I need you (I need you) More than anyone darlin'

ATTENTION.

I will be leaving for an amazing hippie camp in about half and hour, and will not return and be up and blogging until august 1st or so, because there are no computers allowed there.

Thanks for understanding,

Lola.

Title Quote: Build Me Up Buttercup, The Foundations

I got headaches and toothaches And bad times too Like you

Today, my friends and I woke at 5 in the morning and headed off to Central Park, to see the cast of Hair, the tribal love rock musical, perform some of the songs from the play. Unfortunately, the performance was sponsored by abc.com, and television is mainly something I am opposed to. This meant that there were a bunch of people who hadn't come for the music, but to be on tv. We even met a woman who thought she as going to see hairspray! That made me angry, because that is completely not what the play, or the subject of the play,w as about. And then of course it was totally directed for the cameras, doing takes and retakes of each song until it was perfect. The audience was only there so that they could be shown, loving the performers. They literally told us, at times, when to clap and shout. And that is just selling out! The whole play is about resisting the system, doing what you want, being free. Grrrr. But there were others who felt this way too. When my friends and I got in to the area, the first thing we noticed was that there was astroturf place over the actual grass. But, later on, we found they couldn't completely get rid of nature, since after all, it was in the middle of a park. Sparrows were nesting in the supports of the stage, and as the performers sang, they would fly out, above everyone's heads.

So here we are, and there are bunches of people holding signs to the cameras and crowding around the stage. No one really is on it, and we can listen from farther away, so we set out our blanket away from the crowd and sit to eat our breakfast. Others, real Hairheads began to spread down too. We happily munched and crunched and when we looked up, we saw that three men, all dressed like Jimi Hendrix except for they were white, were setting up behind us. They had these wonderful, colorfully batiked flags that they began to twirl and spin and create colors in the air with. They let us try it. It was amazing, and they had just because they wanted to, not because they had been hired. I laughed at all the people in front of us, pushing to see an empty stage, while they were missing a real show behind them!

Finally, the cast began to come onstage, and we had a great time, despite the cameras. The music was amazing, and Berger (one of the main characters, the actor is Will Swenson) actually came down and took people's hands, and totally held on to his for about five seconds! Yes, I was extremely excited, thank you very much. Flowers in my hair, beads around my neck, I jumped and sang, and then it began to rain. Loving it, we reached up and pulled it down, in sheets of drizzly mist. It didn't dampen our party, it only made it better. Since Michael Jackson had died the day before, the cast of Hair did a tribute to him, by singing I'll Be There, and it was great. The concert ended, and we dispersed. My friends and I (to be exact they were the wizardress and Miss Lizzy) wandered away, and began to get ourselves back to school(we had missed the first hour or so, but it didn't matter since it was the last day of school).We stopped by Bethesda fountain, where oh, so many weddings are held, and listened to a man play Michael Jackson jazzy-like on his sax. We waded into the fountain until someone made us get out, then proceeded on our merry way. After getting out of the park and taking many detours, we came to The Wizardress' grandmother's house, and stopped by to dry off. Her house was filled with chotchkes. As we walked up the street, people stared at us strangely, especially since I was singing the lines of the title of this post over and over. I remembered how we looked and who we were and I was so happy that I was who I was and that we were the sort of interesting people tourists stared and talked about. I was so, so, happy.

If you would like to see what you all missed, go here and click on the let the sun shine in and aquarius links on the top bar, or just search for hair in the park. There is also the cast blog telling about all the actors if you did see hair, which I thought was pretty cool. You can see it here.

Title Quote: Hair, I Got Life

All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in

This dose of funny animals brought to you by

Lola Bellybutton,

Blogger (if I do say so myself) extraordinaire

Title Quote: They Might Be Giants, Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes

My sky shoes are spiked with lead heels

This is one amazing artist: His name is Mark Wagner, and he makes art out of dollar bills. He very carefully cuts them up with an exacto knife and collages them together to create beautiful works that look nothing like dollars. Please check out his site or the first one, because I can only put up so many pictures, but here are my favorites:

Title Quote: Don McLean, Dreidel

I been dreamin' since I woke up today

Summer utopias

force down

idea?

Defenders tango

with entombing 

pride

a colorful dragon

breathes language

infernos

The ancient riddle

to folly incites

a fused serum.

title quote: Daydream, Lovin' Spoonful

Facing a dying nation Of moving paper fantasies

People are always writing disparities, agonizing on the state of the world. I see their words, assembled into loose personages, kneeling, their hands stretched out, trying to grasp at something, save something, that they feel they cannot. But really, perhaps you can.

Perhaps, as we live and move, as our brains whir about in our tiny brains that are so complicated when we magnify each particle, but are so simple when zoomed out and compared to things like the theory of Evolution, perhaps we are making a change. I think that to protest, to speak out and bring to light the shortcomings of the world, is really only half the battle. Now that people see  them, we must begin to right them.

I recently read an article in Make magazine, that talked about a man who was doing just that, trying to save the world. His plan was to feed phytoplankton (the lowliest form on the food chain, which krill then eats, which whales eat, or fish eat, which sharks and we then eat, etc.) iron oxide, which caused them to 'bloom', or prosper, grow. And for every iron atom phytoplankton consumes, it absorbs 100,000 carbon atoms from the atmosphere. That means that if you feed them this food, then they get rid of the co2 in the air, what is causing (in part) global warming. 1 ton of iron can fix 367,000 tons of co2. 

So why not do this? Why not let him get started, throwing around iron atoms to these miracles makers? Well, because people won't let him. People in companies who get ahold of the government, etc., who don't want him too for silly reasons. And most of those reasons are masked behind one real cause: This way to fix the environment would cost about $8 billion, while they believe that other ways would cost upwards $400 billion. And these companies are angry, because they would be getting some of that money to save the environment, but with this man relatively cheaply cleaning up the environment, they get no money. So, yes, these greedy people are endangering life as we know it for not just our species but the whole world--because they want some little green colored slips of paper. 

But if there are enough of us whose heads are filled with spinning whirligigs, who like to imagine what if... then perhaps we can do something yet. Per

haps there will be more of us than them, and we can rise, we can live and learn and teach and help and grow and thrive. 

And isn't it, as I am always saying, the point of life to be happy? Not in a short term sense, and not in a singular sense, either. But to be happy yourself, and to be able to try, at least, to make sure that those around you, and those yet unborn, will be happy too. I mean, really, what good is living, day in, day out, trudging to a job you hate, coming home to a house--either alone or with people who are not being who you want--unhappy? What is the reason? And you may say "Because I need to make money." Why? So that you can retire, and live an unhappy life then, too? For, in my experience, unhappiness the whole life just leads to more unhappiness later on. So why not start now by stopping such unhappiness, if only to be happy for an indefinite period in the indefinite future, and start now? 

You say life clings in balance, that it all must get done or it will fall apart, but why not just get rid of the whole system? Do that and the web of unspoken rules, that precious balance, is gone, and you break free, to do as you choose, and to make yourself happy and set an example for others. It's not about money or power; the most powerful, richest person out there may be and most probably is more sad than the lowliest, most poor person around. And really, no one can be happy if you aren't around, or there isn't an earth around, to be happy on. So that's where the long term kicks in Its not all just short joys, you have to plan and be happy as you do it, and make sure that later on, your kids, your grandkids, will have a place to be happy, and you will be happy then too.

But now, it really just sounds like a bunch of commercial fodder, used to make you buy something, or some sort of cheesy "everything is groovy, man" thing. And that's not what I mean. I'm just asking, would you chose billions of dollars, a beautiful spouse, millions of people to rule over, but no guarantee that you will be happy, or none of that, just pure, long lasting happiness? Really, which one? I'm trying to be profound ere, I'm trying to get across a message. I mean, after all, people who smile live longer.

Title Quote: Hair (musical), Flesh Failures (let the Sun Shine In)

Picture Credit: For the first two: Glynis Selina Arban, The last one is from an unidentified flickr user.

from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow

Rain pours and pounds on people's faces, and the faces scrunch up and try to blow it all away, but finally all those little drops add up, and the faces open up and accept the rain, that refreshes, cleanses, opening all sorts of infinite possibilities, and not asking for anything in return. The faces and the people attached tot hem do all sorts of things they might not of been thinking of doing the hour before: running, singing, splashing, perhaps sharing an umbrella, though I don't much believe in those silly things. And, sure, there are people who don't enjoy rain, times when it really is very unwanted and un-enjoyed, but today I am dwelling on its good aspects, those of which there are many. Have you ever noticed, that as you look out at rain, look through it's many mingling, swaying curtains, the colors of the world sway and mingle too? Until it is the color of rain and rain is the color of it. And it is not ugly, quite on the contrary, it is beautiful, even when the mud mixes in too. You just have to look at it the right way. 

I once sat in a stream, and watched as it swirled around my legs, and wondered, what was the color of water? Because to see it anywhere is to see the colors behind, before, and around it, but what was its own color? It had no name. WE had not invented such a word in our language. And I thought that one day, I might write a book, and I would title it The Color Of Water. Curious, about two seconds ago I googled those words, and found a book already written with such a title. Instead of disappointing me, it comforted me, because I knew that at least one other had taken the time to ask his or herself, what was the color of water? I can only answer that question in a poetic sense, answering that water is the color of a child's love; the color of never before opened eyes; the color of want, need; the color of life. And this I pondered and told my friend, sitting next to me, until the conversation came to rest on stardust, and finally the lyrics of woodstock, by Joni Mitchell, where she says "We are Stardust, We are golden", because we technically are made from stardust. During the Big Bang, stars exploded and imploded, and came about to, in the end, create all the elements, 111 of them, in the world. Though it is thought that at the beginning of the Big Bang, there was only Hydrogen, Helium, and Lithium. The world was made from star debris, as were we and everything else on it and in the universe, which makes us, in a convoluted sense, made from stardust. 

And, coming full circle to my beginning train of thought, makes us kind of sort of made, in a very very basic sense, from the same stuff as rain is made from. And not even in such that basic sense, as our bodies are about 60% water in adult men, 55% water in adult women, so we are a lot like rain. If it were not for the salt, we would essentially be crying rain. And isn't that a thought? I think I would be less embarrassed by some of my tears shed if I imagined them to be rain, doing the same thing as rain does. One of my most favorite things to do is to run through grass right after it has rained or while it still is raining, and afterwards, my feet feel as if brushed with the most expensive moisturizing creams; they are soft and supple. Rain is magical, wild animals know it enough, and so I think we better take a lesson from nature and open our mouths, laughing, when the sky opens up around us.

Title Quote: Led Zeppelin, Immigrant Song

Useless information Supposed to misfire my imagination

Hey. Going to Boston with my school tomorrow for three days. Wow. I just almost wrote family instead of school! Wowowow. Interesting... So anyway, we're going away there and hopefully I will have some great stories to write about it. But for now, I think I will write some more (still!) of my travels in Punta Cana (hope this isn't getting boring, I just have so much to tell!). 

Though this was a resort, there were a few interesting people. I mean, most were fat pink americans or tan, almost naked europeans, but there was bound to be a few people there that were someone we wanted to meet. After all, we were there, weren't we? And if we could possibly be staying here, so could others like us. (please excuse my sounding egotistic and self-centered, but I see no way else to explain it.) Here are a few more people I saw who seemed interesting, if not people I wanted to meet, at least people who were interesting enough to write about. 

On the beach one of the days, we saw a topless lady we nicknamed Sandy Lady, for she was covered in sand. Sandy Lady was tanned dark brown, not orange, like some people who overtan. She was slim, with a spiraling, swirling black tattoo winding up one side of her. She stood, in just her bathing suit bottom, playing over the sand. As we walked over to the water we noticed that Sandy Lady had buried her boyfriend in the sand and all that stuck out was his head. As we entered the water, Sandy Lady ran in too, and became no longer Sandy. She looked so happy and free. Maybe it was just her personality, but maybe it was the fact the she had no top to keep her in. We only saw about three topless women at this beach. I would have gone topless as well, no doubt about it, if only I had a friend to come with me. It would be too hard on my own, I think. It made me determined to go to a nude beach someday, though. This is how I feel beaches should be, especially since people wear practically nothing on, anyway. When I go to France (a goal of mine is to go there when I'm old enough to go alone) perhaps I will go to a nude beach there. 

On the beach, I was also interested by how these two men, presumably Europeans, as they were clad in speedos, walked down the beach. They walked side by side, and matched each other's steps exactly, so that if viewed from the right angle, it could have been viewed as one man. Neither man was trying to walk at the exact same pace, nor did either notice. That intimacy, much like the one I noted from this post, was just so very real, you know? I just seem as though I don't see it often. I mean, we're soaked in so called "intimacy" from the media, younger and younger children being able to watch people kissing and having sex in movies, but I feel that that just isn't it. I feel like other little moments, like the two I have already described, mean so much more, and it's sad that there isn't more of it.

Lastly, we saw a man with tattoos all over him. We were able to see them all over, as he was sitting in this ridiculous wet bar--where you sit on half submerged stools or swim around with drinks in your hand, gotten from a bar just plunked right in the middle of the swimming pool! Anyway, so he was sitting at the wet bar, wearing only a bathing suit, so we saw all these tattoos up and down his back, and they were pretty impressive, and believe me, I've seen my fair share of tattoos, in NYC and LA. He had a thin scraggly bleached blonde mohawk that was lilac at the tips. On his shaven head there was a brain tattooed inside a neutron. I thought that this was pretty cool, and it made such an extreme difference from most everyone else there. I wondered what his story was, how he happened to be here. I missed NY, with its diversity. I missed.

But then again, here I am, back again, and leaving tomorrow morning! Well, I better wrap this up now and go pack my bags...

write ya when I get back!

Lola

Title Quote: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

Some of the worst songs get righted on three chords

I think I am addicted. I think I am addicted to music. I carry my tunes in a thin box mp3 player and it is always calling to me from the depths of my pocket. I'm still trying to figure out if this addiction is a good thing or a bad one. It sharpens my reality, it heightens my awareness. When I'm alone, I'll just put on some music. I'll sing if there are words, if I know them, if I want to. I feel my blood being calmed or boiled by the melodies. I walk differently, I think differently. With music, I can wipe away a bad day, or I can cleanse myself in sorrow. It can be the music I carry in my pocket, or the music I carry in my head. I've always listened close to the lyrics, always wondered how it was formed. Unless I've written it. I am besotted with music, we might even say.

I mean really, all my titles are song lyrics! Sometimes I think in them. My folders at school are covered in words, lyrics that flow from my pen, because if I did not let them out, they would bounce around in my head all day. Ear worms, I call them. Those songs that get stuck in your head and you can't possibly get them out? I write them on my folders, and then they're free again. I want to get plain white canvas shoes or a backpack and just write lyrics all over them, so I could walk around wearing songs. Whenever I have the chance, I listen to music.

On the bus, walking someplace, sitting at home--I listen listen listen. ANd the days I forget to bring my mp3 player with me, I feel like I've lost something very dear, I miss it all the time.

Is this normal? Are you addicted? Because I certainly am.

Title Quote: Beth Orton, Love Like Laughter

A suspended ring or the mode of laughing Pebbles drawn from a heap

Last night for dinner, I had an amazing meal. We made beet salad with shredded beets, carrots, and apple with a vinaigrette dressing, which was the most beautiful red imagined.

Then, we made quinoa (pronounced keen-wa, it is a grass grain that is very high in protein.) with corn and scallions. It was sweet and crunchy from the corn, chewy and grainy from the quinoa, and fresh and green and slightly savory from the scallions.

Lastly, we had a cucumber pomegranate salad. Thin slices of cucumber on a bed of lettuce sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and crumbled feta cheese, drizzled with a dressing that is smoky and thick and sweet from pomegranate molasses. 

It was light and cool and fresh and filling and just perfect for spring/summer. And then for dessert I had an apricot. I love apricots, I love how they are tiny, I love that beautiful creamy orange milk color on the outside, and the light fuzz that textures its skin. And I love biting in, pulling out the pit, and tasting the slight tang of the outside mix with the sweetness of the inside. Everyone says it's always the first bite that's the best, but I like all of the bites best.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I make you hungry? How about you tell me what you had for dinner last night in the comments. I'd love to know.

Hungrily yours,

Lola

Title Quote: Suzanne Vega, Predictions

Photo Credit: My father, who loves to take pictures of everything, especially food, took the pictures last night.

And I've got a song to sing

We went on a walk about New York today. Here are three images that stood out to me that I encountered on the walk:

(1) A couple, sitting on a bench outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, holding hands. But they were not kissing, nor were they staring lovingly at each-other's faces. They were both staring out, forwards, their eyes both focused on something out there, in the world. And you could tell that they were both seeing the same thing, sharing their vision, that's how close they were. And I thought, excuse my inexperience, but that I thought, now that was real intimacy. More so than sitting there, making out on the park bench in front of everyone. (which, by the way if you don't live here, is a very normal thing in NY. You see, oh, I don't know, about 1 couple every few benches making out if you're walking in the park or even just some place with benches. Or one per car on the subways.) And so, maybe I was overdramatizing, but that resonated with me, that idea of stronger bonds through what you were seeing, for that you felt as well.

(2)A tree, standing (or sitting, whichever) in it's little square of dirt on one of the many streets I walked down, encompassed by a fence. Those fences are probably there to keep kids and dogs out, but this tree, this tree must have thought that fence was a personal insult, that it was trying to keep it from getting out. So guess what that tree had done? It had swallowed that fence whole, just grown over it, until there were only a few black bars showing, just the tips of each fence post poking out from bark. As if to say, You think you can keep nature from doing what it wants? Hah! Just try! And it made me laugh inside, this tree getting its victory, eating up that fence, showing that it could be free, even if people think the only thing trees can do is stand around and grow. Trees, like all other things, can have victory!

(3) An old store, on the second floor of a building, advertising itself to be a fixer of clocks. And a fixer it was. Through the windows, you could see enormous clock faces, just sitting up there, gathering dust. The old kind of clock, with the big yellowing face and the embellished black numbers. and the really interesting bit was, some of the clocks didn't have hands anymore. They were being repaired, still. And it was interesting, because those clocks, they still had time, but they could no longer tell it. For them, they held all the time, they watched as it alternately sped or crawled by, but though they watched, though it was moving for them, whoever looked at them could see nothing. Time was unmoving on those clocks for them. Not only was it unmoving, it just wasn't there. It wasn't even wrongly told, it just wasn't told at all, for there were no hands to point the way. And I thought, what a sad fate for a clock to end in.

L

Title Quote: If I had a Hammer, Pete Seeger

Photo Credits: The first and last are from an unidentified source from flickr, the middle one (tree) is by kbda.com, (Kim Baer Design Company) by Kim's friend, Keith.

Live and learn from fools and from sages

Linkssss!

First off, we have this amazing project from a few years back: Haverhill 2000.  The photographer Chris Darley-Brown, spent many many hours photographing the people of Haverhill, a town in England. Chris took pictures of resident of Haverhill and morphed them together to form faces, from say, all women ages 15-25. He also did one for all residents, male female, young, old. The photographs are startlingly beautiful, flawless, and make you think. So I suggest you head over to check out the people.

Second off, I will introduce the artist Evelien Lohbeck. She has made these amazing films from paper and animation, the most amazing one being her film, "notebook", which shows her going on the computer, searching youtube and watching her videos--but it's all just paper and drawings. I'd say it's worth a few minutes of your time, to just go over there and be amazed.

And then, lastly, is a podcast. And an amazing one at that. Called the Memory Palace, it is just that--a virtual palace full of memories. The host, Nate Dimeo, talks about all sorts of things, from Ben Franklin's death ray, to passenger pigeons, to the international brotherhood of mothers. I assure you, you'll be very fascinated by what he has to say. I just love this sort of thing, because it provides me with so much useless information I couldn't have gone on without. I also have a widget on my igoogle page that tells me random useless facts. There are a lot out there, because not once have they been repeated. It tells me today that Albert Eintein never learned to drive a car. Now thank Buddha I know that; what if I were to have a test on it??? But anyways, back to the Memory Palace. Believe me, it's good. Go see for yourself.

Ok, I've got to get running off now,

Toodles

Lola

Title Quote: Aerosmith, Dream On

Well if . . . you want to have great love, you got to have great anger

WORD OF THE DAY TIME!!!

(get it, snickers+"see" equals snickersee? haha..)

snickersee-a large knife.

just imagine, warning someone: "Don't push me, I've got a snickersee and I know how to use it!!!"

people would just laugh, and hen look what would happen! Their heads would be rolling at your feet.

Title Quote: Letter to Eve, Pete Seeger

And suppose I never met you

Alright, so we meet again, huh?

Well, here we go, I want to present to you some characters seen while at Punta Cana...

(all are real, none are figment of my imagination. Ha! fig...)

Today, I want to talk about Maya.

Dominican, 20-something-ish, she's hard to describe. Words can't really capture her, she's that sort of person. Long brown hair that on anyone else would be described as a mousy color, with streaks of orange blonde bleached by the sun. Her hair falls to just below her shoulder blades in cascades of uneven waves, and every time we have glimpsed her walking on the beach there is a straw cowboy hat atop her head. She always wears a slim white polo shirt with sleeves that end just below the muscles of her upper arms and hug them close. Her shorts are always shirt but not buttcrack short, like most of the other girls at the beach. They end halfway to her knees, the perfect length. No matter what she is wearing, she always has a big black digital camera hanging around her neck, which my father tells me is called a DSLR. This is her normal dress, her uniform. It changes a little from day to day, but the fundamentals stay the same. For instance, when I first saw her she was wearing denim cutoffs, and around her waist was slung a flat hemp belt with a pouch on each side, extra pockets, and I think you all know by now how much I value pockets. I have since fallen in love with the ingenuity of this particular invention, and want one of my own. Another day she wore greenish twill shorts and a beautiful fire colored tasseled scarf that hung from her shoulders and talked in the breeze.  She was such an intriguing figure, slim, short, her tanned limbs weaving through the air. With a slight accent, she was decidedly foreign, yet when she turned her back to me I was reminded of someone I knew, though I could not remember who. 

Maya worked for the resort we were at, photographing whatever tourist would pay for it, posing them on the sand, occasionally flinging her hat haphazardly on their heads, laughing at their bad jokes. She was ever so interesting, I believe I envied her and her natural sauveness, her beauty that seemed to not even be there, as it is with a tree. And I thought that I would try to put her here in words, because maybe you know someone like her, maybe you would benefit from her image, whatever she looks like to you. Anyway, I just wanted to say,

Goodbye, Maya.

Live well.

Title Quote: Regina Spektor, Fidelity

Nothing’s measured by what it needs

Today, Lola was challenged to speak in the third person. For the whole day. And so she accepted, which is why she is now writing her blog post in the third person. Lola learned a lot today. She is one who fairly often opens her mouth and regrets not thinking through her words first. Well, speaking in the third person got rid of that. She had to think so much about what she was going to say and how before she said it that she wasn't half as compulsive. The slightly irksome thing about speaking in the third person though, was that she continually had this feeling that she was just saying facebook updates (i.e. "Lola thinks that she will go out and get some pizza now." "Lola thinks Joe Biden would be crazy if he acted like a 7th grade girl." etc.). But she got over that, and found out some pretty cool stuff. She realized that this was the most she had really ever said her own name, because, think about, most people don't use their own name often. She found that it was an amazing brain exercise, that she had to think that much harder in order to say things, instead of just blurting them out. And that no matter how hard she tried, she could not get her own mind to think in the third person. She wondered if possibly, there was some language that spoke of everyone in the third person,t hat they would think in the third person. She thought that if there wasn't one, there should be, for that would be interesting. So she thought about animals, and now she is wondering if animals have grammar in their languages, and she assumes they must, which is very very interesting. She now thinks back to a book she read, long long ago, for younger children,but still good, called music of the dolphins, by Karen Hesse, she believes. It was about a girl who had been raised by dolphins, and "rescued" and taught to speak and all. And Lola wondered, did she still think in dolphin? Could she translate, perhaps? I wonder, because that would be incredibly useful to have someone who can speak in an animal's language and a human's so they could translate. Wouldn't that be interesting? There are always fairy tales like that. Lola wonders what we would find out... She bets that they find that dolphins or porpoises are smarter than humans, hah, then the joke would be on them...

Anyways, that's all Lola has for today, she has to go update HoneyFuggler, and she's sorry because she was meaning to post some other parts of her vacation, which, yes, she knows was weeks ago, but she hopes this will interest you for now, instead.

Goodbye,

Lola

Title Quote: Already Dead, Beck