the big 2-5

I am usually not big on birthdays but I must say, this has been the best birthday in recent memory. It's incredibly rare for me to go through an entire day with a smile on my face, but today, starting with a birthday smooch at midnight, has been one big smilefest.

I got so much loot today I feel a little nauseous; like when you eat a really really rich chocolate cake. It's just simply so decadent to have so many goodies all in one day. Here's a birthday loot tip: if you leave it til really late to invite people, you get lots of money :B

The first order of the day is to take my boyfriend out for a first rate dinner when he gets back from trekking all over Malaysia, because he was such a big part of making my day so special. Just look at these flowers he got me! The bouquet was so enormous the only way I could hold it was to hug it. And it didn't fit in any vase I owned so I had to get a bucket to hold it all, because I just couldn't bare to break up the pretty arrangement. I'll have to pretty it up tomorrow, because when those buds bloom, it's going to be epic-er.

I spent the rest of the day playing with my new phone (android. woot!), admiring my hair (it's awesome, but I'll leave that story for later), listening to my song, lunching on all my favourite dishes with the fam (special mention to Ach's famous pork curry, custom made with the fatty pieces left in!), sharing cupcakes and gossip with my friends, and visiting with The Duckling and all her children. (I jest, she doesn't have any children. Yet.)

But the very best part was getting to spend the last few minutes of the old year to the sound of waves and some quiet time with the man I love best, which is just a special kind of special.

10 Things I Love- the Artist Edition

So, continuing with this hugely unpopular series :)...

One of the (many) things I love about the Internet and blogs is that it enables me to discover new artists, and not just see their work but also follow their creative process. My tastes used to run to oils and watercolours, but  I've also come to lust over digital and mixed media. My favourite posts are the ones that start with the draft sketch and let you follow the artwork all the way to the final product. Below are ten artists I've discovered on the internet, mainly through craftgawker, etsy or twitter.While putting this post together I realised that I have an affinity for drawings of women.

1. Nicole Guice
I love her ink on paper style, combined with blushes of watercolour, just as much as I like her mix of the bold and the feminine. There is a soft-edgy combination in her drawings, and I love how most of her portraits gaze boldly out of the paper.

Mayda del Valle - a faith like yours

One of the best poems I have ever heard, by one of the best  poets I know. Since spoken word is best listened to, the video is at the bottom. The poem gives me chills, every time; it almost makes me believe in God.

A faith like yours

Grandmother, our common thread began in my mama's womb
spun my feotus like a record in her cipher
stampled your stubborn and mixed in her father's posture
our connection is full circle

Abuela, you bearer of children, you seer of spirits
you are truly miraculous
you are the whispers of  litanies and white tablecloths
your melody is captured in the spilled candle wax of my skin

my tongue's a broken needle scratching through the grooves of a lost wisdom
trying to find a faith that beats like yours
what secrets do your bones hold?
what pattern does your dust settle into when I beat these drums inside my ribs
what colour was the soil of your grandmother's garden

Grandma how did you pray?
did you store the memory of your creator in strands of hair tucked in to scented soap boxes
or placentas buried under avocado trees
what reservoir did you pull your faith from?
 was it anything like this gumbo, this sancocho
this remix of rituals and chants sampled from muscle, memory and spirit that visit my dreams
that I struggle to stir into discipline, to honour the unseen,
with these shells, this sage, these rudraksha and rosary beads
these white candles, crystals, statues
this sweet water, honey, rum and sweetgrass

Abuela, how did you pray before someone told you who your God should be?
how did you hold the earth in your hands and thank her for its fecundity?
did the sea wash away your sadness?
how did you humble yourself before your architect?
did you lower yourself to your knees or rock to the rhythm of ocean waves like I do

Grandma how did you pray?
Some say faith is for the weak or small minded but I search for your faith everywhere
need it to reassemble myself whole from these shards of Chicago ice and island breezes
so I can rewrite the songs of your silence and pain
your lonely fists, broken toothed smile and burdens into a medley of mantras
wish you could have shown me its shape but I know it's in every sacred breath
in the shadow of trees that you visit me in, in the flicker of flames I stare into
searching for what's divine, and I know my body is the instrument my Maker uses
to rearrange the broken chords of your history
into a new symphony for my unborn chldren's feet to dance to

and I see you grandmother,
gathering with your sistren to chant the names of the living and the dead
and remind us all that whether gathered in marble temples or around the midnight fire or block party speakers
we have always raised our hands to the sky
trying to touch the invisible force
that holds these cells together into a fragile mass,
children of different nations with the same vibration
we be sound to beat, to base, to bone, to flesh
we be sound to beat, to base, to bone, to flesh
we are all truly miraculous.

------

Love in a Night of Light and Thunder

Not sure who this poet is but I gather he's Sri Lankan. I find his poetry quite bizarre at times but from time to time, I understand one with perfect clarity. This is one such poem: 

Love in a Night of Light and Thunder- VK

12 lines I had written, even paced,
I, confused, dismayed, on a certain night
Recover by the flicker of a candle light
And I wonder whet
Lives end, begin
In the same less, effortless moment. Within,
Unheard, something stirs, some unrepresented
Stammer of a wordless thing. In your arms you hold me
Without a word to remember

That the world, where it spins, will
Kill me to mend her. On a powder keg
At the foot of a stairway we stand,
Balancing in a kiss the notion of passion,
Powerful explosion. On a powder keg we stand

In metaphor relating to conflict which
Caused the census many lives; lives lost
Without consensus and the luck which fate deprives
The unlucky. This world is mine, say, this world is mine,
When the world collapses into me without gravity.

It is rain outside, where I write this, the window
Shows me blurring reality that blur away from sight.
Thunder claps on hills far away and a mist veils-unveils the
Lamp light from searching eyes. You’re a truth to me
Where life truth denies

I find a note book in which I have sketched a verse,
12 lines out of love at a time
Where I had not even yet begun to love you. They rhyme
Of pre-historic ripples, anxiously put to time and place.
I love you yet, anyways. In another country from this love; embrace.

Time & Distance - James Tsuffis

there is a blank keyboard before me
with each key removed and each button dulled,
a floating mattress beside me that remains
buoyant over water, over sea, over loss—
here in this room so full of empty plates, and grieving minds

I’ve walked down this hall a thousand times,
in different moods, at different speeds—
my mom crying in the kitchen
while on my mattress I tried to draw
a timeline of myself, starting now and going forward;
for each passing second I draw a branch, then an arm,
until every outcome is labeled, then
weighed against each other on a scale made of marble—
and the best are placed within a prism where every choice
at every juncture reflects upon itself; creating, through triangles,
every possible path my life could take

I take the forecast to my weeping mother,
trying to explain probability and it’s haunting nature—
how every pixel is a possibility, every possibility an image
and every image happens
my forward movement taking only a small
fraction of what’s possible,
while a million duplicates of myself
are forever parading forward—

Skin to skin messaging - Christine Bernardo

please let it always end this way:
staying up late,
both of us soft and warm,
writing words on each other’s backs
with our fingers
like a lazy southern drawl.
and me with puckered brow,
trying hard to concentrate
on semantics
and failing miserably each time,
because you with small grin
obliterate everything else
with each tiny delicate stroke. 

Dedicated to my special someone, because I don't always let him know..