All things pink and red
Cupid’s arrows are zinging around with extra vigor because Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. To help you get into the mood—just in case you’ve missed all the advertising in shops and in every possible variety of media—I bring you a selection of my photographs, paying special attention to pink this year.
Seeing red (and pink)
I once knew a beautiful woman, tall, with dark hair and sparkling dark brown eyes. She dressed to own the room, and she knew what she was doing. She once told me that she only wore red twice a year: on Christmas and on Valentine’s Day. Many years later, I’m still puzzled by such a rigid dress code outside the military, but I once saw her in red, and she absolutely owned the room that day.
Well, sartorial rules aside, we find ourselves between my friend’s two official “red” holidays (plus a third that she didn’t mention), and in honor of that, I’m posting a selection of red and pink, flowers and hearts, plus a few pithy quotations, all in the name of love and romance.
Ho’o pono pono
We have arrived at the early days of a brand-new year. In western cultures, the new year is a time to make resolutions, to make a list of things to do/change/work on in order to become a better person. Or to become slimmer. Or wealthier. Or more patient.
There is a long, long list of potential New Year’s resolutions, and cultures all over the globe have their own practices, as well as their own timing, for these celebrations.
In Judaism, the most holy and solemn time of the year is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It occurs just after Rosh Hashana, the New Year, which generally occurs sometime from September to early October. Yom Kippur is a time to take a close and honest look at our intentions in order to discover the true source of our words and actions. The belief is that when we learn to act from a place of love and connectedness, those values grow exponentially in the world.
About a dozen years ago, I made a single New Year resolution: to live more in my heart and less in my head. It turns out this one single thing is a lifelong process, at times frustrating, always fascinating.
In school, I earned A’s in math classes and was told I should consider a career in engineering. For a long time, my hobby was architecture; I used to design wildly bizarre floorplans, and even built models of a few of them. But engineering never interested me, and eventually I chose not to pursue architecture either.
I studied graphic design in college, and that was my first exposure to the cultural division between following one’s head and following one’s heart. We saw the painters and sculptors as the spacy ones who would probably never earn a living with their art, while we were the “smart” ones who used our art to find a better-paying job. I’m pretty sure those “spacy” artists thought we had sold our souls.
Lo Vedo Life 