Jan 29, 2010

nothing particularly particular.


finals are finally over.
thank goodness.
said goodbye to david and brenden :( , drank expired juice boxes, watched cloudy with a chance of meatballs, followed maggie home, went to the lake to take pictures of judy's least favorite animals, relived our childhoods at the stonecreek playground, indulged in fast food and iced coffee/mocha, lounged around in a room with an organized mess (namely mine), annoyed several unsuspecting guys over facebook chat, & tweaked my layout a bit--the branches in the header are the same as the ones in the 3rd image of this post.

i really really like the following pictures (took them all today. or yesterday. thursday. whatever, the wee hours of the morning always confuse me).
even though they are not original at all
even though i feel like i am copying amelia
but i cannot help but post them.
i admit that i'm pretty proud of my progress in photography/editing in the past month.








Jan 26, 2010

i'd rather experience the entire spectrum of emotion than nothing at all.

having a memory longer than 3 seconds is pretty nice












Jan 24, 2010

we might as well be strangers.

the worst part is that i know you read all this.
and you don't even say anything in person
even when i tell you, in person, about how unhappy and sad and empty and lonely i feel
even though i see you all day, every day
actually not all day.
because you don't make any effort anymore
and from now on, neither will i.
because it obviously isn't worth it.

why do my friendships never last? (okay, i know the answer to this. it's because i'm too picky and i expect too much and i cannot give all of myself to someone who won't reciprocate my actions.)
but i thought that of all of them, this one at least would.

in the words of sokka, (just bringing a twist of humor into this humorless post)
the universe just loves proving me wrong.

i wish you'd actually listen.

i miss how things used to be.

janet fitch could write the story of my life.

"That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific--chair, eye, stone--but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out."

"She was starting to think there might be such a thing as karma - that repetition - maybe you lived through the same thing over and over until you stopped caring. Maybe eventually it got less intense, until it was just nothing."

"How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it."

"The pearls weren't really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart."

"If I were a poet, that’s what I’d write about. People who worked in the middle of the night. Men who loaded trains, emergency room nurses with their gentle hands. Night clerks in hotels, cabdrivers on graveyard, waitresses in all-night coffee shops. They knew the world, how precious it was when a person remembered your name, the comfort of a rhetorical question, “How’s it going, how’s the kids?” They knew how long the night was. They knew the sound life made as it left. It rattled, like a slamming screen door in the wind. Night workers lived without illusions, they wiped dreams off counters, they loaded freight. They headed back to the airport for one last fare."

"Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way."
^ my all-time favorite quote.

i kind of want to be a writer.
but it'd feel like a waste of my (excuse me for saying) skills in math. :/ especially since my parents are like...math, physics, and engineering experts.
it just wouldn't be acceptable to pursue a career in literature, or photography, or the arts.

or maybe it's not so much my parents limiting my potential, but my fear of failure.
and of not being the best.
even though there will always be someone better than you. always.

i just want to do something safe.
something that i'm good at,
that makes decent money. (and this is irvine, so decent = 6 figures.)

why is my mindset so narrow?
why is it that i've never truly considered becoming a missionary, or a servant of the Lord and the Church?
(actually, i've considered it. that's just the furthest i've gotten. :P)

i feel redundant in using the word dormant again because i did in my last post.
but God lies so dormant in my life.
actually scratch that
my abilities to see, trust in, and love God lie so dormant in my life.

i wish i saw Him/beauty in everyday things more often.
i wish i could find comfort in Him.
i wish i could believe that He is always right here alongside me...so i wouldn't feel so goddamn alone all the time.

where did all the sunshine go?


there's some kind of direct correlation between the weather and my disposition.

these days my skies are cloudy and grey.
the weather's cold and so am i, in all applicable ways.
happiness, like the sun, lies dormant.

i honestly don't know if...i genuinely like any of my friends.
maybe i'm a tad picky.
but is it too much to ask for intelligence, thoughtfulness, and good morals in a person?

apparently so.

i wish finals were my biggest problem right now.

Jan 21, 2010

food for thought

literally.


if you want to skip right to the profound analysis of the efficiency of chipotle and how wonderful the world would be if finding a girlfriend were that easy, go to about 2:11.

hahaha these comparisons (more here...) that guys make of girls and food are probably on my top 10 list of things that crack me up. (also included on the list are cheesy jokes, harry potter pick-up lines, and looking upon john's face. hehe ♥)

Jan 18, 2010

i'm only me when i'm with you

i've been at a writers' block of sorts lately.
there are at least 10 saved drafts in my list of posts on this blog where i began an entry, stopped in the middle, and left it at that.
so my apologies for my current lack of eloquence :P
although maybe it's for the better; they say that brevity is the soul of wit, after all.

anyways, all i wanted to say was this:
things have inevitably changed in the past few days/weeks/months/years.
hobbies, interests, and friends come and go, but sisterhood remains constant.
so here's to 13 years of partnership, rivalry, and friendship.


ps. props if you caught the taylor swift reference.
i feel so conformist and girly and all those other adjectives that describe the exact opposite of the person i want to be for liking her music.
but her songs are just too
damn
catchy.

Jan 13, 2010

gustav mahler

"The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause."

wish i could apply this to my photography skills.
these past few days have been really frustrating, photography-wise :/
i feel all this pressure to take amazing pictures that i feel like i'm not capable of.

but thanks to everyone for the positive feedback, it really means the world to me :)
i've realized as of late that a surefire way to win my heart is to comment on (and hopefully compliment..) my blog / pictures.
sad, huh .

Jan 12, 2010

breathings of the soul.

In the midst of these rifts, these stupid arguments, I often close my eyes and think of you. I conjure up your face in my mind, your image as familiar as if we had only parted ways yesterday. In my imagination, you have on a serious expression, the contemplative look that you always adopt when we stop joking around for a minute and consider our surroundings. Until the momentary peace is broken--perhaps by the awkwardness it has created--and your face breaks into the easy, mischievous grin that I have grown to know and love. And with that, we are once again friends. Boy and girl, nothing more; but that's how we want it to be. There is no hidden meaning, or underlying message, to my hand in yours as we read through one of my books on a dreary bus ride, or my head on your shoulder as we take a much-needed nap. Just comraderie and friendship.
Or was that really all there was to it? At the time it seemed so. We were--we still are--young, simple beings. It made sense that our relationship would reflect the simplicity of the naive, carefree adolescence that defined our existence.
But I suppose it's all in the past. Now we are many miles and, seemingly, several worlds apart. There is no use dwelling on what could have or would have been.
But it's during moments like these--unstable, uncomfortable, unbearable moments like these--that I wish you were here.

Jan 10, 2010

infinity on high

the sky has been amazing/spectacular/glorious/breathtaking/stunning/incredible
for the past week or so.
(and no, i didn't use a thesaurus haha. just the words that come to mind when i reflect on this past week's cloud formations and rich hues)

i wondered for a while if it had always been this beautiful and i'd only noticed now because of the camera i carry with me at all times (picture-a-day resolution)
but other people have mentioned it too, so hopefully it's not just that i've been completely oblivious for the first 14 years of my life.










these pictures seriously do not do the sky justice .

i kinda miss year-round school...longer vacations.

i had an epiphany the other day
my outlook on things has brightened considerably.

school has begun again.
aside from the inconvenience of having to remember to date our papers 2010 instead of 2009, everything is pretty much the same. for two short weeks, we escaped the mass procrastination, sleep deprivation, busy schedules, tedious projects, ill-tempered teachers, and basic routine that characterizes the high school experience. but now everything has picked up from where we left it and we are back to the world of education (or forced instruction. depending on how you look at it).












last science fair project i will ever complete. [AP next year <3]
(note: 16 hours straight work. all-nighter till 8:30 am, 2 hours sleep because my vision was starting to blur together, then school for 4th-6th period :P)
good freaking riddance.




Jan 3, 2010

"let us calm our hearts before the Lord."

^ i really like that expression for some reason.
it seems appropriate in describing how we should react to His presence.








hehe i love photoshop.

insomnia



i have not been sleeping these past few nights, but rather in the daytime.
and all i have to show for these long hours is a completed ap euro study guide.
school starts in a day and i'm screwed in regards to winter assignments and sleeping habits.

and i update this thing way too much
it's my way of procrastinating.






these were taken at about 7 AM in my backyard.

edit: feel free to sign the guestbook! haha
(it's in the right-hand column of this page under my about me)
it would be nice to know who reads this stuff.

Jan 2, 2010

part II

my more artsy pictures, i supposee you could say
nowhere near as good as amelia's, but they'll do.











part I

my more colorful pictures of the trip.
pardon my excess of mirror pictures :P