walking on clouds; walking on stars...

joy. peace. happiness. frustration. exhaustion. confusion.
bliss.
the emotions connected to a first 'first love.'
my passion is motion.
my art is musical, visual, physical.
my medium is my body; more importantly, it is my soul.


ballet shoes are records; they contain countless memories and stories, heartaches and celebrations, excitements and disappointments. slipping back into them after an extended time away is like coming back to the room in which you grew up; it is coming home, and it is bittersweet.
there is loss to be acknowledged once you put on those shoes, because they don't fit quite the way they used to, and they don't smell just the way you remember, and they don't move exactly the way you want them to, the way you moved them before; you know that things you once cradled in the palm of your hand have escaped into the still, sweet, thin air of the past. in those neglected shoes rest the pain, sweat, and tears of years and months and lifetimes of dreams pursued, released-- but never forgotten. in those shoes, you may return to youth. you may taste your own hope, possibility, desire...but only for the intake of breath of a moment. you may remember. you may laugh. you may cry. sigh a little, relive the laying to rest of an idea, of a plan, of a wish on a star.
then?
take off your shoes. put them away. handle with care; they are material things, and they won't last forever. someday they will disintegrate and be tossed carelessly into a grimy trashcan, a filthy dumpster.
but the memories? those are yours forever. hold them close; never let them go. feel everything that wearing those shoes poured into your soul, and do not ever forget; do not ever allow your dreams to slip through your fingers again.

i don't want to miss a thing...

it's like i have my own secret garden today... 

normally i hate mornings-- getting up, getting dressed, getting going; it's a drag, it's a chore, and it never. seems. to stop. ugh.
but today is different. today i'm up an hour before i need to be, and of my own volition. coffee is on the brain, but not in the making; today, i have something more important to do than jumpstart my wandering mind.

it's the morning after a long night of rain and a set of crazy storms; the sky is hazy, foggy, muggy. heavy. still thickly clouded, threatening us all with another mighty deluge, and a muted red color from the hidden sunrise. my mum's roses are beautiful. they are covered in tiny drops of condensation -- rain? dew? i don't know. it's lovely, though, and since i haven't been keeping up with this, i'm going to take pictures. even though they're out of focus. even though the color is off. even though they don't do justice to the breathtaking, delicate perfection of the drops of liquid poised so very precariously on the filmy peach petals, i have to try. 

it's too pretty to ignore.

gonna go where dreams like rivers flow...

photo-shoots are so much fun...dressing up, posing 'fierce,' and generally making a fool of yourself with people you love: not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

today, with Dad at work, brother occupied completely by SportsCenter, and Mum out for the weekend, meg and i decided to take advantage of the verdant and vacant backyard and have our own photographic adventure.

i think my sister is gorgeous (a little biased, maybe), and had way too much fun taking pictures of her - there are now at least two hundred new photos sitting on the memory card. 

in addition to being a fun use of an afternoon, our little safari proved most interesting for me, presenting a quandary i hadn't planned on confronting just yet: my little sister is growing up. most of the frames from today are of a young woman; she's conscious of her body and knows how to set herself up for the most flattering shots...and yet: she is still a little girl. there's something fresh about her, whether in her bright green eyes or in the curious set of her mouth, or in a quality more intangible than those. she possesses a joie de vivre that i don't often see in kids her age anymore, and i'm so glad she does. it is this big sister's dream and prayer that she retains and enjoys that all her life, and that in it she grows up and sees herself as beautiful.

you're cute. ♥