Click Here to Download

HBO teamed up with Kid Cudi, DJ Green Lantern & Broke Mogul (DECON) to create “How to Make it In America: The Mixtape”. Hosted by Cudi, he chimes in through out the mixtape discussing the cast, show and his acting aspirations. The mixtape features a variation of music including Dan Black Symphonies remix with Cudi, Jadakiss, Johnny Ploygon, Phoenix, Lupe Fiasco and more.

Since Elfie introduced me to KC, I have never looked back.  Her hair just gets better & better….  Textures & quality are all important & KC has struck the right balance with both these simple yet sophisticated updo’s which are currently gifted.  The updo on the left is the Petite*  (subscribo giftie) & the style on right is the Classic Heart* (Valentines Hunt Gift-find 1 of 4 “hearts” & collect the full range of colours).  Tip:  KC is participating in the Heart &  Sole Valentines Hunt with 8 other stores so you can scoop up some extra gifties while in the area.  Also check out the Hair Sale~hair packs start from $19.  The runched black dress is from COCO ( Shirred Tube Dress~ Group Gift). Tip: Join the group & collect a variety of gifts on a dedicated wall in Womanswear section. Some of the gifts are oldies but still goodies. 

Credits:

~Petite* & Classic Heart Updo Hairs in Chestnut @ KC (Subscribo & Valentine Hunt Gifts)

~Black Shirred Tube Dress @ COCO (Group Gift)

~Eva Skin* @ Tuli (Group Gift ~ $250 group join)

Bibi Shape* @ ::Curvy Silhouettes Shapes::

It’s always fun when winter weather hits. I know my name is cursed many times during such events. It’s part of the job, but I am just the messenger.

Get ready for some wintry fun these next few days. We have some rain chances. We have even more sleet chances. And we have snow…almost guaranteed.

The good news, for the majority of this current system, is that temperatures on the surface will be at or slightly above 32º. That means we can melt some of the snow/sleet as it falls. It does promote the formation of icing, but still…the more we can get rid of the precip the better.

I might have been more concerned had this occurred before our snow pack melted. However, the grass is showing everywhere. An extra one or two inches of snow won’t matter too much. We’ve had much much worse this season.

In short, be careful when venturing outside. Grab the big jacket and the umbrella. Roads and sidewalks will most likely  suffer ice build-up…making driving a bit dangerous. Take care of yourself and each other.

Oh…before I forget. Our total snow accumulation will range from one to three inches through Saturday morning. If you plan on heading down to KC or further south, watch out. They are forecast to see anywhere from three to six inches of snow!

sorry for some lines. i took pictures of my pictures on the phone

sry for any repeated pic

you have enough energy in your body to light up a city.

all i ask is one thing, & i’m asking this particularly of young people that watch: please do not be cynical. i hate cynicism. for the record, it’s my least favorite quality, it doesn’t lead anywhere. nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. but if you work really hard & you’re kind, amazing things will happen. i’m telling you: amazing things will happen. i’m telling you, it’s just true.
-conan o’brien.

Surely this question (or ones of similar WTF?!? variety) has crossed the mind of many after hearing that I moved from Portland, Oregon–the preferred destination of much of the hipster migration–to Kansas City, Missouri, the epicenter of… well, fountains? Meat slathered in BBQ sauce? Terrible sports teams? Jazz?

Truth is, KC was way cool a mere 70 years ago or so but now it is relegated to a lower-eschelon “cool city” status in the part of the country that my friend Marty refers to as the “flyover states.” In other words, it is no Chicago or Minneapolis or even Madison or Ann Arbor. So, again, why KC?

The answer starts a little over two years ago.

I first came to KC in January of 2008 for work. This trip was notable for two reasons: 1) The Kauffman Foundation paid for all my expenses: flight, lovely hotel, and meals. This was the first time that anyone decided that my thoughts were valuable enough to pay to have me at the table. It is a very humbling and flattering feeling; I highly recommend it. 2) My trip to KC allowed me to connect with a friend that I taught with in Shizuoka, Japan back in 1999-2000. That friend, Lily Berkley, was really more of a social-event friend and we’d been completely out of touch for 8 years. In other words, a lot of time had passed between two people who weren’t all that close to begin with.

I should mention at this point that, while it would seem logical for Lily to play a romantic role in this tale, I have never had any sort of amorous feelings toward her in what would be considered a “check this box if you want to be my girlfriend” way–not even during that first weekend reunion. Yet, I did find myself with a lot of loving feelings directed her way and it was only after a later trip that I figured out how to describe that love… but I am getting ahead of myself.

In the winter of 2008, Lily was one year into a divorce and I was 5 1/2 years into a happy marriage. Furthermore, I knew Lily’s ex-husband and found the messiness of their breakup all the more personal and confusing as a result. This weekend reunion reestablished our connection, showed me that there are a lot of really nice parts of KC (really!), and left me feeling like I’d found someone who’d been missing from my life… and I hadn’t even know it. I returned again for Halloween of 2008.

By the fall of ‘08, I was divorced and Lily was still dating the same lovely fellow from the winter of 2008, a great guy named Ryan (her ex- is also named Ryan so no embroidery on towels and sheets needed changing). By Halloween 2008, Ryan and his precocious daughter Grace had moved in with Lily and her bright-eyed son Quinn. Furthermore, Ryan’s sister and her two children lived next door. So, in the place where I had a quiet catch-up weekend with a grounded-but-still-wounded divorcee, there as now a family and, in total, four kids.

Again I left and returned to my life in Portland. And again, in the summer of 2009, I returned, this time for the 4th of July. I arrived in KC on the 3rd after spending the preceding two weeks in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, New York City, and St. Louis. By the time I got to KC–and amidst all the serious patriotic hoopla of the 4th–I was thoroughly disoriented and firmly convinced that we Americans really ought to give up the silly notion that we live in the same country. Yes, it is common knowledge that all of the 5 cities I visited in two weeks are very different, but to actually tear through those places in under 14 days is very, very unsettling.

So, when I returned to Portland on the 5th, I attributed the lack of complete and total joy that I usually feel when the plane’s wheels hit the runway at PDX to the whirlwind nature of my preceding two weeks. While I was thrilled to be back in the Northwest, eager to see my cat, and otherwise ready to stop moving, something was missing, something beyond feeling “unstuck” by my travels.

I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about my friends in KC and about how much I enjoyed being in their environment. I also figured out how to describe my love for Lily: it is the love that a big brother has for a little sister.

It wasn’t until a week later that two conversations coalesced in my head. The first conversation was with my best friend Kevin and he had the following observation: “What’s interesting is that you keep talking about Portland as a place and Kansas City as a community.” Soon after, my friend Stephen said: “Place isn’t everything. If you have community, work that feeds you, and someone with whom to share your life, you are all set.”

I decided to return to KC during the start of September to spend two weeks figuring out if I actually liked everyone as much as I thought I did and to see what kind of professional opportunities were available.

After two weeks, 7 meetings with local professionals, and one day in particular where I spent time playing kickball with several of the elementary-school aged boys in my community of friends, walking another friend’s dog, and sitting on Lily and Ryan’s porch in bright sunlight watching their chickens roam the yard… I realized that life in KC was the kind of living that fed my soul.

While I know that much of this backstory’s focus involves thoughts that are very present and “in the now”, anyone who knows me at all knows that I went through a pretty unexpected (99% or so) divorce in the summer of 2008 and that really did me in for a while. I won’t begin to pretend that the experience of having someone forcibly hit the reset button on my life isn’t jarring, liberating, terrifying, and generally unpleasant. As a result, it is liable to make someone do rash and seemingly illogical things. That said, my eventual decision to move to KC–while surely influenced by my post-divorce mindset–was very well thought out and not at all spur of the moment.

Most importantly, I made the resolve in the summer of 2009 to stop making decisions based on fear. How much of our lives to we spend making choices based on worry, doubt, insecurity, and a lack of desire to change the status quo… even if the status quo is not enough to feed our souls? Even in insidious ways, I think the powers of fear and uncertainty makes us unwilling to reach out and chose to leave our comfort zone, to grow, to evolve, and to become who we want and are meant to be.

Once I spent two weeks in KC and I got used to my new “make choices based on possibility” mentality, it became abundantly clear that I needed to move to KC. I find the professional details of this story to be a bit drab (for a sample of that conversation, check out my last blog post “Taking My Own Advice” for my old work at Idealist.org) so I will simply say that there is more than enough interesting work to be had here. Much of what started happening in Portland in the late 80s and early 90s–the groundwork that makes Portland the bike-friendly, free-range, urban planning, sustainable living, LEED building, yada yada yada place it is today–is happening right now in KC. I remember my “epiphany moment” when I figured this out and I also remember my very next thought: “Why is everyone flocking to Portland to be a part of this 21st Century Community experience when so much of the work there has already been done? Why aren’t people flocking to places like KC where that work still needs to be done?”

Now I just need to dig back in after the holidays and find ways to turn conversations and proposals into paid work. Am I worried about employment? A little. Am I going to make career choices based on that concern (i.e. fear)? Absolutely not.

Now that I’ve been here for two months (I arrived the week of Thanksgiving), I am even more sure that I made the right choice. I have two great people living in my house in Portland (yes, I still have my Pacific Northwest house and I would like that to be the case for some time to come), my wonderful community of friends (and, after spending the holidays with them, I am all the more pleased to be immersed in their lives), a good apartment in which to make an initial “landing” in town (the apartment being the in-law on the first floor of Lily and Ryan’s house), interesting job prospects, my cat (who did admirably on the plane ride and is as lovely and perfect a creature as she ever was), and, yes, even a girlfriend (who is so amazing and whose happiness and excitement is so intoxicating that I am sometimes rendered speechless).

Life is good. I hope everyone reading this can say that about their own lives right now. If not, I hope you can figure out a way to make it a reality this year. Who knows, that might involve you moving to KC. The more the merrier!

what if you could buy self confidence in a jar. take twice a day, with a full glass of tea; do not take on an empty stomach. now this would not be self confidence in the form of mood elevating drugs or weight loss supplements. more of a jar, you could open up & it whispers beautiful things to you. confidence is such an alluring quality in creatures & really, everyone should feel confident. you’re alive, that makes you beautiful. everyone is beautiful. slight things make you beautiful. that speck of gold on your otherwise green eyes, that freckle the shape of maine, the gap in your teeth, the fullness of your body. everyone is beautiful. if this is true, why is it so impossible to feel sometimes? we sink our skin into bathtubs of luke warm water searching for our flaws. the superficial reason he/she might not fall in love with you. we don’t look within towards the passion in our blood- the things people will actually fall in love with. looks fade & anyone can fall in lust with a look. it’s trite but true that in the long run that is not what you want in a mate. you want someone who intrigues you, makes you a better person, someone who compliments your very existence. if self confidence could be purchased in a jar it might say your heart beats like a rabbit & you glow when you smile. it might say the way your brain works is extraordinary, you notice things everyone else is too busy to see. it might just whisper you’re breathing, you…are…alive.

coreena lewis is a gem. she is a beautiful, confident, empowered young lady who will make you feel beautiful.  she helps run a tumblr group called fuckyeahchubbygirls embracing bodies & helping so many girls feel beautiful in their own skin. coreena is also a wonderful artist & you can see & purchase some of her lovely things here. we are thankful for ladies like this. read her personal tumblr or look at some of her wonderful photos.

Who is the most remarkable person you know personally, and why do you think so? I can say with complete confidence, my mom. She is the funniest, most supportive person on this planet. Not just with me, or my sister, with everyone. Even when the plans you have seem like the most irresponsible, least tangible things possible, my mom will fully support you. This seems like the opposite of remarkable, but when your mom hands you a bottle of her greatest rum, helps you load your bed into your friend’s mini van and says “good luck” when you’re moving four hours away with $100 to your name, you know that she’s something special. She never doubts me.

Where does love hide? I think love hides everywhere, behind each grumpy old man or stressed out boss, there’s love. Maybe not for you, but for someone, or something. I try and remember this on a daily basis cause it’s a lot easier to be negative than positive, I think people generally really forget that about themselves and life.

When was the last time everything felt perfect? In general, I don’t really believe that perfection exists in anything, and that’s what makes life really that much more interesting. I feel my best when my life is moving and I’m experiencing new things. I think some of my personal flaws are what makes me keep moving and yearning for bigger and better things.

When you think of the word ‘beautiful,’ what’s the first thing to come to mind? I’m not sure if it’s the photographer in me, but it’s always about the simple things in life. Like, a rain fall during the sunniest day of the year, or waking up beside someone you love, or the palest girl on the beach. I love things that stand out on their own.

What is your favorite thing to do to keep warm on a cold day? Baths! I love baths more than I love most things in this world. I am sort of a water baby and I feel most comfortable when I’m around it. I am a west coast girl through and through. So yeah, a bath and a good book/comic.

What do you think would be the sound of you making magic? Definitely not me singing. I think it would sound sort of like a sprinkler, but louder, and with more Tetris noises.

What inspires you? I am lucky enough to be surrounded by all sorts of amazing influences. My friends are very interesting people with very interesting jobs/hobbies. A lot of them are photographers, artists etc. So, I end up getting a lot of great ideas through collaborating and exchanging ideas with them.

Why did you start your tumblr group? I didn’t actually start the FYCG site, in fact at first the girl who did start it, Amy, followed my personal blog and would reblog the pictures from my ‘365′ project I would post. She got busy and was looking for help and I stepped up. I love the site, it also is a great inspiration. The girls on it are constantly giving me their thanks and appreciation, which in return just gives that much more confidence.

What makes you feel confident? Other than running a blog that features ladies with full figures who are proud of it (in turn making me feel proud) putting on red lipstick, a good dress and parading around WHEREVER with my camera. I feel most confident with a camera in my hand. That or a pencil. It’s just second nature to me.

What is your favourite smell? This one is sort of weird, and I always laugh too much when I try to explain it, so it’s a good thing I’m typing. My grandparents use to own property on a lake and I use to spend every summer there with them. They owned this shed and it’s where they stored all the fun stuff (row boat paddles, tubes, buckets, water goggles…) my favorite smell is the first week of the summer going back there and opening up that shed. I don’t know why, it just smells like summer to me. Stale summer, but summer nonetheless.

Can you define the word “remarkable”? The first thing that comes to mind when I think of something being ‘remarkable’ is something unique and unusual. Like something happening by coincidence, or by chance. Some of the most remarkable things I’ve come across are due to being impulsive or whimsical.

I’ve honestly been waiting to spring this on some folks for a minute. Yes, there’s always some rapper somewhere from someone’s home town that for whatever reason, makes people put on their blinders and get behind. As delusional as it may be sometimes getting behind somebody from your home town, Ron Ron is kinda carrying KC on his back right now. Don’t get me wrong, other rappers and crews have done big things in KC before but (in my opinion) the music is usually “meh” or even garbage level steez. There’s something different about Ron Ron though. He’s 3 mixtapes deep as far as I know…maybe more. He’s starting to tap some serious creative energy and he’s now messing with more than just run of the mill crew from the block (i.e. local figures Stik Figa, Greg Enemy, Dutch Newman, etc). The video above features 2 tracks from Ron Ron. Hey Honey alone could blow up nationally. Both tracks available for download below. Snag em and tell some folks KC has a dude on the come up…

Ron Ron – Hey Honey
Ron Ron – Throwbacc

If there’s one thing I’ve seen God try to get across to His people in the past several months, it’s that He loves them. And actually, I consider the word “love” to be a really lame term to describe it, because it goes SOOOOOOOO far beyond what we humans can even comprehend.

It’s super, ultimate, hyper-active, action-packed, crazy, insane, hilarious, gorgeous, beautiful, rockin’, magical, wonderful, magnificient, heart-wrenching, incredible, intimate, compelling, real, awesome, ridiculous, explosive love.

I think He’s sick of seeing us hurt in our sin and He wants to move into the world in a love like we’ve never seen or felt before. And He’s doing it already. And He’s going to continue doing it. Spread the word!

Anywho, I came across IHOP’s webpage last night (mmmm…. egg burger, ghahghaghaghahgha) and decided to sleep with their 24/7  worship service on.

And to clarify, this is the “International House of Prayer,” not your breakfast joint. And yes, it’s not an exaggeration. They actually have 24 hour worship 7 days a week which you can live stream online whenever you’d like.

I decided to go to sleep with it on after feeling a pull to do so. So it streamed for 4 hours and 14 minutes before it paused and then I was awoken by my computer alarm clock song at 7:15 to get ready for Shekinah Stimulation and prayer with Ron Kopicko and some other students.

Enough links there?

So how does this all connect? Well, I just read a little biography on IHOP’s page which connected all of my thoughts together:

On November 11, during a 9:00am class of first-year students, led by Allen Hood and Wes Hall at International House of Prayer University (IHOPU), the Spirit moved in their midst with physical healings, deliverance, and a spirit of joy. That class, on November 11, continued for more than 15 hours. The word spread quickly, and over 2,000 people spontaneously gathered in the auditorium from all over the Kansas City area, as deliverance and physical healings increased. The meeting continued well past midnight. Recognizing that the Spirit was moving, the leadership of IHOPU canceled all classes for the next few days so that we could gather to receive all that the Spirit wanted to do.
 
We recognize that the Holy Spirit is awakening our students and many others. In each of these meetings, many people are being set free from addictions, shame, depression, demonic activity, and every sort of emotional pain. We are also witnessing an increase of physical healings, as God is touching and restoring bodies inside the building, as well as healing people watching via the webstream. Moreover, we greatly rejoice as we are seeing lost souls being added to the kingdom of God during these meetings. We are receiving many testimonies and reports that this move of the Spirit is spreading to other churches and prayer rooms that are joining with us each night via the webstream.
 
It all began on November 4, on the last day of the monthly Global Bridegroom Fast at the International House of Prayer of Kansas City (IHOP–KC). A move of the Holy Spirit began to stir during the student chapel at IHOPU, as students testified about receiving deliverance from self-hatred, shame, and depression. Students began to experience supernatural joy at the revelation of God’s love for them. A powerful spirit of joy rested on many the next day at the IHOPU student-led 6:00am prayer meeting, and the Spirit continued to move throughout the week in our classes and during the faculty meetings.

A friend and I are looking into starting a 24+ hour worship meeting on weekends here at Spring Arbor University. Please let me know if you’d be intersted in helping us out in any way.

Evans’s recently released poetry collection exhibits writing that is evocative, sensual, celebratory, cautionary, and rife with intent. As the title of the collection suggests, Evans collection seeks to marry the highly abstract (Truth Love) with the undeniably physical (Blood and Bones). We can see a prime example of this marriage in “Stars, Salt, Sun”:

After great perversion, a formal fugue comes. /
The dust ruffles ceremoniously like terror. /
Winds breathe malice and a litany of bird songs /
takes wing to sunnier shores, /
like a shore on which a bottle I once cast may now lie, /
briny with salt and secrets: secret /
sins, buried and blanketed by layers of dust /
blowing over bodies browned by sun and radiation and stars. /
I think that under these same stars /
a dark-eye woman must have stumbled /
upon a bottle of glass, green like the curve of /
the sea, and, opening it, heard a melody /
of sorrow and pride. A shiver, then, /
passed through the sand, and terror, /
like a crab, scuttled over her.

This poem opens with a well-balanced and intriguing opening line coupled with the odd and compelling image of dust ruffling “ceremoniously like terror.” The poem moves on, like many in this collection, to grant agency to the natural as a way to get into and invigorate a somewhat abstract conceit. Evans writes of the wind breathing malice and bird songs taking “wing to sunnier shores.” It’s of note that the songs themselves take flight, and that perhaps they’ve left muted singers behind to ride, silent and uncommunicative, upon that malicious wind. And therein lies a central abstraction of this poem, which Evans draws together over the remainder of the poem: what do we do with communications secret and tossed away, like a message in a bottle, as they are overrun by Nature, yet continue to turn up again and again to frighten/influence/corrupt/enlighten a “dark-eye woman” happening upon them in some unforeseeable future? Do we also take the whispered missives and bottle and toss them? Or do we keep the lessons learned, however terrifying, and keep them close at hand?

Throughout Truth Love Blood Bones Evans writes of the natural world and its seductive/corruptive qualities. “Xocolatl” is an extremely visceral example wherein the narrator ties together a memory of watching a cat devour a bird with the blissful act of eating chocolate with a lover: “…feeding you / the way the bird fed the cat: with intimate exchange of fluids.” The book is full of such twisted and crafted imagery.

Additionally, a number of poems in this collection describe with a solid eye a type of love that borders on the violent (Love Blood). I’ll use “Moments of Weakness” as an example:

Sometimes I can’t /
bear the silence between us, growing as large as the longing inside. /
I want to split your head open /
like a coconut to drink all your sweet thoughts /
and ease this horrible thirst I carry. /
Instead, I /
stare at you until you feel /
my eyes, like fingers, tracing across your skull. /
You turn and ask what I’m thinking. /
Fearing the true /
answer would harm you – as if /
to speak it makes it so – /
I smile and say: how much I love you.

The above piece also features one of the weaknesses in Evans poetry: her interruptive use of the line break. Realize that Evans writes mainly in free verse, where rhythm is often an afterthought, but the choice of where to break a line does matter greatly in terms of transmitting meaning, composing an image, and structuring a poem over all. The break between lines 6 and 7 above illustrates my criticism. That break does well to emphasize the violent thoughts brimming but it does so at the expense of disrupting the easy and loverly pace set by the opening lines which, had Evans carried it throughout, might well have juxtaposed more appropriately the aggressive tenderness at hand in the piece. (See “One-Sided Relationship” as an additional example wherein the questionable choice of line breaks serve to interrupt the image being circumscribed rather than accentuate it.)

Nevertheless, there are many poems within Truth Love Blood and Bones worthy of exegesis. So check it out yourself: Click to purchase.

your body doesn’t deserve what you do to it. you have a good body, a strong body, it doesn’t deserve this. you don’t deserve to hurt. your skin, this skin, it’s pale colour glows in the light. the constellations that freckle your shoulders. the flush in your cheek when, when, when. you don’t deserve to hurt. you say but the outside must match the inside. that means you can’t harm it. if it must match your inside we must keep it beautiful, strong, unharmed. we’ll keep you beautiful, strong, unharmed.

sound: burning – whitest boy alive. never gets old. this song.

don’t want to do too much talking here other than the fact that i am in love with kenzie & co’s newest leggings and so many styles‘ awesome pair of harem pants. i’ve also been in the search for a well made yet stylish tweed jacket so thank you machang, for answering my wishes with this aoharu one <3. and as for the hair? – simply can’t get enough. p.c. jewelery, wedged sneakers, foot tattoos, and bright vintagey pumps… le sigh. both looks were captured on am radio’s sim. gnite everyone!

look 1

hair: deep in copper by shag
shades: the aviator glasses in cream by p.c.
necklace: michel necklace by lagyo
jacket: argon jacket in azul by lelutka
dress: vaudeville dress 1 (without flowers) by oyakin (du3)
leggings: & the vines grow deeper in dusty rose by k&co
socks: knit socks in beige by so many styles
shoes: wedgesneaker in white by coco

look 2

hair: deep in blonde by shag
shades: silver screen aviators by p.c.
earrings: camie’s *gold* camboo bamboo earrings by *kc*
scarf: scarf penny striped scarf in black/white by emery
jacket: tweedshortjacket in beige by aoharu
shirt: and i stumblebum plaid + sweater by pig
bag: my fabric bag by milk motion
ring (right): bird ring by p.c.
ring (left): water over wine ring by p.c.
pants: highwaist harem pants in rusty by so many styles
shoes: group gift pumps in turquoise by maitreya

love love – euni kira.

So a couple months back I went to Kansas City for a few days.  We flew into town to see the Cowboys-Chiefs game.  I always wanted to check out Arrowhead stadium, and I had some friends close by that met us up there.  I did not take my camera to the stadium,because I know that the NFL has strict policies on what they consider professional cameras.  Pretty much any camera with a lens longer then one inch.  I know often you can get them in without incident, but I did not want to risk it.  I didn’t want to have to leave it in the parking lot for the game, plus the temperatures where freezing.

We did take some tours while we were there and did do some exploring on our own.  The city has a ton of water fountains all over the place.  It was breast cancer awareness month so they had put dye in some of the fountains to make them appear pink.   Or on second thought maybe they dyed the water red to create the effect of blood for Halloween.   Probably not, but who knows.  I took the following picture when we stopped at a light in a tour van.

Later that night we where hanging out in our hotel room, and I wanted to play around with the new remote that I got for the camera.  I wanted to try to take a picture using a slow shutter speed.  I don’t remember for sure but I think it was ten or twenty seconds.  I did not have my tripod, so I used a coffee table and a couple of phone books to get it angled and positioned right.  I know this picture has been done a million times, but I wanted to see if I could do it too.  I had fun.  I took probably ten or so different picture using different apertures and shutter speeds.  Although the positions where the same they all came out different.  The two solid white lines are from a car’s  headlights (actually probably more than one) as they headed from right to left.  The single dotted line is from a car’s blinkers as the came from left to right and around the corner.  You can also see the shadows of one of the cars as it stopped at a light.  It was actually a lot darker out then it seems.  You could not see much at all, but because of the slow shutter speed you are able to illuminate more of the dark areas.

zachary schomburg has a way with words. he twists them into extraordinary things. he takes old words & makes them new. have you heard of him? no, no, no? well you must do yourself a favour & purchase one of his books. your heart will swell, your heart will burst, your heart won’t know what to do. his book the man suit is a personal favourite which has been purchased & gifted several times. it’s a book you truly must own. you can learn more about zachary here & purchase his books. go go go! he’s an inspiration to our writing so let us pick his heart & find out what makes him tick.

Who is the most remarkable person you know personally, and why do you think so?
Emily Kendal Frey. She has a strange capacity for poetry, a brain that moves like a kite. And her entire body is filled with her heart. Her heart is like a cream filling. She wrote Airport, which you can read as an e-book here , and has about ten other manuscripts that will be great books in this next decade. You heard me.
Where does love hide?
Love hides in a closet. A real closet–not a metaphorical one. It’s a closet somewhere, maybe in Canada or some place like that. It’s underneath a pile of sweatshirts and some trophies. The house has been demolished so we just have to imagine it. We all just have to do our best recreating it.
When was the last time everything felt perfect?
Things feel perfect in small exact moments. These are moments that last a few seconds, when I recognize the perfection, often while reading or writing, or during sexual intercourse, or painting and listening to music, maybe sharing a beer. So, not too long ago.
When you think of the word ‘beautiful,’ what’s the first thing to come to mind?
Giraffe.
What is your favorite thing to do to keep warm on a cold day?
I love taking showers. It’s like my favorite thing. I’d shower, and probably wouldn’t even bother with soaping myself.
What do you think would be the sound of you making magic?
A flapping cape? Or the sound of peeling off wet tree bark maybe.
What inspires you?
Oh man. That’s hard to pinpoint. There’s not much that doesn’t. Malls don’t. I know that. Malls suck.
What is your favourite smell?
I kind of like the smell of feet. Or maybe, more generally, I could say I love the smell of bodies. Bodies.
Can you define the word “remarkable”?
Yeah, pretty easily.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL

HOPE GOOD THINGS WILL HAPPEN IN 2010 TO EACH OF YOU WHO READ MY BLOG

GOODBYE 2009 HELLO 2010

sincerely: IzzatKC

birds, bees.
breathe deep. the year is coming to an end & just think: your heart is one year stronger, your bones are one year tougher. we survived & we’re alive. it’s beautiful. the year may have been ups & downs, broken hearts, broken homes, broken bones but it will soon be behind us. take everything that has happened in & let it feed your soul to make it strong. learn from the past. we’re constantly learning. constantly developing. don’t let your heart grow heavy with things that have happened. your heart is already doing so much, let’s not burden it with negativity. feed it strong, encouraging words. make it a beacon of light. let us glow from the inside out with experience & beauty. let us glow.