Keeping it simple...

I remember few things from my young life, but one I do remember was something my father once said. He was speaking of a guy my sister had been dating. He told me that the guy was never to blame for anything in his life. He lost this job because of that person, and couldn't get that job because of this person. He simply wasn't happy in his life, and he could tell you exactly who was to blame for it. But never once did his own name pass his lips. It was in the recent recollection of this moment that I realized that we each create our own worlds. In this particular person's world, life was out to get him. And so, everyone else was out to get him too. He was so attached to this world he'd inhabited for so long that when someone, my sister in this case, tried to bring love into it, he pushed her away. She just didn't fit into his world of negativity. Conversely, Dave Pelzer, whose books I am currently re-reading in preparation for seeing him speak next week, grew up in a world of hateful abuse and neglect. Despite this, he forgave his parents, right then and there, and chose to live in a place of love and hope. He blamed no one, but instead moved forward and allowed himself happiness.

Happiness, I've decided, is a decision. I can choose whether to look at my fellow man as a threat or a help. I can choose to be honest, which always ends up being the easiest way in the long run, as I've learned from my husband, or to tell lies and make excuses that only serve to complicate my life. I can choose to be patient by enjoying watching others as I wait in line, or taking a moment to breath in traffic, instead of tapping my foot, rolling my eyes, and constantly existing in the next ten minutes in my mind. I can choose to see the good things about our country, instead of feeding into the end-of-the-world scenarios that whirl around me. I can choose to have faith that it is all going to be okay. And as long as I choose it, it is. I've found that life is that simple.


Last night, my husband and his friends put on a fundraiser for Haiti. If you ever start to think that people are any less than helpful and supportive, just stop. Soooo many people jumped on board with the project, donating several thousands of dollars of their merchandise and time. It was really an amazing thing to see.

The clown pictured above is singer/songwriter Matt Farr, an amazingly talented guy with an amazingly talented drummer. Check him out at mattfarr.com!

Putting a stop to Stockholm Syndrome...

Lately there have been a number of kidnapping cases in which the victims were held captive for years. Perhaps the most intriguing question these cases bring to light is why didn't they just leave? I couldn't help but think the same naive question as I read A Child Called "It" today, the tale of a severely abused boy who suffered at the hands of his own mother. But it's such a stupid question, I thought, as I realized how strong a hold people have over each other in small, day-to-day situations. It's such a common, yet subtle, thing that we don't even notice that we are under similar conditions of Stockholm Syndrome everyday.

I thought about the movie The Devil Wears Prada, that I watched the other night. Although slightly overexaggerated, how many of us remain in jobs where we know we are being used and manipulated? I know I have- several times. Why don't we just leave? Why don't we stand up for ourselves? We have our friends backing us, our husbands or wives, but still we stay. I thought about the movie Erin Brockovich, that I watched last night. Even though the residents knew they had been purposely misled about being poisoned by the local electric company, some remained afraid to take legal action. They were scared to stand up and accuse their offenders. The audio book I am currently listening to, Lucky, is a story about a young girl's rape. In it, she talks of two separate chances she had to get away from her attacker, but she didn't. Instead, she stayed and told him what he wanted to hear, in hopes that he would allow her to leave. In A Child Called "It", though he has several chances to tell someone or to run away, he doesn't. He stays. He keeps his mother's secret. Why? Is it the theory of learned helplessness- the idea that a dog who is given a lever that stops an electric shock from occurring is more likely to recover quickly than a dog whose lever has no effect on the shock's duration? When we have no control over the source of negativity, we give up, we become depressed. Even when our lever begins to work, we don't even try. We continue to say what others want to hear in order to gain favor. We don't leave; we don't run away. We voluntarily remain under the grip of negativity.

I think it's an important thing to check in periodically and make sure that all of the relationships in our lives are positive. Relationships with people, with work, with ourselves. Because what you may think of as a strong relationship may just be one tied by the binds of learned helplessness.


So, one thing I am trying to work on lately is architecture photography. I had never tried it before but have seen some really rad photos that bring boring buildings to life with light, angles, and pattern. So, here is one of my early attempts. I shot this in Orlando before the Ben Folds concert last week!

Connecting the dots...

I was working with a student today, discussing the fighter jets pictured in the library book he was reading. As the book was a little over his head in level, he chose instead to make up stories about them, pointing out the aircraft that belonged to the "bad guys" and those that belonged to the "good guys"- the Americans, he called them. This brought to mind a conversation I recently had with a friend about marriage and how no one teaches you all of the multitudes of facets of levels that are affected by such an institution. Suddenly, one day you just realize that there is no right and wrong.

We are so polarized in our thinking as children. If one thing is good, then the opposite of it must be bad. And that is all. There are no other options than those two, end of story. But that's the type of thing that has gotten us into trouble as adults. Last week I read an amazing story, Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands, set in the center of my home state of Florida in the 1950s (the one time period I would have been better served to have been born in). The book is a fictionalized account of actual KKK events, and, reading it, I kept thinking that it didn't feel much different from present day. Because it is the polarized thinking that the KKK fed on that runs through much of the world we now live in. Luckily, we have civil rights legislation in place now that helps prevent many of the same tragedies from taking place; but law, unfortunately, does not hold jurisdiction over level of thinking.

I asked myself why this thinking continues after a history of such blatantly heinous acts lays our ignorance bare. We may not discuss it out loud, but we can't deny it. Blacks, Jews, Arabs, gays- I'm sure most can attest to the dangers of polarized thought. So, why this thinking? Is our desire to be right so strong that it gives us reason to break the very covenants that we defend? Apparently so. So, I asked myself, why this need to be right? If fear and love are truly the only two emotions, it must surely be fear. Fear of something bad, or a fear that we ourselves are bad? Ever notice how the thing people think is bad is always what they themselves are not? No black person is against blacks. No Jew hates Jews. Perhaps determining that something "opposite" of you is innately "bad" is the guaranteed way to assure that you are right, that you are worthy. Of what, it doesn't matter.

I took this good/bad thinking one step further by examining the polarization of political parties. We have essentially organized a country of 308 million people into two clean, mutually-exclusive groups. How tidy. But only one of these parties is allowed the most powerful chair in the country at a time. Are we therefore setting ourselves up to hate? To conflict? With politics it is clear cut. With sexual orientation, it is pretty distinct. But with race? How did a world of hundreds of ethnicities get boiled down to white and non-white?

Looking too closely at a Seurat painting (you know the one from Ferris Bueller), all you'd see is a mess of individual dots of color. But when you look at it from afar, all those individual dots come together to make a beautiful picture. It may be a cheesy analogy, but I think it's a great reminder for us not to look too closely at life. We may not be able to see it, but we are all connected in a bigger, more beautiful way.


This past weekend I went parkin' in Cental Florida, the very region I had just read about. Visiting Payne's Prairie and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Parks reminded me of the power of Florida. The overwhelming smell of flowers, the warmth of the March sun on your skin, the sound of the heavy wind in the tops of the trees overhead, and the Spanish moss that hangs over the water are just part of her allure that makes me proud to have grown up among her branches.

Finding my element...

I finally finished my last audio book and whilst I wait for my next one to arrive I decided to listen to an old favorite as I drove to my parent's house today. Some people more musically sophisticated than I may make fun, but I find true art in pop culture. And, I think that Come on Over by Shania Twain is a really musically rounded album. The thing I like most about it is that, unlike the recent work of almost all other country artists, it incorporates rock music alongside traditional country elements, instead of allowing them to take over. She blends the electric guitar riffs right in with the fiddle. It's awesome. The important thing is that country is a feeling more than anything else. And, when all of the signature elements of country music are taken away, that feeling is what is missing.

So it goes with life. Lately I have been more than busy. Busy is just a cute term for someone who works a lot. Truly busy is when you don't have a single moment to yourself. Lately, that is how my life has been, hence the lack of posts lately. I have my two jobs that maintain, and my two that sustain. My tutoring work and hotel job maintain me by paying the bills. But it is my art work- photography and writing- that sustain me. But I am learning that when I schedule every possible waking moment with one of these four things, I throw myself way off kilter. I lose that feeling that is the signature element of me. It's good to bring in new things every once in a while, but you gotta keep that one underlying element in place or it all falls apart.

So now the trick is finding out what the underlying element is. At first I thought working on my art was my way of holding onto myself. But even though I'm steadily increasing the time I devote to my art, I still was feeling something missing. Now I'm thinking it might be quiet alone time. One of the six books I am currently reading, The Artist's Way, is a 12 week course on finding your creativity. One of the assignments is to find one chunk of time each week to spend with yourself, doing something you enjoy. Last week I didn't have time for it. The result was breakdown. So my goal is to be more like Shania, add the electric guitar but keep the fiddle.

Lifting myself up...

Today I made a conscious effort to recognize every single time I thought someone was mad at me. Turns out it's pretty often, and for pretty stupid things, ie not returning my texts quickly, not looking up at me, sometimes for no reason at all. All this time I thought I had been on my way to getting over caring what other people thought. Not even close.

My husband has started watching The West Wing from Season One onward, and I caught an episode with him the other night. I found it extremely cool when President Sheen said in an address that he had trouble backing legislation that assumes criminality. I can't remember what this was in reference to, but he was basically saying that it is not wise to expect people to act negatively, and thus, to prepare for it preemptively. Unfortunately we do this everyday. But today, after realizing that maybe, just maybe, not everyone is against me and hates me, I felt better. It's quite a change to live in a world that supports you instead of one that is constantly trying to tear you down. For instance, I took a day off this week to celebrate my anniversary. In my head, all my students' parents hated me for rescheduling their children so that I could go on vacation. But when I thought back on it today, they all wished me a happy trip. Likewise, I am currently putting together some submissions for a photography contest, and you wouldn't believe how many people have chipped in and offered to help. With no benefit to themselves, no less. What an idea that people innately want to help you. I started to picture myself like a kid in a baseball uniform on top of the world's shoulders. Maybe people really do want to lift people up. It's easy to get mired down in the poopooheads of the world and assume that everyone is out to get you. But what a better world to live in where people actually want to help people, even total strangers, and in ever more meaningful ways than donating money.

It reminded me of the third time I went to see The Lovely Bones this past week with a friend. Afterward, we were discussing the movie, and he mentioned how he had gathered from the imagery that Heaven, or bliss, was depicted as the afterlife, and Hell, or misery, our current life. But, to me, it seemed that both can be both. It's truly a matter of what you make of it. What you dwell on is where you dwell. So if you dwell on the poopooheads of the world, you will live in a world of shit. If you dwell on the openness and giving of the world, you will live in a higher world, lifted up on the shoulders of humanity.



There is one line in The Lovely Bones that just gets me every time. It is actually the basis for the opening scene in the movie version. It is spoken by the main character's father in response to her crying for the plastic penguin who lives inside her snow globe. She is five at the time, and worries that he is all alone in there. But, her father reassures her that he is fine. "He's trapped in a perfect world," he says. This line kept echoing in my head during my brief jaunt in the snowy mountains of North Carolina this week. Being surrounded by snow and peace, I definitely felt like the penguin.