Moonlit wedding: ikariotiko, xasaposerviko, gamopilafo, red lipstick, leventia. Also adjustment to earlier statement re messy hair. I also love stylized big hair. I’ve never met anyone with big hair who wasn’t fun, stylized or not.
Reminiscing my mom singing itsy bitsy spider with a greek accent (itchy bitchy spider)
Best spanakopita in Athens from Mam on Panepistimiou
Finding out Gotham City is BOSTON and not New York!
Familiar faces in unfamiliar settings
The bumps on the road and doing my best to live an examined life
Finding friends in fantasies and daydreams, finding friends right here
My colleagues (as always) making me laugh out loud
On Art, Beauty, Photography:
The most stunning photographs of vegetables I've seen for salad ingredients.
“Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.” -Vladimir Nabokov (Art by Mizenscen)
"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." -CS Lewis (Art by Diana Ong)
My friend told me if I was a painting, I would be this. It takes my breath away.
I love this picture. The light, the attitude, the colours. Both rough and playful. Definitely raw. Awesome.
Μake love, not war. BEST. PICTURE. EVER.
"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." -Michelangelo (Eternal Springtime sculpture by August Rodin)
Me: I think Lucky is a hybrid. I think his forehead is owl. I think his belly is leopard, and his back is tiger. I think his ears are rabbit. I think his color is hyena. I think his face is bobcat. His arms and tail are chimpanzee. His paws are lion. And that’s just a small fraction of his devilish good looks alone, not even personality.
(smile)
I think Lucky is a hybrid.
Others: Cathrine… did you ever stop to think that perhaps… Lucky… is just a cat?
One of my favorite sources of online reading is the Movies & Mental Health section on Psych Central. Written in turns by Joseph Burgo (whose blog After Psychotherapy I absolutely adore) and Marla Estes, it highlights major psychological issues by relating them to film.
In other words, they psychoanalyze films and their meanings. (I melt at the thought.)
The latest post bases its theme “Wholeness vs Goodness” as depicted in the movie Pleasantville. They explain “shadow side of our emotions, the dangers of not dealing with them consciously and the rewards of living in connection with all parts of our ourselves”.
Whilst the entire post resonated with me, certain parts stuck out.
…The film shows that the cost of living in “black and white” is a life that is flat, bland and two-dimensional. And, for all the mess that living with our full range of emotions can bring, doing so enables us to live a “colorful” life with all of its richness and depth….
…In the town of Pleasantville, everything is routine; there is no spontaneity. Nothing ever goes wrong, nothing bad ever happens, and consequently there is no disappointment, no failure, no doubt and no frustration; things like “unpleasant” emotions, crime, sex, bad weather, dirty words, bathroom functions and even fire simply don’t exist….
…Jennifer initiates Skip (and therefore the community) into sexuality and afterward we see a flower in red, the first time color has ever been seen in Pleasantville…
…As we expose our shadow qualities, at first we often have to deal with our vulnerable feelings and shame about them. What we often find is that there is nothing objectively to be ashamed of….
…Living within the confines of this version of “goodness” can be limiting and constricting. Once this Pandora’s Box has been opened, what starts to emerge in Pleasantville is creativity, new thinking, wonder, sexuality, as well as music, dancing, art and literature….
This is so typical. And yet, so many of us (myself included) cage ourselves for no. good. reason. It’s safe. But not really. Thedirector said it best:
“This movie is about the fact that personal repression gives rise to larger political oppression… That when we’re afraid of certain things in ourselves or we’re afraid of change, we project those fears on to other things, and a lot of very ugly social situations can develop”.
I cannot wait until the second segment. In any case, I’m definitely watching it the first chance I get.
I adopted a street kitten. He was found in a state: covered in fleas, eyes pussed shut, and throwing up worms. He lives with me now. He is doing a lot better.
“Everyday the real caress [must replace] the ghostly lover.”
-Anais Nin
This is last Thursday’s post a few days late.
Since seeing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the overwhelming theme this week has evolved around this movie, and around romance in general. It made me remember some of the romance in my life. The book is tiny, about 50 pages, so by comparison, the film drags on a bit. Still. I fucking love it.
Some people were born to sit by a river. Some get struck by lightning. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people — dance.
You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.
Life can only be understood backward. It must be lived forward.
Benjamin Button: Full of jaw-dropping moments of hot.
NB: For those of you that are curious, the images I have been posting lately are via the Hipstamatic App for iPhone.
I had something else in mind today but cats seem to be on the menu instead.
For starters, I might be getting one. I’m meeting him/her tomorrow and I will know whether he/she is the one for me.
Second, a cat gave birth to kittens under my grandmother’s balcony.
Sweetness in a bundle.
Third, I spent time with the devil’s spawn.
Sparta...
I love cats. Both as animals and as symbols. It is said that when you see cats more frequently than usual, it is a message to make some changes in your life as well as be more flexible in your thinking…. it is a message to take a step back from a person or a situation… it is a message that you have power over your illusions….
Given the state of the union at the moment, I think there is some truth to all of the above.
Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.
–DH Lawrence
So many people tell me I sparkle; that I deserve to sparkle. That everyone deserves to sparkle.
I get it. It’s sweet. We are all stars.
But to sparkle means the light is on/off all the time. Shine on, shine off. Constantly switching back and forth. It sounds exhausting. It lacks resonance.
I’d rather something that lasted longer. Something that can weaken or strengthen accordingly at a smooth and steady pace. Something with staying power and quiet resolution.
I do overanalyze things. Why can’t I just take a fucking compliment?
In the meantime, thanks for the sparkle darling…. I know you mean well.
But I’d rather glow.
Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
I have a thing for feet. I would use the word ‘fetish’; however it feels too frivolously strong for the way I mean it. I mean it in that feet are significant to me. Feet and hair. I cannot explain really ‘why’. I can only explain ‘how’.
Let’s start with hair. I’ve been obsessed with hair ever since I was little and I would watch Mom put curlers in hers.
I don’t make many rules in life, and when I do, I rarely stick to them. However, this is definitely one rule that has stuck:
Do not trust people with ruly hair.
The messier, the better. Knots, wind-sweeps, curls. Volume. Shape. Colour. I want hair to look ‘lived-in’. I’m a sucker for it. I have yet to be proven wrong. Now I’m not saying that people with tidy hair combed to perfection are, say, evil. Nor am I saying that one should never introduce oneself to, oh, say, a hairbrush. It’s just harder for me to tell whether these people are worth my time.
My hair is definitely lived-in (phew). I’ve dyed it so many times, so many colors; at one point I had orange, blue, turquoise and red streaks. I’ve been blonde, I’ve been red, I’ve been copper. And I’ve had every single shade of brown. Long, short, permed, straight. All this because:
a) I’m experimental.
b) My mom used hair dye as a decoy to prevent me from shaving my head.
Yes, that’s right. When I was 15, I wanted to shave my head and (possibly) get a Mohawk, just to try it. I also wanted to paint my bedroom black. I wasn’t miserable. I wasn’t a goth (well, not genuinely). I just… wanted to try it. I was listening to rock music at the time, going out to Monastiraki, hanging out with older guys with motorbikes. I was a not-so-weird kid, with very weird taste. (Come to think of it, for my Sweet Sixteen birthday party, instead of asking for a ‘girlie’ theme, like flowers, princesses, fairies, blah blah, I asked for a Wild West theme with cacti and cow skulls. Weird. Again. But totally worth it. It was a great party.)
When I told Mom I was going to go to the hairdressers to shave my head, she paused and turned a thousand shades of rainbow before saying: ‘Have you ever considered dying your hair? You can color it anything you want!’ Shock. NO. I had NOT considered it. I didn’t even know it was an option! So I got excited. Very excited. I went into a color-picking frenzy. And I ended up with turquoise streaks. [Mom’s] Crisis averted.
I would never voluntarily shave my head now. No way. (Though my walls are almost black.) And as grateful as I am for Mom’s diplomatic maneuvering, at the same time, a small part of me regrets not doing it. It would probably have been the only period of my life where I could have gotten away with it. My cousin had gotten her hair cut off entirely around the same time – not shaven, but pretty close. I had asked her how it felt. She said her head felt so free! I was jealous. I’m fairly certain she massively regrets it now.
And boys. I especially love feeling the nape of their necks after they’ve had a buzz cut. It’s like a fuzzy peach. Or stroking their hair above their forehead. In fact, any hair I can touch is A-ok in my books. I love playing with hair; my own and others.
So that’s hair. Up in the air. Wild and carefree and adventurous.
Now feet.
I’m a Pisces, let’s get that out of the way. The body part associated with Pisces is feet.
When I was a baby I had an obsession with my grandmother’s feet. I wouldn’t sit or eat or behave unless I had direct eye contact with her painted toe nails. They HAD to be painted.
My feet are ridiculously ticklish. The person least impressed by this is my pedicurist. If you touch them, you will be kicked. I think its the only reason I had strong legs as a child.
I love walking around barefoot. I always have. Even in New York when it was sub-zero temperatures and snowing outside, I would walk onto the frozen marble floor in the kitchen and be perfectly fine. My parents worried that I would catch pneumonia, and I remember how often they would try to coax me into socks and slippers. But I didn’t want them. I liked feeling the cold marble. It soothed me. My feet have always been cold anyway. Now that I’ve gotten older, I still can’t wear slippers. But after living in London, I do wear socks in the winter.
Being barefoot is the ultimate freedom for me. I wish I never had to wear shoes. Don’t get me wrong, I adore footwear, and I have the closet to prove it. But I want it to be a choice, not a necessity. In fact, over the years, when people have asked me how I picture my wedding, I say a beach, a sunset, no shoes, and big hats. This is part of an agreement with an old classmate. She had unruly hair. She said her wedding would have to have hats. I said I didn’t want a hat. She said I didn’t have a choice. I said ok as long as she didn’t make me wear shoes. She said no. We argued. For weeks. We both won. Or lost. Depending on how you look at it. We agreed on the big hats/no shoes rule for both our weddings. See? Hair and feet.
I would even draw feet. In high school when I would doodle in my margins, it was either this, a floating woman in a coma, or a cobra. Over and over. That’s just what came to me.
Ok quite creepy... a severed foot wrapped in barbwire and bleeding, with the bone sticking out, topped off with a leaf and pearl.
In therapy we changed the picture. It looks nothing like this any more. That was a good day.
I also like other people’s feet. In fact, the aforementioned cousin has the best feet in my opinion, because my fingers fit perfectly in between her toes. I love the connected parallel our lives are on. A strange parallel, but it is definitely there, in a way that it is not with my brothers or my other cousins.
Another time in therapy, I heard her voice through my feet. I put my foot on her ribcage as she spoke to me. It tingled. I felt the vibrations of her voice. I’m inclined to get everyone I know down on the floor so I can step on them as they talk to me. I’m not sure I’m ready for their response, so hopefully they will read this post and automatically do it the next time I see them. (Right guys?) It was such an awesome feeling!
I’ve had people come and touch my feet. Strangers. Randomly. At the theatre. I was shocked. I also liked it. Then again, it might have been the shoes. They were beautiful. Red, velvet, sky high, with a huge awkward bow. Marni. Divine.
I love the places feet can take you. I love mountains. I love sand beneath your toes. I love sidewalks; perhaps more than the average person. Look at this sidewalk down the road from my house!
I smile every. single. time. I pass this.
And you say there aren’t advantages to looking at your feet and where they take you? Full foot contact with the ground makes me stand taller. My hair is even higher in the air.
Now that I recognize both my hair and my feet, I can see my silhouette. With each step I take, my feet fill with color, and my hair comes to life. But its not enough. What the hell do I do with the in between? Did I mention I have weak ankles? I need the color to fill me up. I need to stomp harder. I need to jump higher. For the life in my hair… and the color of my feet… to meet!
