bicycle

one summer, i was walking down the street with annalise and said "who has a free bicycle?" in a relatively quiet voice. a man jumped off his front porch, said that he did, and then led us to the back of his house and gave me a free bicycle.

synchronicities

anyone that has ever talked to me for longer than ten minutes knows that i am a sincere believer in the law of attraction. it’s all about emitting positive vibrations, thinking positive thoughts and partaking in positive actions to attract exactly what you want. within this theory, you have to trust your instincts, know what you want and take a lot of risks. you just have to trust that everything will turn out right and put complete faith in the fact that the universe will give you what you want. manifest your heart’s desire!

the best part of this, is that you'll start recognizing everything coming together, tons of synchronicities will appear. things will become clearer and you’ll recognize the path that is going to make you the happiest. but you have to be very brave, you most certainly can not take a cautious route and you can not give out negative vibrations, thoughts or actions – or that is what you will get in return. we all have those negative friends that everything just always seems to go wrong with them, that is not a coincidence. we also know people where everything always goes well and things work out smoothly for them. that is what they are sending out and that is what they are receiving.

i have many favorite stories and instances as to when the law of attraction was at work. one of my favorites involves my roommate, emily.

emily is a perfect friend to have. you can always count on her (except to answer her phone – and she knows that this is a problem). she is very loyal and very cool. I always say she is a lot cooler than i am, in every way. we weren’t that close when we first started to live together our junior year, but that pretty much immediately changed. we lived together for two years and midway through senior year we realized that we couldn’t go on being apart from each other after college. so we decided to move together. emily’s loyalty was really exemplary when she agreed to move to georgia with me, a dream of mine. but alas, we ended up planning for nyc. months and months passed. she would stay at my parent's house in connecticut with me and we would schedule interviews to be on the same day and ride into the city together. our dream seemed so far away, yet we weren’t really ever that discouraged. we would have our off days, but really relied on each other to keep our spirits up.

and then, miracle of all miracles, i got a job! and so now emily needed one and we needed an apartment and then we were on the fast track to living the dream.

anyway, i digress, this was supposed to be about the law of attraction but turned into professing my love for emily and our frustrating job search.

basically, we find the most charmingly petite apartment in the west village and emily moves into the city sans job. she starts working at the coolest coffee shop in the city but still needs full-time employment. so after a month and a half, two opportunities come her way and she schedules two interviews on the same day. one at a publishing giant and one at a strategic brand design agency. the next day, said publishing giant offers her a job and she takes it. she hears nothing from the design agency. she starts that monday. she is an executive assistant. she works eleven hours a day under severe pressure from her boss. she comes home miserable and stressed out. kind of like a lab rat in distress. everyday. even on weekends she can't relax. and after doing this for a month, she realized, that this is no way to live life. so she quits. while living in an insanely expensive city in “these hard economic times”- she quits! emily is a genius. emily is a wise fool. and, emily is, most importantly, very brave.

oh yea, so the law of attraction:

she starts her job search over. i tell her she should call the branding agency and check in on her status as an interviewee because it has only been a few weeks since the interview, and maybe they haven’t made a decision yet. but they did. and it wasn’t her. so she continues her job search. the next week she gets a phone call. it’s them. their first choice didn’t work out. they want emily to come in for a trial week. they love her. she loves them. they offer her the job before the week is over.

how is that for a synchronicity?

shortly before this all happened, i made emily read my law of attraction book because she was really cynical about it and thought i was nuts for how i was constantly referring to it. if you want to check out a straightforward, comprehensive book on the law of attraction, read michael losier’s book.

my next read is pronoia is the antidote for paranoia: how the whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings by rob brezsny. and if you don’t already, check out his weekly astrology reports, it’s not your average horoscope.

soul crafts

annie had recently posted on soul collages. i figured i would too. (and p.s. read her blog because it is wildly hilarious)

annie and i lived together in a big, white, haunted house in college (along with five of our other friends, could we go back in time?) we did many things together. she is just one of those friends, you know? we bicycled, we concocted stews combining our favorite ingredients and tried to get our friends to eat them, we treasure hunted, we scavenged, we ate excessive amounts of candy, we crafted, we attended monthly classes on different usages of herbs, we prank called attractive boys. we really did it all.

and we were also very involved on campus in a group called the paradigm project. it was run through the university of vermont's women’s center and brought awareness to sexual and domestic violence through numerous events. in some ways, i think we were really integral parts of this organization but most of the time we were the eccentric misfits (luckily, we were unconditionally accepted by all – woohoo!). we attended every meeting. we took part in every event. but by the end of our senior year, anytime serious work needed to be done we’d be glaring at each other from across the room and giggling because we were freaking lazy seniors and knew actual work was beyond our attention span at that point. that being said, we were usually assigned to making the posters.

along with paradigm, we were always participating in women related events in burlington. every year, uvm hosts the dismantling rape culture conference, a full day event. upon arrival, attendees were able to choose a few lectures that appealed to them. annie and i, sitting in the auditorium immediately chose a few workshops, and when i suggested the soul collage workshop, annie was hesitant. little did she know it would change her life. it was a delightful crafting activity that inspired us (for the rest of our lives?)

this is how you make a soul collage:

materials: tons of magazines (advertisements and catalogs will also do), thick-ish paper to mount the collage on, glue, scissors, rhinestones (optional but wildly necessary)

instructions: have a clear mind and do not think about what you’re about to create. whatever happens will be perfect. cut out anything that speaks to your soul. it doesn’t have to directly be of an object. it could be a landscape, it could be a pattern, a texture, a color, anything. piece it all together and glue it down.

et voila!

the best thing about a soul collage is that it always turns out perfectly. there is no way that you can do it wrong. it represents so much and yet is gloriously fun. from that point on everything in our lives was about the soul and figuring out what made us the happiest! finding treasures that spoke to our souls was such a delight! soul fabrics! soul flowers! soul patterns! soul music! soul mates! life is wonderful.

birthday

today is my birthday and i am twenty three!

ashley surprised me with these elephant cupcakes. aren't they wonderful? i had an absolutely perfect weekend celebrating with my friends. i love birthdays and i feel good.

saturdays

saturdays are the best days for sleeping in.

london

i took a trip to london a few weeks ago. it was certainly charming.

dainty

my grandma (hello nana!) gave this handkerchief to me last summer.

she had sewn it for her mother (leah) when she was eight. eight!

i think it is absolutely perfect.

venus

in college, my focus was in women and gender studies.

i had that perfect college experience within this area. intense, intelligent and inspiring professors and equally passionate peers. i became involved on campus and in the community. i planned to graduate, move to georgia and work for a non-profit that dealt with women’s issues. (preferably the girl scouts!)

but i have to admit, i was feeling burnt out. things didn’t affect me the way that they used to. i would not say i was losing speed, but i was becoming a bit numb to it all.

was this the way to begin my next chapter?

after a turn of events, i then completely changed my direction.

thanks to my mom, laura tonatto and sandro botticelli.

i was in italy shortly after graduating.while there, i smelled a fragrance that laura tonatto had created using the flowers painted in botticelli's the birth of venus.

painting: eyes :: fragrance: nose! and the stories behind the fragrances! and the memories they can conjure up! what a beautiful thing!

a few months after this trip, I was talking to annie at four in the morning and i had another one of those realizations…

why not pursue exactly what i wanted to do?

and so I did.

i now have a job at an extraordinary fragrance company and among the (massive) clutter surrounding my office desk, hangs my botticelli print acquired at the uffizi gift shop.

and the statue (costing all of 11 euros from a street vendor) is still one of my favorite purchases.