Gypsy Living: a Sunday Shoe Story

She's the kind of girl who never leaves home without her music. Earbuds in, she walks the streets of the city until she finds a piece of green that retains a heart of wildness. Cat Stevens' "The Wind" shuffles on and her bare feet tangle with the grass as she spins and spins, grinning upwards at the sun. Spotted light through branches and bundles of leaves shadows the sun-freckles on her cheeks and shoulders.

Bladed with innocence she listens to the wind and the past, thinking of past and present and future spiralling into a single second. She looks closely at a speck of pollen but still sees the field of flowers without thinking of anything at all. All are one and the same. 

Her time will come. 

Shoes: Chinese Laundry "Gypsy"

The Hermit

It's funny how we change and grow over the years isn't it? The quiet nerdy chick who we were in highschool morphs into a still nerdy but less quiet 20-something. Things were a bit more social for a few years - all of our friends' parents said we were a bad influence - but once we settle down our old habits come roaring back. Reading piles of books in our spare time, being happy in solitude, and the snappy retorts that gave us our name as the come-back queen become the word of the day once again.

image from here

Our group of friends is still small, but they're strange enough to have enough personality for 3, and that's why you like them. We've chosen carefully once again, and weeded out those who only used and abused us down to a select few worthy of our mutual adoration. What's the point in amassing acquaintences when you'd rather hold court? The masses can look in on your life, but they can keep their distance behind your mirrored lenses and stop-right-there hand gesture. Earn your place and be welcomed, but beware the journey; it's not for the weak of heart.

China Glaze "Platinum" nail polish

A Darkness of Light

To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us give the devil his due. 

~ Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Season of Mists

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on Nature's power,
Fairing the foul with Art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.

~William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXXVII

None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.

~Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

Death: the Vertigo Tarot deck by Dave McKean
image from Comic Art Community

Song tank top, Seductions jeans, Converse shoes. Photos taken at Camp Hill Cemetary, Halifax. 

The Cards

Your past was filled with harmony and contentment, but you made the choice to seek adventure elsewhere. Your spirit craves answers to questions that cannot be answered by complacency, and while you will always look back on this time as a happy one your new life outside the walls of the Garden is what you really need. 

An unexpected gift from a close friend changes your relationship in a positive way. Your view of the past changes with this revelation and the world takes on a new light. Your happy past is reincarnated in the present, and your childhood feelings of contentment and freedom return. 

The future holds choices, but the present keeps any fears static. Rational thought, balance, and the right choices will come with time and contemplation. You may be frivolous in the present, but you are planning passively for the future through constant discussion.