Thursday, April 26, 2012
(+)
Major Lazer + Amber of Dirty Projectors + a Mr Tee like character = amazing....listen to the lyrics
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Stop the Shhhh!!!
I was walking from Madewell to Bloomingdale's on my Spring living spree, bags in hand, when my phone vibrated to let me know I had a new email. I was expecting some kind of spam from one of the many mailing lists that my email address has found itself on or something work related, however it was an email from a friend of an acquaintance saying that she had passed in the night. (She being the acquaintance not her friend.) Before I go a character further, I have to say that I didn't know this person very well, only through facebook, herfture and email. Despite not knowing her in real, real life, her death shook me enough that it made me question the way in which I live my life. I mean, she was 31, had been living with cancer for years and despite that was still the shining light in my inbox every week.
I'm not going to dwell on the life of someone who touched my life without knowing much about it, but I have to say the death of a person in your age group always makes you rethink your life. It forces you to face you own mortality in a way that seeing an older person die never could. It drives home the message that life is short since it indeed could be over much more quickly than you think, causing you to rethink the way you've handled or not handled things. Having a friend or colleague who is merely a few years older than you live her life fully while dying, while you are stressing over the dumbstuff, makes you remember that life is a gift. I'm trying not to sound too shallow but it often takes the death of someone to make you realize how good you have it. I mean just yesterday I was bitching about the fact that I'm single instead of celebrating my new job and car. I was also debating on wether or not I should get real with my ex about us. Now all of that drama seems both small and huge at the same time. Small because it's petty stuff. My life is stinking awesome the end. However on the other hand my drama just got ocean size.
When you die the things you regret are the relationships you effed up, the people you took for granted, the time you spent working instead of living and a whole host of stuff that has nothing to do with how much money you earned, how many shoes you owned or how successful you were. People say it all the time but it's true, you dan't take it with you. The only thing you'll have on your death bed is family, friends and your memories--and perhaps a blanket. You have your love and that's all, and if you're me you have a heart full of love deeper than the ocean--Titanic reference--that is reserved for one person who either does not care or does nto believe me when I say that I love him not the job or the money or the outside shizz but the person who makes me feel like being me is the easiest thing in the world. (Trust me being me is not easy, being a puppy is easy being me is strange.)
You know, death makes you remember how fragile and temporary our bodies are. Once they're gone they're gone and you move on to wherever you came from. But in the meantime, while you have a body, tell the people that you love how much you love them, forgive the people that have wronged you, enjoy the time you have to do nothing, seek balance and have ice cream....real full fat ice cream that is rich and creamy and makes you want to jump on a treadmill after eating it. You only taste for as long as you have taste-buds so don't waste your sense of taste, or hearing, sight or smell for that matter.
*I'm not going to get all weepy and sappy but I am going to say that Shanna Sandmoen was an amazing woman and her weekly emails and blog posts will be missed.
I'm not going to dwell on the life of someone who touched my life without knowing much about it, but I have to say the death of a person in your age group always makes you rethink your life. It forces you to face you own mortality in a way that seeing an older person die never could. It drives home the message that life is short since it indeed could be over much more quickly than you think, causing you to rethink the way you've handled or not handled things. Having a friend or colleague who is merely a few years older than you live her life fully while dying, while you are stressing over the dumbstuff, makes you remember that life is a gift. I'm trying not to sound too shallow but it often takes the death of someone to make you realize how good you have it. I mean just yesterday I was bitching about the fact that I'm single instead of celebrating my new job and car. I was also debating on wether or not I should get real with my ex about us. Now all of that drama seems both small and huge at the same time. Small because it's petty stuff. My life is stinking awesome the end. However on the other hand my drama just got ocean size.
When you die the things you regret are the relationships you effed up, the people you took for granted, the time you spent working instead of living and a whole host of stuff that has nothing to do with how much money you earned, how many shoes you owned or how successful you were. People say it all the time but it's true, you dan't take it with you. The only thing you'll have on your death bed is family, friends and your memories--and perhaps a blanket. You have your love and that's all, and if you're me you have a heart full of love deeper than the ocean--Titanic reference--that is reserved for one person who either does not care or does nto believe me when I say that I love him not the job or the money or the outside shizz but the person who makes me feel like being me is the easiest thing in the world. (Trust me being me is not easy, being a puppy is easy being me is strange.)
You know, death makes you remember how fragile and temporary our bodies are. Once they're gone they're gone and you move on to wherever you came from. But in the meantime, while you have a body, tell the people that you love how much you love them, forgive the people that have wronged you, enjoy the time you have to do nothing, seek balance and have ice cream....real full fat ice cream that is rich and creamy and makes you want to jump on a treadmill after eating it. You only taste for as long as you have taste-buds so don't waste your sense of taste, or hearing, sight or smell for that matter.
*I'm not going to get all weepy and sappy but I am going to say that Shanna Sandmoen was an amazing woman and her weekly emails and blog posts will be missed.
Lessons Learned From....Josephine Baker
Freda Josephine McDonald, aka Josephine Baker, was my kind of woman. She was fierce, talented, passionate, generous and behind that coy smile and Eton crop was one bad mamajama who did what she liked when she liked. She adopted her own "Rainbow Tribe" long before African babies were the new black and when her own country would not treat her with the respect and dignity she deserved she split! Here are a few lessons we can learn from the woman who put the Art in des Arts Decoratifs (Art Deco).
1. A banana hammock is a sin but a banana skirt is couture!
2. Being a cat lady isn't all that bad when your cat is a cheetah.
3. If you don't like the hand you're dealt get a new one...Josephine wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth but with hard work, dedication and a lotta bit of gumption she went from a street shild dancing on the corner to the "highest paid chorus girl in vaudeville" to the most successful American (notice I said American not African-American) entertainer working in France.
4. Stand for something. Josephine was more than a nice set of legs and a pretty face, she worked with the French underground during World War II earning the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Resistance and was made Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur by Charles de Gaulle. She also a HUGE supporter of the Civil Rights movement although she stayed in France where her marriage to a white Frenchman was not illegal--look up anti-miscegenation laws, interracial marriages were the first marriage equality fights--and she cared for her Rainbow Tribe consisting of 12 multi-racial orphans. Oh and JB refused to play to segregated audiences in the US.
5. "The things we truly love stay with us always. Locked in our hearts as long as life remains"
My Fairy Tale
 |
| Waiting...waiting..waiting |
Everyone has a story that they tell themselves when they get out of bed every morning and before they go to sleep at night. For some lucky people their story is "my life is awesome" and "everything always goes great." Most of us over age 7 or so, do not live with a story that is so amazing. We have layers of stories that we tell ourselves to reinforce our deeper story and the older we get the more layers we layer...kind of like an onion or an ogre depending on who you ask. This tendency to layer and reinforce means that you can spend years peeling back the fears without touching on your story or, if you're like me, your mother and a book you were destined to read can point it out to you.
Let's start at the beginning. Two weeks ago on my way to work I rear ended someone and my 10 year old car fell apart, literally. Like I barely scratched the other car and my car just crumpled and fell apart, which was for the best since it was 10 years old and falling apart anyway. Not long after that I met up with my ex which resulted in a pretty disastrous encounter. While it looks like shit was hitting the fan, by the end of the following week I had more than enough money to pay my bills for the next month and get a new car--which I did on Sunday on my own with my own credit score no co-signing--and I was offered an amazing new job that would not only make me a decent living but would also bring all kinds of new experiences to me. New car and new job in hand, it looks like my life is finally coming together and one would think I am jumping for joy and filled with gratitude but instead I've been cautious, wary and haven't celebrated at all. As I was wondering about why I haven't been celebrating, the thought hit me that I do not believe that this is my life. Literally, I do not believe that my life is pretty good these days and all I could focus on was the one spot in my life that isn't good. However, the not believing that it's my life has more to do with my personal drama than me not thinking I'm worthy or anything like that.
 |
| Cinderella didn't even pick out her dress. |
So what is my personal drama? Well, it was cleverly layered deep beyond the fears of abandonment, not being good enough and God knows what else. All this time I thought the abandonment issue was my core story but while reading The Celestine Prophecy I had an aha moment and realized that my core story is "I am a victim." Ever since I was a little girl I have played the victim, people were smarter than me, had more than I did, got more attention and whatever else I told myself to prove that the cards were stacked against me. My mom told me she noticed pretty early on that I was a "poor me" type when she was talking about two of my cousin's being bright girls and I said "what about me?"...I was 8 or 9. She seems to think that after the birth of my brother when I was 6, the new dynamic in the family put me in a place where I was no longer the star and to get my spot back I played "poor me." But it didn't end there.
With friends and co-workers, with getting jobs and dating and pretty much everything in my life I have played the victim. I have handed over responsibility for my life to other people and conditions, all the while blaming everyone for my life but me. He left me, she doesn't like me, my parents don't have enough money--sidenote if it weren't for my parents I would be homeless since my rent is way more than I can afford on my own--I didn't go to the right school, I didn't have the right amount of support, blah blah poor me blah blah. These stories churning around my core story like the arms of a hurricane churning around the eye do nothing but wreak havoc in my life and relationships and keep me in a place where life happens to me, instead of creating the life I want. It keeps me a damsel in distress waiting on someone to rescue me when I am perfectly capable of rescuing myself.
 |
| This is my kind of princess |
This is soo not the life I want, one cloistered in a tower waiting on a savior so that my life can begin. The life I want is one that is beautiful, unfolding, full of adventure and love. A life that I co-create and can claim full ownership of. A life where I AM NOT A VICTIM! Sadly, that doesn't happen over night. You don't go to bed saying "my personal story is one of playing the victim" and wake up saying "I'm Xena warrior princess and I run this show." Life is about subtle shifts that add up to major shifts. So for now, knowing my story is enough because now that I know better I can do better. Will I slip? Hell yes, I'm a person and I have no interest in being perfect but I will progress. I can rewrite my fairy tale and will, but stories evolve one word at a time and 27 years of learning take time, and therapy, to undo. All I can do now is say I AM NOT A VICTIM!
Quoted...
"The ultimate goal is to be happy. If you want to be happy, make somebody else happy. If you want to find the right person in your life, then become the right person. If you want to see change in the world, then become the change in the world….There’s no social transformation in the absence of personal transformation."
-Deepak Chopra
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)