self-expression – Page 131

Creating my space

Today’s first step was to create this vision. It was rather easy to create, really. And I can see it all quite clearly. I am really struggling with what will come next, though, and I don’t know why I’m bothering resisting it. I think the feeling is that it will be difficult to do, and that I will mess it all up somehow. I guess I could just bracket the concerns, and go into it full-heartedly and consciously, with intention. Otherwise, I’ll just keep resisting and getting nothing useful, happy, or good accomplished at all. 😛

I wake in the morning happy, have some tea or hot chocolate, and do some yoga, stretching, and meditation. I dress easily in clothes selected last night. As I check my reflection in the mirror, I am delighted in what I see all around. On the days I want it, I sit down at a large mirror and put on some makeup. Otherwise, I just brush my hair.

I have a work space with a sewing machine, and clothes rack behind it with my current and most recent work hanging. There is an asel in the corner with beautiful and happy painting supplies. An art box is near it, filled with the art supplies I use, and a small arrangement of blank canvases. There is lots of white in the rooms, but a warmth from different home-y pieces around… mostly shades of blue and wood-brown. I have a place to set my laptop on a desk (after pulling it out from a shelf or drawer, where it was put away) to work using it, with a notebook next to it for thoughts and notes. My woven stool sits in the corner for sitting, reading, meditating, with my sheepskin partly atop it. There is a large rug or two on the floor, with a few feather throw pillows around casually. I make bracelets and malas on the floor, and always pick up everything when I finish a session. I have a creative collage happening on one wall – a dream board. I see it and admire it every day, and add to it occasionally, as I find new pieces I want to have be part of it. My work room is a haven of peace, giddy delight, and the creativity of God and Woman.

Sometimes, I sit with tea while music plays on the record player. I do my art – sewing, painting, or making my stone bead art (bracelets and malas, mostly) – and usually have music playing, often on the record player. It sits to the side, with a small set of albums by it.

My bedroom is calm and cozy and inviting. It is very clean-feeling. I spend my time here mostly only after I have recently showered. My essential oils and incense are set up in here. When I get ready for bed, I have a set place to put my dirty clothes, and it is small – just large enough for a load or two of washing, and always slightly empty. I select between two or three beloved shampoos and conditioners when I shower, and I wrap myself in towels that I love when I finish. It is easy to pull out my floss, toothbrush, toothpaste and return them to their easy places. The same with the rubbing alcohol and Q-tips. Sometimes I have another tea after my shower and before brushing my teeth. I brush my hair and meditate, before doing my bedtime reading, all in the light of fairy lights and maybe a standing lamp in the corner with similar light. I pull out my clothes for the next day after I check the expected weather. I fall asleep happily.

In all of this, I did not see my own clothing. It is all put away, except for the outfit I have selected for the day, which is laying out, waiting for me. I have a small section of “Memory Materials” in, I think, my room, for my future partner and/or child/ren to peruse with and without me.

I read, but I didn’t notice any books in the vision I created. (Just about four of them.) I also noticed no movies…

I had to talk with my brother about the book part. He thinks I’ve hit upon something profound about the way I want to live and the relationship I have with books. I have them all documented as “Read” and “Want to read” on GoodReads, anyway, so why do I need to keep a physical record? I’m not 100% convinced that I’d be happy down the road if I didn’t keep a handful of my sought-out books from my youth, but I do believe that I am fine letting even more go than I had ever anticipated… I mean, I already went through them briefly today, just to see how I felt when I looked at them from this new perspective, and pulled out about a sixth of the books… with ease and comfort. So, yeah… This will be an adventure. I am certain of it.

Post-a-day 2018

Missing…

I miss my bed in Japan. My bedroom, especially, is one thing I miss most these days. It was a haven for me. No matter what kind of chaos or boredom lurked in my life, every night, my bedroom awaited me in calm, open, and empty space… in beauty. I shut my doors, and was safe in my retreat from everything else. Only love and blessings were ever allowed into my bedroom. I wasn’t even allowed to walk in it if I hadn’t recently showered. Clean clothes, my ukulele and ukulele music, my nighttime books, and water and tissues were just about all that ever went in there, aside from a clean me and my bed.

My bedroom now is slightly larger, but filled with boxes and stuff… a sentimentality to which I am not so sure I still want to cling. I think I am afraid that I will forget the memories, if I get rid of the objects. I do not, for the most part, want the objects, but the memories and the ways I felt. Without the objects, what will remind me?

Post-a-day 2017

Family and music

I love my family. And I miss getting to spend time with them. I had somewhat forgotten the existence of one of my cousins, because I hadn’t actually seen him in so long. I knew he existed, of course, but it was as though I had accepted that it wasn’t ever an option to see him. And so, it was a wonderful surprise – though I knew in my head that he would be here ahead of time – actually seeing him and spending time with him tonight.

One of the things I love about spending time with him is his musical gift. He can be given any instrument, and, whether he has ever played it before or not, can be playing lovely music on it within a maximum of a few minutes. We always end up humming and whistling and singing beautiful music together, whether we have an instrument or not (though we often have at least a guitar).

Tonight was no different. He pulled out one of my favorite songs, and early on in the visit. Oddly enough, I hadn’t listened to or sung/played the song in years, and so it was a fun surprise. I had to look up the words, because it had been so long, but it was too good of a song not to get all the words right (“White Man” by Michael Gungor Band).

As he fiddled around on the guitar, my mom and I sat with him on the porch, listening to him play, and working on our puzzle/mystery boxes we were creating for his brother’s wedding reception this weekend. The kind of music he was playing reminded me of why I ever wanted to learn to play guitar in the first place. I want to play John Denver and Jim Croce music, and other things similar in style. It has always been my long-term, distant future goal, since it really isn’t the easiest music, but there are plenty of things I can learn as stepping stones (and I have learned a good bit of them). I just don’t play when I don’t have the company of someone else’s music.

When I am with my cousin, we almost always take the time to sit down and teach me something new and, of course, beautiful to play. Now that we are back living in the same country, we might actually be able to set up semi-regular music meet-ups for the two of us. We’ll see.

Gosh, I love my cousin.

Post-a-day 2017

My real voice

In college, I spent a summer studying in Germany. It was a language school setup, filled with foreigners, but in such a small town that everyone knew that we were studying German, and so everyone always spoke to us all in German. I had already studied abroad a few times before this adventure, and I had learned firsthand about what works and what doesn’t work, in terms of language immersion. I was dedicated to learning German, and so I made sure that I only spoke in German with others, even if they spoke to me in English. This made friendships hard among the people in my program’s group, since they all used English together; I came across a bit snobby, but I was just really committed to learning German.

I made friends with other foreigners rather easily, though, and especially ones in higher levels of German, which was even better for me. My German was improving immensely. But this led to a unique situation one day.

One day, near the end of either my time at the school or my friend Paul’s time there (he’s British), I found myself faced with a desperate Paul, actually begging me to speak English. Why?! was my repeated question to his pleas.

“Because I want to hear what you sound like!”

I don’t know if he was pleased or not by how I sound in English, but I spoke a little for him. And it was way weird, using English with him, despite the fact that I’d heard him speak English loads, and that it’s our common native language. I had just never used it with him.

And then this brought up a unique and interesting sentiment. He wanted to hear me, and that meant speaking English. I can guess that my native tongue was the one in which Paul believed my identity to lie. I know that it felt like I was setting aside a sort of mask when I switched to English with him. I even felt a little called-out… as though I had been hiding somehow, and it had been behind German. The real me (I) lay in English, in the English part of me.

Yet, years later, here I am, missing the parts of me that belong to these different languages in which I have lived. A part of me, true me (I), exists only on German, and others in French, in Spanish, and in Japanese. So much so that the real me (I) is this whole combination of languages – I feel a huge emptiness and feel not myself when I am using only English in my daily life. I listen to Spanish-speaking radio when I’m in Houston, mostly because I don’t get to use Spanish often enough. I read every night in French, and trade off an English book for a German one at times for my evening reading, too. I regularly pull out a Spanish book to read, or my German audiobooks. And I have noticed that I have been searching for a tolerably satisfying way to have Japanese in my near-daily life, too. (For now, it has just been the occasional music, and a perpetual repeat of a certain song being stuck in my head.) When I don’t have them all, it is as though a part of me is missing, and suddenly getting to speak with someone in them, almost reminds me of that mask I was setting aside in Germany with Paul… like I am again setting aside some mask I have been wearing.

Perhaps it is now a mask of monolingualism, pretending that I only speak English, while I long for the world to talk to me in several languages, all the time.

Anyway… I’m exhausted. And I miss Paul. He was studying opera, and was a really great guy. I wonder if he’s been really successful with opera these past several years. Maybe I can go see him perform one day. That would be awesome. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

Sometimes…

Sometimes, things fall apart, free from control or attempts to do anything else with them.

Sometimes, things come together, free from control or attempts to do anything else with them.

And sometimes, the difference between the former and the latter is that action was desperate and limited in the former, but honest and free in the latter.

Life sure is beautiful, ain’t it? 😉

Post-a-day 2017

An Evening of Moon River, and more

Moon River, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you’re going I’m going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There’s such a lot of world to see.
We’re after the same rainbow’s end–
waiting ’round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

So go the lyrics to the beautiful song that is sung by Audrey Hepburn in the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, and which was written for the occasion. They have been in my mind all night tonight. I likely still will be singing them and humming the song tomorrow, and possibly the next several days or weeks, too, imagining Miss Holly Golightly sitting on her windowsill in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, strumming her small guitar, singing the song while her hair dries in a towel on her head. That was her one genuine moment, where there were no airs put on and no facades blocking the view; dreamy longing and total honesty were there, coming to life in her music.

Why, you ask, is all of this on my mind? Well, because of just that. My cousin makes jewelry from guitar strings. (I do a little, too, but not to the same degree.) Since that particular scene had Holly being simple and honest, showing her core, she loved the scene. Since it included Holly’s playing the guitar, it became relevant to my cousin’s jewelry. You see, this neat art gallery in Galveston decided to do an “All About Audrey” exhibition, in which all of the selected pieces were submitted by various individuals in the community. The only requirements were that the art be vegan and be somehow about Audrey Hepburn. So, my cousin used guitar strings and fake pearls to construct her own version of the famous “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” necklace (with the aforementioned information taking part in creating the idea).

Tonight, the art show had its opening, and my cousin’s piece was part of the show. So, my mom and I attended the opening. The opening happened to be a costume party, with the theme being ‘your favorite Audrey’. I genuinely liked the honesty moment in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, and the fact that it directly related to the reason we were going – to support my cousin’s guitar string jewelry inspired by that scene – made it an easy preference for my attire for the event.

And so, I put together the clothes, had my mom help me with a white hand towel on my head (I had to take out the seams to make it long enough to tie correctly.), and looked up “Moon River” chords. I only have a full-sized guitar with me, so I figured my ukulele would do well for the completion of the outfit. Since I was going to be carrying around my uke, dressed as a character who sings an incredibly famous song, I figured it only fair that I make an effort to learn to play the song myself.

And it was a good thing I did! Not only was I requested to play, but I was asked to play three times. The third time was the coolest, because the second time had already been a sort of sing-a-long for a lot of the people at the gallery, but the third was everyone. I was on my way out of the gallery, heading to dinner with my family who had been in attendance, when a lady at a table complimented my outfit and asked me to play. The man at the table asked if I could play, because, of I could play, he could sing. And so I started up playing, singing with him, only to be joined after only a few seconds by the entire gallery. It was so beautiful, it was almost spooky. People had all different reasons for being there tonight, but we all shared the experience of true bliss and community as we sang together tonight. Reasonably fitting end to the week that included International Peace Day (Thursday), I think.

There are two other fun aspects to this. The first is that we the went to dinner, all of us dressed in our various outfits. Most everyone looked to be in normal-ish attire for our current life and times, and it was even somewhat high on the classy side, and all black and white. My mother, however, was in a genuine formal 60s dress that is just about the color of Tiffany’s boxes, and is floor length, polyester, and very 60s. I was in jeans and a sweatshirt, and had a towel on my head. Just imagine seeing our party at a casual restaurant – what on Earth would you think?

The second fun aspect is that this isn’t the first time we’ve done something like this. For the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, we attended a tea and luncheon that was tied to the Museum of Fine Arts’ temporary exhibit on the Titanic. The idea was to experience tea like back in the day at an actual teahouse in town, and then gonover to the exhibit. We did exactly that, but dressed in period-appropriate attire. Aside from the servers at the teahouse, we were the only ones dressed up. At the museum, someone asked to sketch me (and did), people took pictures of us, and we had several inquiries about whether we weren’t part of the exhibit. It was a grand old time, and felt somehow totally normal to me. I guess that’s just how we roll in my family. Cool, huh? 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

a place in our world

Sometimes I wonder about whether there really will be a place for me in our modern, developing world. There so many things that are becoming commonplace that go against so much of who I am. From the simplest tiny things to morals to lifestyle to core beliefs and thinking patterns, I notice a difference between so much of how the society functions around me and what is in me, myself. I realize that, somehow, I will have a place in the world, but I wonder if it is in the part of the world I already know, or if I will find myself in an entirely different society, somewhere else in the world… not in what I consider my home.

I just wonder…

Post-a-day 2017

Is this friends talking?

I found myself wondering the other day about friends, and whether the ease of conversation has a role to play in whether a friendship will develop. I was with someone whom I had previously considered a friend, when I began thinking about it all. We had trouble spending time together easily. That sounds odd, but I mean it. We were fine spending time with one another – there was no specific issue, per se, that arose. It just wasn’t an easy hangout.

You know the friends with whom you never seem to lack a topic for discussion? You can go on and on together, covering who knows what topics, whether you last saw one another years ago or a matter of mere minutes ago. It’s just easy. That’s the easy that I mean. We were okay spending time together, but we weren’t having an easy time-spending together – we were just together.

I even found myself noticing that I was looking forward to being done spending time with the friend. (I suppose that this was the point at which I began truly wondering if we were actual friends, or just acquaintances.) I considered what I had next on the agenda, and noticed how excited I got about spending time with the next person on my schedule. I knew instantly that she and I would never run out of discussion. Sure, we could potentially come up to some quiet times, but they wouldn’t be uncomfortable, and they would be followed soon enough by more excited conversation. This friend is a particularly happy one, so the conversations are usually quite excited, however, the point was not about the exciting conversation, but rather the fact that we never had to search for topics of conversation – it always just flowed. As I considered this, I had the thought that that was what is present in friendships. That ease of conversation is necessarily part of a friendship.

I also noticed, again, that the current friend and I did not have this. It felt as though we didn’t have enough in our lives that was even somewhat on the same path, and so we didn’t have much to discuss. It isn’t even about commonalities so much – a baseball lover and baseball hater could always talk about and argue over baseball – as it is about being aligned somehow. And we really just aren’t aligned. I had already noticed that by how little I related to things this friend would say, and how I often felt almost offended by certain ideas and ways of thinking that this friend expressed and presented. And so I saw that we really are more of acquaintances than friends… and, what’s more, I rather feel as though I don’t much want to become friends. I guess we’ll see how that goes in a few years…

(See, I got all distracted in that, I forgot the second half of this all!)

In contrast to that, I spent time with someone tonight who had been a childhood friend. Though we had bits here and there regarding catching up on things, most of our conversation was not that. It was about all sorts of things. Naturally, I found myself in the middle of it all, specifically remembering my thoughts from the other day about ease and flow of conversation for friends. It took almost no effort to talk. We always had something to discuss. The conversation space felt open and safe. It was just easy.

It was so easy, in fact, I got blisters from walking so much in my sandals. I planned for a 30-minute walk, with a maximum of 45 minutes. Four hours later, and after a call from my mother (I’m living with her currently) to tell me to come home and go to bed, since I have to be up early tomorrow morning, I finally found myself heading home. We walked and talked and sat and talked, and then walked and talked some more before sitting and talking even more. Like I mentioned, it was just easy. And that is how I feel talking with a friend goes. This is not to say that acquaintances can’t have that – we are currently acquaintances, I believe. It is simply that friends do have it.

The people whom I truly love, they and I have that ease every time we are together (be it physically or digitally together).

Post-a-day 2017

Asia? Really? Really

Who would have thought that I would spend a year of my life living in Asia? I never even had any real desire to go to Asia, until I met my circus acrobat friends, who are from China. But the desire that developed out of those friendships was merely a cultural trade among friends – I had shared it of my home with them, and now they wanted to give the same to me. In essence, I want to go to China to be with my friends, not because I am specifically aiming to see China. Nothing against China, of course – I just have never had a real desire to see it.

On that note, – let’s roll with the thoughts here – I feel as though I have a rather ability to distinguish between my real desires and my that-would-be-cool desires. I explain. When I have what I am currently calling a “real desire”, it is something that I intend to pursue. With general desires, they are things that would be nice to pursue, but I have no deeper intentions to pursue them. These are, of course, both to varying degrees.

Being a multi-millionaire would be amazing. I desire it. I truly do. However, it is not something I intend to pursue, as much as I may wish to attain it. It is a general desire for me. Returning to German-speaking Europe for Christmas markets is a “real desire”, as I am calling them (Can you tell that I don’t much like my current terminology?). No, I will not do it this year, most likely, and probably not next year either. However, it is in my thoughts, and I intend to do it at some point.

This is where the varying degrees comes in for distinguishing. This is one of my middle-range real desires. Yes, I want to do it, and yes, I believe I will do it. No, I am not in a hurry to do it. Having a frozen margarita in Texas is more of an immediate real desire. I will not wait for this one to come up somewhat conveniently, and then take action, or casually plan for it in my some time soon future. My mother is picking me up at the airport when I arrive home to Houston, and she has known for months that I want to go have margaritas the day I arrive. We are getting margaritas within hours of my arrival to Texas, and are only taking that long, because I want it fresh, customs and immigration and baggage take time, and the airport is a ways away from good margaritas. Essentially, I am pursuing this desire as soon as it is possible for it to be fulfilled.

One other example, just for clarity (or to confuse you more, if this all doesn’t make sense to you), could be in my desire to bungee jump off a bridge that is over water. Something a long time ago gave me the desire, but it was more of an unreal desire for me. I didn’t expect my life to have it ever be an option. However, once I went small-scale bungee jumping with friends, it began to shift to a real desire. I was afraid to pursue it, so I left it in the gray area, ready to be pursued, should the opportunity arise. Now that I have lived somewhere that offers such a thing, – Ibaraki, Japan – I see myself pursuing it. I notice that it is not huge in my list of desires, but it is a real one. The opportunity presented itself two weeks ago, and I made arrangements to go jump. Of course, timing was such that I got dreadfully sick the day beforehand, and so rescheduled with my friend. I am now scheduled to go with a different friend next week. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be okay. This is a real desire that I have, but it is so much on a non-time limit that I am okay not doing it now – I know I will get around to it at some point, so I don’t have to hassle myself extremely to make it work at this one place. That being said, I really do want to handle it all now, and bungee off my bridge in Japan, partly because it’s one less thing for me to think about in the future, and partly because it makes for a fun story. And I used the word “handle,” not because I dislike the situation, but because a lot of things here recently have kind of been a real hassle for me, and so I tend to think more in terms of ‘managing’ things in life for the next two weeks, as opposed to just ‘living’ life and ‘creating’ things, and all that jazz.
Anyway, that was a fun tangent for me. I could have explained it loads better, but I didn’t. I hope that’s okay for now. I’m sitting on a train to go up to my final festival in Japan, and I really need to pee, but don’t want to bother using what might be a gross train toilet (notice that I have no concern for leaving my belongings at my seat – score one big one for Japan on this point), when I know I can make it all the way to the station. So, I have written this to help me pass the time without wandering thoughts on the discomfort of a filling bladder (the realness of the discomfort can be evidenced by the fact that my shorts haven’t been buttoned for close to an hour already). I dislike writing on my phone, and for more than one reason (physical slowness of thumb typing and high error rate are two of the main ones). Therefore, I’ll end with this:

I never expected to end up living in Asia, for any period of time. I especially did not expect it to be for longer than I had lived in any country other than my own. I like Europe. I would have expected my doing a year there long before I even visited Asia. But here I am, one year through (and very through, I do believe) life in Asia. It has turned out that Japan is not a very good place for me to live my life, but that I really do appreciate Asia. I actually have real desire to return to Asia, and to experience more of it. Japan, Korea, and Singapore have only gotten me started, it seems.

In a way, it is stressful, because there are now even more places I want to visit. However, I will just roll with what life offers to me, and aim for returning for at least one visit for a start, hopefully within the next few years. I’d say that this is a middle-range real desire, similar to, and likely above the Christmas Market one. It’ll happen, I believe, as I have full intentions for it to happen. It’s a real desire I have. Life does what it does, though, so we’ll just have to see. For now, I’m at the end of the train line in the next minute or three, so I’ll go wrangle my baggage – giving away loads of nut butters, smoothie boosters, and spices, as well as my Magic Bullet (c) (Is that right?) – and head for my friend who is meeting me at the station. Then I’ll use a bathroom either there or at her nearby home. And then we’ll enjoy fireworks and a festival, possibly in the rain. Whatever the case, we will enjoy it, which is a main part of what called to mind my thoughts on having lived here in the first place.

Post-a-day 2017

Oxymorons and Dichotomies of clothes

I simultaneously want to live a simplistic, minimalistic-esque life, and one in a huge house, with lots of awesome things in it.

How do I go about making that happen?

Well, I don’t know. However, I have a feeling that my best friend would simply say that I’ll find a way somehow – I always seem to do so with whatever comes up in life. Don’t know how? Well, I figure it out anyway, and make it happen. So she claims, and I mostly agree with her.

Perhaps this is a perfect time to apply this thinking to my current state of affairs (i.e. Minimal money, needing insurance for the first time when I move to the US next month, needing a place to live, needing to find good work for after my temporary position ends around the end of September, and how to get rid of so much stuff that I know I have waiting for me in a packed room at my mom’s house.). Yes, I think it is.

Post-a-day 2017