Sequins Weekend 2010.

Grab the dance mix, the champagne, and all the glitter you can get your hands on.

We're headed to Vail and Aspen for Sequins Weekend 2010.

Because celebrating quickly-waning bachelorettehood is something to do in style.

...Don't wait up.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

a quick excerpt from The Elegance of the Hedgehog, regarding Art, and what it fulfills in us. I love this passage...

...within the frame lies the plenitude of a suspended moment, stolen from time, rescued from human longing.

Human longing!

We cannot cease desiring,

and this is our glory,

and our doom.

Desire! It carries us and crucifies us, delivers us every new day to a battlefield where, on the eve, the battle was lost;

but in sunlight does it not look like a territory ripe for conquest,

a place where -- even though tomorrow we will die -- we can build empires doomed to fade to dust,

as if the knowledge we have of their imminent fall had absolutely no effect on our eagerness to build them now?

We are filled with the energy of constantly wanting that which we cannot have,

we are abandoned at dawn on a field littered with corpses,

we are transported until our death by projects that are no sooner completed

than they must be renewed.

Yet how exhausting it is to be constantly desiring ...

We soon aspire to pleasure without the quest, to a blissful state without beginning or end,

where beauty would no longer be an aim or a project but the very proof of our nature.

And that state is Art.

Photos: mirrors on building: Stockholm architects Wilhelmson Arkitekter housing project, blond found on visualizeus.com, balloons- Le Ballon Rouge (Albert Lamorisse), Angel of Death, Image of London Library after bombing, Sunrise - Gloriosity LCT Indiana 2009, Solstice Moon at Cabo Sunion from observatorio.info, Shelley's Ozymandias, Childhood Memories by Alicepopkorn, Auspicious Dawn by Peter Kurdulija, homework- pokkisam.com, All the Books of My Life by August Brill, Tired No More Please reblogged from audreyhepburncomplex, girl in field from iamblessed.com, louvre eva green film

A Reminder of What I Know

or: A brief, roughly steam-of-consciousness recording of thoughts that ran through my head during a Job Seminar I attended today.

Hello World.

Please come save me.

I'm sitting in a job seminar with six other people,

Average age: 55.

The speaker has a voice similar to the infomercial guy, though admittedly a few decibels lower.

He's telling us things like "research the company before you go to the interview, and tell them why you want to work there," and "start a LinkedIn profile," and "network."

I'm so glad I drove 40 minutes to get here.

Wait - now we're getting a step-by-step how-to-set-up-your-LinkedIn-profile tutorial.

This is an absolute lesson in despair.

All I can think about is my car in the parking lot (i hid my GPS) in the middle of a field behind the Aurora Community College Lowry Campus.

We've moved on to Twitter. Personally, I think that when average people have Twitter accounts, it's inane.

Wait - was that a glimmer of something interesting? ... nope. gone. Now he's suggesting stalking companies. Oh Lord.

For every 3 job openings advertised, there are 7 that aren't posted.

Dear World, I am unemployed, and I'd really love a job. I'm savvy, I'm creative, and I'm fun to work with. Please tell your friends to hire me. 'Cause I'd love to be working and learning again.

also: as buoyant as my self-esteem and soul-searching confidence has been since I trekked across the nation, I really don't think my mother can take my financial limbo much longer.

ps. mom, i find a reason to smile every day i'm here.

Ooh! Good reminder. Mr. Job Guy suggested getting a library card. Why haven't I done that yet?

I'd really love to be reading Rushdie right now.

"Experience is what was expected of you," says Mr. Job Guy. Then he says, "the words have the same root." No, Job Guy. They have the same prefix. Not the same etymology.

My brain is melting.

A customized resume? That's his big hint? A customized resume? DUH.

I really should have packed a Coca-Cola.

I think what I've learned today is that Serendipity has been too busy orchestrating other areas of my life to deign to dirty her hands on my employment history. Perhaps I should do some more daring, happy-go-lucky, whimsical, fate-enticing things to attract her attention.

photos: bored girl- piu diafana dell'assenza by Giovanni Giorgini, girl lying in road- flickr image by Rachel Victoria, car- visualizeus image Abandoned / delicious photograph, girl with umbrella from DaydreamLily, happy girl- "beyond the grass V" by Burcindrummer, image of Trinity College Library, Cover of Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children, girl in chair from DaydreamLily, Anais Nin image/quote from Visualizeus

Auld Lang Syne.

Just a smattering of New Year's Eve Photos from my Epic Week in Vail. Here's hoping fun times like that don't come just once in a Blue Moon...

2010: The Year of Being Care Free.

Photos: GloriosityLCT Vail Trip 2009/2010

Shepherd, Why this Jubilee?

Why your joyous strains prolong? What the gladsome tidings be which inspire your heavenly song?

Somewhere in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the night, the shepherds were roused by a song from the heavens; a sweet song that whirled o'er the plains, and urged the mountains to echo in reply. The news, exalted by angels, proclaimed by the earth itself, urged them to find the child, lying in a manger. The child was the King of kings before whom royalty kneels, and the Shepherd of men, at whose birth the shepherds of earth were present.

And just as every lamb is counted, so will every soul be.

While the kings bended knees in humility, imagine the adulation, the joy, exuberance of the shepherds. What an honor to find yourself in the presence of an enraptured young mother, awed by her child, and still trying to grasp the idea that this tiny babe is the gift the world has been awaiting. What a compounded happiness. Might we find the simplicity of life that makes us celebrate every tiny joy, that helps us be overwhelmed by the truly magnificent.

photos: Atef Safadi image on the West Bank at Ramallah, shepherd image from vi.sualize.us, Jesus as shepherd (who did this sketch? i love this!), LCTGloriosity Atlanta Botanical Gardens 2009, Rembrandt's Adoration of the Shepherds - speaking of the truly magnificent...

Star of Wonder, Star of Might

Star with Royal Beauty Bright...

I sent out my Christmas Cards today and quoted "We Three Kings." The beautiful parallel metaphor - The Star in the East marking the birthplace of the Light of the World - it always gets me. There's so much to learn from the stories of old. In fact, they were never just stories in the first place.

Three Kings, or Wise Men, or Magi, spotted a brilliant star hanging in the Eastern skies. A scientifically catalogued supernova did indeed light up the night sky around 2,000 years ago, give or take a few. So it's entirely plausible that Kings or Wise Men, ancient composite astronomers/astrologers wondered what exactly such a heavenly beacon heralded, and set off to find its true meaning.
In the story, they were named Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar, magical names that resonate with Orientalism, so mystical to Western minds. The gifts they brought recognized the true nature of the Christ Child: Gold, to crown him King. Frankincense, to worship him as God. And Myrrh, a strong-smelling gum used in ointments and incense, particularly during burials, which recognized the humanity of the Child, and foreshadowed His death, that would raise us all to new Life.
And what can we learn from this aspect of the Christmas Story? From this segment of the scene at the creche? No matter your belief, or your religion, consider the Wise Men- Men of power and respect, men of great renown and great means, who recognized when a power greater than theirs was incarnate. With a strength of humility and conviction, they bowed before the lowly, the meek, and the mild.

In a world where we are blessed with so many things, might we also have the humility to recognize the Light of the World, especially when it shines in the eyes of the lowliest among us, and may we have the conviction to bow our heads and offer what we have to give.
photos: Star of Bethlehem (found via Google), Three Kings by James C. Christenson, "Adoration of the Magi" by Gentile da Fabriano, and the cover of "We Three Kings" by Gennady Spirin.

Words

I just finished reading Muriel Bradbury's Gourmet Rhapsody yesterday. I read it cover-to-cover in one evening -a much more epicurean project than Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I also adored. Rhapsody was quick and guilty, with a real and bittersweet ending... like chocolate.

Here's one of the passages that swallowed me:

"Words: repositories for singular realities which they then transform into moments in an anthology, magicians that change the face of reality by adorning it with the right to become memorable, to be placed in a library of memories. Life exists only by virtue of the osmosis of words and facts, where the former encase the latter in ceremonial dress. Thus, the words of my chance acquaintances, crowning the meal with an unprecedented grace, had almost formed the substance of my feast in spite of myself, and what I had enjoyed so merrily was the verb, not the meat."

It made me excited to devour the book, and move on to the next; to again surrender to the power, and magic, of words.

Next up: Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. So close on the heels of 100 Years of Solitude, I seem to be falling into a literary cadence of (right foot) third-world epic fantasy, (left foot) eloquent philosophical high-culture novel.

Whatever will be next?

photos: etsy christmas library print book, GloriosityLCTBookshelf09, artwork by Scottish artist Georgia Russell, Lorinix Photography, B/W book found on Google Images, GloriosityLCTBookBarnCT09.