Sitting in my room. It’s 4:38 PM. It’s Saturday. And the room isn’t even mine— it’s part of the condo deal that my boss received through the production company she works for. The condo is hers, and yes, I live with her. But she isn’t here right now, or all of next week, which leaves me stuck here, useless, at 4:38 PM on a late Saturday afternoon. The room is all white. It is a modern looking, stainless steal type of condo. I only moved here 2 months ago and this bed is still my default when there are no emails to write or things to return.
I literally ache for activity.
There is nothing.
I eat some food and I’m not hungry, and then resolve to fall asleep early this time and wake up tomorrow morning with energy for the gym. This is a lie though, and I know it, because I never actually wake up early and go to the gym. In the past, I’ve only done that when life has been something I wanted to ignore, and running seemed to help me with that.
I’m not ignoring life, though. I’m just caught somewhere between action and inaction. I am in a white room, on a bed, at 4:38 PM on a Saturday.
My phone does not ring, my Facebook has no activity, and it won’t have any activity in 5 minutes when I go to check it again, either. I click on the ‘photo booth’ icon on my Macbook and I check my face to see if it still tallies up, and it does. I stare at myself. I feel hopeful and alone at the same time. I see the face going somewhere and doing something, I see someone loving this face, but the face that looks back at me hasn’t showered or changed today and is sitting in bed at 4:38 PM on a saturday.
I grow annoyed, and flip my computer shut. I am sick of this. I get up and stand on the carpeted floor, unsure of what I’m going to do now that I’ve left the famous bed. I look out the window. It’s almost 5 now, and the day is almost over.
I ran to the other side of infinity, then turned around, and laughed back at it.
This post is about evolution. Changes take place when you least expect them to, and regardless of what/how they enhance or disturb your life, changes create who you are by how you respond to them.
Looking back at my semester, one could easily think it was a decently shitty semester for me. I did the whole ‘get lost in a relationship’ thing and ‘sacrifice your own happiness for person X’ thing and basically sold my soul to the love devil… or at least a ‘love devil’ impersonator (…WHAT IS LOVE!? AHH). And then, as per literary tradition, the devil turned his back on me and left me in what I thought would be the total shitty, insurmountable dust. –And it was shitty, but not insurmountable. One could look at the fact that I spent half of the semester in a cave listening to ‘Since you been gone’ by Kelly Clarkson and think, wow, that must have sucked– because it did. Kelly Clarkson on repeat is really an all time low. But what nobody will realize, except for me, is that this past semester has probably been one of the best semesters of my life, specifically because of how I chose to respond to an otherwise crappy situation. How one responds to life is what matters. Any kind of hardship (not just whiny, college-girl love problems) can be overcome in a way that makes the struggling individual better.
As obnoxious as it is, Kelly Clarkson is right: —Thanks to you , now I get what I want. But if you’re a little too snobby for Kelly, Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote an equally fitting piece: ‘Every wall is a door.’
-LCWB.
Street art over the past couple of years seems to have become very mainstream and therefore has lost a lot of its appeal. There was something so rebellious and so under-the-radar about it once that has now been lost to Urban Outfitters and the like. One “street artist” (I don’t think that title can fully appropriate his work) in particular, however, is changing the typical Banksy game.
(below) Meet JR: a French guy street artist who just won the TED 2011 prize for “changing the world”.
His “street art” blows other street art out of the water. Using a 50mm camera he found on the Paris metro as a teenager, JR sends humanitarian messages by pasting huge, “as big as one’s house” portraits he took of individuals in public places. His most famous? The Israeli/Palestinian wall, where he displayed images of goofy-looking Palestinians right next to goofy-looking Israelis. The project is called ‘Face2Face’.
"Face2Face" series on Palestine/Israeli border
"Face2Face" series on the Palestine/Israeli border
Banksy tagged the wall too, so I have to give credit where credit is due. But JR seems to make a more humanitarian, engaging statement with his art by using the the war-engaged civilians as his subjects. The beauty of this project is that he makes each individual so identifiably unidentifiable. Photos of Palestinian taxi drivers next to Israeli ones, in the public eye, up on the very wall that was built to divide such “different” groups of people– and yet, not one person was able to tell the difference between a Palestinian and an Israeli by looking at the huge photographs.
The other beautiful part of the photographs, too, is that they are so very light-hearted, and placed on such a dense and heavy symbol of hate. I guess one could say the photos ‘Kill (the viewer) with kindness’.
"Face2Face" series
"Face2Face" series
The message he is sending reads loud and clear: The human race is united at core despite our nationalities and beliefs. We are all individual, silly, and beautiful people.
–A frown can be quickly dissolved by a smile, and yes, laughter is the best medicine, in my opinion.
To check out his TED speech, watch this:
JR also came to LA! (whoop whoop– see below)
-LCWB.
lcwb 