Getty Center

So I'm out here having west coast adventures with my mom in San Diego. This also marks the beginning of my journey to chasing a dream in Film and TV that I have been wanting my entire life. 

We drove up to Los Angeles on the school bus with mom's students and it was fun to be around young, smiling, happy, students riding up for a school performance. It's also nice to see my mom in action, working so closely with them. You can tell they adore her (who wouldn't?!) and I'm real proud of her.

We went to the Getty Center for the performance and it looked like the Sultan's palace from Aladdin. This Queen Amidala-esque Utopia in the middle of the seedy hills of LA. But the students did an awesome job and I wish we could've had the time to look at the exhibits. They apparently have one that highlights hieroglyphics and uses night vision goggles. No fair, that would've be SO cool!

My favorite authors

"You sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve."
-J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix)

"If the composition's imperfect, why would so many pianists try to master it?"
"Good question," Oshima says, and pauses as music fills in the silence. "I have no great explanation for it, but one thing I can say: works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason - or atleast they appeal to certain types of people. Just like you're attracted to Soseki's The Miner. There's something in it that draws you in, more than more fully realised novels like Kokoro or Sanshiro. You discover something about that work that tugs at your heart - or maybe we should say that the work discovers you."
-Haruki Murakami (Kafka On The Shore)

“She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice.”
-Zadie Smith (On Beauty)

"Everything everybody does is so—I don't know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way."
-JD Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe."
-Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)

*These are my favorite authors that inspire me and keep me motivated whenever I get writer's block. I feed off their words, images, and adventures. I hope to create my own style and voice, but it's always great to have a few driving forces to help along the way.

Murakami

WOW. After reading the entirety of Zadie Smith's novels, I've been having a difficult time getting lost in a good book. That is, until I discovered the infamous novelist hailing from Japan, Haruki Murakami. If you haven't heard of him or opted to add him to your stack of summer reading, please, I strongly urge you to do so.

I picked up "Kafka On The Shore" on a whim, and was instantaneously transported to this mystical world of talking cats, drunken cowboys, rainy days, magical libraries, lost souls, and noodles. It's insane how connected I felt with the protagonist. How parallel our lives are. I also was mentally stimulated by the themes of time and the meaning of life brought up in this book as well.

Here are some quotes are really enjoyed:

“Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there - to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you go there.”

“Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.”

It's hard to describe his craft, but it is so visual, intellectual, and imaginative. I love when an author can grab you physically, and displace you into the characters and their situations. Reading it reminded me of the Anime film, "Paprika" that deals with the science of dreams.

Since then, I've devoured:

1) Norwegian Wood (where I discovered the famous Beatles song)
2) Sputnik Sweetheart
3) After Dark

I'm currently diving right into "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and I can't get enough of it. If I could write in Murakami's style, I'd be one happy talking cat.

Raw Vegan Blueberry Cheescake

Um, yum...

Go and make this.

J.K. Rowling's Harvard Commencement Speech

"If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."

Amazzzing...

Veganomicon

A.K.A. My personal bible.

Even if you don't eat vegetarian/vegan (al though EVERYONE can, unlike the blindess entity of meat-eaters) food. Why not take the time to flip through this wonderous cookbook filled with works of art that only your tastebuds could dream of.

Mere and I have already made the Portabella Mushroom salad, which literally, is to die for. I'm not kidding.

Isa Moskowitz and Terry Romero are the brain goddesses behind this masterpiece. If you want to know more about them or their recipes, click here.