world on fire

So thankful I had the opportunity to shoot this family last week! Such genuine people and I'm so honored to have been trusted to take their family photos. 

I had such a great time at my grandparent's up in Ellijay last week celebrating Thanksgiving. Bonfires, starry skies, gator rides and pecan pie. Bliss.

 Tomorrow is my last day of class for the fall semester, next week will consist of finals and my last days at Modern Luxury as an intern...and then there are some seriously exciting things coming up in the weeks following.

Current clips by yours truly in the December issue of The Atlantan: 

page 110

page 117

Current song on repeat: 

Girl On Fire

xo

galactic thanksgiving

'It must be written that the moon elbowed the stars and said, "let's do our best to make it hard for them"' 

Dear stars and space, 

Thanks for being groovy. This was my first-ever attempt at a star trail photo! The brightest trail in the top center is actually Jupiter according to the solar map app I was playing with. The universe is really so, so fascinating.

Love ya. 

film & how to be

 [film]

Car rides aren’t my fondest memories…I used to dread the thought of road trips. On the six-hour trip to Hilton Head or 12 hour trip to Ohio, I would sit in the backseat where you couldn’t see anything but the seat in front of you. I’d attempt to read but get carsick instead, fall asleep in the most terrible, upright positions and wake up with a pinched nerve in my neck. The music would play at a volume I could barely hear all the way in the backseat and the AC was usually cranked on high, all while breathing that awful car smell.

But that was then.

I’m not 15 anymore—the days of my mixing up the gas and the break pedals are passed and the times where I was so nervous that it took three tries to get my license are gone (although whether or not the anxiety still lingers for almost everything OTHER than driving is up for debate). The thought of the windows down, sunroof engaged, wind blowing through my hair and my ever-changing favorite music blasting on my sub-par sound system (maybe even paired with a 99 cent McDonalds sweet tea in the cup holder? You can uproot me, but I’ll be a southern girl ‘til death do us part)….that thought is perfection. I want to drive as fast as the trusty Accord will take me, feel the danger and go nowhere in particular. I want to look at the scenery from the driver’s seat and and live freely and insouciantly. And I think that starts with a karma cleanse…doing things for YOU. Getting things by honest, hard work instead of by taking the easy way out. Check your motives and reevaluate yourself. Go on a drive.

I’ve stumbled upon many-a-good reminder and plenty of words to live by in my life, but recently I found this and it really resinated with me:

“How to be a better (happier & healthier) human being:

Never touch anything with half of your heart, be present, endlessly loving and compassionate towards others, confront any challenging situation with a deep breath, wander, remember your own happiness and comfort comes above all things, before reacting—understand, eat breakfast every morning, find the faces in the flowers, remember what is important to you, treat your body kindly, be honest, get to know yourself, take things at your own pace, don’t feel embarrassed to feel, laugh, cry, sing or love, remember what’s right for someone else may not be what is right for you (and that’s okay), never be ashamed or afraid to ask for help, do what you love, remember that you always have a choice, find joy in what life really is—living.”

And that inspired me to scribble out a mini-list of the seemingly small and insignificant things I love. Of course I love my family to the moon and back. I adore my friends and I’m in love with the city I call home. These things are my life, but what about the small details?

I love strawberries and how versatile they are. You can make cupcakes, muffins, a short cake, eat them chocolate-covered or by themselves. They’re so sweet alone but can be embellished a thousand ways or even sour on a bad day. Kind of like a human. Rather relatable, really. I love the fear of taking that very first sip of a hot beverage. I love opening my mailbox and seeing post, packages with ribbon and sending things off in the mail. I love that airplanes are a giant row of chairs flying through the air, and that cars are essentially a few chairs sitting together rolling down the interstate. I love strange posters, psychedelic artwork, black-and-white film and the endless possibilities of a lone sheet of paper paired with a freshly sharpened pencil. I love magazines and all of the peoples’ jaw lines in glossy photos. I love the words printed on those pages and the fact that humans are such advanced animals that we can look at the characters on that surface and recognize them as something more than what they are. I love when it's cold outside and you can still feel the sun shine warmly on your face. I love the sweetness of babies that don’t know anything but the goofy faces everyone gives them just to see them smile, and I love the innocence that every one has or once had in this world. I love the blood-red tree outside my window and the fact that the scarf hanging on my door was once nothing but yarn, nothing but a cotton plant, nothing but a seed covered in dirt. I love unexpected kisses, poetry, people who hug, maps, traveling, exploration and adventure. I love random acts of kindness and the stranger who spotted me a dollar for coffee when my card declined at the register my freshman year. I love genuine people, sweet tea, kittens and serendipity.

Most of all, I love that I’ve come to realize that the little things in life are actually the big things.

xo

a beginning and an end

I love this sweet family. They were one of the first people to ever start paying me for family photos about a year and a half ago, so I felt REALLY old seeing how changed they were at this shoot. Mila is gorgeous and incredibly smart for her age, and Faith is now walking/stumbling/falling around on her own. It's amazing what a couple of years can mean, especially for these little babes. So much fun.

So...Thanksgiving really couldn't come fast enough at this point. I've done pretty well with managing time, stress, etc this semester, but with everything starting to wrap up, it's getting a little manic. It feels really strange, though, as if I'm not just finishing up a semester, but actually finishing up a chapter in my life. Even with all of the stress and havoc around me, I'm standing completely still for a moment and taking it in. After graduating high school, I thought the next chapter "ending" would be college graduation. I'm only a sophomore, but I'm feeling...nostalgic, I guess would be the most appropriate word. 

I'm typing this in my bed at the sorority house with only a few weeks left of calling this place home. Living with 19 girls has been the most fun and the most frustrating experience of my life. I've learned so many lessons that I could have NEVER been taught on a chalkboard. Sometimes I feel like that's what college is all about, though. Yes, I have to study, yes, I write an ungodly amount of papers and yes, I literally pay these people to put this stress on me (self-inflicted?). But besides learning the necessary skills for a future job (which could probably be crammed into less than a year of studies), the four years of college are to make us learn how to...be. It forces us to learn to live with strangers, to get along with people for group projects, to get things done under stress. When people ask, "Why do I need to know this for the future?"...my theory is that you don't. What you do need to know is how to get to class on time. You need to learn how to be completely lost in a subject and feel like you're on the brink of failing, and do everything in your power to get yourself above water. It's survival, and whether you're at Harvard or a technical school, nothing teaches it better than these four years following high school. 

Further nostalgia: I just heard an ambulance scream past my window headed to Grady, wondering who's in the back and if they're okay. What happened? Will they be able to be helped? Is this the last year I'll fall asleep to sirens? When I'm at the airport, where is everyone going? Are they on a business trip, going to see family, escaping reality or headed home? Why won't the Georgia State student who got shot this week just a few streets away from my house be able to live his full life? How is that fair? 

You're never supposed to tell people what you wish for, whether it's on a birthday cake, 11:11, an eyelash...whatever. And with how superstitious I am, I believe that 100%. Once they come true, though, why not? It can't be undone. So...a long time ago, I made a wish that I wanted to feel everyone else's pain, happiness, joys and sorrows. I wanted to be able to watch the news and cry for the old lady that got scammed by the mechanic. I want to feel the struggle of the homeless man that has been sitting on the stoop outside of my building ever since I moved in months ago. I want to feel bad enough for the server that got yelled at then stiffed at the restaurant I ate at last night, that I leave an extra tip for her, too. I want to cry for the woman who lost her child in Hurricane Sandy, I want to hurt for all of the animals and children that will never be able to get adopted and I want to smile and shed a tear for the military man getting off the plane, hugging his wife so tight that you'd think he'd never let go. 

Whether you want to believe it was thanks to those five seconds of silence before I blew out the candles on that birthday cake, through some kind of prayer, or if it came true simply because I believed it could, it has. It's not all of a sudden, it's not new and it's never going to change. It's how I view life. I truly believe that being able to put myself in that different perspective, being able to feel the deepest of sadness and have my heart break with others, has made me capable to see the sheer happiness and beauty of life itself that I wouldn't be able to see as clearly any other way. And I am so thankful for that.

Happy November, y'all! 

xo, Siren Lullabies