Happiness Unbound

Life has been really stressful lately with taking on more responsibilities at work as well as living in the city on an already tight budget. So, my work in progress is trying to make the most of my (small amount of) free time by doing things that will make me happy. Below are three key things that I can work towards to live a more balanced and healthy life.

1. Feeling good about myself!

This includes:

a.) working out - sweating and getting adrenaline flowing creates endorphins which make us feel good about ourselves. Plus, we want to keep our bods tight and in shape!

b.) shopping - b/c when we wear a cute outfit we feel good about ourselves

2. Sleep! zzzzzzz

I hate feeling grumpy and lethargic because of sleep deprivation. I need to be alert at work, so if that requires me to make it into bed before midnight, so be it! I'll appreciate it the next morning.

3. Enjoying the moments in life that may be overlooked or seem "minuscule" to some, but may be just the break you need to get through the rest of the day/week. For me this includes:

- Starbucks - I literally get a little excited every time I get a beverage there.

- Slurpees - Luckily, I have a 7-11 right across the street from work. Feeling like a little kid again while slurping a frosty slushie is totally acceptable despite all the sugary calories if it'll make me a little happy, if only for a few minutes.

- Nature - One of my favorite things to do one day over the weekend is to go to the park. After being holed up in an office and apartment building all week, it's refreshing to see actual grass and trees. I love central park and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

- Reading - Get away from the noise of a TV or ipod every once in a while and get lost in a story.

- Movies/TV - I love catching up on my favorite TV shows by watching episodes online. That way, I can watch it on my own time.

- Making no plans - Once in a while it's relaxing to make no plans at all and just do what you want to do whenever you get around to doing it. After abiding by deadlines all week and rushing to make it to appointments on time, it's nice to have at least one day to do everything at my leisure.

Doing the above things definitely does lift my mood, but when I think about it, can 1-3 little enjoyable things make up for the remaining hours in a day that are not so enjoyable? I personally think it would be unrealistic to expect to be happy throughout the majority of the day, even though I do wish there was a little more of a balance. Although it sucks and we often complain about difficult things, it is the difficulties that make certain things seem special to us. It gives us something to look forward to.

So tell me, what makes you happy? What gets you through a hard day?

Rude, Nice or Something In Between?

I witnessed something very interesting this past weekend on the subway. I was on a packed train and there were not enough space for everyone to sit. There was a man sitting on the end of the bench closest to the door, and there was a tourist with a backpack standing next to him. It was a little bumpy, and like I said, it was pretty packed, so the woman's backpack was in the man's face a little bit. While I would assume most people would feel a little uncomfortable about something being in their personal space but get over it by rationalizing that it's bound to happen when taking public transportation, this guy was getting irritated and kept pushing the woman's bag. She had no idea he was doing this, but finally he got her attention and gruffly told her that her bag was in his face. She apologized and tried to step away (couldn't go too far though). I watched the whole thing and I kept thinking how rude and unnecessary it was of him. I thought that he could have put up with feeling a little uncomfortable for a few minutes given the situation. Plus, he had his music on loud enough for the people around him to hear. I became a little angry. I felt like telling this man that he shouldn't scold others when he was being inconsiderate himself by blasting his music. But then...

Emotions are quite fascinating. You can feel a certain way one moment and the complete opposite next. Emotions are also conflicted. As the saying goes, things aren't often simply black or white. And this is what I grappled with on the train that day.

Feeling annoyed and slightly resentful of the mid-to-late twenty year old beside me, my perception of him muddled to confusion in the matter of seconds as I watched him dig a dollar out of his pocket and give it to a man sitting on the bench parallel to ours that appeared to be homeless. I had hardly noticed the man. My new New York eyes have quickly learned to turn a blind eye to the dozens of homeless people I see on the streets daily. The homeless man was just sitting there on the subway, no empty cup in his hands begging for change, and here the young man that seconds before I deemed an uncourteous ass just voluntarily offered him some money.

While I have experienced a wide range of emotions in my day, I don't know if I've had an experience quite like that. Of course I've had changing opinions of people over time, but never one so rapidly--not to go from being irritated by someone to thinking they're kind, but more so being in a limbo in which I don't know whether or not to classify someone as a generally good person or bad.

After those few short minutes on the train, of course I cannot make the assertion whether the guy who yelled at a woman for accidentally bumping into him one moment and gave a poor man some money the next is a good or bad person, but I think it just goes to show that we shouldn't write someone off so quickly.

An Eulogy for the Color Black

Black. It's weird how this one color can be so versatile. Sleek and sexy, black is said to flatter the body. It has the power to transform a dumpling body into something curvaceous and slightly alluring--or at least the power to manipulate our self conscious into believing we look better and slimmer. Look at that, a color that can boost confidence.

I'd also like to point out all of the ironies of this one color. Black is worn to both funerals and weddings. If you didn't get it the first time around, an eulogy is "a speech or writing in praise of a deceased person or thing," but it can also simply mean "high praise or commendation." The two are at parallels in the way they seem so clear cut, but when you break them down you realize there's much more complexity to their meaning.

Black is the staple color in the Gothic culture. It represents darkness, mystery, seduction and tortured souls, which is why the group as a whole is often frowned upon by mainstream society. On the other hand, black is a chic and timeless color popular in the world of fashion. Every girl knows that one of the most essential articles of clothing one must own is a little black dress. It's a wonderment that something so simple can speak elegance and sophistry. When I don't feel like coordinating an outfit or if I can't find anything to wear, black is my go-to color. Even more, I feel like one can never have too much black in their wardrobe, partly due to the fact that it is the only color that is ALWAYS in-style, regardless of the season.

Black is classic. Nothing more to say. Even though it's a dark color, and dark is usually accompanied by a negative connotation, it still has widespread acceptability and holds a predominance over any other color in our lives (arguably even more so than white--after all, in terms of dress, an old tradition is that white shouldn't be worn after labor day while black doesn't have an expiration date).

Now then, what better way to end this post than with a poem by the master of beautifully dark poetry, Edgar Allan Poe:

A Dream

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream - that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

Pine Cone! Acorn! Bee! Weeping Willow! Grass! Squirrel!

I felt like a five-year-old who was still seeing the world with new eyes this past Saturday while visiting the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. As one who has grown up in lush Michigan, living in the city for even a short two months has led me to appreciate the little things like grass, trees and undomesticated animals that are lacking in the concrete jungle of NYC.

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens were, simply put, pretty and serene. I felt like I was walking into a completely different world, a world far away from the city with its blaring car horns, dirty streets, unpleasant smells, and air pollution.

What I was rather surprised by was the fact that I spent nearly two hours in the gardens, and didn't even feel bored. It wasn't crowded, there was plenty to see, it was a gorgeous day, and it felt nice to walk around. My favorite part of the gardens was actually towards the entrance. Walking down a set of steps that were lined with trees shading the pathway, it felt as if I were entering a secret kingdom. There were also florescent purple flowers in between the trees. It literally made me stop in my tracks because, even though in reality it was a pretty simplistic layout, it was perfectly gorgeous.

I also enjoyed the man-made pond swimming with turtles and white and orange fish. There is a Japanese-style viewing pavilion overlooking the pond, offering a peaceful place to sit and enjoy the sounds of the outdoors.

I could go on and on about all of the different things I saw that I enjoyed, and as a writer it should be my duty to bring those sights back to life through my writing, but it truly is one of those places that you just need to see and experience for yourself. And, you must have an appreciation of nature in order to really enjoy the abundance of different species of trees, plants, flowers, etcetera that the Gardens have to offer.

During my first visit at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, I felt as if I were having a sensory overload-- but in a good way. My eyes were furiously darting around trying to take everything in as quickly as possible as if the scenery were about to disappear before my eyes. There was so much to see in fact that I plan on going back again, not only to discover numerous things that I'm sure I missed during my first trip, but to also get away from all of the city hustle for a few hours.

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens may not be a hot spot for weekend visitors to New York, but after actually living here, it's finding tucked away beauties like this one that continues to make New York an appealing place full of surprises and opportunity.

(Pictures above found on the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens wesbite.)

Guggenheim Experience

This past Saturday I visited the well-known New York museum, The Guggenheim, and had quite an enjoyable experience. It was helpful going with someone with a little background knowledge in art as well as having the free audio tour device that discussed certain pieces throughout the museum. The audio device often pointed out things that I would have otherwise overlooked. That is one reason I love art--one piece can mean something different for each individual, and there are some pieces that are so intricate that the meaning may change each time it is viewed and new things are discovered in it.

There are a few pieces that stood out to me in particular:

* Julie Mehretu: Grey Area Exhibit - On a huge canvas she combines precise architectural lines with abstract forms. The use of different materials creates texture and adds density to her paintings. As the Guggenheim pamphlet states about Mehretu's work, "The images seem to exist at a horizon where the work could either plunge into dense obscurity or nearly disappear into an ethereal cloud of dust. Yet a remarkable sense of pictorial space always exists in Mehretu's paintings, created not just by their layering but also by the contrasts inherent in them." My favorite painting of Mehretu that was displayed actually reminded me of the movie Inception the way the buildings folded into one another.

* Pablo Picasso's Woman with Yellow Hair - At first glance I was not impressed with this piece, but it is with thanks to the museum's audio player for giving some of the background story that made me see it with new eyes. The girl in the painting is Picasso's mistress and it shows the girl in an innocent, vulnerable state of sleep. What is also unique about this painting is the few lines used to create the body of the girl. Every line and brush stroke is fluent and precisely round. The gentleness of the strokes resembles the peacefulness of the girl at rest.

*Vincent van Gogh's Mountains at Saint-Remy - Something about this 1889 painting intrigued me. Perhaps it was the rounded mountains that seem to be melting and the quaint tucked-away house and flower garden with his signature sunflowers located at the base of the mountains that give life to the painting. Or maybe it is oddly van Gogh's struggle with mental illness that makes me look more carefully at his work. Either way, I liked seeing Mountains at Saint Remy in person at The Guggenheim, and it may or may not have led me to do a little biography research.


Of course I did not like every painting I saw at The Guggenheim. In fact, I didn't really care for the entire abstract section at the museum. But overall, I was very pleased with the wide variety of artwork displayed. I definitely recommend it to others who are into art or are at least curious to learn a little about art. I also recommend picking up the audio device as it was very helpful.

MoSex

I recently visited the Museum of Sex on 5th Ave, NYC. I'm not sure if it was quite what I expected...but I'm not sure what I expected in the first place. Although the content was interesting, I didn't think there would be so much reading involved. I should have brought my glasses! I guess that's part of what a museum is all about though--to educate.

The museum has three floors with a different exhibit on each floor.

Action: 'Sex and the Moving Image'

The first floor focused on the emergence of sexuality in film and how it evolved over time. There were several TVs that displayed sex scenes from films throughout time that went along with the literature.

Rubbers: The Life, History & Struggle of the Condom

The second floor was divided into two separate themes. The first room had old nude pictures, art work, sexual bodysuits, a sex film made from using paper cut-outs, and other miscellaneous things. The other part of the second floor was the Rubbers exhibit. It detailed the history of the condom, while displaying old condoms, condom dispensers, wrappers/tins, etc. It also discussed the importance of using protection and recalled the syphilis outbreak in Europe that made it's way to America and threatened soldiers in combat during WWII.

The Sex Lives of Animals

Lastly, the third floor was an exhibit on the sexual behavior of animals. Long story short, the exhibit objective is basically to prove that humans are much more similar to animals than we'd like to think --animals are sexual beings that perform sex acts for pleasure and not just for pro-creation too; they masturbate and often perform homosexual acts. There was even a case of rape in which a duck smashed into a window and died in the hopes of escaping its attacker.

The majority of the information provided at the Museum of Sex were things that I already knew due to taking several Women Studies courses, a class on Animal Movement & Behavior, and a class on AIDS & Other Communicable Diseases, but for someone who may not have had as well-rounded of a curriculum, one could certainly learn a lot from it. My only warning is that you have to have the patience to read everything and have at least two hours of time to explore the museum fairly thoroughly to make it worth the $15 admission fee. But of course, the topic of sex makes the information pretty interesting to begin with, and it appeals to both men and women alike.

Recycled (he)Art

I've always had an appreciation for artists who can create beautiful things, especially when they can take seemingly ordinary or useless things and transform them into a creative piece that most people would never think of doing. Today I stumbled upon the creative work of Nick Gentry who uses recycled floppy disks, cassettes, VHS tapes and Polaroids to create his art.

Here is an excerpt on the concept of his work:
"As media is rapidly absorbed into the World Wide Web, the physical media formats of the past have been deemed obsolete. This represents a big shift away from real world objects, driving towards a human existence that is ultimately governed by countless intangible data files."

Given that electronic items are usually deemed cold and incapable of sentiment, Gentry is able to evoke wonderment by telling a story through the creation of a life using paint and inanimate objects. Each of his characters manifest an eerie persona that leaves the viewer wishing to know more. There is gracefulness, yet intensity to Gentry's work. Some of the poses--from the positioning of arms, to the elongated curve of a neck, to a set jaw line--Gentry seems well-attuned to the elegance of a body.

For me, investing in a piece of art work is like choosing a pet; it's a fixture that's going to be around for a while. Some pieces are meant to blend into the decor of the room, becoming a simple decoration, while others demand attention, daring every passerby to steal a glance. Gentry's work is the kind of curious art that I would hang from a pure white wall, letting it and only it speak for the entire room.