Went to a Josh Groban concert. He sang "You Are Loved" right in front of me and I almost feinted. Then he sang this song that I had never heard before and now cannot stop listening to.
8/30/11
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
A Higher Window
Went to a Josh Groban concert. He sang "You Are Loved" right in front of me and I almost feinted. Then he sang this song that I had never heard before and now cannot stop listening to.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Summarize
"Art has the potential to summarize things...
It passes to the next generation knowledge: feeling.
It's part of who we are."
Isabel Allende
It passes to the next generation knowledge: feeling.
It's part of who we are."
Isabel Allende
I don't understand myself and my gifting's well, but what I do understand is that I am not detail oriented in my knowledge. I like general biology but even that got a bit too detailed with name and clade memorization, molecular biology was too detailed in it's protein and order of event listings, music gets too detailed when the theory behind it gets discussed, paining gets too detailed when the different brushes, strokes, and mediums come into play. Yet still I love biology and art. I love the big picture: I've always been big picture oriented and I've always felt as though that makes me an unintelligent person because of that fact: college is about delving into the details professionally. But I learned something about myself when Isabel said that. I found a real value in who I am: I went from someone unintelligent and ungifted to someone with a valuable skill set that helps communicate knowledge and who we are through feeling.
8/14/11
8/14/11
Passion
On an airplane I watched a show called "The Artists Toolbox" on a digiplayer. This is what I gleaned after maticulous playbacks.
"I think truth and passion interest me so much because when I talk to people, I find that everybody has passion, but not everyone can talk about that passion in a way that's truthful or they don't have the courage to paint it or write it."
"I think truth and passion interest me so much because when I talk to people, I find that everybody has passion, but not everyone can talk about that passion in a way that's truthful or they don't have the courage to paint it or write it."
-John Jacobsen
"I have not noticed that. I think that people who are really passionate are always very explicit about it. And when that passion is lukewarm you can live with it and not express it but otherwise people are really out there. If people really care for something than they act upon it."
-Isabel Allende
This makes me question my life, and question why I do what I do. How many times have I gone to start a story or an art piece and not been able to finish it because I don't know how? I feel as though the topics and truths of those pieces are things that I am passionate about, but if that was true than I would act upon it. It makes me observe the things that I act upon and realize that I am passionate about those things. I can learn about my heart through my actions.
8/13/11
Miss Independant
Whenever I've gone to make a major decision, I've always asked the opinions of others. I've counted this tactic as wisdom and felt that it's important to look at a situation from all angles, including angles that I alone cannot always see. But recently I've been faced with the truth that I am the only person that can determine what I want and what is best for me. It may not always be easy to differentiate between what I want and what I need, what I feel and what should be done, but it is feasible. I was reading, "Reaching Out" by Henri Nouwen and these are a series of quotes that led me to this conclusion:
Often we go to good men and women with our problems in the secret hope that they will take our burden away from us and free us from our loneliness. Frequently the temporary relief they offer only leads to a stronger recurrence of the same pains when we are again by ourselves. But sometimes we meet and hear that exceptional person who says: "Do not run, but be quiet and silent. Listen attentively to your own struggle. The answer to your question is hidden in your own heart."
...The real spiritual guide is the one who, instead of advising us what to do or to whom to go, offers us a chance to stay alone and take the risk of entering into our own experience. He makes us see that ouring little bits of water on our dry land does not help, but that we will find a living well if we reach deep enough under the surface of our complaints.
...Sometimes one wonders if the fact that so many people ask support, advice and counsel from so many other people is not, in large part, due to their having lost contact with their innermost self. They ask: Should I go to school or look for a job, should I become a doctor or a lawyer, should I marry or remain single, should I leave my position or stay where I am, should I go into the military or refuse to go to war, should oben my superior or follow my own inclination, should I live a poor life or gain more money for the costly education of my children? There are not enough counselors in the world to help with all these hard questions, and sometimes one feels as if one half of the world is asking advise of the other half while both sides are sitting in the same darkness.
Maybe the most important advice to all searching people is the advice that Rainer Maria Rilke gave to the young man who asked him if h should become a poet. Rilke says:
You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now...I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward and that avove all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest laces of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all-ask yourself in teh stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmitive, if you may meet this earnest questin with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.
...Unless our questions, problems and concerns are tested and matured in solitude, it is not realistic to expect ansers that are really our own.
This mindset is what has led me to make decisions on my own. I continually have the urge to find confirmation in the reassuring word of a friend, but I realise that I am the only who can answer my own questions. So when I feel insecure in a decision regarding myself and feel the urge to seek out a second opinion I have been firmly squashing that desire and doing what I think is best, or what I want. It's been liberating and confidence building. It's shaping in me an independence founded on a confidence and trust in myself. It's why I decided to change my major back to nursing without the guidance of others. Because only I could look into myself and decide what I want.
8/11/10
Often we go to good men and women with our problems in the secret hope that they will take our burden away from us and free us from our loneliness. Frequently the temporary relief they offer only leads to a stronger recurrence of the same pains when we are again by ourselves. But sometimes we meet and hear that exceptional person who says: "Do not run, but be quiet and silent. Listen attentively to your own struggle. The answer to your question is hidden in your own heart."
...The real spiritual guide is the one who, instead of advising us what to do or to whom to go, offers us a chance to stay alone and take the risk of entering into our own experience. He makes us see that ouring little bits of water on our dry land does not help, but that we will find a living well if we reach deep enough under the surface of our complaints.
...Sometimes one wonders if the fact that so many people ask support, advice and counsel from so many other people is not, in large part, due to their having lost contact with their innermost self. They ask: Should I go to school or look for a job, should I become a doctor or a lawyer, should I marry or remain single, should I leave my position or stay where I am, should I go into the military or refuse to go to war, should oben my superior or follow my own inclination, should I live a poor life or gain more money for the costly education of my children? There are not enough counselors in the world to help with all these hard questions, and sometimes one feels as if one half of the world is asking advise of the other half while both sides are sitting in the same darkness.
Maybe the most important advice to all searching people is the advice that Rainer Maria Rilke gave to the young man who asked him if h should become a poet. Rilke says:
You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now...I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward and that avove all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest laces of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all-ask yourself in teh stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmitive, if you may meet this earnest questin with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.
...Unless our questions, problems and concerns are tested and matured in solitude, it is not realistic to expect ansers that are really our own.
This mindset is what has led me to make decisions on my own. I continually have the urge to find confirmation in the reassuring word of a friend, but I realise that I am the only who can answer my own questions. So when I feel insecure in a decision regarding myself and feel the urge to seek out a second opinion I have been firmly squashing that desire and doing what I think is best, or what I want. It's been liberating and confidence building. It's shaping in me an independence founded on a confidence and trust in myself. It's why I decided to change my major back to nursing without the guidance of others. Because only I could look into myself and decide what I want.
8/11/10
Thinker
While road tripping back to Alaska, my friend pointed out the universal truth that there are many things that people may love, but they are not good at. If I remember correctly, he brought up loving photography, but not being good at taking pictures. I could identify with him there because I'm the same way way. I can look through Grace Adam's 365 for hours and simply soak in the message, but I could not take a picture like one of hers if someone handed me the best camera in the world. But I can imagine a picture that I would like to capture and that I would like to see. While watching the latest episode of my favorite show, "So You Think You Can Dance," it hit me: I can stretch all I want but I'm not going to be able to make my legs do the splits in the air like those women. What I can do is watch enough dance that it seeps into my nerves and my brain waves until every song and every occurrence in life becomes a dance in my mind. I love dance, but I am not good at it. But I can imagine. One of my great loves in life is communication, and I pride myself in being able to communicate a thought well on most occasions. Dance is a form of communication and though I can't dance, choreography has been running through my brain all day. I am a writer, and an imaginer, and a choreographer by nature.
It's been a running thought and theme in my life currently that there are thinkers and doers in this world, and I am a doer. When it comes to college, chemistry and math, the things that explain the world around us and that to understand them means the power to manipulate that world, do not align with my thought processes. I cannot understand them. I cannot work in a lab and follow along with the why's of what we do. But I can dig my hands into soil and sweat and ache with the strain of hard work and precision. That's what I've always been better at. When it comes to brains I'm a doer. When it comes to beauty, I am shocked and delighted to find that I am a thinker.
8/10/11
It's been a running thought and theme in my life currently that there are thinkers and doers in this world, and I am a doer. When it comes to college, chemistry and math, the things that explain the world around us and that to understand them means the power to manipulate that world, do not align with my thought processes. I cannot understand them. I cannot work in a lab and follow along with the why's of what we do. But I can dig my hands into soil and sweat and ache with the strain of hard work and precision. That's what I've always been better at. When it comes to brains I'm a doer. When it comes to beauty, I am shocked and delighted to find that I am a thinker.
8/10/11
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Drama Queen
“I don’t feel like I have this rage inside of me that’s building...
because I refuse to let him have that.
He can’t have me. He can’t steal anything else.”
Jaycee Dugard
because I refuse to let him have that.
He can’t have me. He can’t steal anything else.”
Jaycee Dugard
I was watching the interview with Jaycee Dugard awhile back, a woman who was held in abusive captivity for eighteen years, and what stood out to me most was how normal she was. How easily she strolled around talking to Diane Sawyer, how easily she laughed, and how honestly she spoke. She seemed completely okay and the more I listened and watched, the more convinced I became that she really is. There's pain in her looking back but I remember her saying that he had taken eighteen years of her life and he wasn't getting another minute of it. She was moving on, neither being tortured nor reveling in the past. Here was now: in all her humility and clarity of mind she was living for beauty. The beauty of her daughters, of freedom, of being with her mother, of being alive, of understanding the world, of laughing, of experiencing and chasing what is good.
I envy this mindset. I want it for my own. I have never experienced anything so tramatic as what she went through, though the lesson she's learned and emulates through her life and her smile are contagious and apparent to me. Just evolving from my teenage years as a young woman, I know what drama is. It rises up in my life and as much as I despise it I also find myself able to thrive off it and find a certain satisfactiona, entertainment, and comradedre through it by way of it being a time killer and source of gossip. In times of boredom and apathy, it gives me something to feel and be passionate about.
But the way Jaycee Dugard lives her life shows me the way I should live mine. She doesn't thrive off the drama, she sees it for what it is: not a source of entertainment or attention, but a corrupt and perverted distortion of the way relationships and living are supposed to progress. I want to keep that view by not giving the people that provide drama in my life one more second of my thoughts and energy: especially when they're not present in my life and I just have myself to fuel my thoughts and actions to that destructive end. I'm learning to leave it be. I'm learning to not think about it, not bring it up in conversation, not check to see who's emailed back, not check to see who's texted, not to let it pervade every area of my life so that I become the hub for all things emotionally damaging and debilitating.
When a person becomes the object of the drama in my life, I want to fight back against that perversion that tries to decieve me into thinking that it can be a viable source of happiness. I refuse to let anger toward a person or situation affect my attitude toward life, I refuse to give those people that want to spark a reaction out of me the satisfaction and success by way of manipulating my thoughts, words, actions, and heart. I will spend the least amount of time I can on the situation, be apathetic toward the barage of attempts at my attention, and move on with life not dwelling or taking anything from the drama other than the positive lessons learned that I can live by. Those people and those situations that I obsess over have taken enough from me and they don't get one more second. Not one more second of my emotion, and not one more second of my time. It's a free, beautiful, and good life that Jaycee Dugard is chasing after, and I plan on chasing it with her.
8/9/11
I envy this mindset. I want it for my own. I have never experienced anything so tramatic as what she went through, though the lesson she's learned and emulates through her life and her smile are contagious and apparent to me. Just evolving from my teenage years as a young woman, I know what drama is. It rises up in my life and as much as I despise it I also find myself able to thrive off it and find a certain satisfactiona, entertainment, and comradedre through it by way of it being a time killer and source of gossip. In times of boredom and apathy, it gives me something to feel and be passionate about.
But the way Jaycee Dugard lives her life shows me the way I should live mine. She doesn't thrive off the drama, she sees it for what it is: not a source of entertainment or attention, but a corrupt and perverted distortion of the way relationships and living are supposed to progress. I want to keep that view by not giving the people that provide drama in my life one more second of my thoughts and energy: especially when they're not present in my life and I just have myself to fuel my thoughts and actions to that destructive end. I'm learning to leave it be. I'm learning to not think about it, not bring it up in conversation, not check to see who's emailed back, not check to see who's texted, not to let it pervade every area of my life so that I become the hub for all things emotionally damaging and debilitating.
When a person becomes the object of the drama in my life, I want to fight back against that perversion that tries to decieve me into thinking that it can be a viable source of happiness. I refuse to let anger toward a person or situation affect my attitude toward life, I refuse to give those people that want to spark a reaction out of me the satisfaction and success by way of manipulating my thoughts, words, actions, and heart. I will spend the least amount of time I can on the situation, be apathetic toward the barage of attempts at my attention, and move on with life not dwelling or taking anything from the drama other than the positive lessons learned that I can live by. Those people and those situations that I obsess over have taken enough from me and they don't get one more second. Not one more second of my emotion, and not one more second of my time. It's a free, beautiful, and good life that Jaycee Dugard is chasing after, and I plan on chasing it with her.
8/9/11
Monday, August 8, 2011
Zipping Up
I saw a portion of my family again for the first time in two years, and normally when I'm around family I feel as though I'm around acquaintances, and when I try to talk to acquaintances I have trouble carrying on conversation. I never know how much they want to know and I don't want to bother them so I end up shortening everything into generic not in depth sentences ending in nods and laughter. I'm always afraid to say what I'm really thinking, articulate what I really believe, or speak with my own vernacular. But today was much different. I felt much more at ease, I felt like I was seeing old friends because I was, and I have this feeling that I'm coming into my own and donning a confidence in who I am. I think I'm growing up, getting to know myself, and stepping into my skin.
8/8/11
Photo is titled, "Let's Dance!! (Put On Your Red Shoes and Dance The Blues) by London Lens
Rhode Island Magic
There’s magic in being away from home that makes me feel more confident and more free: more willing to shamelessly be me.
8/7/11
Photo is a Royalty Free Stock Photo. Snuck up on me while I was searching for a little bit different concept.
8/7/11
Photo is a Royalty Free Stock Photo. Snuck up on me while I was searching for a little bit different concept.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Coping Mechanisms
I have a tendency to develop personas for my different moods or tendencies. When I need to gain control I'm the business woman in full attire. When my faults are entirely apparent to me I'm the Jezebel. When I feel completely out of place in my generation I'm the old woman in a large sweater. Different situations make me feel strongly that I am or need to be a certain way, and some of my friends know this, and we even had a name for the business woman that I thank God I can't remember. It scared me the other day that I said to myself, "I feel like Jezebel is taking over." I stopped myself and decided never to choose names again, and never to let myself feel like I am completely one of those persona's in a moment. Because it makes me feel like a crazy person. I fear that if I give them names, and outfits, and personalities, and allow myself to give into each one separately and completely they really will become real. I watched part of a documentary not long ago about a woman with 13 different personalities with names and faces that she switches between. The more I try to cope with the different situations life throws my way, the more strongly I feel that each persona needs to come out at different times, and I have to remind myself that each one's name is Toni. Each one is me. Lately I've found myself, in the midst of conflict, completely shutting down and desensitizing myself toward certain people and situations. Completely zoning out and forgetting to even pay attention to the world around me. With the consistency that it's been happening the last three days, I've felt myself giving that response a unique acknowledgment and because the personality switch is so massively separate than what my personality would inherently call for in those conflicting situations, I feel like that's not even me, that that's some other persona. I have to remind myself what I look like, what I'm wearing, that I am me, that I am Toni no matter what I do. I feel like I'm sick. Like I'm coming down with the flu. I think I'm far from crazy, but closer than I thought.
8/6/11
8/6/11
Conflict
I love the concept that Travis puts behind this dance, but when I watch it I see them both as two parts to one person. I see her as the heart of conflict and the gripping anger that accompanies it, and I see him as the side of us that tries to control it and not succumb to it. Amidst all the traveling that's been going on recently, the conflict has been fully gripping and crippling. It's a constant battle to control myself and my emotions and do whatever it takes to gain control and get rid of that conflict. This dance seems like an accurate interpretation of what's been going with my soul since traveling began and even before. And even still, just as much as your eye is drawn to her, and how consuming and attractive her character is, so is it easy within conflict and anger to relish the feeling and get high off its allure. It really is a battlefield.
8/5/11
Jezebel
I was on a plane to Portland the other day, and was flipping through movies on a digiplayer when I came to an old movie called The Many Loves of Hilda Crane. I started it just for good measure but got sucked in over time. It wasn't because it was some forgotten wonder of a movie with an amazing plot, but because Hilda Crane herself was the representation of all women in her day struggling to find liberty and independence. The tag line for the movie is even, "I want to live like a man...and still be a woman!" Hilda's father had always told her that she could do and be anything she wanted, so she left home to get an education and ended up not being able to support herself and find a job, as well as going through two divorces. She thought she had found love, but the love went away because she believed love was the same as desire. She returns to her conservative hometown a total wreck, not knowing what to believe about life or love. Her past ends up getting exposed, the one man she desires refuses to marry her because he says she's a courtesan and not the type a man marries, so she gets married to a good, kind, respectable man whom she doesn't love because she thinks that's how it's supposed to be. But that doesn't change the fact that she's a wreck. Hilda drinks, stands up for herself, falls flat on her face, cheats on her husband, is rejected by her mother, and tries to even commit suicide. She's miserable and stumbling through life trying to find happiness and satisfaction through the beck and call of her emotional highs and lows.
I love Hilda because I see so much of myself in her. I see myself in the midst of failing classes and uncertainty about my career path, I see myself in confusion over what love is and what marriage is about after a failed relationship, I see myself making emotional decisions that I'll regret later, and I see myself trying to cope with an overwhelming feeling through addictive behavior. As Hilda rambles on in confusion and misery, flying from decision to decision and making life altering mistakes in an effort to cope, I see myself. I see the character that was so heavily overthrown by darkness, that the name Jezebel has come to represent: a malicious, scheming, sexually immoral, false teaching, power hungry woman. People love to degrade the Hilda's and the Jezebel's, but I wonder how many of them have ever been Hilda's and Jezebel's? It's ironic that Jezebel was thrown out a window to be trampled by the people and eaten by dogs in the Bible: it's similar to the way people treat Jezebel's today. I have to appreciate the fact that the Bible reminds me that to be overthrown by evil and to live in it is a serious offense, but I can't forget what it's like to be her and empathy breeds forgiveness in me.
I understand emotion and I understand mistakes, and that makes me to believe that those who acknowledge the Jezebel with hate instead of pity have had no experiences with emotion or mistakes, so who can realistically acknowledge her with hate but the self righteous?
8/4/11
I love Hilda because I see so much of myself in her. I see myself in the midst of failing classes and uncertainty about my career path, I see myself in confusion over what love is and what marriage is about after a failed relationship, I see myself making emotional decisions that I'll regret later, and I see myself trying to cope with an overwhelming feeling through addictive behavior. As Hilda rambles on in confusion and misery, flying from decision to decision and making life altering mistakes in an effort to cope, I see myself. I see the character that was so heavily overthrown by darkness, that the name Jezebel has come to represent: a malicious, scheming, sexually immoral, false teaching, power hungry woman. People love to degrade the Hilda's and the Jezebel's, but I wonder how many of them have ever been Hilda's and Jezebel's? It's ironic that Jezebel was thrown out a window to be trampled by the people and eaten by dogs in the Bible: it's similar to the way people treat Jezebel's today. I have to appreciate the fact that the Bible reminds me that to be overthrown by evil and to live in it is a serious offense, but I can't forget what it's like to be her and empathy breeds forgiveness in me.
I understand emotion and I understand mistakes, and that makes me to believe that those who acknowledge the Jezebel with hate instead of pity have had no experiences with emotion or mistakes, so who can realistically acknowledge her with hate but the self righteous?
8/4/11
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Baby
Dirty Dancing stands alone as a great movie.
Maybe I like it so much more because I am Baby:
from beginning to end.
8/1/11
Monday, August 1, 2011
Business Attire
When what I feel in my chest threatens to force me into action,
I envision myself in business attire.
(A slim cut black skirt.
Tucked in white blouse.
My black shiny heels.
A high held chin.
Nerves of steel.
A firm sense of duty.)
Because that spy persona knows how to keep all my secrets.
And she keeps me in check.
7/31/11
Photograph by Austin Tott
I envision myself in business attire.
(A slim cut black skirt.
Tucked in white blouse.
My black shiny heels.
A high held chin.
Nerves of steel.
A firm sense of duty.)
Because that spy persona knows how to keep all my secrets.
And she keeps me in check.
7/31/11Photograph by Austin Tott
The Road To Recovery
When Grace added this photo to her flickr she said that she didn't have a story for it. When I saw it, I instantly knew the story behind it. As someone who is prone to addictions, I know what they can do to a life. They take you over like a cancer and they spread and they spread. They break you down till your the ghost of what you used to be and as many times as you shove them down a staircase or stash them in a drawer they creep back up. Sometimes it's the same old thing and sometimes it's new and you realize the cancer had spread to an organ you hadn't considered. But the road to recovery always seems fresh and new, and I see her and she's this character that feels the weight and the guilt of the past disease of addiction but also the freedom and renewal that comes with the gradual recovery from that cancer. There's a relief and a remembrance in that healing process, and so to me, when I see this photo I see my journey of healing.
7/30/11
Photograph is "Ivory" by the now Grace Adams
Photograph is "Ivory" by the now Grace Adams
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