So the internet has been turned off for two and a half weeks (eee) and in three and a half hours we embark to the airport. I’m slurping coffee, prolly be asleep in fifteen minutes. Said goodbye to S (he’s gonna housesit for friends while I’m gone), we realised this will be the longest apart in a year and a half. I’m choosing to focus on the positives - air to explore, fantasise about our permanent move, spend more time with C!! I will miss him and his messy hair but its really only two and a half weeks and we spent all day preparing for the separation regardless. Lotsa hugs, and good memories.
I’m so grateful for the awesome guy at the Crown last night (“it’s my first night working, be nice”), for buckets of Chinese food and Mountain Dew (is Mountain Dew really ghetto? S was admonishing me for my trashy choice but I love the taste). I’m so grateful for bus rides home where all we did was hold hands and smile. I’m so grateful for sky blue fingernails, for alternate views on things, for Malibu slushies with fresh strawberries and banana for lunch with avocado, cheese and tomato crackers. I’m so grateful for vegetables. I’m so grateful there’s ALWAYS leftover vegetables (more for me). I’m so grateful for understanding friends, and being able to console Dan over the phone at 1am that ended in joking instead of crying. I’m so grateful for my MASSIVE ROOTS (cause it means I can bleach and then try Special Effects soon!) I’m so grateful for Astrojax and ukulele and epic Lindsay Lohan short films, for Dainty Squid pouches and Dirty Projectors. I’m so grateful we passed a barefoot busker playing Bob Dylan last night, and S gave him all the change in his wallet and I didn’t have any money so when he finished I burst into applause right in the middle of the street and the guy laughed and said ‘why, thankyou’. I’m so grateful for instax film, and new leather gloves. I’m so grateful that I don’t feel the need for my thoughts to be deeper than they are. I feel that happiness is a sensation light and close to the surface (of what? The vortex? Enlightenment?) I know years ago I would have brought myself down from this place, with ‘you’re not seeing the true state of things. You’re trapped, if you’re not unhappy then you’re just pretending you aren’t’, blah blah blah. But it takes harder work INITIALLY (to retrain your thoughts) - and is more worth it - to be happy. It takes courage because you’re saying, “yeah, I haven’t won the lottery. I had a nice cuddle with my cat and that’s why I’m over the moon.” Unhappiness rarely demands explanation, people just shrug and go ‘okay, yeah me too’. Never discount your happiness by someone else’s criteria of how much it brings you.. If watching clouds go by makes your heart sing so be it. I don’t think we need to justify our joy because it is essentially us, like justifying why we breathe or sleep.. don’t ever worry about someone devaluing your emotions, they are as tangible and beautiful as any other, lottery or not. I think that’s something a lot of people need to learn..
I’m so grateful for exhaustion in my shoulders. For ‘we’re doing the frog!’ For ghd. For A Beautiful Mess’s fashion posts. I’m so grateful for my brown paper notebook, for posters. I’m beginning to realise a reoccuring theme in a lot of the things I’m really grateful for, but I’m not worried about the repetition. For me it only cements that which I truly value! And I feel good ‘bout that. I’m so grateful for sweet things in the post from sweet pink haired tutu maiden (heh! What a title). I’m so grateful I can draw. I’m so so so so so grateful for Chopin’s nocture on my iPod and listening endlessly while tanning (bikini, fresh squeezed OJ, and classical music. A delicious pseudo-winter in the tropics.)
I’m so grateful that with travel brings fresh inspiration. I’m so grateful for a bank of amazing sites I want to eventually expand on. I’m so grateful for vimeo videos of internet predictions. I’m so grateful for TRANSPARENT BLOGGERS, U CHANGE MY LYF. I’m so grateful for imagining beautiful sleeve tattoos, checking out artists. I’m so grateful my head is warm and sleepy. I’m so grateful aeroplanes are such wonderful places to draw (no distractions, a set time). I’m so grateful for smiling, and teeth, and not caring, just feeling like all barriers are melting, like the world can be changed at will a la Inception (build a bridge here, glass door there.) S and I were talking about it, how I get stopped sometimes and people say ‘you look so much like Ellen Page’ and her name in the movie is Ariadne, the architect.. preee neat. But that’s what life is increasingly feeling like, that sense of reality is dwindling. Like I could will events into happening, especially with talking to people. I picture it before it happens and then it feels perfectly natural either way, a little difficult to describe in coherent terms but that’s the point, I guess :)
Oh and I am grateful for our cab driver last night who made jokes the entire way and then laughed at them himself twice as hard when he realised we couldn’t understand through his accent at all and we just sat there, completely nonplussed but smiling encourgingly.
More later, at 3am. Boy oh boy
