Oddities of the ordinary.

I'm a blogger at heart, I think. :) I've come to the conclusion that people can sap me dry emotionally and I turn into an empty shell, I just exist. So by the same token, It's important for me to take charge and disassociate myself from people who effect me negatively. Not easy when you're already limited in the friends market, tho it's really not terrible seeing that I'm really a bit of a loner anyway. I do get lonely occasionally and I do look for companionship occasionally, but I don't need constant attention to stay satisfied. Really really. So, I'm more relaxed, more concentrated, happier... than I was for sure but it's still an upward climb!

So, the urge to get back to this has once again set in and I'm rediscovering the joy I once had in going throughout my day imagining JUST HOW I might express something that I'd experienced that day, in words. It's always a challenge to capture the full emotion and essence, but that's the beauty of writing. Having a blog seems to help me keep focus on certain aspects that I'm thinking about a lot and work through them, like concentrating on untangling a knot. Now, I'll let you in on the formula to untangling a knot... Emma-style, it's proven to be effective each and every time. :) Step 1: First off you need to idiotically shake the wire or string around, starting off gently and calmly but working your way up to furiously. all the while being oblivious to how much worse you're making it - still *hoping* to loosen it. Do this for about 8 - 12 minutes non-stop and if anyone says anything to you just glare at them and tell them you know what you're doing. Step 2: Once said person leaves the room get really really mad! Cuss and swear at it and let it know good and hard how fucking annoying it is, make sure you jump up and down a few times too as you're talking to it - let it know who's boss!! Step 3: Sit down. Take 5 -7 deep breaths, and resume steps 1 - 3 Step 4: After you're about to give up *forever* sit down again, carefully focus on the mass of a knot that is at least double what you started with and slowly begin disentangling it. Voila!!! You're done!

Oh that's SO me!!

I'm studying my wines as I'm writing this and are they confuuuusing! There are so many variables depending on age, region, percentage of certain grapes etc etc. How anyone can REALLY say they know about wines is incredible, but I guess that's why certified wine experts are allowed to be arrogant cuz in actuality they are not human at all but GOD'S! :) I haven't yet had the pleasure of visiting our most famous "wine lands" here in California after being here a YEAR!! That's unacceptable I'll say! I'ma have to find myself some cool peeps who'd like to roll with me, taste a ton of wine and get lost in the vineyards at sunset. :) So wish me luck! Interview tomorrow at Lucca!! May the gods smile on me.

My Song For Life

To make a mountain of your life
Is just a choice
But I never learned enough
To listen to the voice that told me..
Always love… Hate will get you everytime
Always love… Don’t wait till the finish line

Slow demands come 'round
Squeeze the air and keep the rest out
It helps to write it down
Even when you then cross it out

But Always Love… Hate will get you every time
Always Love… Even when you are defied

Self-directed lies
I want to know what it’d be like to
Aim so high above
every card that has been dealt you...

Always Love… Hate will get you every time
Always Love… Hate will get you

I've been held back by something
Yeah. You said to me quietly on the stairs,
I've been held back by something
Yeah. You said to me quietly on the stairs.
You said…
Hey, you good ones.
Hey, you good ones.

To make a mountain of your life
Is just a choice
But I never learned enough
To listen to the voice that told me
Always love…hate will get you everytime
Always love…hate will get you…

- Always Love by Nada Surf

PS If they are ever in your neighbourhood you should really try to see these guys live. Amazing!

Yesterday...

Realization can be harsh. I've never been so powerless and at someone elses mercy till yesterday. I only make it worse, I know, but I guess I can't let go till I know. Now I know.

Oh look! A quote from my blog. Sums things up!

"Sigh

My brain hurts, my heart hurts, I cut my little finger and THAT HURTS, but I was unlucky to be a born a Piscean who can never escape pain, so this is no new phenomenon. Twist my cloud and it rains, and when it rains it bloody well pours! But ah! Sweet tears, they rejuvenate the soul and clear the fog from your eyes. I'm not afraid to cry, but I would so prefer to do so with someone holding me. :)"

I'm determined. I just feel a little alone in the world right now.

Dedicated to Luchi, incase she thinks she's forgotten...

I'm skipping out on Halloween oartying this weekend, not feeling the great organization of ready made, expensive costumes this time. Besides I don't think my style would really fly, or perhaps it will fly more than I'd be ready for. I'm letting this one pass, I'm not American enough to CELEBRATE whatever it is we're celebrating just yet. Hell I didn't even know what candied corn was till yesterday. (people looked at me funny, I smiled inwardly) I think if one grows up with traditions it just comes naturally to dedicate a day to candy and poorly made outfits with the same price tag as a good pair of jeans. Someday, someday.

So yesterday I had the day off, went to breakfast with Teresa and for a change I didn't famously order those huge platters that I think I can finish and never can. When it comes to breakfast I ALWAYS think I can eat a pile of pancakes that takes half to plate, 2 sausages, 2 bits of bacon, 2 eggs, toast and potatoes. It took some restraint but I actually only had potatoes, an egg and 2 sausages. I ATE IT ALL!!! HURRAYY!! hehe. I think it has something to with the fact that I'm kinda bad these days... I see buying as food as such a waste of money so I try to spend as little as possible and usually try to get all my nutrients into one meal. Yep. One meal. Stop glaring! Hey, this is the first time it's just me taking care of me, so I think I am allowed to go through the process of learning how to not die... you know eat and stay alive, that kinda thing. I'm working on it!!!

Oh a few good things lately. So we walked around downtown yesterday, the weather is so beautiful right now. Just a little crisp and coldness to the air. Leaves are starting to fall. To me it's definitely the season to be in love. (This is nostalgia speaking.) All those things that makes fall so special are the things you want to do with someone you love. So I suppose it makes me a little sad as it's making me feel cosy inside but it's also times like these that I wonder how many times I've taken the special ones in my life for granted. I know we can only learn this after the fact, after we've lost or after we've caused hurt and it's hard to just accept. The awesome thing about the future is that ANYTHING can happen. It's easy for me to look back and reminisce at what once was, but I'm learning it does me no good. I'm going forward to the future this time, going to become the type of person who I'd admire, that's the plan anyway.

I have an interview to serve at a very high-end restaurant called Lucca (french/mediterranean) next Wednesday. I'm really quite nervous as I haven't been a server that long and the place where I am currently working is a little bit relaxed and anything goes. If you want to toss the guests plates on to the table you probably could. No not really, I guess there's just a lot of etiquette that I haven't been taught and nobody's really cared if I knew the winelist or not. So I know nothing about wine and am about to give myself a crash course, which should be interesting if nothing more than an oportunity to conquer my ignorance and a happy time winetasting! :) Finger's crossed I get the job as the money will be so much better, but if not it will just make me a better sever where I am now. So either way. But... please, the way I want!!

So this actually started as reply to an email from Chris (gasp! I actually was about to write SOMEBODY!!!) who is currently in Greece for the rest of the year! Let's all take a moment to be very very jealous................ But passed the first paragraph I decided I needed to turn it into a blog. Oh wow. I'm writing a blog! Am I? Really? Sweet!

Carpe Diem. I'm alive and there's a world out there that's missing out on me, so I think I'm gonna go see what the hell it wants!! I'll be around. Don't worry about me, I haven't forgotten you!!

So Cool!

Who's with me??

LF SF OH YEAH!

Love Parade!!

Blah, blah, blah.... yay! Blah, blah, blah.... San Francisco. Blah, blah, blah....Blah, blah, blah.... hotel nice. Blah, blah, blah.... slice of pizza. Blah, blah, blah....blah, blah, blah....blah, blah, blah.... beautiful weather. Blah, blah, blah....blah, blah, blah.... not too much clothes. Blah, blah, blah....blah, blah, blah....blah, blah, blah.... home on Sunday.

Peace!

I'm Moving!!

This calls for champagne and good cheese fondue. I think that is how I will reward myself for moving from now on for ever more.




I'm scared!


A little sad and crestfallen too.

In all Their SplendAR...

Woot!

Burn '06 Boobalicious!

One More Vital Pagan Orgy Sex, drugs and glow sticks:

Oh sure you've got your giant floating neon dragons and your epic desert sculptures and your hissing Mad Max-ish art cars shooting flames 400 feet into the air, and every single thing everywhere smells like some combination of sweat and dust and marijuana and urine and fire and tequila and glue.

And sure there's your rampant glittering nudity and writhing all-night dancing and improvised kitchen-sink costumes and sudden vicious unrelenting alkali dust storms that could choke a cow and make your throat feel like it's been rubbed with sandpaper and your eyes dream of saline solution. This is pretty much a given.

You've got your requisite body painting and drum circles and kite flying and giant kickball and rope-bondage class at Camp Arachnid, music at the Church of Wow, penis gourds on parade, yoga and massage and the ragin' Thunderdome bash-fest and the famed Critical Tits all-female all-topless bike procession.

All topped off by the glory that is the ever-present Pinky's nightclub/libation station, stuck somewhere on the spoke of Imagined between the roads known as Faith and Evidence. Bless you all.

And of course there are always, always the rows of mandatory and simply indescribable porta-potties stuck out in the middle of the Nevada desert in 102-degree heat for a week. For this, there are no words.

Just another Burning Man, really. Sort of pedestrian, all this astounding otherworldliness, this sense of entering another planet, of stepping out of reality as you know it an into a place where anything goes and usually does and no one really thinks much of it except that it's usually pretty relaxed and ridiculous and surreal and friendly and half naked and grinning.

Do we need to be clearer? Are there still those who don't know, don't really understand? Is it even possible to describe the indescribable?

Because you can't explain Burning Man to your parents and you can't explain it to the religiously terrified and you can't describe it to those who, no matter what you say, refuse to see such events as anything other than some sort of freaky-deaky druggie Grateful Dead-esque Satan-worshipping sex-romp thing, one that they pray their kids never get sucked into lest they become kinky beautiful liberal atheists who like anal sex and weird art and vodka shots and open-mouthed laughter.

OK look. Burning Man is not an orgy. It's not a sweetly blasphemous pagan love-fest. It's not a giant drunken drug-addled overly hot week-long rave party with lots of beer and margaritas and bikes and exposed nipples and unshowered flesh and flashing shiny things and dust and crazy nouveau idealistic neo-hippies and breathtaking starlight. Not solely, anyway.

What it is, really, is a chance at unfettered self-expression, with drinks. And this is why it's still so vital, so important.

What BM is, really, is 30,000 people who erect this bizarre gorgeous temporary fully functional art-filled dust-drunk city in the middle of nowhere sans money sans phones sans work sans rules and tear it all down a week later, and that, in effect, is what makes it so gorgeous and strange.

And you'd think this lack of rules, this lawless inebriant-fueled glitter bomb of an event, would result in this teeming screaming free-for-all, this haphazard mess, nothing but violence and mayhem and rape and sodomy and hey you jerk quit grabbing my ass.

When in fact you might be amazed at how civilized and generous and open and friendly most people can be in such circumstances, how relaxed and smiling and accessible, with the notable exception of the camp that played very loud and very mediocre techno 24 hours a day, nonstop, right next door to my camp, and we nicknamed you Annoying Music Camp and you were unfathomably obnoxious and I wish you ill.

What BM is, really, is a chance to hang with like-minded creative nutballs who, at the conservative end of the spectrum, are so urgently in need of release they look forward to Burning Man the entire year so they can finally cut loose and be the type of person they always want to be, at least for a week, at least a little, before they dive right back into their oatmeal lives and hunker down for another paycheck and sigh wistfully.

And on the other end, there are those who live on the fringe of the culture all the time and view BM as the pinnacle, the cumulative blowout result of all their nonconformist energies, the status-less judgment-free dream utopia they've always felt could exist year-round, if we all just tried really really hard and gave up money and air-conditioning and ATMs.

And Burning Man can, in fact, become a little tiresome. A little stale. A little less than magical after a few trips and what's amazing is how you can begin to take it for granted, begin to forget that there's nothing like this happening anywhere else on the planet.

And it was my third year at the famed alt-everything festival, and despite the same old hot pants on thousands of semi-naked women, the same old random dust-choked large-scale mega-art, the same old countless REI tents and parachute domes and odd playa mobiles and mutated trucks and funky signs and clever camp names and huge thumping sound systems and what must be a million bucks' worth of glow sticks, it just didn't quite have the magical zing, the flavor, the electric transformational punch it once did.

But of course, that's just me. It happens. Because Burning Man is just exactly as much or as little as you need it to be. It is exactly the experience you make it, and as any seeker of intense transformational pops will tell you, if you aren't craving a step outside your normal reality, or if you aren't really needing a sticky injection of semi-radical, liminal vision questing at that particular moment in your life, Burning Man might not yank you the right way.

No matter. Because regardless of how powerfully it slaps your spiritual ass on a given year, the truism remains that this event is still one of the few bright glimmers of rabidly creative, pro-individuality hope in a snarlingly uptight, lockstep BushCo world. Try saying that about Ozzfest, dude.

Because in the end, it doesn't really matter what anyone thinks of this stunning festival. Burning Man shrugs off criticism as easily as it defies definition. You simply take one look around the playa, one glance at the art and costumes and the people, and no matter how tired or ennui filled you might have become, you can only feel an overwhelming sense of, well, gratitude.

That it's still happening. That it's still here, still strong and still diverse and outrageously imaginative, still pulsing with funky divine alt-vibes, retaining its core sense of release and evolution and joy and well-lubed creative flow.

This is more important than you know. This is more vital than many of us realize. In the age of Homeland Security and bludgeoning deficits and a government that would love it very much if everyone with any independent opinion whatsoever would please shut the hell up so they can pillage the world at will, you realize how precious a commodity this sort of energy has become.

Ultimately, BM reminds you of just how desperately undernourished is the world when it comes to exactly the mind-set the event itself illuminates. No matter how it hits you, no matter how deeply you connect with it, you can't help but look around and say to yourself, sweet Jesus with a tequila shooter and a sequined Buddha costume, thank God this event still exists. And flourishes.

Because this ain't hippie-dippy New Age crap, not some Grateful Dead Rainbow Coalition acid-trip hemp expo. It's raw, it's dirty, it's hot, it's ugly, it's beautiful, it's surreal and funny and strange and uncomfortable and incredibly freeing and connected and honest and man are you ever grateful for a shower when you get home.

And if that's unreality, it sure as hell feels like the real thing.

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

(Me: And that's what it's all about *clap clap*. Are you gonna be there next year?!)

Yes yes, boobie pics on the way.

Posting pics is tedious I find. Takes forever. Keep Checking back for more tho.

The Burn By Night

Burning Man in Shades of Blue

IT'S A BOY!!!!!

Congratulations to Suko and the new little guy!!

I don't have any baby pictures... but let's all say "awwwwwwwwww" (without an "H" Mig, hee hee)

My Cutie Thea

Greeks, Wine. Cheese...

Happy now?

:P

State Fair is WAY Over Priced

DANGIT!

Luchi gets the BOOBS now! Well, enjoy them chica, you're gonna definitely deserve them.

:)

I find out from Chad?!?!?! :P

OH MY GOOOOD!!! FOR REAL?? THAT IS SO AMAZING I AM GOING TO CRY!!! (I hear it's not a rumour) I WANNA BE THE GODMOTHER!!!! First DIBS!! RIGHT HERE!! Everyone else BACK OFF. AHHHHHHHH!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! At least I wasn't THE last to find out. Poor JM seems to be the unlucky one. haha. LOVE YOU GUYS!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!