beer pong

in case you still wish you could be twenty again and in college, just know that the apartment next to ours is playing beer pong on our balcony as we speak.  i cant think of anything more annoying than beer on the breath of twenty year olds standing right outside our door.

hopefully, if you had forgotten how good you have it, this will remind you.

now if i could just convince myself of the same thing.

spring break and rugs

on the edge of the north american continent

(the ocean is beneath us there)

this view of the trees will most certainly end up in an art project

mo on my shoulders to take a picture

quite an expressive one, mo.

we may be smiling, but at this point we smell like campsite.  

the only thing running through our heads is the word, "shower."

well kids, school starts tomorrow at 8 am.

the first monday after spring break...o man.  pulling into the driveway of my apartment complex has never been harder.

the pics are from a weekend trip mo, her cousins and i took to big sur for her birthday.  un-bloody-believable scenery.  it reminded me of something i heard one time in some sermon some where about the beauty of our pure life in the garden before sin came- how God gave man the job to basically wander around and explore for the sake of exploring.  

to enjoy for the sake of enjoying.

a concept we made foreign almost as soon as the world was introduced to us.

"and now, for something completely different,"

 mo's family owns a rug business named "creative accents" and they had me sketch out some designs for them for some new rugs back in january.  while i was in tehachapi for break i got to see a picture of one of my rug designs in actual rug form... meaning from my sketch they made a digital template of it and actually made a rug from it and then photographed it for the new catalogue. 

there was my rug.  

in my hands on a piece of paper.

descended from a casual sketch i made on the side of my binder paper a year ago in community college.

i just held it and stared at it in wonder like it was a newborn child.

a true fruition of art....

amazing.

 

i gave them 5 or 6 designs so we'll see what they end up using.

so stay posted, kids, and as soon as they have them up on their website you'll be the first to know :)

here's their website in the meantime.

and i'll have some more assignment art up soon.  

gotta get around to taking pictures of it.

gotta get around to real life again.

forest for the trees

i had a small epiphany while i was people watching at school a few days ago.

i was sitting on a bench under a redwood tree, thinking about the things  my painting teacher had said about her view of God.  she had said them casually and with sad eyes... how she'd lived too long one way to change and how the church is chauvinistic.

the opposition is in the air.  

so is the deep-seated pain.

from the second floor of the art building to the bench beneath the redwood tree to the .6 mile walk home, i cover my mouth to breathe.  

there is a feeling of being overwhelmed.

between watching people walk to and from classes to the rhythm of my ipod music (a surreal by-product of listening to music that isnt much faster than a heart beat) i read in matthew 25 about the sheep and the goats.  

maybe its the hippy in me, but i am a shameless liker of "the message" bible.  this is how it phrases Jesus' words to the sheep and goats:  "Then the King will say: 'whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me- you did it to me...whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me- you failed to do it to me."

in surfer lingo, we call a verse like that gnarly.

obviously what really struck me was the "overlooked and ignored section."  and how in real life it is a section.  a section of people about whom we are being watched, to see how we react.  Jesus reacted to them by BEING them.  one reason i read the message bible is because i know what the text says in the formal language; "the least of these my brethren" is what that section of people is called.

i realized that the caustic fumes brewing beneath our fallen beings will get stronger, but being overwhelmed for the lack of fresh air isnt the right response.  that's called panic.  it stops a  person from thinking straight.  instead, i think what Jesus is saying to me, to us, is to stop ignoring the needs of the people around me that i notice.  

"i was hungry and you fed me...i was in prison and you came to me," the rabbi says.  i found myself one way, and you wouldnt let me get away with it, even for just a moment, both emotionally and physically.

i have noticed that when a person really is able to show God's love to people, there is usually no lack of a hungry and lonely and thirsty section lined up for just a second's worth of pure, fresh light.  think peggy pottenger: need i say more.

its because a person who shows God's love isnt ignoring what he or she notices about other's needs just because its easier.  

i dont know.  i guess it helps sometimes to take the bigger picture and narrow it down to my part.  

its a funny feeling to have permission to miss the forrest for the trees.

horses and girl fights

i went to a training class today for some volunteer work i'm going to do in the next couple months with an organization that helps disabled people ride horses. 

maybe it has something to do with a childish wish for a horse, but i like the scene...i like the dirt...i like the work...the perfumey aroma of horse dandruff...the fact that we are helping disabled people have fun...the people...

horse people are hilarious.

there are a few types: 

-the wishers (thats me): wide eyed with wonder and the feeling of being 5 years old watching a parade...dreamy with visions of thousands of years of history born on the back of horses...wishing cars would go away forever and that a regression of transportation modes would take place.  i think it has something to do with being a girl, but i still dont know what the draw is. 

-the talkers: the people who really want you to KNOW that they own horses 

-the genuine: the people that own horses who dont care what you think or know (these are the ones you want on your team...they are also the ones who you dont mess with...they push around thousand pound animals and they arent afraid of YOU)

it felt lovely to get out of chico and feel like a human again (author's note: humans and students are different entities, and shifts can be made from one to the other in an osmosis-like fashion based on a combination of internal and external circumstances.  please do not mistake students with humans, and be sure to feed any students you encounter in the wild).  

i made a friend (actually God made a friend FOR me) who has 3 horses and she says she'll let me ride with her, which made me so excited i couldnt even see straight.  i must have REALLY looked five years old and wide eyed and dreamy when she told me that.  i was talking to her for like 5 minutes and she busts out with, "you've never ridden in an english saddle before?  well you should come out and ride with us [her mom was there with her].  let me get your number before you go."  

who does that?  

she's a high school student who is taking her senior year at community college.  she was telling me stories how she got so sick of the girls at school picking on her that she just started punching girls who picked fights with her.  like, literally decking them, which is funny because she's this skinny quiet thing.  she said after 5 or 6 fights, she didnt have anymore problems.

as you can see, my new friend falls into the third category of horse people as listed above.  she trains this thoroughbred that is 16.3 hands high...that means that if she was standing on one side of its withers and you were on the other, you wouldnt be able to see her...and she's an inch taller than me.  you would see horse shoulder.  thats it.  thats crazy.

the serrano incident -or- a short primer on the exfoliating effects of oatmeal

hey kids-

here's a new lesson of the day for you!

serrano peppers may produce a burning sensation on the skin if...i dont know...it floats in the air after you cut it and it lands on you.

symptoms can be indicated by an acute burning sensation on the face, like how spicy things make your mouth burn...except on the face

exhibit A:

notice in this photo series how she has spread softened oatmeal (at the behest of her roomate) all over said burning area in order to alleviate the burning

note that she is probably not having as much fun as it may appear.  after all, her face was on fire.

this is a true story...

all i know is that i was cutting up a serrano for a curry recipe i found and a couple minutes later, this.

i have to say, rubbing soft oatmeal on your face is actually kind of amazing.  it smells all oaty and you want to eat it...except my snot was dripping in it from the whole burning face thing so i decided against eating it.

happy to say, the burning went away after like, 15 or 20 minutes.

so take notes, kids.  

this could be you someday.