bangles and birds.

Politics have “become a spectator sport”

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 20:28:48 +0000

TEDx Toronto, “Redefining Apathy”

encouraging inner peace amidst challenging times.

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:40:12 +0000

today i have nothing to complain about. i live in a beautiful, sparkling city. i have the opportunity and privilege to spend my days learning, thinking critically, digging my nose in books that have been waiting to be read. i get to sit in cafés all day and read classic literature and great thinkers’ work. i have beautiful friends + family that support me.

this final examination period is merely an opportunity for us to explore and realize what we already know. we get to delve deeper, take a stand, challenge our knowledge system. most people in the world are struggling to feed their families and merely survive.

what ive realized during this period is to treat this process as my own personal growth period. this is my time to learn and test myself on what ive learned – the number means absolutely nothing. also life doesn’t have to stop during this period. i know it may be over-said, but its about maintaining balance and peace within yourself. take a 15-min walk or a yoga class in the middle of your studies. breathe. savor your food. encourage others rather than complain to them. share a piece of amazing information you just discovered and never knew. spark someone’s interest in a topic you are passionate and fiery about. appreciate these moments in the present. relish in your youthful mind and spirit. this period will be a testament to your inner foundation and character. *and take it with a grain of salt. nothing in life should be too serious! comic relief and genuine smiles never hurt anyone.

here’s a little manifesto of encouragement for perspective in your day, your week, this life cycle. enjoy.

****************************

THE MANIFESTO OF ENCOURAGEMENT

right now:

There are Tibetan Buddhist monks in a temple in the Himalayas endlessly reciting mantras for the cessation of your suffering and for the flourishing of your happiness.

Someone you haven’t met yet is already dreaming of adoring you.

Someone is writing a book that you will read in the next two years that will change how you look at life.

Nuns in the Alps are in endless vigil, praying for the Holy Spirit to alight the hearts of all of God’s children.

A farmer is looking at his organic crops and whispering, “nourish them.”

Someone wants to kiss you, to hold you, to make tea for you.

Someone is willing to lend you money, wants to know what your favourite food is, and treat you to a movie.

Someone in your orbit has something immensely valuable to give you — for free.

Something is being invented this year that will change how your generation lives, communicates, heals and passes on.

The next great song is being rehearsed.

Thousands of people are in yoga classes right now intentionally sending light out from their heart chakras and wrapping it around the earth.

Millions of children are assuming that everything is amazing and will always be that way.

Someone is in profound pain, and a few months from now, they’ll be thriving like never before. They just can’t see it from where they’re at.

Someone who is craving to be partnered, to be acknowledged, to ARRIVE, will get precisely what they want — and even more. And because that gift will be so fantastical in it’s reach and sweetness, it will quite magically alter their memory of angsty longing and render it all “So worth the wait.“

Someone has recently cracked open their joyous, genuine nature because they did the hard work of hauling years of oppression off of their psyche — this luminous juju is floating in the ether, and is accessible to you.

Someone just this second wished for world peace, in earnest.

Someone is fighting the fight so that you don’t have to.

Some civil servant is making sure that you get your mail, and your garbage is picked up, that the trains are running on time, and that you are generally safe.

Someone is dedicating their days to protecting your civil liberties and clean drinking water.

Someone is regaining their sanity. Someone is coming back from the dead. Someone is genuinely forgiving the seemingly unforgivable. Someone is curing the incurable.

You. Me. Some. One. Now.

***

From Danielle LaPorte’s beautiful + fire-starting blog.

saying thanks.

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:31:42 +0000

My love for Danielle Loporte’s wisdom transcends anything I love or realize on a day-to-day basis. I LOVED her last post:

“I like to imagine my dreams coming true in great detail. Where I’ll be. What I’ll be wearing. Precisely how I’ll be feeling. And mostly, who I’ll turn to to say, “It happened! Sweet Jesus, can you believe it, score! we did it, the day has come, they called, I’m there, we made it, it’s here, for real, really really for real.”

I’m thinking of those people in my life. The sweetest of the sweets who have watered me with their spoken faith. The steadfast, the patient, the idealists who have waited for me without pacing, happily being with the rhythm of growth. The ones who left long voice-mails of buoyant belief. The ones who are so satisfied in their own core that they easily step outside of themselves and into my dreams. Su happiness es mi happiness. The sparklers. The realists. Fanners of flames. The loves of my life.

The first people I will call to celebrate when…

Who will you call when your day comes? When your ship arrives, when you make it, earn it, get what you’ve been wanting so long and so deeply?

Thank them now.
Make them dinner this weekend.
Water them with your faith.
Celebrate arriving at today with them in your orbit.
Blessed.
Say thank you before tomorrow comes.”

{thank you, danielle}

italian weddings.

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:23:56 +0000

After almost three weeks of traveling through Italy, I’ve probably run into or even participated in half a dozen italian weddings. For some reason, June seems to be the month many couples choose their special date. The general trend is that they are full of relatives and more family, and there is always mountains of eye candy food. And generally, the bride and groom appeared to be dressed very glitsy glam, almost to the point of hurtings ones eye. In one instance, for example, I happened upon one wedding that was taking place in one of the most famous Baroque churches in Lecce (Catholic of course, its Italy) which was completely open to the public. It felt a bit strange being able to waltz through the church while the bride + groom were exchanging vows. But then again, I realized that almost most of the audience were tourists wearing fanny packs and holding out large DSLR cameras to document this strange scene. Though anthropologically interesting, I felt a tinge of guilt and embarassment that the couple’s special day had become subject to hundreds of tourists vacation albums.

the glam couple posing for the tourist paparazzi.

However, while WWOOFing in Napoli, I had the good fortune of being able to participate in an alternative, yet truly authentic italian wedding. A good friend of the family I was staying with was getting married, and being incredibly generous, they extended the invitation to myself and some of friends of the family. And I can’t forget to mention that this wedding took place on one of the most untouched and exquisite islands on the Almalfi Coast. Not knowing what to expect, we all caught an early morning ferry to Procita island. The ferry ride was stunning – the water crystal clear blue, the coastline rugged and rich green. We docked and jumped on a local bus that swerved up and down through the peaceful, bright and colorful streets until we arrived a beautiful villa on the beach overlooking the water. My imagination couldn’t even predict how stunning the view was. After a lovely Napolese style 5-course dinner, we all fell asleep listening to the sound of the crashing waves.

view of Procita island from on top of the hill.

gorgeous sunset.

post ocean dip.

stash of prosecco for the festivities.

The wedding reception the next day was a relaxed yet indulgent day of eating and just enjoying the lovely company and incredible location. We got to work early cutting up the fresh vegetables grown all from friend’s gardens and cleaning mussels. I helped in the kitchen under the supervision of the head chef, a large, big-belled Napolese chef – who also happened to be an incredibly wise, homeopathic doctor in the village. He spoke no English, so we communicated in my broken Italian and lots of hand gestures and smiles.

The rest of the day we spent laying in the grass, eating and drinking and soaking in the sun. To digest in between courses, we would walk along the beach or lay in the sand with bare legs and feet. I never felt so happy and liberated and at peace with life. As the sun began to set we cracked bottle after bottle of Prosecco (Italian sparkling wine) and the live band began to play. Once the last crack of sunlight had vanished, a 10-minute firework show ensued, followed by the procession of the wedding cake – which was made by an old gypsy from the town. Just like weddings should be, it was a perfect day.

ms. chef!

homemade bread w/ bruschetta and sardines.

tempura zucchini in traditional paper wrap.

wedding party enjoying good food, wine, views + company.

alex loving her watermelon and life at the moment!

wedding cake made by gypsy, touched up by the broom.

wedding firework show as a final hoorah to a very magical day.

WWOOFing around Italy.

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 13:42:36 +0000

The last two weeks I had the luck to be able to enter the lives of several authentic Italian families and really experience the life of an Italian. That also involves actually speaking Italian. With my two semesters of Italian language experience, I was able to have many dynamic conversations with local Italians, of course, using my hands for expressive assistance when speaking, like local Italians do.

Now I’m in Bologna, just north of Florence, and I’ve had the chance to reflect on the differences and similarities between each region – Napoli, Puglia, Bologna – and study as an insider looking outward, what the fundamental distinctions are between each region, and why people are so proud and passionate about it! Fundamentally, Southern Italy and Northern Italy are almost like different planets. Even an outsider can see and understand that. But within each subregion, there are local specialities, dialects, traditions, sociological distinctions and political tensions.

Napoli and the Almafi Coast first of all can be summed up by the word ‘rustic’. People from other regions refer to Napoli with caution, disgust and tragedy. But speaking to Napolese people and seeing it for myself, I was pleasantly surprised. Though the problems of the city could be seen bare naked on the streets, the city had a rustic and chaotic beauty, and the people some of the friendliest I’ve ever met. The geographical terrain of the areas surrounding Naples and along the Amalfi Coast are absolutely stunning. I was able to work on a few farms in the countryside outside of Naples and also visit one of the small islands off the coast, Procita. I was able to dig through some of the richest soil I’ve ever seen and eat the food produced from this soil 0 km away, made from our very own hands. You could really feel the sense of community and helping each other out, though no one had much. The pasta, cheese, wine was made by friends. Our farm produced the bread that everyone in the village ate. The mother made her own sausages and fruit preserves. All of the vegetables we ate were picked that day. Where else in the world could you eat this well? It proved that you don’t need to be rich to eat like a King.

entrance to Casa Cuma farm in Sessa Aurunca.

walking through the olive trees.

friendly uncle in front of the vineyards.

sunset walk to the neighbors to trade bread for wine.

doing some happy weeding.

collecting zucchini flowers to make pasta for dinner.

preparing the leavened dough for a few dozen loaves of bread.

finished bread ready to eat for lunch! (topped with roasted and crushed sesame seeds)

Inside Out.

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:03:46 +0000

TED 2011 prize winner JR is changing the world through his iconic b&w photographs that he mounts on hundreds of surfaces all around the world, namely Africa, India, Brazil and all around Europe.

I had seen his work a few times before in the blogosphere but hadn’t looked farther into the artist and the project behind it. The project, profound yet simple, is a testimony to the important and influential role of art. Those people who argue that art is useless and serves no purpose are proven wrong in this example. Art plays a neutral role of merging worlds, bring people together, creating beauty, proliferating the physical and digital world, telling stories, shedding light on truth.

Watch his TED talk and be inspired by the project. You may even fell compelled to participate in the project by uploading your own portrait and telling your story. Do it here.

why you should listen to him:

Working anonymously, pasting his giant images on buildings, trains, bridges, the often-guerrilla artist JR forces us to see each other. Traveling to distant, often dangerous places — the slums of Kenya, the favelas of Brazil — he infiltrates communities, befriending inhabitants and recruiting them as models and collaborators. He gets in his subjects’ faces with a 28mm wide-angle lens, resulting in portraits that are unguarded, funny, soulful, real, that capture the sprits of individuals who normally go unseen. The blown-up images pasted on urban surfaces – the sides of buildings, bridges, trains, buses, on rooftops — confront and engage audiences where they least expect it. Images of Parisian thugs are pasted up in bourgeois neighborhoods; photos of Israelis and Palestinians are posted together on both sides of the walls that separate them.

JR’s most recent project, “Women Are Heroes,” depicts women “dealing with the effects of war, poverty, violence, and oppression” from Rio de Janeiro, Phnom Penh, Delhi and several African cities. And his TED Prize wish opens an even wider lens on the world — asking us all to turn the world inside out. Visit insideoutproject.net …

“I would like to bring art to improbable places, create projects so huge with the community that they are forced to ask themselves questions.”

JR, Beaux Arts Magazine

www.insideoutproject.net/

JR has also made a documentary focuses on the powerful role of women, called Women Are Heroes.

Learn more here: http://www.womenareheroes.be/

Watch the film trailer here: http://dai.ly/epVu4N

The Satorialist.

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 12:52:40 +0000

“Fashion is like letting yourself fall in love everyday.”

Enter the mind and lens of blogger Scott Schumann, aka, The Sartorialist, a fashion blog that twirls around 70,000 readers a day.

Parallel Universes.

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:44:17 +0000

Just listened to this podcast on the talk given by Lera Boroditsky on “How Language Shapes Thought” hosted by the Long Now Foundation. I was drawn to this talk because of my interest and passion with languages, and the evolution and anthropological significance of languages in culture and societies.

I wrote an article in high school for the newspaper on “Endangered Languages” in which I explored the evolutionary mechanisms of languages and the likelihood of languages going extinct, and also the restoration of endangered languages.

This talk is very interesting for those keen on learning more of the mechanical and scientific view of why languages formulate cultural and even philosophical differences in people all over the world. She touches upon philosophical reasoning for languages and the spatial knowledge associated with different languages.

To listen to the podcast, click here. To watch the talk on video, you have to become a paid member (only $8/month).

Here is the summary provided by Stewart Brand, the founder of the Long Now foundation:

Languages are Parallel Universes

“To have a second language is to have a second soul,” said Charlemagne around 800 AD. “Each language has its own cognitive toolkit,” said psychologist/linguist Lera Boroditsky in 2010 AD.

Different languages handle verbs, distinctions, gender, time, space, metaphor, and agency differently, and those differences, her research shows, make people think and act differently.

Take a sentence such as “Sarah Palin read Chomsky’s latest book.” In Russian, the verb would have to indicate whether the whole book was read or not. In Turkish the verb would signify whether the speaker saw the event personally, or it was reported, or it was inferred. Russians have two words for blue, and when those words are present in their mind, they can distinguish finer gradations of the color than English speakers can.

Gender runs deep in some languages, affecting nouns (including number words and days of the week), adjective endings, pronouns and possessives, and verb endings. And that affects how people think about every named thing. In German the Sun is female and the Moon male; it’s the reverse in Spanish. In French, “liberty” and “justice” are each female, and thus the Statue of Liberty is a female, and so is the blindfolded lady of justice in American courtrooms.

“‘Time’ is the most common noun in the English language,” said Boroditsky. (Followed by “person,” “year,” “way,” and “day.”) Time is often expressed as travel in space: “We’re coming up on Christmas.” But some languages put the future in front of us, and others put it behind us. For Aborigines that Boroditsky studied in north Australia, time and sequence gets blended into their profound orientation to the cardinal directions. They don’t use relative terms like “left” and “right,” but absolute compass terms (“There’s an ant on your southwest leg”), and they have extraordinary orientation skills.

When Boroditsky asked these aborigines to place a sequence of photos (a progressively eaten apple) in sequential order, they did not do it like English speakers (left to right) or Hebrew and Arabic speakers (right to left), they did it by the compass: from east to west. “These are not differences of degree,” said Boroditsky, “but a parallel universe.”

Different languages assign blame (agency) differently. English is uncommonly agentive, and so Dick Cheney had difficulty distancing himself from the fact that he shot his friend in a hunting accident: “Ultimately I’m the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the shot that hit Harry.” In Spanish, accidents are expressed in terms such as “The vase broke” rather than “John broke the vase.” Political distancing language such as “Mistakes were made” doesn’t sound awkward in Spanish. Fate looms larger.

Thus, “learning new languages can change the way you think,” said Boroditsky. Multilingual speakers have more mind.

– by Stewart Brand

This talk was given at Cowell Theatre in Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California on Tuesday October 26, 02010

Libraries: “Spaces of Their Own.”

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:33:26 +0000

I just got back from a trip to Santiago de Compostela this past weekend which is a well-known city among Christians and ‘pilgrims’ who make the Camiño de Compostela every year (another post in itself). While there, we stayed with a very interesting 46-yr old cartographer by training, art collector and historian by hobby. Through his eyes, we experienced the city.

On a brisk sunny Sat. morning, we walked through the walkable city of Santiago and popped through a few different galleries, historical and cultural museums, bustling markets, and then finally, he told us that we must seek out the photo exhibition on the German photographer, Candida Hofer, on grand libraries all over the world, called “Spaces of Their Own.”

In the comp. brochure for the photo expo, it analyzes how Hofer views the Library is a metaphor for The Universe. “Of them they say that he replaces the world with the library; that his tragic condition as a blind bibliophile’ whose fate could be compared to those of poets such as Homer and Milton, as the director of a place filled with precious and unlimited volumes available for reading yet which he can no longer caress with his gaze.”

Julian Barrio Barrio, the Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, stated that Hofer’s project which was “outstandingly developed in a number of rooms within the old monastery of San Martín Pinario and its high cloister in Santiago de Compostela, perfectly fits this sense of vitality and cultural transmission. The photographic exhibition presents a sobering choice of archives, libraries and documentation centers of Camino de Santiago under the spectacular, scholar style characteristic of the author.”

I also found this blog post from Artforum International that was an interesting exploration of the artists’ work:

Joshua Decter for Artforum Interantional - 31.n5 (Jan 1993): pp84(2).

If, as is often said, we live in a post-Enlightenment culture, it is only in the sense that new techniques with which to manufacture order (like the computer and television) have been invented. So while the classificatory systems of the Enlightenment, such as the archive, the library, and the museum, are becoming increasingly outmoded inventories of our “knowledge” of the world, they continue to operate as distinctly public sites of sociocultural organization.

It is in this respect that Candida Hofer’s work can be understood as having emerged from a lineage of German artmaking that remains firmly linked to the principles of the Enlightenment. Of course, Bernd and Hilla Becher’s typology of industrial edifices has come to be seen less as a direct figuration of Enlightenment intentions than as the conceptual end point of this kind of classification, one articulated within a photographic discourse that has little to do with “straight-documentary” practice, while Hofer’s work seems to indicate an effort to move toward the threshold of “subjective” investment or inscription.

Whereas the Bechers have constructed an archive of architectural exteriors foregrounding the notion of cultural progress implicit in their synthesis of utilitarian program and utopian modern design, Hofer has focused upon the interior of various public edifices–the museum, the archive, and the library. Hofer’s rooms and spaces are invariably depopulated, so that their “function” as zones of social ordering lingers only as a trace of memory (or imagination): the residue of moments and situations now invisibly embossed, like a phantom history, upon the architecture.

If it is viable to evoke the notion of the photographer’s “presence,” then Hofer seems to hover in the margins of the image, so that the subjective/authorial position is discernible only in relation to the construction of the viewer’s position. Conjoined with the photographer’s equivocal voyeurism, we, like Hofer, are both obsessive cataloguers and casual observers.

The new works in this exhibition also produce a subjectively invested objectivity: the series of shots taken at zoological gardens in Hamburg, Stuttgart, London, and other cities are complemented by pictures of museum interiors in the back gallery. Working in her usual modest scale (most of these rectilinear images are around 14 by 20 inches), Hofer’s catalogue of zoo environments suggests a kind of intuitive orderliness. Our gaze is organized by the geometric structures that construct these spaces of confinement, and by the “exotic” animals that have been subjected to this institutionalization. But the images do not appear inordinately “composed.” Rather, the character of place and architecture seems to guide Hofer’s framing method, even though she is interested in blurring the boundaries between the interior and exterior spaces–a strategy that effectively evokes the peculiar incongruity between the captive animals (a living inventory) and the clinically Modernist architecture of their (substitute) environment. In a sense, as sites, the zoo and the natural history museum have become interchangeable within the artist’s inventory of these places, yet Hofer’s philosophical, or political, relationship to these social spaces remains obscure, mediated by an empirical imperative: here, we are more in the realm of description than of visual hermeneutics.

*all images from Candida Hofer, Libraries, 2005

WWOOF.

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:53:46 +0000

Last summer I joined the fantastic non-profit WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and did two-weeks WWOOFing in Costa Rica with my best friend Gemma. It was an incredibly enriching and invigorating experience. I learned how to prepare seed beds for planting for the harvest season, cut down Tike wood with machetes, make homemade goat cheese, saddle a horse, build a concrete wall, make chocolate from the raw cacao beans…the list goes on.

A few photos from the experience:

catching mangos from a tree on the farm.

the countryside.

carrying sacks of starfruit and mangoes back home for lunch!

dancing in a thunderstorm!

Now, as I’m considering my options for this summer in Europe, I am drawn back to the mission of WWOOF and the incredible opportunities it offers all around the world. I think I want to do a month in Italy, preferably in Tuscany or near the coastal towns near Genova, in a quaint and authentic Italian village with a sweet host family. I just applied for membership and was astonished to find that there hundreds of host families in Italy waiting for WWOOFers! Perfetto!

We’ll see who wants me to come! Besides WWOOFing, I’m also planning on traveling through other parts of Europe that I haven’t visited, including: Germany, Austria, Hungary, Portugal, Morocco, Greece, sailing in Turkey! weeeeee!