Throwin' Down My Heart

One thing that amazes me about myself, in a good way, is my continual ability to forgive. I absolutely cannot harbor resentment. I'm just not capable of it. My broken-heartedness may sometimes take time to mend - but it always does. I love that - because I absolutely abhor the way hatred feels inside of me. It doesn't "fit". and I'm glad for that.

Being in the mood to experience some different music this evening I searched my Netflix account and scrolled to "Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart". Being a fan of Bluegrass, I appreciate the Banjo and this documentary is about Bela Fleck's journey into Africa - incorporating his genius banjo playing with the local music in Uganda, Tanzania and other African countries. Driving home the statement "Music is a universal language".

Each and every time Bela Fleck entered a new country, he was welcomed with excitement and acceptance from the natives. He was greeted with smiles, laughs, affection and a shared understanding of the love and appreciation of music. I started thinking about my heart as a musical instrument and the previous ways in which I have handled joy, sadness, disappointment and intimacy in relationships. In regards to moving forward, sharing again, always so guarded. subdued. restrained. reticent. inhibited.Which in a sense, is how I feel my persona becomes.

After carefully giving my love and heart to a man, for whatever reasons, after a time of totally possessing it, he gives it back, a little more used and bruised than before. I've always been so careful with my heart upon those returns. Taking extra care to protect it longer, hold it closer, not allowing the same "opportunities" to enslave my "precious" heart again. But something about the last 8 months has allowed me to become carefree with it. More accepting of the rejection and loss. The rejection doesn't really feel like rejection anymore. It's become more of an affirmation or realization of knowing what I do or don't want. And realizing that everyone's destination in the end is the same. A journey to find that love and acceptance that isn't subdued and restrained and inhibited.

Bela cried upon parting with the locals, having gained an understanding that sometimes communication, as very important as it may be, isn't always necessary to connect, to mesh and to weave bits of your life into anothers'.

So, for the moment, I'm throwin' it down. My heart.

CHROMATICS I WANT YOUR LOVE VIDEO

I love contrast. Contrast of black on white. Contrast of a deep thrashing drum against the quiet reverberation of a harp. Contrast or a strong mans hand on my own soft flesh. And the contrast of these innocent images as the sultry sounds of the Chromatics play on in the background. I don't know that I prefer the music or the imagery over the other, but I like the way they look together.

I know that my own personality is very contrasting - my political views don't match my religious views - which doesn't match my societal morals or mores.

According to dictionary.com, used as a noun, Contrast means "opposition or juxtaposition of different forms, lines, or colors in a work of art to intensify each element's properties and produce a more dynamic expressiveness." And you the know the Oscar Wilde quote "“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” I think ones life is a work of art - therefore ones life is subjective. We can't be judgmental of each other in this life. It's not our job - to pass judgment on someone else. The only thing we should be passing over to another person is love. I'm open for that - give me your love.

Let's see what I could do with it.

pink martini - hang on little tomato

What happened to the plan?

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now”

Alan Lakein

I don't particularly like this quote. Maybe because I am not a good planner....and it shows - believe me. I don't even know who Alan Lakein is and that bothers me. OK, so I took a moment to Google him. He's an author, and Bill Clinton credits his book to helping him achieve success by writing down all of his goals and then categorizing them by importance and then under each goal writing specific activities for achieving those goals. While that's all well and good for some, and would probably, perhaps, most definitely serve me well, I won't be making any lists and categorizing any activities under any goals. Maybe if I were planning a vacation to Montana and I was going fly fishing and moose hunting I might make a list. I am pretty sure you don't use worms and I am not even sure if moose exist in Montana. So for something like that I would make a list.

But right now my goals are pretty simple. Pay the bills on time. Don't eat sugar. Sleep all night. Don't cry. Focus. Focus. Focus. on the positive. Don't cry. Focus. Self-control. Self-control. Self-control. and Don't cry.

My very first post boasts of having this grand plan in two years - and get this, I even get generous with myself and state "the latter part of the second year", or something like that. Well, today that two year time line has passed and I am not one iota, one idea or even one list closer to achieving that goal. Am I kidding myself achieving? How about starting? Not even starting it. The ideas flourished in my head, I researched how to invoice customers, and read books but when it comes time to apply the intangible to concrete - nothing. I don't know if I got bored, thought it was going to be too much work, lost confidence in my abilities, became creatively blocked or just decided to quit. I am a quitter. I quit everything. It's a bad habit, I started young, I quit Bluebirds, I quit Brownies, I quit softball (although I am sure my teammates were quit thankful for that, I quit tap, I quit piano lessons, I quit band, I quit cheering, I quit nursing school....quit, quit, quit. I quit trying on my marriage(s). One would think after all of that quitting I would tire of revisiting the same outcome of UNsuccess. But I don't. The only thing I haven't quit is quitting.

What's that other quote "Life is what happens when we are making plans?"
That quote I can agree with. Life does happen. But it doesn't just happen to me - it happens to all of us - everyday. I guess those with lists know how to handle Life because everything is written in categories and subcategories that dictate just exactly what one should do when Life appears in front of us.

One of the most recent books I have read is Eckart Tolle's "The Power of Now". Great read. I needed it at the time I was reading it. His words spoke to me personally - specifically in regards to not being concerned with the past, or the future, but to only live here in the now. That can be difficult to do - I analyze everything, everyone, every thought I have...I have to make sense of it; mold it, shape it, color it so it fits perfectly where it is supposed to fit. But the truth is sometimes there is no sense to be made. Accepting that has been the hardest thing for me to understand and then to do. I have come to realize that within the confines my persona, comprised of the environment I grew up in and the way I perceive the world and how I live and love is not like others. Not that I am right and you are wrong. Just that there are differences. Vast amounts of variables that can make something so familiar to me become foreign and unknown.

Henry Miller says "“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.”

I think I would rather grow than be successful.

NASA - Predicting the Weather

NASA - Predicting the Weather: "Predicting the Weather
A United Launch Alliance"

yea, i know months again

Prolificity. It should be a word. The quality or state of being prolific. Is there a person to contact when one feels a word should be added to Webster's? Perhaps if I just randomly begin using it in everyday conversation and request my friends to do the same it may actually *trickle* its way into the english language.

I tend to think of myself as prolific - you know -one who posses abundant inventiveness or productivity. Not inventive in the way I can solve some industrious problem with my spectacular engineering abilities and knowledge, but inventiveness in a MGuyveresque kind of way. Ingenuity? and by productivity I mean working two jobs - raising a family of two teenagers - being in a play - and cleaning gems from every nook and cranny of my home and putting them in every nook and cranny of my garage on a daily basis. No - I REALLY mean it.

It's been an amazing week of Thrift Store and Yard Sale Gems. My garage is overrunning with these gems. Things I find with the intention of placing them somewhere in my home to be revered by guests and family alike. But these things most often end up in piles upon piles of Gems in each and every room of my house. Although last week while "staycationing" in my home I did manage to move all of my gems to the aforementioned garage.

Oh, yeah, the play...thinking of that I really need to continue memorizing my lines - considering opening night is next Saturday.

so i suck. what a procrastinator i am. its been months. months. i could blame numerous things for getting me off track - my busy two-job-work-filled-life, kids, the high holy days (i'm not Jewish but still they have recently impacted my life)...but i wont. truth is i have always been one to grasp hold of something hard and then let it go just as quickly. i start with the best of intention - but thats mostly all it ever succeeds to - intention -and we all know what road is paved with those.
my mind is a spark of one hundred different ideas and thoughts at one time. sometimes so much so i cant even concentrate on one before another one starts to trickle into the crevices of my cerebellum.
so maybe this blog should be just for me and not some grandiose plan to share my bright and thoughtful views on the worlds or the "jackassery" (thanks Robert Arnold) i come across an am inflicted with on a daily basis.
its just gonna be for me to vent about shit. share my thrift store finds. write a poem. share some cool new music \. or just whatever the hell else i feel like doing here.

and no worries, cameron still needs a fat suit.