Retail Therapy/Survival of Texan in Korea thoughts & Meme
Today's Reviews
Lawn Gnome (BPal): Benevolent groundskeepers, these carefree plaster and stone companions lighten the hearts of passersby. Red currant, molasses, vanilla cream, moss, and patchouli.
Which while I'm on the thoughts of that last one I've begun stock piling a mental list of things that fall and winter require of my shipping needs. Things I might get before the season slips into cold and I'm left longing and waiting. Like a canister (maybe two) of Godiva Dark Cocoa, a box of apple cider mix, one bag of candy corn, and so on, now to possibly include one disc of Mexican hot chocolate makings, or a Vosges Couture Cocoas Sampler, too. (I do kind of miss living in a land where I didn't have to plan so far ahead or for two shipping’s of everything.)
I am very slowly leaning toward candles, but I'm not sure I should. I have spotted a few Yankee Candles over here in the oddest places, but nothing very specific and reliable and none of the Autumn Scents I'll be craving when that comes to it. I'm not sure I've fallen that far in though yet.
This was inspired first by BPAL's autumn release this morning, too. I didn't want my paycheck anyway. Actually, I'm kind of in love with the fact I'm all adult and paid and constant job thing, because the order I placed actually doesn't necessitate me shifting any of plans or bills or anything. It's just in one and out the other, breezy and no panic or dithering to choose. I get to ingratiate the collector side of me and not pinch any other part. I feel so very much like an adult. How strange is that.
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. (Please note: If you simply wish to comment on something I've said but don't want to participate in the meme, that is fine. I will only give you five words if you specifically comment you with 'Words!')
thewinteroak's Words Requests
1. You
I am at a loss for the truly huge level that hits me with this word. I am. I've been contemplating a fourth tattoo (yes, fourth, even though there is only one on my skin at present. The other two would be done save for the lack of easily found tattoo artists hers) of a piece of my favorite Walt Whitman quote today. The quote is "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." I'm toying with getting the last sentence put on my skin.
I think this is the second most important quote proclaiming and disclaiming me after the title of my journal. (The other two one day for those who are new around these parts are the Korean word for love on my opposite upper arm, to make my Japanese kanji one, in thin black lines and my lower back down in white-cyan blue Germanic ruins reading Unconditional Love; Forgiveness & Compassion)
The other things it makes me think of is my seldom used lately You Letters. I used to write them to myself and to other people all the time, where I felt my words were stopped up by situations. I so rarely need them lately and yet neither the tag, nor the icon that goes with them will leave because they are/were so cathartic. I rarely abandon most of the things instituted in this, my nearly decade long ownership of this place, which have given me such solace and sanctuary, the mask and the revealing.
2. Australia
Um. weaverandom comes to mind, and the fallen through summer trip, the landscapes of all the New Zealand shows. And then my hellish trip to Australia when I was eighteen. It was my first new continent and I paid for that trip myself, refusing to back down from going even over the events of 9/11 when every single other traveler in my group canceled. I did the Skyrail and Great Barrier Reef. I learned about my will to survive and endure.
But really Australia is my ocean moment. The one clearest, more pristine moment of my life where everything went hollow and silent and holy. Three hours off the coast, in I have no idea where exactly, is the place where I found myself. It's the most powerful memory in my entire life. Where the waves of deep blue crests are silver-white, and even tears and breathing are bereft of knowing the depth of emotion.
3. Goddess
So many warring thoughts. The Goddess, goddesses, and Rain Goddess.
The first is something I've been nearly a decade and a half. Ever since I knelt in front of my make shift altar somewhere around thirteen, in tears, and begging the universe, please, please, please, just tell me where I belong, I cannot do this anymore, it's tearing me apart between my mother’s Christianity and my father's Paganism/Wicca. How heart sick I was then, so heavy with the weight of feeling like to settle on one was to settle on one parent, to pick and play a favorite (and some of the reactions I got were no better than though that were true) -- but I remember that moment so stunningly clear.
The tears on my cheeks, the cracked faults throughout my heart, the shag carpet under my knees, the moonlight through the slits of the window shade and then the sudden warm, fluid, watery sensation of feeling as though a woman, a million times the size of me had pulled me into her great lap of warm, solid thighs and soft belly, holding me close to her and whispering that it was going to be okay, that I belonged and I was loved, and such a sense of being where I was supposed to be, even in the break down and epiphany of it.
The real epiphany moment came when I went to church the next Sunday, but that is neither here nor there nor the subject at present.
(Continued, into The second) I didn't start mainline studying it just after that, not even seriously for about half a decade after. There were a million steps in between that needed taking and were just as important, battles and healthy boundaries, education and founding and ruin and miracles and all the lessons that were necessary. The mainlining would come with all the history and mythology focuses, with the books I read and the people I talked to, the teachers who nurtured me. But the group that would accomplish it the most was The Reformed Congregation of the Goddess. In whom I came to for a different challenge, but I found this there too. In spades.
The third is a nickname pretty exclusive to thewinteroak from one of our many past foray’s.
4. Amazon
Are scary and awe-inspiring and I like my breasts the way they are, and amazingly beautiful. The person who it brings to mind nearly instantly is joyfulwarrior, who has been in many ways inspiring through both action and unawareness of such a state for years, because I associate her passion and drive and power with that. Other thoughts spin toward Diana, both the Goddess and the comic's figure, and tv representations, in shows (especially Xena). I do not know as much as I could, which makes me want to know more about it. Deeper knowledge seeking is in among the many lists and varied paths of the future.
It always makes me think of Amazon.com, which I have to admit I adore and worship a bit. The used books, wish lists, and calendar keepers alone. I keep my brain in Amazon where it comes to so much of my reading. I keep having people tell me they need me to thin my 30+ Wishlist page, but really I can't. That's a diagram of my head for years. And the honest list of things I still all want to read and see and learn and know about and worlds to visit.
I've always wanted a more direct route to the source of all books. Now all I have to do is wait for the wave that will Kindle-ize them all, too, and then I will be totally lost and more broke than I find myself in bookstores already.
5. Future
Is a fuzzy place. I have general and specific ideas in the far future.
I am on the track to getting eventually my doctorate in Post-Colonial studies and pursuing a career as an English professor. More important and canceling out of that is my want to be a mother (which is pretty much as high and innate want as my need to breathe). Since my early teens I've known I wanted four to five children, birthed and adopted, and I have huge requirements of my life during this time, as I am not going to let other people raise my children during the pre-schooling years of their lives.
My immediate future is fuzzier, aside from upcoming trips, my fourteen month contact deadline, and Catherine's wedding. I'm still playing with the pro's and con's of staying here another year or going home. It's a list that might take some time but now that I've crossed the midpoint of my contract it's something that’s weighing on my mind a whole.
Lawn Gnome (BPal): Benevolent groundskeepers, these carefree plaster and stone companions lighten the hearts of passersby. Red currant, molasses, vanilla cream, moss, and patchouli.
- Syrupy sweet and warm in the tube, reminding me of autumn candies, but then on my skin it is mostly resiny earth of the patchouli and red currant. Not as amazing as the other two in its series, but I'm still in favor of it. This one reminds me of summers spent in deep forests, far from the scents of city and sunscreen, where there is only the dirt and the plants. And then there is the hints of sweetness and syrup just barely peeping through like flowers and the breezes of spring passing away. The last two or three hours of dry down are heavenly for me. It becomes this soft butter creamed vanilla with current shot through it slowly moving into the scent of currant scent lingering in a room after someone's burned incense of the scent.
- This is my love affair with the Beth's Centzon Totochtin taken up the notches of homesickness and autumn into flailing state of I may not be able to own enough of this one either. This one is all the Mexican flavor of my home city again. It's the warm, creamy Mexican hot chocolate filled with the spicy bite. It's every once in a while the smoky-sharp sugar of Sugar Skulls at Dia De Los Muertos downtown It's heavy and then gives you waves of smooth wine. There was something for a few seconds soapy, but it came and went in minutes. I really can't get enough of this one on my skin right now.
Which while I'm on the thoughts of that last one I've begun stock piling a mental list of things that fall and winter require of my shipping needs. Things I might get before the season slips into cold and I'm left longing and waiting. Like a canister (maybe two) of Godiva Dark Cocoa, a box of apple cider mix, one bag of candy corn, and so on, now to possibly include one disc of Mexican hot chocolate makings, or a Vosges Couture Cocoas Sampler, too. (I do kind of miss living in a land where I didn't have to plan so far ahead or for two shipping’s of everything.)
I am very slowly leaning toward candles, but I'm not sure I should. I have spotted a few Yankee Candles over here in the oddest places, but nothing very specific and reliable and none of the Autumn Scents I'll be craving when that comes to it. I'm not sure I've fallen that far in though yet.
This was inspired first by BPAL's autumn release this morning, too. I didn't want my paycheck anyway. Actually, I'm kind of in love with the fact I'm all adult and paid and constant job thing, because the order I placed actually doesn't necessitate me shifting any of plans or bills or anything. It's just in one and out the other, breezy and no panic or dithering to choose. I get to ingratiate the collector side of me and not pinch any other part. I feel so very much like an adult. How strange is that.
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. (Please note: If you simply wish to comment on something I've said but don't want to participate in the meme, that is fine. I will only give you five words if you specifically comment you with 'Words!')
thewinteroak's Words Requests
1. You
I am at a loss for the truly huge level that hits me with this word. I am. I've been contemplating a fourth tattoo (yes, fourth, even though there is only one on my skin at present. The other two would be done save for the lack of easily found tattoo artists hers) of a piece of my favorite Walt Whitman quote today. The quote is "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." I'm toying with getting the last sentence put on my skin.
I think this is the second most important quote proclaiming and disclaiming me after the title of my journal. (The other two one day for those who are new around these parts are the Korean word for love on my opposite upper arm, to make my Japanese kanji one, in thin black lines and my lower back down in white-cyan blue Germanic ruins reading Unconditional Love; Forgiveness & Compassion)
The other things it makes me think of is my seldom used lately You Letters. I used to write them to myself and to other people all the time, where I felt my words were stopped up by situations. I so rarely need them lately and yet neither the tag, nor the icon that goes with them will leave because they are/were so cathartic. I rarely abandon most of the things instituted in this, my nearly decade long ownership of this place, which have given me such solace and sanctuary, the mask and the revealing.
2. Australia
Um. weaverandom comes to mind, and the fallen through summer trip, the landscapes of all the New Zealand shows. And then my hellish trip to Australia when I was eighteen. It was my first new continent and I paid for that trip myself, refusing to back down from going even over the events of 9/11 when every single other traveler in my group canceled. I did the Skyrail and Great Barrier Reef. I learned about my will to survive and endure.
But really Australia is my ocean moment. The one clearest, more pristine moment of my life where everything went hollow and silent and holy. Three hours off the coast, in I have no idea where exactly, is the place where I found myself. It's the most powerful memory in my entire life. Where the waves of deep blue crests are silver-white, and even tears and breathing are bereft of knowing the depth of emotion.
3. Goddess
So many warring thoughts. The Goddess, goddesses, and Rain Goddess.
The first is something I've been nearly a decade and a half. Ever since I knelt in front of my make shift altar somewhere around thirteen, in tears, and begging the universe, please, please, please, just tell me where I belong, I cannot do this anymore, it's tearing me apart between my mother’s Christianity and my father's Paganism/Wicca. How heart sick I was then, so heavy with the weight of feeling like to settle on one was to settle on one parent, to pick and play a favorite (and some of the reactions I got were no better than though that were true) -- but I remember that moment so stunningly clear.
The tears on my cheeks, the cracked faults throughout my heart, the shag carpet under my knees, the moonlight through the slits of the window shade and then the sudden warm, fluid, watery sensation of feeling as though a woman, a million times the size of me had pulled me into her great lap of warm, solid thighs and soft belly, holding me close to her and whispering that it was going to be okay, that I belonged and I was loved, and such a sense of being where I was supposed to be, even in the break down and epiphany of it.
The real epiphany moment came when I went to church the next Sunday, but that is neither here nor there nor the subject at present.
(Continued, into The second) I didn't start mainline studying it just after that, not even seriously for about half a decade after. There were a million steps in between that needed taking and were just as important, battles and healthy boundaries, education and founding and ruin and miracles and all the lessons that were necessary. The mainlining would come with all the history and mythology focuses, with the books I read and the people I talked to, the teachers who nurtured me. But the group that would accomplish it the most was The Reformed Congregation of the Goddess. In whom I came to for a different challenge, but I found this there too. In spades.
The third is a nickname pretty exclusive to thewinteroak from one of our many past foray’s.
4. Amazon
Are scary and awe-inspiring and I like my breasts the way they are, and amazingly beautiful. The person who it brings to mind nearly instantly is joyfulwarrior, who has been in many ways inspiring through both action and unawareness of such a state for years, because I associate her passion and drive and power with that. Other thoughts spin toward Diana, both the Goddess and the comic's figure, and tv representations, in shows (especially Xena). I do not know as much as I could, which makes me want to know more about it. Deeper knowledge seeking is in among the many lists and varied paths of the future.
It always makes me think of Amazon.com, which I have to admit I adore and worship a bit. The used books, wish lists, and calendar keepers alone. I keep my brain in Amazon where it comes to so much of my reading. I keep having people tell me they need me to thin my 30+ Wishlist page, but really I can't. That's a diagram of my head for years. And the honest list of things I still all want to read and see and learn and know about and worlds to visit.
I've always wanted a more direct route to the source of all books. Now all I have to do is wait for the wave that will Kindle-ize them all, too, and then I will be totally lost and more broke than I find myself in bookstores already.
5. Future
Is a fuzzy place. I have general and specific ideas in the far future.
I am on the track to getting eventually my doctorate in Post-Colonial studies and pursuing a career as an English professor. More important and canceling out of that is my want to be a mother (which is pretty much as high and innate want as my need to breathe). Since my early teens I've known I wanted four to five children, birthed and adopted, and I have huge requirements of my life during this time, as I am not going to let other people raise my children during the pre-schooling years of their lives.
My immediate future is fuzzier, aside from upcoming trips, my fourteen month contact deadline, and Catherine's wedding. I'm still playing with the pro's and con's of staying here another year or going home. It's a list that might take some time but now that I've crossed the midpoint of my contract it's something that’s weighing on my mind a whole.