it all started when i was flipping through this silly book, '14.34875 gazillion things to be happy about.' and i found myself repeatedly saying, "but that one SUCKS! peas do not make me happy." peas are terrible.
so i vowed right then and there to make a happy list of my very own, a collection of silly & serious things that never fail to make me smile when i need it. and here it is! i hope it will make you smile, too, because honestly there's a lot of sucky shit in the world and i think we could use some more happiness.
holy shit this makes me want to move to brooklyn and have rooftop parties.
and i’m gonna do it. BECAUSE I GOT MYSELF A RESEARCH JOB IN THE CITY.
this is certainly the happiest post of this entire tumblr. perhaps the happiest post of all time. i’m teetering on the edge of a giant leap to something new and exciting and i’m all too aware of it. god, i wish i could bottle this euphoric feeling and save it for six, ten months down the road, when i know i’m probably gonna need it.
i guess that’s why i have this sucker in the first place, right?
i have so much love and emotional history wrapped up in this song and this scene; i think it’s the single most perfect pairing of a movie and soundtrack i’ve ever experienced. it just… fits.
two weeks ago, i went to go see the o’keeffe exhibit at the whitney; the exhibit was closing that weekend, so we had to wait on line outside for an hour and it was uncomfortably crowded once we actually got inside. but it was entirely worth it when i turned a corner and found myself staring at the original red canna painting.
let me explain: i’ve had this irrationally intense attachment to that painting ever since my senior year of high school—despite never actually having seen the original piece before. my art teacher had tasked me with the job of painstakingly recreating red canna on three cabinet drawers in one of the art rooms. i was sort of in love with this teacher, so i poured my heart into the project. i sat on the floor for days at a time, struggling to get the ripples in a petal just right. this piece basically single-handedly sparked my love affair with everything o’keeffe: all the rich, vibrant colors, the seemingly seamless gradations, the gorgeous flowing shapes.
and then i was there, inches away from the real thing—it felt kind of like what i think meeting a celebrity might be like. i wanted to get closer, close enough to touch it; but there were guards in every room, and i wasn’t ready to be forcefully escorted out of the museum just yet. so i stood there, overwhelmed with this strange emotional connection i felt towards what was essentially a piece of colored canvas on the wall. and suddenly, i started to notice all the imperfections in the painting; from up close, you could see the brush strokes and the places where the colors didn’t blend entirely and the texture of the canvas underneath everything.
“congratulations, FFF, you’ve got a kink. it’s not an uncommon response: sometimes our subconscious mind takes the lemons of our sexual insecurities and turns them into delicious bonerade.”
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]hold tight london – the chemical brothers
i love it when i revisit an album or band i haven’t listened to in a while, and halfway through i’m completely knocked on my ass by how incredibly GOOD a song i’d forgotten about is. this happened with this song, today at work. i was rocking out, mindlessly making catalogs; and then this song started to play, and it was like i had disintegrated and rematerialized somewhere else. suddenly i was standing in a tiny living room on wickenden street in the hot summer sun.
and then i started thinking about how i got there—about the boy that introduced me to the chemical brothers, and his first-floor apartment and his crazy oversized computer setup and how he paced around that little room, bursting with excitement. he was irrationally obsessed with this song in particular, and back then i didn’t understand it at all. but now i do.
i think i’m still a little bit in love with all of my exes.
