“The Lord works in mysterious wayz. #proverb #hiphop”

– @DemitriMartin, twitter 

Music and Spirituality

I listen to the musicality and lyrical content of hardcore bands like Thrice or Being As An Ocean or The Beautiful Mistake, and I constantly find myself moved and motivated to live a more spiritual life — or at least continue my search for the Father/Creator/Savior God that THEY revere. Their lyrics, their struggles in life, their hope, and their loving God seem more real than what I’ve heard in most Christian music for some reason.

Bill Watterson

Placeholder/reminder for myself to write about how the author/artist of Calvin and Hobbes has affected my childhood and perspectives/opinions on life and spirituality and integrity and passion and love and everything in between.

"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.”

Drea Lovely

Knowing that I get to see her tonight is ridiculously nerve-wracking. Hoping I won’t be just another blubbering doofus infatuated by every ounce of her being. (I’m assuming there are a lot of those types in her immediate vicinity, haha.)

Practicality v. Dreams

Life is really weird lately. Like a really good, yet difficult weird. I turn 30 tomorrow (shudder) and you’d think that all the big decisions I would’ve had to make would’ve been decided before this point. Or that certain options would no longer be available so I’d be free to live out the rest of my days comfortably and routinely. Of course, such is not the case. Hoping and praying I don’t blow this/these shot/s.

"It’s about misunderstandings between people and places, being disconnected and looking for moments of connection. There are so many moments in life when people don’t say what they mean, when they are just missing each other, waiting to run into each other in a hallway."

-Sofia Coppola, about Lost in Translation

Water Colors

Learned to properly watercolor tonight. I’m feeling accomplished and happy to have found a new medium to express my ideas and creativity. Hopefully I’ll get to do it often.

Enjoy Your Burrito

“Enjoy your burrito” is a phrase that’s said at the end of every Nerdist podcast, but it wasn’t until last November that I finally found out what it actually meant. I stumbled upon Nerdist podcast #39 (The most current podcast is #473) featuring Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Schrute on the Office and is the creator/founder of Soul Pancake. Hilarity and ridiculousness is littered throughout the podcast, but spirituality, contentment, and happiness — the different types of happiness, how to attain it, the definition of it in modern culture, etc. — eventually become the topic. Rainn speaks of a profound type of happiness, a connectedness that he’s not expecting or sometimes even aware of. He mentions past happiest moments, one for example, fishing with his son. He didn’t know it was one of the happiest moments in his life at the time; this was a realization in retrospect. There were so many interesting and substantial moments regarding this podcast: How do you connect particular dots in life to achieve that final product, to attain a type of “human flourishing”, a constant learning and growing experience of well-being?; among others. At the 00:56:06 mark, Jonah Ray (one of the Nerdist co-hosts) talks about moving to LA from Hawaii to pursue acting and comedy, but unfortunately finding very few opportunities for work. At this point, he wasn’t moving forward career-wise and felt depressed because of his current situation. He’d go to his favorite burrito place for lunch — After eating half of his burrito, he’d get disappointed because the burrito was almost finished, and he’d have to go back to his depressing life. So he created for himself a thought process: Yes, the burrito is almost done, but it isn’t done yet, it’s still here, you still have it. Enjoy it. Enjoy the present. We’re always waiting for the next thing to happen. But don’t let expectations or things that might happen take away from what you’re happy with in this moment. Enjoy your burrito one bite at a time, then apply that mindset to whatever comes next.

Butch

With K. Alaia.

“I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.”

– Ferdinand Von Schrubentauffr

Comic books. | Taken with my Canon T1i.

Dr. Manhattan, Watchmen (Chap. 9, Pg. 27)

“But the world is so full of people , so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget… I forget.

We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another’s vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.”

Dan Harmon, about Community

“This is a show about broken people. All of them are quite alone, some involuntarily, some by their own hand, some without realizing it, but none of them come to the study room table with the emotional advantages held by that mythical creature known as ‘a normal person.’ There are no normal people, there are just different kinds of weird, all of it is human and all humanity is better than everything inhuman.”

Honesty Hour

Avengers Youth Camp was a blessing, although I never quite know what to do with that spiritual high. A part of me knows that that’s exactly what it is — something temporary if not built upon — and as much as I want to at least gain momentum from that, it’s hard to keep it consistent. I guess that’s where prayer should come in. Matters of the heart and gray areas and Christian freedoms and this obligation (though it shouldn’t be) to have to live a certain way can be so confusing though. And it isn’t a question at all who I should pray TO, it’s just the fact that I don’t even know what to pray FOR anymore. I know I’m blessed, I know my faith is solid. It’s just a weird time for me right now and as I’m reading Crazy Love, I kind of despise the fact that I might be taking advantage of this Grace. And I also despise the fact that I’m not really taking that last fact as motivation to change.

Sidenote: Oh, and PCC BP, just when I’m starting to miss you, you give me so many reasons not to. Anyway, that’s all.

“I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.”

-Jaime Gil De Bieda

BTM Bonfire

More photos from this set HERE.

Independence Day Blurb

Ok, best 4th of July ever. EVER.

Katrina Alaia, drive to Brea, closed favorite restaurants in Fullerton and Diamond Bar, Chickfila, Ontario Mills with Tita Cyn, plus Steph, Dan, Ron Tua, Barbecue, Vantage Point, driving through the streets of La Puente following the sights and sounds of fireworks and finding the biggest and most dangerous ones in the residentials (tha hood, haha), gangsta rap switched to KOST, 10pm ice cream trucks, dead battery ice cream trucks, jump starting an ice cream truck, getting free ice cream in return, and fireworks on the way back, all with amazing, amazing company. Good day, I didn’t even have to use my AK.

Drix, in search of self (portraits)

#angiebear

She makes me feel so angry and so hopeful and so courageous and so stupid all at once. It’s ridiculous how all I want is to be with her. She’s a snake. She’s horrible. She’s all I want, but she really isn’t. I wish she’d go away. This isn’t love, not even “like”, it’s infatuation, obsession. I do though. I want to love her. Hold her in my arms. Comfort her. Make her jealous. Make her as angry as she makes me. Give her soft kisses on the neck. Hold her hand. Make her laugh. Feel, touch, taste, fuck. Make her feel special. I want to hate her. Use her. Make fun of/compliment her mole/beauty mark. Keep her safe. Look into her beautiful eyes. I want to know her. Make her happy. Truly happy. Make her mine. These are all things she’ll never let me do. And maybe she’s what I deserve. But she sure as hell doesn’t deserve me. Or maybe she does/we do.

It's nice to be needed