#np...3

SO, in honour of all things related to my obsession with the Breaking Dawn Official Soundtrack, here are my five favourite tracks on the album. Just beautiful. Enjoy!

1. Aqualung - Cold

2. Cider Sky - Northern Lights

3. Imperial Mammoth - Requiem on water

4. Mia Meastro - Llovera

5. Sleeping at Last - Turning Page

My favourite track. By far :).

Keep listening.
xoxo

Ciao bella... #29-34

#29

WORK OVERSEAS


Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.  

-Cesare Pavese

I think it is about time I spread my wings a little bit, try living and working overseas. I am partial to Italy, maybe even New Zealand or Australia? 

Explore. Dream. Discover.

Find life experiences and swallow them whole. Travel. Meet many people. Go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys. Try everything. Exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life.

-LKF

All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time. 

-Paul Fussell

Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.

-Frank Herbert

Arriving at each new city, the traveller finds again a past of his that he did now know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.
-Italo Calvino

What you've done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do - especially in other people’s minds. When you’re travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.  

-William Least Heat Moon

So the plan is to go and be a little adventurous bird...

#30

BE FRIENDLIER WITH TELEPHONE SALES PERSONNEL

Oh, this is hard. I always start off really polite, I even allow them to get at least half way with their sales pitch, before I listen intently for the sound that would signal the quick intake of a breath, then I, still very politely say, "Thank you very much, but I am not interested." See, it all went so well up to here...I might have to repeat my  line one more time, but as soon as the personal questions or the inevitable, "But why are you not interested?" start off, things take a turn for the worse, very quickly. I have literally said, "I am going to put the phone down now, ok, bye", and then I do exactly that...*hangs head in shame*...

I do try and make up for this by being extremely polite and friendly with all other service personnel I come across on a daily basis, but those damn telephone sales people just make it so damn hard to be friendly...

But I'm working on it, I might just let one get through the whole sales pitch one of these days...

#31

SEE A PANDA

So I have this tiny Panda obsession...not by chance. So much so, that I even have a designated Panda Caretaker, a good friend of mine, Robert P.

How did this all come about? Well, seeing as you asked...

I was in the Pick and Pay, not a good thing on a Saturday morning at the end of the month. The lines were endless, I just had one basket, so I was chatting to Robert, hereafter always to be referred to as PC (Panda Caretaker), and the conversation just got ridiculous...what is to follow is the real life account of my Saturday morning conversation  in the Pick and Pay while trying to pay for one basket of groceries :).

(Bear...haha, BEAR, in mind that Robert had been out partying the night before...it explains a lot...)

PC:     Grrr, why u awake so early...? Lazy day for me today. Haha!

Me:    Always awake early. Enjoy your lazy day! I'm in the Q at PandP, still like 20 people before me, insane! How's the head?

PC:     Pandap? What that?

Me:     Pick and Pay, clearly still drunk!

PC:     P uhh why u shopping for pandas?? R u in China?

Me:    Who the hell is shopping for pandas?? U stoned as well as drunk? STILL not at the front of the Q. Shite...! At least u give me something to do!

PC:    Whoa Panda aggression?

Me:    Panda's super irritated! This Q is insane, one basket of stuff, taking an hour to purchase, not cool!

PC:    Lol, u do know it's the month end and everyone wants 2 buy pandas?

Me:    Apparently! Pandas are very much in demand it seems, yayness, second in Q! Gotta go!

And that, my friends, is where all things Panda related started. Now you know. So I need to go to China, if only to see a Panda...

#32

HAVE REALLY LONG HAIR

Not as easy as you might imagine. This seems to be somewhat of a struggle for me. I recently cut my hair, the shortest it has been in about 10 years...uhm, not such a good look for me. Too short to be long, but too long to be a short hairstyle. And it seems as if my hair refuses to grow past a certain length...then I get bored and irritated, cut it and then I'm right back where I started...*frustrated sigh*...

#33

HAVE A FANCY DINNER PARTY WITH FRIENDS AND A 
HOME COOKED FIVE COURSE MEAL

The 'fancy' and the 'party' part...check. The home cooked meal part..., not so much :). I can't imagine an evening that is better spent than with good friends, good food (fingers crossed) around a huge dining room table.

Imagine a beautiful, lavishly decorated dining room table, I'm thinking lots of lights, flowers, candles, green and white...the table set for eight very special guests...

A dinner invitation, once accepted, is a sacred obligation. If you die before the dinner takes place, your executor must attend.
-Ward McAllister

There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves. 

-Thomas Wolfe

The cooking activities for the evening might take a little more careful planning...ok, who am I kidding...a whole lot more planning :).

Your invitations are on their way...

#34

GO ON A LUXURY TRAIN RIDE

Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, “I would stay and love you, but I have to go; 

this is my station.

-Lisa St. Aubin De Teran

I never travel without my diary. One should always have 

something sensational to read on the train.

-Oscar Wilde

Any train would probably do...but...imagine this...

Board the train, make my way along the narrow corridor to my overnight compartment, use my suitcase to bump into a couple of people along the way, politely say, "I'm so sorry", stare out of the window, panic a little when we go through a tunnel and it’s pitch black for a while, go and have drinks and dinner in the dining carriage and fall asleep to the clickety-clack of the train on the tracks...

how obvious is it that I have given this some thought?

I missed the first train, stood out in the rain, all day. But little did I know, when I caught the next train. There you were to sweep me away. 

 -Bruno Mars

Keep you posted.

Rachel

xoxo

I love you... #25-28

#25

GET ANOTHER TATTOO

Wear your heart on your skin in this life. 

-Sylvia Plath (Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts)

It's been about a year since I got my first tattoo. So I've been thinking about getting another one the last couple of months. I got my first one done after achieving something very personal to me and I got a design that symbolised both my journey to get there, as well as being something I found really beautiful and I have not regretted it for one second. 

But now the big question is what next? 

It took me months to decide on the previous one...The internet is filled with tattoo designs, quotes, fonts and placements of tattoos, but the most important thing to me is finding something that has meaning to me. Some of the designs and placements I have come across are truly beautiful...

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night

- Galileo Galilei

I like the position of this one.

Really beautiful and I like the idea of a shoulder tattoo and it fits in with my recent dandelion obsession :).

I really like the font of the top one.

'alis volat propriis' is Latin for 'she flies with her own wings'. Beautiful.

'infragilis et tenera' is Latin for 

'unbreakable and tender'

My body is a journal in a way. It's like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself, whether you do it yourself with a knife or with a professional tattoo artist. 

-Johnny Depp

This is one of my favourite Neil Gaiman pieces: Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

When the designs are chosen with care, tattoos have a power and magic all their own. They decorate the body but they also enhance the soul. 

-Michelle Delio

I love the placing and wording: 

'i swear we were infinite'

They keep track of time. Sometimes things happen and you feel that you need to mark them down. 
-Scott O'Connor (Untouchable)

I really like the placement of these ones.

I did not make the decision to get a tattoo lightly, it is after all something that is going to be on your body permanently, so getting one done for the wrong reasons is stupid. So it took me almost a year to find the perfect design for my new tattoo, then I found out a girl at my gym had the exact same one done...true story. It's a sign...I need to keep looking. So this is the one I was planning on getting, exact same design and place...it's pretty, I know...*sigh*...

In my searchings for a new tattoo, I also came across the following story... 

(via http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/this+is+on+account+of+my+loving+you+forever)

Beth Loster, 24, a San Francisco writer and waitress who was a student at UC Berkeley when she met a young man who said, “Hey, we have tattoos in the same font.”

The text of her tattoo - “clad in the panoply of love” - came from “Science & Health” by Mary Baker Eddy. “I like the way the written word looks on the body,” she said. “And that phrase made me feel safe.” His tattoo, also in a “typewriter” typeface, was in Latin. (She can’t recall the translation.) 

The text of Loster’s next tattoo was written by that young man, who had eventually become her boyfriend. Before leaving for South America, where he was going to study, he left a note on her refrigerator that began, “this is on account of my loving you forever.” That phrase - in the form of a tattoo - offered her comfort when he was killed in a car accident in Brazil.

[A] genuine tattoo.... tells a story. I like stories and tattoos, no matter how well done, and if they don't tell a story that involves you emotionally, then they're just there for decoration, then they're not a valid tattoo. There has to be some emotional appeal or they're not, to my way of thinking, a real tattoo. It tells people what you are and what you believe in, so there's no mistakes. 

-Leo, tattooist, 1993, quoted in Margo DeMello, Bodies of Inscription, 2000

#26

HAVE A PERFUME COLLECTION

So far, some of my favourites include After 5 by Fifth Avenue, DKNY's Pure (vanilla...mmm), Calvin Klein's Euphoria and Provocative Woman from Elizabeth Arden. Now I just need to find some more...and own them all at once :).

Wear perfume wherever you want to be kissed.

-Coco Chanel

#27

HAVE SOMEONE TELL ME I'M BEAUTIFUL WHEN I JUST WAKE UP IN THE MORNING

Heads up guys. This is one sure fire way of making a girl's knees weak. And we like to be called beautiful, not hot, just FYI. This might be difficult if my flatmate, James F's, reaction (a slight shriek of fright) first thing in the morning is anything to go by...I embrace crazy hair, ok...and sleep-creased cheeks...and puffy eyes...ok, I'm a mess in the mornings. At least I clean up good ;).

#28

SAY 'I LOVE YOU' MORE OFTEN

...and mean it.

Be a best friend, tell the truth, and overuse I Love You

Go to work, do your best, don’t outsmart your common since

Never let your prayin’ knees get lazy

And love like crazy

-Lee Brice

LOVE. The simplest of  four letter words, it passes my lips a hundred times a day, 'I love this song, this dress, these shoes.' It's time for me to attach some meaning to it, to say it out loud to people in my life, to mean it when I say it, without assuming that they know that I love them.

In one of my favourite pieces, All That Lives Inside, Tyler Knott Gregson has a very visual and vivid way of telling someone he loves them.

All That Lives Inside 

Have you ever wondered what you’d find if you took your two hands and placed them on my chest and with force, just enough force my love, pulled it apart and wide open?

I should spare you the gore and the stains on your perfect hands and tell you instead what would be discovered beneath this skin

and these creaking ribs that have fought so long to keep

the heartbeat inside and the pace slow.

Through the blood and bone and the broken breath of  my battered body you will find so many things you never would have looked for.

I've no doubt in my mind that you will find the residue of our conversations and the fragments, the small remains of a lifetime of skipped heartbeats. 

You will find the silhouette of shared kisses and sparklers in the late summer air. The breath that used to hang above your lips in the cold of morning and the moonlight and the sound of shuffling feet dancing beneath it. 

Look, closer and ignore the red upon your fingertips. 

Look, and find the sound of laughter under the covers and the way your hair smells fresh from a shower.

It’s there, and it’s covered with giant snowflakes that seem to fall inside me in slow motion and the flash of the lightning that struck me but spared me and left me alive to hold you.

Pull harder and reach and risk the scrapes on your knuckles from the jagged ribs that  threaten your advance. Reach and find the space and invisible thread that connects the centre of your eyes to the centre of mine when we stare at each other. Find the words. 

I promise there will be words and the ink will cover the red on your palms and you will never understand how many fit inside me, how many can come tumbling out. A magician you will swear I must be and words will be the scarf that just never seems to stop. 

 Pull and pull and get to the bottom of the words and find the last word that has been at the bottom of the pile since I started collecting them all in my chest. Find the word and smile that smile that only you can smile when you realize that word is, and was, and always will be You. You. 

It’s there where it should be and it’s draped with the way your hand feels on my skin and the rattle of thunder against the walls, the raindrops on my skin. I will feel your hands, cold against the warmth inside me and you will feel the flapping of the birds and butterflies, their wings stirring the dust that collected in the time I spent waiting for you. 

 

Feel them fly past the broken ribs and across your open palms and close your eyes as they create the breeze that will tickle your cheeks. Take your hands now, place them on my chest and find yourself ready and willing and more than completely able to discover and set free all that lives inside me.

-Tyler Knott Gregson-

When I say, "I love you," it's not because I want you or because I can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a woman. 

Spike to Buffy

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. 

-Leo Tolstoy

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. 

-Stephen King

Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that. 

-Michael Leunig

Keep you posted.

Rachel

xoxo