• Drinking: Turkish coffee.
• Listening to: Korean pop, force-fed to me by Ming Tay.
• Wearing: Sandals & a linen tuxedo top from Banana. It’s that warm in Charleston right now.

Hello, cheri!

Can you believe it? Thanksgiving is come & gone! Time flies. Almost all of the bright & beautiful leaves in this town have already abandoned their trees, leaving behind them the bare branches of winter which, in turn, make my memories of the awe-inspiring autumnal colors of a few weekends ago spent in Olive Branch, MS, that much sweeter.

What a wonderful weekend it was! Not a far cry from this one –– though in a very different way. While I was lounging on quilt-covered mattresses & in carved, wooden rockers, bundled in the midst of a foggy weekend away from the world, this Saturday it’s sunny & in the mid-70s. Relaxing this weekend means driving downtown every day, bustling in & out of coffee shops & cafés, & browsing boutiques (okay, maybe ravaging. It’s all relative). But I’m getting the same feeling out of both my mini-breaks: the knot-in-your-stomach, this-is-so-good-I-can’t-stop-thinking-about-how-bad-the-real-world-is feeling. The feeling that maybe I need to start doing homework, but the mere thought of homework scares the pants off me! Add on to homework the piles of winter job applications, summer internship deadlines, and extra-curriculars I’ve signed up for, & my break is feeling shorter & shorter.

Then I realized something, tucked away in the convent-like atmosphere of life in the country, immersed in time to study & dotted with quiet moments of solitude: Life is not a monastery. Life is 5th Avenue. It’s bustling & it’s full. There are sirens & there are thugs. There are honking horns & pushy people, but there are also those who sit quietly in the corner, hands out & asking for help. And there are those who give it–people who will stop & give you directions when you ask.

I guess what I really learned was no matter how far you slow it down, life never stops moving. And the more you’re living, the faster it goes. I love a weekend away as much as the next person, but I need to stop counting down the days in between. Life is now.

{photos by me: Olive Branch, Mississippi}