This is the website of a girl I still love although she hates me for falling asleep at a concert, out of my own admitted naiveté. Not like she wasn't at fault. It didn't want for us to stop speaking so long before we were never to see each other again but it couldn't be avoided. The last time I remember us having the time of our lives together was watching Legally Blond II and how Reese Witherspoon's head was spectacularly back lit in every shot. Elle Woods made a comment about how no one should wear paisley. We were silent for a whole minute till I broke it with "but everyone loves paisley" and she laughed at how she was thinking exactly the same. How humiliating, liking paisley. We didn't know whether or not Elle had made a valid point.
I knew how to fold when she took pictures of me, I let her do anything to me but there was little I asked of her. I am usually like this in friendships. I adored her and whatever I must have done to have driven her away, I guess I didn't notice but she's given me a six year deadline before we become friends again. I don't know how true that is but I look forward to this prophecy.
She still has pictures of me on her website while I still patter away on blogs. She's closer to bigger things than I but I've always worked on a different scale next to other talented people either out of stupidity, insanity or a worser case of idealism. Still, that's my face replaced with trees and I think it's brilliant symbolism. I don't know if I ever told her my name meant 'precious tree'.
What I noticed, from both my experiences in NYC and DC, is that people are significantly smaller than people around here in Virginia (the "south"). I saw no overweight/obese people in NYC or in DC---and if I did see any, they were tourists. And I realize that it's because the people in those two cities walk everywhere. There's no need to drive in NYC or in DC because you can walk or take the metro----either way, you're stuck walking. Unlike here in VA, where there is no metro or train, so you're stuck to using your own car, you're stuck to driving everywhere---even for just five minutes to the store!
In effort to staying healthy by eating right (cough, cough), I made a promise to myself. I promise to walk more. If it takes 15 minutes or less to DRIVE to wherever I need to go, I will walk instead. Which means when I decide to go to the arts & craft store, Starbucks, & grocery stores---I will WALK.
Cheers.
If you knew my life, it ticks by a clock that uses seconds as days,
minutes as weeks and hours as months.
In my world, tides take what seems forever to turn
and my young youth turns darker shades of grey, unable to sleep;
stolen by insomnia and strangers,
people who call me 'friend' when we are temporary friends and I find myself questioning the integrity of what we share.
I have been dispensable before, but not at this rate
and I question whether my travels are by a choice that is mine, fated or imposed upon me
by things I was too little to understand at the time.
But these choices play on cassette - loop, fast forward, rewind,
I hope to find something new each time.
Sometimes I'm naive and expect a different ending
yet the end only goes as far as today
and my clock tells me new things, like distance,
and how I am a long, long way from home.
I am caught in the winding slow-motion
of wanting to go home.
Thank you leigh for creating the video for me :o) Yay! I loves it.
I had such a fun weekend up north. It was my first time at the capital, and we stayed at a hotel in Maryland and took the Metro in and around DC. It makes me realize how much I take advantage of my car because at the end of each day, my legs were hurting so badly that it hurt to even bend my legs! Phew. I need to walk more.
I saw all the tourist monuments, ate at restaurants we don't have here in Virginia Beach, and went to a number of museums. I took almost 300 photos, so I picked and chose photos to share with you all.
The only traffic we hit was in NorVa. We don't like red brake lights.
We got a good deal at a hotel, and the room was too cute. I love the colors and the pillows. It might just inspire me to recreate it in my current room. Though, I don't think they'd match my rainbow sheer curtains.
We ate at a number of restaurants. Our first night we went to Hard Rock Cafe, and bought drinks because we wanted these souvenir glasses to take home. The price wasn't on the menu, and the drinks/glasses ended up costing more than our dish. Haha. We also ate at Cracker Barrel (on the way up), Potbelly's (sandwiches), Love Cafe, Ella's Pizza, Zoo Bar Cafe, Whole Foods, & Macaroni Grill (on the way back). We don't have Whole Foods, and one night we decided to stock up on food and eat dinner in our hotel room. It was fun.
We want Whole Foods in VBeach.
Oh, and Starbucks for fuel.
I drank so much water and ginger ale.
PS: General Tso's Vegan Chicken is delish.
PSS: I had Tiramisu TWICE.
We went to two art museums: The American Art Museum and The National Gallery of Art. I love Modern art, and we spent more time looking at Modern art than anything else. But I love it all---art museums.
We saw the White House, Washington Monument, The Lincoln Monument, The World War II Memorial, The Capitol, and more ( I think ).
We also went to the National Aquarium, which we had to pay $7 to get into unlike all the other museums, which were free, and it was disappointing.
I had fun, but I'm glad to be back :o)
Enjoy the photos.
I love the thrill of traveling, but there's nothing better than the comfort of home.
I'm pretty excited about this post. Throughout high school, most of what I watched was American musicals from the 1940s. It was mostly that I was quite musical back then and enjoyed performance and performing, that I came to appreciate multi-talented performers. I know a lot of people who say they don't like musicals, which I think is a shame and probably due to the fact that they haven't seen many amazing ones.
I love the colours, the exaggerated acting, plot twists, cinematography and choreography. I love how I light up as soon as soon as a character in a musical's eyes start to gleam like the lights just went on in a room. Film musicals today hardly live up to what they were back then. You know that's true when you've got the likes of Renee Zellweger, Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman trying to belt a tune on screen. That's right. Eww. Here are a few wonderful scenes from my favourite musicals:
'Sweet Charity' starring the adorable, Shirley McClaine.
Surprisingly when this film came out, it was badly received by critics. I think it's because it was ahead of its time. That cigarette trick he does? Holishitt. It's a wonderful movie for when you want to escape from the real world.
And that concludes the lesson for today. Musicals are awesome and should not be belittled. These were people who could act, sing, dance, play instruments and look good all at the same time. That definitely calls for respect.
When I was little I used to worry about whether things were right or wrong all the time . One raya (Eid), I ratted on my cousins who were several years my senior, for gambling upstairs out of moral concern. They were so angry but I really did worry then about them. I didn't understand why gambling was wrong, I didn't understand why smoking cigarettes was wrong but I knew everything had their consequences and I didn't wish for theirs to be bad. I would take my mother's Salems which I found in her bathroom and throw them out the window, onto the roof, into the bin or flush them down the toilet (until I realised they wouldn't submerge in water). I was 4 to 9 when I did these things; when I counseled my uncle for smoking because it gave you AIDS, when I would dream of my parents dying of alcoholism or smoking for having dinner with their friends. My mind was filled with sins, worries, all of which now, I see, even I succumb to them.
In high school, I told my parents every bad thing I did. I was so honest about things. My brother hated me for it but I was honest to my parents about everything I could be so that in the instance that I had to lie, I would get away with it better. I was a good kid in high school. I rebelled but I never smoked, I hardly drank, I never got drunk. Now my friends on set ask me to do things like checking the authenticity of their drug props on set because they think I know these things. I do, but in truth, I don't live up to their expectations. In a lot of cases, I don't think the real me lives up to quite a few people's expectations of me but that applies to everyone. I don't always know how I know what I do, maybe I'm just a nerd. I let my eyes wander and my mind, travel. As I grew older and experienced more as people do, the guilt faded, as did fear. Other than bad deeds, the other thing that I feared was ghosts. When we were little, my cousins and I would get into circles, cup our hands like good little Muslims and pray when we heard the dogs howling outside the house. When the dogs went silent, there was a sense of achievement and a connectivity with God. Sort of like Captain Planet and how when our powers were combined, we could call on him to save the world. You can tell I've outgrown cartoons since then. Now I have bigger things to fear than ghosts and God in my life now plays a different role.
I've been on a cigarette binge for the past week. Prior to that, I went nearly a month without smoking. There was a time before I started smoking. I would be worried sick if the boy I liked smoked, then I started to love when my boyfriend smelled of smoke. Gradually I first took up smoking because I had my heart broken and I didn't know how to make the pain go away. It was at that point where I started to run out of cures, retire from vis medicatrix naturae to additives and I no longer moralise things such as these. Now, cigarettes are company when I want no one around. I smoke out of heartbreak or when I feel completely at peace, sometimes as a social lubricant. I can smoke more and not feel sick; inhale the ends hard and not have headspins. Ironically the man, the smoker who I used to always be around hardly smokes anymore. Every day I find less reasons to be afraid of my fears, more reasons to force myself to function. If anything, I'm terrified of not achieving anything. Not failing, of missing the boat. That one day I'm going to die and forgot I had all this time to do shit. I've retired from my need to be 'intelligent' or surround myself with 'intelligence'. I had intelligence, tried wisdom, now I'm going with clever because with clever, you get things done. They're like phases. Words don't cut it as much as hands do. I'm adamant now on measuring myself by my actions so that when everyone's done talking about their lives, I would have hopefully lived mine. You're not an existentialist because you say you are. You're not smart because people think you are. It's simple physics. Energy cannot be destroyed, it can only be transfered. If you don't transfer it onto something concrete, you never move. If your energy goes into mere words, you'd better hope they at least move neurons.
I think it's a shame when people think that the world is full of ugly things and ugly people who are all out to hurt you. They're too afraid of looking into the Pandora's Box to find hope too. Maybe that's why I love controversy and think that humanity makes the best entertainment. Shakespeare was right when he said "all the world's a stage". You can judge and moralise, worry about getting it wrong or right but these are things that are just a part of every day life. Sometimes you just need to move. Maybe it doesn't sound like much to you but when you're contemplating the controversial for the conservative, these are things which one would consider. I'm going back to a core - I am my own actions, flawed or no. I'll do as I see fit because I believe in humanity, I will defy these ugly beliefs incurred by conservatives, that human beings are instinctively cruel when it is evil that inspires good, that completes the satisfaction of good deeds. We need more faith that people are capable of good before evil, and learn that all things are a process to a goal which we will never meet in life. But take responsibility in knowing that all our actions have reactions, and not to destroy other people's journeys as they have theirs too. Choose the energy out of yourself which you wish to transfer onto the world. No one is watching you, people can only guide you so much and it's in these actions, these hands, where life begins and castles start getting made.
Whatever it is that you want from this earth, I do hope you get yours. Good morning, good day, good luck.