All posts tagged: love

Station Eleven and other books like turquoise blue seas

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How do you choose what worlds to get emerged in? I finished a book last week and I’m having a hard time moving on. My book selections are pretty random, but afterward I usually see the beautiful symmetry of adding this particular world to the thousands of worlds I already hold within. A Facebook link led me to a Buzz-whatever like list of books that “contain horror in completely ordinary settings” and I am so down with that. Of Station Eleven: A novel they said, “that moment of genuine terror when the internet goes out forever in this post-apocalyptic world.” For all my talk of wanting to usher in a new evolution of consciousness more aligned with the planet we live on, I’m not really into dystopian, post-apocalyptic books. They are too bleak and lack the beauty I crave in my worlds. I devoured The Hunger Games, and moved on. I’m happy that the movies are somehow better. But it’s not somewhere I want to live. I went into Station Eleven blind and found something …

True currency is time and love

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You know that old bullshit saying ‘time is money’? Uh, no. This is a rather short addition to the 10 Steps, but it might be one of the most important. Realize that the only true currency is time and love. Money is an illusion but it can get you in some deep trouble so live within your means. You have build thick skin in order to resist advertising and focus mostly on needs, and only the occasional wants. Human beings are the only species that have to pay in order to live on this planet. The powers to be figured this out long before the rest of us and found the perfect system of control – money. If we don’t play by their rules we go to prison, which robs of us the only two things of true value in this life – time and being close to those we love. Imagining a world without money is actually a really hard mental exercise, but very rewarding. You immediately run into the most obvious downsides – …

Angelina

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I was 17 when I became infatuated with Angelina Jolie. It was 2001 and Tomb Raider was about to come out. Hollywood, the media, tabloids, everything seemed a little different back then. It wasn’t so immediate around the clock. There was less internet and no social media. An half hour interview with the celebrity you liked still had to be scheduled on MTV and taped on VHS. Magazine clippings actually mattered. And I settled in to watch MTV At the Movies: Tomb Raider, and I met my spiritual soul mate. I did tape it, and I watched it over and over. It wasn’t just how beautiful she was, or the things she got to experience while filming Tomb Raider in Iceland and Cambodia; it was the tone of her voice when she got excited. It was how she talked about love and her husband Billy Bob Thornton. It was that, for some reason or the other, she had managed to carve out a life for herself in which she was absolutely free, and I had …

Review: The Goddess of 1967 (2000)

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Picking a movie to watch is sort of like going on a blind date; you’re never complete sure what you’re going to get. I’m not a film snob or a very harsh critic – I usually give most movies a passing grade just for effort – but I do ask to be taken on a journey to somewhere I’ve never been before. It’s just usually never as literal as The Goddess of 1967. My movie picking process occasionally goes something like this. [insert actor] is really cute. I like her. I’m going to see what other movies she has on Netflix. In this particular case it was Rose Byrne. At the time she had three movies. One was called The Goddess of 1967 and had a gorgeous cover of a pink sky and a pink car with a couple inside. My brain snaps to judgement: ok, so it’s about a guy who meets an amazing girl in the year 1967 but it looks kinda indie so maybe it will be an insightful and pretty road …

Old Hollywood on the page

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A well-written biography is the intersection between life, story and truth – my three absolute favorite things. To follow someone’s journey through their whole life, their highs and lows, regrets and lessons learned, is a very intimate thing. And unlike fictional stories, it feels more intimate because it is all true. Sure, they can’t all be gems, and it’s up for debate whether the fault lies with writer or subject, but the really good ones – oh gosh. It really is like gaining a friend. You come to know this person. You laugh with them at their silly stories, you read the poignant moments over and over, marvel at their perfection, and ultimately, you cry when they die, no matter how rich and wonderful a life. Mainly, because it was so rich and wonderful. In October I went to Hollywood for a few days to hang out with my favorite girls – Rita Hayworth and Gene Tierney – and I took a tour of the Warner Bros lot to get the feel of a historic …

So fucking special

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I think my life would be a lot easier if I wasn’t obsessed with truth. Truth in all things. I badger the people I love about getting to the bottom of things – why did you do that, why do you think that, why, why, why. Sometimes it feels inevitable that my life took this turn. A writer asks questions. A writer tries to make sense of human nature. And what bigger question is there than who runs the world – who creates reality? In no way do I think I am unique in asking these questions. I think a lot of people do, and I think that’s why all these ‘truther’ movements are popping up. As marketing and image-obsession increasingly seep into all aspects of our lives, people are eventually bound to start craving truth, honesty and beauty, which all used to be found in art. But even art is an endless marketing campaign now. Maybe it always was, who knows. So then the artist turns to reality – how can I shatter these …

Your story matters

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Who else is feeling like the world just imploded this summer? Gaza, Syria, Iraq, America’s reentry into Iraq, so many refugees, an endless stream of people with nowhere to go… every place is “full” and the money supply is always dwindling as the 0.1% keep stuffing their secret bank accounts with more billions each month. And it’s all there, right in our face on social media. It’s exhausting just to keep up with all the senseless suffering. But then I had this thought. What if social media is eventually going to put a stop to all this? When enough people have had enough and join together in a massive show of civil disobedience of this bullshit system of war and profit over people and peace. Wouldn’t that be something. Soon, everyone under 20 won’t know a world without social media. Soon, it will be impossible to justify war when its true face is in our face every single day. Stories have the power to change the world. One visionary photographer, Brandon Stanton, was recently unemployed …

Readers appreciation post

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In celebration of reaching almost 500 followers on WordPress, I wanted to open up the floor for a little informal Q & A. When I started this blog 1,5 years ago I really had no idea what kind of blogger I wanted to be. I thought I wanted to be a lifestyle/personal blogger but over the past year I have learned how much I truly value my privacy and not having to put every little thing out there. Not to mention, my life is really not that interesting! I’ve even stopped maintaining a personal Facebook because I just don’t see the point anymore, although I’m more than happy to creep on others! It also seems to me that personal bloggers tend to buy a lot of stuff to constantly show off and that’s really not going to work for me since my blog is basically an anti-blind-consumerism forum. So here we are, and I’m very happy to be right here. I’ve really been enjoying the WordPress community lately and discovering a lot of insightful and …

The Artist’s Walkabout ft. Lana Del Rey and Charmaine Olivia

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I don’t know if you are born an artist, or if you become one. I guess deep down I think everyone is an artist at heart, it’s the human condition to want to create something beautiful and meaningful, but not everyone feeds that particular beast. I have all these moments from childhood that stand out to me, and lately I’ve been cataloging them to see if they can steer me on the right path since I’ve been feeling a little lost lately. I’ve always been kind of a loner and at age 9 my biggest luxury was to stay home alone and spend all day building and playing with pirate Lego. Pirates appealed to me from a very young age because they had two things I’ve always desired: absolutely freedom and tropical islands. I could easily spend six hours or more totally engaged building ships and deserted islands with crumbing forts. I had an audio book of Treasure Island that I knew inside out, I had played it so many times, but it always help …

How science can be spiritual

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I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about what I don’t believe and how I think the way we live should be different. That’s necessary, but also kind of a bummer. So what exactly do I believe in? My evolution to get here was about as long as my life. I feel like I’ve lived a very typical, Western, white girl life. I grew up with non-religious, non-judgmental, supportive parents, and I was encourage to go to school above everything else. I had my very mild rebellious teenage phase. For a split second I wanted to be Wiccan, then atheist, then just travel the world because, fuck it, life is short. I mocked the concept of God as a man in the sky with white beard, I still kind of do, sorry. But somewhere along the line I did develop spirituality.  And it’s science-based, somehow. As much as I can’t get on board when people say “God” because I feel too much evil has been used in “God’s” name, I do very …