"We colored inside the lines until the lines began to imprison us."

Reblogged from As far as i'm concerned...

#doyourownthing

Is this too 8th grade for senior year?

Reblogged from Too Good to be True

 Because I have a very strong desire to put something similar on my ceiling, so it can be the last thing I see before I go to sleep at night, and the first thing I look at it the morning. I miss being reminded that my life is wonderful as soon as I become conscious.

Reblogged from Too Good to be True:

Self-Concept Thursdays is my favorite feature on Curly Nikki.

The lines that are grabbing at me today:

"Don't limit yourself to being what you have been. You owe it to yourself to embrace all that you have inside of you to become." Full post here.

My friends are maaaaaaaad inspiring:

A friend's Facebook status:

"What comes easily you'll esteem cheaply. Dreaming is easy. Making those dreams a reality is HARD. But, anything truly worth doing requires work so, come what may, gotta keep pressing on because fighting for your dreams means they'll mean that much more to you when you finally achieve them."

I'm exhausted but cannot go to sleep without talking about:

Erykah Badu's voice!

So small confession time: I wasn't the hugest fan of Erykah Badu when I somewhat nonchalantly suggested that K and I go see her when she came to Atlantic City. I was still excited when he wanted to turn my suggestion into a reality, and planned to bone up on my Badu-knowledge before the show, but with all the craziness of my past week that just didn't happen. So I was expecting to know the hits, be generally pleased by the rest even if I couldn't sing along, and enjoy myself for the most part. 

I love those experiences where reality exceeds your expectations. Blown away can't even begin to cover it.

HER VOICE. I CANNOT BELIEVE HER VOICE. 
30 seconds into the show she had me and K both going "MMMMM!" and it got better from there. Her voice made me wanna touch myself, in both senses of the phrase. Every time she showcased those chords of hers by doing a fancy trill or hitting an impossibly high note, I had to clap my hands or snap my fingers or stomp my feet to help all that energy pass through me cleanly. I found myself grabbing at my thighs, my neck, digging my fingernails into my collarbone, out of a need to both hold myself together and a desire to rip myself apart and let all that spirit into me. (I wonder if that's how people feel when they "catch the Holy Ghost" at church. Hmm...) I mean, I've always loved her sound, but hearing the raw talent and beauty amplified over a small dark grown-folks space (and being one of the grown-folks there!)...it was all I could do not to sink to the floor and revel in it sometimes. Never have I been in awe of a performer like this. I almost want to say that her CDs don't do her justice. She is a performer, not a recording artist. I wish I could bottle the energy she had tonight and the beauty and the talent and the attitude and the ass (to quote K: Erykah Badu has ass for days. DAYS.) and just carry it around in my back pocket every time I need to be reminded of love and magic and truth and beauty and the knee-weakening power of peace. Maybe I'm just particularly susceptible to beautiful things right now, but tonight I feel like I witnessed greatness. She is so...herself and like no one else. It's inspiring. She may not want to be a role model, according to a little song she sang to introduce herself, but dammit I will see her as an inspiration. The strength of her soul pours out of every pore. I want to be radiantly me in the same way. I don't feel particularly chained, but she makes me want to seek liberation. She makes me want to be...greater than everything I am, but also makes me feel like the only thing I need to do to be greater is to BE thoroughly who I am. I hope that makes some kind of sense. I'm rambling. It's 3 am. Something wonderful happened here. I will post videographic evidence once I get home tomorrow to my own computer to upload the files.     

Lauryn Hill I GET OUT MTV Unplugged

I like this as an anthem right now.

My New Motto in Life

What exactly my dear are you clinging to

Some propaganda stating you've gone as far as you're going to?

That your skies are finite and limited

That your growth is an impossible dream

That your future is inhibited

Aw please, they been shoveling them lies since the '50s

Can't nobody decide what your life can move through

This is your time and your challenge--what is it that you want to do?

Sit and be still and not shine the way your light was meant to?

Oh, I pray that ain't true, I pray that ain't true

Aw please, don't fall into the abyss because something negative once ruled you

Please understand I'm from where you are and I've got to fight my demons too

Please don't give up because somebody broke your heart and some things fell through

This is life. You owe it. Life does NOT owe you, okay?

An obstacle is something that impedes or blocks one's way

You can climb over, you can dig under, you can chip through it, you can go around it, you can move it, you can ignore it, but you can DO it

YOU      CAN        DO          IT

-Jill Scott, as seen in this song by Kem:

I believe many of us--too many of us--don't take enough time out of our lives to appreciate the simple things. I was reading an article for class yesterday, in which someone said he "abhors the dull routine of existence." I didn't realize how much that struck me, until today I was walking home from lunch and, for no real reason, I glanced up at the sun as it cut jagged little patches of light through the reddening trees. I was overcome with a realization of the true beauty of this place I nonchalantly call home, and instantaneously upset with myself for ever having forgotten it. So I beg you, the next time you're out and about taking a walk, no matter your destination, take a short moment to really look at your surroundings. Remember why where you are is where you have chosen to be, and why you have chosen it. Remember that we are products of our surroundings, and do your best to reflect the beauty that surrounds you.

Sometimes I still marvel at the fact that this is a building I have class in. It makes me feel rather classy overall...

I'll leave you with a song:

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Nine: Someone You Wish You Could Meet

Dear Maya Angelou,

I promise I don't just want to meet you because I was named after you. That's a big part of what got me interested in you as a child, but over the years I've become incredibly drawn and attached to your work. As cheesy and stalker-ish as this sounds, I feel like we're connected somehow. Being someone's namesake should be some sort of cosmic connection, right? When I'm going through a dark time, I turn to India.Arie when I want music, and I turn to you when I want poetry. Sometimes the woman I imagine the speaker of your poems to be is myself, reminding me of my glory. Sometimes she's the self I imagine I will one day be, telling me that I'll get through this to a brighter day. Sometimes she's my mother or my grandmother or a woman from the topmost branches of my family tree, telling me that she has been there too. Your words, they comfort me, and inspire me to reach higher and walk taller. You remind me why I do all that I do. 
Sometimes I ask myself if I poet because of you. I haven't been able to come up with an answer to that question yet, but it goes without question that you were enough of an influence on my childhood that some part of my interest in wordsmith-ship must have been inspired by your work.

One of the memories my father always smiles back on is of a day we were in the Pleasantville public library. If we were in Pleasantville, I was in the fourth grade. I was checking out a biography of you, and most likely a volume or two of your work, along with whatever else I was currently reading, and the librarian who was helping me asked if I was doing a school project. I must have given her a strange look, because she elaborated, "You're checking out all these books on Maya Angelou." I cocked my head to the side and said, "No, I just like her," and grabbed my books and walked out. My dad says she stared at us until we pulled out of the parking lot, and he likes to reminisce about this as being one of the things that marked me as "different."

 It's one of my absolute greatest dreams in life that you will come to Princeton before I graduate. I will quite literally kick, bite, and claw my way to a ticket to see you. Going back to cheesy and stalker-ish, it would genuinely be an honor to be graced with your very presence.

Thank you,

Maya 

"..."

^heh, that could be a funny emoticon. A cookie for you if you can figure out what face that's making, XD


Anyway, this is a post about a quote! The last words of the last chapter I read of this book before bed last night have been on my mind all day...