Chopping Wood

Is there any personality type out there that does not feel refreshed from a little time in the country? Where your nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away at least... where it is so beautiful that no matter how many times you've seen this landscape, it never gets old... where the internet has never been connected... where you actually have to watch out for bears... where you chop your own firewood from the forest around you...

I know some types would be more likely to always want to live this way, others could handle it for a weekend and no more. I'm tempted to lay out my guesses right now, but maybe you could guess who might like what more on your own. But I feel like almost everyone can gain a little perspective and rest and peace from a time like I just had up in Oregon for a few days with my dad's side of the family.

*view from my Grandma's porch that is done no justice by my camera...the mountains in the distance are snow-capped.


*met these llamas on a hike past the neighbors' farm. they all stared at me the entire time i was near them. a little disconcerting.


*wandering around in some favorite forest spots with my dad and brother (who got this shot from his phone).

It's good to get away from this SB paradise and remember that it's not just the sea that pleases my eye. I think I could be happy living anywhere if I had some people to love and scenery to enjoy. But also maybe a fun cafe in which to play on my Mac. Yes, I think that's it.

Half of it is 90% mental.

The other night I hung out with Mary's daughter,Sable, for the night. She is ten. We ate pizza. Watched America's Best Dance Crew. Walked to the Carpinteria Beach Bluffs during sunset. And I taught her how to not be ticklish.

Well, she might still need some practice. But I gave her some good training, and tested it out a few times, and I think she got it. Here's how we went about it...

1) She flinches and draws back when someone looks like they are going to tickle her. She anticipates the discomfort and what her usual reaction is, and already feels ticklish before she's even been touched. I told her to practice relaxing, and just watching the person who might tickle her. They aren't yet, and so what if they do? Don't flinch until you're forced to.

2) We got her to see tickling for what it is. Just skin on skin. I "tickled" her feet and told her to focus on diminishing her instinct to kick my hand away and laugh. We conditioned her to feel a different sensation. There's no switch I was flipping to demand that she react, and she could control how she reacted if she thought about it the right way.

3) Like I touched on briefly in 1 & 2, I stressed again to her that tickling is mostly a mental game. There will be some situations where you cannot help but feel tickled, and you'll have to react if you can't get away. We both knew that. Certain people have a knack for getting you good. But look, that hand coming toward you? It's just a hand. Will it touch your side? Maybe. But you can defend yourself. Flex your muscles, that helps. But mentally relax. You'll make it through unscathed.

I kept thinking about this later. I thought about how what I told her really boiled down to...
Don't be anxious.
Put it in perspective.
Be strong, be capable, but be relaxed.

This has happened to me before... maybe to you... when you realize the advice you've just given is of the kind you could use yourself.



"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."
-Henry David Thoreau

fresh new talent

Awhile back my mom showed me the website Googlism.com which lets you plug in a person, place, thing or time, and then collects whatever it easily finds from google connected to that item. So you get a wide range of funny, random, and sometimes inexplicably accurate phrases attached to whatever you've typed in. Sometimes the things it comes up with are actually a bit poignant. I think the things that come up for my name are pretty fun...


corinne is a very capable actress
corinne is my little angel
corinne is a quiet farming community located four miles west and one mile north of brigham city
corinne is an americana artist with an arresting voice
corinne is approximately 639
corinne is originally from montreal and has worked on hundreds of television commercials
corinne is too much like her mother
corinne is forced to realize that the real problem she must overcome is growing up
corinne is inspired by the muse
corinne is rapidly becoming one of the hottest sought after women of the next generation of australian comedians
corinne is a must hear
corinne is a board member of the french australian chamber of commerce in sydney
corinne is a jazz aficionado with an exquisite ear
corinne is puzzled with james coldness
corinne is happy that she and james would get back together again
corinne is still there
corinne is a junior journalism major at oswego state and hails from israel
corinne is always friendly and takes that extra time with us to get it just right
corinne is not in the office
corinne is a person who seems to keep herself much to herself and to start with repels james advances on her in the bedroom
corinne is 15
corinne is able to stand up on her own everywhere and she runs
corinne is forbidden by law
corinne is single and living in chicago
corinne is entirely associated with italy
corinne is demonstration of the fact that a classic style will withstand all passing fashions
corinne is his pillar of strength
corinne is a published poet
corinne is the fresh new talent out of sweden on the cool music label
corinne is primarily responsible for serving students from the colleges of business administration and arts and architecture
corinne is one of the most visible and accessible lesbian artists in the world
corinne is an intuitive
corinne is a new girl in town
corinne is looking forward to the upcoming year
corinne is my granddaughter
corinne is a magnet collector extraordinaire
corinne is a junior english major with an economics minor
corinne is dedicated to making your search for a new home a truly enjoyable experience
corinne is a 1998 magna cum laude graduate of notre dame college
corinne is a consummate world traveler who never lost her strong attachment to
corinne is a trailblazing entrepreneur
corinne is not especially patient
corinne is responsible for policy development in alberta and the nwt
corinne is the oldest of three children*
corinne is home to some fine people and fine houses
corinne is making her presence known to the family
corinne is a wholistic health practitioner
corinne is new to us this year
corinne is kind enough to drop by burrito boy to pick up our lunch on her way over to the hotel room
corinne is married to jeff and they have a married daughter
corinne is still highly regarded and sought after both professionally and by her fans


*How'd they know I was the oldest of three children? ;)

What crazy things come up for you?

Lifestream

life-stream v.

To make a thorough, continuous digital record of your life in video, sound, pictures and print.

This is one of the new "buzzwords" of our English language as of 2007, so said this NY Times article. First off, what a great word... it sounds lovely and is perfectly descriptive.

I love the history of other people made up in visuals, writing, or other media. Things like wedding slideshows, yearbooks, scrapbooks... anything that can add to a more complete idea of who a person is other than what you can talk to them about face-to-face. Our facebook and myspace pages are now one of the most common and easiest places to contain our lifestreams (at least for my generation, which is basically the first to be presented with such technology).

I have a few thoughts about the growing and ever more present concept of one's lifestream...

In some ways, it is easier than ever to control your image. You can put out anything for anyone else to see, post only the good photos of yourself, "untag" yourself from bad ones, write anything you want on a blog or under your "favorite books" section, make certain conversations with others visible to everyone.

Also, it is easier than ever to get your ideas out, albeit maybe more with more competition since it's also easier for everyone else. I wonder how quickly Leonardo da Vinci would have gained fame if he'd been able to scan his sketches and post them in an album on his facebook and blog about his ideas and art and promote his talent in an online community.

In other ways, it's harder to hide ourselves if we want to. With technology, information clueing others in to who you are is available to almost anyone. Your name can be googled. The time and location of your cell phone calls can be traced. Someone can share anything they hear or make up about you with any and everyone else by a simple mass text message (maybe most of us know a junior higher this has happened to). If you participate in a sprint triathlon everyone can look up your final time in relation to all the other way more in shape people than you. Ha. Anyway, this concept can be scary; our having less privacy, but also, there seems to be more accountability. If you live truthfully, there is nothing to hide. Or if you don't live truthfully, at least be cautious of who can figure that out, unlike the third grade teacher of a friend's daughter, whose public myspace was found by a parent and had many photos of her smoking weed, and evidence of constant partying til the early dawn hours on school nights. Oops.

One more idea... I think in some circles the idea of one's lifestream is getting taken a little too far. As in, the attempt to record and share what you're doing, how you're feeling, who you're talking to, and the song you're listening to at any given moment. Twitter is an example of that... you can sign up and program your page to share those things with anyone else who is connected, and even receive text message updates whenever those peoples' Twitter pages are added to. So if your friend is "heading out to Paseo Nuevo!" or "enjoying their new Alicia Keys album" or "feeling tired after breaking in their new nikes on the city college track " you'll be sure to know. Does this seem like madness to anyone else? Do we want to know what others are doing and feeling at all times and to share the same about ourselves...it seems to arise from a desire to feel affirmed, that what I'm doing is of note to someone, that I'm being thought of... within this family of oversharing also lie the email alerts to anything happening on your facebook, the friend count on myspace, certain uses of webcams, etc. Maybe it's the introvert in me, but I don't like broadcasting constantly what I'm doing and how I'm feeling. And I can't think it's healthy that the generation just below me is growing up seeing that it's normal to want and seek constant acknowledgment and feedback on every single thing that they do.

I'm happy that circumstances have created a need for a word such as lifestream. And I like the opportunity for online sharing and virtual feedback and instant communication gratification as much as any of you, I'd say. But all things in moderation right?

It was the best of times...

I was directed to see this clip of The View today. I can't stand the View; chatty women talking over each other gives me a painful headache. But sometimes I am directed to see relevant brief snippets of the show online.
This clip is thoroughly irritating to me. On MLK Jr. Day the women are discussing whether we are, as a country, more racist or more sexist, the question being pertinent to whether we'd be more likely to elect a female or a black president. Elizabeth says that black men could vote before any woman could, Whoopi urgently corrects her to the contrary. The person who put the link up makes fun of Elizabeth for "putting her foot in her mouth." Turns out she was right. Google "womens' suffrage" and "black vote" as I did to nail down the exact dates.
I hate being wrong. I try extremely hard to always be right, and I like to think I usually am. This preference is likely in large part due to being the oldest child in a family, since what the oldest says usually goes; and they are also usually the first to learn how to verbally defend anything they say to their advantage. I have to think having an older sibling would be maddening at times. Right, Ian and Calista? ;)
As I've become an adult, I've gained a healthy obsession for being able to back up what I say. Sometimes I might be too slow to speak on an issue or defend an idea because I don't have all the info. I really dislike when people speak too quickly and incorrectly on something they are not at least partially educated on. And if they do it with even a hint of condescension, they'll have work to do to gain my respect again. Exhibit A, Whoopi Goldberg. It is the slightly malicious part of me that wants to see her reaction when she finds out that she incorrectly corrected someone on national television on such a major part of history. I generally like Whoopi, but shame on her for not knowing, and you know what, a little shame on Elizabeth for not defending the accuracy of her comment. I probably would have done the same thing, I can't imagine trying to keep everything I say straight on national television. But I will use this as an example for myself to continue to seek knowledge and accuracy in everything I say, and have the confidence in my words enough to defend them.
I will never forget the concept of the acronym "WUKFA" as long as I live. Of the many invaluable things Spencer taught our rhetoric class that year, this is on my top three.
There are basically five levels of knowledge in regards to everything we encounter in our lives, be it a person, history of a country, piece of literature, political policy, how to use a mac, nutrition, etc.

The first is Awareness. A vague idea that something is there and has a shred of significance. I am aware that there is a great novel out there called A Tale of Two Cities. I could not tell you more about it than that I know it exists and is well-respected and that the title of my post comes from it.
The second level is Familiarity. I am familiar with many people; the ones I see on State St. or friends' parties and say hi to but not converse with. I might know they went to my college and are from Washington and have heard who they are dating, but that's about it.
The third is Knowledge. I have knowledge of Santa Monica, having been visiting Zac there for nine months now. I know how to get around pretty well, and have a couple favorite restaurants and shops, but I have to ask someone else for a good place to have a glass of wine in the evening, how to get to the 10, and I still discover something new every time I go for a run there.
The fourth level is Understanding. I understand Spanish. I can speak it and write it and read it somewhat proficiently. Since I haven't used it much over the past year, it's quite rusty but I've translated for missions teams and had friendships spoken only in Spanish before.
The fifth level is Wisdom. I am wise in very few things. My best example is maybe myself. I know myself very well; my strengths and weaknesses, I can intuit how I will feel about something or someone quickly, how certain exercise will affect my body, and I know how to make decisions for myself that I will be happy with tomorrow, in 6 months, or in two years.

Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, Familiarity, Awareness. Spencer taught us to strive towards knowledge and understanding in things that we intend to speak to others about, and to strive for higher levels if we are hoping to actually teach or debate with others about something. He gave us a quote about how many men speak on things they are only familiar about, and only few share abuot that to which they are wise. We were urged to seek wisdom on the things most crucial to our lives... our spouses, our children, the line of work we pursue, the things we vote on. We were challenged to have the evidence to back ourselves up when confronted, to have the wisdom to be able to love deeply.
The journey to reach this point obviously takes work, but I believe that it is our duty to embark upon it whether you are sharing your views on tv or just trying to be a good friend, employee, or citizen.

They grow up so fast...

The other day Mary's daughter Sable, who is 9, was hanging out in the office for a little while before I came in. Mary was on the phone and Sable wrote this up on the whiteboard.


We weren't sure what prompted Sable to write out her idea of the process of selling real estate, but we loved this little list and have left it up on the board for the past couple weeks. Sable soaks up a lot of information, being the only kid left in her parents' house. I especially love #8, "Shake hands." She also has somehow picked up in #10 that if you sell your primary residence after living in it for two years that you can take away a big portion of the sale tax-free. Hilarious.
As much as she already apparently knows about real estate, this girl is not going to be a realtor, she informed her mom. Even though her initials are S.E.L., as she pointed out, she does not want to "sell" homes! This little ES?J (or so I guess) wants to be a veterinarian. Cute.

The moments and the story.

"We do not remember days, we remember moments."
~Cesare Pavese, Italian novelist


On Saturday I was walking down the Huntington Beach pier, and I happened to look over the railing down at the beach and witnessed a man propose to his girlfriend. It was really remarkable and moving, and I could hardly tear myself away from my overhead view. A young, but not that young, man and woman were with two pre-teen girls and they all had white shirts on with jeans. It looked like they had a professional photographer taking photos of them. They looked really happy, and then the man and woman hugged, and as she tilted her head up towards the sky, she clapped her hand to her mouth. She pointed up, so I looked up. An airplane was flying by with a banner reading, "Alisha, Will You Marry Me? -Dave" The four of them began hugging and crying and laughing and hugging some more. They continued for quite some time, and as they did, I made up what I thought their story was... that the man, Dave, was the dad of the two little girls (kinda seemed more like he was their parent) and that Alisha was his serious girlfriend whom the girls had grown to love and they were out here and the pretense to Alisha was that they were taking a holiday photo out on the beach to send out for the holidays. You could tell all four of them were ecstatic and just loved each other. The two girls had big smiles and kept wiping away tears as they went back for more hugs from both the man and woman. I wondered what the history was...second chance at true love? finally a mom for the girls...? I actually wiped away a tear or two myself. Now my made-up story is probably not accurate, but even so, it was evident that this moment was going to be really huge in its influence over the rest of each of their lives. None of them will probably ever forget that moment, or how it shaped them in the years to come.

I was thinking today about the two main ways that we remember our lives and pass on what we remember. Our personal histories are revealed in the specific moments that made an impression on us, and in the stories that we design to explain how and why we arrived at where we are now. Moments & stories...like photos & journals, show & tell. It's interesting to share with someone about the moments of joy, sorrow, surprise, fun, and learning in my life, or to hear theirs. It's necessary to develop a healthy way of recounting your history so that you understand yourself and what has made you You.

After some reflection once I got back from a month and a half in Thailand five years ago, I realized that nothing I'd ever done taught me so much about my strengths. I've done plenty of things that taught me how I am weak, but this trip I got to know myself intimately and learn what I was capable of when tested and constantly in the unfamiliar. That is the story that developed from the experiences and memory of that trip. As for the moments that remain vividly in my mind's eye; splashing through the rainforest for hours with a couple friends, the first time I strung together a sentence in Thai to try to connect with some of the kids at the center we worked at, riding on top of a van past rice paddies and trying to comprehend just how big the sky was in that place...they will always be a source of pleasure for me and remind me of who I am almost as much as the story does.


This stuff is on my mind partly because tomorrow morning in this new amazing womens' small group I'm in I am supposed to tell a brief 10-15 minute version of my life story. Gotta condense the most influential moments and stories of my life down into the most bare bones and telling format. Should be fun.

What Happened There Didn't Stay There...

This past weekend I went to Vegas with Zac to see his family and celebrate his birthday. He grew up there. Whenever I'm there I always make a point to go see the Bellagio water show. There are few things I've seen in my lifetime that leave my mouth agape and eyes wide like this does. If you have never seen this performance of water, music, and light, you must. Here's a little something to help take you there, although as we've all experienced with great things we try to record with photos or video, it doesn't do the subject justice...



I know that to be so impressed by something that cost $50 million dollars and 3 years from concept to debut does not make me especially unique or discerning. However, much less has been accomplished with more (think blockbuster movies that bomb). I also happen to particularly love music, water, and light maybe a little more than the average person, so the water show could hardly fail me!
Check this out for the inside scoop, I find it pretty interesting...
http://www.mlifestyle.com/pages/issue_2v2/fountains.asp


Part of this article outlines all the different types of professions involved in creating and maintaining such a thing. They are all experts, or at least extremely capable, in their field; these lighting technicians, designers, water engineers, and pipe maintenance teams. The person who decided they wanted a spectacular thing to separate the Bellagio hotel from the street of the Strip sought out the professionals who would not fail to let them down. In my Rhetoric class at Westmont we spent a day discussing the bricklayer who described his job not as "I'm laying bricks" or "I'm working on a building" but as "I'm building a cathedral." A lot of what's gonna get you places is your perspective, and your commitment to it.
I believe that the most successful people, those that get asked to work on a world-class design concept, those that are hired to build cathedrals, or do the most in whatever their business is, are the ones who combine a positive vision of their ultimate goal, along with the discipline to become very competent in their field. These thoughts all did indeed come from my half an hour in front of the Bellagio lake. And I have been inspired by them lately.


Some people go to the beach or read a book to find inspiration. And some go to Vegas and find it there.