Secret Guilty Pleasures

As I sit here in my room writing this post I think of our guilty pleasures. I mean, everyone has them, but I don't think we realize they exist in our lives until prompted with the idea that they do exist within us. So, I'm taking it upon myself to write this in the utmost honest importance of telling everyone my secret pleasure, in hope that you'll look at your life and find those secrets which make up your happiness, but first...

Yikes. I must digress to tell you my absolute epiphany for publishing such a revealing secret which may leave me scarred, and ultimately vulnerable.  I find that I think far too much. My brain is constantly in overload. I've come to a point in my life where, for the most part, I can control the outrageous frenzy which exists in my cerebral interior. Sometimes such thoughts bring me to a sad place. I'm never really sure why, and I never really know when it happens (because it doesn't happen often), but when this does happen I've found that only one thing makes me feel better...

Dance.

:) It's true. I just pop my ear buds in and pump up the dial on my iPod to an awful decibel and dance (probably more like prance) around my room. In no time a smile appears on my face, and I've found that's because all my thoughts, the ones that roam rambunctiously in my head. They disappear, and for a moment they don't exist. It's me and the music. That's it.

A wise man once told me: "It's amazing what dancing naked in the mirror to 'Be Italian' from the musical Nine, will do for your self-esteem."

It was that wisdom which started my entire venture to begin prancing around my room. Although my self-esteem doesn't receive a boost, and I don't do it naked; the essence of the advice has forever changed my life.

Tonight was one of my dancing nights. 

So I say indulge in your greatest guilty pleasures, because life will get you down. Whether it's just for a moment, a minute, an hour, days or weeks, or perhaps you're one of those lucky few who has life beating you like an egg in a cake mixture every single day. Take a moment to steal that extra scoop of fudge swirl ice cream, or run those five miles on the treadmill, or perhaps it's something less tedious like reveling in a great novel or drawing the great horizon.

Whatever it may be: love it, may you genuinely smile while enjoying it, and may it rejuvenate you to continue your dance with life.



Song of Choice: Pretty Girl Rock by Keri Hilson

Through the Crackling Fire Pit

Stubborn feet walk the plank--
hot coals which burn the souls,
of feet and crave the pane--
from windowed glass.

Ouch,
I whisper.

Tears drench my face,
as they cascade--
from the plateau which are
mine eyes,
down to my feet.


Sssss...
the coals reply.

The symphony which plays
songs of farewell.
To this impassioned child
I bore, but now--
give away.


I run away.
Looking,
forward.
Only forward.

It still burns.

Are We Beautiful?

I've been thinking a lot about beauty lately. I'm not really sure where this idea evolved from, but I keep thinking about it. Perhaps, it's the tiny blemish I just developed on my left temple? Or the audacious capacity my nose takes up on my face. I guess, I just started to think: am I beautiful?

Who would want me with this awful scar on my face, or these brown eyes, or these crazy emotions I feel about being beautiful and what that means. I am destined to be alone, I thought. Then, I thought to myself, naturally, that I should compare myself to others. So I did. But rather than seeing other's imperfections as reason to heighten my own self-esteem I found those imperfections to be beautiful.

A mother and daughter who cashed-out at my register with their groceries; two stoic women with pasty complexion, pointy noses and glasses to boot. They looked like twin sisters. They are beautiful. A man who had too much sun as a child (as well as an adult), maybe he was a construction worker, or concrete layer. Whatever it might have been, his skin was burnt and dry. He is beautiful.

I think what I realized is that too many times we stand in the mirror to ask ourselves if we are beautiful and if we live up to the astonishment which are those unreachable beauties, which people (some people) have been cursed with what society see's as "perfect" genes.

I guess, in short what beauty is, it is more about what beauty isn't, and it isn't some competition where we must compare ourselves to one another. It is our fulfillment of taking what we have, and making it work.