Jungian.

Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throught the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul.

—Carl Jung

I'm alive!

Just buried under books and papers.

Finals are creeping up on me, which of course means blog posts inspired by frequent bouts procrastination, so heads up, dear reader!

Giving New York some context.

Jess and I took a mental-health-road-trip out to Cheshire, Connecticut today for some apple-picking and deep breathing. We left the skyline behind us so gladly--it's amazing how cluttered your insides feel when you live in such a cluttered city. We drove through small towns and villages with names that sound British. The East Coast structure is so foreign to me! I'm sure I looked as wide-eyed as if I am from another country entirely. But oh, to hear nothing but the cacophony of hundreds of blackbirds in the trees is something so special. To smell nothing but crisp air and (yes, even) rotting apples was something like heaven. (Never, ever, ever breathe through your mouth in New York City, lest you are taken by an awfully unpleasant surprise.) Anyway, it was absolutely wonderful. And the apples are delicious. And I am going to make a pie with a braided crust.

October

5

Look, hasn't my body already felt

like the body of a flower?

6

Look, I want to love this world

as though it's the last chance I'll ever get

to be alive

and know it.

--Mary Oliver

Dead Horse Bay, the first expedition.

This weekend, two friends and I explored a part of the Rockaway Inlet called "Dead Horse Bay". The name comes from its early 19th century use as a site for a glue-making factory (you can still find old horse bones on the beach.) Around the 1920's, it stopped its function as a depository and became more of a landfill. The beach is covered with old glass bottles labeled with unfamiliar alcohol and beauty product companies. When the waves lap at the shore, you hear the tinkling sound that comes from glass shifting against glass on the shore. It is so eerie it give you the goosebumps, especially because you're guaranteed to be one of the only three people on the beach, but it is a treasure hunter's paradise.

One of my favorite finds was an old, olivine Scotch bottle from Scotland; the beach was absolutely covered with blue, green, brown, clear, and milk-glass bottles. I've laid my treasures along my windowsill--when dinnertime comes, I sit in my room and watch the light reflecting through the bottles onto the wall opposite. (Sarah would add here, "It's the little things.")