Escaping from Noise

One thing I miss about this Central New York area is the beautiful outdoor hiking trails they offer. Now that I'm back for the semester, I decided that I needed to return to the woods to center myself. My good friend Megan and I went on a fun trip the other day to the upper part of Buttermilk Falls. It was really breathtaking and refreshing. We brought along her little puppy who really had some great adventures with herself.

One reason that I love hiking, the woods, and waterfalls is that they provide such a calming experience away from the noise associated with everyday life: cars, sirens, screaming, crosswalk beeping, etc. You really get a great chance to clear your mind and think, and you're not bothered by outside noise. Instead, you hear really cool noises of the outdoors, like running water, wind through the leaves, and sticks crunching under your shoes.

The atmosphere provides for great thinking and conversation. Megan and I really had a great chance to sit down and think outside the box at a beautiful clearing near the water. Everything does happen for a reason.

I am going to post an array of pictures from the experience. Feel free to comment on any picture or my above post on the calmness and thinking atmosphere of the woods. Where is your calming place?







Here's Megan and the puppy (adorable shot)











The swimming series (her first attempt at swimming!)













Check out the puppy posing for a portrait shot (minus the fact she was scared and partially crying/wimpering...)





Megan found a heart-shaped rock. She has a really good eye for finding really cool things...



Awesome shot of Megan--one of the best taken that day



This is the best picture though, by far. A good one to end on. This is what I love.

Birthday Symbolism

Being a bored birthday girl yesterday, I was browsing the internet for astrology-related material. I came across a website that gives a fortune/description of every birthday. Check out the website here.

I'll post mine here and let me know what you think is accurate/inaccurate.

Love and satisfaction in relationships may not always come easily but this is no reason to become cynical about marriage and affairs of the heart. You will learn the lessons of love through the action of Saturn, the tester and inhibitor. As a result of your Karma you may indeed have to be patient until the right person comes along.

You are capable in handling money and are very resourceful even if you don't have a lot of money. You will soon put an end to that though because of your strong ambitions. Plough through life like a steamer through ice.

Your lucky colours are deep blue and black.

Your lucky gems are blue sapphire, lapis lazuli and amethyst.

Your lucky days of the week are Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Your lucky numbers and years of important change are 8, 17, 26, 35, 44, 53, 62, 71.

Birthdays

I'm one to really love holdiays, but what is more special than you're own day?

I've always tried really hard to make birthdays special, not only my own, but for other people. But, I won't lie, I really like to fancy-up my birthday. Everything is fun and special. I get to talk to all of my best friends in the world, no matter how close or far that I live to them, no matter how recent I've spoken to them.

What's a good birthday memory you have?

I'll share some of my birthday pictures with you. The first set are from 121, and the next are from 83/85.

Chalk drawings













Ang and the pinata fish I liked from KMart



My girls
Birthdays give a great excuse to have a good time







Next year! Which was technically last year







A great excuse to eat desserts and chocolate



My best friends :-)



Borderline inappropriate



Jenna cradling the gnome









And I'm going to complete the blog with a series of Ang crazy pictures. Poor Jenna. Maybe you can catch a glimpse of Ang's character from these pictures.

Deciding Who We Are

"Our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remain what is essentially ourselves."

Another Waking Life quotation. Isn't that an interesting concept? Like, we're constantly changing, but we slowly make those changes so we always appear the same. But, we're really composed of completely different matter than years before. Physically, we're not the same person we were as when we were a baby.

Expanding on that, speaking of change, another quotation from the movie goes as follows:

"It's always our decision who we are."

Do you agree with this statement? Personally, I think there are so many external factors that effect who we are, and we don't always have control of that. Things may happen to us that we don't necessarily want to, but we don't have the power to start it or start it. There are certain decisions we make that can make and shape who we are, but it's not always our decision. We can't always control what happens to us. All we can do is make ourselves be the smartest people we can, people capable of growth, no matter what happens to us.

Do you agree with the above quotation? Always?

Endless Curiosity

Further into the Waking Life commenting session:

"What we don't take into account when we're young is that endless curiosity. That's what's so great about being human."

Endless curiosity. This quotation makes me think of childhood and our endless imagination and creativity that I long for today. But, then I'm thinking, perhaps "young" is also meant for how old I am currently, because 21 is really not all that old. That's youth. So, at 21, the age of a lot of my friends, we still are pretty young, huh? We're still in this endless phase of curiosity? Do you think that you still are? Do you think that some people at this age lose that curiosity and settle?

I chose to talk about this one today because, last night, Jess and I were talking about a similar concept. We were talking about childhood pasttimes and what games we would imagine up and play. We had invisible friends that we could talk to for hours. I commented that I really miss the imagination I used to have. I wish I could regain all that imagination I lost as I grew up. Jess opposed, saying that I probably still do have a lot of that imagination. All is not lost. We still do have a lot left, just maybe not to the extreme of concocting battles with fairies and made-up treasure hunts in the back yard.

What do you think about the declination of our imagination from youth to adulthood?

I think authority, schooling, etc. really pound it out of us, but we really need it as a society. Creativity is everything. I wish more people would not be so afraid of being creative. I love seeing people who really do maximize their potential and creativity. At these craft fairs I've been going to, I love seeing the wood-workers, potters, jewlers, tie dyers, bakers, etc. who really put time into their craft and seem to really enjoy it in the process.

Back to the quotation though: how much, then, do we give up on curiosity once we get older? What is being lost? What exactly were we curious about before and now have no more desire to continue searching? Is it that we've learned so much (perhaps tired and bogged down by life) and no longer feel it necessary to discover and seek out more and new information? Comments?

Help me on this one.

Don't Box Me In

More quotations to ponder from Waking Life. Feel free to make comments on anything you read...

"It's like you come on this earth with a crayon box. Now you may get the eight pack, you may get the sixteen pack, but it's all in what you do with the crayons, the colors that you're given. Now don't worry about coloring outside the lines or inside the lines. I say color outside the lines. Color all over the page. Don't box me in!"

"There are two kinds of sufferers: those who suffer from lack of life, and those who suffer from an overabundance of life."

"Dreams are only as real as long as they last, but couldn't you say the same about life?"

"A friend once told me that the worst mistake that you can make is to think that you are alive, when really you're asleep in life's waiting room. The trick is to combine your waking, rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams because if you can do that you can do anything."

"What are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential?"

Are you a dreamer?

Fear or Laziness

Another thought-provoking question from Waking Life:

Which is the most universal human characteristic: fear or laziness?

Hm... Among Americans, I think both traits are pretty prominent. I think we're becoming lazier and lazier as things become easier for us. We can do pretty much anything we want from our homes now, courtest of the computer, we can talk to anyone, anywhere at any time, and we can even shorten our tasks with our technological items or shortcuts via the internet.

Fear is always present, isn't it? There's always something external and foreign that freaks us out. Wars have always instilled fear in people. Now we have terrorism. There's always something.

Universally, I think the answer has to be fear.

Now, my example makes me think about people who have dreams to do things. I wish I was an actor. I wish I was a writer. I wish I could do this or that, but these people never act on what they have to say. I think laziness is definitely a key ingredient here, but I think that fear is a stronger element. It's easier to back down to the fear of rejection and failure than it is to try it and fail. We may not be good enough or we may have to be rejected several times before we succeed, but even that is a lot of work (which is where laziness comes in). A lack of motivation to work for something you really care for.

With other examples, I think accounting for people all around really turns my answer to fear. Thinking about how other people in other countries live, they have to feel more fear than laziness. I think if the answer were solely for Americans, then maybe laziness would be a good answer, but I think that other countries are definitely not as lazy as we are. It seems to me, with my education thus far, that some countries have to work a lot harder for some things that we take for granted. I think they fear more than they have the opportunity to be lazy over something.

Think about how many things someone can fear. Death--probably the top on the list--is probably more of an issue for some countries or people than others. People in war or certain countries (for various reasons) perhaps fear this more. Rejection, for those in pursuit of something, dreams, love, etc. Change. Doesn't everyone fear change? Failure. The list goes on.

How do you answer the question?

Being Understood

Ponder this from Waking Life:

"When it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use our system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. Like, what is frustration, or what is anger, or love? When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth goes in their ear, through their memories of love, or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and say 'yes, they understand,' but how do i know they understand? Because words are inert, they're just symbols. They're dead. And so much of our experience is intangible, so much of what we perceive cannot be conceived. It's unspeakable. And yet when we communicate with one another and we feel that we have connected and we think that were understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion and that feeling might be transient, but I think its what we live for."

If you think this is interesting, watch the video clip. It's under two minutes. It's not very time consuming.

I think it's crazy how much power and feeling can come behind such a simple, yet loaded, word like love, anger, or frustration. On the screen, they look very simple, but we all have such unforgettable, negative and positive memories and attachments to the words. Such strong emotion and feeling can be evoked just by saying a simple one-syllable word like "love." Someone could be moved to tears or smiles just by a single word. Now that's power.

Don't we all just want to be understood in some way, in one form or another? It's one word, or many words, that we want to have that connection with someone, that the word can be said and someone else will know and feel the same as we do about it, be it love, acceptance, loss, death, etc. We don't want to feel alienated and alone, that the word could repress our feelings or bring us so much intense sorrowful emotion that it couldn't just be you that's feeling the horrid, creeping feeling beneath your skin and through your nerves? Don't we all want that connection?

But how do we know that someone else knows? How can we get such deep and true understanding?

I think that everyone has at least one person who really and truly gets them on a spiritual level--and I don't mean anything hard-core religious. I mean spiritual in the sense of two people truly understanding each other's souls, their thoughts, understanding their motivations and actions even before they do them. It's knowing without hearing it, knowing just by looking at the person and seeing their reaction to something. It's hearing them say one thing and know that they are saying something else with it too, something that you can silently hear inside your brain. I think we all have this with someone whether we realize it or not. We might have it with one person, two, three, maybe more. I think it can be rare, and rare is ultimately special, for this is truly a special connection. Does anyone know what I'm talking about, or can anyone else describe it? Who is yours with?

I think this longing, desperation, sadness, and depression can occur when we lose someone like this. I think we long for it when it's absenst or when it's stripped away from us. To have it is purely God-given and lucky. We all should be thankful for the special people like this in our own lives. I know I would fall to depression if I lost my "soul mates," for a lack of a better term. They're not all my long-lost romantic loves. They know my soul, and I know theirs.

Have I gone truly crazy yet? Let me know.

I know for sure that I have two people in my life who are categorized here, and I love them more deeply than I love myself. They know who they are.

Anyway, I hoped that I made the words move off the screem, that they weren't just symbols and images in front of you, that maybe I put some feeling into small words that evoked an emotion out of you.

What do you think about my rant, or especially about the beginning quotation?

Waking Life

Yesterday, I saw a movie that really intrigued me. It was so different from any other movie I've ever seen. It asked questions and let its characters ramble on about the depths of life--something foreign to most films.

The film looks to answer the question: Are we sleep-walking through our waking life or wake-walking through our dreams?

Yes, it was confusing.

Yes, I still don't know what it means.

But aren't those the best kinds of movies, the ones that you can watch over and over again to continuously figure out the meaning, the deeper meaning that has something to do with your own life?

This movie, Waking Life, asked many questions about life, and introduced various concepts of life (particularly about dreaming) that are, perhaps, taboo or "deep," but they're not too far-fetched to scare anyone away. You might have even thought about it before at some point too.

Waking Life is different from most movies you'll see, first because it's cartoon-like, and second because it really doesn't have a plot. Each scene jumps between a main character basically speaking to various characters who don't really connect in any way at all. I think there might be a connection or some meaning, but I haven't figured it out yet. Maybe someone out these has and can enlighten me. I'm in the mood for enlightenment.

The director, Richard Linklater, who also inserts himself as a character at the end of the movie, has written and directed other films that are very, very good and worth seeing. Exmaples: Dazed and Confused, A Scanner Darkly, Fast Food Nation, Before Sunset, Before Sunrise, School of Rock, etc.

Advice: Gotta see this movie. Also, see A Scanner Darkly, even though it's also a bit bizarre and cartoon-oriented, but it does have a plot. If drugs or the invasion of personal privacy from the government interests you, try it.

In my next series of blog posts, I am going to attempt to figure out various quotations from the movie via blog rant. I hope that you can all help me as I try to wrap my head around some of these loaded questions and quotations.

Fairs

One thing that I really enjoy about this time of the year (this end of the summer, beginning of fall time) are the fairs and festivals.

Last week, my brother and I visited the New York State Fair in Syracuse, not specifically go enjoy the fair, but to see the Counting Crows. However, we had some time before the show to adventure around the fair, and it really was a great experience.

I think my favorite thing about the fair is the unique, freshly cooked varieties of food they offer. The smells around the fair are intoxicating! I couldn't choose what to eat! And the best part is, they don't overcharge you. The prices are so reasonable that it made it very hard to not purchase something that you craved. The sweet smells in the air from fried dough, kettle corn, ice cream, turnovers, dumplings, cheesecakes, doughnuts, shortcakes, pies, candy apples, fresh squeezed lemonade, etc. How couldn't you break down and buy something delicious?

Also, I do enjoy the homemade array of trinkets, t-shirts, candles, bags, tie dye, jewelery, etc. You never know what cool stuff you're going to find at a fair. There's always something that entices you. Personally, I really liked this section at the fair last week that was dedicated to African culture. They had some really interesting beaded jewelery and music. It was really inviting. They also offered ox tail for food (now how about that for trying something new!).

Fair rides are also really fun. Tilt-a-whirls, ferris wheels, bumper cars, etc. What were your favorite rides?

I think it would be really cool to be so talented at some kind of hobby that you could sell your products at a fair. That must be so fun and exciting. You work all year (perhaps during free time) creating something that you enjoy, and then you go to a fair, put up a small tent, and watch people review your work and purchase your creations. I think that would be fun. And, you would get to snack on some extremely delicious snacks that you can only get from a fair. It's just something about being sold at a fair that makes them taste better...

Have you heard of deep-fried oreos? They sold them at the fair, and I thought that was wild. We're just deep frying anything nowadays. My brother tried them once, and he says they have like a fried dough cover and the oreo pretty much melts inside of it, so it's a gooey oreo flavor inside. I guess they come in packs of like six, and they're pretty cheap. I didn't try them this time, but I'd like to another time just to experience it. Has anyone tried it?

If you could work at the fair, what would you like to do: sell your own merchandise, work a food booth, entertain, be a drink vendor, etc?

What do you like about fairs, or do you have any good fair memories?

Personally, I liked to watch the pig races when I was little, but I didn't see them at the Syracuse fair this time...

Let me know some fair thoughts.