Hola, I'm Aliveee

Hi to anyone perusing this page right now.

If you've taken the time to scroll through some of my posts (thank you by the way) you'll see that this is my first post in a whileee, to say the least.

I'm back now! Let's just say that I wasn't living by the motto I created this blog by.

So I decided to take a little break and it did my wonders! For some reason the busier I am, the happier I am and the more conscientious I am about taking care of myself. I know, doesn't make sense but whatevs.

Lately inspiration has been hitting my from all angles and I'm excited to delve back into this little project I started.

For now I just wanted to update you guys as to my existence and leave you with a quote I read the other day that stuck to me like glue. I don't know where it's from so if you do, please comment down below!

" 'How does one become a butterfly?' she asked pensively.

                'You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.' "

Hugs & Lovin' xoxo

Anna

The Infinite, The Eternal

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The Tao is infinite, eternal.

Why is it eternal?

It was never born;

thus it can never die.

Why is it infinite?

It has no desires for itself;

thus it is present for all beings.

The Master stays behind;

that is why she is ahead.

She is detached from all things;

that is why she is one with them.

Because she has let go of herself,

she is perfectly fulfiilled.

_______________________________

The Tao Te Ching

People come and go in our lives for various reasons. To some extent, we will never know the truth of that friendship, devastating break-up, or monstrous family intervention. These things don't explain to us very well what their purpose was, besides to mind fuck with us.

In every soul, there is pain. With that pain comes wisdom. It takes a thoughtful and mindful human being to convert their sorrow into something worthy. Not everyone in the world knows how to deal with difficult emotions, leading to attempts to self-medicate with sex, drugs, blood, money. Everyone has their own shit to deal with; everyone has their own fuckedupness to address.

fucked.up.ness, adj. : eternal thoughts, emotions, past and present experiences that contribute to the subconscious internal darkness that resides within each of us; a released negative energy that can consume a human being if they do not climb out of the subconscious dark, deep hole.

One of the little gnomes in my well of fuckedupness is named Tina. Throughout our middle and high school years, I aspired to be like this girl whom I called my best friend. She had the confidence of a 20-year-old, yet the maturity of a 10-year-old. Tina had her own shit to deal with but that's just it: she didn't deal with it. It's like there was this constant chaos occurring in her home life that later would negatively impact her to make stupid decisions, yet shrug it off. I felt the responsibility of almost mothering her, since after a time I was the last friend who stuck by her side regardless of the poor manner in which she treated me.

On a warm summer day last year, Tina texted me asking if our other friend could borrow my bike so they could head down the bike path to the beach. Tina asking me for a favor so she could hang out or do something with someone else was a regular thing for us - living down the street from me we spent enough time together for her to easily get annoyed with me. The friend this time though ... well I didn't really trust him with my beach cruiser. He was a rough and tumble boy (I mean, who knows what happened to his bike) and the bike path had a deep riverbed. Nuh uh, I thought, not gonna happen. So I made up some bullshit excuse ("Sorry, I need my bike today for errands").

Before I continue, let me preface by saying that a close friend of Tina's had passed away a couple of weeks before this in a freak car accident with some of the boys. So yeah, that happened.

Not expecting my "no" to be a big deal, I get really surprised and shocked when I receive a blast of texts from Tina calling me a priss, saying not to come over her house ever again -and boom- I'm out of her life forever. Whatthefuck?

In retrospect, I realize it was a good thing our friendship ended over such a mundane thing. Had Tina not had a text-breakdown, I perhaps wouldn't be recognizable today. She taught me so many valuable things about drugs, boys, self-confidence. But she was also a horrible friend, and turns out I'm not the only good person who was unexpectedly left from her life.

Funny thing is? I kinda miss her sometimes.

I don't know, it's like someone can do so many unforgettable things to you (make you feel ugly, put you down in front of others, disappear on you when you need them), yet all you remember is the person they were that made you happy at some point. She made me happy quite a bit: banished my insecurities, told me everything was gonna be alright, always had faith in me, believe I deserved better than our circumstances. I miss that.

Now I know that you can't force friendships. Creating a connection is something that happens organically and if your rush it ... well then it's ruined. It's a slow process, but you take those pauses to do things for yourself. Like write in your blog and try to learn things from your fuckedupness.

Go do yourself a favor and act on instinct. Every. Day.
Your gut is never wrong and your mind plays tricks on you.

xx Hugs & Lovin' xx

           Anna

With Silent Roars, She Let's Go

Why do we bother
With boys who aren't men
And laugh like little hens
At anything that is mildly, remotely,
Inappropriate or raunchy?
Where are the good men?

Who take you out on a date,
Don't dare to be late,
For fear you're left waiting?

When did it become okay
To get drunk & just say
All of those thoughts
Louder and rotten
Than anything sweet
He had said, now forgotten.

It's not okay to joke about me
It's not okay to make me feel like a fool
For having insurmountable dreams
And close in candor expectations.

I will wait.

I will wait until a man
(a MAN, not a boy)
Comes into my life
His words swift & nice,
His actions to match'em.

The struggle?
Oh it's real.
It's constantly there, picking at my heels.

A hungry lioness
Breathes inside me deep inside
She's been hunting for so long,
It's hard to deny,
That hunger, that aching
Deep down in her belly.
She wants to eat now,
Before the weather turns to jelly.

Juicy and thick,
The first bite is satisfactory,
Meaty and warm,
The second goes deeper.
Eager and wanting,
The prey kneels in surrender
In surrender to the lioness
And all of her splendor.

Confronted with two options
The lioness sticks her long neck out,
And back slowly into it's mane.

The zebra was alluring
The deer was endearing
And the elephant, well he was such fun
"Why I can't I just, stick with just one?"

An image she knows not
Sensation seems default,
More faulty the senses from all of the rot
Therefore she cannot.

Option two leaves her growling
When the lioness has been starving
For over 1095 sunsets and nightfalls
She knows she can't stall.

Claws retracted
Tongue still salivating
Pawsteps lead her to turn away from her prey
And away from the game.

Breathe that sweet anticipation,
Lioness darling
Don't let your haughty tracking
Begin to undo you.
Your essence is too great
To succumb to petty grumblings from your tummy
Meat is yummy

Yet the prey disgust me.
Have you ever seen them bathe in the dirt?
I have not and cannot
Let their feces unpure me
So quickly
Too quickly
For me.

Let go to of that girl
Who has only captured my toe.

xx Hugs & Lovin' xx

Anna

Karma's Little Accidents

So this morning, I ate shit.

Let me rephrase that: as I was biking to work on this beautiful Monday morning, my chain slipped off as I was pedaling furiously, I lost control of the bike, and smacked my head (along with other bits) straight upon the pavement ending in a twisted heap with metal and limbs intertwined. 

Besides being shaken up & slightly embarrassed for the dad taking his daughter to daycare who stopped to peel me off the road, I'm thankfully all right.

What can I say. Shit happens.

Biking has been a big release for me since I've returned home. It's taking a good scuffing up for me to realize that I've been quite lucky to not have been in any sort of accident before now, with the amount of biking I do. Because after a Friday night of cattiness & craziness, it feels oh-so-good to wake up Saturday morning, jump on my cruiser, and hit the beach. So satisfying.

Karma, as defined by Merriam-Webster via online, reads as the following:

1. the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in it's ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence
                                                                      and/or

2. the force created by a person's actions that some people believe causes good or bad things to happen to that person


I believe that me almost ending up sportin' an eye patch as my new accessory, has something to do with that second bit. 

Why? Well, let's just say it's quick easy to be vain and egotistical when Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and texting bombard your every day life. I love it, I hate it,  whatever = I'm a part of this generation. It's inevitable that this culture will consume me.

Yet it's kinda scary thinking that my first thought this morning to start my week off was to catch an ultra-cool snapshot of me doing a challenging yoga pose at the studio. Then posting it to Instagram, and making everyone jealous because they can't do/wish they could do what I'm doing.

Whaaaaaaat.

When did our thinking come to this? Even in the days of MySpace we had a little more discrepancy. Didn't we?

Or maybe it's always been this bad and I'm just realizing it.

So to conclude, I'd like to share a new routine of mine, beginning today. I was inspired by Dr. Wayne Dyer's Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life CD Audio Set initially, and then other events in my life just kept pointing me towards this little book: The Tao Te Ching.

Every morning I'm going to read a passage, say it aloud, affirm it.... & attempt to put that passage into practice for the day. Also, besides this blog, I'm taking a little sabbatical from Facebook, Instagram ... all that crap. Selfie's + Stiches? Uh, no thanks.

Hopefully this exercise will humble me a bit more, and make me sense the appreciativeness one can have for one's own being. Loving oneself is first and foremost, one of our main priorities in life I think.

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The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

______________________________

xx hugs & luvin' xx 

       Anna

Defeating the Mundane: What It's All About

It's when the air has become stagnant. When you can't differentiate today from yesterday. When you find yourself repeating the same words in response to commonly asked questions. When all your dreams from the past have been completed and it's time to start anew, yet there is nothing around you, object or person, single event or time shift, that motivates those new dreams to become a reality. 

That's the mundane.

Yet those dreams must become a reality. 

As defined by Merriam-Webster via online, mundane has two definitions:

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the world

2. characterized by the practical, transitory, and ordinary: commonplace

Both are very relevant for this period of transition that I'm in. Being nineteen-years-young of the female variation, I made a very big decision last spring when I decided to leave university on the East coast. Now being back in the suburb of California that I grew up in, I've re-stationed myself for the next year and a half, until I can transition back out.

In order to keep the typical dullness of suburbia from creeping into my life, I have created this blog: Defeating the Mundane. I, just like many other lost young adults out there, am reaching a point in my life where I want to take hold of my youth while it still hangs in reach. I want to know that where I stranded on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, butt-naked with no other life surrounding me, I could survive because I don't need to depend on anyone other than myself.

Now, how to keep my sanity whilst a year and a half of my youth is secured to this small town?

That's what I'm venturing to find out.

Come along with me if you wish to defeat mundaneness as much as I & aim live a life where your Tumblr dashboard is your reality.

xx hugs & lovin' xx 

Anna