That Moment.

There is a moment while riding a horse. As far as I know it is a well known -- as well as well dreaded -- moment for most equestrians. Let me lead you up to it:

You are approaching a jump, the horse drumming out a cool, steady beat below you. You can count the strides: One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four -- and you even hum a song in your head, perhaps to the rhythm of the hoof beats. Your eyes are fix at a point above and beyond the jump, your hands brushing at the whithers as you tighten your grip on the leather reins. You push your heels even further toward the ground speeding away beneath you, stretching your calf muscles longer and longer. The jump comes closer. You want to hold your breath, but practice keeps you breathing steadily in and out through your nose, your mouth curling into the smallest of smiles. Here it comes. The moment that should be the release, the freedom you get when your horse rears back and gracefully clears the obstacle in the way and you are disconnected with the earth, leaving your problems behind in the dust...

But that's not the moment I'm talking about.

The moment I'm talking about occurs exactly at the second when you think the flying will happen, but it doesn't. You press your heels down, throw your hands forward to give the horses head room and begin to lean forward -- but the horse has other ideas.

So as you steed veers suddenly to the left, shying away from some unseen terror, you continue to sail over the jump... alone.

They say you really have never ridden a horse until you fall off. I remember my first fall was on a pony when I swung my leg up a little too enthusiastically to mount and plonked on my butt on the other side of the pony, my eyes wide with surprise. That doesn't really count, I guess. But not all falls are as comical. I've once fallen over the top of my horses neck at a jump, my hands twisted in the reins. I landed on my feet, only to tilt my head back and look to see a frightened rearing horse inches from my face, my trapped hand making sure that I could not move away. I've had so many falls that I can't give you a number, or tell all of the stories.
But I don't believe that is what makes me a rider. It's not the falling off the horse that is important... it's the getting back on.

Now in the "the moment" of falling some very unwanted feelings begin to bubble up under your skin: Anger, fear, betrayal... all of the feelings and instincts that tell you to never get on a horse again. See that, the falling, does not, and never will, make you a rider.

No, it's the moment when you pick yourself up, dust off your jeans, straighten your back and walk over to your unrepentant horse, give her a pat on the shoulder, and hoist yourself back up into the saddle to try again... That's the moment that you officially have ridden a horse.

This is how I try to go through my life. I believe that you have not really lived until you fail at something and then pick yourself up, stick up your chin, and try again.

So go on. Go fail epically at something. It's good for the soul. It's even better when you come back and kick ass at it the second time round.

Melody

So, I've been sitting here, staring at the seashells on my desk, and thinking quite passionately about toes ... when it occurred to me.

Woah. Music.

I mean, let me tell you, this was a pretty huge then-it-occurred-to-me moment, cause I managed to completely forget about toes. See, my iTunes is constantly playing in my room. Never is there a moment of silence or emptiness. Whether it is Mozart (yes I have him on my iPod. Don't judge, it makes you smarter.) or alternative or blues or punk or rock ... all different kinds of sounds and notes swirling playfully around my room, squeezing into every crack and corner, caressing every living or nonliving being in reach with its quick invisible hands.

I listen to all different kinds of music. It all depends on what mood I'm in. Sometimes the best choice, though, is a song without any words. Like, for instance, just strings, or piano, or a score from a movie you liked. When you take the lyric out of a piece of music, instead of lessening its value, you only purify it. You force the song to tell its story without the aid of the spoken word. In listening to this kind of music, I have become quite fluent in a language that is unknowingly used in every corner of this world.

And music has been -- and will, no doubt, always be -- a part of every culture ever made. Whether it be crickets chirping, or banging on old trash cans, or a more sophisticated form of instrument used, music has been a means of telling stories in a way that gives the listener no doubt of the meaning and raw emotion this is conveyed through a melody.

I mean even the word 'melody' sounds like a song. Go on. Say it out loud to yourself right now. Gah! I love those words that let your tongue just hug the word before it lays it out before you. It's one of those cool words that looks and sounds like its meaning, like voluptuous. Or guffaw. (Go ahead. Look the words up if you need to.)

My favorite types of instruments are the strings. Oh, there is nothing more gorgeous than a string quartet. They literally make me melt into a puddle of mush inside. The way that they can pull off the note in just one quivering pull of their hand. You know, the note. That one note that just leaves you leaning forward, your heart having skipped a beat and your lungs forgetting to breath. The note that seems to take a warm fuzzy blanket and lay it all around the world and tuck it in safely. I love that note. When that note hits my ear drums it seems like everything in the entire world is suddenly okay.

The instrument that I am most able to utilize however, is my voice. Yes, this does count as an instrument. You must warm up, and cool down. You must practice all the time to keep it in tune. You're whole body is your instrument when you sing. Me? I sing all the time. Not just like, in the shower or when I'm alone in my room holding a hair brush to my mouth like a microphone. No. I sing all the time. Making breakfast, doing the barn chores, riding the horse, doing my hair, waiting for the bus, walking down the street, watching TV.... If I'm not eating, sleeping, reading, talking, or pondering the meaning of life quietly to myself, I'm probably singing. Does it get on peoples nerves? Yeah. I mean, I don't think of myself as an excellent singer. I think that I can carry a note sure, but really above all, I just really enjoy it. Because it means that I can tell a story through a melody too. It brings me as much pleasure as acting. Singing is just another form of acting really.

Anyway. What I really meant to say was, I really enjoy music. Who doesn't right? But just letting it know how much it means to me. Peace Out.

I'm off to listen to Liszt. (Go ahead. Look him up if you need to.)

Funny Graphs

Here's a bunch of hilariously true graphs that I found online.
Haha.

My Future House

Hey! This is me being really bored this summer and creating my future house. That comes from my head. With assistance from Google Images and StumbleUpon

Enjoy!!

Here, below is the house itself. Nice, huh? Very Hobbit-esq. I'm thinking this will take place in either Scotland or Ireland.

The insides of the house look something like this:

Then! We proceed to the basement:

My modest little library. The attic is similar! Looking something like this:

The bathroom is also quite lovely. If you step through some doors here and follow this staircase up:

It takes you to the bathroom:

Cute, small, with rocks. Nice :)

The kitchen is also quite nice:

Oh and who could forget the bedroom!

And then of course the near by village

And last but most certainly not least, the pool!

What? What was that your thinking? Cost? Not important. Money will cease to matter in my future. All of this will simply, uh, appear. Yes. That's right. Hmmm? You think that my real future house will look something like this??

 






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I really don't want to talk to you right now.

Ten Rules

Below are the 10 rules for being human.

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but you're stuck with it for the entire extent of your life. You can change the shape of it, the color of it, but it will, for better or for worse, be yours.
2. You will learn lessons. As soon as you let our your first charming wail as you are pushed into this world, you are enrolled in a full-time public school called, "life".
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, of experimentation.
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will show itself in many forms until it is learned. Only then can you move on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons never ends. There is no part of life that does not have lessons in it. If you are currently breathing, that means that there are still lessons to learn.
6. Other people are just mirrors of you. You can't love or hate something about another person unless if reflects to you something you like or don't about yourself.
7. What you make of life is up to you. You have all the tools and things you need. The choice of what you do with these tools is up to you.
8. All answers lie within you. The answers to all life's questions (42, btw) are all there for you to discover.
9. Life is a journey and the little issues that are encountered do not shape the whole picture. Things must always be kept in perspective.
10. You will forget all of this.

Books.

Today, like ALL of today, was spent in the barn. Literally 6.5 hours of cleaning out the barn. OH MY GOD. I can't really feel my feet and I have blisters in places that I didn't know existed. Now the whole left side of the barn, the goats paddock, the tack room and all of the water troughs are CLEAN.


I'm slowly figuring out that I have a mild case of OCD. For instance, I cannot do any work if my room is not clean. If I get a new book I need to clean out and rearrange my whole book shelf (Windex included). Today in the barn, I couldn't stop -- like could not stop -- until everything was swept!! I just... like things tidy, is all. And it's not a bad thing! Things are much more organized that way and it's easy to find things... but it can get in the way sometimes....

BUT no fear. My slaving away in the barn was not in vain. Because in payment for my efforts I was rewarded with a gift! Mum got 'Alice' for me. You know, the SyFy version of Alice in Wonderland? It happens to be my new favorite movie. Ever. For the time being anyway.

I went to the library with my sister today and got a hard back book in great shape for a buck. *All Hail Used Book Prices* Another thing about me. I collect books. Like ALL THE TIME. Whenever I pass a book shop I need to buy SOMETHING. Anything really. My sister is opposite. If she sees a book that she likes, she will return home and put it on hold in the library. This saves room and money.

But I don't know... I could never do that. I'm too in love with the books. Not just the story but the actual book. I love the look printed pages, the smell, the broken spine of a loved book. I love having a space just for that book on my shelf. And I love the fact that I can go to countless different worlds without leaving my room. Cheesy and overused line, I know, but seriously, that really is the main attraction for books for me. The more I have, the more escapes I have.

Plus, whenever I open up one of my books, I can remember exactly the place where I first read it, and bought it. I can never have enough books. And everyone of them has a small 'SM' in the cover just so I know which ones are mine and which are my sisters. We have an equal love for books, but just like everything we do, we show our love in different ways.

She's the one that got me into books in the first place. As a kid, I could never figure out why she enjoyed them so much. She was always in her room reading and instead of rock music, she had book tapes blaring out of her speakers at top volume. Being more of an outdoorsy child, I spent more time swinging and singing at the top of my lungs, and playing with my trains outside than reading.

Then one day I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I went to her room and asked for a book (please). She took her time choosing, brushing a book with her finger, looking at me with shrewed eyes, then moving on the the next. I was getting very impatient but I kept that all inside. Finally (finally) she slipped a book out from her book shelf. It was thin, with a huge dragon on the front. She gave it to me, only after making me cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die that nothing, nothing, would ever happen to this book. Ever. I solemnly swore that the book would be taken the utmost care of.

And... I fell in love.

It wasn't a particularly good read. It had a girl, and a dragon, and the dragon turned into a guy in the end and the writing was really so so. But it was the sheer impossibility and wonder of the fantasy that got to me. The whole new world being laid out before me in a labyrinth of letters and words.

I have a very visual mind, and whenever I read a book, it plays out like a movie in my mind. The book I was reading then was no exception. Soon, I became overly obsessed with the Harry Potter series, then more and more books came tumbling into my radar until the person that I am now was flung out on the other side, like in one of those water slides at a park. Now instead of me yelling at my sister to turn down her book tape because it was annoying me, it was because I couldn't hear my own.

I actually could not fall asleep unless I had Jim Dale speaking Harry Potter into my ear (to the distress of my friends at sleepovers). Hell, it was from those countless nights that I listened to Harry Potter that I got all of the vocabulary that I use now.

So it's really thanks to my sister that I have the ever growing library of books and that I'm never caught without one. Thanks to her that whenever someone is looking for a book to read I have at least 4 books on the tip of my toungue. Thanks to her that life sometimes just doesn't live up to my expectations. Thanks to her that I daydream about being in some other world.

So thanks, sister.

....

I'm going to go rearrange my bookshelf.

Stories about Toys

Toy Story 3 is definitely one of the best movies I've ever seen EVER. It was SO. GOOD. Those movies never seem to tire me. It totally didn't matter that my family and I were at least 10 years older than the target audience and still were gasping and crying and laughing. Yeah, crying. I don't want to talk about it.

But seriously, us older people have been waiting 11 years for the next Toy Story!! I mean really!

Never will I throw away a toy again.

ps.
There was a commercial for Smurfs *In 3D* and my dad was like, "Hey look guys, Avatar!"

Haha.

Avatar.

Funny.