“After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul, and you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t mean security, and you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises, and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open, with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child, and you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure… that you really are strong, and you really do have worth.”

-Veronica A. Shoffstall

Your Secret

Your secret from Jean-Sebastien Monzani on Vimeo.

Ignant is a German blog and one of my favorites (and soon, I'll do a real post about them). Today, they showed me this beautiful peice by Jean-Sebastien Monzani. I am severely tempted to watch this movie, every day, for the rest of my life.

Young at Heart? Promise, Frank?

Today I was feeling low, when this song came up on Pandora.



Frank Sinatra, you are my new best friend.

Bucket List:

21. Visit Sinatra's grave in Palm Springs.

Yesterday I took Ginsberg (my guitar), a notebook, and some pens, and walked to that park at University and Center Street to brainstorm. It was kind of like this (not that I took these yesterday):

Two hours, seven blocks, and a nap later, I finished a new song. :)

Hey, Make Up Your Mind.

I want to post something, but I don't feel like writing anything. So- this:

My basil sprouted. The whole world is a miracle.

Hanging Out In the Sistine Chapel.

This is so neat. Thanks, Sam.

http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html

What goes on in your mind?

Well... life is fun. I went to the beach last weekend, so I just thought I'd post about it here. While Madelyn and I were walking along the bay on our way home from Balboa Island, we noticed a particularly picturesque spot where the lights were shining on the water (I'm just about to post the pictures here. While I was looking at it, talking to Madelyn, I realized something: I spend so much time (and I think other people do this, too) trying to think of ways I can bring an image with me that I don't really enjoy the image when I am looking at it. I am so caught up with trying to bring the things I'm living to my future that I don't enjoy them in the present.

Capice?

I Think

it would feel good to be a violin. I've been playing the guitar more than usual the past few days (I get out the guitar every summer- it's just a summery instrument) and it feels so nice to have the music so close to you, just thrumming through your heart. I wish I could play the cello; a lot of my friends are probably sick of hearing me say that. I'm also working hard at "Time Does Not Bring Relief" and it sounds really good. Hopefully my old choir director will (if I'm really lucky) have my high school choir do it. Does that even sound possible?

Another thing I feel like doing is riding my bike. I got my bike for Christmas this year, and even though I've never photographed it and posted about it really, it's the most beautiful bike that ever existed. Riding my bike makes me feel so... free. I just have time to think. I have so much time. I feel awake and alive- I feel. A part of me adores books, which is why I spend so much time lying around reading, but another part of me wants adventure so much I think I will explode. But I am a coward. I want adventure in the form of travel and beauty and points of interest. Sometimes I think danger would taste good, but I have no heart for fear.

I also feel like being in love. This statement is self-explanatory, right?

Catching up...

I am home now, as you must have deduced, so I will just finish up my trip stuff and have done with it. :)

The next day in Paris we visited Saint Chapelle, which is a beautiful church with exquisite floor to ceiling stained glass windows and jeweled light bouncing off of everything. I liked the Basilica best of all of them, but I think this one came in second. After we left the church, we took the subway to the Rodin gardens, which were more coifed than Monet's, but beautiful and gold and green in the summer. Madelyn and I ran around taking pictures and stuff and then we went home in a taxi. That night, I stayed up really late talking to our family and then went to bed.

The next day, we got up and got ready and went to church!!!! On the way though, something scary happened: we were walking down the stairs to the metro and there was this shirtless, grimy hobo hanging around. As I went down the stairs, he blew in my face, said something about pretty French girls (which is ironic) and slapped me, HARD, on the arm! Madelyn even heard the sound! After that, we hurried off to the subway and then we eventually found church. It was so nice to be in a familiar environment! We went to an English sunday school session and then the meeting was afterward. We could only get one set of headphones, so Madelyn and I switched off for the different talks. After church, we rode the subway to the Tuileries and ate a picnic on a bench there. Madelyn spilled the chips, so we fed them to the pigeons, which was fun. :) After we ate, we went back home and slept and Skyped and stuff. I was up really late talking to our family, and after that, packing. Madelyn took all these funny pictures of me that I didn't see until the next day, when I downloaded my camera pictures onto the laptop.

The next morning, we got up around 5:30 and got ready and then Madelyn, Grandma and I walked to the Austerlitz Bridge for a last look at the city. It was cool; we could see Notre Dame from there. After that, we went back to the hotel and had breakfast. Madelyn and I went shopping one last time at the train station stores, and then we came back and met the taxi, which took us to the airport.

You've all been on planes, so I won't go into the flight, but after 20 hours or so, we were back in Newport Beach and then the next morning, we drove home to Rancho Mirage! Once we were home, we gave our family the presents we got them. Shortly after, we were packing for a trip to Brian Head, which I returned from last night.

At last.

More still...

On Friday, we went to Giverny at last! Madelyn and I woke up pretty late, so we didn't get going until 10 or so. Then we rode to the train station, and barely made our train headed to Vernon, the nearest stop to Giverny. When we got on the train, nearly all the seats were full, so Madelyn and I sat on the stairs for a while until a nice girl a bit further down the train pointed out 2 empty seats to us. When we got to Vernon, we took a cab to get to the house and gardens, and before going in, we sat on a bench and ate some food together for brunch.
Next, we bought our tickets for the museum and went in. You go through a gift shop first, which was Monet's actual studio in his day, and then you step out into the most beautiful garden.
Ever.
I'm not kidding. If I have never been sincere in my life, this one thing I mean: Monet's garden is beautiful. It was everything I planned on it being when I was eight years old and first wanted to go there. We walked through the main garden for a while first, and then we headed down the subterranean passage (generously donated by the Annenbergs) to the water gardens. I never thought they could look so much like the paintings do, although one can tell that he painted the ones at the Orangerie at dusk, when the light is more purple and grey. We were there in the afternoon. Well...I won't cover it in words, I guess. You can see the pictures for yourself. We went back to the main garden afterward, and then went to the gift shop, where we bought a few things. (Okay, cut me some slack. Monet is my favorite painter ever and I couldn't stand not getting one gorgeous thing in a shop chock full of Monet paraphernilia.) After some confusion, we got a cab back to Vernon and rode our train back to Paris.
After we came back from Giverny, we rode the metro home and just relaxed for a bit in our rooms before we decided to go to the Eiffel tower. We wanted to get there late, so it would be dark and lit when we went. We were going to leave the hotel at 9:30, but then Grandpa took a really long time at the front desk doing something, so we weren't even on the metro until 10:00 or so. Then it took us about half an hour to get there, plus there were lines. To make this brief, we weren't at the second level of the tower until about 11:30. Grandma and Grandpa were pretty tired, but Madelyn and I still wanted to ride to the top. So we waited in a big fat line. Behind us in the line were a boy and his girlfriend. He was all excited about going up, but she was being the worst Debbie Downer I have ever seen in my life. They had this really stupid argument and I just wanted to turn around and tell her to be optimistic. It was pretty sad. Anyway, we went to the top and took a lot of fun pictures, which you can see on my album here, and then we rode back down. When we got ready to go home, though, we saw that the RER was closed!! Can you beleive it? It actually closes! Anyway, after that we took a cab home, where we had scriptures and prayer and then we went to bed. :)
I will start a new post for the next day.

Venice

Hello! It's morning now in Paris. Well, technically it's 11:14 AM because Madelyn and I always sleep in. Today we are going to Giverny, which is kind of the main point of our trip. My Grandma first introduced me to the art of Monet, who is my favorite painter, so it's been a plan of ours since I was eight to go and see Monet's garden together. I can't beleive it's finally happening! Wow!
Anyway, I am obviously supposed to be blogging about Venice, so I will start now. In the morning on our day in Venice, we woke up and got all packed and then rode a water bus back to the train station. There, we left our bags at the left baggage place and then headed off to begin our adventure. First, since it was late, we walked down the street a bit to find some lunch. We at at this little sidewalk stand and I got this delicious peice of pizza with really really spicy pepperoni. We sat down in the back of the restaraunt to eat, and when we were done, we threw little peices of bread at the ugly pigeons and mostly at these cute little birds (which were very fast) there. After that we bought a few presents at this little stand nearby and then we wanted to to go on a gondola ride. Unfortunately, there were no available gondoliers yet, so we decided to go to Saint Mark's Square first. We got on a water bus and rode for a half hour or so.
The water bus feels kind of like the subway, but much slower, and it rocks way more. Plus it's only a boat, so it's super crowded.
At Saint Mark's square, we went to the Basilica first, which was an amazing, majestic church. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside, or I would post them here. Unlike most Catholic churches (in Europe and the States) it wasn't all stained glass and statues. The entire building is covered with mosaic pictures of saints, apostles, and Biblical, stories. The spaces are filled in with gold peices. It's dark inside, so when you look up, only a few peices of gold glint down at you. They reminded me of stars.
Needless to say, I gaped with my head back at the ceiling the entire time, and I kept running into things in front of me.
After we were done with the Basilica, we went to the Doge's palace. Grandma and Grandpa were tired, so Madelyn and I just went through the museum alone. We crossed the Bridge of Sighs, where condemned prisoners would look out at Venice and sigh on their way to prison. We also saw the largest oil painting in the world, called "Paradise" by Tintoretto, I think. It is of Mary and Jesus surrounded by apostles and saints in heaven.
After we finished those, we bought some stuff and then rode the water bus back to the railway station. Near there, we got some sandwiches for dinner and then we took our gondola ride. Madelyn and I sang what pretty songs in Italian we know while we were going through the extremely silent canals and backways of Venice. It was an awesome experience.
When we were done, we went back to the railway station, bought one last present, and soon enough, we were on the night train to Paris.
Tada! I have to brush my hair so we can leave, so that's all for now!

Oh My Heavens.

I adore Cloud Atlas. It is probably the best book I have ever read and completely different from all of them. Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. I cannot get over how gorgeous the prose is, how, whether in a limited vocabulary or speaking through a verbose persona, David Mitchell makes every rudimentary thought pensive and beautiful. I'm not even through with it yet, but I just reached the part where the narrator sort of explains the title (you know that part; it's in so many books), and when I read it, I was completely shocked. 

I stopped.

I read the next paragraph, turned the page.

I turned back to read those two sentences over.

And again.

And I literally gasped.

Heavens, it was the most gorgeous thought. And the way he led up to it was... just completely perfect.

To complement the thought, here is a collection of art/photography by Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson on a UCSD site. The site introduces the collection thus:

"In 1874, the year of the first International Meteorological Congress...important new efforts were initiated in the [field of cloud classification]. During the succeeding 20 years constructive proposals were advanced in many countries by a large number of workers whose combined efforts led in 1896 to publication of the International Cloud-Atlas". This atlas documents an early cooperative scientific investigation on an international level. U.S. observations were made at Blue Hill Observatory, south of Boston."

It's actually a legitimate cloud atlas. :) Crazy, huh?