I am on my break from school. I realize I only have two more terms.

The summer is approaching. The sun struggles with the clouds to bring about summer. I am cheering for the sun. The clouds are making a good fight. Rain pelts the sidewalks daily and then the tired overcast clouds, exhausted from pummelling soaked londoners, release their hold on the skies and the sun makes a fine show.

I consider buying a bike. But the schizophrenia of the weather keeps me a spendthrift.

I love to watch people on the train. I love to spin tales of their lives and where they are going. People on a train are going somewhere, oh the places they go! I also like to watch people in queues or lines. Patience becomes physical. Children are fun to watch as well, but I worry that their parents will find me strange.

and I am not strange.

More of Summer with Dad and Grandma,

My new niece! Summer Rose Johnson, born February 20th!!

Boy am I missing the Sun.

I'm looking for some hope and happy inspiration.
Please share. Thank you.

I am missing the sun......and the dray......and Christmas with my family.

I leave for Portugal in a week and I am going to spend Christmas with Diogo's family. I am very excited to spend time with a family this year, but there is an ache of homesick about not seeing my own family on Christmas. Especially now that my brother will be having a baby soon. Though both kids don't live at home and haven't for several years, there is something sentimental that stirs in me about this Christmas being the last Christmas the my nuclear family is just four.

Life moving forward, welcoming and reminiscent.

Merry Christmas 2007

A Touch of home....www.thishome.org.

Sex and the City...an end/beginning.

A few moments ago I watched the last episode of Sex and the City. I wept, I laughed, I mourned, and I smiled....widely. Throughout the last two episodes, and now I can't help but feel like my life is on a path. You see, I started watching Sarah Jessica Parker's show when I was 21. I was between my sophmore and junior year of College, crazy and mixed up, planning my career path in advertising, addicted to video games and diet pills, running between 4-6 miles a day. It was just after my first really emotional and hard break up with my first long term live-in boyfriend. The show was like honey to my wounded, independent, female-rebirthing soul. And it was good. OH sooooooo good. But I stopped watching the show at the end of the third season. I have no good reason why and I can't really remember anything besides maybe I got a life again or at least decided to reemerge in the world.

Now, since I quit my job and school hasn't started back up, I've had the time to watch the last three seasons. And it feels like I was meant to wait six years to finish off this gem of HBO goodness. The first three seasons are all about empowerment and loving yourself and loving all the trouble we girls put ourselves through for love, sex, and excitement. The independent girl establishing herself in the crazy world.

The last three seasons are about settling into yourself, commiting to love, and finding a path to stick to. I am now 27, in my last year of grad school, in love with a wonderful stable and great guy, and thinking about what my path to settling down would look like. The Independent yet collaborative woman choosing/commiting to a path within an option-filled existence.

Now, I'll admit that I am making a mountain out of a television show, but it's my mountain. I'm standing at the top of the snow peak waving happily, saying.....I've grown up. Oh goodie. And look, I really like this show because I watch it and feel simile. Catharsis. Cyclical Catharsis.

Hoorah!!!

We have returned!! Diogo and I arrived back from our trip on Tuesday after a much mixed up return flight. We lost our luggage but luckily it was found and returned to us yesterday. PHEW!

We had a wonderful time. To all those whom I was able to see, much love, it was wonderful to see you for the brief time that we did. To those who I missed, :(

I have put a bunch of picture from our trip on my facebook page, but if you don't have facebook, I should get some up here or on my flickr page soon enough. (Photo montage!!!)

Our trip followed the path from New York (ANNIE! It was fabulous to see you.), Portland (Sabra, Alex, Brooke, Sarah, Molly, Bruce - SOOOOO good to see you! hannah, I'll catch you in London.), Ashland (Erin and Jones we must make a longer road trip after we graduate!), the Oregon Coast, Klamath Falls (Jessie and Josh, congrats!!), and finally ending in San Francisco where we took a spontaneous trip to a theme park and Diogo took his first thrill ride on several roller coasters.

Seeing my parents, family, and friends was a wonderful recharge and by the end we were looking forward to being home. Now that we are home. It's reallly lovely. I'm very happy.

Oregon State motto: Alis Volat Propriis, Latin for “She Flies With Her Own Wings”

(since 1987; This was the original motto of Oregon, but had been changed to “The Union” in 1957.)

I am going home for three weeks with Diogo. We are going to New York for a couple days, then arriving in Portland on the 16th of August and then spending a big amount of time with my family in Klamath Falls and finally ending and returning from San Francisco. I am looking forward to it with great anticipation. I never thought I would be missing my homeland, but I do a bit. Living away from my native country makes me miss it, for all it's blessings and curses.

Also, falling in love, thinking about getting married and wanting to have children makes me long to be around my parents for a bit and touch upon their wisdom and love. I'm missing my mother and father more than I expected to. Despite all our loving disagreements, they know me more than anyone else in the world. Their love for me is part of the foundations of who I am. I really want to come back to my foundations for a time. I hope to have this connection with my own children. Boy, my parents did a good job. This respectful, loving bond I have with them is the epitome of parenthood.

The woman that left Portland a year ago is very different. I feel I've grown up so much in only one year. My feet feel rooted deeply within myself, but I don't feel grounded at all...yet. I knew when I decided this path for my life I was going to be different afterwards, I just didn't think I would be so aware of it. I remember just before I left Portland I had freak out about whether this was the "right path" for my life and I asked many friends whom I respected for advice. The best advice I received was from my friend Dani, who said, ultimately, that there was no such thing as a right path. Which ever path I chose, going to London or not, was the path I would live my life by. Labeling it right or wrong was just a way of worrying and avoidance.

The greatest lessons that I own now is the understanding that everything moves forward, whether it be viewed good or bad, it all moves forward into something else. And ultimately, nothing is good or bad because it all leads on. My worst times in the past are an integral part to my current happiness, had I not had them I would not be where I am right now. And I love where I am right now, even completely lost, emotional, and ungrounded, I wouldn't change anything.

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. - Marie Curie

The same is true of art and artists, no?

I'm often completely in awe of the similarity between artistic and scientific discovery and innovation. The artistic and scientific minds often function on very same levels.

Spacelab 2006-7

Here is my answer to one of the questions my school asked me.

The value and survival of theater as a performing art is constantly in question. What value do you ascribe to live theater? Is this value related to its “market value”? In what ways, if any, is theater a “service” rather than a “product”?

I value theater's life. In our current culture of speed, immediate satisfaction, technological isolation, and submissive consumption, theater slows down, unites, and demands active participation of the community it occurs within. Anne Bogart in And Then You Act says, "In the United States, we are the targets of mass distraction. We are the objects of constant flattery and manufactured desire. I believe that the only possible resistance to a culture of banality is quality." Quality theatre is the antidote for my culture. Quality theatre is not a consumption, it is a participation. It is something created between the audience and the performers. It is alive. I believe live performance is an antidote to the opiates of our culture (i.e. television, movies, internet, media, etc). Theatre creates physical metaphors and poetry that the audience must participate in.

Theater is a service instead of a product when its intention is to serve instead of sell.

Ladybird

Here is a video created in my backyard by two of my lovely classmates. Its a simple beauty. Just like Agnese and Martha.