Thursday, September 22, 2011

a poety sort of day

in the mood for some poety music today, started a new poem this morning. here's my inspiration:


i think this video is a bit odd, but the version i liked better has disabled embedding. http://youtu.be/wKhGKB6faW0


the saddest song on the earth, i almost didn't put it here. it makes me weep.


i like rufus' voice better than cohen's. it's grittier.


i was surprised that i liked kd lang's version so much, considering how much i love grittier, more unconventional voices. she destroyed this song (in a good way).


soul stirrers are my favorite.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

my bible study

daily worries & laundry have a way of sneaking in & taking hold, telling your creativity that it's just not needed at this time, please check back later. then your creativity has to file for underemployment & it gets cranky & peevish and then won't return your calls.

i've been feeling the effects of this for some months now. most of it is my own doing. i have chosen to take appointments with worry instead, and reschedule creativity for an undisclosed later date. "when i feel like it."

you can only put up with creativity deficiency for so long, tho. it really starts to make you ugly.

i've recently decided to get back to private bible study, as i have done in years past every morning. i'm trying to think...how many years has it been since i've actively read my bible? six years? luckily for me, god is gracious & merciful and somehow i've been sustained...youtube makeup videos? trying to squeeze the face of god out of forensics shows on tv? does god go to starbucks?

i went to bed a few days ago on the verge of tears and just really spiritually wiped out. i felt smeared on the pavement. altho i am healthy, i've been struggling with worry & anxiety over issues that are beyond my control. how do you deal with stuff that you want to control but obviously cannot? my tack is to worry about it obsessively and let it control my every waking thought. not a good strategy. so i was just wrung right the hell out the other nite after entertaining these doom thoughts for so very, very long.

i remembered that when i was a teenager i struggled badly with anxiety and so i turned to psalms every nite before i went to bed. reading praise passages reminded me that god created everything and was in everything, and after a year or so of reading praises to god, i got thru my insomnia and free floating anxiety.

so the other nite i laid down in bed and cracked an old worn bible with no cover on it, a gift from a friend who had cleaned out her late mother's house. it increases my faith to see other's faith in action, in this case, a worn out bible with crinkled edges. i decided to open the book & read the first thing that my eyes hit.

to my complete joy and gratefulness, it was psalms 107. it was MINE. i knew that he sees past my laziness & weakness, and that i matter. he knows my anxieties and faithlessness and "should know betters" and excuses, and time wasters and diversions...and yet he still loves me and still wants my time & attention.


i know because of this part: (4,5,6) they wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. hungry & thirsty, their soul fainted in them. then they cried unto the lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses.

i was so grateful to read that, my soul drank it in like a kid that barges in the kitchen in summer, slamming the door & slugs back an entire glass of water. that was me for so long, so many months, wandering around with my thumb up my butt, wondering when i would feel grounded and safe. burdened with worry, my soul almost completely dry, and my spirit...where was my spirit? asleep? i knew that we should read the bible, and that we should commune with god daily; he wants to hear our troubles, he knows them anyway, but he wants communion with us, so his spirit can help us. so our spirits don't dry up & wither away with each tiny worry that takes our attention away from our awesome journey here.

but i let my worries be more important, and i would get around to bible study, communing with god, "when i felt like it." this does no good for the creative soul. we are made in his image, in his likeness. we must create, it is in us to do this. part of us, like our organs & our blood. yet i was denying it daily, and days turned into years. then i was so parched & depleted...no one & nothing else can renew you like god's word. because it is a living thing, it is always fresh.

thank god for psalms, and for people of faith. "be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." romans 12:2.

anyway, onto more talk about creativity (genesis 1)next time. this post is gargantuan. xo

Thursday, May 19, 2011

xoxo "bling bling" toe: epoxy queen

this is kind of an old fad by now, blinging your appliances, but turning your world into fabulous only takes a dollop of epoxy?!!! shit, yes.

who in their right mind would not want their camera to be this awesome?


beautyQQ on youtube kind of makes my world. i subscribe to her videos because she is so inspiring all the time. i don't even understand cantonese, but i don't care. i would watch her even if she mimed the whole thing.


some supplies to get you started:
miss sapporo on etsy

and two songs to sing while you glue:


Tuesday, April 19, 2011

vanity project

people always ask me, "toe, how do you stay so gosh darn glamorous?!"

no, they actually don't, but my recent hobby is a guilty pleasure...i'm sort of obsessed with nail polish & makeup blogs. i don't know any of these people personally yet they are such a big chunk of my free time...when i should be doing laundry or cooking or something. logging onto girly girl sites to check out makeup is the new calling up your bff to gossip. it's frivolous like that--won't change the world, yet so damn delicious.

chloe's nails
this woman is hardcore. i love her attention to detail and her dedication. if i don't get my nails right the first time, i take all my polish off & just forget about it. her nails are magnificent works of art, seemingly at all times!

makeup and beauty blog
this makeup diva always has beautiful pix and a great sense of humor. karen's blog is so bright it makes me happy. i think maybe her cat writes the majority of the articles, tho. =^. .^=

temptalia
if you need to know who's makeup collection is coming out when, this is where you go. temptalia's site is the comprehensive, pic-laden, review-filled site with all the info you need to keep you from making any frivolous, unnecessary purchases when you log onto sephora.com

makeup alley
reviews by your peers. i find this site invaluable when i'm waffling whether to buy some heretofore untried drugstore cosmetics. it has saved me from wasting my money on foundations that will only make my pores look larger. shew!

scrangie's blog
more nail porn. swooooonnn....

xoxo

Monday, April 18, 2011

indie movies online

bleary eyed from watching indie flicks online...
http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/watch-movies/room-2017
"The Yanomamö tribe is a fierce, ancient people, living in the most inaccessible depths of the Venezualan rainforest. When documentary maker Rob Smits dared to undertake the journey into their world, he got far more than he bargained for."

deconstructing

detroit, michigan


leisurely stroll thru detroit ruins

i enjoy this crap. we take so much artistry for granted. xo

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

april is poetry month




Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.
Hafiz

xoxo

Sunday, April 10, 2011

lazy sunday link love




i've been busy with my script & traveling, so i haven't made time to blog lately, but this was a perfectly gorgeous sunday morning for digging around online. i had my green tea & little eee machine & a delicious chunk of quiet time. here are treasures in case you find yourself with a lazy sunday morning. savor!

advanced style
sublime style inspiration. reminds me of when richard pryor said, "you don't get to be old (and stylish--xo) bein' no fool."

i found that website here: nowness

spoonful zine
a little dollop of happiness, which can be delivered right to your door.

artist marketplace
if you're feeling creative & tired of using just coffeeshop napkins to doodle, contact moleskine to be one of their cover artists.

chinese movie blog
looks to be defunct since 2009, but good diggings thru here if you're like me: a chinese movie fan who misses a lot of chinese movies.

ps i made this
some entries are a little...odd, but this chunky pearl necklace just seemed so why-didn't-i-think-of-this?!!

the selby
celebrating stylish surroundings the same way the sartorialist celebrates stylish clothes. and i love the watercolor logo.

well, that's a wrap. i wish you quiet sunday chunks of exploring all to yourself. xo

Saturday, March 26, 2011



remember the movie called impromptu with judy davis, julian sands & hugh grant? it was about georges sand, franz lizst & frederic chopin. i loved that movie...mainly because i had a thing for julian sands after seeing a room with a view. but it was also educational. you know, it was a place to start if you didn't know anything about any of them but wanted to because you're artistically inclined or hoped to be (me). or more to the point, if you're into vintage gossipy scandals (also me).

today i began anne rice's book called out of darkness and in it she mentions a lot of her favorite things as a child, things that sort of defined who she became as a woman and a writer. she says that her mother was a great influence on her because of the poems she read to anne & her sister, the radio programs they listened to and the movies they saw. she especially loved this movie, which was a precursor, in my wacky mind, to the judy/julian/hugh movie, called a song to remember. in her book she says, "i was so taken by this film, so taken by the emotions of the young chopin, when he clutched a handful of polish earth and swore to remember it, that i wanted nothing more than to have such meaning in my own life, something that precious to me, something to which i could give my whole soul." the movie came out in 1948. she was, as far as i can figure from google, seven years old.

the biggest thing i wanted when i was seven was a barbie dream house. xo

Monday, March 21, 2011

shit grows things



"mastery does not come from dabbling. we have to be prepared to pay the price. we need to have the sustained enthusiasm that motivates us to give our best." -- e'knath easwaran

sometimes the writing comes easy, you're just taking dictation. your mind relaxes like your eyes do when you gaze off into space daydreaming. you just have to show up & the feeling in your belly (fire? hunger? whatever you personally call it) drives this writing; you just have to keep your fingers moving & the thing writes itself. when it's finished (and it does tell you it's finished, you don't have to ask or wonder) you wake up out of savasana, refreshed and eager to read what all went on.

sometimes you feel as if you have to put on your miner's hat with the light and delve into that closet of feelings...such a nice door on that closet, good and sturdy. this writing takes awhile, after you make it through the pile of stuff on the floor, and down through the secret door under the closet, you still have that labrynth in the cellar to explore. you should set aside days, uninterrupted for this writing. and bring tissues. for the dust.

the worst (or best, most cathartic--like running a marathon; you finish & you're sweaty & contentedly exhausted) is the hairshirt writing. you have found your hairshirt in the back of that damn closet & just for kicks, you try it on to see if it still fits. you haven't had it on since you gave up torturing yourself a few years back--and yep, it still fits. light some candles, cue up the sad music & put that sucker on. this is the heavy monster writing that will either end up genius or crap, depending on if you've also had wine and, too, depending on how you handle wine. set aside days for recovery from hairshirt writing.

it doesn't have to be complicated and it doesn't have to be good. my goal is to write because, quite simply, writing begets writing. i mean, even if it's shitty crap...a basic law of the universe states that shit grows things. thich nhat hanh put it better: the lotus can grow only from the mud. garbage = flowers.

so...write. create. teach. SOMEthing. xo


"if your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you're not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place." -- rilke

"objectivity, and again objectivity and expression: no hindside-before-ness, no straddled adjectives (as "addled mosses dank"), no tennysonianness of speech; nothing--nothing that you couldn't, in some circumstance in the stress of some emotion, actually say." --ezra pound

Friday, March 18, 2011

what's your excuse?

"now my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose...i suspect that there are more things in heaven & earth than are dreamed of, in any philosophy. that is the reason why i have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming." -- john burden sanderson haldane (1892-1964)

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

are you in?





i've made a committment to myself to finish one of my screenplays this april. i have started five, and for my own edification and satisfaction, i will endeavor to finish just ONE by the end of april. script frenzy sounds like a way to stay on track with my goal.

this month the new yorker has an article about how the elite in hollywood get unstuck and stop being held hostage by their own negative mindset. outside the box thinking helps so you won't have to pay a $364/hr therapist. but i do like his ideas.

there's still plenty of time to sort out your notes & get a few ideas on paper before april 1st. join me?

Monday, March 14, 2011

maybe....



this blog is a repository for the stuff that blows the dust off of everyday life, as picasso put it. hopefully it's stuff that blows the dust off of everyday life for you, too. maybe i'll keep up with it.