The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World

The words have returned.

The haze of the weekend burned off like dew in the sunshine.  My mental hibernation has been replaced with an acute awareness.   I feel a little like a laser beam split between my desire to run barefoot into the jungle to discover my true Oneness with All There Ever Is and Was and Will Be and my desire to climb the corporate ladder to the top and shift the paradigm of international business in a large, multi-national corporation.  I’m wondering now if it’s possible to do both.  Simultaneously.

I never shared the triumph of my first cover shoot and tonight I’m feeling inspired to do that.  MOLE, a new publication in Tirol asked me to shoot the cover of their first edition magazine.  When I say the words, “media landscape in Tirol,” what comes to your mind?  Most people say something like “mountains” . . . but lest I remind them, a media landscape is not always the same as a landscape.  2+ years in the lovely hamlet produced a lot of cultural richness but a real dirth of commentary about it.  Something about the nature of state-funded publications produces a very bland form of coverage.  Come on, every German-adapted production of The King and I can’t be triumphant, right?  In any case, my job was to consider the media landscape in Tirol.  It was my first ’staged’ ‘concept’ shoot and I ended up taking an old cinema called Cinematograph to realize my image “The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.”

The quote is from the French founder of new wave cinema Jean-Luc Godard.  I don’t want to come across as a French cinema snob, ’cause i’m not, but his quote hit home on what I was trying to capture.  The media landscape to me was something like a beautiful fraud.  The cinema filled with people represents that the audience is present.  They are showing up, buying their tickets and entering into new experience willingly, eagerly and openly.  The openness of the audience in Tirol to new things always humbled me and helped me find my own portal to openess to new media, culture and art.  Its a wonderful thing for a woman who always had the flexibility to carefully curate her sonic landscape (thanks New York!) to find herself in a place where you get what you get.  The glasses were made of the 7 different popular media outlets that cover ‘kultur’ in Tirol.  The majority are state-funded and, as a result, have a very bland way of covering events that might actually be thrilling.  That bland filter is the cause of the audiences obstructed view…the generic coverage and promotion of the kultur essentially alters it, making it similarly moving, similarly edgy, similarly interesting and, as a result, exactly the same as what came before.  The added element of the cinema further removes the audience from the experience keeping it both filtered and 2 dimensional.

MOLE is going to attempt to alter the media landscape of the Tirol.  Make no mistake, they are also state funded but they are going to attempt to shine a new light and bring a new perspective.  The light of the projector is MOLE…hopefully they can be the beacon ,the light, the difference between ‘the filter’ and the unaltered experience.  I’m certainly rooting for them.  Check out MOLE online or swing by any cultural institution in the Tirol to pick up a copy.

 

The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World

It was an honor to participate in the 1st edition of an idealistic new magazine and a treat to nab the cover. The team assembled making the print and online editions are excellent, inspired people and I hope our paths cross again.

 

Each relic I leave behind me feels a little like a bouey…like breadcrumbs in the forest…showing me the channel through which I’ve sailed.  I leave pieces of me wherever I go not to show me the way back but to remind me where I’ve been.  Like a ship out on the sea…  I’ll have another fun commission to share with you in the coming weeks that will live in Austria for a whole year!  How wonderful.

  Don’t see the player?  That’s okay…click here for my long distance dedication.  Casey Kasem-style.

Bring Me That Horizon

The lightning bolts that were shooting out of my neck and keeping me from turning my head in any direction had me thinking, for a while anyways, that maybe I shouldn’t turn my head.  Maybe I should just point forward.  Straight ahead.  Now that the electricity has dissipated and I have my peripheral vision back I realize that there was no point to the pinched nerve at all.  It was just good bad luck and a little whiplash.

So flying over the Alps yesterday I was hit with a wave of sadness.  It wasn’t all sadness.  There was a lot of gratitude and excitement and anticipation mixed in but the underlying current was definitely sadness.  Every time I’m about to leave one land for another I get sad.  I don’t think I’ve ever taken my life in the Tyrolean Alps for granted but knowing that I won’t be flying in and out of them, riding up and sliding down them, seeing the sun set pink behind them or falling asleep under their big, blue shadows made me pause.

In an effort to not take anything for granted, I hopped, skipped and flew back to the USA for a whirlwind love-in with friends and family before my schlep East.  I’ve got a big job ahead of me and its a stupidly long flight so I figured I’d head back now to feel less pressure later.  I’ll let you know how that strategy works out.

I started things off in Vermont with some Burlington, some Mud City and some Isle La Mott.  Getting up there was a shit show but upon arrival I was in good hands and let the good times roll.  More rolly than rocky, it felt great to be back in the green mountains.  I caught a glimpse of my future here and there in the ponds and trees and, as is always the case, I brought some VT home with me.  Here’s a couple of my favorite pix, but click here for the whole album.

Green Garden - Mud City

Lake Champlain Sunset

Very Nice People

I headed South to New Jersey for some quality time with my Grandfather and was swept into total puppy frenzy with Annie the puggle.  As is always true, I enjoyed every moment with Popi though I dream of the day I will be able to beat him at dominos.  The time flew by too fast and it was hard to say goodbye…Here are a couple of my favorite shots from Jerz, but click here for the whole album.

Let sleeping puggles lie

annie

american dreams of a jersey girl

After Jerz I had a therapeutic and relaxing hot minute in CT with my Aunt and Uncle and then it was time to head back to the metropolis for a quick hello with Jamie, Marc & Kelly’s wedding and some Brooklyn love.  Celebrating the love of two dear friends at the juncture of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges is a fine way to spend a Saturday.  Here are a couple of my favs but click here for the whole album…

Marc & Kelly

yummers

There is no doubt that hopping on the F Train feels like a breath of fresh air and there is also no doubt that the throbbing metropolis still feels like home.  After the wedding and more mojitos than I remember I shimmered my way to Crown Heights for a little more merry-making with another group of lovelies…birthday cakes, microbrews, fanny packs and Michael Jackson.  Click it!

Mia - Big Buck Hunter

la-la-la-ladies

red velvet

My hangover made me late but not un-ready for a spectacular Sunday…a Sunday entailing a new BMW motorcycle, the Meadowlands, wind in my hair and some good times with yet another dear friend.  You can only get a little bit more “American” than an NFL football game in New Jersey complete with tailgate and piss-beer so it was an excellent way to see myself off the continent.  I wasn’t sure I would enjoy sitting on the back of a motorcycle on the BQE but I was pleasantly surprised…really good times!

All the fun and merry-making left me hurtin’ but I was able to squeak in a last minute lunch with another all-star, D, before a date with a chiropractor and then an epicly uncomfortable ride…but it ended with a spectacular view of my amazing backyard and then 2 very, furry kittens. The stress is real now, the job is big but the truth is that everything is good – really good – and I am an incredibly lucky woman.

“It is a profound mistake to think that everything has been discovered; as well think the horizon the boundary of the world” ~Antoine Merin Lemierre

Getting to Getting There

“The hard part about mind-blowing experiences is that your mind cannot (and should not) revert back to its previous shape”

These wise words just arrived in a note from a friend and I was happy for something tangible to help explain why, though almost everything is the same, I feel different inside my skin.  ((Thank you, Matt))  Departure from routine and all things familiar has a way of expanding perspectives so it’s really no wonder that I am having trouble fitting myself inside myself.  Like the extra suitcase I bought at Ulaanbaatar’s State Department Store to help carry all the goodies I accumulated in my travels, I am now considering how to go about carrying this extra understanding gracefully.  Combing through only 10 days of images from Beijing and the train ride to Mongolia, I feel like I have been swept back to the beginning of a movement, the first notes of what will become a crescendo.  My trip was like a spiral with each leg of the journey taking me in a seemingly larger circle, encompassing more, and revealing more so that now I feel like I am crawling through a wormhole, squeezing through tight spaces, to bring myself back to the beginning.

Distance brings perspective so I figured that the further away I went, perhaps, the further I could see.  Coated with smog in Beijing and also standing alone in vast expanses of the Gobi Desert I found that, regardless of the actual visibility, that clarity inside me was crystal clear.  I’m far-sighted in actuality and it would seem as though the same is true metaphorically speaking.  Standing up close and personal now with everything I could see so clearly only a week ago, the edges are blurry as my eyes and mind refocus.  I feel like one of my camera lenses zooming in and out trying to find the focal point around which I can compose the picture.

Half of the journies photographs are already visible but I need a little more time to consider how I want to share the stories that accompany them in addition to the rest of the images…

I’m getting to the part where I get there.  In the meantime, I will hide behind my fan, get back to work and let the dust settle.

Mutha

“Every man, for the sake of the great blessed Mother in Heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all Honor.”

~Alfred Lord Tennyson

Happy Mothers Day

Roads We Abandon, Roads We Take

Pacing along the banks of Lake Zurich last Thursday night I found my mind skipping like a stone across placid water; ripples bumping into ripples, circles breaking surface tension, the stone eventually dipping below the surface and sinking out of sight.  Anticipation, I think, is the fine line between anxiety and positive expectations and when traversed like a tight rope  it can be an exciting ride.  I awoke on Friday to a stillness that seldom visits me and headed to Zurich to open a door I had closed more than 2 years ago.  A delay proved to not ripple those still waters and, as though no time had passed, we said ‘hello’ and headed south to the Italian Riveria.

Anticipation - Zurichsee

If I could drink the air in Cinque Terre like a cocktail I would do so happily with some muddled sunshine and a dash of sea salt.  This delicious concoction couldn’t be enjoyed in a dainty, fragile martini glass but should be served instead in a big, wide wooden bowl so the sweetness and salt drips down your cheeks as you drink it in.  Cresting the first cliff on our way into Riomaggiore, the Mediterranean spread out bright blue beneath us, it was clear this was not going to be an average weekend  road trip.  The phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ has surprised me with its truthiness more times than I can count so I’m not sure why I find/found myself suddenly so surprised.

Dont Look Back - Cinque Terre

The villages of Cinque Terre look like precariously stacked building blocks, colorful and Seuss-like, all ready to topple and tumble into the sea at any moment.  Tucked into terraces of grape vines and lemon trees, its no surprise that the entire place smells as sweet as honey.  Blue skies, deep turquoise water and a little gravity pulled us down the hill into town and, after a cafe latte, a rush of walking stick-carrying toursist swept us up onto the Via dell Amore (Walk of Love).  Even with what felt like a swarm of people around me, the serenity of Cinque Terre still managed to envelope me.  I abandoned any conflicts I had with sharing the Via dell Amore with both Uncertainty and Strangers and coasted the 5-6 kilomenteres from Riomaggiore, through Manarola to Corneglia.

Riomaggiore, Italy - Cinque Terre

Hot in the sun and cool in the shade, the deep deeeep deeeeeep emerald blue of the Mediterrenean called to me like the sirens song and in Corneglia I made a B-Line to the ‘marina’ to get my feet wet.  He observed right around then that when I want something there is often no stoppping me and I had to (and still have to) agree.  Some frozen lemonade, sweet truths and an uncomfortably packed train ride later we arrived in Monterossa where I let myself get swallowed up by the Big Blue.  Seeing my reflection, hair salty and wet, in his sunglasses after my swim I saw myself clearly, the lines and definition made sharper with the yellow light.  With the sun behind us we rode the ferry back the way we had come with our first glimpse of Vernazza and a sunset landing back home in Riomaggiore.  From some stairs by our rented room we watched the sun go down and I considered how I might go about botteling the sky so as to let it free in my apartment when I returned home.

Sunday - Monterossa, Italy

Leaving the Coast the following morning I drank in my last breaths of salty sea air and Ligurian romance, rubbed my belly where the mounds of fresh seafood were still being digested and smiled at my travel companion who was shuttling us north to Tuscany.  For the last months I have been counting down the days to my trip to the Far East and somehow, magically I was not wandering alone in the Gobi but first skipping over the hills of Tuscany like a stone on water…that cliche about finding things when you stop looking is a cliche for a reason.  Secret vacations and lost weekends could very well be the fuel that propels any woman out of bed in the morning and smiling through her days.

Cinque Terre

This trip went further inward than the mere 1000 kilometers we did on land and the cyprus trees and rolling hills were more of a backdrop than the focus.  Something about travel and the world speeding outside the window frees me and this trip, though not a solo sojourn, was no different.  As I grow (um…older) it gets easier and easier to be the same person regardless of company and geography and I am always surprised at the weight that that honesty can lift.  That statement makes me think of an image of Atlas carrying the world on his back but I think that Hercules was the stronger of the two…

A Bean Divided - Tuscany

Riding bikes around the walls of lovely Lucca, crawling over the hills and fields of Tuscany and the Apanine Alps the day passed slowly before we landed like a glider on the banks of Lake Garda.  Hotel Lido was aptly tucked into a small town called Val di Sogno, Valley of Dreams, and from our balcony we watched the twilight sky go from blue to purple to black.  ‘House red’ is always a good call in Italy and a large carafe liberated some of the harder truths and realities that this trip brought to the surface.  The whole journey, the whole week actually, were something of a crescendo.  More information, more intensity each day.  It built like a wave in the ocean and Lago di Garda was the point when the first bits of white froth curled over and fell back to the sea.  Truths, even when they are dark and prickely, are better than the alternative and with the sunrise on Monday came a renewed sense of understanding and desire to enjoy the day.

Speeding Through Garda

Breakfast crepes, 2 caffe lattes and a castle on a lake are a perfect day by themselves so the laughter and conversation and photos and the rest were all gravy.  We landed back in Innsbruck in time to see the sun set on my Alps, the Tirolean Alps, and relaxed in the furry paws of my best boys.  Though the trip was over for me, the crescendo continued to build and rise, revealing more information and asking more questions up until yesterday when a train and then some planes carried my friend away.  The crescendo crashed like they are wont to do, a wave on the sand sliding slowly and surely back to the sea.  The melody changed now softer, clearer and speaking plainly.

My suitcase remains out.  My passport returns home from the Russian and Chinese consulates next week and in 2 weeks time I will fly away.  Again.  This time alone.  The juxtaposition of a trip spent so clearly together to a trip so clearly alone should provide some contrast and context to consider both where I stand and where I’m going.  I have plenty of food for thought.

Local Ligurian Lemons

If you’d like to enjoy some more photos of 72 hours in Italy, click here for the whole album.

Foreshadowing

The fog is lifting and the mood behind the clouds and haze is quiet, cautious optimisim.  I’m pretty sure that I summoned the fog to numb me from some unpleasant realizations and some family drama but I am hopeful that as the wind blows the clouds away my unrealistic expectations will blow away with it.  That’s the hope, anyway.

There are so many lights on the horizon now….what was just one carrot dangling before my nose to pull me through is now a field of carrots.  As I was wrting that I thought it was going to sound better than it does.  Why is it that one carrot sounds so much more motivating than many?  I digress…anyway, this Thursday with Sonic Youth in Munich followed by next weekend with an old lover in Cinque Terra followed by my sojourn to Asia only 2 weeks later is A LOT of motivation.  Then I will shake the rock and salt and sand from my soul and wake up to June.  It’s amazing.  Scary and amazing.

“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”  ~Benji Franklin

All that talk about nothing ventured, nothing gained has proved to be true for me.  Give it all up, let it all go and be prepared to be pummled when it clammers to come back and devour you.  I need a Zen Master to tell me what comes after letting fear go…because I think I’m there.

Switching tracks now (completely) I will share a little of last weekends trials and tribulations.  That sounds a little heavy but the reality was my weekend was chill.  I worked on a new collage/painting/sculpture thing that just might see the light of 2bean one day soon…I photographed a very pregnant woman in a field high in the mountains, I had a slumber party with Wendy that resulted in the best portrait of Walter Sobchak to date (and a lot of f-ing whiskey), I drank some coffee in the city with varied and radical peeps, I watched the first 2 seasons of Entourage and find myself liking Jeremy Piven more than I did before I saw the show, I talked philospohy with Niko over the best bread in the Tirol and managed to do a little work on some freelance opportunities I could have in the not-so-far future.

Walter Sobchak

If you’re inclined to peruse the rest, by all means, click here and the 1st 2 pages will equal the last 2 days.  Between the blog and my flicker archive I am truly transparent, all my careful days there for all of you to see and feel….Clearly I am better at keeping your secrets than my own.

Here’s a song for Tuesday…

Dont see the player?  Click here.

Only Fools Are Satisfied

The desire to comfort a dear friend last night with old pictures saw me open up an archive I haven’t looked at in years.  Beginning with my touchdown in the Big Apple through my take-off almost 8 years later, it is a digital catalog of a thick and truly epic chapter in my long (and strangely short) story.  I can’t help myself but scroll through and giggle and think and flinch and scratch my head and wonder how I always manage to land ‘butter side up.’  Not just older and wiser with better stories to tell, but surrounded with fun and love and adventure and people that make me a better Bean.  It’s like my story writes itself.  Maybe its the big 33 that has me taking my time to reflect…slowing down…looking backward or maybe it’s just a coincidence.  Actually, that’s bullshit.  It’s not coincidence.  One more trip around the sun is as good a reason to look backward as it is to look ahead.  My theoretical rear view mirror is one of the main reasons why when I do forge ahead it’s deliberate.

I was supposed to head to Vienna tomorrow night to ring in the b-day but some cosmic debris (in the form of a shifted meeting and a kaput Skoda) side-swiped me and have changed the plan.  I envisioned writing in my journal on the train ride and listening to Mogwai while the motion of the rails lulled me to relax.  Spring and cement and libations and friends, sounded like a romantic way to wake up a year older, doesn’t it?  It’s okay, I trust that Vienna will wait for me…

I am a proponent of the notion that things happen for reasons so, though recalibrating my plan of attack, I am not letting the switch back sidwswipe me, as it were.  Innsbruck you say?  I say “ok.”  There are some fun things on tap, not to mention that extra day off and the air here tastes like what I would imagine the words “sunshine buttercup” would taste like if they were edible so I am going to surrender to the flow and enjoy myself.

Something about all those images scrolling through my mind has me overflowing…really mushy and gushy and grateful.  With only 1 1/2 years under my belt in IBK I can already wander through the pictures of my life here and tell some amazing stories…and see myself surrounded by dear friends.  Is it normal to always feel so damn lucky?

Anyway, enough of that.  I still have a whole 2 more days before my birthday and I feel a short list coming on so I’ll save my optimistic philosophy for when I have a point.

p.s. thanks for hurmoring me with the Billy Joel tune.  i had a song class in 7th grade and chose that song as my ‘final’…i haven’t sung it in years but was (obviously) thinking about it tonight as i bid farwell to vienna.  one for the uke??

What’s Yours is Everybody’s

Moving, along with death and divorce, is one of the three biggest stressers on the human spirit.  According to my sister, anyway.  Having experienced all three in a very personal way I can attest to that and say that moving, though last on my list, is still in the top 3.  It wasn’t my own move that got me thinking about this but that of a friend of mine.

I find it a little ironic that the freest spirit can be the hardest to move while an unmoving fortress-of-a-person can fit all their belongings in the trunk of a car.  The weight of the suitcase has no  relation to the agility she who carries it.  I asked the question the other day that Brad Pitt once asked me, Ed Norton actually, from the role of Tyler Durden…something about me owning my things or them owning me.  It occurred to me last night both is true.  Sitting in the Alps while the things I’ve collected and cherished the last 32 years gather dust on Cape Cod, Manhattan, New Jersey and here at home I couldn’t make an inventory of what I own even if I tried and yet I decided on many occasions that these were the things that I needed to keep.  These were the things that I could not live without…and yet I live…without…and all is fine.

I don’t know if its true of everybody but the more I let go of, the more I gain.  We have an infinite capacity to hold onto love and beauty in our hearts and minds but the same is not true of our cellars and storage spaces and attics.  It’s like the notion of letting love go so that it can return on its own terms – a similar effect is true for stuff.  Making art, hanging art, giving it away produces more space and, as a result, more art.  Same goes for love.

if the whole world’s singing your songs
And all of your paintings have been hung
Just remember what was yours is everyone’s from now on

My legs are bruised from schlepping LP’s up 6 flights and with each trip I thought of what, in my own life, I can let go of.  I’m happy to report that, although I am spread out, I don’t have much left in the way of things.  This weekend I will try to lighten my load a little by selling off some photos at pmk which will free me up to frame and shoot some more.  Letting go opens up so many options to begin again its a wonder more people don’t purge more often.

It’s 2 am and the Chianti has gone to my head and I think I’m rambling.  Ive been a whirlpool of contemplation lately in my dire effort to restore balance and fight my new, workacholic tendencies and the process of seeking myself again has me muddled like a Milk and Honey mojito.  Hopefully a springy weekend filled with talking, hanging, picture making and (hopefully) some beer drinking and sun-soaking will un-muddle me enough to stop rambling yet leave me minty, limey and refreshing like the alcoholic snowcone that I miss and love.

Here’s a tune for you (and me) to enjoy whilst you check some pix from our mostly failed but totally fun twilight photo shoot in Pil.  My toes got cold prematurely so we bailed before we were done but it was rad while it lasted…

  Don’t see the player?  Click here.

Luca Flies

Wanna see some more pix from our woodsy fun?  Click here for the whole album.

Descending into the Molten Core

Perhaps its the extra daylight, the emerald blue skies, the reverberations of the Mothership rippling across the Atlantic or none of these things that has my wheels spinning today but all I know is they are spinning and they are spinning hard and fast.  One part longing, one part exhaustion, one part desire, one part refusal, one part quiet satisfaction and a smattering of embarrassment, selfishness, selflessness, hunger and fulfillment.

Click here for a soundtrack to this ramble

So far I have not found the science that could explain this state of being.  I think its because there isn’t one, per se.  Perhaps its just a human state.  The regular cycle that we all orbit and are run over by from time to time.  A cosmic debris and primordial ooze cocktail.  I wonder what you would garnish a drink like that with…a hot lava floater or maybe planets lined up on a toothpick like olives in a very dirty martini?  As my thoughts find their way into existnace I’m realizing that the “one part longing” I mentioned earlier is really more like 5 parts…

“when you went there, you wanted to come here.  now that you’re here, you want to go back.’  it was when i first realized i had a new nationality: citizen of the country of longing.”

I found that quote a while ago (thanks Addie) and it stayed with me the way a catchy jingle does or the scent of a lilac bush even after you’ve walked past it.  It’s lingered while I long(er)d.

So it’s sunday and its (almost) Spring and I want to drink it…drink it up, ingest it and feel on the inside how the mountain air smells and how blue the sky is.  If you could digest a color and feel it in your soul, what color would it be?  Like the molten core of a volcano, I would dip myself in thick, honey sweet orange and glow like the sun right before it hides under the horizon.

Finally admitting this longing instead of glossing over it like I’m all full-up, I am going to put my shoes on and go outside.  Eyes open.  Mind free of the weight of the pretense that I’m not looking for something.  I know that there is truth to the statement that it’s when you stop looking for something that you find it but what about when you’re not looking for anything in particular?  Then what?

I’m gonna go find out.

*_*

Invest in the Fantastic

I haven’t gotten up from my computer since my last post.  I am the moth…Ive been sifting through a pile of *amazing* design sites and artists work doing another screenprint round-up and looking for inspiration, distraction, ideas or whatever fantasticness I can find…stumbling across this quote tonight was clearly no accident…

Something Lost. Something Found.

My chronic boulder rolled back down the hill again last night.  I ran after it.  Maybe it didn’t roll down the hill actually.  Maybe it was shot into the sky like a rocket, bursting into a thousand and one shiny lights falling over Innsbruck.  Or maybe I swallowed it…washed it down with too many beers, a pigs foot and a variety of other tasty delights.  I think that is more likely since I can still feel a lump in my throat and my stomach is growling like a junkyard dog.  It’d be nice to think that its possible to ingest my boulder.  Digest it.  But I think I’m dreaming again.  I think what’s more likely is that I will climb out of bed tomorrow and find that my boulder waits for me.

The mandatory reflection that arrives on New Years is a wonderful thing.  A period at the end of a 365 day sentence where you can take a moment and think.  You can think about where you’ve been and, more importantly, where you want to go.  I like to think that Im an arrow…very Kahlil Gibran, I know…pointing forward.  Where I’ve been is responsible for where I am and where I am will lead me to where Im going.  Looking back at the last trip around the sun I am in utter awe.  So much about my life is completely different and yet it is also exactly the same.  Wherever I go, there I am.  The plight of an eternal optimist is an exhausting one.  Always finding the updside and anticipating goodness is not easy.  Turning loss into something found…lonliness into reflection…boredom into art…rejection into confidence …this is my task.

2008 was epic for me.  A full year alone in a new land.  Always without sex, often without friends and, more literally, without words, I can look back and see that my outward journies (of which there were many) are humbled by the ones that took me inward.  If spiritual growth could be measured on a bar chart, we would need Al Gore’s hydrolic riser to show how high up I go.  Seriously, I have learned more about myself in the last year than in my entire life.  It’s a gift in the shape of a fast-moving freight train and last night was my night to contemplate it.  It’s no wonder why, after far too many beers, the dam broke or, not to mix metaphores, I got run over.  The tears starting falling because I was feeling some superficial loss but they continued falling when I realized how much I found.

This is when the hard work comes….realizing what kind of woman I have become, what kind of human…well, it makes me grateful for the hard road that brought me here and also keenly aware of what I have to offer somebody else.  The time alone has been medicinal and if the universe dictates that I need more, well, I’ll find a way to make it work but it is getting harder to spin.  See what I mean?  It’s hard to be so positive but it’s all I know.  Looking back, for me, begs the question, “what’s on tap for 2009?”

I have the same resolutions this year as last year:  Talk less.  Say more.  Plan less.  Do more.  Generally speaking, I think that these are reasonable requests to make of myself and look forward to trying.  Aside from the daily grind, what do I want?  Well I would be forever grateful to have even half…even a fraction…of the adventure, surprise, learning, friendship and experience that I had in 2008.  I find myself now surrounded by creative and interesting people, new and dear friends and I have an opportunity to share more of myself with my community and it is my task to try.  I am hopeful that giving away what I have, what I am, will lighten my karmic load and keep me open so, when it’s time again (and I hope it is soon!), I can let somebody new in.

I think that’s enough deep thinking for today.  I think that…no, I know that I am a very lucky woman and I’m eternally optimistic that the next trip around the sun will be a hell of a ride.

Now, onto the nitty gritty details of my way, way too many beers…In a nutsell?  Friends.  Brixen House.  Supper Club Extended Edition.  Fireworks. Beer! YouTube DJ-rama.  It was fun up until the freight train part but, fortunately, that was at the end of the night and mostly alone in the snow…Some photos were hidden at the request of a friend but you can check the rest out here.  As for me?  Here are some of my favorites in no particular order…

I’d like to send a hearty thank you to my Innsbruck peeps for kicking so much ass and making New Years fun…I think we all have a lot to look forward to….

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.  ~Benjamin Franklin