This morning I wanted to be at the airport around 9am despite Karen insisting that I’d be okay strolling in at 10 for a 1030 flight. The airport in Memphis isn’t very busy. I didn’t wait in line at security, I just walked right through and managed to have a conversation about Hanson (sparked by my tattoo) in a relaxed few moments before locating my gate.

There’s something about airports that I love. A mix of nostalgia, excitement and missing someone, airports never disappoint in this feeling. I love watching people, observing how they dress and wandering through overpriced shops to look at souvenirs, magazines and trail mixes. This morning I bought myself a Memphis Tshirt.

But really I like the suspended moments when I am between places waiting but not bored, watching my surroundings. My favorite time of day is the in between – Twilight – just before dusk. My favorite time of night is after the moments that everyone else is asleep and its quiet, my mind is racing with ideas.

These moments in between other bigger moments tend to be the boring times while we wait and wonder. They are the clusters of minutes before an oven timer goes off, the finally minutes of lunch hour.

If you think about it we are always in between something which means we are always in some sort of moment, some space of time before another undoubtedly happens.

Xo
Melanie.Kristy

So here’s the deal, since I discovered the app Happier, I’ve been writing less love lists and updating my Facebook with less things I love Thursday posts. My life is a little mundane right now, and that’s not to say I don’t love it but I tend to love the same things week by week. Writing the same love lists over and over is destined to be tedious and boring.

So instead I’m going to write about one thing I love each week. This isn’t including books movies or music though. It’s highlighting something, anything, that has made my week special. Happier is an app where you can post what makes you happy, categorize it and add pictures if youd like. You can send people smiles to let them know you liked their moment. You can find me and my consistent love lists on Happier through the address starsgoneblue at gmail. I’d love to see you there!

My one beautiful thing this week is discovering this new application that makes creating a love list easy and fun. It even reminds me nightly to add to my collection.

Xo
Melanie Kristy

Some day I want to live in a cottage near the ocean. Fill it with books and host tea parties in the garden out back. Won’t you join me?

(credit)

I am alive.

I am here.

I am heartbroken, sickened, scared, anxious, confused. My chest is heavy. My eyes are wet.

Oh, Boston. I just don’t even know. I’m alive, you know? All of my family and friends are unharmed by the bombings at the Boston Marathon yesterday. But we are all with heavy hearts.

But also. Also I am grateful. I am appreciative. I recognize all of the helpers and heroes, the love spread online and in person. I’m glad to be alive. Happy to be able to breathe. 

This is our time to be alive.
We have no other time but now.

xo.

Melanie Kristy.

Lately I’ve been a little obsessed with taking bubble baths. I’m a water sign and I could sit in the tub doing nothing except being in water for hours. I hadn’t been taking baths because my tub is teeny and I feel large, because it uses up the hot water, because our drain doesn’t really block well.

I got over it. I take baths late at night or when no one is home (to use the hot water). And I bought a drain cover.

So now I’ve been taking what I have been called $10 Fancy baths. I’ve been experimenting with all of the different bath products at Lush. I can’t quite get enough. Last night my bath bomb (Henata, an Easter special that’s yellow and orange and – you guessed it – shaped like a hen) had flower petals in the middle. Sometimes they’re glittery. They always smell good. Alway

if only you spoke with the same peace of mind that you write in your blog with…*

I still think of you every day.

When I read Francesca Lia Blocks Dangerous Angels I always identified with Witch Baby more than any other character of hers. She’s the misfit with dark curly hair, alone inside herself. She’s the beauty curled up in the mud and beating songs into drums. She’s the girl with the cowboy boot roller skates photographing the world.

Witch Baby takes articles about all of the sad things that are happening in the world and wallpapers her bedroom in sadness. She takes on all that sadness even when she doesn’t mean to. She absorbs it and it becomes her.

It’s hard to see the beauty, you know? With all this sadness. It’s hard to hear the news without being angry and sad. It’s hard to know what my friends are going through without wondering why why why. I’m a sponge of emotion, absorbing sadness. The girl on tv who was raped with an audience, a friend who was recently diagnosed with an auto immune disease (you’re alive, you’re beautiful but it sucks and you’ll get through), the minuscule things and the elementary school shootings, cancer eats us away, hearts race, mental illness is a lump in our throats when all we want is to swallow.

So in a way I’ve always been a bit of a Witch Baby. But I write and I listen and I See as a way to get through, to move past and to accept. I can’t figure out how to accept all these realities. It’s like I’m just waking up to something really cruel. And yet.

I’m not grateful like I should be. I’m not appreciative, not deep down on my heart like I should be. I’ve got all this perspective and yet I’m still doing the wrong things, worsening myself. Something. I need to be kind to that voice. Be kind and move on.

Seek beauty.

Look for magic.

It’s somewhere.
It’s somewhere
I can’t stop the search.

Ps I found this photograph on tumblr here: what time are we upon

Right now I’m sitting in the young adult section of the library staring in vague directions. I tried reading a short steam punk story but I couldn’t focus. I have work to do, my netbook is sitting anxiously in my car while not snows outside on the second day of spring. I don’t come here often but I should. I used to and then I started buying books and yet I want to be a librarian. I could have brought my netbook in and decided to work on a strategic plan, but instead I’m sitting here staring blankly around. Occasionally I listen to the conversation in other parts of the library. I think about what it would be like to work in a library, surrounded by books and information and people who love those things. I think, I should have brought a notebook inside with me. This quietness is filling in a arrange way. There are so many less distractions than at my house. I tend to go to restaurants or coffee shops with wifi but the focus turns into primarily about food and drink. Right now I’m hungry and full. I need to drink and nap. My mouth is dry and my head aches. But I’m sitting in quiet surrounded by books and possibilities.

And right now that’s all I need.

Xo
Melanie Kristy

But I’m so not here
here
Present
Aware

I’m exhausted and achy
Here but elsewhere
Startled
Overwhelmed
Detached

I’m here. We all are
I’m building words together
Wanting to create more
Say more
Express more

Be more with you
In this world
Of photographs and phrases

I’m here
And I’ll be here
With or without words

I’m alive
I’m alive

Reblogged from The Kindred Collective: