ART.

All of these are by Carrie Chau. She is one of my favorite artists. Her paintings make me smile, and they remind me of my childhood with all of the fantasy, innocence, and anxieties that come with being young.

In an Aeroplane.

I know that we are free. Free to live our lives and free to be ourselves. But for the longest time, I did not want to be free from you. I wanted to love and be committed to you for as long as my heart was pumping.
I still love you, but now, I can love you freely. A love I have never given you.
I now know that I no longer WANT you. What I want is for you to be happy in your life. What I want is for me to be happy in my life.
I have fully let you go and it is the most amazing feeling I have ever felt. Whether you feel it, whether you notice it, I am free from you.


I am HAPPY! I am LOVE! I am FREE!




"What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round' the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all"
-Neutral Milk Hotel.

A Conversation with CLAUDIA.

Haleigh: Hi Claudia
Claudia: Hi
H: Did you get a hair cut?
C: Yeah.
H: It looks good, I like it.
C: Hey
Claudia looks at Elise
Elise: Hi Claudia
Claudia sets her brown bag with a tall boy inside of it on the counter.
C: Do you have any nail polish?
E: No we don't, sorry.
C: Oh.
E: Did you try the beauty supply store on Del Mar?
C: Ehh they mumbles
E: Oh, okay, maybe try CVS.
C: Some places don't let me in.
H: Why not?
C: Because they're crazy
E: Well maybe someone can buy it for you there.
C: Bye
H & E: Bye Claudia.

Hello Existence.

Dear Stranger,

I would like to thank you...

Thank you for coming into my store, and meeting me half way. Thank you for taking my hand and my heart and my head, for just a moment. Thank you for tickling my brain. I hope I tickled your brain, too.

For just the few moments that we were in each others minds, I saw the whole universe being born, and it was beautiful.

So thank you stranger, I know that I will never see you again, and that is okay, because you gave me an amazing gift.

-Elise Streeter

Friendship.

Love is this amazing thing. Sometimes, well, most times, I don't even understand it. I just feel it. It radiates through out my whole body. It tickles me inside and I can't help but laugh out loud.

Love is constantly growing, and it is incredible when, all of the sudden, you just realize how much bigger it is today compared to yesterday, or last year.

Friendship is the ultimate love to me. With friends, most of the time, it is a purely emotional love, there is not that physical love that you would have with a 'lover'. The emotional love is so much harder to have, I think. It takes a lot more effort, but at the same time is so effortless.
I feel this love more and more everyday. I wish I could describe it, but I don't think I can do the feeling justice.
It's amazing to have the same friends for so long, and you always knew you were friends, but all of the sudden one day, you realize, "WOW! I love this person. I want to stay their friend forever." I just want to hug them, and laugh with them. Laugh with them and love them.

With all of my friends, I have known the majority of them for a long time, well long for me, (I haven't lived here long enough to have actual childhood friends) and I am realizing now, 5, 7, even 9 years later, that I am in love with them.

Mind you this isn't some creepy stalker love where I fantasize about them at home or something, it is a platonic love that I feel for all of them.

I don't really know where this is all going, I guess I just wanted to try and explain the amazing feeling I get thinking about or being with my friends. And how truly happy they make me, with all their quirks and pitfalls and qualities and skills, and the love that they unknowingly radiate!

...

I wake up early
I get ready for work
I think about the happenings of last night
and I laugh.


I cannot stop laughing.


This is a good sign.

Grey/Gray

Something has been slowly brewing on the stove, and has gone bad. It does not smell good. Even the weather has noticed it: cold and cloudy and grey. Grey in the sense of the smell, bland, not like a cold winter's day that smells like winter, no, the air smells like sadness. And for once, it is not my own sadness that I smell.

Love is simple. So simple that it is difficult. There are two kinds of love. Emotional/physical love, the one we all usually feel, and then there is the spiritual love. This last love is much different. It is the unconditional love that we have for everything and everyone. It is constantly flowing through us. It is not the love we feel from "being in love" it is the love that JUST IS.

I have learned of this love over the past year. My ego has been put aside and I have looked within. Granted, someone helped me see this love, but they are not the reason for it, nor did they know what they were helping me with.

Loving someone is an amazing feeling, but feeling love even when that person is no longer there is even more amazing.

I know he loves/loved me. And I love him, too. But more than that emotional/physical love I feel for/from him, I AM love.

When you can shut your mind off and completely follow your heart, you will be amazed at what it is telling you.

Why would your spiritual heart tell you something so different than your mind? And why wouldn't you follow your heart over your ego? The heart knows what it needs, what it wants, what it is. Your head is just there to fuck it all up, make you take a different path and then you hurt over your decisions.

Life is this amazing gift we are given, and it should not be wasted THINKING about what you might do with it, but instead just doing it. Head vs. Heart

JUST BE and BE LOVE.