presence of absence

i spent my evening looking at the super blood moon. and as i was looking at it, i couldn't help but feel small. not small in the sense that i am not important, but small in the sense that some things are so much bigger. 

the last time this kind of eclipse happened was in 1982 and won't happen again until 2033, but even so, hardly anyone in my neighborhood was watching it. i guess some people aren't into it, which is fine, but what a shame for them. and then there are people who come take one photo on their phone and go back inside. 

here is the thing about taking photos like that. are you really going to look at it again? really look at it? no. because it was one second of your life. one second that has no thought. but the picture itself is not important anyway.

i was sitting there staring at this gorgeous moon and people were not out there seeing it. the moon doesn't matter. the experience of being present and sitting and thinking and being mesmerized by something so simplistically beautiful that humans put no effort in to achieve is what matters. 

how often it is that i pass moments like this by. moments in which i can realize that a lot of things i stress about or over-think, DO NOT MATTER because the world is beautiful and i need only have the eyes to see it.

sometimes my eyes are blind. and a lot of times my eyes are presently absent. 

i also thought, some things do in fact not matter in the grandeur scheme of things, but they do matter in the scheme of this moment. more often than not, i worry about plans, and how my plans never work, and how my original plans didn't include the almost-always event of never turning out how i planned, but i still try.

time always goes on, whether or not there is a plan. things will continue to happen even if they happen 18 years apart like this moon. 

maybe there are people out there staring at this same moon who feel the same way, and maybe there aren't. but isn't that nice to think about? 

all from one evening with the moon.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/kerismith/1815099426/in/photostream

^^^

i have a lot on my mind. but it's so full of thoughts that they all kind of cancel each other out so when i try to explain what i'm thinking, my mind becomes blank. as i sit here in my dark room staring at this vibrant screen of light that is probably ruining my eyes and killing my ability to shut off my mind and sleep, all i can think about is sleep. and dreaming i guess. do you ever wish you could control your dreams? sometimes i try to. and do you think dream interpretation is for real? and do you think people that are in your dreams are there for a reason? or is it just that our mind was subconsciously thinking about them? because i have dreams about people i've never met, and people i've barely met.

and still i'm thinking. thinking about this week. thinking about mountains.

oh what are men compared to rocks and mountains?

nothing it would seem. but things are never as they seem.

it has been a while since i've blabbed on here. i didn't feel as if i had anything worth saying. but this week is a fork and maybe if i try and de-tangle the web inside my mind on here, i will get the smallest amount of sense.

so i've been trying to figure out my life, which i have said before, yada yada yada...no one cares, ariel. but literally this week i have opportunities of seeing two completely opposite directions that my life could go. how cray banans is that? i'm not going to say what they are so all my followers (aka all like 1 of you with probably 100% being my family) STOP ASKING. because i don't know what i'm doing 4 SHORE. just test-driving. also, you already know.

but maybe this week i can move a mountain. or probably more like a hill, maybe just an ant hill. just so. even so. movement is movement and making a decision is the first step is it not? so this week, while on a test run for two different life paths, if i am so brave to have an inkling of which decision to do, i will begin to move my own mountain, cutting a new path of my own future. and if it turns out that it was the wrong one to try and move.... well hopefully it was a nice view while it lasted. and if not that either, then i'll have something to smile at while reading my journal 50 years from now.

ahh, the smell of adventure.

how to fertilize a soul

i've decided to make a recipe on how to grow an exuberant soul. i feel as if my growth has been lacking a little bit lately, the activities i have been involving myself in have been slightly soul-sucking.

1. know your soul: or i guess i should say continually strive to get to know yourself because as i mentioned in my previous post, life is constantly changing, therefore so is your soul.

2. treat your soul with kindness: the best advice i ever heard is to treat yourself like you would a child--precious, because it is, be on your own team

3. treat other souls with kindness: kind of self-explanatory

4. engulf your passions: as long as it is good, it will bring you happiness (of course this does not include such things that would book a ticket into prison and/or some other kind of involuntary confinement)

5.  love: whatever--people, animals, books, poetry, music, dance, art, science, grey's anatomy, whatever

obviously i don't know everything, i'm only 23. but life is meant to be beautiful, even with the unfortunate mets of grief. as with most recipes, adjust to fit your taste. suggestions welcome.

"whatever is good for the soul, do that." --anon

cheers.

life is in session

life changes really fast. especially when you don't want it to. you know that quote, i don't know who it's by, but it says something like, "isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different?"

i feel like life for my family has flipped a 180 four times over. not that it's a bad thing, it's just a thing. like lots of other things are just things. and that's the way it is and always will be. but change is a strange thing. it just happens and then suddenly you realize what all is happening and you begin to see that this is your life and everyday will be different and because of that, you are different, and the world is different, which means the people around you are different, or at least the way you see them because you have changed. and your life. and i think it's important to embrace change if that change is a good thing. but isn't it crazy how if you hit pause for just a moment, and look back one year ago, you see such an evolution. sometimes i try and put myself back a year ago to see if i ever would have predicted where i would be now, and i don't think i could have. i knew my life would be different, but not in this way. which makes me think, where will i be one year from now? or two? or ten or thirty-five and onto fifty? and where will the world be? and my family? and my dear little dog taking up half of my bed whilst snoring and twitching. but then you must hit play again; for life waits for no one. oh what a difference a year makes.

my baby sister is a senior in high school. my sister just older than that left for college, in hawaii. rough life. my sister just younger than me passed her one year wedding anniversary and has a runty dog that runs sideways, and my older sister has been married three years and has a rockstar husband. i am still floating in this vortex of life still deciding which new place to stop and settle for awhile. i don't know when all this happened.  

this post should probably be a new years post but why wait? "LIFE IS IN SESSION!" (bless if you know what that's from). besides, like mentioned in previous posts, i am a large percentage abnormal, so why wait for december 31 or january 1 when you can post here and now on september 22 at 1 something in the morning? plus, if i waited until the end of the year, think of all those months of waited anticipation for such nonsensicality (word?) when i could post this now and gift many more absurd and useless brain waves to the internet that enter my head beginning september 22 at 2 something in the morning. it's a public service, really.

so although i have no idea where me or my family will be one year from today, i have some hopes. i hope each day i will be a little more brave, a little more kind, a little less selfish. i hope my family, through all our difficulties, will cling to each other, i hope the world has a little more happiness.

so embrace change, because exciting things are happening. 

borderless

i've posted this before and took it down. but up she goes again. i'm not sure why.


i've been thinking.

i've been coming to a crossroads in my life in whether or not i should choose the smoothest course, steady as the beating drum. thankfully, i don't have to make a decision on marrying kocoum because let's be real, i can't be expected to make all these kinds of decisions at once cause, you know, i mean, that would be too much.

how do you know? how do you ever really know to-be-sure-without-a-doubt-100%-full-on-positive what you should do with your life, in the case that one decision is not better than the other? if multiple things are all good, which do you pick? i know it requires a lot of prayer and faith, but it has been made known to me that you never really know what is right, until you make a decision.

i decided not to take the smoothest course. i decided to see what the dream giver has for me and i am taking the road less traveled by. and i am choosing everything. i cannot possibly comprehend what 'everything' is but maybe it's just an infinite.

for seventeen years of my life i was a ballerina. and oh i love(d) it so. every moment of every day was consumed by the thought of ballet and performing (except for during calculus because i don't have einstein's brain capacity, although we do share the same birthday. so that's information). and what a dream it was when that passion became my career. i consider myself extremely lucky and fortunate to have been able to do what i love for a living. and during college? seriously lucky. but it came to a point when i thought about who i was, i only knew myself as a dancer. i only fit into that tiny category in this big big world and i couldn't bear the thought of one day dying and never knowing the other sides of me.

so i made a choice to no longer stay where i was at. and it was the hardest thing i've ever done. i began to see myself as one of those number paintings, you know, where each section has a number and that number goes with a certain color. i was a giant painting where only the red had been filled in. i am a dancer, and i always will be. i am going to keep dancing, but not at the expense of not filling in other colors.

so what are the other colors?

buckle up, here's where my brain is going to get a bit crazy. so... everybody grows up imagining what they're going to be when they "grow up." whatever that is. people spend years training to be one thing, such as i did. world class chefs, doctors, painters, architects, dancers, musicians, actors, lawyers and generally, for the remainder of their life, they are known as such. everybody finds their way into a category in this world but what i don't understand is why we define ourselves by such.

it's like the world is a control freak. the world is obsessed with being organized and even those of us who don't think we are organized, are, because we try so hard to get into our desired category that gives us that sense of homeostasis. and i'm not just talking about professions, we classify ourselves according to a zillion different things like personality types or looks or whatever. and really what's the point? so we can look at the world and give ourselves a giant thumbs up saying, "congratulations! you're all sorted!"

?

i mean, i understand that it's nice to know where you fit so you can find people with whom you relate, but other than that, it just seems like a way to compare ourselves to other people.

what if i don't want to be known as one thing? what if i want to be a doctor who knows how to dance and acts on the side, can play the cello and my sisters' weddings, writes books on the weekends, spends every other month traveling the world, and devotes an entire day once per week to binge watching grey's anatomy without being hygienically acceptable? and what if i find that i love training horses or grooming dogs or gardening or baking or i am unexpectedly good, or more likely terrible, at talking to complete strangers and i never know? i want to be multiple things, and good at those things. i don't want to be sucky in a jillion things; i want to work hard and constantly be improving on whatever i decide to do. if i am any of the things listed above, i want to be the best in it as i can be.

but then i think, why does the world need to know everything about me? shouldn't it be enough to wholly know myself? it should be, so maybe it's ok if the world only knows one side of me, because at least i know more? if there is more.

i don't want to be one thing in this world. and if i have to be classified, i want it to be within myself so that i may know everything about me and who i am. i don't want to fit into one idealized category. unclassifiable. i want to keep that part of me that i know so well alive and close to my heart, but it's time i get to know the other areas as becomingly as i know the dancer side.

so i guess, get ready, self.

streNG(k)TH

people often talk about being strong in difficult situations. they say, "i can't believe how strong you are" or "i could never do what you do" or that popular quote all over pinterest that says "you never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have." what does that even mean? what is strong? i don't think that there has ever been a tough time that i have gone through where i have felt like, yeah i am so strong right now! it's more like scraping just to get through and survive.

the other day when i was at the gym, there was a man there running around the track. this man was an amputee, with only one leg. as he was running, i could hear him grunting and moaning in what sounded like agony. i'm sure he was in pain, running hurts enough as it is, and he was doing it with a prosthetic. yet he kept going. i watched him go around and around and he just wouldn't quit. he sat down a few times to rest and then got right back up and it blew my mind. i kind of got emotional watching him because his tenacity was unrelenting, my heart ached for him and the pain he must have been feeling. obviously it was his choice to keep going, but i don't know if it was because he thought he was "strong."

i think everybody has strength they cannot see themselves. it's kinda like when you look at yourself in the mirror and you can't really even see your features anymore because you've looked at them a zillion times over. but they are there and they are unique and other people who are not you, can see every single one of them. they admire what we ourselves can't see anymore. maybe the reason we can't see our own strength is because we need other people. it makes sense doesn't it? if we could do everything on our own, why have families and friends? that would be a sucky life. so maybe the people that are in our lives are there because they have the ability to see what we can't see in our own reflections, and because they are there, we get through it.

and i think when other people see our strength, is often when we feel our weakest. have you ever looked back at an experience that was horrible to go through and marvel that you even got through it? like how on earth was i able to muster up all that strength to endure that? and then you look at someone going through their trial and are in awe because they don't stop. we can see them but we can't see ourselves. it's so frustrating that we can't see it because it really is a less-than-desirable feeling to feel like you're lacking and forty-seven steps behind.

human instinct is to survive, but we don't give ourselves enough credit for having the guts and perseverance it takes to do that. we are experts at pointing out how inadequate we are and fail to recognize the capability and strength.

you know, i don't think it's exactly a "good" thing to feel weak sometimes, but i do think in many ways it is a lot more beneficial than feeling strong all the time. it makes you grow in three dimensions rather than two. so maybe that's the point.

 

http://favimages.net/image/79610/