Conditional Love

I've been thinking about this the past two days. The notions of conditional versus unconditional love are complicated, when you think about it. The only unconditional love that is absolute is God's love for us. Sure we can say that we love someone unconditionally, but how true to form is that? Will we really be around when the going gets tough, I mean, reaaaaaaallly tough.

To expand on that, I guess I feel like people sometimes walk on the opposite side of the fence and, to a certain extent, tell it how it is. What ends up happening is that people put too many conditions on love. We ask questions like, "Would you still love me if I laughed like Fran Drescher?" "Nope!" Now, is that necessarily true? No, but on a slightly more serious note, what happens when the question becomes, "Would you still love me if I got in a horrible car accident and lost both of my legs and my ability to speak?" Well... would you? That's a tough question, Ryan had a point when he said that you probably couldn't accurately answer that question until it happened, but what about if you know that the answer is no? Can you still profess your love for that person knowing it's not unconditional? I suppose it's hard to answer the bigger question when you're going off of examples, but my point is that sometimes we get so caught up in asking, "Will you love me if..." That our relationship becomes more of a shell, with nothing inside. We create a set of conditions that make us comfortable and anything outside of that is mutually unsavory... we don't like it, we don't want it, we won't have it. We leave no room for the unexpected. Where's the chaos and the dirt? The bumps and bruises create dimension, add a little flare.

What are we so scared of?

New Year in February

Sooooo I haven't posted anything new because I haven't written anything new. Tragic, I know. With all of the resolutions people have been blogging about I realize I never blogged about mine, though I just like to call them goals, I feel like if I call them resolutions I won't keep them. Among the obvious and surefire goals (graduate from college, for example), I've also decided that I need to write more. I don't expect to be the next Maya Angelou, but before I die I want to publish SOMETHING and the only way to do that is to write until I've written something publishable.

I could probably even write a bit here and there at work, but alas I spend my days on monster.com, college job sites, and searching for publishing companies (to work for)... and reading all of the blogs I subscribe to, but let's not get into THAT obsession. I've come to the hard realization that I can't afford to go straight back to school. This creates a lot of new directions for me because if my path takes me down the road to becoming a professor, then there aren't really "entry level" positions I can take on in the meantime. You're either a professor or you're not. Jumping into any job in the educational field would certainly help, but that's not necessarily the only road I can go down.

I've been looking into publishing jobs hoping that I can jump into a company and do copy editing or another form of entry level editorial work and become a corporate worker bee. The more I read the more I find mistakes, or disconnects, or ways that, if tweaked, a story could be that much better. I think that if I can cultivate that, I'd like it even more than being the writer. I'd be able to work with people and read all day! Okay, so it's not THAT simple, and perhaps I won't always be reading something of interest, or even something with merit, but I'll be reading and reading and reading and that's exactly what I love.

The problem is that I was born on the wrong coast for book publishing (magazines and newspapers are, of course, a different story since there are locals and regionals everywhere). The best place for book publishing, especially for powerhouses like Penguin and Random House (which basically house almost all other, smaller and slightly less well known publishers), is New York, followed by Boston. That's quite a move. If I'm lucky I can get in with a smaller book publisher around here or get a job with any number of magazines. The economic state of this country has me a bit discouraged though, what a crap time to graduate college when there are no jobs. I'm going to Chapman's career office tomorrow to spruce up my resume and see if they can help me with a job search so fingers crossed!

Tag!

I've been tagged by Mel, which means that you all (by all I mean the 3 people who read my blog) get to read 6 oddball facts about me and thus receive a small glimpse of my quirky nature.

1. Every night, almost without fail, I have really ridiculous dreams. I can almost always pin them to conversations or events that have happened the day before. Last night I had a dream that I was in Mexico at a Nacho stand where a shirtless boy was serving me custom nachos with olives and extra fresh squeezed limes on top. The olives kept falling through the bottom of the thatched bowl. The whole dream likely stemmed from the in depth research Ryan and I did into the calorie count of a new nacho plate at Taco Bell. (ask me about the green hanger, I'll laugh so hard I cry)

2. I'm super afraid of balloons. When I was in 3rd grade I went to a birthday party and participated in a relay race. My leg of the race required me to run to the other end of the yard and sit on a balloon until it popped. Instead I did a half squat and cried hysterically... my team lost.

3. I hate having my belly button touched. Even the mental image of (or blogging about) a finger in my belly button makes me want to gag. It makes me think of umbilical cords and abortions, both of which I cannot stomach. When I have a kid I'm closing my eyes until the cord is gone, I'd feel really bad if I puked on my baby.

4. I love lists. I am so scatter-brained and they make me feel a bit sorted. I have lists for everything. Lists of things to write. Lists of authors I like. Lists of things to do. Lists of quotes. Lists of goals. Lists of qualities I want in a relationship. Lists and lists and lists, most of which are saved on my computer in a folder labeled "lists," which is quite full and might soon require a subfolder.

5. I can't stand meatloaf. I don't know that anything else needs to be said about that because, well, it's meatloaf. Yuck.

6. I don't watch TV. Unlike most people who say they don't watch TV, I REALLY don't watch TV. The closest I get is my Sex and the City dvds, which is a show I started watching while working at Conroys, well after the show was off the air. Contrary to TV, I regularly watch waaaaay too many YouTube videos. In fact, here's one of my favorites.

Eye Candy

For a solid month now the weather has been changing.  So have the leaves.  There are two trees across the street that I stare at every morning when I pull out of my driveway, excited to see the daily progress of the leaves as they change from greens to yellows to oranges to reds.  Right now they are a deep crimson color, I have three of them sitting on my kitchen table.  I snagged them yesterday on my walk.  I decided that since the semester is over and I now have a large amount of free time that didn't exist before, that I would do things like that.  You know, walk.  And cook.  Sometimes both.  

So yesterday I looked up some recipes for basil chicken in addition to trying to mimic Chipotle's cilantro and lime rice (except with brown rice... verdict: not as good).  There were, of course, things I needed from the store, because why would I harbor a stash of fresh cilantro in my fridge?  I walked across the street making my way to Albertsons, but I didn't get far at all because I realized I didn't have my camera (or a sweatshirt and it was quite chilly), so I went home and retrieved both.  There were so many moments where I would stop on my trail to capture the contrast or how the light hit a tree at just the right angle.  A green tree next to a red one, or a bare tree next to a full one.  I love snapping pictures of all this fall, I have so many from years past but they never get old to me. 

I suppose my love of fall has a lot to do with the vibrant colors.  One of the things that I thank God most for is color (some might find that trivial, but I think when He made me that He knew it would be crucial to my happiness).  Often when I see fresh fruit or a healthy flower or a loud outfit I'm reminded that color is one of the recreational aspects of existence.  What I mean is that God could have made the world cold and gray, a sweater serves its purpose of warmth just as well in charcoal as it does in turquoise.  But God didn't create the world in shades of gray, He filled it with brilliant eye candy.  The beauty that leaves embody as they change is a wonderful reminder that He loves me, which is why I love fall oh so much.

On the Heels of Discovery

The following is a photo project I did with a piece I wrote.  The idea was to take a small portion of a piece and take it outside the confines of the medium (paper).  The photos are not in order of the stanzas.  Also, please forgive the horrible photo editing, consider the cause my and iphotos combined lack of skills.

The original piece reads as follows:

I sleep in heels, crossing my legs like a lady while I dream of dark things, looking and feeling

like a lady of the night, but still a lady.

I run in heels, catching the night bus at 3am outside the club in Camden Town so that I don't have to wait in the cold looking like a lady of the night, but still a lady.

I trip in heels, falling flat on my back and sullying my new dress, showcasing my goods to the 

world like a lady of the night, but still a lady.

I cook in heels, dancing and stirring and seasoning, playing the role of a proper and contented

housewife, fantasizing about the life of a lady of the night.

There's a Theorem that Says:

There's a theorem that says:

The shortest distance between two points is a point.

At a point I am on a plane with 

wings made of feathers and

a captain who speaks in

a language I can't understand.

At another point I wake up in

a toxic cloud, surrounded

by tainted dreams where

vacuums turn to snakes and

leave me cornered on 

the bathroom counter.

At some point I am

wandering along a hikers path trying

to find whatever point

I'm looking for.

All I find are bees.

I hate bees.

I'm still confused

about which one is which.

The Dawn of a New Era...

So we all know I'm not in Kansas anymore... or London, as the case may be (mere semantics).  So I've finally decided what I'm going to do with this here blog, aside from the obvious occasional updates on pivotal moments in my life.  This includes, but is not limited to: sweet trips I intend on taking, embarrassing moments that will inevitably occur at various points in my future, and important meals I may consume (because let's not kid ourselves about the importance of food in my life).  Oh, and when, by a miracle of God, I graduate from college, you'll all hear something about that too.

I've been doing a lot of writing, as is customary for any Lit. major.  But beyond writing critically, which I'm forced to do on a far too frequent basis, I've been writing a lot more creatively; if I don't want to be poor for the rest of my life I should attempt to make something of these random and tiny bursts of creativity, so from time to time I will be posting and thus sharing them with any and all of you who may continue to read this.  

The more I write, the more I love writing.  I am learning about the process in general and specifically learning so much about my own process.  I no longer look at my writing as simply a "before" and "after" because I'm actually grasping some of what happens in between.  Lately I've been writing a lot of poetry (which is weird, because approximately 16 weeks ago I was dreading taking "Intro to Poetry" and now I love it).  Poetry has previously never been my thing, but somehow it's managed to turn into it.  That said, poetry isn't for everyone, I certainly never thought it was for me and therefore will not be hurt if you have absolutely nothing to say on the matter.  But because the people who read this are people I love so much, I thought I'd be a little vulnerable and put it out there anyway.  Happy reading!

Always with love,

Ashley