HNY

May the new year be this beautiful.

Rustika Photography

the dissonance within you, the beating, thrashing, is what drives the beauty in you to surface, calling you to feel the pain and beauty of the thousands before you. the essence of being. to make sense of it all. to divulge the secret of life to those willing to listen. and to somehow prevent cognizance from impeding expression.

from the Buddhist Mentality

Went to Nepal. Met some llamas...

...okay, not that kind. :P  Was a great trip though!

Photo from Lucyesnowphotography

even during an experience filled with such immense joy, the pain seeps through. will my heart ever learn better? if not here on a spiritual retreat, when will i be able to accept what I've learned the hard way time and again? why does being human require this emotion? and if I am to grow from the experience, how many years will it really take...

"Painted Love" - Air (Cartier)

...if only

Let there be bright-energy-efficient-non-poisonous-recyclable light!

Fiat Lux :)

An interesting Houzz.com article on the pros and cons of different types of lightbulbs.
Hopefully the price of LED bulbs will decrease soon.

Photo Ref

Gotta love it

I walked into two coffee shops just now... in one, all the Phillipinos were gathered, entranced and reverently cheering on their national hero in the Manny Pacquiao vs Marquez fight as if it were the biggest event of the year.  I let them enjoy their moments and instead, went to the other coffee shop where I walked in on the barristas singing the high notes to "Winds of Change" by the Scorpions.  They then looked at me, held their breath for a second, and then without skipping a beat the three of us sang the rest of the song together, high notes and all. :)

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the wind of change

Oh, and Manny won! :)

...there's no map and a compass wouldn't help at all...

...but logic does exist, though it may not be understood by all...

and what you want may not be what you want... logical?

11/11/11 11:11:11

We all carry around so much pain in our hearts. Love and pain and beauty. They all seem to go together like one little tidy confusing package. It's a messy business, life. It's hard to figure--full of surprises. Some good. Some bad. 
Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure

"Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary."
Peter Minard

"Do not worry about what others are doing! Each of us should turn the searchlight inward and purify his or her own heart as much as possible."
-- Mohandas Gandhi 

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.” 
-Mother Theresa-

“The wind lashes the surface of the sea and makes it rough and turbulent,
but in the deep there is calm.”
~ Cardinal Basil Hume

"...in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known,
which is the prison of past conditioning.
And in our willingness to step into the unknown,
the field of all possibilities,
we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe."
-From the Chopra Center's Spiritual Law of the Day

"I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life but that great consciousness of life."
Jack Kerouac
 

~Happiness comes when you take every situation as a blessing,
no matter how difficult it seems.~

OnVidi

A great new site that promotes videographic talent.  The videos currently available to view are the top-20 ranked from a recent student contest.  http://www.onvidi.com/student_winners/top20/

There are a ton of great videos, but my favorites (from what I've seen so far)...
Anchored (above)
I'm Sailing Away
Burn
Be Near Me
Be Strong, Move Along
Polka Face
Love will Conquer the Rawest of Seafood
On a Park Bench

...and then, for the first moment in years, i took a few deep breaths and felt no pain in my chest.  for the first time in years, i felt a sense of healing making its way in.   a slight numbness, yes, but with it, hope.  peace.  and freedom. escaping even if for only a few moments.

by Flying Mouse 365 on Etsy

I also like Swan Kick, Difficult Task, and Sunshine Melody

reading between the lines

In Belgium, local architects Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh created a beautiful piece of "art"chitecture that is much more than just a building.  In this see-through church exists a metaphor linking the place in which we are 'supposed to' find God and the breathtaking nature that proves God's presence with every glance.  We've been indoctrinated for centuries to believe that we will find God through proper penance on our knees, reciting memorized prayers in darkened buildings, listening to guilt-ridden sermons, fearful of penalties for disobedience, and striving to be without sin in God's image.  Yet this structure isn't perfect.  The welding drips, and the steel is rusted and sharp. Without pressure, this artwork thoughtfully shows how God surrounds us with beauty and that walls can be illusions, that absence can yield understanding and faith.  A deep breath of fresh air brings peace, the ability to relax, and moments to recognize the light that shines naturally within.

Article  Images by Kristof Vrancken

"stellar"

"Stellar" by Ignacio Torres

ref

ref

ref

ref

An abandoned East Berlin amusement park...

Abandoned

Saturday in Spreepark

The Art of Flight

A new and insane boarding film with Travis Rice coming in the fall.

 ref1 ref2

ref

One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen...

Click here for the article and, even better, here for the video link.

Living

Found while looking for underwater cameras/cases.  Love.

Yup...

My thoughts exactly.  Though sometimes I need a reminder.  It reminds me of a poster I made in college, or of SARK.  One snipit I'll highlight, "all emotions are beautiful".  (to purchase this poster)

Each little clam here know how to jam here...

...under the melted glacier lake!  These next two places are on my travel hit list.  Both involve scuba, a new fear-fighting hobby of mine.

Below is an image taken at Green Lake in Austria.  Every year from June to July the ice and snow atop the nearby Hochschwab mountains melts, transforming this park into an underwater playground for divers.  See here for the full article...

Far away from Austria (and in much warmer water) lies an underwater art gallery.  Near Cancun, Mexico, in the National Marine Park of Isla Mujeres, 120 tons of cement stands on the ocean floor in the form of muted people looking towards the surface.  The creator and artist Jason deCaires Taylor calls this manmade reef “The Silent Evolution”.  Though fresh and clean right now, I prefer to wait a few years before visiting this site so I can mingle with the fishies and these characters once dressed in colorful, texturized algae.

An Escape Pod?

A neat concept though I'd have the whole floor covered in a layer of white plushness that I could fall into.  I'd also have removable in-set attachment brackets in the walls so I could mount hardened work space or shelves for my in-progress art, candles (for meditation & yoga), plants, or photographs of all that I see as beautiful.  The space inside would be fluid, reflecting my everchanging moods. This would be a sanctuary where I could be surrounded by my thoughts and ideas, or to escape from them... 

The Inspiration Archipod, for "only" $40,000....

Solar Flares... and 2012?

On June 7th, a super solar flare erupted on the sun, spraying massive amounts of electromagnetic particles into space.  Luckily, it was not directed at the earth.  Scientists say we are coming to a high point in the sun's storm cycle in 2013-2014.  Unfortunately, this means there will be more frequent, more intense flares ahead, some of which may be headed straight for us.  The concern?  A direct hit on earth would result in a surge on the power grid with the potential to burn out the industrial-sized generators that give us electricity throughout the world (for an indefinite period of time) but also to wipe out any/all information stored on computer systems.  This means unless banks and government entities have alternate data storage locations in protected faraday cages advanced enough to prevent damage from such an electromagnetic storm, the electronic history of everyone on earth could be wiped clean.  This includes the money I've been saving in the bank- potentially gone.

This site offers some more interesting information (especially the Carrington event) as well as a personal protection measure, a Faraday bag in which you can store your electronics. 

Contrary to all the hype above however, other scientists are saying that not only will the 2013 Solar Maximum be weak, but that it will potentially initiate the beginning of a period of solar inactivity.  While a cool period would affect the earth's climate, it may not yield nearly the devastation of a super solar flare hitting Earth.

Evolution of Character

In Cosmos Carl Sagan said, “We are made of star stuff.”

I'll add to the point above by saying that stars are balls of fire and that we are just as volatile. That everything in the cosmos is the result of (or will result in) an explosion, be it a massive universe-creating one or the colliding of synapsis. While gravity may seem unchanging, it is only our minute perspective that makes it appear as such. Everything is in constant flux and to believe otherwise, that some things might actually stay the same, is naive. Yes, I will always love my family. But even the dynamics b/w each of us are perpetually changing.  Changes, whether happy or sad, always bring hope, for both new opportunities and second-chances lie on these paths that cross often in this web. But to suppose that anything could remain constant once found is sadly more absurd than believing that a star is nothing more than a twinkling light. Whether a cataclysm of atomic explosions reaching us millions of years after the snapshot had been taken or a wish granting ambassador, there will always be many interpretations and much unknown. It is in the unknown and in our transitions that possibilities lie, where dreams breathe and creativity thrives. To find your way means to constantly redefine yourself as you fit into the cosmos at that moment. 

How can I best affect this moment?  What is the world missing that I can provide?   Is my absense more beneficial in certain circumstances?  Why have I been given these opportunities?  This understanding?  This life...?  How will my changes, my breath, my conscious decisions affect the world?  Must I explain myself??  And will benevolent acts result in benevolence or is perception a more influential factor? 

“Many social and natural phenomena—societies, economies, ecosystems, climate systems—are complex evolving webs of interdependent parts whose collective behavior cannot be reduced to a sum of parts; small, gradual changes in any component can trigger catastrophic and potentially irreversible changes in the entire system that can propagate, in domino fashion, even across traditional disciplinary boundaries.”—George Sugihara (a theoretical biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography)

*currently listening to Hotel Costes 5......

It's that time again...

So it seems I have a propensity to post here every year or so. I have a feeling that will change now. There are many many reasons why I have not posted much this past year, one being my focus in other areas of life. Though I will surely be caught up in another career whirlwind shortly, I am attempting now to update this little creative corner of my world with photos, philosophical rants, and any other musings that decide to surface.