The lady at Walmart thinks I'm artsy

This story is true. I'm not sure if it's a social commentary on the culture of the people of Walmart, or if it's just a piece of prose I wrote to amuse myself. In any case, I feel obligated to memorialize it. If not for your sake, then mine.

The other day I felt the need to print some photos I took. So I ordered photo prints online through Walmart. Unfortunately, my photos usually end up over-saturated when I print them there. This dampens my spirits momentarily. But then I remember how inexpensive they are and I cope because I am a poor college student.

I also felt the need to purchase a book I've desperately wanted to read for quite some time now. I was surprised to find that Walmart sold it online, and through its Site to Store Pick-Up, I could buy it for a cheaper price than anywhere else. So I did.

On a Saturday afternoon, I traversed to this magical place to collect my treasures. I quickly bought some groceries so I could sooner start the fun part: retrieving my photos and new book. Bananas, strawberries, avocados, wheat pasta, almond milk, guilty pleasure chocolate protein shake. Check.

I hurried to retrieve my book from the Site to Store Pick-up section of Walmart, where a tall brunette man materialized from a back room. I revealed my intentions of picking up the book. His eyes reflected subtle surprise, and he informed me that people hardly ever order books at Walmart. He gladly gave me my book, I gladly received it, and I was on my way to the photo department.

The Lady sat. The Lady sat in her apathy. The Lady sat in her apathy until she mustered the will to ask, "Can I help you?"

I smiled and said, "Yes! I'm here to pick up some photos under the name of Kristina Smith."

The Lady found my photos amongst her files. She pulled two of my photos from their sleeve and asked "where I got them." I told her I photographed the images, because I did. She gave me a pointed look that undoubtedly carried the subtext: "AND I'M THE QUEEN OF SHEBA." The Lady returned the photos to their sleeve without a word, acting like she'd let me slide on this one.

I asked The Lady why she questioned the origin of my photos. She replied, "Well. they look kinda like...artsy. So if you got them online [here she paused and gave me accusing eyes], they're probably copyrighted or something, and you're not supposed to print them without permission."

I reiterated the fact that I took the photos. I even told her the shots' locations. A smirk sat, fastened indefinitely to her face.

The Lady clung to her opinion like a tiny starfish on an artificial boulder. However, as she married her opinion, she also entertained her apathy. Drenched in her indifference, she ultimately permitted me to print photos which she presumed I stole from the Internet.

As I walked away from this strange scenario, I was mildly ruffled because of my inability to penetrate The Lady's mind with truth. However, feelings of amusement and even gratification prevailed.

I don't how much fulfillment a human being is supposed to feel when a Walmart employee deems their photography to be professional in quality. And I don't know what it says about a person when they feel flattered in such a scenario. But for a good five minutes, I felt pretty good about myself.

The lady at Walmart doesn't know it, but she thinks I'm artsy.

FIND YOUR HAPPY PLACE

In a book called "The Summer Before" by Patricia Windsor, the main character described an attention-hungry friend of hers as follows:

"I can't imagine her reading a book quietly or making herself a sandwich or listening to music all alone. 

It's as if she can only exist when she's with somebody else."

We shouldn't live life for an audience. It's important to actively relate to other people, and to exist in relation to other people. However, I think sometimes we get too caught up in relating. We need to be able to exist on our own.

Every once in a while, I take a step back in my life and think of this quote. Lately, I've been thinking about it in relation to the college years. During the college years, you're constantly meeting new people. When you meet someone new, your immediate impulse is usually to find common ground. It's comfortable.

Even when you're past those surfacey stages and you're really getting to know someone better, there's still often a struggle to relate perfectly. It's like the end goal of every human interaction is a flawless connection. And too many people depend on those connections as their only source of fulfillment.

Disclaimer: I am not advocating that people be antisocial or saying that people shouldn't strive for connection. You should. I love connecting with other human beings just as much as the next kid.

However, it's healthy to nourish our individual existence and autonomy.

I included the picture on the right because for me it represents the role that autonomy plays in personal fulfillment.

During high school, I once found a page in the newspaper that said "FIND YOUR HAPPY PLACE." At that point in my life, I was just starting to discover what my internal happy place was, and what external activities helped me get there.

That newspaper page hung on my wall throughout high school as I made my room my own little haven: the place where I covered one wall entirely with quotes, where I crafted collages, where I penned crappy poetry, where I painted abstractions on my nails, where I sang, where I swallowed novels whole, where music played endlessly, where I wrote and wrote and wrote, where I sipped hot chocolate, where I practiced photography, where I studied scriptures, where I succumbed to sweet, sweet sleep.

I still have that newspaper page today. It's a yellowed and tattered reminder that I established my own internal happy place a long time ago, and that I need to revisit it as often as possible. I value time spent connecting with other people, and doing so keeps me sane. However, I need to remember to cherish alone time and to embrace autonomy.

Today I celebrated my internal happy place by turning out the lights in my room, lighting a candle, lending Miles Davis an ear, sitting still for a while and thinking about where I've come from. I feel at peace and recharged. I'd recommend it to other human beings.

What is the Upper Hand?

Okay so I am obsessed with this book right now. I highly recommend it.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Gibran writes as if he is a prophet about to leave a people he lived with for 12 years. They ask him for some last words on important subjects (like love, reason and knowledge, pain, self-knowledge, time, good and evil, pleasure, religion, death and so much more). He responds with a poem for each topic. It is great stuff.


The following are excerpts from his poem on Love. Afterwards, I'll give you my two cents on the matter. You are so welcome.

Kahlil Gibran on Love  

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
...
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. 
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. 

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
...
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
So What is the Upper Hand?

As I read this poem, it made me think about the struggle for "the upper hand" in relationships. Any type of relationship. There's too often a fight for that ambiguous "upper hand." What the heck is the upper hand?? It seems like it changes all the time, especially in 'romantic' relationships.

Is "having the upper hand" equivalent to maintaining emotional distance? Is it saving face? Is it being less invested than the other person, but still getting what you want out of it?

Gibran's poem reminds me of this "upper hand" phenomenon when he suggests that love "threshes you to make you naked." Nakedness is vulnerability. Love or anything approaching it will make you feel vulnerable anyway. On an internal level, it will thresh you naked whether you like it or not. 

I think we can take the upper hand by voluntarily offering up our vulnerability.
  
When we offer up our vulnerability, we are completely honest with ourselves and others. We live life openly, without cloaked intentions weighing us down. 

Results? We are liberated. We become less concerned with controlling relationships and it's more likely that we'll learn and grow from them. We will get to laugh all our laughter and weep all our tears. We receive a fuller life. Sounds like the upper hand to me.

White Oleander

White Oleander is a universe-expanding, skin-thickening book. It is rough and empowering. It grants readers a connection to people, both ordinary and extraordinary, with all their frailties, their flaws, their beauty, their games, their will. It is poetically realistic.  Some of my favorite quotes from it:

• Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you and allows your soul room to grow.
•  That beautiful girl, she was a universe, bearer of the words that rang like gongs, that tumbled like flutes made of human bones.
•  I realized I was exactly where she wanted me, safely unhappy…a prisoner…brewing into an artist, someone she might want to know someday. When all I wanted was for her to see me now.
• This was an artist’s stare, attentive to detail, taking in the truth without preconceptions.
• That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific—chair, eye, stone—but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out.
•             Life should always be like this…Like lingering over a good meal. Unfortunately, most people have no talent for it…As soon as they start one thing, they want it to be over with, so they can start on the next.
• The mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don’t know whether you’re going to jump.
•  His guitar bore his longing up into the darkness like sparks, a music profound in its objectless desire, beautiful beyond solace or solution.
•  A man I wanted like falling.
• Feel the music, Astrid. Don't look at me. Close your eyes and be inside it.
• How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth were bad, its hair gray and unkempt. While beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.
• The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.
• The mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain.
• I liked Berlin. The city and I understood each other. I liked that they left the bombed-out hulk of the Kaiser Wilhelm church as a monument to loss. Nobody forgot anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn’t like America, where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time. We hadn’t learned yet, that there was no such thing as an empty canvas.
• We were the wild children with all the talent.

Quelqu'un m'a dit

This is the type of song you listen to on repeat on a long car ride to California while you're reading a sad, honest book. It's the type of song you listen to while you're falling in love. It's the type of song that starts to play as you walk away from him in blissful, utter disbelief of what just occurred. It's the type of song that you put on as you twist restlessly in your sheets, remembering the way his lips felt on yours. It's the type of song you listen to as your heart is breaking, and everything beautiful seems to unravel slowly. It's the type of song you listen to when your heart is broken-- for a moment, you are physically paralyzed; for a lifetime, you become emotionally numb and immovable. It's the type of song that lets your senses drink in all the sweet beauty and pain the world has to offer. It's the type of song that plays as you careen off a smooth, slippery cliff, and you don't mind. Because this song is playing, you are suspended in air, and that is enough.

Hushed Whispers

This is just some stream-of-consciousness I wrote last night as my mind wandered during a symposium I attended for extra credit.

Hushed whispers float to the tall, tall ceiling.
It's Friday night; what am I doing here?
What would I be doing if I wasn't here?
At least I'm somewhere.
Company.
This company is a 1.5 on a scale from boringdryspeechprofessor to Lady GaGa.
So many 1/3 bald heads.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.6.7.8.
9.10.11...
It's an epidemic!
If I wasn't here, where would I want to be?
I would be warm. I would be sitting by a fire, the flames jumping delicately as I turn the pages of a cherished book.
Steaming hot cocoa in hand, I give no thought to the whirlwind of intricacies which weave together the fibers of my existence, my world.
For I am immersed, absorbed, engulfed in the world of my novel.

Be a Filter, Not a Sponge

Hello, world.

So blogging is one of those things I swore I would never do. Along with joining Pinterest, talking to my parents about my love life, and befriending people who like things like Justin Bieber and Jersey Shore. But I've done all those things now, so I figured I could give blogging a try.

My main reason for starting this blog is to organize my thoughts. I LOVE WRITING. I always have. It's therapeutic. I have come to realize that it is the most thorough and productive way for me to sift through my thoughts and discover little golden nuggets of truth. I love it.

For my first post, I thought I'd share one of my favorite quotes ever. It's from the book "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." Here it is:

"Be a filter, not a sponge."

In this book, the main character is named Charlie. This quote is advice given to Charlie from a phenomenal teacher. The teacher specifically intends for Charlie to utilize this advice when reading books. I firmly believe that this advice applies to books we read, along with everything else we're exposed to; this including opinions of human beings we respect.

It is so important to develop a way to sense what actually resonates with you, as opposed to instances when something simply shocks you into thinking you believe it.

Authors of novels are such interesting and insightful people. I love reading books and gleaning pieces of wisdom that the authors have nestled within the pages. I always write down quotes as I go, and I try to apply  those things which resonate most with me to my daily life. However, there have definitely been instances when I have read something, been floored by its peculiarity, and taken it for life doctrine simply because the idea was so original and captivating. Just because something shocks you and alters your perspective doesn't mean that it is truth.

In regards to written stimuli, the main point is that I've learned I cannot simply soak up everything I read and let it all affect me equally. I'm all for being exposed to as many aspects of life as I possibly can and letting everything I do in life influence me and shape who I am; however, letting something shape who you are doesn't necessarily equate to including it in your worldview. Letting something shape who you are often means that you're exposed to something, it shocks you, and you decide to reject it and move on.

I believe this also applies to the opinions of people you interact with. Often, a conflict of interest arises when someone I have a lot of respect for forwards an opinion with which I blatantly disagree. I'm not saying I'm more right, or they're more right; that's not the point. The point is that people possess opinions, and just because you revere someone as a person doesn't mean you need to mirror their views of what is truth and what is not. Don't passively let people change you. Be a filter, not a sponge.

Picture a water filter. I'm obsessed with those things.
The unfiltered water is everything you're exposed to. The filtered water is the things that you let affect and change you. The filter is the important part. Here you choose what you let change you. It might seem tedious to refine your filter, because it often takes a lifetime to fully develop. However, I believe it's something worth working on. Realize what things resonate with you, and what things don't. Life is so much more fulfilling when you realize how in control you are of who you become. So do it! Be a filter, not a sponge.