Everything Changes.

“Look around you. Everything changes. Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing and changing. You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant.” – Steve Maraboli

Passion.

“It’s not about passion. Passion is something that we tend to overemphasize, that we certainly place too much importance on. Passion ebbs and flows. To me, it’s about desire. If you have constant, unwavering desire to be a cook, then you’ll be a great cook. If it’s only about passion, sometimes you’ll be good and sometimes you won’t. You’ve got to come in every day with a strong desire. With passion, if you see the first asparagus of the springtime and you become passionate about it, so much the better, but three weeks later, when you’ve seen that asparagus every day now, passions have subsided. What’s going to make you treat the asparagus the same? It’s the desire.”
– Thomas Keller

Baptism By Fire.

Tonight we dined in the cold evening sun, huddled around coals and laughter. We looked up at the sky, the sliver of the moon, and talked about acid and love. We burned memories on the bonfire and embraced its impermanent warmth, a brief reprieve from our own critical eyes and minds.

Rejection is a word I hear often. People reject things, emotions, other people. When you’re on the receiving end of what’s interpreted as rejection a part of you just dies. It breaks and dies. For me rejection has always felt like I was being cleaved in two: the part of me before, that was worthy, that was loved, that was confident, and the second part, the part that feels tiny, insignificant, and unworthy. Rejection isn’t what we go through, it’s what we put ourselves through by subscribing attributes or value to our experiences, to our interactions, our love, our being.

Tonight I watched my friends by the fire, some old, some new, and wondered at our connections. We can feel rejected because a thing, a person, an event did not go the way we wanted it to go, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t still just as connected.

Rejection is a feeling we place ourselves in because our mind tells us there may have been another outcome. We suffer from believing there would have been a different reality than the one we are faced with, the one we are going through.

If we never felt rejected or felt rejection, we’d feel more connected. We would believe in ourselves and in others, our belief wouldn’t waiver or change. We wouldn’t put ourselves down, or others down. There wouldn’t be a “could have been.” There would only be a now.

Right now.

Logos

Time, just goes. We look back and think of all the time we had to do this, to do that, and here we are over a year later and time, seems to have escaped everything. It’s really not as important as we think it is. It really is not important. Time that is. A lot more to come, first though, this:

Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you. – Marcus Aurelius

 

Futures Influenced by Today.

Stumbling around the news articles from this past week, I found this:

http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2012/may/21/avatars-assist-area-airports/

The article is about customer service technology, being installed in airports. The Avatars:

will be seen on a device that is a life-sized flat screen in the shape of a woman. She will dispense flight information and tips about services like shuttle bus and taxi pick-ups. It activates when a customer approaches.

Thoughts. I remember several years ago when a new multi level parking garage was built on campus. For the first year or so, there was an actual person working at the ticket pay both when you exited the garage. The garage was a 24 hour garage, so, there was always someone there. Fast forward two years: the human attendees, are replaced with ticket pay kiosks. You still get a ticket when you enter, but have to manual feed your ticket into the machine and pay before you are able to leave the garage. These machines would get jammed from the paper tickets, only accepted cash and exact change. The technology used at the exits now, would also get jammed from the paper tickets. The bar wouldn’t raise and back ups actually occurred inside the garage because cars couldn’t get past the exit stand. It didn’t matter if you had paid for your ticket or not. Usually a help button, linked to the campus safety office allowed a third party to raise the exit bar and let you out if one of the other technologies failed.

So Avatars…will replace actual people at the air port. It may not happen now, or in the next several years, but just reading the article means the future is now here. What I mean by future is technology. Technology replaces the human interaction.

Freedom and Value.

Last night I was working late modeling for a class at the college. The summer sessions are in some ways better than the usual spring/fall sessions. Why? You can have a 10-12 hour day, but those days are only for 5 weeks, whereas, in the spring/fall, you could potentially have 10-12 hour days for three months. Summer sessions tend to be more relaxed, both from a teacher stand point and a student one.

A student started asking me how I feel when I model, then next, how did I get into modeling, and lastly, where else do I model?

Students always seem surprised that modeling is something I just sort of “fell” into. I helped friends out a couple of years ago by posing for a class for them at the center where they still work. I loved it so much I asked how I could do more. Cue nude and portrait modeling, I’ve never looked back.

Modeling is pretty much a thankless job. It’s physically demanding work, at times for very long days (10-12hrs), you don’t get benefits, you don’t get sick days, you don’t get wage raises and some of the environments where you have model are down right gross. What modeling does afford you is freedom and value:

You can make your own schedule, or work around another one. You have the ability to say yes to some jobs and walk away from others. If you save your money, you can have financial freedom. The best part of modeling though, is that it helps others with their creative process, you become part of the learning process, well, your body does actually. In some way, you’re inspiring others to stay passionate about creating, and that’s an amazing thing.

Upcoming Art Shows!

This summer my grid portrait series, 100 Reflections, will be featured in two shows. The first is the Emerge Show, held by The Art Trust Gallery in West Chester, PA. This show features emerging local artists from several surrounding art schools. The shows purpose is to bring philanthropy back into the arts, and connect local businesses with emerging artists.

Emerge Show, The Art Trust Gallery, West Chester, PA reception June 1st, 5:30-8:30pm, shown from June 1st to July 30th.

The second show is a solo show at The Bean Cafe, located on South Street in Philadelphia, PA. The Bean cafe showcases local artists in an eclectic environment. It is one of my favorite cafes! The show will run from June 13th to July 10th.

Come on out for these great local Philadelphia shows!

Peace & Love

Life After Life.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. -Lao Tzu

 

Thoughts.

This week was the first week I could walk without pain. The weather here has been outstandingly beautiful. Sunny, cloudless skies, warm but not sultry, slightly breezy and refreshing. I started painting portraits again this week. All the ideas and creative pressure has been building up in me for weeks, and this week I finally set aside the time to see where all those ideas would go. I started and finished three separate 8 x 8 inch portraits, more for the 100 Reflection series. It felt like a release seeing those ideas take form. I felt enthusiastic throughout the week, and even painted in the middle of the night….just like I used to so many years ago.

A part of me felt alive and awake in a way that it hasn’t been for a long time.

Everyday I took a few hours and just walked around town. It’s funny, I’ve walked a lot in my lifetime, for events and for fun. Going for a walk this week felt different, that great kind of different. The sun beating down, a warm breeze brushing across my skin, tickling my hair. It was as though I had never walked before, and felt everything for the first time.

I thought about how we take even something simple, like walking, for granted. I haven’t been able to do much moving over the last two weeks because of pain and discomfort from the surgery. Walking this week made me reflect on just how fun, simple and invigorating walking is. We have these legs and sometimes we look for ways to not even use them, how crazy is that? People park close to buildings because they don’t want to walk. They drive short distances because they don’t want to walk. They ask other people to get things for them because they don’t want to get up and walk to do it.

So crazy. Walking gives you time to reflect, to relax, to see everything slowly, as it comes. Rediscovering this about walking and movement is so positive. My heart feels lifted and my body feels great.

Graduation is over. College is finished. Taking my time to rediscover simple things that make life beautiful, celebrating the positive, reflecting on the hardness of other things, and pushing myself to be open to whatever comes next.

Life is beautiful, get out and discover it!

Recovery

The test we must set for ourselves is not to march alone but to march in such a way that others will wish to join us.
― Hubert Humphrey

 

On Wednesday I had my operation. Everything went well. I had an option to have my tubes removed as well, since I was already on the table, I decided to take this extra preventative measure. So, I still have my ovaries, however, the uterus, cervix and tubes were removed.

I am looking back to the night before I went, trying to remember if I had any expectation, trying to remember what was going through my mind. I know, deep down inside I was just exhausted, and sitting today I still feel the same.

Things are different though, and the tiredness I feel is more from the nervous energy I have than the fear and dread I was eating through a few days ago.

Do women talk about their procedures after the fact? What do they say? Is it horrible to have nothing to say?

I was by myself Wednesday night in the hospital, with what I expect to be, the worst pain I’ve experienced in my life. My catheter was pulled out at 3 pm, and every two hours I was peeing knives. My belly, bloated from the surgery was getting more bloated by the hour. I imagined my organs inside inflamed and pulsing from being pushed around. My abdominal section, almost nonexistent, stinging and pinching every time I breathed in and out. I cried a lot that night. I know it was part from the pain, and part from the realization of what I had just gone through.

Things have slowly been better each day. I’m trying to walk a little farther each day. The swelling has slowly gone down, and the pain is less consistent.

I have a list I go over in my head every night: getting through this initial two week period where I’m immobile is the first item. Slowly regaining core strength through movement is the second. Starting work again at the end of May is the third. Getting back on the bike for training is the fourth. The fifth is tying back into the climbing rope, I’m aiming for mid June.

Things are slowly unfolding, and everything that was before will still be, just different. Not different in a negative way, just different.  There’s nothing wrong with different, sometimes you need different.

I feel fortunate to be here, surrounded by the people that I am, that’s enough for today.