l'étudies

I would like to propose a new field of studies. If this already exists somewhere, let me know! I will definitely look into it. Before I jump into the details, I would like to thank Pinterest for the inspiration. Oh, Pinterest.
Every day I log on, I see pictures of places I have never been and of foods I would have never thought to create, of clothes I would have never thought to wear let alone design. All of these new and wonderful things inspired me. Thank you Pinterest.
I propose a study of the world, in it's entirety. Mostly culturally. The world would just be "Earth" if it wasn't for the people that make an impact. As a human race, we have the ability to care, to change, to create. That is a constant throughout the world. The purpose of these studies would not be to break language barriers or to learn one culture (or any) in its entirety. The purpose would be to get a broader concept of what goes on all over the world.
Sure, they have exchange programs where one student can live with a family of another culture and learn more about their structure- their schools, their language, their society. As humans, we are constantly evolving. Exchange programs have existed for long enough to seek improvement and growth. We should be expanding beyond one other culture, beyond learning languages. We should be learning about people.
Things identified as cultural basics can vary from one person to the next. Language may make it easier to learn about the differences but there are many other ways to read a culture than by understanding what they are saying. Even just on the plain of communication, there is body language and there is expression through a multitude of media- music, dance, adornment.
My proposal is to experience, understand and/or interpret these other ways to "read" culture and take something from it. Let me be clear- As americans, the purpose is not to bring it back and Americanize it although I'm sure that would make for an easily expandable business market. I know it can be easy to sell someone on something from another culture, especially if it seems new to them and especially if it seems like something that will be widely accepted by their current culture.
There are a few reasons for me to propose it as a class instead of a personal experience. First, I think it would be much easier and much more likely for others to participate if it were organized by someone at the university level. This point isn't so much to have translators but just to have a plan. People have a tendency to talk about doing things but fall through with it if they don't initially set up a concrete plan. Also, this way general observations can be shared and these findings could potentially inspire others to go too. Lastly, it is a proposal to improve on the mainframe of university studies as they are today. I am encouraging all levels of growth from personal to world-wide growth, global adaptation, and a giant step towards an evolution of the learning process.

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.

tu es triste. je suis désolée

Birds and Tears. Words and Fears.

If only I could be the wings on your caged bird

If only I were the songs of a dove

If only the swans shared their beauty

If only I, solely, was your love

But you are the cage that surrounds me

You don’t even know I’m inside

Maybe, when once you had found me,

You wouldn’t be lacking such pride

If you could see beauty that profounds you

You’d be a happier man

If you could accept me, my beauty

You’d love me for the who that I am

If only I could be there when you cry

Even just as the tear on your cheek

I’d comfort you, falling, and then dry

I would make your future less meek

I’d wash away hurt and stay close by

I’d be with you while you felt pain

I would let time pass and just stand by

I would, for your world, be the rain

And in the end, you’d see my beauty

In the end, you’d feel me again

In the end, I’d die for you, mutely

In the end, I’d have nothing to gain

But it’s not about winning or losing

The battle, it stirs deep within

For longing and longing, I’ve lost you

And I’ll never see you again.

m'appelez belle

Call me beautiful. That is  what I want to hear.
I want to know that I leave an impression. I want to make a difference. If I am nothing else to the world but beauty, at least I will have been that.
Don't call me pretty. Pretty is petty. Beauty is all encompassing. Beauty blooms, from the inside, out. Calling me beautiful is like calling me meaningful.
When you call me beautiful, you tell me you care. When you tell me I'm beautiful, I know you noticed. When I am called beautiful, I feel strong.
If I am beautiful, I am useful.
As a beautiful human being, I am kind. As a beautiful woman, I am inspiring. As a beautiful sister, aunt, daughter, friend, I am loving.
With my beauty, I hold purpose. With my beauty, I captivate. With my beauty, I love.

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...

les temps froid

There are many reasons why winter sucks. The first hundred reasons? Snow. Snow makes driving (and walking) dangerous. It makes your daily commute at least double. It gets dirty and ugly quickly and covers everything that reminds you that there is still  or ever was an eco-system, a life form, on Earth. It's a bitch to shovel and scrape  sidewalks, driveways, cars, etc. Need I say more? No. Everyone else living in a wintry climate knows. And for the rest of humanity, why should I bring 'em down? The biggest reason I hate winter is because the cold means I cannot wear my "good" clothes. I love dresses and skirts more than any other clothing item. Some days, I even like crop tops. Especially those passed down by a friend. Or super vintage, passed down by a great aunt.  I guess I have been kinda lucky this year with the "lack" of snow but I went to wear this shirt one day and then realized that I would freeze as soon as I got to work. Because the doors don't always close. And/or the heat doesn't always feel warm. So, instead I took some pictures. To remind me of days to come.  In the summertime, I like to dress up in my creations and set-up self-modeled, self-shot photoshoots. It's fun to play dress up and work on sharing my creations with others. These, in the pictures, are not my creations. Some jeans from work, shoes from Macy's and super cute shirt from one of my best friends. I love the yoke and buttons on the back <3 And I am liking how the shirt , standing with arms down, just meets the jeans. Like they were made for each other.

Brother-face bought me a domain name last year. We are currently working on setting it up. It is mostly just him writing code and whatever you do to set up a web page. I'm more like the creative director. Which is always fun of course.  More to come. I'll share the link and stuff when it is more presentable : )

les biscuits et les verres

Thanks to Pinterest, your average Joe can dream up all sorts of creations. Or mimick all sorts of others' creations. Here is my Peanut Butter Hug "cookie". 

I was going for a sweet pink so the hug looked more like zebra stripes but I got a humble rose color. I'm not disappointed. They taste pretty good. I used an idea that I found at dailynibbles.com. However, I did not read it well enough to find that I should have used gel food coloring. I used some target off-brand liquid drops. Probably the cause of the humbled mumble-bumble rosy pink instead of the hot look-at-me pink.

(That was just what I had at the house.) And when she refers to the Peasandthankyou.com recipe I again used just what was around the house. So dairy-margarine instead of not and plain creamy Skippy peanut butter instead of natural. Things like that...

I also tried breaking beer bottles down into glasses. I read about this technique in a magazine my cousin had last year or a couple years ago. Seeing it on pinterest reminded me that I wanted to try that. So I finally did. Once again, I used what was around the house instead of what was recommended. For this, I looked at about.com's several pages on "How to cut class with string"/similarly named topics to get the gist of it. I ended up soaking some pink kitchen cotton crochet yarn that has been sitting in my sewing room for a while now. After a few different trials -oh there were errors, obviously- I wound the yarn around the bottle a couple/few times, cut and tied it and took it off to soak in, in the end, lamp oil. I tried nail polish remover but it just didn't burn long enough. Maybe not enough acetone. 

I don't know why but there was an unopened gallon of lamp oil in the basement. It has to have been sitting there for at least five years. Probably. I used some machine-washable gloves that I bought for my printing and dyeing class to push the soaked yarn back into place. Sitting at the side of the bath tub with a metal tub full of cold water under my arms, I took off one glove to strike a match and light the yarn. While sliding my hand back into the glove, I watched and turned the bottle as the yarn self-extinguished. (Note to self: Oven mittens are not necessarily flame retardant. But I learned that a different way, don't worry.)

As soon as it was done, I dunked it in the cold water. After some attempts, I heard the "pop" that I read about and the glass was broken. But not neatly like I thought it would be. And repeat. ish. I'm planning out working on the kinks. I think the big chunkers of edgy glass are from the yarn-knots. I plan to trim/tuck them better next time. Also, I am thinking that it would create a more consistent/leveled break to put the glass in the water vertically instead of randomly rolling it into the cold. Trying to make sure that the hot ring goes cold all at once should work. Hopefully. We'll see. I gave up for the day after two failed-ish attempts. And then made the afformentioned cookies. That failed-ish.

 This was my first attempt (above). It went through a few different burning yarns and cold-dunkings. There were a lot of rugged edges left and as a result a lot of little pieces were still breaking off in the sanding process. For once in my life, I actually kept my gloves on for the project (except of course to light the match).

The one with the label was my second attempt. You can see that it is smoother but still not necessarily something someone will want to drink out of. Oh right, did I mention that instead of a diamond emery, I used a 400grit sandpaper? I'm looking into getting the emery. I sanded out the sharp parts, it is perfectly safe for rubbing your finger all over. Trust me, I did so again and again and again. It just needs a good sanding down for obvious aesthetic purposes, you know?