I'm happy knowing that you are mine The grass is greener on the other side

Here's a great weblink to a bunch of pictures done by this artist, Christopher Gilbert. I hope they will interest you if you are bored one day (and you probably were right now, since you came here, didn't you?).

These are some of my favorite photographs from the series:

Title Quote: NeverShoutNever, Happy

Call her green and the winters cannot fade her

Just felt like it you guys, because it makes me really happy to think of it in my head, and I don't want to forget any of it: I am presenting Lola Bellybutton's List of Favorite Sounds.

(In no particular order)

1. The sound of a guitar string as the hand playing it slides quickly across to reach another chord.

2. The sound of keys clacking as someone types on a keyboard at their computer.

3. The sound of rain hitting the roof.

4. The sound of Real Laughter (not fake laughs, I hate the sound of those).

5. The sound my brother makes when he sleeps, which is this slow, rhythmic breathing.

6. The sound of Flower's fingers when she drums them on the table.

7. The hisspop of eggs frying.

8. The silence right before a movie starts.

9. The sound of crickets and cicadas outside my window in the country when it's summer.

10. The bubbling of boiling water.

11. The sound you can hear when you block out the ruckus of the train: that rhythm of clickclack, clickclack.

12. The word the Wizardress sometimes makes when she's very happy: "Da!"

14. People speaking another language (especially french) so fast that all I hear is exoticity, flamboyance, elegance, beauty, without meaning.

15. The sound of the words "I Love You" when they are really and truly meant.

Please add your own favorites on the comments or in your blog and link to mine!

Title Quote: Joni Mitchell, Little Green

Did you know you're still crying Did you know that we all did Is it paradise?

I am sitting here, with a happy warm purring cat at my feat, encircled by my family. We're listening to Reggae and making an Indian feast for Christmas Eve. And might I remind you that I am of Russian Jewish descent, and a definite New Yorker. We are not Rastafarian, Hindu, or Christian. Yet we manage to get it all in, because that's who we are, and we love good music and good food and Love. And the snow is sparkling outside, and I've finished all my cards in beautiful sharpie and trusty colored markers, and I've wrapped gifts and helped make an origami star for our solstice tree. And Lola is having her happy time.

Sometimes I get this feeing from the middle of my chest, like it's filling and filling and warming and warming, and it's going to burst. And sometimes it does. And you know what happens then? I feel like streams of color burst forth and paint invisible streaks of color all over everyone and everything around me. But you know what's funny? I don't feel like that depletes me, I feel like it makes me fuller, more whole. Like, sometimes it's better to give than to get. I've just started reading Lord of the Rings, and in it, a hobbit tradition is that on birthdays, instead of getting gifts, you give one to each guest. That way, over the course of the year, you get presents gradually at each party you attend, instead of a whole bunch on one day and that's all the whole year. I absolutely love this idea, but I know I can't do it, because if I gave gifts, I wouldn't receive any from anyone else on their birthdays. No one else does it. But if they did...

Man that would be awesome!

And I guess all I want to say now, is that I love you. I love life, I love earth, and I think that each of these posts are like love letters to the world. Hmm, that would be a good description for a blog! I'm taking it. Dibs.

I'm leaving you all to your Christmas Eves, be you Christian, Jewish, or of no faith at all. Enjoy it, just as you should enjoy every warm night while the world outside shivers and frosts.

Love,

Lola

Picture Credit: Manoli Lopez

Title Quote: Cocoon, On My Way

It's something unpredictable but in the end it's right. I hope you had the time of your life.

Hey, you guys. It's Solstice. December 21st. In purely scientific terms, the shortest day and the longest night of the year. But my family celebrate it for something more. We celebrate Solstice as a Pagan holiday, though we are not Pagan. You don't need to be to celebrate it. We celebrate the fact that another year has passed, that another Solstice has come around. And more importantly, we celebrate the fact that from here on out, the days are getting longer. The Pagans used to celebrate by lighting a huge bonfire, and/or watching the sun rise through monuments like stonehenge. Many people migrate there still today for this very reason. You see, before we knew much about the earth rotating around the sun, every Solstice, we would get very worried. We would become terrified that the sun had disappeared, that the world had grown dark, and that we would never see sunlight again. So we set up huge bonfires for light, warmth; comfort. And we danced and feasted and in the morning, gave thanks that the sun was once again back. Often, we would hang candles from trees, where the image of stringing lights on your christmas trees originated. You see, Christmas originated from Solstice.

You don't need to be Pagan to celebrate Solstice (as I said before, I'm certainly not). Just tonight, find a place in yourself to give thanks that the metaphorical sun will rise again, look back on your year, and be happy for the world around you. Light a candle to symbolize that flicker of sunlight those people craved, to symbolize hope, warmth, love. What my family does is light candles and hold hands and talk about what we give thanks for. Then we give presents. You don't need to do it that way, though. Flower celebrates is by lighting candles and incense and playing drums. Make up your own way, it only needs to embody the feeling. I love you, and I give thanks for our minds continually whirring, and for our feet continually stepping forwards.

Happy Solstice.

Title Quote: Green Day, Time of Your Life

In the cool of the evening When everything is getting kind of groovy

The cold is creeping in, winter has come. It has invaded our very bones, it has chapped our lips, brittled our hair. Yet it is somehow still so inviting... it reaches our noses with the smell of pine, it wets our tongue with the taste of falling snowflakes. Winter kisses some, and slaps others.

I feel that winter picks my hair up in long, spindly fingers, and licks it until icicles hang, and my cheeks are turned to crystal. But I feel warmth, for winter forces us to cocoon ourselves up in warm wool coats, wrapped tight from the icy slush, encased in a big warm hug. It forces us to brew warmth in a cup, hot chocolate with cinnamon sticks.

And I love winter. Despite some of my grumblings about the cold, or wind, or ice, winter is my favorite season. I love going to the park and sledding, I love snowball fights, I love bringing icicles home to live in our freezer until August. I love Solstice (which is coming up on monday), and I love the smell of coming snow. People are just very fickle. We want what we haven't got, and when we get it, we n0 longer want it. In the summer, "I wish it were cool and wintery", in winter, "I wish it was warm and summery". You can't exactly have both at the same time, so enjoy it as it comes!

Enjoy the frost flowers on the windowpanes enjoy the feeling of a warm shower after you've been outdoors, enjoy making snowmen, or snow angels, be you twelve or twenty two or one hundred and two. And enjoy it especially because who knows how much longer we've got? Already global warming is giving us much less snow, and, not to be morbid or anything, but no one really knows when they're going to die. I don't believe in living each day as their last, but I do believe in keeping the idea close in your thoughts, so as to motivate you to live each day to its fullest. I walked outside this morning, and do you know what I smelled?

Snow.

And now I am sitting here waiting.

Waiting for the snow to come.

Title Quote: Imogen Heap, Spooky

you cease to smell the steel plant after you've been here for awhile

First off, I'm REALLY sorry I haven't blogged for a fortnight (giggle! who can tell me how long that is?). I am basically done with all of the time consuming high school applications though, and now I just have tons of time to sit and worriedly wait. And so blog I will, and make it up to you all. (which happens to be nobody, except my faithful friends of course, though half of these things don't matter to them because they're the people it happened with.) In fact, I feel unsuccessful as a blogger. I feel like it helps ME a lot, but is anyone else really that interested? I love to blog, but I used to be able to blog to no one and be content with telling the interenet. Now, not so much. I don't really know what to do. I don't want this to by my resignation letter, my final post. I promise it won't. But I have a feeling that this blog is winding to a close. I feel like no one else in the world is listening, besides The Wizardess and Flower. And hey, I don't blame you. Who wants to hear abotu my life? As interesting as it is to me, and even maybe to others. if I were you, I would not just go to someone else's website and read them writing about their life.

And that's why I feel like I have to close up this blog. That wouldn't mean I would stop blogging, Good Heavens no! I would just stop on thsi blog. You may have noticed I have ceased to update both my bellybutton blog and Nobody is Home. Maybe I will work on those. And hopefully, I will start a new blog. Bu it needs to have apurpose, a theme. It needs to be something other people will have in common, or find interesting. Not just the general "my life" but something about... well, something. But the problem is, I don't have a lot of ideas. I need to think. I need help with this, and if those anonymous nobodies I wish were reading this are truly there, now is as good as ever to comment and give me an idea for blogging. I was thinking maybe an art project, maybe an interactive project. I don't know. I will continue this blog until I have a new idea. But be warned, be thinking, be it known. This house will not stand much longer.


Title Quote: Ani Difranco, Trickle Down