an ode to being present

Don't let your mind get weary and confused

Your will be still, don't try

Don't let your heart get heavy child

Inside you there's a strength that lies

Don't let your soul get lonely child

It's only time, it will go by

Don't look for love in faces, places

It's in you, that's where you'll find kindness

Be here now, here now

Be here now, here now

Don't lose your faith in me

And I will try not to lose faith in you

Don't put your trust in walls

'Cause walls will only crush you when they fall

Be here now, here now

Be here now, here now

"Be Here Now" by Ray LaMontagne

i hope that if you're in a moment of fear or isolation today, looking only to your past or future for the answers, this song finds you and INSPIRES you. it's be years since i took a listen to it, but this morning i woke up with it on my mind. more than me needing right now, it's like a gentle reminder.

man, this man. what a writer. love seeing people using their God given talent so obviously.

-teen

life.

we could keep peeling back the layers, getting in deeper than we ever imagined to be possible. it could make us sick to our stomach, light in our heads, happier than we've ever been, more depressed than we understand. 

we would have to accept that the layers will never end. that no matter how much we learn, we'll always be a little stupid. that the layers can make us harder or softer, and you can't know that ahead of time.

or

we could stay right where we are. comfy in bed on saturday morning and content in the pub on saturday night. 

be satisfied knowing we don't know. we don't know what lurks beneath the next surface. we don't know true joy. we don't know true pain-who wants to know that any ways? we could let the rose tinted glasses blur the truth, let our bliss muffle the noise. 

take the long way home

glorious 2015, stay nice to me!

my life lately...

i have to be credited some sort of adult maturity for spending xmas apart from my immediate family, and not even being that depressed about it! also we worked out on christmas day. i loved it. blaze hated it.

colin being a hot biznitch.

canada... y'all know how that went. chickens, newborn babes, a lot of late nights of laughing, good food, much snow.

some of my favourite boys everrrr.

also, metric and lights was always playing on the radio. i think blaze started to question if canadian radio stations are in touch with the rest of the world.

my nearest and dearest. one in a million right here!

i was going to add in some february pictures, but considering there's four of us in the family that have february birthdays, and we each had about four-ish celebrations.... well that's a lot of pictures. and yes i'm hiding in the corner of my apartment until the end of february, hoping no one invites me to another birthday dinner. i can't take the food and alcohol and presents anymore! 

just kidding to my dear family. it's been the most fun month ever, and i can't wait till next february ;)

"The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises, that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research “childhood.”

There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises “adolescence.” The feeling haunts people all their lives.

Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do with the pieces? Some people hunker down atop the local pile of ruins and make do, Bedouins tending their goats in the shade of shattered giants. Others set about breaking what remains of the world into bits ever smaller and more jagged, kicking through the rubble like kids running through piles of leaves. And some people, passing among the scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle, start to pick up a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back together again.

Two difficulties with this latter scheme at once present themselves. First of all, we have only ever glimpsed, as if through half-closed lids, the picture on the lid of the jigsaw puzzle box. Second, no matter how diligent we have been about picking up pieces along the way, we will never have anywhere near enough of them to finish the job. The most we can hope to accomplish with our handful of salvaged bits—the bittersweet harvest of observation and experience—is to build a little world of our own. A scale model of that mysterious original, unbroken, half—remembered. Of course the worlds we build out of our store of fragments can be only approximations, partial and inaccurate. As representations of the vanished whole that haunts us, they must be accounted failures. And yet in that very failure, in their gaps and inaccuracies, they may yet be faithful maps, accurate scale models, of this beautiful and broken world. We call these scale models “works of art.”

-Michael Chabon, The Wes Anderson Collection

this is happiness

i have been following the case of Mariam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag for quite some time and am SO happy to report that not only is she free, but she is living in the states!

article on her departure from sudan and entrance into italy: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28460383

awhile back i signed THIS petition: https://www.change.org/p/government-of-sudan-don-t-execute-meriam-yehya-ibrahim-for-being-christian-savemeriam

you can also read more on her case here. but it was yet another story of unfair and unjustified imprisonment. (it seems her name is being spelt two different ways all over the internet).

she was jailed while pregnant and actually birthed her child with shackles on. disgusting. 

ultimately, this case to me is proof that as a person halfway across the world with nothing but an opinion, a difference can still be made. i hope that is a bit of inspiration for you today. 

oh and yes i have been having a splendid birthday week. yesterday was the big 2 6 and the fun isn't even over yet.

A Cheesy Love Story - The Ad Doritos Don't Want You to See

Hey Friends! Sum of Us has created an ad that they will be entering in Doritos' Superbowl Contest this year. Although it will not be chosen for obvious reasons, it's very clever and has already caught a lot of attention with almost 2 million views.

"Rainforests across Southeast Asia are being destroyed every day to make way for massive palm oil plantations, where workers, even children, are trapped in modern slavery to cultivate the vegetable oil. The clearing of these rainforests and peatlands are driving many species like the orangutan and Sumatran tiger to the brink of extinction, while simultaneously polluting the Earth’s atmosphere by releasing gigatons of greenhouse gases.

Each year, Doritos' parent company PepsiCo buys 427,500 tonnes of palm oil. Given how high profile the Doritos Super Bowl campaign is, we’re using this opportunity to let consumers around the world know about PepsiCo’s irresponsible palm oil sourcing policy. There’s never been a better time to spread the message and make friends, family and colleagues aware of PepsiCo’s practices."

-SumOfUs.org

"Underneath and unexplored

Islands and cities I have looked

Here I saw

Something I couldn't overlook"

Islands, by the XX

a picture of 'tiny island' (truly its name)

taken this morning at approximately 7:53 am as the sun rose

alone on belle-eau-claire beach

located along lake huron

you know you're canadian when you enjoy a good beach experience regardless of the fact it's a frozen experience. these moments make me feel things i can't explain. i have spent 2015 deliriously happy in canada and although it's hard to imagine that i must leave in exactly one week, i'm ready to discover what the rest of this year has in store for me.

H A P P Y (belated)  2 0 1 5 ! ! !