Define Imagine: October 2011

Creating Prosperity - How To Imagine Your Desires to Be True

Limitation As a Means of Learning To Be Free

In anything you do you impose a set of limits upon yourself. Those limits define what you are trying to do.

Driving a car you are limited to a car and the road you are on unless you are driving off road. By doing the act of driving you restrict yourself to being in a car. However, you also free yourself so that you can get from one place to another quickly... assuming you are using roads and the roads are relatively clear.

In the act of creating roads, we create limits. We define or divide the countryside into parcels. Those same limits help us to define places, and they help us to move between them.

Imagine creating a series of roads so that you could go easily from one place to another and in the process learn what was in between each place. Imagine then that once you knew the lay of the land you could get rid of the roads and go to each place by walking, flying or teleporting. You and the land would no longer be encumbered with roads, but because you used the roads to explore, you now know where you can go, and even better, those places serve as a jumping of point for further exploration.

'These protestors, who are actually few in number, have contributed nothing. They're parasites. They're pure, genuine parasites. Many of them are bored, trust-funded kids, obsessed with being something, being somebody. Meaningless lives, they want to matter.'

Rush Limbaugh

Everything we know about our history - everything man has recorded up until this present moment - all of it has taken six thousand years. Every single one of those years were based on greed. Every one of those years functioned under the mandate of a priviledged few controlling entire nations. The entire history of man has been centered on the tenets of greed, corruption and destruction; every century rife with its own particular injustices, cruelties and murder.

Fashion Loves

One place I would love to own a dress from is Shabby Apple. They've got so many adorable designs!

After Class

Overboard

Syncopation

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Boogie Woogie

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V.P.

Beauty Mark

I can't believe I don't own a black dress yet....

But I think my favorite at the moment is the Extra Credit dress. SO CUTE!!!

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Extra Credit

Midnight

Impossibly, something absolutely perfect happened yesterday night whist watching Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’.

For years film and video has been trying to be self-reflexive, to truly encode the fact of the making in relation to the audience. This is about how the subject, the makers and the audience are bound together in a group agreement to suspend disbelief about the act of watching a fiction of some kind, about how the cleverer works encoded this into the subject matter to reveal some deeper truth when you are in the depths of immersion in the fiction of the piece.

In the middle of the film Gil Peters goes back in time and meets Salvador Dali, Man Ray and Louis Bunuel.

Gil: I'm Gil, nice to meet you. It's a pretty name.
Bunuel responds: A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph!
Man Ray: I see a film!
Gil: I see an insurmountable problem!

At that exact moment the projector in the cinema turned off and the safety lights came up and I was amazed that Woody Allen had arranged for thousands of cinemas across the globe to do this in every performance of the film. We sat for a moment and I mused on the nature of going to see films and engaging in fictions and what immersion and suspension of disbelief means.

A voice emitted from the projection box that ‘we’ll get the film on as soon as possible’. How amazing that Woody had issued dialogue for the cinemas to speak. Then the sound came up to let us back into the film gently, then the image, then the lights went down. What orchestration. I got back into the film.

Later I went to the box office and they told me that the electricity in the small city where I live had gone off at that exact moment.

You couldn’t have planned it...

Got a job!!!

So finally, after two years of looking, I have got a job. It's at Things Remembered and it still seems strange to me...

But I've worked two days so far. Well, I've trained for two days. I really love it so far. My position is engraver which means I work the engraving machines and put the messages on the jewelry and boxes and watches and whatever else.

So far in my training I've learned to use the machines, engrave on metal, engrave on plastic, and engrave pens. I've also learned how to engrave on different shapes like hearts and stars. But it's a lot of fun and I really like my manager and the assistant manager.

But yeah, that's about my only update at the moment...

After talking to Daniel from The Anonymous Antagonist, (Which you should totally check out because I think he writes one of the best blogs in existence!) I'm thinking about writing a short story and posting it here. I think it would help my inspiration and motivation a lot if I actually finished something. Maybe then I would be able to get farther on my main story...

Oh! Also this Friday I'm putting together a costume dance as a fundraiser for my Church's school. I'm making Benny and I gypsy costumes for it. Hopefully I'll get them done in time... :P Actually not hopefully! I know I'll get them done in time. So there!

:P I'll try and get pictures of them on Friday.

And now... Because it is Tuesday!!!

Oh my gosh I love this song and video so much!!! :D It's kind of like our house. :D Except that we live on the corner of our street.

Have a fantastic week all!

I finally finished Clannad After Story the day before yesterday. I don't think I have ever seen a tv show series that moved me the way this one did. I was literally sobbing through all of the last five episodes. Well, actually through most of the second half. But the ending wasn't sad, it was beautiful. That may sound weird when talking about an anime series but... It really was.

And the music for it is lovely. :)

I don't want to give anything away, but if you do watch it and get to a certain point and want to stop... Don't! Go all the way through to the end. :)

Pinned Image

Anyways, I really loved that show and recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind crying a little. Or a lot as in my case...

I have a longer post coming soon hopefully. :)

Love!
Shay

Apocalyptia?

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

The Sign of the Four

At the beginning of this year, the media began reporting on the phenomenon of mass animal deaths that were occuring almost simultaneously all over the world. Frightening to read, the articles and photos strongly resembled the tension building scenes from a typical Hollywood apocalyptic blockbuster - the scenes that occur right before the destruction of the planet unfolds on an epic scale.

In countries all around the world hundreds to thousands of dead birds fell out of their skies, for no obvious reason. Reports poured in daily of thousands to millions of dead fish washing up onto beaches in both hemispheres. And there was more to come - mysterious livestock deaths would occur in the hundreds and whales dead of starvation would wash ashore in waters far from their natural habitat. During the most bountiful season, inexplicably starving animals would attack humans as food and sharks would attack swimmers in unprecendented numbers. This was bad. Really bad. And we weren't sitting in a comfortable cinema chair with popcorn in one hand and a Coke in the other, this was happening for real.

Catching up

So I think I've killed my muse... killed it stone dead.

I thought when Autumn came I would start being able to write again... The smell of the air, the rain, and the color of the leaves almost always make me need to write.

Like right now... I'm forcing myself to write this. I have a cup of warm coffee next to me, a fire going in the fireplace, and my inspirational playlist going. Usually that should be all it takes! Especially since it's raining outside at the moment.

Well, I guess I just need to try and work past this.

Choir started again two weeks ago. It's amazing to think how different this year is from when I first started it. In a good way completely.

So far the songs we're learning aren't all that interesting though.

The choir will be singing at the Grotto for the second year in a row which means we have to learn about 45 minutes worth or music. Normally I adore starting choir and learning Christmas music straight off. It's like cheating since normally I don't allow myself to indulge in any Christmas music till the day after Thanksgiving. But this year none of the music has that distinct Christmas feel to it... Hopefully some of the stuff we start tonight will be more like it.

So far we've started learning:

And the Glory of the Lord from The Messiah Choruses by Handel
In the Bleak Mid-Winter (but the melody isn't the same as the traditional one)

Shepherd's Star

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring by Bach

Ok, that last one is a little more fun. Also it's pretty easy.

We're also learning Sing to the Lord by Vivaldi

We All Believe in One True God

and

Except the Lord Build the House based on Psalm 127

It's kind of a lonely season of choir for me this year since my best friend has moved to Washington for his new job. He comes back most weekends but he can't come back for choir...

Anyways

Today I walked up to Joann's to try and find a gypsy pattern for a costume I'm going to make. I found one but it isn't quite what I was looking for so I'm going to look through the old costumes we've got around here and see if I can find anything I can piece together. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it before the party which is on the 21st... I'm putting together a costume dance as a fundraiser for the private school that my Church runs. Hoping plenty of people show up!

Last weekend Benny came back from Washington and Wes, Caleb, Forrest, Elisa, Benny, and I went to Portland. It was Wes' first time and Benny's second. We went to Saturday Market, Everyday Music, and ate lunch at Pizzicato.