i sincerely & utterly hope your find your own mr. potter

that one teacher that
changes your point of view
on teachers forever.
the one that exchanges music with you before class
and gives you extra assignments because he knows youll enjoy them. the one teacher that tells you, you have amazing energy & to never stop creating.
that awesome teacher
that when he isn't teaching during the summer, he uses his saved money to travel to different countries & make independent films with his friends & puts your music in those films. the one that knows that youve had a hard week, & leaves a bag of hot cheetos on your desk before you come to class.
my art teacher,
who i secretly hoped would meet & marry my mom someday haha
he gave me great films, books & music to have forever.
 when he noticed i didnt care about having a year book he grabbed my notebook & wrote me this.
i think its time to pay a visit to my old high school soon & see if he still wants to elaborate on some movie ideas we had.

mattiniero

 the past two days i've had a total of five hours and fifteen minutes of sleep.
at eleven pm i gave up on trying to sleep and indulged into an old favourite novel,
i was having so much fun reading and laughing so hard..
turned to a clock and its four am?! i'm seventeen pages away from ending it.
i am so tired that i cant sleep.
gripped by insomnia, again.
 yesterday night my friends called and wanted to suprise sean & i, they picked us up thirty
minutes later which was so cute because they live an hour away & were already on their way
just thought it was just so sweet that they wanted to pick us up, even though i have a car.
i'm so lucky to have friends like that,  we stayed up all night, making up games
to play that involved drawing, guessing,reading, dancing, and trying not be to
completely distracted by their new white kitten.
that they named booger sugar. haha i thought it was a strange name
they didn't know if they were going to keep him at first because he kind of just showed up,
but everyone loves him, he is staying & the joke name just stuck.
..although i didnt know the name meant anything. they didnt mean it to,
 it just suprises me how sheltered i still am. today we spent the day in their living room
passing around books with interesting stories, profound quotes & crazy facts. when
we liked one so much we shared it with everyone. we also threw in a random
book where the sidewalk ends because that book is always fun. drank tea, and talked a lot.
sprawled out across the floor or sitting on the couch, we just enjoyed eachother and the day today.
 i wonder if anyone else in this generation also goes without tv & computer purposely for days to
just really be involved in life anymore. (not having access to cable or internet doesnt count)
like having a debit card and never touching the money, makes me personally feel like the money isn't real.
people have tablets now.. but to me it seems like theyre missing out on half the point. touching the book, opening it, the way it smells, seeing someones name and a little note from the person who gave it to them in cursive handwriting that is dulling out from being written in pencil, and having to actually bookmark it. thats half the fun to me. i know its the way of the world to change, and i should be used to it by now. it reminds me of that line in that one bright eyes song "you think after 22 years, id be used to the spin". its actually just like that line.
  on another note i've begun writing again. music. which feels so good! my good friend kyle wants to record some stuff for fun soon so that's exciting. i cant wait, really.
sometimes when i go visit my granma in my old town, i pass some places. i miss this old coffee company that not so recently died and turned into another pizza place. come on! like starbucks is the only place on the planet to go to for coffee? serious? not giving in..  don't even get me started on starbucks.
  anyway. there was a piano in old coffee company, on sunday mornings different people/bands would schedule to play at like 9am. it was awesome because downtown was a ghost town sunday mornings due to church. it the only place you could spot a human there. it was filled with elderly folk smiling in silence with a warm cup of coffee in their hand & music coming from inside. i remember the first time i was walking with a couple of friends around there to enjoy the morning. my friends were talking so followed the music and stood in the door frame, taking in these lyrics that this mid age man was singing and playing piano. he finished singing, i smiled, and was ready to walk away after clapping.. when he spoke into the mic. "hey you there in the door, with the red & white striped shirt" i turned around. "you play piano?" i nodded my head. "i can tell, come play us a song won't you?" i felt myself blush but i walked over to the piano. he asked my name, and introduced me. i sang &played hallelujah by leonard cohen. after finishing it was silent for about three seconds. while noticing my friends in the door way, people begun clapping. he came back to his seat. i turned to him and smiled. before going on with his show he turned to me and whispered "i felt it, thank you so much". i didnt know what to say, i was happy and i just smiled at him. he turned to the audience and asked for another round of applause in my name, which made me turn bright red & run out of there. it all happened so fast, my friends were just as suprised as i was. i didn't know i had the nerve to. while i lived there for a few years i made friends with the owner and played shows there. it felt so nice, to not know anyone and go secretly play sometimes on mornings to myself. my granma & family found out though so i ended up inviting them the last time i played with some friends there. it felt like my spot. it was small and quaint and, perfect. it actually was a big factor on why i stopped playing shows often. i still play sometimes, but i want to find something like that again before i start playing on a regular basis. but that place came to me almost. so instead of 'finding' another place like that, i'll patiently just wait for another one to pop up like that one did. i'm dialing a call into universe please hear it within the next few of years haha  random places are fun, dont get me wrong. super fun... but having one spot is nice.
it is nearly five thirty.
the sky is changing from navy to egyptian blue
 my mind is wandering else where so
here are some photos of recent sketches & paintings
& good morning! ☼
fino alla prossima volta ~

sinking into the harmonica

piles of fallen leaves

piles of fallen leaves close up

i took off my boots & held onto you, tight.. in my dreams

you turned into a sound and put me straight to sleep

     traveling in the passenger seat looking over the vast golden hills. the sky was white, as if clouds were actually blue. waking up with on my green pillow and the seat belt hugging at my side. seeing never ending telephone wires go up and down, up and down. driving behind a metallic diesel going the speed limit on the one lane highway. i woke up in cambria, buried my fingers deep in the brown dirt as sean hunted for some jade. we packed a lunch and shared a coca cola before climbing in trees too tall for me but we climbed them anyway. its funny, how the mundane little things like being in a long car ride or a shower allows your mind to drift to places in your subconscious. seeing the multicoloured tumble weeds through out the hills, i wondered if anyone thought they were as beautiful as i thought they were.
 a song by sixpencer none the richer came on a radio station we picked up, it reminded me of a movie with rachel leigh cooke. her and the guy dance to it at the end of the movie. that memory lead to how i wanted her part in the movie tom and huck.. because i thought jonathan taylor thomas was such a dreamboat haha then that reminded me of when i turned twelve. my family came over for my birthday, i thought nobody knew that sixty percent of the time i was only watching home improvement just for him. if i could go back to that birthday i would lock myself in that restroom & dance alone to spice girls instead of opening those presents. one j.t.t calendar from my mom, a huge poster of him from my aunt.. stupidly proceeding to open the rest of the presents, a tom and huck & lion king movie from my granma.. i already had both of those cassettes!and its only his voice in the lion king! but then i wondered if she even knew that or just got those movies for me because she knew i loved them. mortified and bright red was i on my twelfth birthday, as if that age wasnt awkward enough. and in the car i giggled, i guess it was pretty funny.. if you were my mom. you know he was born in bethlehem? random. the telephone wires.. up and down, up and down.
 my eyes grew heavy again, this time only day dreaming. about last week in san diego to be precise. sean, my brother and i walked out into the ocean. we took a deep breaths and closed our eyes, waves swept over us with the consistency of heartbeats, bringing our bodies closer to the shore each time. we were laughing because it was so cold and we didnt care. the waves never stopped coming. we walked along a big rock until we found some tide pools with crabs in them. if you stood still long enough they came out. my brother looked for the smallest one he could find to let it crawl across his hand.
 sean & i came home, we took our best friends to drum circle, had a glass of wine. amber & i swung around glow poi balls near the water & stood on rocks that poked out from the creek. meanwhile the boys wandered away & sean showed chris the circle pit. drum circle is at my friend garys house, hes an elderly man with a good heart and good rhythm. he built his house, his moon tower and his circle pit. behind his house is a river. the walls of the front of his house open side ways like doors because he uses that part of his home to show case art, thats how i met him. i displayed my art there when i was eighteen. anyway when you walk towards the deck,behind the house theres a moon tower that leads up to the sky. after the moon tower more towards the creek is the hand made circle pit, and on the right of his house is garys room. no one is allowed in there, his russian wife meditates alone there during drum circle. she doesnt really socialize with anyone but ive met her, talked to her a few times and shes a sweet lady. we played music with the locals there. ive been going for about five years but there are always random people passing through. still everytime its just as therapeutic. we sat in a circle around some fire as we drummed, clapped and passed around our jug of green tea. amber & i got up and danced. we grabbed eachothers hands & lightly spun eachother around, uncontrollably laughing. some other people joined in, smiling and dancing. we were surrounded by trees. the trees near to us had big white christmas tree lights hanging down from them. the last time we had been to drum circle was during a meteor shower. we went up in the moon tower with our friend erin, laid down on mats & pointed at the shooting stars.

we went for a swim

things to do when summer heat dampens your creativity

*get up early to water your garden,drink mango juice & close your eyes enjoying morning weather
*look away when your boyfriend kills the grasshoppers that are huge/bright green from eating your sage & drowns the creepy light brown spider attacking your aloe vera plant
*eat one sheet of otter pops a day,turn on the air conditioner & take a nap or vise versa
*watch your favourite documentaries on the flaming lips & sigur ros
*hug your mom
*go vegetarian and have more energy
* buy your boyfriend an overabundance of coffee & tell him sorry for taking out a chunk of his hair/ thank him for making you lunch everyday
*go swimming & eat fresh fruit
*try to get creative with water colour, give up & watch classic jim carrey films
*look up photos of foxes & interesting facts about elephants
*read a book/get a new instrument/donate a quarter of your wardrobe to rescued treasures
*after dinner have a glass of wine and talk to your friends in a british accent
*laugh at videos on youtube of people after their wisdom teeth taken out
*call your animals names that only sound like their names.. make fun of them when they listen,
then cuddle them

life opens up when you do

take things in. stay up late. go visit your friend when youre super tired & sleep later. embrace and give everything you have with pure sincerity because its worth it & will come back to you. endure being in & out of your comfort zone all day everyday. every day we are forced to see something sad, or smile.. or tell someone no.. but its all in the way that you do it by being honest to yourself. we can take things in and choose to how to view them and what to do with it. its your life, you can do anything you want with it, so live it.. not how anyone tells you to. just do what makes you happy in the moment & it all comes together later. i used to over think everything, but i've slowed that down. the california heat is keeping me in water or next to the air conditioner inside. thats all i do lately, with or without people. water & cold air. breathe breathe breathe. i can't wait for fall, heavy coats, scarves, cold noses, talking and making white fog in the air. so crisp and clean its hard to take it in at first, fall come home. i miss you. my mom is moving to san diego, i'm happy for her. she deserves it. i'm going to miss them more than they know.. but in the big picture its good for everyone. i can stay here and work towards places i want to visit and live, and they will live where they always wanted to. i'm proud of you mom. my granma on my dads side just battled cancer, it was scary at first. i couldnt bare the thought of loosing someone else close to me this year. quiet & unsettling, but she got through it[: so so happy. for her and my family. dreaming so much lately. that rem sleep, where you wake up.. still tired. melatonin doesnt cut it either, or chamomile, or home remedies. just good old fashioned real sleep. for once in my life, i wish i didnt dream.. for a whole week even!haha i'm listening to yoshimi battles the pink robots part one in my headphones and it sounds sooo crazy aah. goals for the week : *get that painting idea out of your head, the one you wrote in your phone under 'saved drafts' *finish up planting & arranging our fall harvest garden *get carrot and beet seeds, plant them! *make a mixed c.d. for this weekends car ride *go on a health kick for fun but i can still have cheeseburgers and fries because who are we really kidding? *write your penpal back *start posting photos on your tumblr again for your little sister *start taking more photos for 'hugging trees' project *have normal sleeping hours

energy given in an array of blues & purples

we are the whistling breeze through the trees, we are the winter by the sea

that feeling you get, well i dont know if you get it but i do.

when you're living in the woods, sleeping a tent for so long. then you come home.

you step into the house. it just feels different, weird but in a bad way; you dont like it.

 that's what happened to me this week. i miss the smell of campfire in my hair. i miss all of the big trees that surround us.with some dark spots, right next to some sunlit leaves creating a mysterious ambience. i miss being in that place waking up to hear birds sing their own songs instead of mimicking car alarms.

we set up camp with some friends the first couple of nights. sean cooked for everyone the whole time,

just like he always does. he loves cooking so much, its awesome for me! but i still like to

help out every so often(:
 sean james and i got there the first night. we hiked our stuff a ways back to set up in the forest. near a campground, so we could walk & use the restrooms sometimes. (shh!) we showed our friends a secret hike to a waterfall. you end up at the top of it, where there are pools you can swim in. we soaked in them a few summers ago. this time they were too cold. we went on a side trail that led to a private yet abandoned cabin. found a hug tree stump, with a ladder cut into it and two chairs at the top. a sign said not to pass, but we did anyway. we sat on the chairs nervous but got some photos - oh! speaking of stumps i also am creating a new blog. its called hugging trees haha its pictures of people i know, hugging trees with their name and what kind of tree it is. sounds like a fun hobby for a while[: i thought of it while listening to the water from our sleeping bags, awake, holding his hand that was wrapped around me.
 anyway, we got back, made dinner, had a couple of beers, played music & talked amongst each other, together and seperatley. we woke, ate smores before breakfast and had extremely long talks about different cereal killers and which ones we thought were the craziest. i think ted bundy/ jack the ripper take the cake but i won't get into that now.
 after a couple of days everyone left but we stayed to camp alone. i thought i'd be more afraid but it was so peaceful, calming. being away from everyone. i can feel myself transitioning back into my old ways. old ways where i have my phone off all day, don't like the computer so much or hanging out with anyone really. loving solitude. there was a creek behind our tent. dreaming was great, so relaxing to fall asleep with the water moving in the background.
  i like to sit on stumps over rivers, watch the clear water flow gently over the rocks.

you look up, endless numbered trees with vivid greens and browns. so vast, engulfed in a sea of browns and greens.

the air fills your lungs with purity, a breeze comes. the cold wind bites your bare skin

 you love it because you hate the heat, but got stuck with a july birthday in california.

put on my moccasins, camera and brown jacket for a walk to gather some wood.

we brought some but more friends showed up so we didn't have enough.

 we took a walk, talking, seeing over sized lady bugs, vivid yellow flowers, black and white butterflies. there were also some small pink and purple butterflies i got some shots of.

anyway here is a photograph i like of an over sized pine cone.

everything is untouched in this particular forest so it has room to grow.

this is what a real pine cone looks like[:

 on the way home we were loading up my car, i was grabbing something.. sean saw a mouse in my trunk. guess it got in with one of the bags. it chews up any paper. the ride home everytime we remembered there was a mouse with us we giggled in all hope it wouldn't crawl up one of our legs while i was driving. sean thinks mice are creepy, i have to show him the movie the green mile.. then he.ll think they're cute. i made him promise not to freak out if the mouse showed up, if anything ever showed up! you cannot freak out when someone is driving a car haha
  we stopped on the side of the road near a field before coming home. it's lady bug season in a couple weeks. the air was filled with them. i had never seen so many all at once in my life. it was magical, a myriad of them swarmed around us. there wasn't a place you could look and not see clusters. we smiled, got back in the car and listened to iron & wine on the way home.

real eyes, realize, real lies

today i've taken a look at my life from a different stand point. one night i was painting i.ve realized there have been a lot of set backs this past year. i'm tired of a lot of repetitive things that i don't need in my life. so i've taken them out, things already are starting to become full of shape again. i've been wearing a lot of blue. last night sean and i sold a lot of stuff we don't use he made me moon cycle tea. i've only been hanging out with my closest friends an taking a lot of time to be alone. going on walks, giving myself a certain genre of things to photograph during the day. i've seen so many people close to me, change in ways that i remember thinking of how much i hated when people did that in high school. i quit my intolerable job because i was surrounded of hypocritical, self loathing, and manipulative people. sean and i have been making organic soaps to sell and setting our own hours to work. it feels good to work for yourself and be completely free. things were emotionally wrecked after my friend eric committed suicide. i got confused of left and rights, i stopped talking, and stopped even painting for a while. all i knew was how much i missed him and that there was this black hole eating away at every ounce/part of happiness that would appear; that hurt physically & sometimes uncontrollably. i knew it would always be there. its still there, except its not black. it's not a colour at all. it's a place inside of me that eric has and will always have. i'm just happy that we existed together and will be forever grateful of that time we had, the things we did and secrets we told. things are changed, i see things in a different array of spirals than before. this year has been so emotionally exhausting, tiring and heart breakingly beautiful. this past weekend my best friends and i went to the zoo. i fed a giraffe, we saw a fennec fox sleeping & pet manta rays that were slender, slimy, and grey. after getting back stephanie and i went underwater and told each other things that no one else could understand. we floated for a while in the sun. then sunk to the bottom of the pool watching the water move above us. as our hair moved like mermaids and spread with the water. lines from the sun moved over us in circular rhythms like the sea. before going home she surprised  me with our twin owl lip balms after we dressed in oriental attire for fun & laughed so hard we couldn't breathe.

cold summer

 i’ve had this dream twice. once last night & once three weeks after one of my best friends, eric committed suicide. there aren’t any words said through out this whole dream.i’m just going to write it down.to get it out.

 i’m alone in a secluded,off white house in the desert. the paint is chipping off and you can see parts of the brown wood underneath. it’s old, its my house in the dream.

 there is nothing in this house except for a very light pink antique parisian love seat with an off white border. there are open windows with no glass, just open square holes in the walls. a light breeze coming in causing the white sheer curtains to waft in the wind.my hair is down & i’m wearing a light pink night gown, it goes down to my ankles.

 i look at the curtains standing in the middle of the room. staring out the window at the sand, some specks glide lightly over one another. & all of the sudden the scene changes.

im standing in the kitchen doorway. the two sided kitchen leads to the dining room where an off white picnic table sits. the paint is chipping off but it still looks beautiful, just like the house. this time i’m in a light pink, off the shoulder dress looking up. glitter confetti falls down, my arms open, my eyes close as my hands catch the confetti. there are boys in tuxedos. though it never shows any of their faces; all of them are talking, laughing, and eating chocolate cake amongst each other. it’s my birthday.

 through out the boys in tuxedos and my birthday party, i’m disconnected. i see people but not their faces. i hear chatter but am not involved in any conversation. i see a familiar face out of the corner of my eye, sitting at the end of the table on the left. wearing all black, but not in a tux. alone, disconnected, content, just like me. i walk over and he turns to me, its my friend eric, he looks up at me smiling only with his eyes.

 all the sudden its back to the beginning of my dream, where i’m standing looking out of the window. i’m back in my pink long gown, only this time.. i’m not alone. eric is standing next to me. we sit together on the old parisian love seat. i lean my head on his shoulder, he leans his head on me. we sit in comfortable silence expressionless.just like we used to.

 then i wake up, feeling like he was really there. feeling like i was just with him, and he was letting me know he’s okay.

my eyes are your kaleidoscope

lately i’ve got that jungle woman hair, been busy planning camp outs with my best friends around lunar eclipses & meteor showers. playing music for everyone, everywhere. waking up to a dog that acts like a kitten & a cat that looks like an owl at my best friends apartment every other weekend. i’m super excited to develop some 35mm film from different cameras. i quit my intolerable job & spent the last of my money on a banjo. our garden is thriving. last week, we made all organic soaps to sell.stayed up late eating donuts intensely watching e.t. because sean had never seen it. i’m ready to start finishing some old paintings that i haven’t had time for lately. i’ve been waking up from different vivid dreams.. strangely with good plots that should be vampire movies. ups brought a wonderful c.d that i’d forgotten i ordered a while ago & have been listening to on repeat. yesterday we had a family dinner at my granmas for my uncles birthday and ate some comfort food. am super drained/energetic from the abundance of love from the beautiful people i’ve gotten to see this month. right now seans asleep with a fever in bed, our cats asleep on my vanity and i’m going to partake in breakfast at tiffanys with some apple sauce and gypsy tea. i’m a very tired, happy girl.

 

astrud astrud, ambulance. insound tour series no. 12

this song plays when :

⋆youre sitting in your room painting with the window open & an incant burning

⋆youre riding your bike in the cold with a scarf covering your pink nose

⋆youre stepping off of a plane in florida for instant humidity;entertaining yourself with feet moving from
  square to square, trying to step on every crack without getting any slower

⋆youre a senior on the city bus ditching school to watch monty python and the holy grail with your boyfriend

⋆youre falling asleep outside on a quilt your great great grandmother made for you

⋆youre dreaming

⋆youre on a train to santa barbara to visit your best friend & take photos with tall plastic purple dinosaurs

made these with charcoal, paint & ink

childhood

carnival rides

i told my little brother to see the water

my birthday party (pink)

i got you,babe

our childhood we were taken everywhere in this green wagon

my cousin and i were princess baby mermaids

wanderlust within & the we are trees ep

slept in late, with this song on repeat this past month

driftin'

and today, monterey

so small with a wide eyed open sky

     simultaneously looking at the snow capped mountains

    feeding deer friends

    tarot readings & seasonal beer in the middle of a forest,soaking up all positive energy from negative
    ions that came from pine trees

    after climbing a huge ass rock

    sean