Saravut Whanset, Photographer.
The landscapes are beautiful but it's the people I love.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Oleaginous
o·le·ag·i·nousˌōlēˈajənəs/
adjective
• rich in, covered with, or producing oil; oily or greasy.
• exaggeratedly and distastefully complimentary; obsequious.
" Though similarities exist, Ted Cruz cannot be Lucifer. Everyone knows the Devil, while also oleaginous, actually has charm." - Mrs. Betty Bowers.
Suze Orman
This seems to be more than just financial advice:
"I spend a lot of time helping people work out a plan for overcoming a financial challenge. Quite often the bulk of my work is in getting them into the right frame of mind. Financial problems are so stressful it is completely reasonable to feel depressed. But the first step in working your way out of a financial fix is to convince yourself you control your future and you have the ability to make it a great future.
My best advice for anyone facing a financial challenge is to give yourself the gift of a positive point of view. Commit to these three beliefs and you can achieve anything:
I Can. Lasting wealth is built on a foundation of confidence that empowers you to control your financial destiny. It may be natural to feel defeated when you’re staring at a statement showing all the credit card debt you owe, or when you realize how much it will take to save up for a 20 percent home down payment. That’s where framing your challenge with “I Can” will empower you. Instead of thinking “How will I ever get my credit card bills paid off,” switch your inner dialogue to “I can make progress every month by spending only on needs, not wants.” And “I can make progress by paying more than the minimum balance due each month.”
I Am. Power attracts money and powerlessness repels money. A big step in setting your mind to build lasting wealth is to embrace the power that is within you to create the future you deserve. “I am drowning in student loan debt” is not a sign of power. “I am going to make timely payments and be out of debt in 10 years” is your power move.
I Do. Catch yourself every time there is a financial issue and you find yourself thinking “I don’t understand” or “I don’t think I will ever be able to do that.” When those negative thoughts invade, identify what the problem is. For example, if you are confused by the investment options in your retirement plan, rather than be anxious that you “don’t” understand, commit to spending an hour a week for two or three weeks reading up on the basics of retirement saving. I guarantee you will soon be saying “I do understand what I need to do to.” And you will be on the road to building lasting wealth."
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Nihilistic Questions
ni·hil·is·tic/ˌnīəˈlistik,ˌnēəˈlistik/
adjective: rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Monday, April 25, 2016
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Balboa Theater
This afternoon I went to the San Diego Gay Mens Concert California Dreamin' at the Balboa Theater. The concert was great fun and the theater is beautiful.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Take Agency Over Your Own Life
This is true for everyone:
Dear Ones -
When I think about how hard my mother pushed me to become as strong and independent and resourceful and resilient a person as possible, I believe it was because of this truth — which life had already taught her very well:
Bad things happen to women who wait for good things to happen.
Waiting to be rescued, waiting to be noticed, waiting to be heard, waiting for things to change, waiting for somebody to defend you, waiting for somebody to understand you, waiting for things to get better, waiting for a miracle, waiting for recognition, waiting for a promotion, waiting for the economy to pick up, waiting, waiting, waiting...
But here's the dangerous thing about spending your life waiting: When you are paused — defenseless and passive — the world around you does not pause. Life remains in session, which means: THINGS KEEP HAPPENING. Whether you show up or not, life will keep occurring. And as you sit there waiting for good things to happen, all sorts of other things are happening around you. And if you continue to just sit there (hoping and waiting for something "good") then things will not only happen around you, but TO you. And the less you participate in that story (the story of "your life is in session"), the more likely it is that the things happening to you will be based upon other people's decisions, other people's power, other people's demands, other people's needs, other people's manipulations, other people's will — in short: other people will show up and start using your life for their own purposes.
Other people's purposes are unlikely to be in your best interest.
This is very, very dangerous.
Please understand: I am not a forceful person, by nature. I was not, by nature, born confident and certain. My brain and heart lean more toward "worrier" than "warrior". My inclination as a child was to hide in quiet rooms, safely building nests of blankets and pillows — wishing to not have to participate. So reluctant to even be here!
But my mother had already seen what happens to girls who grow up to be women who are reluctant to engage with their own lives. She wasn't having it. It was a battle for my mother to forge me into somebody who could participate in her own life at every level, rather than softly folding in on herself, and becoming life's victim. But my mom didn't give up on that battle, because she cared about me. And when I'm feeling scared and small, I STILL have to reach deep down and find that power to show up — to keep participating in my own choices, no matter how hard it is. And to accept the consequences of my choices from a place of sober self-accountability...which is the ultimate source of power.
If there's one thing I'm trying to do on this page, every single day, it is to pass that lesson onto you.
I want you to take agency over your own life.
I know: You're afraid sometimes to take agency over your own life because you're afraid you will make the wrong decisions — but if you don't make decisions for yourself, then decisions will be made for you, by somebody who may or may not (probably not) feel the same sense of sacred stewardship over your one rare and precious life that I want you to feel.
This doesn't mean you have to do everything alone. Find your team, find your tribe, find your supporters, find your coaches, find your teachers — find those who will love and uphold you. But make sure they are people who know that you are strong — not people who fear that you are weak. Make sure they are encouragers, not enablers. Ask their advice. Listen to their wisdom. Fall in their arms at times in tears, seeking comfort.
But then — DECIDE.
Make your move. Understand that your life choices must originate from your own power — or else somebody else will lay their power upon you. And that will never be a good thing.
Stop waiting, everyone. Please don't forget this: Any move you make — born of your own volition — is better than BEING moved by somebody else's hand.
I love you, and you can do this.
ONWARD,
LG
Friday, April 22, 2016
The Evil Men Do
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
William Shakespeare
Why I Was Late to the Hypnotic, Erotic, Genius Prince Dance Party
I didn't get him ... until I did.
By Melissa Harris-Perry
Apr 22, 2016
Prince did not speak to me when I first heard his music, barely muffled by the perpetually closed door of my teen sister. I am not an artist. She is. My elder by more than six years, Beth is the girl who refused to buy a dress for high school homecoming, instead designing and sewing maroon satin knickers that scandalized the pitifully conventional boy who took her to the dance. Beth despised the restraints of small town life and eventually ran off to Washington, D.C. to finish high school at Duke Ellington School of the Arts. But in the dark days before her soul found refuge in that unparalleled community of dancers, actors, painters, vocalists, and musicians, she turned repeatedly to The Artist himself, playing hour after hour of Prince alone in her bedroom.
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I'd hear her rage drain as she belted out "Let's Go Crazy" and her self-confidence soar as she assured herself "Baby I'm as Star." She'd rewind the 9-minute version of "Purple Rain" for what seemed like an eternity.
I didn't get it.
Conformity felt easier for me. She is the dancer; I am the cheerleader. She needs a canvas; I need a spreadsheet. An impatient literalist by nature, I thought Prince was going on about an actual small, red, Chevy. I was not moved.
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Then I fell in love with a tall, broad boy whose sickle cell disease kept him off the football field where every other tall, broad boy in our town inevitably spent most of their adolescent hours. Unable to play ball, he played bass. He was utterly incapable of moderation and adored or ignored me with brutal and unpredictable equality. I wanted only to be allowed to be his singular audience, invited to listen, first to him then to track after track of his favorite artist, Prince.
I started to get it.
I never fully knew his lovely inner self, but I watched the space Prince made for his difference, for his brooding, for a manhood defined against the narrowness of our childhood. Sports defined our working-class community. We all went to the football games on Friday nights in the fall, basketball occupied us all winter, and we filled the baseball stands in summer. Those wrongly shaped blood cells clogging his veins with debilitating pain kept my tall, broad love off the field and off the court, making it hard for the town or his dad to imagine him as fully a man. But Prince expanded that manhood, let him find it in his ability to make something beautiful, to elicit something pleasurable. And by his touch, I was offered new interpretations of those lyrics I had once taken literally. Oh my. I was moved. Now I understood why "I Would Die 4 U" and why Nikki was Darling.
I wanted to be able to exist in the tension of undefined spaces, where identity and experience and possibility are visible but not reductive. I wanted to be uncompromising and fabulous. I finally got it.
Then I found Prince for myself. It took years to recognize that although Beth is uniquely talented, she is not my mother's only creative child. Years to acknowledge the reasons I fell for the ones who woke me at 2 a.m. claiming I'd inspired a new composition only to leave me by the dinner hour. I began to notice that I was composing ideas, choreographing community, painting possibilities. As a teacher and activist, and eventually as a public voice, I was working in a different medium, but I was, nonetheless creating. That means I was risking being different and risking rejection as a result of that difference. I knew the fragile creative soul needed companionship and I knew where to find it. I turned to Prince.
I finally got it—the bravado, the freedom, the woundedness, the eroticism, the dualities, the unmatched genius.
I finally got it—the bravado, the freedom, the woundedness, the eroticism, the dualities, the unmatched genius. I started to hear everything I missed when I listened with my most uncompromisingly categorical mind. I heard how the music was neither funk, nor soul, nor jazz, nor rock, but all of them. That is exactly the kind of public voice I wanted to have. I wanted to bring social science, and literature, and humor, and ordinary wisdom, and black girl vernacular together in one unexpected creative fusion that felt good if you could let go and be inside it. I wanted to be able to exist in the tension of undefined spaces, where identity and experience and possibility are visible but not reductive. I wanted to be uncompromising and fabulous. I finally got it.
I long have been embarrassed by having come so late, if so fully, to Prince. This shame kept me from fully participating in the public grief so many expressed when he passed away unexpectedly on Thursday. I felt somehow implicated in his untimely demise, as though by my childhood failure to grasp his genius, I had not clapped for Tinkerbell to prove my belief in fairies as an antidote to Hook's poison.
Today I could not hold back. Deserving or not, the grief took. It seemed like Prince was all energy and artistry and spirit and ideas. But in the end, he too was body—limited and vulnerable and now gone. The entry was halting and delayed, but I did eventually throw open the gates of my soul to The Artist. And even in this little, incomplete, and wholly inadequate way I needed to remember how he helped me to find the artist in myself.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Rain
Last night I ushered Rain at The Old Globe. It's a new musical based on a 1921 book by Somerset Maughn. After the book it was made into a play and then 3 movie versions starring Hollywood icons Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth, and Joan Crawford. The music is complicated but beautiful and the set was amazing; a 3 story house that rotates and comes apart and rain falling on the stage.
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