All in All You're Just...

The Cynical Child

Overly positive people scare me, a tad. I can't help but wonder why or how one can just be excited about everything all of the time, without immediately thinking they must be on something, or have buried issues. I realize some prefer to smile through the muck and convince themselves everything is fine until it becomes so. Others accept the BS, without candy-coating anything. This is not an attack on how we, as individuals choose to handle the unpleasantries life gives us...just to make sure that's clear. In other words, I probably also scare the overly positive people. Maybe life actually is one giant exclamation point for some (if so, right on!!), but I will always be the one to question this kind of behavior, just as some people may feel I hide behind comedy and cameras. I'm OK with being "the cynical one," because I figure we just balance each other out. Would we ever laugh if everything was just AWESOME all of the time? I'd fall asleep. I embrace the positive and the negative, perhaps more so the negative - only because I can almost always find humor in it. Humor, to me, is positive. Therefore, many of my negatives are also my positives.

Life, to me, is exactly like this moment I had last week in the car. I was driving across the Triboro, and the sky was just fucking beautiful...this piercing shade of blue with huge silvery clouds that fell perfectly above the Manhattan skyline...birds flew gracefully overhead in careful flocks...Rufus Wainwright's cover of "Hallelujah" played in the background. Yes, I was having....a moment. Like, I smiled as my eyes welled up with tears just thinking, "The world is so beautiful...everything is beautiful...I have a warm, gooey heart...deep sigh". That was EXACTLY when I was almost side-swiped by a taxi, hit the horn, swerved to the side, and cursed loudly...Rufus just sang on. That's life to me, and if that isn't hilarious, I don't know what is....we have these moments of complete beauty. Complete bliss, interrupted by...well...life. Or does it realistically happen the other way around? Maybe life is often horse shit, interrupted by moments of complete AWESOME, and it's those outstanding moments that keep us going - that make it all worth it. All I'm saying is that it's OK if that is the realistic pattern. We're allowed to cut ourselves some slack in order to be genuine. After all, if my moment on the Triboro had just ended in, "Everything is beautiful...deep sigh", would you have read this til the end?

Burg Morphing

Williamsburg - May, 2007

Basketball in Reykjavik

Hermit is an Island

Lesson 103: Honoring Your Goals

"If you're going to reach for the stars, reach for the lowest one!" - Jerri Blank, Strangers With Candy

How often do our goals change? I think just today alone, mine changed at least five times. The range is anything from smiling more at people to starting my own business. Lately, I'm very into all things food. Part of the reason it has taken me so long to write again is because I was giving into the temptations such as perfecting batches of cold brewed iced coffee with simple syrup, which I happily sip while watching Ina Garten make perfect roast chicken and seasonal fruit tarts. She always has one of her many silver-foxy gay male friends over to arrange tablescapes, which I admire & mentally note, but never attempt. Okay....I was procrastinating. I guess my realistic goals fall somewhere between doing something with food and the photo industry (again).

I had an interview at a photo agency earlier today, and was asked, "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I raised an eyebrow, laughed, and immediately shot back, "I don't want to grow up." They liked that answer. I said I'd have to think about it. I asked them if they were happy, as they didn't look like they were. Eyes darted around, they both paused, and then non-enthusiastically shrugged and said they guessed so. I was not convinced. I think sometimes we all need to check in with our childhood selves when thinking about what makes us happy, because that's us at our simplest and most honest.

For example, my family has told me I was a strange kid. When I was six, I started playing with Lincoln Logs...a lot. I wouldn't build cabins though. I arranged the pieces into floor plans across my bedroom floor that my mother would have to tip-toe through as if it were a booby trap. I didn't know what an architect was yet, but I did go on to work in architecture for a few years after college. I loved it, but just not enough to become one once I found out the hard facts about how unglamorous and monotonous it really is. I would even convince my mom to take me to open houses on Saturdays, just so I could snoop around different types of houses to get ideas. When I was ten, I obsessively watched The Weather Channel, and thought I wanted to be a meteorologist. I watched it so much that my parents noticed, but had no idea what to say. It actually wasn't that I was so into weather as much as all of the different maps they'd show. I got to know where places were, and imagined life in other cities. The Weather Channel actually became my gateway into wanting to travel, and fantasizing about living anywhere but New Jersey. International weather updates were my favorite, and I had them timed so I knew when they'd come on each hour. Well, flash forward 20 years and I still love traveling and architecture.

I guess I want to be lots of things when I "grow up". Mostly, I just want to be happy, healthy, and a good person. If that means I make less money in order to be able to lead a balanced life, then I'm willing to do that. So, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Lesson 102: The Urban Coffee Campsite

Not being a hermit on weekdays between the hours of nine and five typically includes at least one day per week part-taking in the “coffee campsite”. Luckily there are no less than ten of these in my immediate area, all jam-packed and resembling library study rooms where people are actually allowed to talk, but choose not to. This is where other like-minded freelancers and job-seekers who also don’t want to be hermits go to sit at large communal tables with multiple devices trying to look busy and important, and as if they have no time for conversation when in fact, that’s all they really want - Otherwise they’d be at libraries. It is arguably the safest, most “normal” passively social environment...a place the hermit-not-want-to-be’ers go to, well, be hermits...but in front of people. Or maybe I’m just guilty of that, but I have a gut feeling I’m not alone.

So, with the motivation obtained from Lesson 101, I regress a pinch by fully accepting that I never actually get any work done when I embark on these journeys of sitting in not my house doing exactly what I’d be doing in my house, because I’m too fascinated by watching other people sit in not their houses doing exactly what they would be doing in their houses. We check our phones every ten and a half seconds, but are sure to slink back and look casual about it as if to anticipate not caring when, shockingly, no one has tried to reach us in the past ten and a half seconds. Insert sip of beverage, refresh all open tabs, check phone again, look around to confirm that everyone around you is doing the same thing, annnnnd then, uh-oh...here comes the dreaded needing to plug in your low-battery 3 year old Macbook. How un-hip of you (me), you poor soul who lacks an iPad. Luckily, this is where observing people becomes interesting...especially when the person in need of the charge is not seated directly over an outlet. This means that you must interact with whomever is over the nearest outlet, which means they kind of own you since they have the power, literally. Mo’ Joe is now forced to either A) Reach over without saying anything, and plug in as if the person there does not exist, or B) Bite the bullet and give ‘em a, “Hey, excuse me - mind if I use that outlet?” Quite often, asking to use outlets in coffee shops has now become the only possible sparking-up of conversation...the immediate motivation being that we simply wish to continue to quietly glue our hands to our electronic pacifiers...while secretly pining for human contact, of course.

Well today, I took a computer break. I followed up my epic errand running with a book purchase. Like an actual book book, with pages and stuff. How refreshing, when paired with my large-enough-to-keep-me-here-for-while (but not for too long) iced coffee. I was astonished when I went to sit down and the man next to me poked his head up from his Mactop and asked me if I needed more room. I thanked him, shook my book in the air, smiled, and said I was not packing heat today, so no. There was even another girl reading a book book nearby. Rebels, we were. Still, I could not help but go into my observer mode. Another dude came and joined Mactop dude next to me and they started excitedly discussing what they were working on. I was curious, as I often wonder what the fuck people are doing during the day on their computers out in public. Well, apparently they were creating an app for a game where some cartoon character pees on things in order to reach the next level. I kid not. They discussed it as if they were CEO’s of a prestigious hedge fund. I smiled to myself and acknowledged that they were being productive, probably making a lot of money, and that I wished I had invested in skills enabling me to create games where cartoons get away with public urination. There was another almost invisible guy sitting across from me, but he did not flinch himself away from his iPad even once. I admired his discipline. I, on the other hand was obviously distracted from my reading, and had taken to making abstract water mark art with the condensation from my coffee cup. iPad guy wrinkled his face and looked at my masterpiece splattered on the thick wood table as he collected his things and left. I wanted to remind him that that is what we all once did to entertain ourselves growing up, although he looked like he was most likely born around 1992. I then just felt old, but cheered to myself for not being a hermit. My table water art was just a minor exercise in staying creative, which is another lesson altogether.

Another Day in Job Huntville: Lesson 101 - Staying Motivated

I awoke this morning to the lovely, whirring sound of my air-conditioner around 7am and flicked on the "news" from my bed. I will admit to my guilty mindless pleasure of The Today Show, mostly because after about five minutes of hearing over-enthusiastic multi tonal blabber about topics such as what to dress your dog in for the summer, I am definitely more than motivated to eject myself from my bed, dive in to the shower, and begin the day. Every so often though, The Today Show hits me square in the heart. Well, I'll throw them that point today. There was a story on about a soft-spoken, hard-working janitor in a working class neighborhood in Washington state. He hit the lottery and won $3.4 million dollars, but kept working, and stayed in his tiny house with his wife. He did splurge on a new heating pump, but also on a $40,000 track for the school he works at. I wished to myself that I could have this man as my mentor, and that, in essence motivated me to get my ass back in gear on my own...hopefully. It's been way too long since I wrote anything here, mostly because I felt there was nothing to really write about. Well, so I guess I'll more or less write about nothing.

It is month number four of my labor hiatus, and it's only now that I actually kind of, sort of want to go back to contributing to society in some way. Maybe it's the Capricorn in me, that strives to have some sort of organized purpose, and a place to go and tasks to tackle so that I feel as though I really earned that beer by 6pm. I find ways to justify "earning" beers for myself by about 2pm these days, so a more disciplined approach might be appropriate at this time. Yesterday it was because it was hot out and the beer was colder than the water in the Brita pitcher...right next to the can of beer.

What I have learned thus far from being unemployed is that I need to really make the day count. This comes in forms such as stretching out the morning coffee routine, epic errand running, etc. A really successful day is when I drink coffee for only about one hour, while job-hunting. This counts as multi-tasking in my justification book and has me well on the way to my hops-infused reward. This morning was good, and my attitude was an 8 on the 10 scale, even when I momentarily balanced my hot cup of coffee on my stomach, hiccuped, and spilled half of it on myself. I then planned out an epic errand running excursion, which would then be followed up by book reading on the patio of a coffee shop. Quite the day, and it was only 3pm. All in all, motivation was achieved.

Public Lovin'

Tremendously small. Alone, yet surrounded.

Kimchi Pots

This was taken from the inside of Golgusa temple, while waiting out a thunderstorm. I was doing a temple stay and had taken a walk up to the main temple when a huge storm broke. I was completely alone, and it was absolutely beautiful. I lit incense in front of the Buddha statues and just sat on a floor cushion listening to the thunder and rain hitting the deck outside.

Carpe Diem

I got chased down by the street vendor in Seoul for taking this photo of dried octopus snacks. Definitely worth it.

Korean Buddhist monks after Sunmudo demo.

In Seoul, hand-drip coffee is and art form. It's around $5 a cup, but sometimes you pay for the presentation. This was the most beautiful cup of coffee I've ever had.

The Valley

The Valley

When the valley of your heart is muddied and swamped-
And all color absorbed, turning light into black.
Allow your self to sink in, to admit to the pain,
Just know that the light will return to that plain.

Find your way back to all beauty left in this world,
For I promise it’s there, though at times, unrefined.
Fear not the routine, though you’re held in it’s grasp
You can break off it's claws, to cut loose from the clasp.

The valley is vastly unending it seems,
But with deep breath and open eyes you push through,

You always do.

And beyond your valley is another, and another
Day to be taken and cherished, and held
For what it is, and the potential for what it could be
If you let it….just be.

Light Wars

Light Wars

"The things you do not have to say make you rich.
Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk.
Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing.
And things you know before you hear them - those are you.
Those are why you are in the world." - William Stafford

The Motions - #1

We go through the motions of birth and death - our two guarantees. When death comes expectedly, at a ripe old age, we're often peacefully stoic...going through the motions in order to respectfully conclude one's biography.

The Motions - #5

The Motions - #7

The Motions - #8

The Motions - #10

On Your Toes.

This was meant to be more than an image of my crotch. It's finally a New Year. More important than drinking and cheers-ing, and on a personal note...I am on my toes. Everyday, I will vow to be thankful for balance and to seek clarity for things which are out of my control. Even more, I will look for beauty in chaos. I will look back on last year only once, just long enough to allow myself to admit that it was rough...shake it off, and move forward.

I will appreciate everyone I care about in my life. I will ask for help when I need to, and help others when asked. I will cry if I have to. I will laugh, love, and learn. I will write and speak reassuring cliches (I will then ask for forgiveness for said cliches, should they be exceptionally terrible). I will do my best to be honest with myself, and with others. And for as long as I can - I will run, walk, and dance. I will stay on my toes.

Here's to 2011....

Cliche Self-Portrait With Camera, In Mirror

Double Vision, Vision

Maxwell