My Five Favorite Albums of 2013

As the year comes to an end, I always love reflecting on all my favorite things:) Here are my five favorite albums of 2013! What are yours?!

1) Native - One Republic

2) Red - Taylor Swift

3) Magnetic - Goo Goo Dolls

4) Golden - Lady Antebellum

5) Moon Landing - James Blunt

Five Must Read Short Stories By Aimee Bender!

I recently discovered the beauty and magic of Aimee Bender's short stories. In my opinion, she is a very talented writer, and I would definitely recommend reading some of her work if you haven't already. Once I pick up one of her books, I find it really hard to set down! She wrote a bestselling novel called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which I enjoyed, but I think I like her short story collections even better! In no particular order, I've listed my five personal favorite stories here at least from one ones I've read so far. If you've ever read her work, I'm curious as to what your favorites are too, so please feel free to add your comments below!

1) Death Watch (Willful Creatures)

"Ten men go to ten doctors. All the doctors tell all the men that they only have two weeks to live. Five men cry. Three men rage. One man smiles. The last man is silent, meditative. Okay, he says. He has no reaction..." This is how the story begins and ultimately the rest of the story expands on the basic idea that people can have very different reactions to the idea of their own death. Within a mere five or six pages, this story is filled with ironic and humorous twists as well as a few brilliant observations on the deeper meaning that often lies behind the simplest of our actions.

2) Tiger Mending (The Color Master)

This is a story about a girl who travels with her sister deep into Malaysia, after her sister was hired for a special job of mending injured tigers. The need to find out what it is exactly, that causes the tigers to need mending, leads to an unsettling discovery. There are some great sad-but-sorta-true quotes in the story including my two personal favorites:

"During the descent, she gave the doily to the man across the aisle, worried about his ailing son, and the needlework was so elegant it made him feel better just to hold it. That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. That's why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in."

"It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moment..."

3) The Meeting (Willful Creatures)

This is a story about meeting someone that is not the type of person you were looking for, yet still being irresistibly attracted to them for a reason that you cannot comprehend. "It is these empty spaces you have to watch out for," the story says, "as they flood up with feeling before you even realize what's happened; before you find yourself, at the base of her spine, different."

4) Fruit and Words (Willful Creatures)

This is a story about relationship troubles that lead a women to a magical discovery that seems wonderful at first but turns out to be horrible. I can't say for sure what Bender intended the story to mean, but to me, it's a great allegory for a rebound relationship. We often trade the dullness or troubles of one world, for a new discovery or person that first seems more amazing, magical, and liberating than anything we had hoped for, only to find out that what lies beneath the surface isn't quite as sweet.

5) The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers (Willful Creatures)

This is a story about a man that attempts to explain a murder mystery by considering the meaning behind a couple's collection of salt and pepper shakers. It's extremely clever!

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5 Of The Best Commencement Speeches of All Time

You don't have to be a recent graduate to be inspired by the best of the best commencement speeches. Here are five that are definitely worth listening to if you haven't already!

1. Neil Gaiman at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2012

             

2. Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2005

                               

3. David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005

                                   

4. Mark Lewis at University of Texas Austin in 2000

Speech Transcript Is Here: http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/admin/Grad/lewis.html

5. JK Rowling at Harvard University in 2008

                             

The True/False Quirkology Quiz That May Surprise You!

I recently finished reading the book Quirkology: How We Discover The Big Truth In Small Things by psychologist Richard Wiseman.

                                           

This book discusses numerous studies about often peculiar human behavior and certainly provides a lot of food for thought. I created a true/false quiz to share five points of the book that I found to be the most intriguing. How many can you get right? I hope you enjoy learning about these fascinating facts as much as I did!

The Questions!

1. True or False? Many seemingly supernatural or ghostly experiences are actually a result of low frequency sound waves.

2. True or False? Woman van drivers are less likely than others to take more than 10 items through the supermarket express lane.

3. True or False? People born in warmer months may be luckier than those born in the colder months.

4. True or False? The best way to detect a lie is to look rather than listen.

5. True or False? People would rather wear a shirt that has been dropped in dog feces and not washed than one that once belonged to a mass murderer.

The Answers!

1.  True or False? Many seemingly supernatural or ghostly experiences are actually a result of low frequency sound waves. True! Although these sound waves, referred to as "infrasound", cannot be heard by the human ear, they carry energy which may be capable or producing strange effects. Certain frequencies may cause distortion of vision, move objects, or cause weird flickering of a candle flame, all things that one might blame on a place being "haunted." Wiseman tested this theory by doing a study in which two concerts were performed in an auditorium that were identical except for the timing of infrasound waves, and then seeing how this effected how the audience felt about the music. As expected, the audience reported significantly more unusual experiences during the parts that incorporated the infrasound waves.

2.  True or False? Woman van drivers are less likely than others to take more than 10 items through the supermarket express lane. False! Women van drivers are not only the most likely to break the express lane rules, studies also suggest that they are more likely to speed, ignore stop signs, and park in prohibited areas.

3.  True or False? People born in warmer months may be luckier than those born in the colder months. True! Studies show the time of year that you are born may matter when it comes to luck. Also, in general, those with summer births appear to be bigger risk takers. The are various possibilities suggested for an effect most related to how the cold temperatures effect babies or the birth mothers. Although it's certainly fascinating how the temperature around the time of birth may effect one's future personality, the difference between the average luck and risk adversity of summer and winter babies is not extremely significantly and of course there are lots of exceptions. I, myself, was a November baby and I consider myself both lucky and an above average risk taker!

4.  True or False? The best way to detect a lie is to look rather than listen. False! What liars say can actually be more helpful when trying to determine if they are telling the truth. When lying, people tend to say less, give fewer details, and use personal adjectives such as "I" less than people that are telling the truth.

5.  True or False? People would rather wear a shirt that has been dropped in dog feces and not washed than one that once belonged to a mass murderer. True! The idea of wearing something that had once belonged
 to someone who personified evil appears to be more disturbing to most people, than the disgust and potential health concerns of wearing something that has touched dog feces.

Blood-Remembering

I just had to share this beautiful passage from Rainer Maria Rilke's book, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Bridge. It almost made me cry.

"Ah! but verses amount to so little when one writes them young. One ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, and a long life if possible, and then, quite at the end, one might perhaps be able to write ten lines that were good. For verses are not, as people imagine, simply feelings (those one has early enough), —they are experiences. For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, men and things, one must know the animals, one must feel how the bids fly and know the gestures with which the little flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and partings one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents whom one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illnesses that so strangely begin with such a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars—and it is not yet enough if one may think of all of this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the window open and the fitful noises. And still it is not yet enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance and gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—not till then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them."

                                                                         

My Favorite Quotations From "Letters to a Young Poet"

                                                                      

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

"How can we forget that old myth, which is to be found at the beginning of all peoples-the myth of the dragon, which at the last moment changes into a princess? Perhaps all the dragons of your life are princesses, who are only waiting for us to show a little beauty and courage. Perhaps at the bottom of every horror is something helpless, that wants help from us."

"If it were possible for us to see a little further than our knowledge can reach, to see out a little farther over the outworks of our surmising, we should perhaps bear our griefs with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moment when something new, something unknown enters into us."

"I believe that nearly all our griefs are moments of suspense, which we experience as paralysis, because we can no longer hear our estranged feeling living. Because we are alone with that foreign thing, which has entered into us; because everything in which we have confidence and to which we are accustomed is for a moment taken away from us; because we are in the midst of a state of transition, in which we cannot remain. The grief, too, passes.

"So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”

"Rejoice in your growth, into which you can take no one with you, and be good to those who remain behind. Be assured and peaceful in their presence, do not torture them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or your joy, which they could not comprehend."

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”

"And if we speak once more of loneliness, it becomes even clearer that that is not a thing which one can choose or reject. We are lonely. One can deceive oneself over and over and behave as if it were not so. That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are lonely and candidly to make that realization our starting point."

"Avoid adding new material to that strained dram which-is ever played between parents and children. It uses up much of the children's strength and consumes the love of the parents, which is always active and warm, even if it does not understand."

"Men have already had to change their conceptions of many processes, and they will gradually come to realize that what we call fate comes out of human beings themselves and does not come upon them from without."