"borrow indefinitely"

7:19 PM


I don't really know what that means but I don't intend to ask either.

It was 2 years ago when I spotted this sweatshirt from Nom De Guerre's first season's debut of their men's line. When it came out at the time, it was highly coveted and sold out too fast for me to grab. I've since learn how to correctly pronounce their name and have been searching fruitlessly on ebay and everywhere else for my own.  I've pined after it for a long time. You know when you see something and your heart just attaches itself to it... kind of like love at first sight? I had to own it. After 2 years of searching, I found one on ebay for around $300. Sadness because it was too big and $300 is too much for a sweatshirt.

So would you call this fate or how else do you explain it? I go up to New York to meet up with a long-time friend. We go to his place and staring right at me, is the elusive sweatshirt! Turns out he's friends with the designer of NDG, and it was given to him as a gift.

Now its on my shoulders, back in Maryland. Indefinitely. 

Finally. =)


admiration: diane von furstenberg

10:46 AM


Did you catch The City last night? Like many of us in our early twenties, we are conflicted between following our dreams or settling for our hearts. Whitney had to make a choice; to be with Jay, the potential love of her life, or to commit to her blossoming career in the fashion industry. One would think that love and career are mutually exclusive. They are not, but at this stage of debut into the working world, it is mutually exclusive. What needs to be asked is, what is your priority? The boy first and the career later, or vice versa?

Whitney chose career. And so did I. The boy will come later. The career builds a solid foundation for which a healthy relationship, if it happens, can eventually build on. When all your bases are covered, the rest come easily. When all your personal bases are covered, you really don't need anything else.

I found a new inspiration last night. I have always admire the leadership and strenght of Diane von Furstenberg, knowing that she is the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). That means Karl Lagerfeld has to answer to her. Amazing. 

Last night solidified her as a strong role model based on the wisedom which she bestowed on Whitney:

On love and heart-break, "My mother told me the most important thing: Absence to love is what the wind is to fire. If it's a little fire, the wind will blow it out. If it's a big fire, the wind will only intensify it."

On life, "The most important relationship you will ever have is with youself because no matter what happens, you will be with yourself."

How true that is. Before you can love another, before you can give selflessly, you must love yourself first. If you do not, then you will just be searching for someone to fill that void inside you, to fill up what you fail to do for yourself. That's not true love. It is not the emotional and mental co-dependency on another being. That is unhealthy and clingy. If you don't address the issues within you first...if you don't reconcile your past, you will only be temporarily covering it up, until it inevitably surfaces again. You will be repeating your past over and over again. 

So. Let's hear it for loving ourselves. Cheers to us.




What is happiness to you?

8:29 PM

Not the emotion itself, but the idea of everlasting and pure joy. What is it to you?

I just finished watching Vanilla Sky. It's a beautiful story about a narcissist. He relies solely on his good looks, money, and inheritance as a source of power and "happiness," as he perceives it. His happiness is that of which has no real consequences; he takes as he pleases and never experiences the pain of rejection, failure, or loss. When things start to go wrong because of the consequences of him living so carelessly, he escapes into a literal dream world despite his friend's constant warning, "You can do whatever you want with your life, but one day you'll know what love truly is. It's the sour and the sweet. And I know sour, which allows me to appreciate the sweet."

In the end, our protagonist realizes that life is much sweeter and deeper with all its misery and sour moments because it is thanks to them, that the happiest and sweetest moments are able to exist. He decides that he would much rather live and experience all the pains life has to offer, that goes hand-in-hand with happiness, than in a perfect dream, where nothing ever goes wrong... when nothing goes wrong, how would you know when something is right? what do you have to compare it to? One cannot exist without the other.

His last words are, "I want to live a real life... I don't want to dream any longer."



So what is happiness to you?



Happiness to me is not something that you can look for because you won't find it by searching for it; it already lies deep within you. In you is all the happiness in the world. Happiness is accepting the present moment, accepting that you are perfect as you are, at this very second. It is knowing that nothing lasts forever, which intensifies each second and trivializes the future because the future will soon become now, and now will soon become the past. The very essence of life is impermanence, so try to live in the now and appreciate this moment. See it for what it is; passing, ever changing.

If it is sadness that you feel at this moment, know that it, too, shall pass. If it is bliss you feel, appreciate it and be grateful for this very moment. Everything must go. Everything turns into the past.

But what happened to you in the past is not happening to you now.

"We enjoy warmth because we have been cold. We appreciate light because we have been in darkness. By the same token, we can experience joy because we have known sadness." -David Weatherford