fuck famous people - they are so predictable

i hate liars and i am dating a pathological liar. things need to change.

on a posative note, i just got my back-pack for europe. it weighs 10 lbs with nothing even in it! fantastic.

so now it's officially sunk in, i'm going across the world for a very very very very long time. my life is going to change in a million and one ways. i'm spinning in circles, freaking out, can't wait another day, ready ready, ready.

i can't wait to leave behind this bullshit - to see the world, to fall in love with the sea, to lay in the flowers, to photograph the cathedrals, to bask in the sun, to be free of it all.



this photo is of cinque terre, my new home for a few months.

i am always falling love... i'm not worried about it

Love (noun)- a powerful experience in which your heart is able to feel and think beyond the capacity of reason.

i believe that love exceeds the conventional classifactions and man-made boundries in which people catagorize feelings. at times it is both wise and foolish, tragic and inspiring, momentous and remedial. i suppose love is everything and nothing. i'm still considering that.

recently i have been aware of how important love is to me (perhaps this is because i am in love right now). but then i started to wonder--- when am i not in love? since i can recall i have always been falling in love with someone. sometimes it lasts a week or a minute, other times it carries on for years.
should i be worried?

my friend suggested that perhaps i wasn't actually in love at all. based upon the length and level of my feelings i was probably just infatuated. she also contested that i was probably more in love with the idea of love than the actual person itself.

this is bullshit.

also, let me just say that i have never actually understood the concept of infatuation. it has always been my knowledge that being "infatuated" with someone means you THINK you are in love, but you're actually not. infatuation is supposedly just a foolish, fleeting feeling (like love is ever rational). so if being in love is an abstract notion, and it's not tangible, and there is no way to physically prove it to anyone else.... well how is being in love any different than having an infatuaiton?

basically they are both human constructions. if you think you're in love with someone and you feel like your in love with someone, then you obviously are. thinking and feeling is the sum total of what anything is. why do people feel an obligation to certify emotions with some kind of retrospective, self imposed, authenticity? and when did such an illusive and intimate experience aquire so many rules?

i guess the way i see it is a bit more simple--love is love. no matter how many times you've loved before- it's still love. or if you love someone more than they love you in return- it's still love. and whether you only love someone for a few minutes or a few years- it's still love. i think some people go their entire lives honestly believing that the only love out there is the kind that is identical to their own. love is not a mirror.

i think what i like most about love is how it can be the opposite of you. love challenges you to be something and go somewhere you could never have gotten to on your own. some of the most self-actualizing experiences i've ever had were when i was taking a chance in love. this of course is not to say that those experiences were always story book endings. God knows how i have trudged through some epic tradgedies that have left me wrecked and ravaged. i guess it's always been my philosphy that EVERY experience is a possibility. even in times of defeat i celebrate, because i know eventually i will get through it. i will simply brush myself off and move on. why not celebrate this chance at life and strive to grow as much as we possibly can? love and the hope of finding a love that's worth the risk has just always been apart of me since i can remember.

hurry up bergamo!

when it comes to reality i am very much a dreamer. it is instinctual, it just feels right to be this way, it must be in my blood or something. recently i have come to realize that this kind of thinking isn't recognized as practicle. as an adult one is assumed to have what other adults like to call "a plan". as a dreamer (i guess i will keep calling myself this for the sake of convention) my unorthodox ideas of excavating temples in bali and living in a treehouse in thailand for a year hardly qualifiys as a plan. so when faced with the plaguing question of "what are you going to do with your life" by family members who all seem to have the answer for me, i finally begin to understand why they call these times the wonder years. i'm realizing i'm actually not invincible, that time is precious, and that the south pacific is most likely out of the question for my next choice residency. this was truthfully a devistating realization.

sooo with much disdane i elected to grow up. and in my defence let my say, valient were my efforts to refine wonderous kinds of thoughts, to purge my fantasies, and replace them with practicle plans for the future: balancing budgets and schedules and check books. it was a gruesome and exhausitng process that never ever seemed to end. at the end of each day i felt akward and rearranged,like i was a crude mockery of what an adult should be.

now i sorta feel stuck in some kind of limbo. it's like the never talked about grace period of young adulthood- when a young person crosses over that grey fuzzy border into the land of full blown responsibility. and everyone's so proud and now my parents can throw a party and say "my daughter graduated, she has a great job, and a mortgage, and a car payment, and a life sentance of bills and taxes and domestic purgatory" yayyy lets all celebrate.

but i ask you - what's so great about all this responsibility anyway? am i missing something? it's just a bunch of endless tasks ---- don't forget to pay on time, work extra, save every penny, be here, go there, buy this, do that. now a days i have to run from one place to the next, always in such a hurry. gotta beat the traffic, and the lines, and the clock.i miss the stillness of life, the simplicity of it all. i miss the eager imaginations of my childhood. laying in the grass, climbing trees, fighting off pirates, and soaring through the air like an angel. is it a crime to continue feeding such a wild imagination? why can't we still make believe, and skip on side walks, and conceive fantastical happenings for our lives?

in my mind roll waves of romantics- i am plotting a great escape. i should want nothing more than to sell all of my belongings and travel the world, to live like a bohemian queen. i would keep a journal in my pocket and document every fascinating face and life i meet along my way. i want to be an adventurer, to map out only my dreams, and to fall in love many times over. i would paint every secret seascape, shop in foreign markets, and drape myself in brilliant colored fabrics. i could dance with the tahitian natives and welcome the fireflies and let my hair grow wildly long until it tickled my elbows and spiraled around in the air like floating calilly petals.

and yet, in spite of all the idealic liberations this dream world encombers, deep down i know i would miss a home to call my own. i would ache to see my family and to wake up in the familurarity of my own bed.
i suppose growing up is the ability to find a balance in all of this- to embrace maturity and still maintain an innocent heart.

i will have to manage a few more months of adult life until bergamo-where a coming of age truely awaits me.

less than 2

today i stood underneath of this oak tree. it is over 400 years old, which means it was around before the US constitution and when sir issac newton discovered the laws of gravity. it made me feel incredibly tiny.

when the hurricanes came through orlando the oak was severely damaged. one side of it's branches were warped and hung so low that they were touching the ground. the city almost cut them back, until they realized that the tree was regenerating a multiple root system. the warped branches started growing into the ground and then back out of the ground again. survival... it's a beautiful thing.

scribbled on a map of england... in england of course

i am seeing the world and i am seeing myself in every step. i am seeing the world and myself and God and i feel as though it were the first time i ever used my eyes. there is so much beauty, so much sunshine, so much love to experience. i am taking it all in, i am standing at the base of a mountain- plotting my assent. i am feeling the rain on my face, i am falling in love 100 times a day, i am singing to the clouds as they take shape in the sky. i am abandoning my fears and worries of inadequacey and just living. i am swiming in the 7 seas, i am lying in fields of daisey's watching the sun creep up between the trees and warm my little feet. i sat down today, on the other side of the world, and let these moments come over me. they were born up out of my mind. they traveled throughout my body. they visited my heart. they filled my eyes with tears. and every universe was there, along with every first kiss, and setting sun, and beautiful thing i've ever lived through. and i've never felt so alive as i do sitting here right now. i borrowed some passing man's pen and scribbled this down on my map. ....and i laugh, because i realize these harmless little words, so limited, and so small- can not even begin to catch up to the pase of my thoughts. how can i ever describe the rivers of joy that flow out of my belly? how can i organize the way my heart opened up today over smoothed out stones on this black sandy beach, hiding in caves, filling our pockets with shells that will never make it home? i can't. all i can do is let it run it's course through my body, pushing the blood through my viens, dancing with the tiny molecules that i forget are even there, and be as much of me as i am of myself. oh how we are built for love. like tiny little vessels drifting along some endless current. oh the potential, the possobilities, the dreams we hold- such precious cargo, bottled up, and ready to serve. i will let life love me. i will let love live inside me. i will see the beauty and the jems of possibilities life inspires for me.