Justice aka Revenge

I never write on here anymore, because I don't really feel a need to any more... as strange as that sounds. But right now, I feel more compelled than ever to write.

On a night when millions of americans are in the streets chanting U-S-A and celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden, I feel remorseful. I've of course made jokes tonight and quoted team america and watched wide eyed at Obama's speech but over all I feel very uncomfortable. Facebook is filled with statuses of excitement and joy and satisfaction and I feel so torn. To celebrate the death of any person seems unbelievably wrong yet I know that killing him had to be done... there is no other way to stop someone who simply uses terror and death for power. I know that it isn't morally wrong to be celebrating- people are feeling that justice has been served.... but for religious extremists, they are thinking the same thing when we are harmed... justice. Why do we have to use death as a means of feeling like a chapter is closed or that justice has been served? If humans are ever going to get a long and stop the endless cycle of killing maybe the whole concept of justice needs to be thrown out, two wrongs certainly don't make a right. But then again, I can't bring myself to call the killing of bin laden wrong but I also can't bring myself to call the mass celebration of death as right...

9/11 was a horrible day but it's over now and we have to move on and stop trying to seek justice. Trying to stay safe is one thing but seeking something that is simply just a nicer name for revenge fails to help humans and will ultimately separate us all once more.

It is not human nature to do these things, we are an under determined species- these things have been taught. We need to stop teaching the myth that revenge or justice will bring happiness.

New!

Please check out my new blog... my new experiment!

http://reusedrecylcedreloved.blogspot.com/

Follow it and love it please! : )

Anthropologie's Valentines Gift to Me

Anthropologie has just released their new wedding line today: BHLDN

It's dreamy and perfect and I've been awaiting it anxiously. The shoes are incredible and the eyelet medley sheathe gown is picturesque!

Look and Love

http://www.bhldn.com/index.cfm

Happy Valentines Day!

Epic Poem versus Love

Well I'm procrastinating... there is nothing I'd rather do right now that not do my paper on Gilgamesh. Don't get me wrong, I love Sumer and Gilgamesh... what's not to love about an Epic poem which focuses on death and corpses being eaten by bugs? Okay, so there is far more to it than than that. But really, it's not what I'd like to be thinking about right now. So I'm going to instead write about something fantastically indulgently happy.

Valentines Day.

Now, I know that valentines day is kind of a taboo phrase. When said out loud it evokes eye rolls or eye glitzes. There are always the people who love it and the people who would rather bite their arms off than give into this corporate created greeting card holiday. Now I've never really been on either of those sides, I love holidays but valentines day has never really meant much to me. But this year I realized something... this year I will actually be in the same country as my boyfriend on a day that is all about indulging yourself in love. So needless to say, I got a little excited when I realized this.

I've decided that this year, I will celebrate and I will indulge and evoke eye rolls and I will enjoy it all while wearing a fabulous outfit. I mean hey, when is there a better time to put on a silk blouse and some sky high wedges? No other day, I say! But I also decided I wouldn't go over board and just jump into the deep end. No thoughtless presents and store written cards, just a nice night out with someone I love.

I've decided valentines day is all about balance. Enjoying a day devoted to love is such a well, lovely idea. Be it with friends you love or an actual lover or just indulging yourself because you love yourself! But it's important to balance it and not let all the heart shaped pillows in target go to your head, even though they are incredibly appealingly cute!

So buy yourself a new top from you're favorite shop! Meet your best friends for drinks and chocolate covered strawberries! Take your petite amie for a nice night out and give her an excuse to pull out the heels! Just do things you love, on a day dedicated to love.

So Happy Early Valentines Day, may it be filled with love.

It's a wonderful life

Last December I took some time and followed my very own Yorkshire man back to his city, I spent my first Christmas away from home. I ate more than any one person should eat. I got actually "piss" drunk for the first time in my life. I felt more homesick than I've ever felt in my life. I lit my dress on fire in a fire place. Again, I drank more alcohol than I've ever consumed before. I pet a donkey. I realized just how loud growing up in America has made me compared to everyone else, seriously, it's embarrassing. I watched wayyy to much top gear and come dine with me. And I had an amazing time even though I cried... often and hard.

But, hey, that's just me. I cry. Anyways... there is a point to this! I've been a bit of free spirit these past few years. I've floated around university programs... arts and anthropology and writing and so on and finally found humanities but hadn't really known how to hone that down and create a life I wanted to live... a life that will inspire. Since I realized that my life long dream of having no consequences and travelling the world until my hair grows grey would probably be not a great idea... I started wanting to find something I felt ready to devote too. While on my English Christmas Extravaganza, the badger's family took us two to London for a few hours one day. We stopped by the V&A and I saw an exhibit which included clips from The Rite of Spring... my favorite ballet because of what an important role it plays in human history. Walking through the V&A is something else, literally. The fact that people get to spend their time working there surrounded by some of the greatest human accomplishments just blows my tiny American cultured mind. I cannot help but feel things when I'm in a place like that, literally you can feel the past there.

So when I cam back to the good ol' USA to continue my university work I finally choose a "focus." Museum Studies. This is pretty big for me, I never make decisions like this. So wish me luck on my new adventure! I hope to one day be able to surround myself with some of the greatest achievements of human kind, on a daily basis.

I hope that anyone who stumbles into reading this has led and is living a life in which inspiration is around them. Let it surround you. Let it envelope you. Let it arouse you. But most importantly, share it with those around you. Let's inspire each other.

And even though you will probably never read this, I'd like to give an incredibly important thank you to the Badgers for inviting me and having me during a very special time of the year. I regret that I was so incredibly shy, but it's only because I worry about my obnoxiously American cultured self around people of other less loud cultures. So thank you : )

Am I an animal? Part 1

Well it's supposed to snow in Flagstaff tonight and tomorrow, so clearly I am sitting here checking the weather every ten minutes, waiting for the snow to fall, and hoping for a text from my university tomorrow saying "class cancelled" aka... SNOW DAY.

Snow day, two of the greatest words invented. The definition of snow day is: A day in which leaving the house except to build a snow man will be putting yourself into danger so one must only eat popcorn and nutella and canned soup( the only things in my pantry right now) drink lots of tea and snuggle up to a book one is really looking forward to reading. That's my daydream for tomorrow, not what is actually going to happen. I am actually going to have to put on all the clothes I own and march through sleet and snow across campus to my classes. But what's important here really, is that one of my classes is actually helping me change.

Woah, change? Can people really change? Wait, can I really evolve myself in the course of 3 months? The answer is yes, I've done it in a week. It all started last Monday.

Monday evenings I have class called HUM 373, aka Nature and Values. I am the only humanities major in a class which all environmental studies majors are required to take. We were having an in class discussion after our grey haired lanky man of a professor wearing his plaid shirt read us the syllabus, and it was all about why aren't we changing. Everyone knows the ozone layer is depleting the Hopi tribe has said we have already gone so far we can't turn back and a British guy who knows what he is talking about has stated that after this century we are probably done, kaput, peace out planet Earth. So why aren't we changing when change is a part of our culture already?

We threw around ideas, and then I came to a conclusion on a whim said it out loud and everyone went, yeah. I am an animal. You, me, the badger, my best friend, my dog, my sister, all every single one of us, animals. But no one looks at it that way. Because we think we are above it. Because we live in our cultures we think we are not apart of nature.

We believe that we can own anything, we don't think of ourselves as a part of the land we live on, we think of ourselves as owning it. It part of our culture, we own our animals and land and we are certainly not animals, we are humans. But it's also part of our culture to change.

We are amazing animals, but we are animals. So try and think about that... try and think about ways you and I could change, do you want to change?

Should we really own our ideas?

It's not secret, we all want to be unique. People may try to blend in and go with the flow but everyone wants to feel special and original and unique, especially when it comes to our thoughts and ideas.

No matter what we look like, we will always be dissatisfied with something. It doesn't matter what we weigh, if our hair is turning grey, how we dress or anything, we will always be dissatisfied. But with our ideas and thoughts it's different. How good does it feel to have that ah-hah moment when you realize something? How fast does your heart beat when you realize the answer to the question you've been pondering all day? How perfect is that moment when realization knocks you over when you least expect it? It's electrifying, that feeling of I've figured something out! The moment when for one second your idea has solved the riddle of life, and you did it all on your own! God, there is nothing like it!

To all of a sudden come to a conclusion on something you spend hours and days and months and years pondering makes a person feel important and special and original, if only for a minute. I love that feeling. That's how I feel when I write a blog post, I feel for just a tiny second that my original ideas are more important to my survival in life than anything else!

But then it hits me, I'm human, of course I'm having these thoughts. How can my thoughts be truly original when people all over the world are probably thinking the same things and coming to the same conclusions at the same time! This was an ah-hah moment I had last night, and it was tragic. I felt cut down and completely lacking in intelligence and originality. Thoughts that I spend hours and months and years thinking about felt.... like they belonged to someone else.

But then came another moment, an ever more important ah-hah than the original thought I had in the first place! Thank God people are having the same thoughts as me! If my thoughts really are about what I think is best for me and those around me and humanity, I want , no I need other people to be thinking the same things!

It's great that we have ah-hah moments, but it's even better that we as humans can think and feel the same things as other people around us and even contribute to others around us! For a blog that's all about the living, whether they be the living past, future, or present, that has to be something I realize.

Ideas these days can be patented and protected, but really, ideas are meant to be shared. That's the beauty of our minds, our sixth sense if you will. The beauty that our minds can give us more happiness and truth than any other sense we have.

We have to share our ideas so that other's can experience that wonderful ah-hah moment, so that humanity can help each other.