Quoted...

You train people how to treat you. 

- Iyanla Vanzant

Act like you know and they shall follow. 

Wine Makes Everything Taste Better...

It doesn't always take a ton of bricks for you to feel like you were just hit by one. A few days ago I came across video on Facebook that slapped me across the face with a huge wake up call. It was just a remix of a song but something about the music and the visual made me stop and take a mini inventory of my life. And while I am very proud of everything I've accomplished in the past 8 years, I want stories to tell. I want to be able to sit down with my kids and tell them about being humbled when I stood at a temple in India or how I was a kick ass surfer who danced 'til dawn on the playa. I want to find freedom on a mountain top and silence in the ocean before I become a suburban housewife, and after. I was born with magic in my blood and I refuse to give up that potential without fulfilling it. 

In the spirit of learning who I am, I have decided to dedicate the next 2 years to blowing up my boundaries and doing all of the things I only wanted to do in dreams instead of waiting for my 20s to silently expire. While I do have a day job to keep, saving to build and a time limit to consider, I've come up with 30 things for me to do before August 26, 2014--when I turn 30--that are ambitious, international, totally doable AND full of magic. 

So here's my 30 before 30. If anything on here seems like a shock, you probably don't know me outside of the internet. And didn't I say I'm a beautifully strange amalgam of Beyonce, Carrie Bradshaw and Lisa Bonet? Keep that in mind...here'd the list.

1. Go to Burning Man
2. Go Paleo for 30 days
3. Publish my 1st book (OK this is SUPER ambitious and totally doable.)
4. Learn the art of trapeze
5. Go backpacking through Europe
6. Celebrate Durga Puja in Kolkata aka Calcutta
7. Map out my family tree. 
8. Throw a proper dinner party, with food I actually cooked. (I can burn. Lafayette voice)
9. Finish reading those half read books on my shelf.
10. Watch the sunrise over the ocean.
11. Take a good old fashioned American road trip. 
12. Learn how to surf. 
13. Make my apartment beautiful.
14. Spend the weekend with Gabby B at Spirit Junkie summer camp at Kirpalu.
15. Finish a Course in Miracles. 
16. 30 days of getting my yoga on. 
17. Get published in a national glossy. 
18. Go to the shows (not work them) at NYC Fashion Week. 
19. Get my savings on!
20. Add one pair of Louboutins to my closet. 
21. Become fluent in French. 
22. Learn the art of burlesque.
23. Run a marathon....did I mention I don't run at all. 
24. Hike the Appalachian Trail.
25. Go to a music festival that is not Jazz Fest or Voodoo.
26. Bungee jump.
27. Visit the Grand Canyon
28. Give snowboarding a try
29. Learn how to make a stiff martini
30. Follow through. 

I find it fair to mention that I have an intense fear of flying that I intend to conquer during the course of these experiences. That's technically number .1 on the list. 

(+)

There are quite a bit of music videos on this page...here's one more.

 

Quoted

If poetry does not come as easy as leaves to a tree, then it had better not come at all

- John Keats 

Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand blah blah blah

Creation always begins in darkness. Whether you are reading the Bible, the Rig Veda, the Popol Vuh or pretty much any religious or mythological text, they start with an all encompassing abyss. So too does our creation, unless your mother had a tap light in her womb. But aside from the moment when we went from a drunken night between two relatively responsible adults to a fetus, the moments that make us usually begin in darkness as well.

A year ago on this very day I was a nervous wreck that couldn't eat, sleep or move without falling to pieces in anticipation of the inevitable. I knew that my relationship, which up to that point was perfect in my mind, had done a complete 180 overnight and no amount of pleading, crying or talking could change that. I knew in my soul that my love could fix what was being held together with tape--me, him and us. I knew we were stronger than whatever had come between us. I was wrong. But then again, I was right.

This is not my ex...I don't remember this guy's name and this was from two weeks ago.

My relationship was not perfect, I spent as much time happy and in love as I did feeling clenched, unworthy and miserable. I wasn't in love with a person, I was in love with the way he validated my existence, boosted my self-esteem, made every other girl--and my shitty ex's--green with envy, and everything that made me feel better about me because of who he was. The ambition, drive, affluence, and success that drew me to him like a moth to a flame eventually made me feel small standing next to him. It wasn't all "I love you because of the way you make me fel about me", I still love and am inspired by who he is as a person--flawed, funny, and a shit talker--but I was wrapped up in finally finding my Big not how we worked or didn't work together. If you don't see the cracks in the foundation from day one, you end up buying a house that eventually sinks and I saw the cracks, and ignored them just to have my dream guy. Love cannot save a sinking ship. Ask Jack Dawson.

Guess no one told Jack to secure his life vest before attempting to help others. 

While all the love I had for him and us couldn't save anything, the love I had for myself eventually won out. There were days when I literally could not get out of bed and wanted to kill myself, obvs I did and did not. Then throw in losing your job on top of going through the most difficult breakup of your life and you get me circa January. In that vacuum, no job, no man, no money, I began to feel more free than I had in years. (It's funny what hanging at home and collecting an unemployment check can do for you.) For months I devoured self help books, checked into therapy--long over due, did a 4 week group coaching course, started doing volunteer work and a fuck ton of other shit. My life was a nothing like he life I'd spent the past 3 years building, one that would have ended with me and my ex as a strange hybrid of the Obamas, the Clintons--not really but really--the Gates, Bey and Jay, and basically almost any bad ass, smart, talented, revolutionary couple ever to have a documentary made on them. There were few martini circuit events to attend, no tiki Tuesdays and my calendar looked more like that of a yogi/new age/ hippy than a bad ass fashion blogger/writer. I'd gone from Carrie Bradshaw to Lisa Bonet over night and I wasn't mad at it.

Lisa aka Lilakoi Moon & her daughter Zoe make one bad majama mother-daughter duo.

In between all the manifesting, meditating, cleaning, and starting this blog, I landed a job that I wasn't even looking for--that my psychic connection predicted months before--and my life changed back to what I always wanted it to be. I am way closer to financially independent than I ever have been, I have a pretty decent job that is not a major life drainer, I can afford to shop at Whole Foods, I have successfully married my Carrie side with my Lisa Bonet and Beyonce sides--it looks and feels as amazing as it sounds--and I have reconnected with friends that I abandoned when I started my relationship in 2009. My life could only be more phenomenal if I were engaged to Alexander Skarsgard....dreaming is good for the soul.

He is really, really ridiculously good looking.

The point is, everything begins in darkness but it does not stay that way. I mean first there was darkness and then God was all like "let there be light" and darkness peaced out. Everything changes, all the time. Change is the one constant in life. If I have moved form wannabe socialite, shop girl balled up on the floor crying herself to sleep because the one thing that made her worthwhile was someone else to a badass creatrix ready to run shit in 2013 in only 365 day--was it leap year this year? Imagine where I can be in another 365 days, or rather where you can be.

Lessons Learned from....To Wong Foo

Yesterday I woke up in what I imagined to be a cold sweat, panicked and frightened as all hell because in a few short days I will be one step closer to 30 with nary a husband or child to show for it. Yes children, I woke up bright and early on Monday morning in the midst of a major "OH SHIT! I"M ALMOST 30 AND STILL SINGLE" freak out. While my most dependable ladies did their best to get me out of my "I'm going to check into the Ritz and check out if I'm still single by 30" mood, this was the kinda funk that needed an epic intervention to lift. Enter Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo dressed in full drag. Not only did my mood lit, wouldn't yours, but I also learned a few valuable lessons along that way that had me belting out "Rumor Has It" on my way home from work. Without further ado, here are the lessons I learned from To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.

You are a boy in a dress. Not me, but Noxeema and Vida's protege Chi Chi. Along the way the more experienced queens prove to wee Chi that until she harnesses her inner queen that she is just a sad little boy playing dress up. Or as your mom would say, "It's what's on the inside that counts." Apparently when you're a drag queen, what's on the inside is fearlessness wrapped in pain smothered in camp and tempered with a "been there, done that, here's my unsolicited advice bitch" attitude. LOVES!

Hair, makeup and shopping solve everything. Hello! I got bangs and a tattoo post breakup to shake myself out of a rut, so of course the queens give every woman in the small hick town they are stuck in fierce makeovers to free them from abusive husbands, small-mindedness and Michael Vartan...Don't ever save me from that last one. 

It pays to have a friend who only looks like a girl. You hav no idea what I would give to have a girl friend who is had He-Man like strength when I'm out and some guy just doesn't get that I am not at all into him. 

If you don't love yourself...Of course the Queen of the queens, RuPaul, has a cameo in this one as done his message of loving yourself first. At the end both the ladies and the ladies learn that you have to love and accept you as you are if you want others to do the same. Even poor little rich boy/girl Vida vows to tell her conservative, East Coast fam that she is who she is and they can kiss it her huge pumps if they don't like it. 

If you have legs, use them! At a very statuesque 5'10" Ms Julie Newmar had some seriously amazing legs, and cuves, and boy did she work them in the photo that Vida lifts from the restaurant which serves as the journey's Holy Grail and gives the movie its name. At a statuesque 5'5", like Marilyn Monroe, I have learned the power of working my cuves and building upon what God has blessed me with by slipping into a pair of heels. Sadly, post break up I have forgotten that not only do I always look better in heels but I also have a sick body that I rarely work out or diet for. Time to make like Julie and werk!

The Rareness of Realness

I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.

- The Talented Mr. Ripley  

I was in high school when I rented The Talented Mr. Ripley one Friday night for family night--something my dad started after my parents got divorced when I was 11. While my mind may not have grasped every subtlety of the movie dedicated to a young man having a serious Single White Female style identity crisis--I just thought Jude Law was hot and had to see it because he was in it--I do distinctly remember agreeing with Tom Ripley when he managed those words. At the time I was 15 and like most teenagers I wasn't really comfortable with who I was, mostly because I didn't really know who I was. I knew who people expected me to be and I knew that wasn't necessarily me but I didn't know who me was, and therefore decided that like Tom being someone else would be so much easier. Eventually I grew out of that, puberty and wanting to be anyone but me. The funny thing is, the more real I am with me the more I realize how many people are real life Mr Ripley's trapped in lives that are far from who they really are in an effort to impress us all with their network, travels, iTunes libraries, Netflix queques, salaries, closets and relations. 

We all know the types, using religion, spirituality, materialism, elitism, the desire to belong and to not belong as a means to hide who they are from others for fear of rejection. I completely understand it. The world is a very "either you are with us or against us" kind of place where being who you are, raw and unfurled, can get your ass kicked or kicked out of your comfort zone Ask anyone who came out to an unsupportive family, an atheist in a room full of Christians, a feminist, someone fighting for their rights and the rights of others, or better yet anyone who has ever felt alone when they had to stand up for their beliefs. It hurts to be rejected for being who you are, especially if you are taught that who you are is wrong, bad or different.

The Spice Girls are still kick ass! 

I'm not that different--I am an odd mix of Daria, Quinn and Beyonce which means I love books, fashion and boys and I have a sarcastic sense of humor with kicking curves and a Southern drawl--but I was made to feel like I was wrong because I was a stereotypical American girl not a stereotypical BLACK American girl, whatever that means. So I learned to never say I preferred MTV to BET (that was way back when they both played videos), I actually loved reading the Crystal Cave, Dawson Leery was my secret crush and I blasted Jewel, Nirvana, Alanis and Lisa Loeb when I was sad and Britney, Spice Girls and Nsync when I wasn't--for the record everyone eventually got up on Britney, Nysnc and the Spice Girls because Justin Timberlake was hot sex, the Spice Girls were hella catchy and Britney turned into a total whore. The funny thing is 85% of this judgement was in my mind. I went to Catholic school and most of the girls were pretty average, it just wasn't until facebook was invented that I realized that I could've been myself all along. But when I talk about Single White Female and Tom Ripley types, I am not talking about teenagers with minor identity crises. I'm talking about full fledged adults who never learned that the only person judging you is you, even if you're talking to me and I tend to come off as judgmental...I'm not at all but I am a snob, that's another blog post.

While these two groups of people, teenagers and adults having identity issues, seem ages apart they are in fact stuck in the exact same mire. If I would have never realized that not only was I the only one judging myself before anyone else could but that the people who were judging me did not know me enough to do so, I would have stayed in a place where I pretend to be something I'm not so that people can like me for being a success, whatever that means. Guess what? Whether or not people like you is not your business. Your business in life is for you to like you. If you can fall asleep at night happy as a clam with who you are whether you are rich or poor, fat or thin or if you talk like Marlene Dietrich in clothes made by Balmain or not, there will be no shortage of people lined up to hang out with the you that is you. If you, however, make a habit of lying to yourself to get through everyday conversations with strangers to prove to them that you do belong, eventually you learn not to trust yourself or anyone else. So stop trying to be someone and start  being you, I mean being someone else seems tiring and I don't have that kind of energy or time to waste.