St. Augustine

The Benefits of a Destination Wedding

Whirlwind Wedding Weekend

Last weekend I flew to Florida for my cousin's wedding, along with my entire extended family. I was only actually there for three full days, not including the two days of travel, so while it was a long weekend, it was a short vacation. Packed full to the brim, though! There was something for the wedding every day (I was there Friday, Sat., Sunday) and the wedding itself was Saturday night. The ceremony was short and sweet, and absolutely gorgeous. My cousin made a beautiful bride and the location was breathtaking. It was a destination wedding, my cousin and her husband are from Atlanta, both have family spread out all over so they decided that since everyone would have to travel anyways, might as well go all out! It was at a resort on Florida's Palm Coast, about an hour south of Jacksonville, that was about the fanciest place I've ever stayed at. It was beautiful and huge and everyone that worked there was really nice, which surprised me because unlike most resorts, they didn't work for tips. Gratuity was automatically included in everything, so there was no cash changing hands and everyone was really nice anyway. Go figure. Maybe people really are just nice. Or maybe not.

I hadn't seen my 3 cousins in that family or my aunt and uncle for years, so it was really great to be able to see them again, and to see again everyone that lives much closer. I especially loved spending time with my favorite aunt and uncle and their two adorable munchkins that I love. I took a TON of pictures over the weekend, mostly at the wedding and in St. Augustine, where we spent Sunday since it was overcast, not a great pool day. St. Augustine was awesome, I just wish we'd been able to spend MORE time there. Did you know that St. Augustine is the oldest continually inhabited settlement in the continental United States? There's been some sort of settlement there since 1565. It has a long Spanish history, as that's who originally explored there, which was really interesting. There's an old fort, Castile San Marcos, a cathedral, the Ponce de Leon, which was originally a hotel and now is a college campus, and a bunch of other stuff, including a long walking street full of shops (sadly, mostly touristy stuff and T-shirts) but the shops are in old restored buildings that are, I hate to use this way overused word but it fits, quaint.

Time to stand and stare

My roommate told me about this great article that was in the Washington Post this past winter, so I looked it up and read it, and it truly was amazing. It was about art and beauty and perception and context and not seeing what's right in front of you simply because it's unexpected. It's called "Pearls Before Breakfast" and is about an experiment done by the Washington Post. Read the article if you want to know more, and I highly suggest you do. Here's the link to the article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

Cat's Eyes

My wonderful cat again! She has the most beautiful green eyes and the most penetrating stare. And she likes to stare. To be honest, she stares so much it freaks me out a little sometimes. But don't let her penchant for peering fool you, she's really very sweet and loving. And yes, I am a little too obsessed with my cats. But my family's been falling apart over the past year, my siblings and parents scattered to the four winds, so my cats are all I've got left. They're my family now.

Another poem that calls to me

The Hollow Men
by T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.
    
         A penny for the Old Guy
 
              I
        
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
        
              II
        
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
        
              III
        
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
        
              IV
        
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
        
              V
        
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                  For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow


                  Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

                  For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Moods

I'm in a lyrical mood right now. Moods are a strange thing. This morning I was depressed and pessimistic, and now I'm just introspective and thoughtful, pondering deep things and even getting a little existential now and then. What causes moods to change? I've always tried to figure it out. My depression this morning was undoubtedly caused by my dreams last night. I definitely did not sleep well. I've always had very vivid, intense dreams that seem to create more problems than they solve. You know how dreams are supposed to be your subconscious's way of working through your problems and occasionally solving them? Well, dreams work the opposite for me. All they do is increase my stress and agony. Often, my dreams are simply horror shows, highlighting all the possible things that could go wrong with an upcoming event that I'm nervous about and therefore increasing my fear. Then there are the straight-up nightmares. But we're not even going there, because those are the nights when I'm afraid to go to sleep and I'm so busy right now that I need my sleep.

Anyways, that was this morning. And now I'm in a more contemplative, speculative, not really happy but more content mood. I usually call this particular mood my "lyrical mood". The only reason I can think of for the sudden change is that 1. my dreams have faded and 2. it's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL fall day outside, and things are actually going fairly well so far this afternoon.

Now, when I'm in a lyrical mood that always calls for one thing in particular: poetry. Now with poetry, most of the time I can take it or leave it (with the obvious exception of Shakespeare because I adore Shakespeare and it's always the right time for Shakespeare), but if I'm in just the right mood for poetry I can't get enough. One of my favorite poems is Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol. It's odd really, I'm a visual person rather than an audio person--meaning that I learn better when I see something rather than hear it, so I usually prefer to read poetry rather than hear it spoken. But the first time I read this poem my response was basically, "Meh". It didn't call to me the way it did when I heard an excerpt on Classic Poetry Aloud, a podcast I listen to. After hearing it read out loud by someone who is good at it, wow! It's such a beautiful, sad, bittersweet poem. And it fits my current strange mood. So I'm going to post part of it here and share it with you, my non-existent loyal readers. Helpful hint: if you have the same reaction I did at first, read it out loud or better yet--get someone else to read it to you.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol
by Oscar Wilde

In Memoriam
C.T.W.
Sometime Trooper of
The Royal Horse Guards.
Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
July 7th, 1896

I.

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
"That fellow's got to swing."

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

Natal Day

I'm 24 today. I've been on this planet for 24 years, and what do I have to show for it? Two cats who love me? Well, I love them back, and its much better than being alone, but what else? An awesome roommate? She is awesome, and I love her too, but she's most likely heading off to Spain in a couple months for a fantastic job experimenting with sustainable living, which is one of her passions. What does that leave me with? An apartment I can't afford to pay for by myself, full of stuff that I'd have to drag with me anywhere else I move to. My job? It pays the bills. No, it's more than that, I do enjoy it sometimes, I like my coworkers, and my boss is great. But basically I'm working in a kitchen. Not exactly on my desired career path. My city? Small. Really a small town, about 30,000 people. Friends? None within one hundred miles other than my soon-to-be-leaving roommate. Desired destination? Chicago, DC, Copenhagen, London, Rome, basically anywhere with more than a million people. How am I spending my birthday? Alone in my apartment with a pizza, a bottle of wine, and my cats.

At this exact moment, my older sister is in Afghanistan, doing something doubtless fascinating and important as a representative of the FBI. Not an agent, but still. That's exciting, and exactly the kind of thing I want to do, travel to places off the beaten path where bad things are happening, and stop them. I want to help people, and yes, I might be a little bit of an action junkie as I always want to be in on the action, but that's not a crime. She's doing something important in a war zone, while I'm lying on my bed in Small Town, USA, trying to figure out what it takes to get someone to hire me.

Reflected

More Chicago and the Bean.

The Bean!

Millenium Park is by far one of my favorite places in Chicago. I love the row of older buildings lining the far side of Michigan Ave with the open park on other side. And the park itself is wonderful! I love the fountains with the faces that spit water, and the garden with the wooden walkway bordered by running water with a step that you can sit on and soak your feet, which is wonderful after hours of walking on a hot summer day!

Grand old time in Chicago!

I just got back from spending the weekend in Chicago with my family, and took this picture of one of the older buildings downtown. I have to say, Chicago is one of my favorite cities. I spent a summer there during college when I had an internship downtown, and got to know the city pretty well. I love it! It's so vibrant and loud and colorful and busy and alive! It's also one of the most beautiful cities, with all the parks (Millenium Park is my favorite) and wonderful old Art Deco buildings from the 1920s and '30s. It also has this, I don't know quite what to call it, kind of a feeling, an atmosphere, an attitude is maybe the best word. Chicago is undeniably Chicago, and could never be mistaken for any other city.

Finding Myself and Saving the World

Lately I've been rather obsessed with self-expression. I think that stems from something I've been dealing with since I moved out, which is figuring out who I am, what I want to be and where I'm going. I know, no small order, right? Well, since I've graduated college and started searching for a job I've had to figure out precisely what it is I want to do for a living. I know, I know, I'm supposed to have figured out all that in college, right? Well, I didn't. College is an amazing experience, but it really doesn't do a whole lot to prepare you for life and a career. As I've been wading through all these job search websites and job listings and talking to people and looking at grad schools I started thinking, and as usual, thinking is my downfall. I had originally planned, back in my naive, no-sense-of-the-real-world college days, that I wanted to work in book publishing and editing. Well, my new, street-smarter self has figured out that that is an EXTREMELY competitive field and nearly impossible to break into unless you have some connections. Which I don't. And even more importantly, I've come to realize that I don't want to work for some evil, giant, soulless corporation. I want to save the world. As naive as that statement is. I want to feel like I'm doing some good in this mad, mad world. That my existence has meaning. That I can help other people. That realization has led me toward looking at non-profits, human rights organizations, and things like the Peace Corps, which I never even considered in college. After all my research, sadly, the Peace Corps is out because even though it sounds fantastic and I would LOVE to do it, I have no qualifications for any of their positions and it is apparently really, REALLY hard to get accepted by them. GRRRRR! So that leaves non-profits and any other save-the-world type positions I can find. However, jobs are not as easy to come by as people seem to think. So until someone finally accepts me as the fantastic employee I will be, I'll have to stick with my resident penchant for self-expression to figure out who I am and make myself into who I want to be.

Martini Night

I took this at the martini bar here. A couple of my good friends from college were visiting for the weekend, so we went out for a drink and had a good time. However, at $7 per drink, I stopped at one. I love the way the candle on the table backlights the glass in the foreground.

Musings

You know how some people have an addictive personality, where they get immediately addicted to any substance that is the least bit addictive? Well, I think I have an obsessive personality. I get obsessed with things quite easily. Luckily they only last a short time, anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and I realize it and can manage it somewhat, but it's kind of annoying, mostly to my roommate I'm sure, since she has to listen to me go on and on about whatever I'm obsessed with at the moment. Mostly my obsessions deal with hot guys, movies, TV shows, books, concepts, ideas, possible careers, well okay pretty much anything. I only ever have one at a time, and my current obsession is "Generation Kill".

To be honest, it's a damn good show and well deserving of an obsession. The dialogue is HILARIOUS, and most of it is legit, what was actually said by the actual people at the actual time. For any of you out there who have managed to miss the media blitz of information about it, Generation Kill is a 7-part HBO miniseries adaptation of Evan Wright's book of the same name. It's an account of the role played in the invasion of Iraq by this one particular battalion, First Recon. Which apparently is some sort of hot-shot special forces Marine division.

Based on everything I've read, the show is very accurate down to the smallest details. As part of my obsession I ordered the book from Amazon and inhaled that in less than two days, so I can tell you that at least the show is extremely accurate to Wright's account in his book, right down to the dialogue. And every episode has at least one fantastic quote that cracks me up every time I think about it. It tends to be alternately hilarious and horrifying, which in itself is disturbing.
Although, as funny as it is, I always feel strange laughing, because this really happened. These were real people living through these real events, and those kids that were vaporized when the bomb was dropped on them really died. It seems morbid, macabre, and just plain wrong to be laughing, even when there's a joke, because the situation was as serious as it gets. A recap I read said it best; "this makes a much better TV show than it does real life."

It's a strange paradox; watching something that is clearly entertainment and was designed to entertain people, but is also more than that, it's a moment in the lives of these people, who really did these things and spoke these lines, which weren't lines to them but simply comments. It must be a really strange experience for Rudy Reyes, who is actually playing himself. How do you "play" yourself? How much is just being yourself and how much is acting? He's speaking lines that were taken from things he actually said. How existential is that?

I also think that this is an important thing for Americans to see, because the producers pull no punches. They show both the good AND the bad, and don't try to explain or apologize, they just show it. For myself, I had no idea that most of this had happened; I was a senior in high school preparing for graduation, a school trip to Spain, and then college while all this was happening. I couldn't have cared less about what was happening half a world away, other than generally knowing that it was happening. Right now I think that I had an appalling lack of concern about world events, especially considering one of my other, ongoing, obsessions: the media and news in general. But I'm going off the subject: what I meant to say was that I didn't really know what had happened, or any of the details of the invasion. I HAD NO IDEA that it was this bad, that these things had happened, that this many people had died. Or that the sheer incompetence was so mind-boggling. And I would guess that most Americans didn't know either, or care even if they did know, as it happened to other people in another place. This show, by providing us with faces and names, makes it real to us. And that's important.

Sure, Hollywood undoubtedly left its touch on the purity of the show, making easy themes and right-versus-wrong clearer than they would be in real life, but they also did a good job showing how insane things get in war and how hard choices sometimes have to be made. They also showed how the military is a bureaucracy at heart, and bureaucracies make mistakes. A lot. Now don't get the idea that I'm one of those flag-waving, blind support of the military type of people, because I'm the opposite, I'm a complete liberal, I don't believe in violence or war. But really, what this show comes down to is this: people are people. Just that, nothing more. Some are good, some are bad, most can be both. Sometimes good people do bad things and sometimes bad people do good things. Sometimes stuff just happens. Life is all about choices. People can do good things if they simply make that choice to. And that, I believe in.

I'm going to leave you with a few of my favorite quotes from the six episodes there have been so far. I have a somewhat wacky sense of humor and I found a lot of the dialogue from this show to be freakin' hilarious.

"You gotta respect the pajama."
--Brad Colbert

"It was the enemy who stole your food from you, and you should be REALLY REALLY mad at them! Before we step off on this next mission, I'm reminding you of who your enemy is: the enemy!"
--Encino Man

Innapropriatin' your chemical filtration device by attemptin' fornication wi' it?! Jeee-sus, do I have to tell you not to DEE-secrate your mask with PER-VER-sions?"
--Sixta

"Fuck that. You can fuck with me all you want but do not, I repeat, do not fuck with my men. I'm putting it down, Gunny. You picking it up?"
--Nathan Fick

Encino Man: "We all know how much the men look up to you. I'd like to know what you're thinking."
Doc Bryan: "I don't think so, sir."
Encino Man: "Doc, this is your chance to get a little something off your chest."
Doc Bryan: "You asking me to speak frankly sir?"
Encino Man: "Yes! Well..."
Doc Bryan: "Well sir, it's just that you're incompetent, sir."
Encino Man: "I'm doing the best I can."
Doc Bryan: "It's just not good enough, sir."

"Goddamn Baptista! How the fuck would he like it if I joined the Brazilian Marines and only spoke English!"
--Ray Person

Christeson: "Q-Tip, what the fuck?"
Q-Tip: "I had to get medieval on his ass!"
Christeson: "What is it?"
Q-Tip: "Don' know. It's got fur, four legs, a little bit of meat."

"Bad news is, we don't sleep tonight. Good news is, we get to kill bad guys."
--Nathan Fick

Person: "I'm on the Nevada, Missouri Wal-Mart Wall of Heroes. Even got my dress blues on."
Colbert: "If my mother ever distributed my likeness without written authorization I would disown her."

"Gentlemen, we just seized an airfield. That was pretty fucking ninja."
--Brad Colbert

"I knew you were a fucking gay-ass liberal. You tried to pretend by invading Iraq with us, but I knew!"
--Ray Person

Picture Perfect

This always makes me think of a postcard, or one of those cutesie little posters people put up. I found this beautiful little alley off a street in Orvieto, Italy, and just had to take a picture. Seeing these type of decorated entrance-ways wasn't unusual, but this was by far the prettiest and most plant-filled I'd seen.