Working it

After three weeks off, where I got to do so many things I've been really wanted to do for a long time, I had to go back to work to Shawshank. I guess when you start calling your job shawshank, it is time to retire and do what you really wanna do. But it is not easy. Hell no.
I always think and analyze ( surprisingly!) about people that are making a living doing what they love and it irks me when they still get to whine and complain about not being satisfied. People take too many things for granted, including the gift of dedicating your life to do what you love.
I know so many talented people that should be doing something else, the thing they were really born to do, the talent that came engraved in their adn. Singing, acting, cooking, teaching, etc.... that unfortunately and for external circumstances are obligated to work on something that has nothing to do with their intellectual vision, passion, whatever you wanna call it, to survive and be able to get by in order to get to where they wanna be. I consider myself one.
The challenge is not small. While trying to make a living, paying for bills, the ones that are parents, caring for our offsprings, dealing with the everyday life in general, time goes by right before our eyes and so are our dreams of becoming ourselves, the real ourselves and it is discouraging, even though i am really trying not to sound negative.
I see the last 10 years of my life like kind of an intellectual blur. I did things, yes, I did. I became a nurse, i became a mom, a wife, and ex wife, ha! I became less selfish, and i lost interest in material things, because as I've had them, I've also lost them. I guess I just became older. 10 years older, 10 years gone, like Led Zepellin sings so beautifully.

The positive thing is that one day, we do wake up from the blur and get all voccacionally "red bulled" and start doing all the things we should have done or we couldn't done for lack of means, time, whatever in as little as days or weeks and we start working it, in baby steps.
This week has been very interesting. Even though 'shawshank' it's still there, I've proudly managed to juggle the rest of the thousand things I wanna change in my mind and life and I feel great.
I've sent some of my art work to some schools to be reviewed for a scholarship and sending applications for admission and I have been called back to be considered. Just to be called back makes it all worth it.
I am a low maintenance chick, which makes me be happy with little. little by little.

Picture perfect

Yikes. Lately, it seems that everyone I know is going through some kind of existential crisis. 

It may be the new year, all the silly resolutions we make as part of starting a new page in our lives, all the dreams and things that seem possible just because another year has been added to the millenium. It is hope.

But hope is overwhelming in some strange way, at least in my opinion and experience.

We set goals, make plans, come up with ideas, etc... because we really believe they'll happen no matter what.  To my ADD ridden mind it works in a way that I have so many ideas and plans that start as literally, genius master plans of power over the world. They are perfect, they work, they are the best thing that'll happen to mankind, just because they came out of my over productive mind. I friggin' rock.

The first, I'd say, three days are the honeymoon of idea. I love it, I wanna work on it over and over again ( I did compare this to a honeymoon) and I'd even marry my idea and myself for creating it. It's all picture perfect. 

Then, it comes the go back to the real world stage ( which would be equivalent to coming back from your honeymoon in Fiji to work).

Idea, goal, plan, whatevs, needs to be developed and hardly worked, but in the meantime, there's a thousand other things I need to juggle along in order to make this work. It is harder than i thought, but slowly and somewhat patiently, I'd find a way to start the machine. 

Next, just to compare, comes the 7 year itch. I love my idea, but it is becoming so overwhelming that I don't really know if i wanna keep working on it. It has become monotonous just for being thought so much and I feel insecure if I'd be able to keep going with it. 

Truth is I've never been sure if I have really given my best to make it happen, but all of my plans and blueprints were conceived in a time where I wasn't sure if I was capable or smart enough to execute them. 

Now, I am living a different time. A time, era, and world I HAD to create in my head, yes, when the new year started, where I can beat all the mean boyfriends, like the Scott Pilgrim movie, just to keep the girl. 

My girl is my plan and with that I double mean it. Yes, there'll be obstacles, and even if it sounds cheesy,  it is only up to me to kick them in the head. 

We overwhelm ourselves for not being able to get "there" but now that I analyze it, it is only because we don't do EVERYTHING possible and we complain, whine and feel sorry for ourselves in the process. 

I do it all the time. In the last week i think I've read at least three emails from very capable and brilliant people feeling sorry for themselves, but hey, they're still wasting time on facebook, or watching football, rotting in depression because life is not happening. I do the same. 

We just need to realize that everything begins taking baby steps and saying abc's. Stop being so impatient and give our goals time, and while time goes by, we go by doing something, not waiting for it to happen. 

This year, I've started with baby steps and abc's. I had to reset everything that happened and went wrong and not worked enough in the past in order to make things easier and not so overwhelming. 

I think when a plan or idea, either it is creative, or science related, whatever, comes to us, it is because it was meant to stick with us. It is like a little embryo that implants itself under our skin and starts growing as we take care of it. They'll be times where it'll become so big that we'll need to get it out of our system and raise it because it came from the deepest our minds desires.  We just have to get over the morning sickness....

Carnival

Having a lot of time to spare can be really fun or deadly for me. If I stay home, especially when I am alone and now going thru some life changing events, I start overanalyzing, depressing, stressing and cleaning. This past week, having only one week left til I start my nurse schedule from hell, I decided I was going to get out of the house. Screw laundry, screw dishes, screw cooking and screw so much thinking. Instead, I am going to use public transportation to save the world a little by taking the metro, something I used to do all the time when I was younger and childless.

These days, I am older and childless for a week so I took the exciting new adventure of enjoying the simple things life has to offer. Just a couple of bucks, water, time and ye ol' faithful phone camera. 

I started little by little and a tad anxious about getting lost. I have absolutely no sense of direction ( I think it's a women thing) so knowing which way the metro would take me where I wanted to go was already a challenge, but one can manage by asking other people that do this daily. 

It is already a trip to watch people waiting for the train at the station. So many ethnicities, languages, people totally lost in their own thoughts, like sleeping awake. I was one of them too. 

First stop was safe Hollywood Blvd. 

I have to say that I may be one of the few people that live in LA and is fascinated by Hollywood Blvd.

 It has such a noir vibe, despite the crazy people, the beggars, the traffic and all the cheesiness. Perhaps these details are the frame that makes H so dark and interesting to me, like I can almost feel the era of the 30's clubs, the wannabe pinups and the old movie theaters. 

Hollywood blvd could be the only place you get to see michael jackson, spiderman, jason from halloween, jack sparrow, elvis and marilyn, just to name a few, engaging in a happy conversation about the weather ...

I decided to do downtown LA on a separate day which I did today. I feel exhausted but it was so much fun. 

I am sort of a loner, so I enjoy doing things by myself. Not that I don't enjoy the company of people, but for stuff like this, I like to be by myself and not get distracted with conversation and just look and breath deep if I want to. Walk at my own pace, eat whenever I feel hungry, stop whenever I feel tired and keep going when I want to, so downtown it is an awesome experience to absorb by yourself. 

I got off Pershing Square and started walking aimlessly without knowing where to go. It was a surprise to find lonely and abandoned streets in such a huge city, which is exactly where I got lost.

 It was scary, and I even got a little forehead/upper lip sweat when "courted" by a few cholo friendos, but I figured, no offense, that it works the same as it works with dogs and human adrenaline. If you let them know you are scared, then they attack. When you put on your best tough really mad don't f with me face, they actually stay out of your way. 

The scent of the city it is something to talk about. Urine, tacos, chinese and indian food, besides the smog from all the traffic make an interesting blend that you kinda get used to as you walk thru the streets. 

It is never enjoyable though.

I sat in the sunlight which was kind of a treat since it was cold and a bit windy. I ate my apple and watched the homeless actually laugh and joke among them which was kinda funny and sad at the same time. They were hating the people feeding the birds. I agree with the homeless brothers.

I kept walking cautiously til I found the Angels flight, which is sort of a  teleferic that takes you up to the civic center, actually where I really wanted to go later and thought of as such a complication. Life makes things easier when you less expect, even with small details. 

This thing did not look safe at all. I was afraid for the people riding up, but hey, looked a lot like the ones in Valparaiso ( Chile) so I went for it. 

Basically for .25 you skip the stairs and get a partial view of the city, but you are too worried the train is unsafe so you don't really look much, ha. I felt like a dog in a kayak. 

The view from there was spectacular and from where I was coming, the historic part of the town, the upper part seemed like another world. People walking fast in their work suits and briefcases, power lunches at elegant restaurants seemed very contrasting to the shrimp taco kiosks plus a coke ( a combination I would not dare to try for my guts sake but works for a lot of angelenos)  from down under.

Unexpectedly, I found MOCA ( Museum of Contemporary Arts) which was the highlight of my city findings. 

I've been there before, but as i said, i enjoyed the whole experience more this time by seeing the museum by myself at my own pace. I like to walk to the beat of my own drum.

After MOCA, I walk several blocks more, not even noticing, perhaps by the hypnotizing playlist in my ipod and all the visual input, that it was getting really cold and dark, so I headed back to the train to come back home. 

Lost again, I had the pleasure to meet the sweetest and nicest old man.He gave me directions to get where i needed to and started telling me his story He had come from Tennesse to try fortune as a singer. He even sang for me right there in the metro, which made me blush and smile at the same time. 

He had a voice as amazing as Otis Redding as he sang 'Sitting on a dock on the bay', which made me tear up a little bit.Life is not fair, but it is what it is.
Not everyday you get a sweet man to sing a song for you. 

He starts telling me about how he never made it, not being able to afford a place to live or even food as a singer. It instantly reminded me about Ted Williams, the homeless man with a golden voice. Hopefully, for this man from Tennesse, that was kind enough to guide me on my way back, good fortune will smile at him someday, just like it did with Ted Williams. Bad things happen when you less expect it, but good things happen with the same odds. 

Eyes

Eyes disarm me. Eyes are the first thing I look when I meet a person. Eyes, to me, are doorways to who a person really is.  Eyes and voices. You can tell so much about a personal story just to see and listen.
When my brother was four and I was seven years old, a glass bottle of sparkling water exploded in my hands while walking. As a kid, I was probably shaking it and the gas pressure made the bottle explode in hundreds of little pieces.
When it happened, my first reaction was to look at my little brother's face. I knew nothing had happened to me, except for a little cut on my finger. For my bro, luck was different. Dozens of pieces of glass flew right straight to his eye, cutting nerves, and basically destroying his beautiful brown long lashed left eye.
It was a day before christmas eve, in 86. He spent christmas eve having an 8 hour surgery and we all four spend christmas receiving terrible news. He had lost complete vision and color of his eye. He would never be able to see us with his left eye, we would never be able to see the beautiful brown almond eye again as it once was.
I was devastated. I felt so guilty, and as a kid, I knew it was my unintentional fault. It was a long summer of sadness, more surgeries, and my brother not able to go outside and play with the rest of the kids, so I stayed with him, all summer, by his side in his bed, talking and playing so he wouldn't be bored.
Months later, things got a little better. He wasn't at risk of infection and he could at least walk and hang with us, but I guess in all my little depression, I had never seen how his eye looked now.
He was usually wearing a patch, so dust or other things couldn't go in his eye and cause infection, but one day, while having breakfast, the patch was gone and the new eye that was here to stay forever was right there for me to see.
It was smaller than before. It had cuts and stitches on the outside, eyebrow and eyelid and it also had stitches on the inside. It was bizarre. His eye looked now like fish eye. It was all dark black and had no expression.
Years later I came to terms with the fact that it was an accident. He took the whole experience as a champ and I love him so much for not ever making me feel guilty about it, not even once, not even when he was mad at its worst, or when we were fighting as animals. Not even when he was bullied or called terminator or pirate or all the cruel things that come out from kids mouths. He would ask us not to care because he didn't.
When I meet a person, maybe because of this experience, I look right to his or her eyes. I don't care about the rest and I am fascinated by how much you can tell just by looking to these little crystal balls.

Black, brown, blue, green... they all reveal something they don't want anyone to know, but sometimes, connection is strong, and we can see more thru them than people would like us to find out.

Some old stuff from the beginning of timesssshh

Because I hate cheesy sunsets

So I bought this canon camera more expensive than life, but I find myself shooting with my dear humble iPhone camera very often. They're not the best picture quality, but the device comes handy when something catches my eye's attention.
Here's some stuff from when I just started photographing with the good ol' iPhone. 

Too cold to get in, too cool to not take a shot

Ghost palm tree

The illusion of cold LA

Invasion at the parking lot

Detour

Not totally convinced to actually start a website with my work, I've decided to start a blog with a lot of ranting in between my images. Yaaay for my possibly minimal readers.
Ranting it is also an art and I am a believer that possibly the only time you get to know the essence of a person and their totally natural state of being is when they write and rant. ( which is what I am doing right now). Also when they joke.
People don't say how they feel anymore, or maybe never did, for fear of being judged or laughed at or just for the fear of looking different or weird to others.I am one of them and it's a shame because I have a lot to say and show, unfortunately or maybe fortunately, I was born with the non filtered thoughts stigmata which people tend to take the wrong way.Thoughts come out directly from my beautiful cortex which has me spilling major mental beans all the time!
Because of my fear of expressing my feelings in words, I started to develop an extra set of eyes. Internal eyes that would make me stop in the street while walking  and observe my surroundings, an action that has totally lost its meaning and importance in these fast times, where we are all too busy, stressed, or angry to appreciate the small beautiful things that surround us. so I started documenting my humble observations in pictures.
Daily, we see faces that just at a glance, they're faces. But faces are made of expressions and expressions are made from our own personal stories.We can learn so much from other peoples stories or even our own, to give us a new perspective.
My lack of verbal communication made me stop and observe a face, a gesture, an emotion, a place, a tree, a moon, or even the ground I walk on everyday and wanting to document to never forget where I stand by seeing what's around my own person. In some strange way, I am grateful for my difficulty to express myself in words and I have welcomed this gift of seeing very dearly.
I was afraid to talk and show, but not anymore. This is my detour from that....cause when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, like this remarkable guy I saw while touring the town yesterday.
Just to see his face left me with a big smile on my face. I thank him for that.