Summer Solstice

In honor of the start of summer I laid out in the backyard and soaked up the sun in my bikini. 

Here is a list of my sunbathing essentials:

Sunscreen! 

My ipod and my blackberry

My journal and the book(s) I am reading

A big drink of ice water (in my Edward Cullen cup of course)

 

A fun windmill planted next to my towel

(my mom sent me this a while back. so cute!)

A breeze! 

My cute whale shorts (from forever 21)

and my bikini from target 

(i got this last year for one of my first dates with jake) 

Happy longest day of the year! 

those words are not enough...

feelings, inside of my head
i don't know, but i'm thinking about you- relient k

writing has always been a huge part of my life. happy, sad, angry... i love words. (music lyrics especially!!) i have been keeping a journal since i was 14 and have roughly 20 of them filled up. recently for a writing assignment i had to think about my love of words. i loved the assignment and had a lot of fun with it, but this is me we are talking about... words arent always enough. i needed pictures!!! if you have seen my journals they never consist of just words. pictures, stickers, sketches and other things always adorn the pages. so the paper didn't satisfy me and i began brainstorming ways to mesh my pictures with my words. i have a million and two ideas running around in my head as always. for my advanced photo assignment this week i narrowed my ideas down (for now) and decided to take small quotes from my journals. but this was not narrow enough. like i said, 20 journals. thats a lot of words. so i took quotes from journals only within the last year and mostly from my current journal. not all the words are mine (2 are song lyrics) but they were written in my journal because they mean something to me so i felt they still fit into the project. i wish i could have made 20 of these but 8 will have to do for now. these photos and maybe some more like them will make their way into my final project which i am already planning out in my head. -rachel johanna

i love a good sunny day

waking up to a day like today, with the sun out and the warmth... i love it! i associate good weather with good memories and good feelings so on beautiful days like today i get overwhelmed with rich emotions and a desire to be free. but since i had to work i found an outlet for that through poetry. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin's "i loved you...", Pablo Neruda's "drunk as drunk" and "twenty poems of love", and as always my favorite poet the lonley, brilliant and always inspiring Emily Dickinson. I love everything she ever wrote. They spoke to me today and their words entered into me and found a home.

It was Langston Hughes who's words hit home the most though.

"Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night-

And I love the rain."

i guess it spoke to me the most because there is no rain in my world right now.

The Intangible Redd

I have been dreaming of swimming through dark water-these words.
Glistening in the sun on snow.
Like a fish through these words
Flickering thoughts
Kaleidoscope dreams
The scratch of pencil-
the sweet smell of ink.

As i lay next to the fireplace
as it dances with the ceiling fan
i can see the shadows
through the thin skin of my eyelids.

The intangible red.
The intangible Redd.
Untouchable.
Abstract.
Ethereal.
Disincarnate
Incarnate
My companions do not care about anything so intangible.

I reach out for the flames, but meet only glass.
It's cold outside, but it's warm
in here.

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"Art is simply confidence in what you do"~ thayne