Tuesday, April 3, 2012

We came, we saw, we saved the whales.

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I spent last week in the beautiful Emerald City, canvassing to ban plastic bags and save whales and seals in Puget Sound. I've got fulfillment and friends and... Feathers! I don't have feathers.

But I sure do feel like I could fly.

Let me ask you, what could life ever require beyond $2 midnight happy hour sushi, people you meet in the rain who give you hand warmers just because, the discovery of a laugh you could sample as the foundation of the world's greatest techno song, love, jam sessions, friendship, and disco?
Nothing, silly panda. These comprise the basics of happiness.

I am now home in Coeur d'Alene for a bit, battling my bi-monthly cold brought on by the plane ride. Fret not, I'm stocked up with tea and sugar free popsicles, emergen-c, and kittens. I'm consuming 3 of the 4, I'll let you speculate.

Also, I can't wait for my next trip to Ashland. The last one had baby lambs, and this one will have brand new PEOPLE type friends. Oh buddy!
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What a beautiful dream that could flash on the screen
In the blink of an eye
And be gone from me

Love to be
In the arms if all I'm keeping here with me.
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Monday, February 27, 2012

Thank you Loren Eisley for the key to life.

Day One
Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"

The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."

"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.

To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"

At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Whatever kind of crisis happens when you're nineteen rather than 54.

So, I've found myself once again looking for somewhere to go.

Money is tight, jobs are non-existent, fulfillment is like some sort of intangible phantom that I saw out of the corner of my eye once then realized I was dreaming and woke up to a reality as flimsy as the walls of my unconscious idealisms. And I still sucked at making sense.

I'm spending a little time at home to recharge and get my head in the game, which basically equals out to "making enough money to keep eating until you're given the magic shovel that will grant you entrance into your own personal grave of college debt". And that grave, I suspect, must have embellished walls with beautiful views to keep you comfortably fooled for just long enough, because everyone living university life is much more carefree than that sort of consequence might allow for. I'm thinking more and more though, that I may soon justify all my teachers who rolled their eyes at me for devising this whole residency plan to go to U of O. "it's dangerous, you may not want to go back to school." and admittedly I've been bitten by the "youthful unrealistic young person" bug. I'm not so sure tying myself down with over a hundred thousand dollars in debt to avoid the social stigma of skipping college is really my thing. I'm as cynical and arrogant as the day is long I know.

I want you to consider for a moment, how much of your life is lived according to social stigmas and norms. If you are in college, the most likely reason you are there is to increase the chances you'll end up with heaps of recreational moolah later in life. To insure that you end up with a nice home, a drivable car, a well-bred labradoodle, and the satisfaction of perseverance. And the reason for that is assuredly because the world you grew up in has equated that lifestyle with success. And the most direct route to validating your success, be it intellectual or otherwise, is to have a fancy degree that shows you're good enough.

However!

Success is happiness.
Success is balance of all parts of yourself, painted out onto the giant mural-to-be that is your waking life.

Maybe I don't need to go to college. I've got love and libraries and youth on my side and lives to change and a novel to write. I'll think much too much about it and get back to you on my decision.

Things-

Places
http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/s/81wR3U

Ways
http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/s/2Ly8E7

Music
http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/s/1ZdfIv

Typical.

Be still these rolling thunderheads behind my open eyes
If I recall this visage one more time 
You've lost yourself and I've misplaced mine. 

I've come back to greet the eye of the storm 
With youthful pride gone brave and blind. 
 just short of kissing the withdrawals goodbye.
It's good to see you my love. 

Monday, February 20, 2012

The best.

Sincerest apologies for being a lazy bum and not writing in like nine years, but i've returned with all varieties of exciting news.
Firstly!
I can definitively state that this weekend was the greatest of all the weekends in the weekend world. I spent Friday beasting it up, biking what seemed to be a nearly vertical face of asphalt with a beautiful spectacular girl named Morgen. This was en route to Spencer's Butte in our current city of Eugene, Oregon, where we would hike for a bit in the light rain, spend a significant chunk of time absolutely agape at the way the light green moss gave the trees their fluorescent glow toward their tops, then sit our little butts down under a natural overhang of branches and eat Brie cheese and grapes and three kinds of chocolate and granny smith apples. Being out in a place like that seems to heighten every sense and emotion to their greatest degrees, which I suppose must be why everything tastes freaking glorious when you're out hiking. I don't know that the words or company of any person could comfort me in the same way as the company of the wild.
In a seemingly endless succession of uncanny shit that just worked out swimmingly, Morgen and I spent the rest of our day dodging death while careening at roughly 27637382 mph down those vertical hills we'd climbed up so slowly before (which were also wet and muddy by this point, mind you), wandering around Valley River Center buying vitamins and undergarments, then living the absolute high life at Anatolia restaurant downtown, trading bites of Mediterranean deliciousness and reveling in how wonderful this girl date had been. We hugged goodbye as she waited for the EmX and I scurried across Eugene station to catch the 13 Centennial home (does the city just look at some people and say, "Welp, we've assessed you thoroughly and you're a complete creep, here's a dirty baseball cap and a bus pass!). And as I walked, I caught myself with one of those giant smiles on my face that must have looked really silly to anyone who wasn't reading my mind. But I was just so stoked on life. Two of life's greatest essentials are relationships with 1) a beautiful view that you can't get to in nice shoes 2) someone who makes you just want to break out a quality fist pump, because they balance and uplift you and make you laugh your little face off for no reason.
And that was just FRIDAY! Check ittttt-
If days are typically separated and denoted by sleep in between them, I pretty much had one giant Saturday that's still going on and will be until this blog has been posted. And I spent most of this adventure with my newest and among my very best friends, qui s'appelle Diego. I met a majority of his immediate family, who was in Eugene to watch Diego's younger brother take vicious stabs at the opposing soccer team's dignity. We huddled under umbrellas, cheered and clapped, congratulated Edwin on his win, ate tamales, and went home. At which point I decided concretely to someday learn fluent Spanish. And how to make tamales. Love is family, and family is love, and it doesn't even have to be yours to feel it.
Later, born of the inherent insomnia which is bound to happen after a four hour nap at 6:00 pm, I invited Diego over for a late night jam session since he had done the same thing, ironically. We sang, and talked, and speculated about tomorrow's plans until about 4:00 a.m. when some ambiguous force (youth, perhaps) possessed us into agreeing without hesitation to road trip at that very moment to Lincoln City to watch the sun come up over the ocean, then spend the day taking pictures and exploring beaches and watching waves and adventuring. So, teeny mandarin oranges and camera in hand, we hit the open road. Arriving in Lincoln City just as it really started to get light out. Little bit of walking on the beach, a few pictures, an hour car nap in the sun, glorious. We later drove south a bit, ending up in Newport for lunch at Mo's on the one day that will assuredly go down in history as the ONLY sunny day every to befall the city of Newport, Oregon. Things could not have worked out better.
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This weekend really got me thinking introspectively about circumstance and outwardly manifested reality. It seems to me like a completely legitimate possibility that this visible, tangible reality that we see before us is nothing but outward reflections of ourselves, which exist for the sole purpose of experiential growth of our minds, hearts and souls. In which case, weekends that work out wonderfully are just visual manifestations of some balance you've achieved within yourself. The more likely possibility though, I think, is that there is one over reaching reality experienced by everyone subjectively, and it looks and feels varied depending on where you're figuratively standing. And reality is constant, though only in the way that it is ever-changing, and one's soul and mind cast different arrays of shadow and light over this scene, making it just as subjective as the first idea, where reality does not really exist at all. We can draw nearly the same conclusions from either, to learn about ourselves, to discover the circumstances in which we function best, or the times we are most perfectly balanced. Remember, just be.

Also, slightly less recently, I discovered I was able to run short distances again (I've had a recurring stress fracture since in my metatarsal bone since last July), and my first 5k in nearly 8 months nearly made me want to cry tears of "this is the best day of my life". I've been taking it easy, and will continue to do so until I'm runnin' ultramarathons left and right and I have so many muscles in my calves it's borderline inhuman and kiiinda gross! Score!

Grain-free raw vegan as of tomorrow, I'll keep you updated with that as well.

Au revoir, belles!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Chasing April

I was on my knees painting an unintentionally morbid looking picture today and "Ever Since" by The Head and The Heart popped up on Pandora. I had nearly forgotten how instantly I would die of overwhelming happiness if someone wrote that about me. Unless he was, you know, bald.
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I wrote a song today about coming to terms with the inevitable possibility that upon uprooting your life and moving out of state, the lives of the people you left behind may still function, even progress swiftly, without you, believe it or not. But alas! You can never really lose the ones you love. Because the reason they existed in your life in the first place, was for the love. The love that they brought to your life and allowed you to actualize within yourself. Remember your best times with people. "We only have what we remember." -Listener.

Monday, January 16, 2012

The Road to Willegillespie and Beyond.

You, you only, exist.
We pass away, till at last,
our passing is so immense
that you arise: beautiful moment,
in all your suddenness,
arising in love, or enchanted
in the contraction of work.

To you I belong, however time may
wear me away. From you to you
I go commanded. In between
the garland is hanging in chance; but if you
take it up and up and up: look:
all becomes festival!


Rainer Maria Rilke

I read this poem today in my collection of Rilke poetry, and I'm unsure if it's a picture of God or nature, or one within the other, maybe just "the way". The way all things have precisely one way of fitting together perfectly, looking so different from each angle at which they are seen. I'm seeing for perhaps the very first time that the garland is indeed hanging in chance.

I met an aspiring ultra-marathoner, a vitamin sales woman/closet super environmentalist, and a quintessential starving artist today. These people shared nearly no physical attributes, they didn't say the same things to me, they weren't headed for similar homes at the day's end or similar places to live or die or anything in between after today. But I was told by the human meteor who shook the foundation of my Earth, if only briefly, that the world around you, or your perception of it at least, is just a reflection of yourself. And I may have shattered my own skepticism of that today.



"You will love again the stranger who was your self."
Walcott

hang up
^photo by superpipo2010

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Like kings.

I am currently laying in my bed, on my back, with my computer resting gingerly atop my giant food baby. A couple friends of mine came over a couple hours ago so we could make a quick trip to trader joes, followed by a little commute home to make sweet potato soup and consume copious amounts of goat milk brie and apples and dried mangoes and whatever the heck that delicious Indian yogurt sauce was that Morgen wished she could go at with a spoon. Well, she was the only one who announced it vocally. Then we couldn't help but indulge in dark chocolate and a magnificently impromptu jam session. And this.

http://youmakemetouchyourhandsforstupidreasons.ytmnd.com/

This just gives me butterflies of excitement for the next time a boyfriend and I experience some catastrophic mushroom cloud of relationship trouble so I can lower my voice and recite this to him in person to a tee, all the way through.

I digress. One thing that's really rested heavily on my mind lately is the giant gaping metaphorical chasm that stands between my body's age, and my interests. Given the option to stay in and read or talk to someone over dinner about string theory or comparative religion or how little sense the physical world makes, I will snatch it like a hungry hungry hippo snatches those little white plastic spheres. Anybody who knows me, knows that I couldn't party my heart out if my life depended on it, and to be quite honest I kind of dig being an 80 year old woman in a 19 year old body. It's not some sort of faith-laced strictness or moral rigidity that steers me from it, partying is just like.... Strawberry ice cream. Lots of people love it, but I dont ever crave it,and will usually pass it up for something I like better.
I'm so lame I know.
Every time I'm at a rager all I want to do is go night running by myself then climb a mountain then impression sketch the pants off of the sunrise. Figurative pants.

Growing up seems to bring out the recluse in me. No, I think it just further removes me from mob mentality, and makes the depth and honesty of one on one relationships much more valuable to me. No, I'm not growing up.

http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=2Z0ysQk1kaY

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Just call me Alexander Supertramp

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Today I am doing the anticipatory happy dance. I got a job interview, and I may very soon be hocking expensive retail in the form of denim, sparkly scarves, and all things "privileged white girl". Looks like I may very well be within days of finally slaying the job-hunt dragon after all!
I went on a walk with a young, homeless by choice man named Aaron in Ashland a few months back. He showed me which plants make your stomach feel better, which ones make your teeth stronger and whiter than any fluoride toothpaste would, which yellow weed tastes strikingly like broccoli, and he told me he'd someday prove to people that he didn't need any money to live. Let alone to be happy.
I suppose this was already in the back of my mind somewhere, (but that's how everything is. We've got everything we need and life is a quest to make it relevant) he's right. With money, comes stuff you have to pay for. Not only fiscally, but also emotionally and mentally and spiritually. You've been taxed.
I really hate that my greatest recognizable fear these days is that I will run out of money. I'm scared of giving up. Throwing in the towel and going home after almost six months will look very much like failure on the surface if it happens. But I'm convinced it won't. I got this. This, and a future as environmental progress pioneer, then a vagrant painter/ musician, then somebody who learned something from it all. And maybe somewhere along the way, I can be somebody who's got too much love for the beauty in a changing landscape that there's no room for tangible things.

I will give the world a little more air to breathe, a little more green to look at, then I'm going all Chris McCandless on this shit and living out of a backpack. Just call me Alexander Supertramp. Except he died in a bus in Alaska, which doesn't make me super jazzed to think about. I'm going to live on an orchard overlooking the Ireland coastline instead I think.



Also, go to the library. Libraries are pure good.
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Officially a blogger newby before the world ends! Woo!

I plan to send my first ever blog post flying off my fingertips in record time this evening, because this evening is in fact morning, and I know I must be tired because I just became so enamoured with the word "snooze" that I said it out loud to myself like four times. Snooze snooze snooze. Snooze. I digress. I made the decision to start up a bloggity blog about an hour ago, because Hector in his search for happiness ( good book given to me as a birthday present from a fantastic friend ) indirectly told me to. To share a bit of my life with everyone at least.

I've lived in Eugene, Oregon for about a week, where the people are ducks and the ducks...are too. I get so lost on my bike every day that I'm just waiting to see the big green "Welcome to Washington!" sign at any given moment. The first things I learned upon moving here were - 1) it is never too dark, too cold, or too unlikely that you'll find your way back. Trader Joe's chocolate is worth the bike ride. 2) do not apply for a job at the running store if the manager is a burly, muscular witch of a spandex-obsessed woman. 3) Be free.

My one of my three roommates told me the last one, and I figure she's got life as sorted as anybody I've yet encountered.

I'm going to hop viciously (there's a unique verb/adverb combo!) back on the yob hunt tomorrow and kick the crap out of a library visit. I'm taking a very intense approach to life tomorrow it seems. But anyways that means its time for sleeps.


Be freeeee!
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