Moving Out.

Blogspot, you have been oh so good to me.
But I am temporarily or perhaps permanently moving to:

linivictoria.tumblr.com

Lini still loves you,
Catch me tumbling.
♥ Lini.

OMG, I totes love [ ] too.

I have this thing, this fatal attraction to things.
It causes me to fall in love with things far too often and far too fast.

I've begun to find that this problem plagues many in my generation, the current twenty-somethings. We think our things are so precious we become infatuated with them. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and Catcher in The Rye are our Bibles, Lebron James and Lady GaGa are our Gods, and we make our required pilgrimages to Bonnaroo, Coachella, and Ultra. This seemingly individualistic culture has become the religion of the masses, and we've all blindly converted. And for me at least, when I meet a fellow convert, I think it's some kind of divine indication we are meant to be friends, we are meant to be lovers, we are meant to share our religious experience.

Only everyone loves music. Everyone loves books. Everyone loves food. Everyone loves sports. And though we seem to believe our tastes are tailored, we alone love these divine elements, and we alone know of their existences, it seems we all just drank the Kool-AId. Because when we all love these seemingly brilliant things, it may seem like when we meet someone else who loves them as well, that well, it's just fate.

It's not fate, it't actually fake. It's false perception that because you and someone else both love adore watching Lost and the same Tazo Tea flavor therefore for some reason you and this person somehow belong together.

How do you know what to believe when your own feelings are liars?

Try lying for a change, it's currency of the world.
-Closer

♥ Lini.

Rehearsal

A boy I went to high school with wrote this original post on his tumblr, and I found it quite moving. So, I wrote the female counterpart. The large bulk of it is his, and his is a lot more fluid. You should check it out at the above link. And just as a disclaimer, this is not based around my life or average weekend at all, or anything. Like really.

I know. Sometimes, I don’t. But sometimes, I know.

I know how it’s supposed to go – what I’m supposed to say. I know how to act normal – how to speak only in codes heavily laced with implications of my potential willingness. I know how to attract a boy. I know how to treat him with carefully balanced disinterest and enthusiasm – and show him that he’s not the first boy I’ve been with or around. And I also know that he likes that, for some reason. Knowing I’ve rehearsed the steps sufficient times to recall the choreography but not more times than I can count my dance partners. I know what I’m going to hear – he’ll probably [hopefully?] suggest it – and at what point in the night it can we slip away without causing an awkward silence?

I know how to fill the blanks in our conversation with carefully structured questions– I’ve got a whole list of ‘em. No way, you like music, movies, and food too?! You have career goals?! You grew up somewhere, in some city in this world?! Wow, I have a friend whose cousin’s dog groomer is from there, or something!

Blaring from speakers somewhere, the song changes.

I uncross and cross my legs.

The song changes again.

Tuck my hair behind your ear, bite my lip, drop my napkin, place my hand on his knee to brace myself as I reach for it. Gold star for locking eyes on the way back up.

The song changes again.

Yawn. People respond well to yawning. No one likes being boring.

The song changes again.

Close my bar tab.

I know to hold a boy’s hand when we walk down the street, pretending either of us truly believe in this implied affection. I let him give me his coat, because boys don’t feel cold, and that’s why girls don’t wear coats. To relieve boys from wearing theirs- those poor overheated creatures.

I know how to smile big when he walks on the outside of the sidewalk. Opens the car door. Offers to get me anything I need. Say no one ever does that anymore, haven’t had a door held for me in ages, you’re too sweet! I know how to laugh lightly and promise my apartment is a total mess too, no I don’t mind at all. Actually, I happen to love cheap American beer, that’s so funny and great that you have nothing else for me to drink! I know how to blush at innuendos – act totally surprised to discover why we’re in his apartment.

I know how to segue – by accepting an offer to see “posters in his room” which don’t exist, or to listen to “this great new album.” Before I know it, I’m in his bed, and we both know exactly why – and both know exactly how it will end. I know boys don’t like condoms, questions, or eye contact. I pick a couple to avoid, strike a pose maybe he hasn’t seen, and cue the one-night-only performance. No encore, Count 1-2-3…I-gotta-wake-up-early. I know how to do us both a favor and respond to his fabricated early morning study session with a 9’ o’clock yoga class or a headache. I know why I was there, I know that reason ceased to exist.

Simply put – I know how to get what I want. I know how to use the same gestures and identical formula to get the same result every single time. And when I’ve completed my task – I know how to watch them disappear, too. I know how to exchange numbers merely out of habit. I know how to microanalyze and repeat each second of the evening in conversation over a double pump latte and low-fat muffin with a friend as we search for any moment that might possess a shred of something genuine. I know how to eventually pretend the whole one-night thing never happened. And I know how to pretend it’s just another funny story, I’m just another Sex & City Samatha.

I know how it’s supposed to go.

& I know how it actually goes.

I watched Blue Valentine tonight, put me into perspective. Go see it though, a-m-a-z-i-n-g.

♥

Lini.

Que Paso?

People have been roaming about the planet for quite some time.

Now, I'm not really too into science or anything, but it seems to me if you can get an entire meal in about 60 seconds without even leaving your car, that maybe the billions of years we've spent crawling around the face of the Earth could have reaped a few more results.

I just have so many questions.

Like why aren't people happier, healthier, smarter, and more successful?

Why are things generally unfair, blatantly unjust?

Why are things run so inefficiently, just overall bureaucracy all over the place?

Why has mankind, as a race, in the past 5 billion years or whatever not figured out how to get along with each other or how to know or really even like our own selves? Why does watching six episodes of Sex & The City in a row seems more interesting to me right now than, well, basically anything else?

Maybe that's what we've been busy doing then? Maybe progress is being impeded by Carrie Bradshaw and Cosmopolitians. What were the neanderthals doing without HBO then?

Slackers.

♥

Lini.

Rules

I found these little bits of wisdom of Stumbleupon the other day. I cannot recall the author, but I think they're pretty enlightening. If they're commonly attributed to some genius, well, I'm unaware of whom this individual may be, so pardon my ignorance.

Alienation produces eccentrics or revolutionaries.

All things are delicately interconnected.

An elite is inevitable.

Anger or hate can be a useful motivating force.

Any surplus is immoral.

Artificial desires are despoiling the earth.

At times inactivity is preferable to mindless functioning.

At times you unconsciousness is truer than your conscious mind.

Being alone with yourself is increasingly unpopular.

Being happy is more important than anything else.

Being sure of yourself means you're a fool.

Deviants are sacrificed to increase group solidarity.

It is a gift to the world to not have babies.

It is better to be lonely than to be with inferior people.

It is crucial to have an active fantasy life.

Knowledge should be advanced at all costs.

Money creates taste.

Much was decided before you were born.

Spending too much time on self-improvement is anti-social.

Just some brain food.

Chomp Chomp.

[look at that Guernica closely, sidenote.]

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

-Ernest Hemingway

I know what said that one.

♥ Lini.

Who Dat Girl?

I'm about to half-confess something I've never really told a soul.

There's this girl.

She loves the designers I love, in fact she loved them before I knew who they even were.

She has the job I want.

She got through school the way I wish I had, or currently was.

She associates with people I wanna associate with.

She's gorgeous.

She's brilliant.

She has amazing taste in clothes. Men. Food. Books. Music. Everything.

[And I am quite the snot when it comes to complimenting other people's taste.]

To me, she is fashion. She is living, breathing fashion.

While I think she's sort of an awful person, undeniably two-faced, a terrible friend, and ambitious to the point of throwing anyone at all under the bus, I envy her to pieces.

I want her work ethic. I want her wardrobe. I want her network.

I keep telling myself I don't want to actually be her because you know, everyone has a cross to bear, you don't know what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes, be careful what you wish for, yada yada yada.

Because, damn. I kinda wanna be her.

Or at least have all her shit.

There, I said it.

SIGH. OF. RELIEF.

♥ Lini.

It's Getting Hard To Be Someone

I am all for markers.

I am all for needles & thread.

I am all for drooling over buttons, beads, brooches, and brocades.

I just feel sometimes I am surrounded by people who are incapable of seeing beyond the four walls of [studio] classrooms or the pages of their [sketch]books.

I'm not really too concerned with them [them being various people I study with in my Fashion Design program] reading this, because I'm sure they're far too concerned with coming up with better ideas than everyone else yet complaining about how their garments are someone SO much more difficult. UG, fashion!

But anyway.

Tonight was the State of The Union Address.

Just that thing, ya know.

Tonight I also went to dinner with a handful of friends from my program at a lovely Indian restaurant.

Mind you, I love them all dearly, but when they were talking about politics and taxes and traveling and living abroad, etc. etc. I just wanted to shout "Put down that samosa sweetheart, and turn on your fucking televisions if you care so much about anything that just spilled out of your mouth."

May lightning strike me if I am wrong, but I feel quite certain none of them knew about that State of the Union thing which happened tonight.

It's not like it's hard to follow. Back in the day that shit was practically carved into stone and read from a mountain top, nowadays Mr. Barack has a Twitter.

Real talk right now: Barack Obama has a Twitter. Becha our parents didn't see that one coming.

I can be largely un-American. I despise weekends dedicated to football, condiments and potato salad make me cringe, and I think Greek life may singlehandedly be responsible for the abysmal quality of higher education in this country. But once a year it doesn't hurt to tune in to the elected leader of our nation's report on the good ole U-S-of A's status. I mean you can check Susie Q's status on Facebook on your iPhone every 15 minutes, but God forbid you see what's going on with health insurance, or you know, the 10 year war we're currently in.

I am not saying I am some enlightened, all-knowing being. [Believe me, if you spoke to me for more than 15 seconds you would see I am far from such.] I am just saying I miss being around people who stimulated my brain and I missed not constantly being under pressure to focus. Maybe if I wasn't daydreaming about how to attach a vinyl sleeve properly I could focus more on the world I live in.

The world you live in isn't just your major in college, your newsfeed, "overnight" success stories, or the way you look just because you've been instructed to focus so much on those things.

I could think about how to vote properly if I focused less.

I could remember the governor of my home state if I focused less.

I could have picked up a novel without being forced to if I focused less.

I could be more concerned with the fact that I am 22 years old I honestly just realized this week that "sponjes" is not how you spell that lovely little thing you wash dished with if I focused less.

"Living is easy with eyes closed."

-The Beatles [John Lennon], Strawberry Fields Forever

♥ Lini.

The Greatest Thing You Will Ever Learn

In terms of my education, in some ways, I feel I've learned more in the last week than I had in the past four years of college.

And painlessly.

Seamlessly.

If only I could bottle this methodology, I could take it right to the bank.

Why hasn't all my schooling been this insightful?

Do they just save the most useful information for seniors because we need to build up to it, layer semester upon semester to reach a final few months of relevance?

Or am I delusional, imagining I picked up on something of importance in the last handful of days?

♥ Lini.

Now Playing

Some posters I found & loved while doing research when making a poster for my friend's play he's directing.

I'm about to not do something today out of sheer stubbornness and pride.

But I might regret it.

I wish I had more time to think about it.

Choices.

♥ Lini.

[Internet] Window Shopping

Endless windows to shop in when your windows are in a browser...

Dreaming of a new wardrobe, I want everything from Refinery 29.

♥ Lini.

Snow, Snow, Go The Eff Away.

Because as much as I love Stella McCartney's new stuff, I'd love being warm a lot more.

♥ Lini.

Voici Mon Secret

I know I'm all about skulls, rips & tears, leather, and dilapidated shit.

But if you promise not to tell, I will confess.

Occasionally a gown, preferably stunningly photographed, will take my breath away.

I do sorta wish I was Marie Antoinette after all.

There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.

Reine Marie herself, smart lady.

♥ Lini.

Momma Don't Preach

My mother, Katia.

Yesterday was 1/1/11. My dear friend was with me at 11:11 on this date and we made wishes as all those in our generation probably were as well. It reminded me of a story she had told me earlier about on all her birthdays. She blew out her candles, pressed her eyes shut, and wished for- well, she can't remember what she wished for. She can only remember hearing her mother shouting out "Happiness! Wish for happiness!", drowning out whatever desires and dreams she had thought up on her own.

I'm not sure why this story stuck with me so much. I mean to me, I think if one were truly happy, nothing else would matter. I like to think possessing the feeling of genuine, non-artificial happiness would give the owner to power to control everything else in their life, therefore making wishing for a perfect body, job, or spouse useless. On the other hand, I don't really buy into this whole "Money [or insert whatever else you want here] doesn't buy happiness" bullshit. What makes people unhappy? Being hungry, having debt, bad health, and in today's society let's be real, wanting things we can't have. Cure for all of the above, hate to say it, is a couple ole green backs.

So is it fair to force happiness upon someone? Is it fair to control your children? Mothers, maybe you've been told you know best, but mothers you're human too. And mothers, believe me, we children are overall thankful for the immeasurable amount of love you always give us. It's just sometimes we don't want happiness. We want a pony. Or a the star quarterback to ask us to prom. Or a new car. Or bigger boobs. Or for you to accept we're never going to be the child you prayed for because maybe we don't even believe in prayer ourselves.

Does anyone really even understand their children? Does anyone really even understand anyone?

Mothers, be good to your daughters.

[& sons, they're not too bad.]

-John Mayer, Daughters.

♥ Lini.

Mambo Italiano

ma non conoscete questo ancora

Adventure time?

♥ Lini.

Order & Progress

Do I keep wasting massive amounts of time doing nothing because I'm lazy or because I'm afraid of doing anything meaningful?

I know what I want.

Why am I not chasing after it instead of chilling with my cat looking out the window right now?

Sigh.

♥ Lini.