Wednesday, April 24

Loving Anais

Still reading the wonderful Diary of Anais Nin. As such, here are my favorite quotes for the 2nd ...eighth? of the book! These selections aren't so much inspiring as they are beautiful writing (to me).

On a side note; I believe this is post #200!!!!! 
I am excite.
 
From, The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 1. Pages 47-105

"I was upset as a child to discover that we only had one life."

"[She has] increased the dose of love as the poor addict increases his dose of drugs."

"...they grappled body to body, breath to breath, tongue against tongue, as if to enclose, enmesh, imprison once and forever..."

"I could not life any longer in an empty world. I must have much to love, much to hate, much to grapple with."

"Again and again I return to poetry."

"Anger incites him: fuels him. Anger poisons me."

"...[she] stopped them an angry way which revealed her love of me. As i f I were sacred."

"To destroy is easy."

"I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation."

"He wills the whole world to fire and floods..."

"Today I feel my past like an unbearable weight..."

"To me the truth is something which cannot be told in a few words... those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning."

"I could already see how contagious a full life can be."

"I keep a kind of shell around me, because I want to be loved."

"...so I cover all this up with understanding, wisdom, interest in others, with my mind's agility, with my writing... I cover the woman up, to reveal only the artist, the confessor..."

"I want my Dionysian life, drunkenness and passion and chaos; and yet here I am, sitting at a kitchen table and working..."

"For this is the moment when I relive my life in terms of a dream, a myth, an endless story."

"I have constructed a style, a manner, affable, gay, charming, and within this I am hidden."

"He gets drunk on words."

"The old pattern of my life is shattered."

 "To be unhappy is not a sign of weakness"

"I have never seen anyone so withered from within, so dead in life."

"...an initial shock has shattered my wholeness, that I am like a shattered mirror. Each piece has gone off and developed a life."

"...writing, for me, is an expanded world, a limitless world, containing all."

"Her love was brave and virile."

"The room feels heavy and deeply anchored in the earth."

"Enter this laboratory of the soul where incidents are refracted into a diary, dissected to prove that everyone of us carries a deforming mirror where he sees himself too small or too large, too fat or too thin... Enter here where one discovers that destiny can be directed... Once the deforming mirror is smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness; there is a possibility of joy."

Monday, April 22

Retail Therapy :: Starry Night

Starry Night





Was having a bad day last week; said yes to a job I really didn't feel like I could handle.
So what do I do?
$55 of retail therapy (please don't think i'm a shopper; i really couldn't afford this) on Love Culture.
This outfit (sans the jewelry, which I already own) will be here Wednesday. 
I
cannot
wait.
It will be on my body Thursday morning,
and you will have to pry this shit off of me come the weekend.

Saturday, April 20

Ze Inspiration

I don't think I've ever posted this before, so it's important for me to get it done.
Everyone creative, everyone who wants life and love and fun (and success), should see this.

Invocation
by Ze Frank


Thursday, April 18

Things I Love Thursday :: Miss Mena

Things I Love Thursday

A theme this week!!! ::

Maria Mena






The sound quality on these videos isn't great; it's like they just used the cd recordings and played them over the video, instead of recording for the video. But still. 



While not my favorite Maria Mena songs, these are some of the prettiest (with videos).




And finally, to pick you up when you're down...



Tuesday, April 16

Pick a Page, Any Page.



Despite my general avoidance of putting information about myself on the web, I don't think I've ever hidden that I live in Greensboro. I like it here. It's a big city and (most of) my favorite things are here. The beau and I used to argue all the time about food.
What should we eat. What should we [read I] cook. Where should we go. Blah blah blah.
So before our last move, I started a new food book.

Simple, adorable Tokidoki journal on the outside...
Unlike my Bento Book of Shadows (have I ever even talked about that?) this one was simply full of Meal Lists (my version of a recipe, because I don't actually read recipes) and photos of food ideas and food favorites in the front, and information about local restaurants (and food trucks) in the back.

And this restaurant list has gotten HUGE.
Up to 33 pages so far, two places on each page-- most we've been to, many we've not-- with Name, Hours, Food Type, Price Range, Location, and any particular specials on each block, with two empty squares under each, for checking off. Once we've been to a restaurant twice, we can't go there again until we visit more of the others. If we go to a new place and like it enough, we can give it a third check box.
 So far this has happened with Slices and Dames.

This is particularly useful for quite a few reasons.

1) When people come over.
My family are terrible at just saying "I want this". Instead, they ask me what I want, and since I live here I must know what all is here, even though they visit all the time and know all my favorite restaurants, and I'm the one who LIVES HERE so it should be them who picks, cause they live in a shitty town without all this cool food.
*deep breath*
So now I just hand them this action-packed little thing and they flip through it until they have come to a decision.

2) When we [I] don't want to cook but we don't know what we want.
This leaves us with two cool options with the book. a- flip through it until we've found something that sounds good, or we haven't had. b- open the book to a random page and visit one of the places on said page, whether it's the first one, a random one, whatever sounds best, or wherever we haven't been before.
No more arguments about who chooses what we should eat!
And because this also has new and old home-cooked ideas, when I want Him to pick a meal, I can just hand it to him and tell him to pick something from what's inside.

See? Win!

The damned restaurant list/guide is so effing comprehensive that I want to publish the damned thing and sell it on the streets!
...delicious food ideas on the inside!
"Don't know what's for dinner??? Pick a page! Any page! Enjoy the food of the city you live in! Five dollars a book! Fifty pages of Greensboro food wonder!"

Of course, there's not all the restaurants in G'boro in there. Use fricking UrbanSpoon for that crap. Here you will find Brazilian Food, Italian, African, Sushi, Taquerias, Food Trucks, Thai, Banh Mi, and Pizza joints, but very, VERY few chain restaurants and fast food.
This is (mostly) the good stuff.

Thursday, April 11

Emptiness and Nin

I don't have anything clever to say today. I am sorry.
When you're in a good place, emotionally/psychologically, you forget how bad things are when you're not. You forget the empty feeling in your head that grows into a gnawing discontent, then a deep, aching misery. You forget how your soul just doesn't seem to accept joy anymore. Every possible pleasant or useful activity is more work than it's worth, because afterwards you won't feel any better. 
This, too, shall pass.
Right?
I have miles to go before I sleep.


I have, however, restarted the Diary of Anais Nin for... about the tenth time. I always start, fall in love, and then set it down after a hundred pages or so and get distracted for a few years.
It's very beautiful, and very much of the sensual, artistic (yet realistic) beauty that I love about Francesca Lia Block's stories, but through the words and thoughts and life of a person who actually did live and love and was kind of amazing. Anais Nin sought a life of both hard realism and truth, and also the beautiful, ethereal life of sensualism; love and fantasies and beauty.
Her many many journals record her (amazing) thoughts and feelings throughout her life, including about friends, lovers, and life in general. She is kind of my literary hero, and there's no (or at least very little) fiction to it.

To entertain you in my place, I present my favorite lines so far from The Diary of Anais Nin (Volume One, pages 1-46). The bold ones, of course, are my favorite favorites.

"I know that human beings place upon an object, or a person, this responsibility of being the obstacle when the obstacle lies always within one's self."

"I had a sense of preparation for a love to come."

"I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension."

"I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops."

"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book ... or you take a trip, or to talk ... and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating."

"...then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death."

"I have always believed ... to write as one thinks, in the order and disorder in which one feels and thinks..."

"She was color and brilliance and strangeness."

"She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself."

"'I will never know again who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me.'"

"'...if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madness."

"...[we] have paid with our souls for taking fantasies seriously, for living life as a theatre..."

"She is a personality expanded to the limit."

"...she walked into my house and I was willing to endure any pain at her hands."

"Our love would be death."

"We were walking above the world, above reality, into pure, pure ecstasy."

"In his love for her he has endured so many torments that the lover took refuge in the writer."

"I have the power to burn like a flame"

"To be fully alive is to live unconsciously and instinctively in all directions..."

"All but freedom, utter freedom, is death."

"I go out into the world to seek life."

"She is so busy just BEING, talking, walking, making love, drinking, that she can achieve nothing else."

"She lives within chaos."

"You cannot possess without loving."


More to come, I'm sure.

Sunday, April 7

Beautiful Blogs :: Feral Doe



Beautiful Blogs


This isn't a full BB write-up, but I did want to give a shout-out to this (new?) blog I caught sight of in my Follower list.
It looks like she's just started out, and her blog is mostly short bits of fiction, but I loved the first one so much I copied quotes of it for my Inspiration Board (more on that when it's a little more finished).



"She wanted the right one, the key, to unlock the spill of her voice."

Doesn't that just scream Francesca Lia Block!??!
Very beautiful; I love it.
Will definitely go back for more 
<3

Friday, April 5

Super Salad :: A Recipe

How to Turn a Simple Salad into a Super Salad!

Currently Listening to: Grimes


I'm not a super health nut, but I do appreciate healthy foods. Particularly since my health has been super crazy up and down lately; what else can I do but be better to my body any way I can?

On a side, personal note, I was recently put on Prozac for anxiety, and a month later had to drop it because of too much serotonin, which was extremely unfortunate, because I noticed HUGE improvements in my mood, attitude, energy, happiness, and --most of all-- my coping mechanisms when it came to stress and problems. Having to quit the drug, however, has put me on a super search for anything and everything that will (naturally) aid my body in any way possible. Homeopathic remedies for cramps, stress, and sleep, along with more exercise (when I finally can stand for more than five minutes at a time again...) and healthier food are all on my list, even if I have to find a new job to afford it.

So lately I've become obsessed with salads because they're easy, no heat meals (no microwave in my tiny new flat) that fill me up while making me feel healthier, and not smothering my salads with junk has been my first step to making improvements in my meals.
So! Here is my guide to turning a super simple salad, into one that's just plain Super FOR you!


1. Start with your greens. This can really be any greens, from iceberg to romaine to arugula, but for a Super salad, the more variety (and color) the better! Iceberg is really just water, and romaine is pretty much just a step above that, so go for whatever mixture you can manage!
I love starting with a good pre-mixed Mixed Greens salad. In today's bowl, it was a Baby Kale mix (kale is full of iron!) with a lot of different baby greens, most I didn't even recognize, but all tasty and probably super healthy!

2. Add some basic variety. My favorites? Nuts and Dried Fruit. I used to be a salad purist: greens only for me! I hated fruit, cheese, nuts, seeds, or anything not green on my salad. No more! I'm obsessed with Slivered Almonds and Dried Cranberries, both for texture (crunch and chew!) and for health (almonds= protein & good fats, cranberries = sugar, which is good in small quantities, & goodness like vitamin C and antioxidants).
Allergic or don't like? Try other crunchy/chewy combinations. Sunflower seeds and dried cherries? Apple slices and walnuts? Fresh blueberries and pecans? Just grab your favorites and throw them in!

3. Add some super food punch!! This is new for me, but when making my salad tonight I glanced in the fridge and noticed a container of cooked Quinoa I had made but not used. Salad ingredient? 

Quinoa is a new thing for my household, but it instantly became a favorite. Grainy carb? NO! Soft but with a tiny crunch and a nutty flavor, this strange little seed is high in fiber and one of the ONLY non-meat complete protein there is!
When someone tells you lentils have more protein than, say, chicken, they're full of shit, because your body doesn't absorb all that protein because it isn't "complete". Quinoa, on the other hand, is a complete protein. Your body takes it all in and uses it up!
Not too mention a heap of fiber, fucking calcium, folate, AND it helps regulate blood sugar.
Fuck rice, people; eat this stuff!

Anyway. Two heaping tablespoons of cold yellow quinoa (or is it "white"? dunno, i prefer red) on top of the greens, nuts, and fruit.

4. Add protein of your choice. Anything will work, as long as it's lean and/or good for you. If your vegan or vegetarian, go for the stuff you'd normally use. Anything will work, from veggie sausage to tofu to tofurkey. Personally, I avoid un-fermented soy products, but, seriously; Whateves.
That stuff on mine that looks like dog food is actually a leftover hamburger patty from last night's dinner. 90/10 (somewhat local) fresh beef mashed with zucchini chunks, some spices, and nothing else. I think I've been low on iron, so I wanted something with nutritional oomph, and since everything else is low-calorie/low-fat, the leftover grease from the burger pan was no big deal.

5. Dress it up. Lightly, please. This is not the time to smother it in Ranch or Catalina. Go for something with that is low calorie but high in flavor and goodness.
I used a faux-greek dressing I always have a mason jar of on hand. It's super simple; 1 part Balsamic Vinegar or a mixture of half balsamic, half red wine vinegar -- 1 part Olive Oil (always use olive oil: good fats!), some dashes of any extra flavor liquid you'd like (lemon juice works good), and as many spices as you can lay your hands on. I use black pepper, Garlic Salt, dried parsley, dried basil, and a salad spice mixture i got from the international store that has a mix of things like turmeric, celery, onion, coriander, etc. I love it. Shake shake shake, and store in the cabinet (the fridge will turn the oil into a gloopey block).

Sprinkle over your giant salad lightly, until satisfied.
Don't saturate it, but if you can't taste your dressing, feel free to add more.


Notes:
-- i did not add cheese to my salad. There is calcium in the quinoa, so why add the extra fat (and allergens) from the cheese. Occasionally I will add crumbled feta, gorgonzola, or fresh mozerella, but really, that's not necessary when I've got the quinoa (though it does absorb the extra dressing nicely).

-- Step it up! Another thing I love to do is add shaved veggies. Grab a potato peeler and shred up some carrots, cucumber, zucchini, or any other raw veggies that are pretty solid. Yay for more nutrients!

-- A note on quinoa. This shit CAN be expensive. I've seen it as high as $6/pound at the health food store, or worse, though I will say a little goes a long way. BUT, make the trip to your closest Trader Joes, and you should be able to find it for just over half that price. It's worth it to replace plain white rice and add that crazy boost to your nutrients in any meal.

-- Don't have or like quinoa? Add another superfood. Avocado, while mushy, goes wonderfully in salads and is so good for you it's not even funny. Or try chickpeas! Artichokes! The possibilities are endless.

-- Like creamy dressings? You could also make a simple, greek yogurt based dressing, such as with cucumbers or avocados, and dashes of lemon juice or vinegar. Just Google cucumber dressing and you're likely to find a light, quick dressing that will work wonders and still be good for you.


Enjoy!









Also see: Recipe Tags

Wednesday, April 3

The art of losing

I think I'm tired
of watching other people's lives.

I want friends
and adventures
and smiles.

Where did I forget them?
Where did I lose them?

Looking at a girl's smiling candid I wondered
"is this what my life would be like
if i weren't crazy?"

crazy.
i don't usually say that.
crazy.

Trapped in my skin and my head and my stumbling tongue.

Where did I forget myself?
Where did I lose it?