stuff that makes me happy

lately my days are a blur of nonstop to-do lists.

so i'm just going to stop and do nothing for five minutes. in fact, i'm just going to make a list of things that make me happy for no reason at all:

big fat trees

cracking the crunchy top on a creme brulee

tin cans, ribbons and stickers

riding my bike

anything stripes

cherries and avocados and watermelon

cobblestones

reading the classified ads

things with a lot of texture and heft

people who smile for real, from the inside - this is rare

ugly dogs

sunshine and a breeze

pasta pasta pasta

the sound of running water

wrapping presents

giving presents

the smell of hyacinths and gardenias

making grandmas smile when i compliment them

super bright colors

beautiful girls

silk, cashmere and leather

the way my stomach feels empty in the morning

super hot showers

really soft bedsheets

babies

the bookstore

peanut butter cookies

new magazines

you.

(nyc)

people that make you go hmmm

tonight i met someone who struck me b/c he was just so real.

i can't quite put my finger on it, but his energy struck me b/c it seemed so neutral. that's a funny word, but i don't mean it in a negative way. he was just simply present as a human being, wanting nothing and needing nothing, but just being himself. no projections, no perceptions, no agenda, no small talk. just real. just present. i don't know how else to describe it.

it was nice. it had nothing to do with the way we were interacting or anything romantic or even friendly. it didn't even have anything to do with two people just clicking or getting along as people sometimes do. it was just about one human being recognizing another, minus the surface of this world. such a strange way to describe it, but sometimes i meet people, however briefly, that move me for some reason. hmm.

(nyc)

here

i saw your twin in the waiting room at the doctor's office

i couldn't stop staring at him

i had dinner with j and b tonight

we all miss you

think of you

i feel you

i know you're here

but

sometimes i just wish

my heart didn't have to ache exactly this way.

(nyc)

two wolves

one evening an old cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

"my son, the battle is between two 'wolves' inside us all. one is evil. it is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

the other is good. it is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

the grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "which wolf wins?"

the old cherokee simply replied, "the one you feed."

(nyc)

off

some days, i am just cranky. it doesn't happen very often, but every once in awhile, i just want to tell my mind to stuff it. i want to tell my to-do list to disappear, i want words and paragraphs and chapters to magically appear on my screen, i want time to slow down and wait for me to catch up. i want my calendar to stop freaking me out every time i look at the deadlines on it and i want to just float in a warm ocean full of salt and orange sherbet sunsets.

trying to breathe more slowly right now...

(nyc)

  

newton's second law / before & after part ii

lesson two:

force equals mass times acceleration. the greater the mass, the more force that is needed to accelerate.

blah blah blah physics.

so what.

in my 'before & after' post, i showed a picture of a chest of drawers that got a makeover. visually and concretely, it is the simplest way to see change in tangible form. but that was a piece of furniture. how about a human being?

changing yourself has to be one of the hardest things you can ever do in life. it is so so so much easier to criticize others and tell them to change, get angry at your circumstances rather than change your own self, and fingerpoint at everyone and everything else rather than look into your own heart. and the longer you become set in your ways, the harder it becomes to change. which relates back to newton's first law of inertia.

it takes a massive amount of force to change the largest mass in your own life - you.

but the good news is that it's not impossible. no force on this planet is completely immoveable. things are moving all the time; even on the tiniest level, our atoms are always vibrating. 

but how do you make a mass light enough so that it can be moved? how do you make it so that it doesn't require all the force in the world to get going, changing, accelerating? easy. yet also incredibly difficult - let go of your ego.

when you can admit that you are not always the right one, the one with all the answers and the center of your own universe, the world literally opens up. there is so much out there to be explored, experienced and loved, and all you have to do in order to participate is just say YES. it is much easier to travel without the baggage of ego. when you're willing to make mistakes, willing to let others lead the way and willing to let go of control, the forces of light & love & beauty that exist out there in the world can pick you up and start moving you. you become a moveable mass, a veritable moveable feast a la hemingway.

and again, the choice is yours. you can choose to focus on the light, on the possibilities, on the love. because if you want it, it is all there for the taking. it always has been...

funny how a hard-data quantitative science like physics explains "qualitatives" like love?

to be continued in part iii...

(nyc) 

before & after

i find some kind of almost-perverse pleasure in this concept of before & after. actually, i think all humans do. i find it especially satisfying visually when it comes to interior design, which i have always loved. whenever i step into a room or see a random piece of furniture, i immediately start re-arranging it all in my head and imagine what i could do with the space/the piece/the material.

here's an example:

perfectly functional set of ikea drawers - who doesn't heart ikea?

but then - ta-daaah!!!

how cool is that! it just makes me all happy inside :)))

part ii coming in a bit...

(nyc)

did anyone tell you today

that you are beautiful?

you are.

did anyone tell you today that you are loved?

i do.

anytime you need to be told, come read this again. and again.

xoxo

(nyc)

treehugger

"teach your children what we have taught ours, that the earth is our mother. whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." - chief seattle

sometimes, many times, living in a city of high rises, yellow taxi cabs and concrete sidewalks, i forget how moving nature can be. it transcends daily life b/c it is perfect in design. there are no glitches, no miscommunications, no mistakes. nature only absorbs and reflects back exactly what is put into it - which is why it is so important to take care of it, so that it will continue to take care of us.

thank you qb for sharing the video above, it had been awhile since i had seen it :)

(ironically, nyc)

if only you knew

how deeply happy this picture makes me.... :D

(nyc)

love

focus on the light, not the dark.
focus on the possibilities, not the impossibilities.
focus on the what-could-be's, not the what-went-wrong's.
focus on the mosaic, not the tiles.
focus on the expansion, not the compression.
focus on the joy, not the hurt.
focus on the infinite, not the finite.

it is not that the other side should not exist. nothing can ever be whole, ever be grand, ever be more, without its flip side. one can only comprehend desire, beauty and brightness through the existence of its other side.

so understand it.
then let it go.
because one can choose which part to focus on.
the choice will always exist.
and life is too short, too rich, too full
to spend looking forever into a black hole.

(nyc)

patch

how is it possible that something this sweet:

go could from that to this:

in the span of less than a year?? he's huge!! he weighs almost as much as i do and he's super obnoxious in that cute puppy kind of way.

spent a lazy sunday afternoon with patch in the st. germain studio, feeding him oranges and aloe vera. this dog eats eveeeerything. fatso :D

(nyc)

we need more cowbell...

i love will ferrell's belly. that jiggle is awesome :D

this makes me laugh, every single time :D

(kinnelon, nj)

scaredy-cats

for as long as i can remember, i have always loved talking to people. learning from them and about them, asking questions, curious as to what makes a person tick, their dreams, their passions, their fears.

but somehow, so often, my inquisitive nature gets mistaken for a) romantic interest or b) interest with some kind of underlying motive, when this is totally not the case. i just truly love celebrating what makes a person unique and beautiful, and discovering what s(he) has to offer the world. but insecurities come into play and suddenly i become the suspicious one. my interest becomes second-guessed and then the door shuts closed.

why am i not allowed to recognize you? why am i not allowed to find out what an amazing human being you are?

could it turn romantic? yes, it has before. but i fall in love all the time, with men, with woman, with children, with old people. that is the whole point. of life.

interestingly, the more successful, the more famous, the more "powerful" a person is, the more likely they are to not only open up to me, but to ask me questions in return. there is a reason why they are where they are. you cannot pick and choose the aspects in which to open yourself up to the universe. you're just either open to all of it, including the so-called "bad" stuff, or you're not.

what kind of energy do you emit and draw? how open are you, really?

and how open am i? i'm trying, always have been. let me in, let me out, let me be.

let me be me.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianne Williamson


(nyc)

significance

this is from a journal entry i wrote more than two years ago:

I am always amazed when I think of man against the backdrop of nature in its rawest form – a span of mountains or canyons, the infinite span of galaxies or the life cycle of a redwood sequoia. In that realm of understanding, man seems so insignificant to me, so small. In nature’s territory, we are nothing. Yet man also wields unfathomable amounts of power over his surroundings and the daily choices in his life that ripple out and change outcomes.

yet man also wields unfathomable amounts of power over his surroundings and the daily choices in his life that ripple out and change outcomes...

what happens when you choose to keep going, keep believing, keep moving?

(nyc)

if you know...

the brightest lights cast the darkest shadows.

(nyc)

newton's first law

remember these horrible kinds of graphs in your textbook that made your eyes glaze over and want to stab yourself? i don't know why the so-called clever physicists think that these kinds of pictures speak a thousand words.

because they don't.

gibberish, fools.

but put into plain english, this drawing is of isaac newton's first law: an object at rest tends to stay at rest, while an object in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

ok, big frackin' deal. like, who really needs to understand physics or calculus in the real world except for astronauts and the nerds who work on the hadron collider in switzerland? (although i have to admit that i find that kind of stuff very cool. god i am so geeky.)

as an academic proof for doing calculations, sorry isaac, it really has no pertinence to real life. but conceptually, physics can pertain to many things - including emotions, the soul and your spirit. hear me out.

have you ever been in a relationship where you get into some little argument and then it suddenly snowballs into a completely different thing altogether? one minute you're just arguing about some miniscule thing and somehow the next minute is filled with all the reasons that your partner is totally wrong for you/not being very understanding/driving you crazy and you can't believe (s)he did it again - whatever it was. an argument in motion tends to stay in motion.

and then you both huff off and the air is thick with tension and you feel sick to your stomach. you start questioning whether this person is even right for you and how could they not understand something as simple as you. ridiculous, eh? but now the stalemate fills the space and both of you are avoiding each other b/c each of you is so right. a silence at rest tends to stay at rest.

and then the longer the silence festers, the longer the emotions have a chance to get taken over by the head and its cool logical proceedings, the more it makes sense that maybe you should break up. maybe you should see other people, like the cute guy/girl you met in passing through work who flirts with you. and your mind starts filling up with possibilities, even though your body is still in the same place. 

but you see, the longer that stalemate stays at rest, the easier and more sense that breakup becomes. and that is how relationships/marriages/friendships end. because there was nothing to stop the inevitable. 

but what about the unbalanced force? this is where i believe free will plays a part. this is the part where you have a choice in the matter of "inevitability" and the natural laws of motion. you can choose to lay down your ego, to say sorry, to forgive. to be the bigger person, even in the face of. you can change the trajectory of a looming outcome and put a relationship back into play.  

and that, my friends, is newton's first law at work in real life. because this law of stopping/starting and the forces at play around you are a part of every single aspect in your life. who said you couldn't work, couldn't achieve your dreams? who said you couldn't get that dream job/girl/guy/house/etc? your self-doubts will keep you at rest and keep you there forever. a hitter seems to gain momentum from out of nowhere and is suddenly in the midst of everything, in perpetual play. sheer will.

the relationship argument is just an example. but the structural concept behind the feelings... well, that's just physics.

stay tuned for newton's second law...

(nyc)

jump jump

you know that scene in big where tom hanks and elizabeth perkins jump on the trampoline inside his loft?

i want one of those. a loft. with a trampoline in it.

(nyc)

lately

blank inside/distract myself with work with fun with surfing/but in silence/a blank slate/blinking cursor/waiting/inspiration/dry...
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(nyc)