sweet thoughts

flicker, flicker
the little light dances
singing sweet tunes
of soft amber nights

tiny crossed legs
cricket near the window
and the hustle of the world
dims to a gentle hum

oh what a lovely thought
crosses the crevasse of my mind
trying its very hardest
not to fall inside

down, down,
down it falls
deep into the walls
of my deep lagoon heart

hmm
singing sweetly the thought,
nestling comfortably
plans for here to stay

hmm

quickly the air
shattered by a separate self,

unconscious of the air they hath just destroyed

this must be my cue
the curtain is falling
yet my chest still rises
and falls for you

my latest poem. can you guess the subject? it's quite hidden and the poem is open to interpretation aside from my intention

Silly Me

Night sky lit ablaze 

with small voices spinning,

circling, 

circling round a cold corpse 

seeking fulfillment.

Red strings play delicate tunes

sold to the mind

sold,

for a nickel and a dime

falsify the burning in my chest.

Mere Illusions of you

have displaced my desires,

projecting,

projecting fantasy affection

toward a poor unfortunate innocence.

So quickly am I to grab hold

of the wilted bloom,

churning,

churning the soil around its roots

 begging to return life to the already passed.

Silly me to think such power of me. 

Silly me to think so little of my own two feet.

Pooling mentality drowns this beautiful face

placing the remains of a person into the cracks 

cracks,

of my volcanic walls

held together by nothing.

Caving into the corridors,

my beautiful stolen corpse lies.

What have I done

I have placed care.

Silly me to do such a thing,

again.

I am now in a poetry club. So I am going to post my poems I have written in my notebook...eventually...

i'm not in the 'mood' to date right now, but...

...if I were to allow someone to change my mind, it would have to be someone who is willing to

watch silent films on a Sunday night

eat my popcorn with olive oil and seasoning

go on late night skateboarding adventures

meander through cemeteries

spend hours upon hours in the studio 

listen to me rattle on about how much I like trees

play in the mud

dress up for Halloween

sit and listen to the psithurism 

try my vegan creations

leave me alone when need be

jump in the water in the dead of night

lounge around in our PJs on Sunday mornings and live the cliché

make damn good coffee

tell me stories about life and past endeavors

play with my hair and get all the knots out

take me to see their favorite artists/musicians

work really hard in life

understand I need to voice my chemical status sometimes

and most of all, someone who is willing to be ultimately and completely human with me, raw and true, with all the emotions, struggles, pains, joys, opinions, goals, dreams, and everything else that comes along with being alive...

but for now, I'm just going to do all these things on my own and date myself. Which is totally and completely, satisfyingly beautiful. 

The End. 

 

Life is an ever-changing tide on the sea of existence and we are but a small fishing boat.

Life is always a series of ups and downs. Everyone who has ever lived or will live knows this to be true. Life gets hard. But life also gets easy. Life is an ever-changing tide on the sea of existence and we are but a small fishing boat. There are times where we are just trying to stay afloat and there are times when the sun is out and the waves are steady like a surgeon's hands. So when you find yourself lounging about on the front deck of the boat with the sun warming your skin and a cool breeze in your hair, do you think of the inevitable storm brewing only an ocean stride away? I do. Maybe, it is because when my storms hit, they have a tendency to tear boards from the transom and rip holes in my sails. Maybe it is the sense of preparedness that overwhelms me as I lay slightly rocking above the waves. The sense that if I prepare today then tomorrow won't be so bad. But what do I do to prepare? How does one prepare for a storm when they are already out at sea? This is the question that has plagued me for the past nine months or so. How do I prepare for the inevitable downfall of my mental capabilities? How do I place a cushion under my heart so when my emotions run ramped they don't cause a crack in the glass? Simple steps and quick solutions seem to be the general tone of my answers to these questions. At least for now. Yet I wonder, is there a more permanent solution? Can I just stay basking in the sun with a gentle breeze on the calm sea? No, because eventually I will get burned. I will tire of the sun and wish for rain. Waiting for waves, waves that envelope the boat entirely and bring me to gulp the sweet air and feel grateful once again. Maybe it is the ever-changing of my mind, but I truly enjoy both the calm and the storm.

So here's my dream...

So here's my dream for my life. Are you ready? Ok. I want to live in a small house with more windows than walls and pretty antique furniture that I will paint after finding at a garage sale. I want a big fluffy white bed with lots of soft pillows and a colorful quilt at the foot. I want to live high up. Whether that's on a seaside cliff, the mountains, hills near the coast, or in a tree; I want to be close to the sky. I want pretty fairy lights in every room and every inch of my property so matter the size. I want a garden full of veggies and yummy things. I want flowers too. Lots and lots of flowers. I want to make art in a little studio with no walls, just windows. I want to live near enough to the coast so I can take morning walks on the beach and smell the salty air from my balcony. I want to own a flower shop/cafe where all the tables and chairs are kind colors. I want to serve people wholesome healthy happy food in the front cafe and design beautiful arrangements of flowers for every occasion in the back flower shop. I want to know my regular customers by name. I want my kids to come home from school all bright and cheery, bouncing into the cafe for a bite to eat. I want my husband to be my best friend and business partner. He can carry the big boxes and put things on the top shelf where I can't reach. I want him to help me with running our little business. Maybe we'll live upstairs from the cafe/flower shop. I want all the colors to be warm and bright and cheerful. This is my dream. This is how I want to settle down in life. This is how I want to raise my children and love my husband. With love, sunshine, and a garden. I want my parents to visit often and be excited about my little cafe/flower shop. But before I settle down in this lovely life. I want to see a bit of the world. Gather recipes for the cafe and stories for the customers. Pictures for the walls and souvenirs for the bookshelves. This is my dream. I know it is a big dream. And one that will cost money and time and energy and it won't always be rainbows and butterflies. But that's what dreams are. Perfect realities we can strive toward. Something to look forward to. My mom always says. You always need something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. Amen to that.

So, I was feeling bad about myself...

So, I was feeling bad about myself and decided to do something about it.

I recently returned home to the OC after spending a glorious four months living wildly in the mountains. In these mountains, I learned more about myself and who I want to be than I have ever come to know throughout my life.

Sure, I had moments of insecurity while surrounded by numerous beautiful people, but nothing compared to the moments I have experienced here. Within hours, I was bombarded by photoshopped ads and critical magazines claiming that my entire mindset should be focused on losing weight and forming into a mold designed by Victoria's Secret.

Research shows how to lose weight and keep it off in just under 10 days!
How I lost 90 pounds and got my confidence back!
Drop those pesky 10 pounds by fasting for two days!
Tell all insider secrets on how she got her body back!
Easy 5 step plan to be hot and sexy for summer!
Get your summer body in just 30 days!

It's overwhelming. And these claims are always equally paired with headlines like

*celebrity* gains 10 pounds and is disgusting
Can you recognize these celebrities who have started to jiggle?
Name the cellulite.
*celebrity* declared obese while pregnant!
You won't believe how they look now.
From hottest in Hollywood to overweight and unwanted 

Are you fucking kidding me!? This has got to be a joke! I have cellulite! I jiggle! I have rolls when I bend over! God forbid I have a tummy or thighs. I'm sorry for being human and having a body of a woman rather than a 12-year-old boy. I must be a whale because I can pinch my skin! "Fit as ever Miley Cyrus doesn't even have enough to pinch!" This has got to be some sick joke. Where did my confidence go? Oh, I must have smothered it with all the weight I've gained! BULLSHIT.

Within the last five years, I have put my body through quite a bit of hell.

I have gone from being super thin, toned and mildly starving, to having a bit of confidence after being declared homecoming princess, to not giving a shit about what people think and paving my own path, to eating shit once a day and fueling myself on coffee for all the other hours, to deciding I was done with it all and I just was going to accept myself. I'm still working on that last part.

I have always been a little more on the curvy side but not exactly big. I have strong legs and a booty. I have always had strong arms and a strong core. And I have a tremendous center of gravity which makes more easy balancing ability. I am tiny and petite but not scrawny. But according to magazines, I am overweight and unathletic.

This is a lie. I can summit mountains and climb vertical rock walls. I can swim like a mermaid and sprint like a forest nymph. I can balance all my weight on my head. I can do most yoga poses with ease. I can do many things. And it has taken me some time and some convincing from others to believe that I am athletic and beautiful even though I am so far from fitting into the cookie cutter image plastered on every magazine and on every billboard.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a large scab on my face. Face imperfections are never fun. My theory is that when I experimented with mixing two different essential oils they somehow burned my skin. However, tragic this may seem to most orange county folks, I don't mind it much, aside from the slight tenderness on that part of my face, it is not a huge deal. My only concern is making sure it heals properly. The only bothersome aspect of the situation is that I don't want to have my picture taken while my face heals. I also don't want to cover it with makeup because I don't want to make it worse. I want my face to be relatively healed before my interview on Monday, but that's really the extent of my worries on the matter.

I may not have a perfect complexion or the most toned body. But that is okay. I have blemishes and cellulite. Sadly, these words come with bad connotations solely because those aspects of the body do not photograph well. Don't get me wrong, I love taking photographs. I love pictures. I love photography as an art form. However, in a world like today, having the perfect image of yourself posted on social media declares your worth. You have to be able to fit the standard of beauty through filters and photoshop and the like. As an artist, my lenses filter all that I see to be beautiful without alteration. To me, there is some level of Beauty in all things.

Yesterday I felt inspired to pull out the nice camera and take a few shots of the sun peaking through the window and the leaves blowing in the breeze. Of course, the mechanics of a camera are never able to fully capture the beauty in front of me, but I got a perspective that seemed close to what I was experiencing and I was proud of myself. Proud for being able to see the Beauty and then being able to create a version of it. In finding and capturing Beauty, I felt beautiful.

Today I was feeling bad about myself. The kind of bad where I was pinching at my thighs and planning how I was going to lose 20 pounds this summer. Then I realized, I don't actually give a fuck. I don't care if my thighs touch or if my stomach has rolls when I bend over. When I am at home and comfortable and there is no one around me to compare myself to, no magazines telling me I need to change, and no outside senses of judgment, I really, truly, honestly like myself. I like how I look. I like that my booty is kind of big and my arms have muscle. I like the skin I am in. The only time I don't is when I am comparing myself. Comparison is the thief of joy. When I feel like I am lesser than someone else or somehow less valuable because I don't have washboard abs and a gap between my legs I try to remind myself of this. Because the truth is, I am beautiful. And guess what, I believe God agrees.

In rebellion against the evil that continues to try and convince me I am not perfect and beautiful the way I am, I drew a picture. Art is my biggest form of rebellion. I used my art, my view of beauty, to reclaim my image. Instead of going to the mirror and chanting some self-help encouragement, I drew a picture of myself. Not a picture that overexaggerated my body's size or proportion but more the most accurate little cartoon I could muster in 10 minutes.

It is not a realistic still life or a proper recreation of my body but just a little cartoon that, I think, reveals my beauty in the same way I would draw a bird or a daffodil.
 
Like me, it is not perfect to the mold that society wishes I would fit into. It rather fits into the eyes of My Creator. The Creator crafted me. How dare I claim his work unworthy or at all poor in form, no matter what society tries to tell me.