penser

The thing is, when you're smart enough to know what is going on in the world, you can't help but over-think things. At one point in my life, if you would have come to me with your problems, telling me you think too much, I may have believed that you and I were the only ones. As I meet more and more sophisticated individuals, I realize that this is common. And what is "too much" really?

The other day, an intelligent individual shared with me a quote. After googling what I could remember of the quote, I believe I have found that it was originally by Jonathon Safron Foer. It goes like this:

 "I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness a million times but never once into it."

Sucks doesn't it?Now, it is obvious that the only individuals free of this over-analyzing curse are the individuals too dumb to realize it exists. And who wants to be that either?

Either way, I'd say that no-one is truly satisfied with everything about life all of the time. And that's okay. It's okay to be sad, to be forsaken, to be thoughtful. I've said something like that before and I know that I've already said this, "It's okay to be happy." No matter what wrongs exist in the world, there isn't any single individual that can fix them all. Sometimes,we just need to accept the things that surround us, work on what we can and acknowledge that that will have to be enough. It is not going to do anyone any good to just be constantly thinking ourselves out of happiness.

l'avenir

It's a slippery slope, living for the future. The farther you get into it, the farther you feel from it, the farther you start reaching. I was inspired by Yeah Dave's guide to livin' the moment when I read it a couple years ago. Reading some of his stuff was like a revelation. There were some obvious things that I remember having heard all my life and I feel would be common sense even if no-one ever told me but there were also some things that I felt brought me to life.
I haven't focused on it so much in the day to day life lately but he recommended to each and every day enjoy: something beautiful, something humorous and something delicious. Within a few months after reading this, I was noticing to myself all that was beautiful, all that was funny and all that was yummy in a day. I often felt proud of this and would even share these things with my friends. Whether that meant sharing the actual experiences or sharing my tales of these experiences pretty much depended on where they were. I remember feeling energized and revitalized. I felt as though I was I doing something good even if I didn't really have a purpose.
It is hard to be happy when you are weighing yourself down with the pressure of having to matter to everyone. To be honest, if you didn't try at all I would be willing to guarantee that you would still matter to at least one person. And it's the people that you matter to without trying that you should be happiest about, should be closest to, should try to matter for.
It takes a really decent person to care about and care for other people. I don't mean to just care about and for your family- that usually comes naturally. And I don't just mean someone who does things for others. A lot of people do things for others just for the gratitude. Some don't help others out for others' sake. Some people do it for some sort of self gratification in the end. It's the people who just do it because they see a problem out there and they hope for a better ending. The people that share concern for the future of not just themselves but of others.
That got off on a tangent. I was talking about the future so I guess that was coming back but still. What I am trying to say is that I am finding it very hard to live in the now.
In interviews, people like to ask where you see yourself in five years. It completely freaks me out that I have absolutely no idea. It freaks me out thinking that if I were to instantly jump five years into the future, it would be like waking up an amnesiac with no idea of how I got there. I don't know where I'm going and I don't know what I'm doing to get there...

je n'oublierai jamais

In high school, I had planned on going to Arizona for spring break with my boyfriend and his family. We made plans to walk over and see Mexico. Since I had been to Arizona for a short while once before, I knew there would be a lot of scenic opportunities that I would want to catch on film (or, as our times would have it, catch digitally). And, since this would be my first time riding a plane and my first time leaving the country, I just knew I had to take pictures.
I researched digital cameras online and bought one of the most expensive cameras that were out at the time. Of course, I only picked the most expensive because it had the best reviews. One of the key factors in my decision making was that it had the fastest start-up of available cameras. I wanted to be able to whip out my camera at a moments notice and have a picture in less than a second, in case we were driving by or something was flying by.
I took hundreds of pictures on that vacation and I'm sure at least thousands that year. Soon, everything I did had to be caught on camera.
On the fourth of July, I was watching fireworks through my digital screen (not even through a view-finder because, again, I had a fancy digital camera). Hardly a picture turned out and before I knew it, the fireworks were over.
I had an epiphany soon after- that I had to stop living my life through a digital screen. I missed seeing the gun powder flaming in the sky in various hues right above my head. I started bringing my camera with me less and less.
My mother and I took a trip to Paris. I noticed her doing the same thing when we saw les feux d'artifice à la Tour Eiffel (fireworks at the Eiffel Tower). I kindly reminded her to just sit back and watch the show. It was probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen. There was an entire light show backing up the fireworks, covering the entire face of the Eiffel Tower. A history of Paris was dancing around in bright lights as things went flailing from the many levels of the structure.
So this was a time for me when I had somewhat turned my cheek to cameras. I felt the experience was better off emblazoned in my mind than in digital storage somewhere. To be honest now though, I miss Paris and I wish I could look back at more of the unique things we saw. Those moments when I wanted to capture them all, completely in my memory. To just absorb the reality of the moment.
I wish I had some sort of photographic evidence of the homeless lady harassing the beer-bellied man asleep on a bench, trying to help him birth his twins. It feels like a soft image, fading more still, and I remember the story more and more but can picture it less and less.
Ah, to have those memories. To be able to pass those stories on with photographic evidence. Its a fine line I draw: to live life through a lens/screen or just through experiences and memories? That is the question.

bisous bisous

Sometimes I think all allergens settle in the back of my mouth, making my throat and the roof of my mouth itch like crazy.

I can't stand when someone I'm dating calls me babe or baby but I don't mind when others do. Hun/hon/honey, I only want to hear from someone I am dating. But I still don't want to hear it often. Anyone and everyone is welcome to call me "love". I absolutely love it : ) Or "beautiful"

It drives me crazy when people respond to "Hi, how are you" by asking the same question. It is okay to also ask, but at least answer it first. 

I am so terribly afraid of spiders and bees that my heart still races for a while after they're no longer in my view.  Even after being in a car accident, I was calm and collected until I saw a spider crawling near my feet but I just tried to hide the fear as I casually stepped away.

I can't think of anything else that scares me, even just a little bit.

If you are going to try to scare me, you should probably wear a helmet, a cup and maybe shoulder/elbow pads because it won't phase me mentally but my body does have reflexes when prompted.

I can hold more liquor than one would think, based on my petite physique. But that doesn't mean I've never over-done it.
I've never smoked anything in my life but I have dreams where I am addicted to cigarettes and I think I can really tell what it would actually feel like. Sometimes, I crave them in the day time. Especially if I'm stressed out.
I don't get stressed out easy or often but when I do get stressed out, I go all out.
My best friend has maybe seen me cry three times in my life and most other people I know have never. Even when something minor is bugging me and I don't feel like crying at all, sometimes having my dad around just makes me break into tears and I still don't really get how that works.
I think the world of my nieces and nephew. I have about the same visitation as a divorced parent gets and when they're not in school, I see them even more.
My family means a lot to me, as they have raised me to feel. This is how I know they'll always be there for me in whatever ways possible even if/when I move away.
I hate being cold more than anything in the world. If I am cold, I feel angry and have a hard time concentrating on anything but my misery. I have never been to California but I feel it is the perfect place for me to live.
If love at first sight is actually possible, I should have gone to Italy this summer. I have never felt the same way about a guy as I felt about one whose name I never actually heard. I only read it off a scrap-paper with his name and number that he handed to me after leaving my workplace and coming back with it already written.
I wish I was raised bilingual because it was very difficult for me to learn the French that I learned in University and retaining it is even harder since I find hardly anyone around me speaks it.

I feel accomplished when I empty a bottle of lotion or a tube of toothpaste.

I believe three years ago was the first time I cooked a grilled cheese.Three boyfriends-cooking-for-me later and I can prepare meals all by myself : P It makes me proud when my nieces ask for my "breakfast potatoes" which is really an easy, quick recipe I learned from my last ex.  Every time I break up with someone, even if I'm doing the dumping, I feel really down but in the end, I always feel better off single.

I love kids and a lot of people point out how great I am with them but I honestly never see myself having any. Maybe that will change in a few years. But maybe not- don't get your hopes up.

I think Chuck Palahniuk is a literary genius and I feel ashamed for never even daring to think about having half as much courage as anyone of his created characters have.

Sometimes I feel incredibly inspired but get almost shy to draw things out or start a creative creation process because I'm afraid I won't be able to translate what's in my head to real life. And that would be embarrassing.

Whenever someone says phenomenon or phenomena, I think of the Dr. Pepper commercial where they sing something that sounds like "meh na men ah" followed by some cheery "do"s. 

When people say, "but, um" I think "bu dum bum" like comedic drums.

Ever since teachers started pointing out when people use fillers such as "like" and "um," I have tried to omit them from my speech. Sometimes, instead, I start a sentence over an over again until I figure out a way to word things because I try my best to avoid those and feel awkward sometimes just pausing instead.

In some short quirks-biography of a girl I knew, I read that she hated the sound of people chewing. That never used to bother me but it does now. It actually drives me so bizerk that I dismiss myself from the room before I end up saying something so as not to make the chewer self-conscious.

I don't like the spoiler on my car because I know they have a purpose on sports cars but are just used for looks on normal cars-to make them look sporty and I feel like a poser.

rien de nouveau

Murphy's law says that anything that can go wrong will but I would like to draw emphasis to the tense in which this law is spoken and change just that. When you are talking about anything that can go wrong, I believe you are talking about limitless possibilities. I don't believe in planned destinies. As people, we make decisions and for every decision we make there are consequences or at least subsequent events.
In order for everything that can go wrong to actually go wrong, you would have to be able to make every possible decision at the same time. You would have to cover all bases. Break off into multiple dimensions. Because, at any given time, you could be presented with decisions that have more than one or two outcomes. Each outcome can go wrong in multiple ways so long as you don't believe in having only one planned, mapped out "destined" future.


Looking back, however, if we were given the same decisions to make in the same circumstances like going back in time, I believe we would make the same decisions because we would have the same information, same experiences and same state-of-mind. I don't think our life decisions are mapped out until after we've already made them. It's almost like Timequake by Vonnegut. Except for when they go back in time, they still have a memory of what happened the first time. And, even if they wanted to make new decisions, given their knowledge of the outcomes, they simply couldn't because they were forced to stick with the "map" that they already created living through that time once.
I think, if you blame all the wrong stuff on Murphy's law, you are slacking to acknowledge your own faults. It's easy to brush your mistakes off, saying that anything that could go wrong did, and leaving it at that. Own up that things may have gone better if you made different decisions. Admittedly, this is how we learn as people.
A friend posted on Facebook, "Everyone in life lives with regrets. Those who say they don't are admitting that they havent learned anything from their mistakes."
But I argued that you can admit to having made mistakes, and learned from them and still not regret making them because you did end up learning something.
In the end, we live, we love, we learn and we leave this world "the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

philosophie de l'art

If I remember my art philosophy course correctly,  Plato described art as a copy of a copy. He was worried that the harder one tries to portray an object's beauty the more one would destroy it. Dishonesty was of great concern. For those who couldn't see a flower, but could see a painting of one, would be stripped of the original beauty of being in the flower's presence. But the viewer, nonetheless would still see a flower and still see beauty in that flower.
Today, we not only  have museums chock-full of this dishonesty but everyone has a moving picture box in their home to provide continual, dishonest, imperfect beauty. Enter television. I can only say this in so many ways before I even get tired of it but our generation is living through this ruined world that Plato was worried about.
We watch the lives that go by on television as if they were our own. Meanwhile, hardly anyone takes the chance to try to live anymore. I will take time, here and now, to admit that I am a hypocrite. While I know these are the things destroying our generation and I try to heed against them, I take part knowingly and willingly. I'm not brainwashed into thinking that I'm doing anything more with my life than the next. I admit that I am the same "undifferentiated nothingness" that I was when "my peepholes first opened" (thank you Vonnegut).
Still, as the hypocrite that I am, I would like to point out that even Disney/Pixar people know what's happening. Those hypocrites playing on our hypocracy. They see it happening and they mock us for it, knowing that we're still going to love it, still going to love them. Still going to beg for more when it's over. We know we're getting lazy and we know we're only living through the screen but that's what we like, its what we want. Entertainment, in this era, has entered under those categories of survival it seems. Along with shelter, water and food, we need to be entertained.
I would like to say that I think it is "good" (but only to the extent that learning our lessons through tv can be) that there are movies like Wall-E that show kids where our laziness will get us. Kids may not see the underlying themes like adults may but hopefully it settles in their minds on at least some sub-conscious level that we do need to stop trashing our earth, our minds and our bodies.
I still enjoy a movie from time to time, those copies of copies of copies but I try to appreciate beauty in it's purest available form as well. I still enjoy walks amongst what nature is left. I still dig my feet in the sand or stop to watch a dragonfly flutter on by.
I know Plato would describe books the same way, copies of copies.Though my interpretation of these copies of copies, and the thoughts that follow, could to some level be dishonest and impure- yet another set of copies- I appreciate that I feel slightly more knowledgeable for having read/learned them.
As Palahniuk would touch on, in Lullaby, some people still view knowledge as power. And life is just a battle of power. Maybe once I have enough "power", I will actually do something with it. Or maybe I won't be an exception to the rule, though. I could just forever remain what I always was, what I still am, undifferentiated nothingness. Uninspired. Uninspiring. Copied. Copying.
No matter the outcome, I will probably always feed off of and into what Plato would have called a copied world. This is how we've evolved. Words = Knowledge. Knowledge = Power. We are born to be entertaining. We are needing to be entertained. We are hungry for power. So learn something.

"The natural world destroyed, we're left with this clutter world of language." -CP

je suis amour

One of my best friends has a tattoo on her wrist. It reads:
be free
be happy
be love
For readers that don't understand French, and didn't look it up already, the title of this one translates to "I am love." Though I may not think of that saying everyday, like someone who has it tattooed to their wrist might, I still feel as though I have melded this saying into my persona. After all, who shouldn't be free? Who shouldn't be happy? Who shouldn't be love?
There may have been days when I have come up with people who, at the time, I thought didn't deserve to be one or any of those. Realistically, however, I am sensible enough to admit that each and every individual truly deserves all three of these idealisms toujours.

We should all be free to feel the way we feel. Whether it's what we want to feel or not, we are all human and can't always control our feelings. Others should be able to accept that. It is okay to be sad. It is also okay to be happy. But at no point in my life should I ever have to be either. We should all be free to express ourselves however we want. You may not agree with me, but you may feel free to express that as well. Each and every individual should be free to make mistakes! What better way to learn? We should be free to talk, free to listen, free to walk, free to christen, free to love... Free. to. be.

I have heard, often, that it is okay to cry. It is okay to be sad. Its okay to grieve. And it is true, that is all okay. But how rare is it to hear, to read, to understand that it is also okay to be happy? I love this phrase for many reasons. It contradicts the norm. It gives an optimistic spin on life. This phrase frees one of the burden of feeling as though one has to acknowledge and/or represent the moment when things go wrong. This phrase opens up a world of happiness where others may have felt it wasn't yet appropriate or okay to move on.
Lesson learned: there is no right or wrong time to grieve. Even when sad things happen, it is okay to be happy.

Further, it is okay to love and be loved. From this, I conclude that it is important, essential even, to be love. This is a free and open phrase. It can mean many things to many people. To me, love is a happiness felt in your heart. It's knowing that somewhere in your life, you or someone close did something so right that your connection to yourself or that person can constantly change your life for the better. And even when it feels like it may be changing your life for the worst, one day you will realize that those feelings were still "character-building" and you still turned out to (as you always will) be better off.
So to be love, in my opinion, is to be that happiness in a heart. It can even be in your own. I know that some would still disagree when they hear, "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." But in the most minimal of ways, you should at least love yourself.
You don't have to be selfish, cocky, and/or arrogant to love yourself. This simply takes a little appreciation. Sit down and think about it. What do you like about yourself? Maybe you do something for others, maybe you like the way you look, maybe you have an incredibly optimistic point of view. These are just three of millions of reasons to love one's self. You should be able to come up with at least one. Why? Because you will be a better person for it. Because, if you can't love something as simple and approachable as yourself, you will never be able to appreciate that which makes life worth living. And without that appreciation, even if your body is still alive, you are not truly living.
In order to love others, I'm sure you've heard, you must first love yourself. And why bother loving others? Love is such an important communicator between two human beings. It doesn't have to be between lovers to be important love. Just as loving yourself is necessary to appreciate life, loving others opens up that many more doors to the opportunity of appreciating that much more in life. I feel so passionate about this that I'm sure this subject will take up more than one blog. I'll save that for another day, though. But just know that, in the words of Kimya Dawson, "Love is common destiny."

même des artichauts a du coeurs

A friend from the Gump recently quoted another friend on Facebook. It made me think of another thing he said that deemed quote-worthy. He, mimicking a popular childish saying, said, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words may break my heart."
I got to thinking about that today and about the original saying ending, "but names will never hurt me." What are we telling kids to say? If you really want to hurt me, start throwing rocks?
Are we trying to raise kids to be unaffected by the words of another human being? Sure this saying is originated to apply to foolish childish torment but what does it say about our society? Like my friend mentioned, words can burn much deeper than physical pain. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes we need another person's insight to realize that we are becoming something we don't want to be. Sometimes we need a critique that burns deep in our chest to drive us to succeed. If we say that words, or names for that matter, don't hurt us we are just saying that we've finally cut off a communicative tool that makes us human and that motivates us to change, teaches us to be better and encourages us to appreciate praise.
Words can hurt. We should teach children that instead. And, even when the words are aimed to dig deep and hurt, they can counter-intuitively lead the victim of said words to progress.  It may just be a song but there are plenty of real life instances where these lyrics from Dirty Head's "Check the Level" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHoN9FOGos4) can apply: "she didn't know that the things they said that left her hurting would actually turn out to make her a better person". It's just a little lengthy to say "sticks and stones may break my bones but those mean words you say can turn out to make me a better person so watch what you say."
In the end, I like the way my friend put it, "words may break my heart." This encourages thought and apathy. It appeals to our morale rather than our drive to hurt others. It explains that we are human and that language can be a very effective tool. It can motivate us to chose our words carefully, to engage our brains when we move our tongues. Overall, it reminds us that we are all human and that we all have feelings and, at some level, we care about what others think of us.

<3 *the title is a quote from Amelie, an amazing French movie. A rude, often crude and stubborn, man is calling his employee a vegetable and someone chimes in that at least he (the man, not the employee) could never be a vegetable, because even artichokes have hearts.

inspiration

I don't know if this has already been "discovered" by someone yet, but I find that those who are truly great at what they do are those who have suffered a great deal. For some reason, a crooked childhood, a near death experience, a loved one's death... they are all perfectly great inspirations. Maybe it's because it forces the person to think longer, harder, and deeper about life and their supposed purpose.

What are any of us here for, really? What are you here for?

Before this gets too deep for anyone, let me remind you that yes, I do ask a lot of questions. I know, I am the writer. I should be the one informing not the one inquiring. But these are, more or less, hypothetical questions. I plan to share my opinion and thoughts, where they apply, but I want to make you think. Good classes, the ones you really learn things in, don't just give you information. Good classes, good people, the ones you really learn things from, ask questions. They make you think. Good classes and people engage you not just during, but for at least a while, if not forever, after. There will be no quiz. Not about RL. But these are key points that I'm brushing on. Maybe you can make time to think of them when you're in the shower.

Have you suffered something that should/could make you great? If yes, have you really? Or are you just being dramatic? If you really have, did you use that driving force or did you try to bury it? Sometimes people bury it because they don't want others to know what happened to them. Sometimes people exploit their problems to make them seem more meaningful and moving. Rarely, but most importantly, people keep these problems honest and relevant for as long as they can and help others to cope with similar situations. Or help others learn. Or help others heal. And in this process, they create something beautiful.

Can one be inspired and/or inspiring without such an epiphenomenon? I would like to believe that no one wishes upon themselves a great tragedy in order to be inspired. So, how would the rest of us, un-bothered nothings find inspiration? Can a person truly be inspired by the beauty of life as it is? If you stop to smell the roses, do you think to appreciate that you can: 1.stop 2.smell 3.find roses??? And if so, is that even enough? I feel as though this is what gets you called naive.When you can finally take the world and view it as something beautiful, you are all of a sudden missing out on reality. Why do we have to strive so hard to be happy but at the same time focus on everything that is wrong with the world? Is it enough to appreciate the good times, or do we never rest until everyone is happy? Newsflash: ce n'est pas possible

call me Bella

This is hardly a love story. But I hope you love it. I want it to inspire. There are so many blogs out there and I have hardly a clue what they're all about. I just know that I want this one to make sense and have purpose. I wish for someone to benefit. Words are so easily tossed around and often forgotten. I'm not expecting these words to forever be remembered but know that they are not coming easily. And they are not being tossed.
I am the kind of person who won't say something if I can't word it the way I want. This blog is not going through five stages of editing but each post will be carefully thought out. Words should not be wasted.

Not even in a blog.

Here is how I see it: Life is a struggle of purpose and beauty. If you fail to serve a purpose, you should at least be beautiful. Which is easier?

I love "would you rather"s. So here is one that I would like to share: Would you rather wake up and know that you're beautiful and see beauty when you look in the mirror but know that the rest of the world sees something more along the lines of ugly OR wake up and see ugly but know that the rest of the world thinks you are beautiful?