Psalm 39:4 ☆

"Psalm 39:4 ☆"

"Show me, LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is."

My name is Grace. I love writing, photography, and wearing cardigans.

Welcome to my first Project 365. Although my 365 is now over, feel free to look around. :) After a break from shooting, I plan to start a new photography project for 2012. Stay tuned!

Start: January 2, 2011
End: January 1, 2012

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/writrgrl/

Theme by Day LP.

14th
September

16 notes

256/365
Today I checked the forecast and we’re supposed to have a high of 59 on Friday. Since I last looked it’s changed to 61 degrees, but I’m still excited. Cardigans, here I come.

31st
August

1 note

242/365
Today is the last day of August. Summer is slowly disappearing, although the heat insists on remaining. I was walking around campus and saw this leaf peeking out among the others. It’s slightly reminiscent of my apple picture (a few hundred days back), but I think that with this half of my 365 I’ve become more focused on taking pictures that represent my life instead of doing conceptual shoots. It may be mostly due to lack of time (and I’m still trying to figure out how to take pictures in front of my apartment complex without creeping out the other tenants), but for the moment artistic pursuit has taken a backseat to actual living.

18th
August

2 notes

229/365
As she falls I try to catch herFor one last touch of warmth from summerAs one thing leaves to becomes another againI remember whenOh to be with summer again
- The Afters, “Summer Again”
Today I settled more into my apartment and figured out the bus system to campus. I bought textbooks and was almost mobbed by freshmen (I can’t believe I’m a junior, gah!) I also discovered that the sunlight on our back patio is incredible in the evenings. Not having a backyard to shoot in is going to feel different for awhile, but I’m going to try to explore off-campus some more this year and find new “go to” places for pictures.

26th
July

0 notes

206/365
This time next week I’ll be in Seattle and then I’ll be boxing up my things to move back to school. I really can’t believe how quickly this summer has flown by. I just realized it’ll probably be the last summer I spend living at home too. But in the wise words of my youngest brother, “Let’s just enjoy it while we have it.”
I’ve written almost 30 pages in last few days, which is the most writing I’ve done all summer. Now that the end of work is in sight, I’m taking more time to write out the ideas that have been wandering around in my head for weeks. For me, writing is exactly like exercise. If you don’t work out for awhile, when you finally do, you burn out quickly and you’re sore afterwards. If I fall out of a habit of writing regularly, it’s difficult for me pick it up again and think any of it’s worthwhile. It makes my brain hurt. But after a few hours and several re-writes, things start looking better.

185/365

“The beauty is in what isn’t said,”
I’m rising to my feet
Because tonight, the world turned in me
Because right now, I don’t dare to breathe
Oh, babe, I know, it’s alive and somewhere for us to find
Tonight, oh chase this light with me.

- Jimmy Eat World, “Chase This Light”

(This is blurry, but I like it.)

3rd
July

2 notes

182/365
Country roads, take me home,
to the place I belong.

“I’ve always wanted to bring someone here.”
We lay on our backs, stretched out on the prickly rain-thirsty lawn. The sun was muted by the thin haze of clouds, but our necks and the crooks of our arms were sweat-kissed by the summer heat. Still, after several hours in a cramped minivan, it was a relief to stretch out and not touch anyone.
“Really?” you asked, steepling your fingers together on your chest. “Why haven’t you brought someone before?”
“There was no one to bring,” I said simply. We both went quiet then, the silence only punctuated by humming cicadas and the mooed complaints of cows in the next field over. I hadn’t meant to be such a downer, but it was the frank truth, there had never been anyone else. This was my place, this was where the heavy layers of stress and doubt were peeled back by family dinners and catching fireflies. As each layer disappeared, my vulnerability was on full display, aching and raw. I was brimming with joy and laughter and my eyes were always crinkled at the edges - this wasn’t the place for strangers. My family dangled on a delicate precipice during our summers here, and one unpredictable outlier would send us reeling, spinning like the earth flicked off its axis and away from the sun, into the dark.
Now that you were here, I was suddenly afraid that I had made a mistake. I was afraid to touch you, afraid to accept your presence, to accept that a stranger had been invited into the fold. Your actions now became my responsibility - so what if I had chosen wrong? What if was too soon?
“Well, thank you for inviting me,” you replied, thumb brushing against the back of my hand. “I know it means a lot, being here with your family.”
“I mean, most of my memories are here,” I explained, allowing your hand to tangle in mine. “We had this giant blue pool we put in the driveway and my grandpa would swim around in it with us, dunking us under the water. And I skateboarded for the first time on the driveway too. You can see how well that turned out.” I pointed at the scar on my elbow with my free hand.
“Well I’d say it turned out pretty well,” you said, laughing. Then your lips where on my cheek and before my actions clicked in my brain, I rolled away from you, out of reach.
“Sorry, not…not here.” I sat up, folding my arms around my knees. “Someone could see.”
“I’m just kissing you,” you chuckled, reaching for me again. But I edged away once more and the playful light in your eyes dimmed.
I wanted to apologize, to explain, but the words were jumbled in my mouth, crouched up against my gums. I didn’t know how to say that I could almost see my seven year-old self glaring at me through the window, my five year-old self’s face twisted in misunderstanding on the tire swing. This place was sacred, the little valley in the mountains, and I had brought someone here, someone who wasn’t concrete, who could be temporary, and yet would still leave a mark. Now if I stretched out on the lawn I wouldn’t remember chasing my cousins around the yard or pretending to be pirates with my brothers as we smacked each other with sticks.
I would just remember you.

29th
June

1 note

179/365
“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.”
- The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
(That weird line on my neck is actually a necklace, not a strange wrinkle.)
The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorite books. I’ve read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which a lot of people say is The Catcher in the Rye of our time. I have to respectfully disagree. I’ve read The Perks of Being a Wallflower and it just didn’t resonate with me that way that Catcher did. Holden Caulfield just seems to have more of a personality than Charlie in Perks does. Both of them were lost and wandering through their lives, but to me, Holden had a maturity that Charlie didn’t. Neither Holden or Charlie were very good at standing up for themselves, but Holden didn’t try to change himself for other people like Charlie did. Holden was an outcast who spoke his mind and pissed people off while Charlie never spoke up. He just let people keep using him. That’s my biggest pet peeve with people in real life too, when they are unhappy with their situation but won’t do anything about it. They just let others keep trampling them. In my opinion, if you have a problem, you should do something about it, not just sit there and complain or suffer quietly. It’s difficult to stand up for yourself, trust me, I know, but for life to get better, you have to be proactive. A better future won’t just fall into your lap. And in Perks, Charlie killed me for that exact reason. Over and over, there were moments where he could have acted differently and spoken up, and then he wouldn’t have been used by his friends and maybe he would’ve had a real chance with Sam.
But then again Charlie realizing all of those things and coming into his own is kind of the point of the book. I guess I just truly couldn’t relate to Charlie, whereas over and over again I found myself agreeing with Holden.

27th
June

0 notes

177/365
This year, all but disappeared,bought into fairy tales,But sleeping beauty justkept score and tried to sleep moreShe said “I’m not quite, myself tonight,”
- “Kiss Quick,” Matt Nathanson
“There’s something about these June nights,” she murmured, running a blade of grass through her fingers. “On nights like this I feel like I can do anything, like anything could happen. They make you want to find someone and whisper to them the way the light flickers on the mountain tops. It’s not love exactly. It’s more of a need to feel the night together, to just share something that is on the tip of your tongue but neither of you can name. You know that feeling? That feeling’s June.”

23rd
June

6 notes

173/365
“We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we’d learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, you’d stop suffering when they did.”
- Looking for Alaska by John Green

10th
June

0 notes