Girl Unobserved

factoseintolerant:

The Fitzgeralds’ passports

Todays Inspiration: The Lady, Directed by Luc Besson and starring Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis

I get goosebumps every time I watch this. Aung San Suu Kyi is one my biggest idols of all time and I think it’s fantastic how things are going for her in Myanmar right now. 

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“Most importantly, the meaning of spirituality lays the seeds for our destiny and the path we must follow”- Dennis Banks

Monks making their way back to their home in(side) Angkor Wat

Siem Reap, Cambodia 2011

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Because sometimes, the best words to use are borrowed. 

So happy new year, all! May your 2012 be filled with peace, love, inspiration, and light! 

Recent Inspiration

A recent  site visit to Karisma Ville in Malabon for work introduced me to Nanay Lucy, a resident there who recently received a permanent housing unit that she has been working towards getting for nearly six years. Before showing me her new house, Nanay Lucy took me to her old shanty in the staging area (a temporary area for those who still cannot afford building a house) and told me her life story. After, we took a short walk to her new home. 

I was touched by how she so openly shared her life with me, and how unguarded she was when she relayed all the hardship she went through in the years leading to this one. She shed a few tears, but they were happy ones. Nanay Lucy told me towards the end of our conversation that she planned on focusing on paying for the rest of her house and raising her children who she said she lived for.

 

After talking to Nanay Lucy I went to make friends and take pictures of some of the kids who were playing on the streets. They had smiles that brightened up my dreary week. 

I also stumbled upon this very old picture of the sky at dusk which I took back in the summer after high school, when I was still fairly new at taking pictures. It took me some time to remember where this was taken, but after awhile I remembered that it was on the roof of a friends weekend house in Tagaytay. It brought back nice memories of what my life was like at that time, and I remembered that a boy I was sort of seeing back then read Pablo Neruda’s In My Sky at Twilight out loud to me one night while we were on the phone before saying that he thought of me when he read the poem. Cheesy, but I’ll always think it was nice. 

In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.

The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!

You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon’s
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.

You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin

-Pablo Neruda

Finally, brunch at my one of my restaurant’s in town (well, not exactly in Metro Manila, but pretty nearby) on a rainy Sunday is always something I find great. Apart from the food, I love the ambiance at Antonio’s. This spot in particular.

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Happy 23rd wedding anniversary to the couple that reaffirms my belief in true love everyday.

My folkista parents circa 1998 in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Why We Should Keep Imagining According to Jean Jacques Rousseau:

From Behance