It starts w/…

a cute boy and a cup of coffee, (eyes meet)
or crumpled jeans on a dressing room floor, (zippers don’t lie)
or the ring of a cell phone, (lost voices smiling hello)
or a kiss, a book, a crime, or a punishment,
a decision, an accident, a test, or a broken heart, a coma, or an alarm clock.
a right turn or a left.

It’s that moment just after impact, life bent all around you…

that you get to choose to
look up to see a rainbow or
down to see blood or
over to see life/death or
inside to see fear
(if choose to see beyond the debris at all)

its easiest to choose fear
to ignore the beauty/sadness/reality that’s woven all around us in favor of the illusion our minds creates.
fear consumes (trust me).
we trap ourselves as to avoid adapting
we hold our breathe to keep from inhaling the present.

It’s a futile game.
Things change. always.

My grandma knows the future.

My grandma and I have an unspoken language full of shared laughs and similar glances.
A need for solitude and plenty of space to think.
A love of potato chips and a constant stash of chocolate.
A real passion for sitting.
(ok, so maybe not that last one)

Our similarities, after noticed, are too many to ignore. I see myself in her.

I savor her wisdom.
I search for morsels of truth that might somehow keep me from having to discover them the same way she did, from 89 years of pain and sweat. It’s impossible, I know, but I hold her words close and think of them often.

Her voice is horse and blunt. She doesn’t speak in “darlings” or batches of homemade cookies. She speaks in the cursive “F.Y.I.” letters on newspaper articles. She speaks in dated, yet completely genuine, fashion tips about reflecting color and skin tone. She speaks in carefully curated grocery lists, complete with an asterisk adorned love of coffee yogurt.

See, this getting old business is inevitable, our bodies will begin to fail and our minds will fade. A perpetual and unavoidable change. Tomorrow will happen and so will next year. The thing we must remember is today is when we get to choose, because some day we will either look back and remember those rainbows or that fear.

Things change. always.

Me: “Grandma, if you could give your 27 year old self any piece of advice what would it be?”

Her: “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

Me: “But, how do you know what is small?”

Her: “Colleen, everything is small. everything.“

—

photo: my grandma, age 30. edited and remixed by me.

IZZE esque: the basics

Nutrition: All IZZE products are made with pure fruit juice w/ no refined sugars, no caffeine, no preservatives, and no artificial flavors. 50 calories per 12 oz. serving & Less than 14g of sugar (all from fruit).

Where: Find a store here! They are sold at Whole Foods Markets, Starbucks, Target. Also many local grocery stores, restaurants, and delis. AND on Amazon.com

Price: $4.99 – $5.49/ 4 pack and $1.39- $1.69/bottle – a lil pricey, but they do have printable coupons on their Facebook Page

Sparkling Black Raspberry

The most striking thing about all the esque flavors is how true they are to their name. I feel like this should not be strange but you can really taste the real fruit. In a world of artificially flavored whatever and Red number 3 this is a breath of fresh air. As for the Black Raspberry, It should be noted I am a berry person. I love ras, blue, and strawberries. But Black Raspberries are not as high on my list so this was not my top pick. Just personal preference. It is very light, again not really sweet but natural and satisfying.

+ simple and natural flavor. 50 calories!

- Black Raspberries are not my fav

Try it with raspberry ice cubes

Sparkling Limon

+ Perfect balance!!! so refreshing! 50 calories

- only 12 fl oz : )

Try it with a squeeze of lemon or orange

Sparkling Mandarin

+ Mandarins are so cute! hint of lemon is tasty! 50 calories!

- aftertaste made me want to take another drink

Try with a orange or lime slice

—

photos my moi

Have you ever just stopped and realized that you’re happy?

It is rare and fleeting to be completely content exactly where you are. This realization will inevitably be interrupted by tiny cracks (thoughts of tomorrow, worry about things past, regrets that have yet to be determined). There will be unexpected calls and harsh realities, stunning sun sets and life altering storms. But sometimes moments align, minutes merge together to create an experience that you want nothing more than to soak up completely. Grasp those intangible seconds before they fade too quickly into memories that will soon be lost forever.

Life’s that way. Bittersweet and always moving, faster still.

I’ve always loved photography and it’s futile attempt to hold on. It’s such a noble cause, actually it’s almost romantic. The constant struggle to pause life in such a tiny, flattened, and scentless form. Pixelated placeholders remembering all the details we want to try harder not to forget. We idealize the results and press delete until the pose is perfect. Then we cover them in glass to ensure they wont shatter, we let them surround us. We dust them off and smile so the distance in between doesn’t seem so far.

We photoshop our reality.
We soft focus our lives.
We escape.

 

I’ve noticed this trend. A weird zombie like stance, arms bent, an opened mouth gaze half obscured by a plastic rectangle and glow. We have become obsessed with our own point of view. We mediate the present by constantly wondering if this is that moment we will want to remember forever. So we capture instead of experience to make sure we can relive what we didn’t really live in the first place.

I’m learning that happiness is health and love and friendship and those things that I can’t hang on to. It is everything. In order to be fully aware we have to be willing to see more than that perfect pose, or shiny glass, or beyond that glow- and into this moment. We have to be unafraid to change and live, faster still, to be conscious of the happiness that already surrounds us, just waiting to be realized.

–

Photos:

Top: random magazine ad (for some sort of whiskey, i think) from my collection remixed by me

Bottom:  photo by The Next Web via Flickr remixed by moi

The first couple years of art school are about relearning how to see. Training your mind not to get in the way of your eyes. Days of observing vases became weeks spent squinting at every detail on a nude model. At first it’s weird to be fully clothed, covered in charcoal, and staring at a naked stranger for hours. It seems like it will be easy to translate what is in front of you on to paper. But, then in the space of a light filled hallway, while the model enjoys a robe it becomes clear you’ve drawn an alien. Not only that but an alien that makes no sense whatsoever. This is the beginning of the struggle to see. Arms get crazy long, legs don’t always connect to hips, skin does weird weird things. Thinking too much about the way we logically know the body works is the best way to ensure the results look nothing like reality. It is confusing and simple. It takes time to learn how to let go of what you think you see and draw what you actually see.

We all know that being fat is dangerous. But, internalizing the word “fat” is also dangerous. I can’t comprehend the impact of growing up with such a label has on identity or the way cruel bullying weaves itself into your being. I can tell you that disgust is obvious on peoples faces. It is easy to feel the constant pressure of an ‘ideal body’, complete with the acute awareness that perfect is not a place where your hips reside.  The truth is my mind has not entirely caught up to being 130 lb lighter. I automatically walk to the plus size section and I’m still figuring out how to accept peoples compliments. I notice guys staring and assume there is something in my teeth. These days, I’m relearning how to see myself without my mind getting in the way.

I have friends who jokingly (or not) call themselves “Fat”. To each their own, but really I don’t get it. Well, my mind gets it but my eyes don’t. Those love handles that help them cling to the term seem like only the latest flaw. Degrading ourselves (even unconsciously) means we will always find something else to punish ourselves for. I have stretch marks and a tummy, I have fat but “fat”does not define me. The 72.5 million people whose bodies are composed of a high amount of fat are more than just “Fat“. We are all works in progress. If we let ourselves stop thinking and just trust our eyes we might just realize that our minds are the only thing keeping us ”fat”.

Bonus!

I came across this video while reading about the impact of fat stigma and bullying. Our unconscious cultural (and increasingly global) fat stigma and weight discrimination is rampant. Weight bias has even greatly impacted medical care. This video is from The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. It is aimed at helping health care professionals understand weight stigma and bias within their community. It does have a junior high health class aesthetic and the acting is funny terrible, but it’s worth watching for the statistics and insight about the reality of medical care for the millions (MILLIONS!) of people with weight issues.

In case you want to skip the acting…

1:57 -- 2:14 : Defining Weight Bias

4:01 -- 4:58 :  Prevalence of Weight Discrimination

6:23 -- 7:08 : Stats on Doctors and Nurses views about obese patients.

7:33 -- 9:21 : The effect of weight bias on a patients health

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZLzHFgE0AQ

***

Photo: Image by Oxymoron via Flickr remixed by me.

Well, it is more accurate to say I heard a murder and saw a dead body. I rarely think about it these days except occasionally when I drive past the scene (that’s the kinda thing that turns a normal parking lot into a “scene” forever thereafter). That morning was sunny, crisp, and full of all the possibilities of spring. What happened was so loud and quick that it didn’t seem possible that it could leave a man in jeans laying dead in a pool of blood. I saw her pull away in a van and I still can’t fathom how you breathe (let alone drive) after taking some one’s life.
She used her turn signal.
An hour later she decided to stop breathing.

People tell me I have amazing stories, that I’ve had a crazy life. Friends say “that would only happen to you” and “OMG tell us another!” The truth is that as I am living these crazy moments I tend to smile (well not that day 2 years ago but yes, at mostly inappropriate times) because I know I am in the middle of a classic. I want to soak in the details. Remember every minute. My experience then becomes ours with subtle details, strategic gestures, and precise pauses. I have also been told I am a psychic (by a psychic*, of course). The psychic told me that I already knew of my abilities but I didn’t believe them or tell anyone.  She said that three things would happen in the 2 weeks that followed that would make it undeniable. They did.

So I *might* be psychic…but I’m definitely a skeptic.

The only problem with my skepticism is that strange things keep happening. They are too numerous to list and even if I did you probably wouldn’t believe me. If I were you I wouldn’t believe me. I get it. Plus, bottom line, while my lottery wins are impressive I have never hit the mega millions jackpot. I’m still single. And I completely did not see that earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster coming. But, I will admit that whatever this strangeness is, it does have perks- like knowing when someone will run a red light or saving someones life. But this ability/instinct (call it what you will) can also be a burden. A constant reminder of all that is out of our control. Knowing something before it happens and then watching it all unfold is completely indescribable- as it should be. It’s like waking up two years later at 8:59am and hearing that gunshot again because your unconscious will not let you forget a date you never knew in the first place.

trust your instinct (mostly)
live great stories (always)
don’t kill people (ever)

–

photo by Si1very via flickr remixed by moi

*note: I don’t have a psychic like on speed dial or something. I was at her garage sale and she was doing readings. See, I always feel obligated to buy something when I rummage through someone else’s stuff- I thought it would be more fun than an aged bar of hotel soap. It was.