Monday, April 26, 2010

Meet my 朋友!

I forgot to announce that I was given the honor of guest blogging on my fantastic foodie friend's fabulous food forum... (a little too much alliteration?).  A couple weeks ago I filled in for her while she was busy being responsible taking the GRE.

You can check it out here...   and, I highly suggest becoming a follower of "I ate everything".  You won't regret it- the recipes alone are worth it, not to mention you will fall in love with Stephie's charming wit and jovial candor!  Enjoy!

isn't she just scrumptious! 

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Art Here... Art There... Art Everywhere!

I have decided to really invest in improving my blogability.  I know I have said this before, but now I’m making a schedule!  I plan to post something once a week... every Sunday evening to be exact.  The reasons are many but mostly just boil down to my need to create… something…anything!  Expression is good for the soul.  Usually, my need for well written, thoroughly processed thoughts has stifled and squelched my freedom to scribble down my life unashamedly.  “Perfectionism is the archnemesis of creativity” (Found Art-71).  SO- through more consistent random thoughts and tangential wanderings, I am hoping to fight back against this villain for freedoms sake!  … here we go… 

Blogging makes me acutely aware of my surroundings.  It makes me think of every experience, every meal, every encounter as a potential post.  Anything has the potential to have significance and meaning.  It makes me actually ponder my experiences and think about connections.  As I was “making art” out of my breakfast this morning, (for the sake of a later post) I was whisked back to my freshman year of college, sitting in my mandatory (aka miserable) writing class – Culture, Art and Technology- learning about what makes art, Art.  The answer: ascribed meaning.  The only thing that makes anything art is the value that someone assigns it.  I had turned my breakfast into art by seeing the beauty in the crimson strawberries and the tasting the nostalgia in the hint of cinnamon… My mind then wandered to the value of connections.  Beautiful personal experience found in foreign spaces. 

I just finished reading a book about one woman’s discovery of beauty in unlikely places.  Her words deeply resonated with me as I saw many of my own thoughts, hurts and experiences mirrored in her unpretentious journalesque writing.  The more I thought about it, I realized that a lot of valued literature is nothing more than the modest scribbles of common experience connected to deeper wonderings.  Julie Powell’s random thoughts on cooking is now a well known book and movie.  A young girl’s personal diary of life during WWII became one of the world’s most widely read books and an inspiration of hope.  These creations of the written word remind me that art is imbedded in our connection with other people’s experiences.  The way that my heart shares space with yours through common memories…. the way reading about your journey can ignite the flame of my own nostalgia… the way reading your hope, pain, love, joy, mourning unite us- world’s apart- through the fragility (and yet strength) of humanity…

The criteria for art is not anything pompous or sophisticated.  It does not have to be universally adored or survive the criticism of others.  It just has to be real.  Honest.  Even vulnerable. We just need to be “willing to strip all the way down to [our] true self and listen and look for God in [our] world.” (Found Art -73).  This is my art.  These are my experiences.  This is me.