carmel salted brownies.

mm.

Yeah I know how they look..
..But have you tried them?


Addictive Recipe.

autobiographical advice from a writer.

{how to steal like an artist}

"You’re ready. Start making stuff.

You might be scared. That’s natural.

There’s this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called imposter syndrome. 

The clinical definition is a “psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their

 accomplishments.” It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, 

that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing.

Guess what?

None of us do. I had no idea what I was doing when I started blacking out newspaper columns. 

All I knew was that it felt good. It didn’t feel like work. It felt like play."

I like how Austin put this...that if we wait to figure out everything before we do anything, then we'll never do anything.
It's so easy to want everything figured out first, before we jump.
But if we never make any kind of step out into anything then we'll never make it to the good things, the things that are worth it.

wall or no wall

I'm an introspective-type person, so it always astounds me when I figure out something new about myself.
It's always something that I had a hint of before, but have re-learned in a different way.

It's a slap in the face when someone tells you something they see in you, or something that they think that you are based on who you've been around them...and then you realize that you must be putting off a different personality, because what they've related isn't you.

I've never been a really open person, to any degree, and I feel that only a few (a handful, maybe) of people have ever gotten to really know me, because I let my guard down.

Just looking through my life now, I wish it was more like a collapsible room-dividing screen rather than a wall that I've worked to perfect throughout my life.
Not too thin that it can just be blown down by an unexpected comment, but not too thick so as to never be able to find my way back.
But it would just be so much easier if it wasn't there...only to be put up when situations arise.

What is life if you can't share it with those that are beside you?

Who are you if everything is just a private joke that you never take the time to share?



But then again, who actually wants to listen.
Most people are on their own road, stopping for a while to relate their life to you.
But their road, no matter the actual size, seems a small path to them, winding through the woods...so taking the time away from figuring out their way seems preposterous.

My life does feel like a switch-back trail sometimes but I'd like to think that I can break out of my head sometimes to just be..
I don't want to look back on my life to see that I've been walled-up and staring at the ground a foot in front of me, instead of looking all around me and connecting to what's nearest to me.

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

of great price, the one field that had

treasure in it. I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receeding future, nor hankering after

an imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

-R.S. Thomas

sons of caliber

hokku.

{ ee cummings }

a lady..wears 2 pairs of glasses?

{ genteleyendo }

"Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic."

-Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

morning coffee

morning coffee in the brush
& a carved-gourd that birds sometimes like to nest in :)

from a song that seems to love being stuck in my head often!

girl power:

 { likethewaterfilter }

down to memphis.

paradoxicalities.

{quote; John O'Donohue}

Sometimes I try to figure things out.

I like to separate everything into different categories, and then bring them all to together. 

Very nicely. And very understandable. 

My mind just likes to work in this way so that I have some sort of control over myself and situations and other people.

I think it's natural, for most, to want to have everything figured out; to feel like they have a hold on things, that they understand.

But I don't think that's fair, to life or to myself...or to anyone else.

I don't think it's all as predictable and planned out as I'd like to think.

If life was made to be lived, then surely it wasn't meant to be lived all the same way. There are going to be people and things that don't seem to fit what we know. But that's paradox, and that's life...it can't all be reasoned just exactly as we want it.

It breaks my own bubble when I think about things like this, and of course a little part of me hurts with the realization.

Truly, though I wouldn't want it any other way. 

Not everything is a puzzle for me to figure out and then put back in the box.

If it was then I think things would be too boring and too easy.

babes.

"..getting your needs met is the baby end of faith."

-Graham Cooke

growing is forever

Growing is Forever from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

a winter song..

Hear the snowflakes falling, winter’s calling my name.

The silent song she’s singing, what’s she trying to say

Can I fall like glory, to wash your year away

All that remains was really meant to stay

Come and clothe me winter, I really need a change

With silent redemption, cover me in grace

Hear the song of beauty, melodies and sounds

Cover you in white love, a joy you lost but now you found

Sing, sing, winter, sing me your silent song.

chrismis and baked goods!

I

home to this:

A wonderful Christmas full of baking and adorable family!

עָמַק

It always amazes me that I'm able to learn in every type of situation. Even the crappiest of circumstances can bring unexpected growth that couldn't have come in another way or from another time.

I'm glad to be able to look back at the time I've had now and be grateful for the new ways that my character has developed.

And isn't that what we're supposed to do...at the core?
Enjoy the life that we've been given in this crazy-beautiful, miraculous world, and that means the depth as well.

Sometimes I think that I can mistake things that are full of depth and pain and struggle as dark when really they're just full of an emotion or experience that I haven't come to know.
And that's not bad, it doesn't mean that it's a dark situation just because it looks different to what I know.

Like in the movie Chocolat, the young boy has a "darker" side to him, struggling with oppressing who he really is from his mother. He's an amazing artist at such a young age, but he knows that his depictions of death are not what he "should" be doing in his mother's eyes. But another relative realizes his talent and his need to express things that are going on in his life. She encourages not darkness in a bad sense, but depth in the way that it releases him from his feelings and helps him to grow.

It's such a vulnerable and beautiful thing to be able to embrace depth (עָמַק).
When contradictions come up in life it's easy to blame yourself and treat your own life with a sort of disdain because you're not who or what you thought you were.
But being able to be flexible, to move with life and show grace to your soul and your self shows wisdom.

"Beauty likes to keep away from the public glare.

 It likes to find a neglected or abandoned place, 

for it knows that it is only here it will meet the kind of light 

that repeats its shape, dignity, and nature."

-Ezra Pound