clouds&resolutions

i like looking at the clouds, not because i'm a flower child or anything because i'm totally not, but because they remind me of being a kid and children's books and just everything awesome about the world. because when you're a kid and looking up at the clouds you don't care that you have homework to do, or that you're fighting with your brother, and you don't know or care that the clouds are actually moving because the world is spinning around and around with you on top of it. (or is it wind? science was never my strongest subject.)

all you see is clouds that look like dragons and knights and monsters and your grandfather and france and pointing fingers and anything else your young and unhindered mind can dream up. that's why i love clouds.

the other day i saw this awesome cloud/cloud group because colorado has awesome clouds all the time.

i think it looks like a dragon twisting its head around towards its tail to firebreathe on whatever is following it. probably an airplane or a hot air balloon. and then it kind of morphed as the clouds moved and it looked like something completely different. cloudwatching is awesome. if you ever have writer's block or just a general lack of inspiration and creativity and imagination, just go outside and hope there are clouds and then watch some clouds!


anyway, now that it's 2011, i've got a fresh list of resolutions to not follow up on. although the top of the list is "actually follow through with this year's resolutions," so we'll see if that makes me work harder. my number two? "enjoy life and write more letters."


challenge to make the world better: learn some words in a foreign language so that if you ever go to that country you can brighten a foreign stranger's day by being able to say "i love you" and "please" and "thank you" and "you have a nice butt" (i'm going with swedish)

monday morning music:

rogue valley. album: the bookseller's house









boxes of honey nut cheerios in 2011: one. (i started before the year turned 2011 though, so i didn't really eat a whole box in two and a half days. but i could have.)

hey, 2011, hey!

if you don’t just sit for a long time and look out the window at the snow falling all around you, you miss out on a whole lot

if you don’t go outside on a snowy day and stand there, letting the snow fall on your hair and your face and your eyelashes and your fancy clothes and letting the silence wrap its big cold arms around you, you miss out on a whole lot


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2010 was awesome. 2011 will be awesome. and i'm going to blog more about how awesome it is! a new addition to my blogs: i'm gonna add on at the end of every post something that people should do at least once in their lives to make themselves happier and healthier, to add more innocence and joy to the world, to liberate themselves from the confines of routine and stagnation, to become better human beings, to laugh out loud or hug a complete stranger, etc&etc.

there's a children's book author, dallas clayton. (he wrote a book called an awesome book! and then another one called an awesome book of thanks!, you should check him out here), and on his blog/diary thing on his website, he once posted this:

 

this is completely true and i think that small acts of kindness or of imagination or of joy, even something as simple as holding the door open for someone or doing a handstand while waiting for the "walk" sign to come on, will make the world a better place. so i'm going to start including that at the end of each post and should you chose to accept the adventure of becoming a more happy and fun-loving and liberated human being with me (the best new year's resolution of all), it'll be awesome. 

also, i'll be posting more random musings or ideas or writings like the one above about the snow. just because i have a lot in my mind and sometimes my mind likes to see that stuff that it thinks on paper.

also, i might start including a count of how many boxes of honey nut cheerios i've eaten. because if i start counting on january first, i'm sure i'll reach an outrageously high number before long. honey nut cheerios are like God's gift to breakfast. 

anyway, happy new year and check out dallas clayton and go play in the snow if there is any near you and eat honey nut cheerios. and then fix spaghetti and eat it! (<-- that doesn't count as the thing you should do to become a better person, that was just some good advice)

thursday album:

the wapsipinicon, san geronimo

(listen to the song --> "vans on dupont")

http://www.myspace.com/thewapsipinicon

written word wednesday: emerson's all you need

"to speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. most persons do not see the sun. at least they have a very superficial seeing. the sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. the lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. his intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. in the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows."

-ralph waldo emerson

go climb a mountain. or at least take your facebook-plagued laptops outside. air conditioning and heat are bad for your complexion anyway, i think i heard that somewhere. but really, mountains and grass and trees are great. and vitamin d is really great. and be nice to each other, always. (not to sound preachy, or anything, i just think that's a good principle to live by.)

happy thursday!

(photo cred - me)

minnesota music thursday

so it's not a catchy alliteration or anything, but today definitely is a minnesota music kind of thursday. actually there are two m's right in a row, so that makes it alliterationarily neat. beyond hard-hitting hockey players, that whole state has produced awesome musicians and music, from semisonic, to a bob dylan album, and nowadays to an awesome "indie" music scene, if indie actually means anything as a genre now that's it's been so overused and abused. but really, the minnesota music scene is alive and thriving. examples:

caroline smith & the good night sleeps. quirky voice and folky sound overall, awesome band!








and then, of course there's cloud cult. only the best band ever, in my unbiased and open-minded opinion. these are from their in-studio performance @ KEXP in seattle.








and tons of other bands, but i think i overloaded the video capacity of this blog...so i'll let you discover it for yourself. (sorry for the overly large video sizes, too. apparently i don't know how to work the internet.) land of ten thousand lakes! great thursday.

the old man in the grocery store: written word wednesday edition

i was sitting in creative writing today, zoning out because really, who can focus in an 8 am class listening to other people's sometimes pretty lame stories? not me. and i was looking out the window, at people pretending to be really cool and skateboarding--no, longboarding (big difference)-- and walking to class with scarves and jcrew jackets and coach bags. it's that time of year again in denver, the cold weather time. so, naturally, the uggs-with-tights looks has made its triumphant reappearance, too (GROSS).

anyway, rants about materialism and ridiculous fashion trends aside, i was sitting there and i thought of a story idea about this old man who goes to the library every day to read, and every day, he sits on a park bench outside to eat the same ham and cheese sandwhich. every day. well, not the same sandwhich everyday, but the same general kind of sandwhich. he goes into the grocery store one sunday to get more ham, and they tell him they're out, so he argues with the poor lady for a really long time. then he turns to leave and the ground starts shaking and it turns out there's some bomb raid going on or something crazy like that. maybe just a really bad earthquake. anyway, our professor told us to put a character in a really unexpected situation and that's what i came up with. just in case anyone was curious. it's a pretty fun exercise to do, so you should do it. it's good for your brain and your imagination.

for the revival of written word wednesday, i chose...where the wild things are.

the book, not the movie. books are always better than movies. the simplicity and yet complexity of the book is so powerful that the movie can only be seen as a separate work of art, at least in my opinion. so this book is genius and probably one of the best books out there. my theme for the week has been NEVER GROW UP, so i thought that this book was only the greatest choice ever. really, that's been my theme my whole life.

anyway...this book. it's great. on a basic level, the illustrations and story are awesome and powerful. sendak creates a whole world in just a few pages with just a few sentences. but the story extends beyond just these sentences and just these pages, living on in all of our imaginations and inspiring us to be more max-like. on a more profound level, sendak blends the real world--max's mom and his dinner, for example--with the fantastical and the magical--the monsters and max's whole journey. he plays with time and space to build up this fantastical realm and just creates this universe that i'm sure we would all like to be in. i know i would.

"and he sailed off through night and day
and in and out of weeks
and almost over a year
to where the wild things are."

beyond all the analytical stuff, the words are just powerful. i don't know about you, but they give me goosebumps every time i read this book. it's an escape, but it's not an escapist book. it gives us an opportunity to refresh our perspectives and become more child-like in the best possible way and it applies to our lives at any given time at all. (so it's an opportunity to escape to a higher level of living, rather than an escape to run away from our lives, but i guess it can be that, too.) it uplifts us out of our "worlds" and re-teaches us what's important: love, family, imagination, and wolf suits. and huge monsters and boats. thanks, maurice sendak.

oh man i missed written word wednesdays. but maybe they're back! on probably an un-regular schedule.

happy written word wednesday. and let the wild rumpus start!

monday afternoon.

so taylor swift's new album dropped today. (she sure knows her way around love.)

as if there was any need for more inspiration than that:

happy monday! it's fall.