You are sitting at a sunny French café, but there are shadows in your heart.

Today I found out that Franz Wright is dead. He died last year on 14 May. I never knew him ha, I never thought about him, but he wrote that one poem that never quite left my mind:

A description of her eyes

Two teaspoonfuls,
and my mind goes
everyone can kiss my ass now—

then it’s changed,
I change my mind.

Eyes so sad, and infinitely kind.


Today I was thinking about my life. About sadness and kindness and shades of loneliness and why I continue to sit in school and try to learn when I don't want to anymore. Skipped class today to finish that essay that was due in class, probably and submitted it at 8pm, my feet pattering through the corridor to the pigeonhole—I am an awful student.

St Josemaria Escriva wrote that for the modern apostle, an hour of study is an hour of prayer, but man, I can't study anymore ): All I want to do is let my mind go blank just so I don't have to feel or think anymore, and I'm just tired of expectations y'know? What do you want to be in the future? When do you graduate? Who what when where why and the incessant noise of worry and fear everywhere you turn. The two girls discussing their project at the corner of the library in loud stage whispers—you want them to shut up. Another two girls talking in a different language, a high plaintive voice—you want them to shut up. You watch the films you have to analyse in silence with the subtitles on because you forgot your earphones. You walk up and down the corridor twice.

Today, you said a prayer. You clicked on a link to a 3 minute online "retreat", sceptical, and it asks if you're hungry. You take a few deep breaths and you realise that yes, you are hungry. You aren't hungry for food, you had lunch an hour ago, but you think about the reason behind all the effort you put into your work, the stress, the nervous energy, and you think, "my God, I'm so hungry to be recognised." And he says, "I see you and I hear you, my child."


Wild Geese (by Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.