Humans can love, they can do it flawlessly.

I like how you mispronounce words sometimes, how you fumble and stammer and stutter looking for the right ones to say and the right ways to say them. I appreciate that you find language challenging, because it is, because everything manmade is challenging. Including man, including you.

When you sleep on your side, I like to map the constellations between your beauty marks freckles pimples, the minuscule mountains that sprinkle your back. I like the tufts of hair you forgot to shave and the way you smell when you haven’t showered in a while; I like the sleep left in your eyes.

I like the way your skin dies in the middle of the night, how you die from embarrassment the next morning; how you writhe in the snake casing you’ve left behind. I like that you think pillow snowflakes carry more weight than pillow talk; that you think my opinion of you is so fickle that it could change overnight. (It’s not.)

I enjoy seeing you insecure, vulnerable. I like to watch red steam light up your cheeks, a spreading mist of shame when you think you’ve done something unacceptable like missing a step on the stairs or not having the perfect answer to something I’ve said. It’s like you honestly don’t know how wonderful you are, it’s like you have no idea.

The burns, the scars, the black and blues on your face body heart, I want to know their stories. I want to know what hurt you, who hurt you, how bad the damage is. I like your hard, ugly toenails and the layer of fat that lines your belly, the soft parts you try to hide. It’s okay to be soft, sometimes.

I Like Your Flaws by Stephanie Georgopulos

I appreciate your ability to get inappropriately angry as much as I appreciate your willingness to apologize afterward. I like how your passion manifests unpredictably and uncontrollably, how your feelings cannot be caged or concealed, how you’re incapable of apathy.

I like how you can’t dance, how you have pedestrian taste in music, how the worst song on every album is your favorite. I like how enthusiastic you are when you hear it, it’s like you don’t know how terrible it is, it’s like maybe how you’re able to love someone like me. (Perhaps that’s your biggest flaw, perhaps that’s the one I love most.) Your flaws single you out, set you apart, make you different from the rest, and thank god. I don’t just put up with settle for accept your blemishes, I like them. I like them because they make you human, and humans are easier to love than photographs and illusions and ideals; humans fit more easily between arms and between legs; humans are welcome to their imperfections because if there’s one thing humans can do perfectly, it’s love. Humans can love, they can do it flawlessly.

why do we need grammar?

Grammar is the study of how sentences are constructed. Within the study of grammar, we find “subject-verb agreement” and “verb tense” and “syntax;” in short, words and phrases that explain the logic behind language. But grammar is not just about creating sentences that make sense. It holds the language together, so that we may better communicate with one another the beauty in our existence. Just as simple algebra leads to the complex physics that explains the universe, so do grammar and its usage lead to the prose that expresses everything. Using advanced grammar helps to convey reality rather than just writing about reality. 

Novels help us better understand the many facets of the human condition. In chapter two of How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton insinuates that novels actually heal us by allowing insight into humanity. In reading, we learn about ourselves; de Botton states, “In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self.” We also learn about other people—“we are repeatedly able to read about people we know.”  Novels expand our horizons, letting “worlds that had seemed threateningly alien reveal themselves to be essentially much like our own, expanding the range of places in which we feel at home.” A reader cannot read himself or his friends into poorly written prose, nor can he feel at home in simple syntax. In order to effectively display something complex, we must use complex means; nothing short of an advanced use of language could adequately display characters complex enough to allow a deeper understanding of mankind. 

Great writing is not just the result of intense character development. A story is not a story without plot, and plot does not come out of inexperience. Experience gives us something to write about. In chapter one, de Botton gives us this directive: love life today, not tomorrow or the next day. Learn how to appreciate a morning cup of coffee as the delicious deep brown and bitter liquid that it is. View a cold walk to wherever as refreshingly crisp. Or choose to see a particularly fierce argument as enlightening. He implores us to take note of everything we do and what is around us instead of blindly going through the motions.  When we begin to experience life—both the good and the bad—we then discover “a host of untried possibilities lurking beneath the surface of an apparently undesirable, apparently eternal existence.” When we are active in our lives we can write in a way that is believable and subsequently relatable. And when we write about our experiences, just as we pay attention to the details in our everyday business, so should we pay attention to the details in our writing. 

Advanced grammar helps us to write about incredibly complex subjects: people and their lives. Novels help us understand how people work. They let us gain deeper understanding of ourselves and they allow us to learn about other people so that we may better appreciate their perspectives. Our active participation in life gives us material to pull on so that we may write stories worthy of the characters we put into them, making the tales more relatable.

Valentine's Day Advice

In honor of the "love" holiday, I thought I might impart a few tips to ladies lookin' for love.

Find a man, not a boy. Hearts are broken by stupidity. Boys are stupid, men are less stupid. Also, note that "men" and "boys" are terms that don't necessarily mean physical age.

Find yourself an honest man. One who will tell you what he actually thinks about your friends and family.

Next, find an honest man with a couple extra helpings of kindness in his soul. Some of us may be able to handle an honest but not kind man... but I doubt anyone wants to. So, find a man who will, in fact, tell you that yes, that dress makes you look fat; but make sure he's the type to say it nicely.

Here's the most important one: find an honest, kind man who is good with words. Love doesn't mean anything if he can't express it.

fun stuff!

Hello my dear, wonderful readers! It's been a while, I know, since I've written- even longer since I've written of happy things.

SO, here's some happy stuff for you all to enjoy!

Occasionally, I get overwhelming urges to go shopping for EVERYTHING. Today, I indulged with these four lovely products:

a sticker for either my car or my camelback... not sure which

a bumpersticker for my camelback

this one is a tshirt from the shop at mentalfloss.com

tshirt from outofprintclothing.com

Also, for those of you who enjoy the ooey-gooey mushy-mushy ness of the Romance genre, I highly encourage you to check out Okay, Listen Here. My mother and four or five of her writer friends are the writers. Their posts range from the hilariously random (written mostly by mom) to the outrageously opinioned. And they update several times a week. How awesome is that?

That is all for now, lovely readers.

a reason to be happy

We use words to talk about our world and to show the beauty in living. Every word that has ever found itself spoken or written into existence has been so in order to more perfectly rejoice in all things, both good and bad. If we do not rejoice in these things, we have no reason to speak or write.

This is the day the LORD hath made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.