a strength that lies

excuse me while i have a love affair with summer of oh nine.

sometimes i anticipate something so much that there's no way it will live up to my expectations. i was so excited all week for the ray lamontagne concert at the hollywood bowl, knowing the weather would be great and that we would pack great food and wine and just have a lovely time. i pictured the setting of the hollywood hills and ray's soulful music floating over the amphitheater.

sometimes, when i'm lucky, the moment exceeds my fantasizing.

the night was so warm. the hills wrapped their green around us, the hollywood sign watched from high above. the champagne and salad and dark chocolate covered cranberries were so satisfying. everybody was so happy to be there, so summerfashionable, prepared with their picnics and wine. the orchestra raised their instruments, the flutes, the trumpets, the saxophones, and then, the strings. it was so beautiful. and ray, he never really talks, but boy does he sing. and he sang right to me. "be here now" he said. don't be somewhere else, corinne. now is where you are supposed to be. don't think of tomorrow, next year. now that you've fantasized about this moment don't think of what's next to come. just be still. be still.

Be Here Now

Don't let your mind get weary and confused
Your will be still, don't try
Don't let your heart get heavy child
Inside you there's a strength that lies

Don't let your soul get lonely child
It's only time, it will go by
Don't look for love in faces, places
It's in you, that's where you'll find kindness

Be here now, here now
Be here now, here now

Don't lose your faith in me
And I will try not to lose faith in you
Don't put your trust in walls
'Cause walls will only crush you when they fall

Be here now, here now
Be here now, here now

i want to love you, PYT...

saturday was a wonderful summer day. i played soccer in the morning, a fastpaced, hot, good-humored game with boys and girls up by westmont. then i got crepes at the french festival with friends. i went to northstar cafe and played on my computer. then i saw the movie away we go by myself on a whim. then i had dinner at the habit by myself. then i met up with some friends at dargans pub. then we went to yogurtland. i was about to go home to bed, but then we decided to party, and, still in my outfit from the past eleven hours, we went to indochine and the dj played one of the best sets anywhere in months. we danced forever. we did funny moves. we pumped our fists. we would try to take a break and then have to come running back since "this song is my jam!"

i don't have a single photo of any of it.

so i'll put one from sunday, which was unbelievably amazing too. there is nothing like sitting out on the ocean, alone in a kayak, looking back to the shore at your gorgeous hometown and friends playing paddleball and knowing that this is not your vacation. this is your life. this is my life.

shimmering sky

days like today make it obvious that the evening will hold a fabulous sunset... the scattered streaming clouds always make for a colorful show and reflect the gold fading light in the best way...




backyard barbeque, lawn games, guacamole, coronas... a perfectly mellow friday night.

alegre en el sol

Shortly after I graduated from college I took off for a month in Costa Rica for language school. Almost exactly five years ago today is when I returned. I spent the fourth of July there, on a weekend down the coast with a few girls at a two room bed and breakfast in a tiny tiny village by the sea, that wasn't even in the guidebooks. We couldn't believe how wonderful it was, so gorgeous, the waves were the best we'd seen, and we seemed to have the beach and the boogie boards and the tiny German restaurant with the crazy lady who needed our order two hours in advance and the kind Canadian man who ran the B&B and made us pancakes and the warm night filled with stars all to ourselves. It was one of the most amazing times of my life.







Below is a photo from another time on that trip when a few of us from my language school hiked through the hills to get to this hidden waterfall and pool. We swam there forever, and some of us jumped from the top down into the pool. Some of us may or may not have been dared to jump without their top on... and even though from down below the group couldn't really see anything, you could cover yourself with your arm and put the top back on once you were underwater...I may or may not have done it and felt like I was truly having the crazy carefree moment you should be having when you're 21 and just finished college and jumping off waterfalls in foreign countries.

seven eight nine

you can't see it but there was a fiery pink sunset going on when i took this photo tonight. i was headed inside to watch So You Think You Can Dance with the girls. the white little lights over the back door, the pine tree in the background, karen and laurie making snacks and pouring wine for our show...

july is going well.

summer school

On my walk from home to work downtown today, I passed the international language school on Chapala. Whenever I'm around that area I see young fashionable foreign students milling around, just out of class, heading towards State to shop or get some food. I love trying to figure out where they are from, imagine what their story is, how well they speak English... Today there were dozens all gathered outside, and it seemed that they had maybe just started a session and were new to Santa Barbara; they had that first few days of school buzz, and were slightly hesitant as they made their way in front of me towards their new adventure that is downtown SB.

"show me what i'm looking for..."

I went to a free concert tonight at Bay Cafe, near the beach. A local radio station was sponsoring it, and Carolina Liar was the main performer. I like their song on the radio and thought it would make for a fun Monday night. Meg and I were enjoying our delicious tacos under the mid-evening sun, and as the band got going, I heard a familiar accent. I thought they were all from Carolina for some odd reason, but at least one of them definitely wasn't. I didn't continue to think about it until the accented band member starting talking again. Later the lead singer, speaking American, told the crowd a story about how a song was written about his experience with the Swedish summer, since the rest of the band is from Sweden and he's the only one from North Carolina. Ha! I thought I recognized that particular way of speaking English... and that preppy funky style. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and spontaneous night, complete with the opening singersongwriter guy doing a fun cover of Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid. No joke.





Two of the band members, Carolina to the left, Sweden to the right.