Monday, November 28, 2011

I'mma get your heart racing
In my skin tights jeans
Be your teenage dream tonight

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Falling Slowly.....

Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won


Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you had a choice
You've made it now
Falling slowly

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You




I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

 

 

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” ~ Mother Teresa

"Until It Beats No More"

I was down for the count
Feeling like I've come to the end
Nothing really mattered
Nothing left for me to meant

And then you came
And I still couldn't see
Til you tore down every wall in me
How you healed me with your patience
If it's all I ever do
I never stop loving you

[Chorus:]
Cuz I'm alive, I can breathe, I can feel, I believe
And there ain't no doubt about it, there ain't no doubt about it
I'm in love
And it's all because of you
I was fading but you pulled me through
I'm awake, I survived, I was hurt, thought I'd die
And there ain't no doubt about it
It's love and I have found it
Feel the beat again, stronger than before
I'm gonna give you my heart until it beats no more

I was in place full of pain
With a broken down heart in despair
He took away my feelings
And made it hard for me to care
But then you crashed through the door, to my soul
Put back all the pieces and made me home
I was living in the past
Now I'm never looking back, I'm never looking back

[Chorus:]
Cuz I'm alive, I can breathe, I can feel, I believe
And there ain't no doubt about it, there ain't no doubt about it
I'm in love
And it's all because of you
I was fading but you pulled me through
I'm awake, I survived, I was hurt, thought I'd die
And there ain't no doubt about it
It's love and I have found it
Feel the beat again, stronger than before
I'm gonna give you my heart until it beats no more

Whatever you want me to
I'm gonna see you through
All I ever do
Never stop loving you

[Chorus:]
Cuz I'm alive, I can breathe, I can feel, I believe
And there ain't no doubt about it, there ain't no doubt about it
I'm in love
And it's all because of you
I was fading but you pulled me through
I'm awake, I survived, I was hurt, thought I'd die
And there ain't no doubt about it
(There's just no doubt)
I'm much stronger
So much stronger than before
I'm gonna give u my heart
Until it beats no more

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Einstein, Physics, and Photography……….

 
 
''One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility''.
Albert Einstein
Einstein wanted to ultimately find an equation to explain the universe around us. This being virtually impossible because the wonders created in this universe are far to great for any one to sum up . But none the less Einstein saw things so differently than the rest of the world. He wanted to capture wonders in the world around us and explain things no one saw.

In this ever changing world photographers seek to capture small fragments in time. We thirst to see what most would not. By holding down the shutter we in our own way can hold a piece of the world, and in theses frozen moments in our fabric of time we have a chance to invoke thoughts and feelings, and as photographers we can hold this relative time in our hands.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

To be or not to be ?


Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for: it is a thing to be achieved. – William Jennings Bryan
 
I can’t remember what started it, but for the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of destiny. Are we traveling through our lives like trains on a track, with a pre-set beginning and end point? When I think about destiny, I feel like I’m hurtling through time toward an end that’s already set, like a stationary point. And it’s hard to articulate why, but that scares the hell out of me – that it’s already out there waiting for me and there is no way, ever, for me to know what it is until I get there. I think there are a lot of people who feel the opposite – the idea of their lives being predetermined (by various Who’s or What’s) and that certain things are meant to happen is immensely comforting to them. You marry the person you marry because you two were meant to be. You were meant to do the job you do, have the friends you have, be the person you are. It’s a little easier to face disappointment, because you can sigh and say, “It just wasn’t meant to be.” I catch myself saying things like that all the time, even though I’m not sure I believe that anything is “meant” to be or not be. Can a person believe in things like that and also believe in a higher power? Do the two go hand in hand? It seems that way to me most of the time, but then sometimes it doesn’t. There have been moments in my life when I’ve felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be, at the moment I was meant to be there, with the person I was meant to be with. Sometimes everything lines up perfectly and it feels like that can’t possibly be a matter of chance. But if I’m brutally honest with myself, I have to admit that it probably is. When push comes to shove, I have a hard time believing anything is destined to be. The idea just doesn’t sit right with me. I think it’s more likely that our lives are a series of accidents, a mess of interconnecting paths that could just as easily have crossed in completely different ways than they do, or never crossed at all, if we made different choices. Maybe it doesn’t have the elegance of a laid-out map where we’re all following carefully planned-out, predestined paths…but I think it’s still beautiful. Just in a different way.

Here’s the thing, though: Even if nothing is meant to be, I think it’s a good policy to go through life looking for the people and things that feel like they are – people and things and moments that feel so right, they seem like they were meant for you…or you were meant for them. Even if there is no “predestined” path, those people and things and moments help us know when we’re on a good one.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Love is....

Thankful....




Last night I went out with some old friends and a not-so-old friend :) and had a truly wonderful time.  I was amazed by their kindness. We talked about some things that aren’t easy to talk about¸ and I felt so grateful for their willingness to listen and understand.  I talked about things I don’t often discuss because I’m afraid of what people might think, and they listened with an acceptance and lack of judgment that floored me.  I’m not a perfect person and I’ve made some choices that I’m not proud of, and to be able to speak openly about them and feel nothing but acceptance brought a sense of awe and gratitude that I don’t know how to describe.  Sitting there , I was struck by the realization that my life, while far from perfect, is nevertheless an embarrassment of riches.  I have so many people who care about me, and not just because they’re family and they’re supposed to.  I’m aware of my faults, and I know that I’m not always easy to understand.  The fact that there are quite a few people in this world who know almost everything there is to know about me and love me anyway is something that I can’t (and don’t) take for granted.
That’s really all I want to say tonight: To everyone who’s ever seen through my walls and found something to love, thank you.  I don’t always deserve it, but I promise you that I always appreciate it.  I feel humbled by you.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

 

Found Poem-The Book Thief

One eye open,
one still in a dream,
I knelt down and
extracted his soul.
The chaos of goodbye
must have shown in my eyes.
In my swollen arms,
I carried him;
carried memories.
The cemetery welcomed me
like a friend.
My knees entered the ground;
a beautiful submission.
I handed his soul to eternity
and left my broken heart
in the clumsy silence.








The next book you read should be Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. I finished it two nights ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. The book’s been in my peripheral vision for a couple of years; I picked it up a couple of times and thought about reading it, but at any given time there are about a dozen books that I’m thinking about reading, so I never got around to it. A friend recently asked me about it ,and that brought it back to my attention and I finally settled down with great anticipation to read it.

I had high expectations, and The Book Thief blew them out of the water.

The story follows a young German girl named Liesel growing up in a suburb of Munich at the height of Hitler’s regime. In January 1939, when she is nine years old, she is given over to foster parents when, for mysterious reasons, her mother can no longer care for her. She grows up with her new foster parents in a silently anti-Nazi household, publicly participating in the Hitler Youth program and attending book-burning gatherings while her parents are secretly harboring a Jewish man in the basement. Her adopted father is the epitome of kindness and charity, teaching the illiterate Liesel how to read and write and igniting a passion for books. I can’t discuss the plot too much more without ruining it, but it’s about growing up in a scary and uncertain time, and the power of books to comfort and empower. But this is no ordinary World War II story – it’s a World War II story narrated by Death. And I can say with no qualms whatsoever that Death is the BEST. NARRATOR. EVER. He (it?) takes notice of Liesel for the first time when he comes for her little brother. (“She caught me out, no doubt about it. It was exactly when I knelt down and extracted his soul, holding it limply in my swollen arms. He warmed up soon after, but when I picked him up originally, the boy’s spirit was soft and cold, like ice cream. He started melting in my arms. Then warming up completely. Healing.”) He encounters Liesel two more times in her life as he comes to collect peoples’ souls at key moments, and he is taken with her and her story. As a non-human, Death is baffled by the things that people do, and he makes some interesting observations about human behavior. He’s not quite omnipotent, but he has a wider frame of reference than the average person does; his method of storytelling isn’t linear. As the story progresses in a mostly chronological fashion, we get periodic glimpses into the future that puts the events into larger context so we understand their significance. There are characters in the story whose deaths are described almost immediately upon their arrival on the scene…this being a WWII story, you can imagine that there’s quite a bit of death. Almost every character’s demise is mentioned long before it actually happens, and the writing here is so brilliant that even though you know far ahead of time that someone is going to die, it doesn’t soften the blow when they finally do. This is the most beautiful and gut-wrenching book I have ever read. I sobbed. When was the last time a book made you actually shed tears? I sat in my bed on Friday night and cried like I haven’t cried in ages. The last few chapters have the most exquisitely gorgeous and heartbreaking passages I’ve ever read in any book, and I’ve read a whole lot of books. You might be wondering why in the hell anyone would want to read a book that makes you cry like a baby, but just trust me, you do. It’s so sad, but so strangely beautiful in its sadness. And it isn’t sad just for the sake of pushing your buttons. There’s a point to it all….or rather, it raises a question and that question is the point: How can human beings be so awful and so beautiful at the same time? “I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race – that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and so brilliant.” World War II is the perfect setting for a story about this dichotomy, because while Liesel is growing up in a country where indescribable cruelty is taking place and hatred is stomping around in jackboots, she and the people in her life are continuously doing small but beautiful things. Her life is hard, but it is shot through with kindness and loveliness and strength. How can we be so brutal and so kind? So evil and so divine? I don’t think there is a definitive answer to that question, but the question itself is enough to marvel at.

The Book Thief is getting a place of honor among the best books I’ve ever read. I don’t think I’ve ever been so moved and haunted by a book since ''night''. This one is going to stay with me forever. I wish someone had sat me down three years ago and told me I have to read this book, so now I’m doing that for you.

Monday, November 14, 2011

I guess this is growing up.......




When I was younger, I made a lot of assumptions about what being an adult would be like. As I was growing up, it seemed like my mom always knew exactly what to do and how to do it, without a moment’s hesitation. Adults, it seemed, had it all figured out. I thought that once I reached a certain age, adulthood would just kick in and the world would make perfect sense and I’d be magically endowed with all this wisdom and know exactly what to do, where to be, and why.

I was in for a very rude awakening. I recently came to the startling realization when I turned 30 this year, and that means that I can no longer hide from the fact that I’m an adult. When you’re in your 20s you can pretend you’re still a kid, but at 30, you’ve got to face facts.

And here are the facts: I am an adult, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
It’s amusing and vexing at the same time. I thought being a grownup would be so much easier than being a kid – adults have money, their own means of transportation, and no scheduled bedtime. Nobody can take away their TV privileges. Nobody can make them put on uncomfortable shoes and confining clothing and go to parties they don’t want to go to. To be an adult was to be on easy street.

I did not know, of course, about bills, work, having a home, broken hearts, college burnout, having a child, and forgetting to put the lid on the blender before pressing “puree.” I didn’t realize that when you’re an adult, nobody is responsible for your life except you and when you make a mess of it, you’re the one who has to find a mop and get to work. You are completely in charge of, and responsible for, your own existence. I didn’t know that with that knowledge comes both empowerment and paralyzing fear.

The truth is, adulthood sneaks up on you. One minute you’re swinging on a tire and the next day you’re changing a flat one. In a dress. In the rain. There is no magical line to cross between childhood and adulthood, and I’m starting to think that I will always have this still-growing-up feeling.

I didn’t expect to still feel so baffled by the world at 30. And I didn’t know that what little wisdom I had at this age would be so terribly hard-won. I didn’t expect that every time I came to a crossroads, I’d stand there with my breath stuck in my throat and wonder why the hell I’m not allowed to have a map on this trip. I didn’t expect to find that the world still shocks the crap out of me on such a regular basis.

All of this has made me reflect on the adults I had in my life when I was a kid, particularly my mom. She always seemed to know exactly what to do, but I realize now that she didn’t. I didn’t see her go into the other room and choke down tears of frustration when I was pushing her to the limit. I didn’t see how scared she must have been when I was really, really sick. I didn’t see how helpless she must have felt when I had my first broken heart. She had to fly by the seat of her pants just like everyone else does, just like I’m doing now, and I can’t help but be a little bit in awe of her because she made it look so easy. I guess the word for that is grace.

In the midst of all the uncertainty, that’s something that I aspire to as I’m trying to navigate my life. Life won’t always go the way I thought (or hoped) it would. It’s going to keep throwing plenty of curveballs and WTF moments my way. And that’s okay. In the midst of all the confusion, chaos, and uncertainty, I’ve learned that the important thing is to live well, and to live with purpose, and love, and at least a little bit of grace.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Decisions....Decisions.......


“If you truly expect to realize your dreams, abandon the need for blanket approval.  If conforming to everyone’s expectations is the number one goal, you have sacrificed your uniqueness, and therefore your excellence.” – Hope Solo


I spent many, many years of my young life in possession of very little backbone .  I rarely made a decision that wasn’t immediately called into question. As a result, I spent a lot of time feeling lost and frustrated and unhappy, because that’s what happens when you ignore your own intuition and assume that someone else knows what’s best for you.  The blame can’t be placed on anyone other than myself, because I’m the one who gave people that power over me.  I’m not mad at myself over it, but I look back at that version of myself and I feel like I don’t know who that girl was.  I don’t recognize her.  Because something’s happened to me over the last few years, so slowly that I hardly noticed:  I stopped caring what other people think of what I do.  It seems like such a simple thing, but it really isn’t.  It took me a while to realize that in the instances when I was able to tune out everyone but myself and do what I wanted, I ended up feeling really good about it.  I don’t know if this happened because I’m getting a little bit older and a little bit wiser and a little more secure with myself, or because I booted a couple of toxic people from my life, or a combination of both, but it hardly needs saying that this is a good change.  There is a big difference between taking someone’s opinion under advisement and automatically assuming their opinion is more valid than mine and acting accordingly.  Sometimes I feel really resentful when people load unasked-for “advice” on me, but then I remind myself that I don’t need to resent their advice, because I don’t need to follow it.  And there’s no need to be testy or defensive when someone disagrees with my choices, because they’re mine and I know what’s best for me, not them.  And as long as my decisions aren’t hurting anyone, that’s all there is to it.  It’s not that I’m unwilling or incapable of heeding someone’s advice; I think advice from someone you respect can be invaluable.  I’ve just put it into the appropriate perspective.  I feel good enough about myself to trust my own mind and my own decisions and when I feel certain about something, I don’t seek the approval of anyone else.  There will always be people who feel the need to tell me whether they approve or not, and that’s fine.  It just doesn’t factor into most of my decisions anymore.  And I can’t even tell you what a relief that is.  I’m proud of me.  I think it’s a big step forward on the path to figuring out how to be happy.

Jar of Hearts


Today I was listening to a song by Christina Perri called “Jar of Hearts.”  Every now and then I stumble across a song that knocks me for a loop – it snatches up a feeling or a memory from somewhere inside that I’ve forgotten about (or have been pretending to) and I feel like a doll coming apart at the seams.  Do you have a song like that – one that takes one of the most emotionally intense times of your life and compresses all that feeling into 4 minutes of sound?  “Jar of Hearts” is one of those songs for me, and I started thinking about how invaluable that kind of song can be.   I like to think I’m pretty good at expressing myself, but no matter what I’m thinking or feeling, it seems that someone else has also thought it or felt it and managed to express it in the way I would if I knew how…and it’s the most wonderful feeling of catharsis.  I wasn’t able to say it, but someone else was, and that’s just as good.
There was a boy.  I loved him like I’ve never loved anything or anyone else.  It ended very, very badly.  When the dust finally settled, I was convinced I’d never be all right again.  I was always going to hurt, was always going to be sad, would never find a way to be at peace with it.  He did things that nobody has the right to do to another person, and in the months I spent sifting through the fallout, he had the temerity to try to remain part of my life, and over and over again I found myself wanting to hunt him down, grab him by the collar and scream “Who the hell do you think you are?” I’ve since learned that I won’t always hurt, I won’t always be sad, I will find a way to be at peace with it, and most importantly, it doesn’t matter who the hell he thinks he is.  But “Jar of Hearts” is about that “who do you think you are?” feeling, and it brings me back to it in an instant….and it’s funny, because it’s not a bad thing.  I’ve been listening to it over and over again.  It seems counterproductive to listen to a song that makes you feel sad, but we all do it.  I think we’ve all put on “Everybody Hurts” or something similar when we’re feeling particularly sorry for ourselves, and strangely, we feel better afterward.  Why is that?  Because it’s reassurance that someone else has felt the same way, and not only that, they’ve also turned it into something beautiful.  That last bit is the important part for me.  There a lot of really lovely songs (and poems, and books, and art) about really ugly things.  I think that turning something ugly into something beautiful is just about the strongest thing a person can do—downright heroic, in fact—and it makes me feel better about the world to know that there are people out there doing it.  So in a circuitous sort of way, the songs that make me feel like a doll coming apart at the seams actually manage, when all’s said and done, to sew me back together again.
Just like the clouds
My eyes will do the same, if you walk away
Everyday, it'll rain.....

Friday, November 11, 2011




“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why”.

I keep coming back to that bit of Slaughterhouse-Five. “There is no why.” In this passage, Billy Pilgrim is talking to a being from another planet. These beings don’t perceive time the way humans do – instead of perceiving one moment at a time, in a linear fashion, they see all moments in time simultaneously. Everything that has ever happened, and ever will happen, is actually all occurring at once, and has always been occurring. They don’t worship a deity and don’t believe that things happen for a reason. Death isn’t sad because although a person is dead in this particular moment, he or she is still alive in a million other moments. Death is just something that happens, and it is always marked with the (slightly fatalistic) saying, “So it goes.” The idea that “there is no why,” when I encountered it, was terrifying. I think human beings have a deep, instinctual desire to assign meaning and purpose to their lives and the things that happen around them. We really want there to be a “why,” even if we can’t figure out what it is. As intelligent, self-aware animals, we are capable of analyzing the world on a pretty high level and as a result we can be baffled and terrified by it, because we are inclined to be afraid of things we don’t understand. So, in our fear, we look for a why. If we can just assign a why, it will make sense and our sense of order will be restored. Religion fits that bill extraordinarily well. It enables people to assign a why. We are being rewarded, or punished, or the karmic wheel has made a full circle, or we are being taught something, or at the very least we can shrug and say, “It’s part of God’s plan, and his plan is not always for us to know.” I think there’s an enormous amount of comfort to be drawn from that. So the idea of there being no why is really scary, at least initially.
Then I encountered Vonnegut and his aliens, and they knocked me for a loop. I discovered Slaughterhouse-Five during a really difficult time when I was trying to drag myself out of my pit of devastation and not doing a very good job of it (at all), and I was asking a lot of questions that started with why. When something knocks us down we want to know why. Why did this happen, and why does it have to hurt so bad? So I happened to pick up this book in the midst of all this pain and angst, and I stumbled across “Here we are, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why,” and it set me free. Having a why can be immensely comforting, yes, but I also think that when we get knocked down and are lying there dazed, we can be so encumbered by our insistence on figuring out the why that our recovery is hampered. It’s like a weight around our necks that makes getting up again even harder than it already is, or delays our even trying until we figure it out. That was the case with me – I was so obsessed with figuring out why all this nasty stuff had happened to me that I wasn’t really even trying to get past it. So the idea that there wasn’t a why for me to figure out, instead of being scary and bleak, was liberating on a near-miraculous level. The why isn’t really what’s important, it’s the how – as in, how was I going to allow this experience to shape the kind of person I am? Forget why, I decided. It doesn’t matter. Awful things happen to people all the time – good people and bad people alike. So it goes. If we don’t allow ourselves to be bogged down by an obsession with why it happened and instead turn our energies to thinking about what we learned and what we’re going to do now, suddenly we’re empowered. And feeling empowered makes it so much easier to get back on our feet when we’ve been dealt a hard blow.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011



We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Friday, November 4, 2011






 I may hate myself in the morning But I'm gonna love you tonight.

Thursday, November 3, 2011




''Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down''.


''How can I be in love when in afraid''........

Wednesday, November 2, 2011