Eleven Minutes

This is an excerpt from my favorite book "Eleven Minutes" from my favorite author Paulo Coelho. His books allow me to drift off into far away places in search of MY personal legend. There is something so special about this story, it's a sadness that I can somehow relate to....

Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with two perfect wings and with glossy, colorful, marvelous feathers. In short, he was a creature made to fly about freely in the sky, bringing joy to everyone who saw him.

One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She watched his flight, her mouth wide in amazement, her heart pounding, her eyes shining with excitement. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two travelled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird.

But then she thought: he might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid, afraid that she would never feel the same way about any other bird. And she felt envy, envy for the bird’s ability to fly.

And she felt alone.

And she thought: “I’m going to set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again.” The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put into the cage.

She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: “Now you have everything you could possibly want.” However, a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.

One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contentedly amongst the clouds.

If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had thrilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body.

Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. “Why have you come?” she asked Death. “So you can fly once more with him across the sky,” Death replied. “If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him even more; alas, you now need me on order to find him again.”

Madness of Love:::::

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

Here's to new beginnings....

I don't make resolutions, I just look forward to new adventures and new beginnings! One thing that I plan to do is dedicate more time to my blog....This blog isn't just about my thoughts, it's about things that I love and that inspire me:::: Everything Art!! Fashion, Photography, Music, Travel, Los Angeles......

I will post my photography which is developing quite nicely if I do say so myself...and I do say so myself!!

It will be everything about The Girl With The Rouge Lips!!!

All you need is...

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Crazy little thing called...

...searching for...

Life has taken a toll and although I feel that I have a lot on my my mind, I just can't seem to find that energy to write....and I miss it!...so much going on yet nothing going on at the same time...

Life and I need to sit down and have a serious heart to heart....

I can't expect things to change by themselves...I have to muster up the energy and courage to MAKE the life I see when I close my eyes.

Young love…full of promise, full of hope…ignorant of reality!

Seeing as how the infamous V-Day fell on a weekend this year, Friday’s mood at school was all about hearts and flowers, cards and candy grams all stating “Will you be my Valentines?” Young love…full of promise, full of hope…ignorant of reality!

As I was in class, one of the students comes up to and says “Miss Diaz I am on a serious mission today!” curious as I am I ask him to explain this serious mission he is undertaking…he proceed to explain how there is this girl that he likes that just happens to attend a neighboring school. He wants to impress her and decided that during lunch he is going to rush over to her lady friends’ school and drop off a bouquet of roses and a homemade card (yesss I said HOMEMADE)…

What a well thought out plan! So I stated that this young lady must be really special for him to go to all this fuss. There was no hesitation in his “YES”…”I have saved my lunch money for days just to get her the flowers and my cousin is coming over to drive me to her school.”…

This young man went out of his way to MAKE this girl a card, with construction paper and markers, which expressed how he felt about her. He saved his lunch money for days in order to buy her flowers. He made his cousin pick him up during lunch so that he could go surprise this young lady. All to ask her to “be my Valentines”…
I asked him if he thought that he would always be this detailed and romantic…again, there was no hesitation in his “YES” reply…”I have always been like this and will always be like this”….

Young Love…Full of Promise, Full of Hope…Ignorant of Reality…or is it that we as adults are just a little more skeptical and jaded???

Maybe we are skeptical and a bit jaded…but it wasn’t always like this; I remember that feeling of butterflies in my stomach, waking up to the thought of someone and falling asleep with that person in my thoughts. Listening to Boyz II Men songs and just getting lost in my own thoughts. There are countless diary entries to prove that I was once part of that “Young Love, Full of Promise, Full of Hope, Ignorant of Reality” crowd…

But man has it been a while!!

What is it that has happened since those days that has made me a little more skeptical about the explosion of Love??

Life.

Life has happened. That life that has lead to this entry in which I reminisce about first Loves and first heartbreaks, which in a way go hand in hand. With maturity comes experiences, good choices, bad choices, maybe a regret or two or three…but all of these things equate to growth and wisdom. We learn from experiences. Once we make a bad choice we learn not to make it again, right? Well not exactly! When it comes to emotions and matters of the heart, sometimes we choose to gamble over and over. I’ve gambled and lost many times. Each loss brings feelings of frustration and disillusion; those feelings only lead to questioning why the hell I keep putting myself in the line of fire!!

My answer to that: Because That Line of Fire Has Yet to KILL Me!!! Has it hurt? Yes. Do I feel like closing my heart off from potential pain? Yes. Has it at times made me feel comfortably numb? Yes. Have I lost my faith in Love? NO! How can I not believe that One Day It Will All Make Sense!!!
I am a Warrior in this insanity of a life.

Paulo Coelho said it best:

For the warrior there is no such thing as an impossible love.
He is not intimidated by silence, indifference or rejection. He knows that, behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.
This is why the warrior takes more risks than other people. He is constantly seeking the love of someone, even if that means often having to hear the word 'No', returning home defeated and feeling rejected in body and soul.
A warrior never gives in to fear when he is searching for what he needs. Without love, he is nothing.

I talk so much about this because these are the types of experiences that life has thrown my way. How can I not let my pen bleed?!?!?!

Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be so hard. But this is what it’s about!!

The wisdom to know that even though it will never be exactly the same as what I experienced as a youthful teenager; the “butterfly in the stomach” feelings are part of the endless possibilities!

I truly hope that that student never loses that enthusiasm for the possibility of Love! I’m sure that he will endure feelings of frustrations and disillusions, but to this day No One Has Ever Died From A Broken Heart!

I can’t help but reminisce about the first and only real time I fell in love that coincided with the first and only real time I truly experienced a broken heart.

Time has left a mark that can’t be erased.

Hope keeps us going but the pain stays to remind us and to motivate us. {Well said Mr. Blake}