yeah, yeah, wut, wut?

in the quaint, familiar fashion of an update, i provide a quick recap of some of the latest events/revelatory smackdowns to recently surface, provided i am aware and coherent enough upon discovery to make the stuff actually stick.

1) i've discovered a really cool new shampoo that comes in a tube. and it's by L'Oreal. Voila.
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2) I shaved my legs after like two months of major vibrissa. How's that for an aphrodisiac, uh!
3) I'm dreading holiday travel like it's the Bubonic plague- the thought of me walking through one more airport checkpoint makes me want to play voluntary Russian Roulette.
4) Turns out that salmon in vacuum tight sealed bags stays fresh waaay beyond the cited expiration date.

5) Note to self: I may have to stop watching The Biggest Loser with a behemoth burrito in my lap.
6) Turns out I have 34 unused, prepaid personal training sessions left-over from a health & workout stint from last year's heyday.
7) I realize i've got to get off my @$$ if i'm going to put them to use.

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ohhhhhh, yeah, bay-bay

8) Documentaries on netflix are my new mojo. North Korea, check. Man on Wire, check. The Case for Faith, in proceedings.

9) I hate holiday melodrama. Shopping makes me sick [although I manage to peruse the endless bevvy of online holiday shops. Latest faves: westelm.com, for home decor. asos.com, for the kinda stuff only the fashioney brits can dream up, and findgifts.com, for uncoventional whats-its that make your mouth go agape at pure brilliance in a click of a button (you mean i can link up a USB drink warmer/chiller to my COMPUTER!!???)].

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10) i'm on a facebook strike. besides the loss of general appeal, i've decided not to occupy an alternate cyber-reality. hyperbole and argument aside, it feels good to idle my attention away on other things that really matter. like netflix, of course. ;)

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conundrum conundrum, oh what is your function?

i'm trying to approach this blog like a journalist, when inspiration is lacking. the kind of journalist who's on an endless siege for truth and a damn good story. the truth is, i love blogging and the sweet comfort it brings.. knowing and seeing the own stirrings of your imagination, what unfolds and spills onto a page... even as i write this now, i can never predict the next line, the next thought... there's something so unfettered in it, a wild lotus that just spawns from a crack in the sidewalk, untamed, unpredicted yet ever bold and beautiful...

random things capture my fancy these days... funny things that happen at work, like the way the tongues go lolly-gagging when MJ comes on the radio, these pre-pubescent little people already showing the signs of the old cronies to come, in all their raunchy glory. if i gave you a nickel for every time i saw the kids thrusting their pelvis [in the lunch-line, during playworks, in time to their morning practice of their ABC's- "U is the tugboat, uh (thrust in), yoo (thrust out), uh (thrust in) yoo (thrust out)!"], you'd have the next lotto winner beat. that, and the crazy happenstances of a day. kids fake barfing to get out of math class, the list of 'crazies' who go streaking down hallways just to post a scene and all the other not-easily forgotten meltdowns... you've gotta love the Raheems who leave you tangible souvenirs like the mitt sized bruises on your ribs (nothing says "i've done my job" like a true battle scar, albeit left behind by a swarthy, pint-sized adolescent) and the Ja'Rons, who go a'scavenging on voracious food hunts through people's backpacks, only to throw up the the box of applejacks he consumed earlier that morning all over your linoleum floor.

such moments make life ever so fun. and interesting. although, admittedly, we want to wrang our necks on nooses or plot ways of jabbing said perpetrator in the gut while claiming full innocence- "Oh, [insert name] I didn't mean to pummel you in the gut right there. Why dear, you've got to stop thrashing so!" They (the wise greats, to be exact) didn't say it'd be easy... but they sure as hell meant it when they said it would be WORTH IT. :)

Watched the film adaptation of Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and am still breathing hard, letting the contents unfold within me... The story chronicles the Soviet military occupation of Prague during the 1960's and the lives of the philandering surgeon Tomas and his ingenuous wife, Tereza, whose meek docility unravels throughout the film as she must stand up to a love which carries a burden as heavy as the airiness it permeates. Their lives ever increasingly endangered by the afflictions of war and a deadening fear looming still throughout Czechoslovakia, the couple must navigate the fragile waters of their relationship amidst a politically turblent climate and a string of sordid affairs with Tomas' ever increasing bounty of lovers.
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The film is at once beautiful as it is terrible, calamitous and conversely, tender, with Tereza's wide-eyed innocence surrendering a deeper and quieter strength as she beseeches Tomas, "How can one make love without being in love?" To Tereza, there is nothing "light" about love or its sexual expression. Despite the staunchness of her sentiments, her inordinate earthiness carries the film and lends an ironic lightness and quickness of feeling- she is the redeemer, the light in the darkness. The fleeting quality of the film echoes Kundera's explorations of life, most in its vaporous brevity as life passes so swiftly, without a second return. How can one afford to attribute any meaning or weight to life if they live it only once, unable to reflect on its passage or return to take a different path? Without the ability to compare lives, Kundera argues, we cannot find meaning, finding in its place only an unbearable weightlessness.

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While the book and it's accompanying film incite penetrating philosophical thought and contemplation, more so, the movie sheds light on life's host of multitudinal paths, each governed by the irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, "a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight." Happiness can only come about with repetition; the Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return, says Kundera.

to

Kundera writes ever poignantly (and truthfully):

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The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? — Milan Kundera

high tides.

boooy, watch me as i touch the bow of my lips to the S of your neck, memorizing the lines of your elegant countenance...letting the tips of my fingers trace pirouetting swirls down your torso as i inhale the scent of post-game glory sweat and taste the vapour of your oceany-salt skin.. wait for me to pull your head back and brush my lips to the underside of your throat, lingering upwards towards the soft patch of undiscovered smoothness behind your right ear...pressing into you as i lean into your retreat, infused in your essence, finally greeting your parted lips with contained delirium, the perfect dichtomy of rough and tender, slow and fast as the music in me swells and billows over like white sails on a cobalt blue sea, only to find myself catapulted somewhere among the stars...ohhhh yeaahhhh.

Do I dare? Do I dare disturb the Universe?

evidence of life lived.

the reason for which i sometimes get on the blog can and update the seminal events of my so-called life. momentary lapses of fear that i'll be swallowed in abbreviated mortality, corpse splayed on table like the primordial insect sprawled on a pin of t.s. elliott's love song of j. alfred prufrock, engulfed by life's unceasing flow... tragic the thought... and therefore i write, in my morbid hopes that my writings and idle musings will evidence a life lived, a human writ large onto the cosmos' grand stage, transient between multi-universes yet as real as the virtual copy paper i transpose my thoughts upon..

times comes and goes with feverish regularity. and yet, as the moments tick by, i am ever so acutely aware of my state, seemingly fixed and frozen, the moment before me looming large and wondrous in my tiny human imagination. life has a way of magnifying all monstrosities and present realities, condensing and compacting our existences into tiny, neat little campbell soup cans. we forget the meaning in the gestalt light of things, so taken by the minutia detail of our intricate lives that we suspend, mid-air like in the thing of things, forgetting all too briefly our existential dilemma.. ohh yeah, that.

been drowning in hairy dreams as of late, inception like, the real-likeness of my dreams reigning sovereign to the conscious life version. hmmm... fascinating how lucid our sleepy docility may appear. woken, we are sleep-walking zombies. in slumber, we face our truest realities.

for now i'll just let it sit like a hazy blanket on a cool summer's night. til the smoke rises from the pipes of my imagination, malingering like the dust that rises at dusk...

the art of grilling, and then some.

i just purchased a george foreman grill today and i can't get over how much i love it. i could just pore over the manual that comes with the package for hours. i have this peculiar interest in meat- cuts of meat, temperatures to cook it at, different grains and marbled contents; its composition, texture and coloring. it's weird, i know. but i get uber excited at the thought of cooking, 1) in my slowcooker and 2) in my newly acquired handy-dandy little portable grill!

been transitioning to school and the kids- i'm starting to develop that rhythm, getting a feel for the little ones and the way their brains work. it's been really challenging, taking on this job, especially in such a high caliber school, but i know it's taking me places and developing the characteristics in me that i need, for the now and beyond. i'm also learning to develop a heart of patience, understanding and compassion for the little ones who are so behind.

my one kid, donvan, the one who usually gets super hyper and excited broke down in tears today because the work was so challenging. to me, what seemed like a simple activity of sorting initial consonant pictures of S and R had donvan's brow furrowed up in such distress, he was reduced to tears. i'm learning, as my kids are.... how to love, how to give, how to not give up on them, as tempting it seems at times. this job has not only shown me my talents and successes; it has, admittedly, revealed some of my greatest flaws and deficiences... it is a work in progress.

i have found that the nature of my job is rather unforgiving and oftentimes, blearing of major oversights when it comes to the work we pour in, day to day. thank goodness, for 3 day weekends and friday celebrations and cute sticky note pads, which makes the title 'teacher' oh so worth it. and oh, yeah, for little donvans, who sometimes teach you life's most teachable lessons. <3

Gaga, ooh la la..

ive been a mystified critic for too long, of gaga's fantastical eccentricities and over- theatrical displays. i am, however, a convert. her creativity is brilliant; while this video featuring ms. B-b-beyonce is clearly more gaga's vision than sasha fierce's, i give credit to the dynamic duo for pulling off an outrageously colorful and in-your-face sexually charged performance that has us panting for more p*ssy wagon-esque antics(props and spiked louis included) and punchy gun-metal expletives.

NEW ORLEANS RISE.

grasping, feigning, groping, understanding, tryna come to grips with this blood spill thang, echoes of the sirens and the ear-shattering gun bangs. why our youth's lost the truth, is there hope? seems to be the only resounding battle cry... i try, with all my might, to fight the ig-norance, take up fight with what's right and yet my cries are silenced, like a revolver, i'm getting cold, shit's getting old, my shoulders are weary and my eyes teary... how can we try, to define the power struggle, our hands binded, mouth muzzled as we deal with all this trouble, the grime and the street stuggle, i'm so puzzled. what to do, where to turn, how to deal when all i feel is anger and disappointment inside, to the point where i'm sittin here just tongue-tied..

I have to say that one of the things that's awesome about living in new orleans are these fantastic rainstorms we get. buckets and sheets of rain, pouring over the roofs, slapping against the windowpaines with newfound easy familiarity. granted, we've witnessed our fair share of devastation in these parts due to atomic caliber hurricaines, but nothing beats the sound of murderous thunder in the sky as i sit, tucked away in my cozy southern digs, buried beneath a mountain of pillows and a stack of books perched precariously on my side. Perfection.

the place has charm, i'll have to post some pix. hardwood floors, french doors, tall ceilings. an adorable screened little balcony. the house is a delicious flamingo pink with major new orleans classic throwback appeal. the bathroom features a claw tub and a black and white checkered floor. my room is floor to ceiling windows, letting in so much natural light i could just pinch myself.

ive decided to sort of abandon the editing process in my writing and just write what comes to mind. it's interesting; i viewed another friend's blog and decided i liked her ramble musings so much i thought that some soul out there might feel the same way. people's lives are interesting, even in their placid ordineriness. for instance, in my younger days, i used to get oodles and noodles of delight in falling into the lives of the characters of Laura Ingall's Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series. God knows those days are a far cry from the technological-gadget filled, modernized world we currently occupy, but there was so much imagination! A peppermint stick would elicit cries of delight and something as seeminly benign as a gentle kiss on a woman's cheek would have all the girls' hearts cooing and fluttering with exultation. i lost myself in that era, feeling just as dainty and fine as the young ladies skipping about in their muslin and calico petticoats and fur trimmed collars. And school! Oh, how school seemed so interesting and fun. I may even dare say I attribute my teacherly aspirations to Wilder's descriptive pages by I so routinely got lost in.

The nostalgia of those times fills me with a sweet reverie. While I didn't choose to be born in this century, something about life on the homefront transports me to a time and place where things didn't matter as much as people mattered. where importance was placed on virtues or character traits. where blizzards brought people together around a warm family hearth, stories spun with animation and plumes of delicious color. Fast forward to the present: I guess storms have a way of harkening back to simpler times, when a cozy kettle and a warm quilt (let's not forget a good book) were some of life's sweetest indulgences. For now though, I have imagination...and imagination I shall readily use...

More than a Woman.

i think this video, this song, these lyrics are not only incredibly sexy, they tell one helluva love story. The song, by the timeless Angie Stone, features Joe at both their best. If you feign romantic indulgence as i do, and love it in a pictographic form, this vid's for you.

I guess I'm momentarily revived.

In the world of blogging, I meant. I came across a colleague and friend's blog on her life as a teacher living here in New Orleans, and I was struck by the austerity of my own blog, one that should very much be colored by my own strands of rich experiences living in one of the most interesting and perplexing cities of our time. So here I am, months later, again picking up the dusty cyberquill, which has, for some time now, remained unused and abandoned. I am enthused. By my life right now, which is textured with graininess and the sorts of runs you might find in a pair of weathered pantyhose (as most interesting and lived lives might contain their fair share of, I posit), but also by my experience. By the sensational act of getting up every day and going to a job that resembles something like the frontlines our American soldiers face in strange, unknown places. A job with worthiness. A job with purpose. A job that's more than just a job; it's a duty, an honor, an adventure containing tons of snares and tangles, roadblocks and other sorts of obstructions that might threaten the demise of a journey. But it's cooh, man, it's realll cool, 'cuz it's something that you believe in. Something that gets you going in the morning like a cup of mint java. Something that incites the exhale of sleepy weariness at the end of the day, the mark of a day's good work.

junk reformation.

my cutie, rockin out the new hand-painted vintage desk we salvaged!

E= MC squared.

So its been a cool ass minute since i took the time to stop. pause. reflect. and connect pen to paper in a way that fossilizes my thoughts- there's the fear perhaps of what could emerge from the abyss of one's mind, that deep, cavernous place far within, tangled with the cobwebs of history's incandescent moments. Your memory will fail you, but the all mighty quill shall not, as the inner workings of the subconscious gush forth with the infallibility of life, embalmed in its own ceaseless immortality.

you asked me to write, E, and writing i am.... because you shall see the brilliance that shines like the lone light in a sea of darkness, bouying it's way to the surface. we all wish we could glimpse our humanness; some have a way with revealing our inner vicissitudes in ways others do not. there are those, like me, who take pleasure in pondering the striking uncertainty of it all, who dabble in the unknown with rapture, sensuous delight.

i wonder of your own magnitude, the posturings of your body, the flickers of emotion that cross the oceans of your deep, warm eyes. because part of what i feel is indescribable, a flurry of warm and penetrating instances that embed themselves, deeply, keenly, ever so serenely... is it the way you fill an entire room with your being, top to bottom, floor to ceiling, beckoning the eye in your direction? or is it the way you can demurely camaflouge your way into the foreground, innocuously and surreptitiously sitting on the rim of life's rushing canvas? you stick. somehow. in a world that is fleeting, where time flows through the fingers like sand. where faces become blurred with time's fash forward button, people forgotten, memories swept aside like the high noon tide. because you matter, in that large and special way, to the people you come across, leaving an imprint, a footprint frozen like the apparitions of the sun's telling mark on the body's canvas... easily left behind, not easily forgotten...

joy. JOY. joy.

oohh, this one!

pausing for a quick pre-wedding snaperoo

E+J

Oldies but goodies of the stuff that happened, but never got broadcasted. Enjoy.

MY INTRO TO ENDYMION...

A TASTE OF THE PARADE:

INTRO TO BACCHUS PARADE, MARDIS GRAS 2010

BE*WITCHED.

Sweet coupled airs we sing.
No lonely seafarer
Holds clear of entering
Our green mirror.

-The Odyssey

Inspired by an episode of Oprah today featuring Raquel Welch, known perhaps more famously for her sexpot status a la One Million Years B.C. than her contributions to film (unless you count wearing animal skin loin cloths as 'contributions'), I visited some of the prevailing women of the last century who defined SEX ICON and changed not only film and women's place in it, but much of our conversations and discussions on male/female relations. Strangely intrigued by these siren songs of beauty and carnal objects of lust and desire for men (and women, I need mention), I think that there has always been something beguiling and mysterious about the heavy-lidded, tease-tressed sexpots, what with their lips ever so slightly parted and their dreamy bedroom eyes begging silent invitation. With much of their appeal centered squarely on their sulking beauty and glowing sensuality, the women featured below are a few amongst the pantheon of World War II pinups and tribute magazine spreads legions of men and women have come to iconify.

Marilyn Monroe

Brigette Bardot

And while their beauty is intoxicating, dreamy even, what with their coy smiles and generous figures beckoning the eye their direction, there is something so tragically marred about these archetypal 'femme fatales', who seemed to carry with them an elixir containing both a bounty of power and impending calamity. Take it back to Homer's Odyssey, set in 12th century BC, where the Sirens sing a song so irresistible, Circe warns Odysseus to plug the sailor's ears with beeswax and have them tied to the mast if they wish to go onward with their treacherous journey. This idea of temptation as a deadly threat is no novel idea, harkening back to Biblical times with the first original ancestors of sexual deadlock , Sir Adam and Madame Eve. Postmodern cinema and Hitchcock films of noir showcase these cutting figures of device and trickery as the lady in wait casts a sort of magical spell over the trembling men who are so lost in desire, they see only crimson.

Elizabeth Taylor

Tempted to call it mere fantasy, it's more than just that, as a power play shifts into gear, one's feminine wiles used as tricks of allure to advance one's personal gains. This interlocking exchange between power and tantalizing seduction among men and women is self-evident from literature to films and music and even in our most esteemed governmental institutions. The women captured in this post are only a few of the beauties who captivated audiences and suitors over the last century; their lives were heralded, their deaths declared tragedies. For the ones whose lives and careers were cut short, we are left to wonder whether they were driven to their grave by the very success which made them into superstars. However, upon closer examination, in our impassioned urges to assign blame, it becomes clear that it was no mere ploy of the directors and film studio heads whose low budget films profited immensely from these women's draw. We see, indeed, the way these women used and profited themselves, turning their faces and bodies into commodities, tools for profit and self-advancement.

Italian beauty, Sophia Loren

Jayne Mansfield

Rita Hayworth

Bardot

Betty Page

Betty Grable

Jane Russell

Nights on the Bay.

During those days where your stomach eats you alive from the nerves and stress, I take a DEEEEEEP ass breath, inhaling and exhaling with intention. I blast that Thievery Corporation and watch the scenery whiz by my window. Oh Bonnet Carre Spillway, how I adore/abhor you. Louisiana, you are boatloads of fun and soul, but pretty you are not. Some days I miss Cali with such a vengeance. What I'd give to be sitting on top of San Fransisco, staring out at the glittering lights skimming off the Bay. Lost in nostalgia. Reverie. Eating a bowl of Papamingo tart yogurt, mango and mochi piled atop. Sucking on the spoon, closing my eyes, losing myself in the swirl of the energy pumping through the warm night air. Relishing the dopeness that is CALI.

Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom

I've been following Mystic for years, appreciative of a female MC who delivers as much intelligent delectation to her lyrics as soul personified. I looove her raw honesty, hard spit on real shit and real issues (listen to Fatherless Child, Spoken Peace and Fallen Angels) and ability to stay versatile and yet so true to her game.

twisted elegance.

I am enamored by beauty, in people, places and things. My cousin told me, that as a child, I had a peculiar penchant for insightful observation. I would sit on doorsteps, stare out the windows of buses during our impromptu excursions, or go plucking about on the Los Angeles city streets... and I would just stare at the scenery enfolding before my very eyes. I would marvel at an upturned smile on a passer-byers face, lapse into existential reverie passing by the decaying feet of a transient lying on a bench, hop in and out of puddles with my makeshift, paper-sewn sandals... I remember, most specifically, going to Century City mall with my petite yet noble Korean grandmother, as we fingered the clothing in upscale retailers, touching the fabric with a curious delicacy, following its folds and texture. She would look at the tag on the inside, and with a nod and a cheeky grin of smug satisfaction, say "Good", if the item happened to be made in the United States. If it were made in Hong Kong, she would crinkle her nose and move along.

That love and appreciation for beauty has translated in many different ways, physical and immaterial. I've found also, that beauty for me has evolved or metamorphasized over the years and the accumulation of life experiences. For me, beauty is not always pretty. In fact, some of the most beautiful aspects in life lay bare in those battle scars, hard fought and hard won, but mightily claimed. I began to develop an almost vulgar taste for the acrid, the sorts of films and plotlines that were anything but virtuous or whimsical, devoid of the prototypical, Walt Disney sugary ending. Movies that once haunted me became embodiments of truth, stripped of artifice and vaingloriousness. I watched films such as The Virgin Suicides, American Beauty, Blow, Monster, Behind the Sun and City of God with a sense of savage rage, blood-curdling passion, reckless abandon, renewed luminosity... And yet I found, in those sad endings, tragic story lines, and maladroit adaptations of our tortured existence, a life LIVED.. truly, richly and densely. I made sense of the insensible, found beauty in the grittiness, understood more deeply the binaries and dichotomies crossing the span of generations, and related to the pain, the atrocity, the hypocrisy with an almost unnerving acuteness.

i'm still finding myself, what it means to be human. what it means to fall and fumble and yet still rise. what human dignity means, compassion, a sense of unbridled righteousness and strength in even turbulent waters. i rise and i stand, aware of the possibilities that lie in wait as the world turns and the horizons expand beyond the naked eye's wildest imagination. This, I Know.

Thank God I didn't give up shopping for Lent...

I'm torn between two pairs of shoes that I'm currently coveting. Fashion forward people, care to deliberate? I love how the first pair are great for the every day, and the ones below that are just such foot candy (I fell in love with the t-straps on Swank Height's blog). YOUR OPINION COUNTS!!!!!

A)


OR THESE?

B)


C) OR HOW ABOUT JUST BOTH?

VALIDATION, a short film.

This was a short film sent to me years back and I fell in love with the simple yet sweet storyline- what can I say, I'm a sucker for the "feel good" type of stuff. But sometimes, we need those simple reminders of the small things that make life oh so grand.

St. Patty's Shenanigans

Ohhhhhh, St. Patty's, St. Patty's.

The city is cast with a green glow- let me forewarn you, even the BEER is green here, in New Orleans.

Had a blast and a half yesterday at the St. Patty's Parade here in NOLA (come on, when is there ever a reason to NOT throw a parade here?) where beaucoup- pronounced BUCCU- people flooded the streets in their green regalia to celebrate the day dedicated to uhhh-getting shit-faced? Haha. It was a lot of fun actually- I wish I took more (and better) pix of the action. Of course you had your classic "Everyone loves an Irish girl" t-shirt and a twist on the classic- "Everyone loves a drunk girl" tee. A guy wore a shirt emblazoned with "Kiss me. I'm shit-faced." I met a man wearing a floor-length green ball gown with a wig, fairy dust, green painted finger-nails- his name is Aaron and he's an office manager, buahahah!

Me, Jamie, and the gang gathered at First and Magazine where we chillaxed in the fucking incredible midday sun, drinking margueritas, Irish car bombs, Guinness'- you name it, we had it. And it was just so festive and FUN- the cute Irish boys in the parade line would come up to us and tuck flowers in our hair (the tradition is that you exchange kisses on the cheek- how very French, uhh, I mean Irish), toss beads and cabbage (nothing, I mean NOTHING is more romantic than a man throwing wilted produce at your feet) at us and even pull up panties and garter belts up the leg if you happened to be a lucky recipient.

It was all good! I love this city, I fucking LOOVE it. I still feel the need to hide my open drink or beer every time I pass a cop, but then I remind myself- Jeanine, it's all good in tha hood, baby! So after a lazy, chill, sun-drenched afternoon of playing in the sun, dancing in the streets and drinking up a storm, I passed out, in a proper sun-dazed, intoxicated asphyxia, reveling in the good ol' Irish roots (yeah, right, I wish) and day dedicated to all things green and splendid.

Now, I just need to go eat me bowl of lucky charms!

BAOBAB.

I feel like Ms. Carrie Bradshaw herself, surreptitiously whipping out her laptop in the wee hours of the morning, perched in a jaunty manner on duvet, purporting the whimsical anecdotes of a day into fine print...


Are you (yes, you) really reading this? would be her first question, because I still can't seem to get over the fact that people would extract minutes out of their daily lives to read some off-handed entry dedicated to god-knows-what... Again, readers, I AM GRACIOUSLY STUPEFIED and delighted (And no, I'm not going to get over it).

With that said.... oohhhhh, the ruminations of a day well spent, catching up in all manners of mind, body and soul. I took the day off yesterday in pursuit of the world's finest beauty remedy and that is SLEEP, ladies and gents. (You can see from the odd hours of my postings that I've become, I'm afraid to admit, somewhat of a insomniatic busy-body, trolling the midnight hours in restless agitation, overcome with some thought, some idea that has my tongue lolly gagging and my mind adrift.) So, sleep and exercise, and oh yes, good food. And a wonderful night filled with good, kind, trueeeee people.

The non-profit organization I work with, the Baobab Youth Leadership Initiative, put on a Silent Auction Gala last night at the Children's Museum in Nola. I have been blessed to work with this organization as a mentor to a high-school student, or Leader, as they are called for the duration of more than half a year now. This organization works with up and coming high school students in distressed New Orleans communities, socio-economically speaking, who determine to rise above the dismal circumstances, statistics and stereotypes which attempt to define their place-value in life and circumvent their pathways to success. The year-long project filled with education, leadership building skills and service caps off with an amazing trip to the Motherland in Ghana, Africa, where these student leaders will find themselves, for the first time in their young adult lives, in world very much outside the bubble of their hometown and also, a sort of alternate reality (much like the one I found when I visited Zambia 2 summers past).

Therefore, the event I attended last night was held in order to raise funds for the student leaders' trip to Ghana this upcoming summer. Everything was organized and distributed by the student leaders themselves, who worked vigilantly to gather items for auction and raffle. Hundreds of people came to support the high-schoolers in their mission, grazing on hors dourves donated by the kind folks at Robert's (pronounced the French way, of course) and lapping up yummy drinks at the open bar, all in tune to the sassy and deliciously loud Young Fellaz Brass Band. I had a loooveeely time, and more so, was extremely appreciative of the 8 personal friends who graciously supported the endeavor with their wallets and attendance. Twas a success!

If you'd like more information on this organization, or want to support through your own kind-hearted donation (100% of proceeds goes towards their trip!), check out the website:

http://www.baobableaders.org/

All for now! Tchau~

Hum Ho Dee Dum Dum

I apologize for the inconsistency in my posting, for those of you that regularly tune in (honest to god- it's still overwhelmingly flattering and gratifying, this idea that there's a larger world out there who finds your senseless rants, queries and musings note-worthy to some degree)...


After a week of non-stop flitting about, from one activity to the next, my mind has had ZILCH unoccupied space for creative bubbling and fizzing. After nearing the point of absolute EXHAUSTION, I decided it would be necessary to take the day off on Friday as a routine-check "mental health day" and it is only now that I return to dear blogger and make some semblance of an "update."

I worry, in having any type of general audience, that my once-mindless, nonsensical meanderings which were once the de rigeur have now spontaneously adapted to posts bearing a sense of intended purpose- whether it's to indulge, entertain, enlighten or amuse. With that said, that's an awful lot of pressure to place on a budding writer or anyone for that matter, which is why, in the form of a blog, I will leave my thoughts as they are. No pretense, no fancy accoutrements or bells and whistles. Once you start writing for an audience and less for yourself, there is an abandonment of form- your art becomes subversive and stripped, something like a white-washed tomb.

An interesting thought- the more inert and inactive your body is, the more alert your mind becomes. It is during those lazy, lackadaisical days of idle relaxation my mind starts to take on the makings of a pizza dough factory (me and my corny analogies!), the dough being kneaded and spun until it takes on the rotund shape of a pizza, ready to go into the kiln. But when my body is being put through the grinder, when the bulk of my attention goes towards the fulfillment of priorities, tasks and other menial obligations, I lose a bit of my lust for life and on the back burner this blog goes.

If you're tuning in, thanks. Trust me when I say that inspiration still comes and that creative energies are lying in wait, itching to be revved. I promise you'll be the first to be notified, via blogger. ;)

BREATHE. YOU ARE ALIVE!

There are days where inspiration pours out in endless quantities, and then days where inspiration must be picked like rice grains, with silver chopsticks. There is no doubt that the days have shown me kindness and profound morsels of beauty, even as I attempt to delicately maneuver through the unrelenting currents. In fact, I have found true moments of peace in the oddest of places (amidst trance-like meditation on a treadmill! on the john! driving down that deadening stretch on the Bonnet Carre spillway!), a vibrating hum of energy coursing through my veins with feverish irregularity... and from these moments, a resulting contentment would ensue, that knock-at-your-door reminder that we are, in fact, ALIVE.

I used to walk down the sidewalk, my head down, lost in reverie, on a classically sunny Berkeley afternoon. The spray painted words on the side-walk, "BREATHE. YOU ARE ALIVE," would suddenly pop into vision, dispelling me from my quiet, detached self-absorption as I recanted all my daily "to-do's" and sonorous cerebrations.



I would suddenly stop, part my lips in smile, remembering, Wait! This is my life and by jones, I really AM alive! A breathing, walking, talking and living embodiment of all things contained in the universe. Excuse the cheese factor, as I have my Eckhart Tolle moment and retreat into New Agey- talk, here. But there is a sensuous delight in knowing that your visceral senses are somehow in complete accordance with your translucent, immaterial body and that every moment is a part of The Grand Scheme, in just the same way a pixel makes up an infinitesimal quota of an image. Those moments escape us rapidly, filtering through our larger lives like sand through the fingers. But if you catch them quick enough, remembering to pause and tilt your heads in wonder, you may find that that life is chock FULL of the individually isolated moments that lend meaning to our lives. We may, in fact, remember, through our very breathing, labored or still, that our existing is no small undertaking, and that that, my friends, is short of being the greatest miracle of all.

Love and marriage, love and marriage, goes together like a...

I love this book I'm reading by Elizabeth Gilbert called Committed. she basically does all the hard work for you when it comes to scoping out marriage, giving it a hard and long investigation (research and all), from every angle, every facet. and in doing so, wondrously unravels precious gems of unconventional wisdom that are decades more refined and tried than the mere two and a half ones i've been privy to. i'll take that, thank you very much. as an almost 26 year old coming-of-age woman (wow, woman), i am precisely in gilbert's shoes. wanting to find matrimony with that one single person (and not of the short-term wedded bliss variety, either) and to find true love, true compatibility with another human being. i've understood and lived the realities of failed expectations. i've experienced the setbacks of love, exploring harsh realities (in my suitors, to be clear) early on in my adulthood such as incarceration, mental illness, instability, depression, post-traumatic stress, possible infidelity and unmentionable compulsions to certain tendencies and predilections. in this process, i've uncovered a lot of who i am, in that i tend to attract the guys with the brooding good looks, but an additional caseload of drama and vitally tragic circumstance.

so dear liz, as i affectionately call her, boils it down for me, all the facts, all the inglorious and unromantic things one would prefer to glance over when they meet a person, because, as her dear felipe (as a jewel merchant) expounds, we are so blinded by the gemstones in a person that we tend to over-look the entire parcel that comes in a shipment, ones which may very likely contain a whole load of irreconcilable crap. and so it has been with me, the girl who meets boy and then goes love-blind, gaga like lady gaga, so wrapped up in my glorious halo of soaring butterfly wings and titillating ruminations that i insist, to myself, in some stupor-like funk, that this is looove. when in fact, it's infatuation, and the olympic games of love triages and pullings of heart-strings have just begun. truly. time after countless time with me, i've met these strangers, poured my heart empty, thinking they would find my sincerity, my passion, my soulfulness as whimsical, refreshing, even endearing, coming to find out i shoveled out the loot so fast, they could hardly swallow, much less taste the valuable and priceless parts of me. and in doing so, i found myself, at the end of a very short yellow brick road, with fissures and cracks in my heart once again, disenchanted with love, men, and the possibility of finding true and meaningful companionship with the opposite mate.

well, gilbert says that in her explorations of love and marriage, she decided that honesty was the best policy and quite literally broke it down for her husband-to-be. rather than feather and fluff all the good stuff (that people unwittingly do in unencumbered pre-marital bliss), she decides to enumerate a list all of the character and personality flaws and potential things things that her betrothed is sure to run headlong into. sounds romantic, eh? ohh, think of the list that could add up! "Honey, I have psoriasis." "Sweetheart, i snore louder than a pack of wildebeests at the heyday of deep winter slumber." "Babycakes, I have a predilection for S&M bondage and expect you to take full role in carrying out my deep-seated fantasies."

Such things should probably be discussed before we do the jig down the aisle. and while i am all for self-restraint (come on, some things you've just got to keep on the temporary DL!) i also love the brutal self-inflicting honesty; it's sheer brilliant. why package ourselves into versions of something we're really just not and then begin the downward descent into woeful disappointment? wouldn't you rather adopt that fine old mantra and just "save (most of) the best for last"?

look, im not saying that we should go around with a post-it note on our foreheads saying, "Look at me. I am a loser. I have hairy toes. I carry a tire around my waist. And I am an over-compulsive spender whose dream job is laying away on gilligan's island smoking a pack of marlboros." that would surely not work. can you imagine the scene? it would surely send our species into immediate extinction. but rather than paint glossy images of ourselves on a canvas where the sun always shines and butterflies and daisies abound, how bout we just keep it real? how bout we practice a little self-deprecation (there's a difference between self-deprecation and self-loathing, by the way) and humility instead, eh? and i'm talking about it from the perspective of marital prospectiveness here. fall in love, by all means, but do it gently, slowly and with the cranial cavities somehow wedged into the mix rather than being sold by just the sizzle and not the whole daggone steak! you've got to be practical, sometimes. falling in love, if done foolishly, is equivalent to falling smack-down into a pile of concrete. love should never be employed in the same sentence as "eat dirt", my dear.

so gilbert has inspired me. rather than sit and wait for the incipient list of provincial do-wrongs and unforgiving grievances to appear, i plunge head first, feet second and offer up my heady list of misdemeanors and potential deal-breakers:

1. being the gemini that i am (or silly girl), i tend to be very flighty and have a hard time finishing the shit i get started. prone to dreaming up ideas and visions, i seldom carry to term these nascent ideas, and this bleeds into vital aspects of my personal life, im afraid: lack of follow-through, despite the best of intentions.

2. a wild temper when inflamed. now, if i converted all the jalepenos and spicy what-have-you's consumed over a lifetime into subatomic energy, you'd have an atomic bomb waiting to take out the entire human race. meaning, spicy may be a bit of an understatement with me, literally and metaphorically. i'm korean. we suffer fits of explosion and then we get over it. if you're patient enough to suffer a 5 minute scream-a-thon (my family sometimes practices this in the car, windows closed, all of us firing off expletives and roars strong enough to shoot missiles from 20 feet away), then, well, you just may be the one. or jesus christ himself.

3. i am a selfish. i like things to be done MY way and this may come across as bossy and domineering. really, the thing is, if i managed to meet a man who wasn't so overcome by his own napolean complex and need to exercise his manly machismo with full authority, you'd see that i mellow out. quick. in fact, you could easily parlay this no-nonsense, my-way-or-the-highway into a meek, agreeable little purring kitten. ok, maybe meek is not the word, but most definitely, compromising.

4. i buy waaay too much shit online. wait, i buy way too much shit period. now my debt is really quite manageable, and according to suze oreman, of the healthy variety (hah! as if you could convert debt into spinach and foie gras fillets and organic endives). that means a bit of college debt and a minimal amount of credit card debt somewhere in the low 3 digits. but i like stuff and money is not that important to me. meaning, my philosophy is rather laisezz faire when it comes to the 'chedda'- it comes and goes but it will never rule my life or send me into a tail-spin. life is too short to be controlled by the stuff.

5. i curse a good amount. in fact, profanity is a bit of a sport for me. for instance, how many ways can you creatively say the word "fuck" in a sentence? don't let me get started.

6. i sometimes forget to brush my teeth when i get really tired. i don't shave my legs in the winter (really, i could care less). i'm a bit of a feminist (treat me as your equal or ELSE) but somewhat contradictory to that, find chivalry and gentlemanly-ness to be really sexy. i burp out loud. a lot. umm, let's see, what else. i tell really lame jokes; wait, i really don't have jokes. i like reality tv (and if i still had cable, would probably have E!, Vh1 and MTV on constant rotation) and sometimes read shit like US weekly (god, my most embarrassing confession of all). I'm a bit messy; I throw my towels on chairs rather than hang them up like a good girl and you'll often find my bed unmade- oh the thought!

7. i can be narcissistic; i like attention just as much as i have an aversion to it- you'll find that i'm deeply contradictory and paradoxical. i am sensitive, emotional, opinionated, and bitingly honest. I am, in fact, quite the COMPLEX woman.

And there pretty much goes it...feel free to add to the list (call to all exes, i repeat, open casting call to all exes-NOT) if you'd like. not bad, a bucket list of 7 items (well, let's count #6 as just one) that might very well tend to throw a pursuer off my course. and i'd rather you know now, than find out years later, spent and bitter. (Who's still willing to hang?) In enumerating my less than pretty character traits (and then broadcasting them for the world to see, no less), i realize i am neglecting all the juicy and brilliant bits of my ever-expanding and multi-faceted self, qualities and such things that may quite defy the laws of gravity and empty yourself of all the aforementioned lines above (hah- there goes my entitled sense of narcissism!). but the point is, that's neither here nor there, and i'm certainly not going to sell you on it. you'll just have to find out for yourself.

because, quite simply, like i mentioned before, i'd really rather just save the best for last. ;)