In the Garden

Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.
Alfred Austin

Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow.

Zora Neale Hurston

Funspot, Laconia, NH

In Laconia, New Hampshire, there is a little gem of a place called Funspot. It is the largest arcade in the world, featuring 3 levels and over 500 games, including classics, pinball, 8 bit, indoor mini golf and more! If you have seen the documentary King of Kong, it was filmed there. I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked because it's pretty difficult to take pictures in an arcade and I was really pictured out by the time I got there. There is so much to do, including an outdoor ropes course, you couldn't do it all in a week! My favorite game was one not pictured here, where you try to roll a bowling ball over a hump and not have it come back to you. I don't know why I enjoyed that so much but I did. My husband actually worked the same game at Six Flags as a teenager and after trying all summer, he never once won, but for some reason it gives you the feeling that if you just try one more time you'll make it. I never made it. No wonder it's the highest paying game (in tickets) in the place! If you ever find yourself in the Boston area, it is worth the 2 hour drive to visit Funspot, and if you are not in the area but you just love video games, definitely check this place out before it's gone! There are plenty of campgrounds and hotels in the area, much to my surprise, and a beautiful lake.

Boston

Drowning

Lying, robed in snowy white

That loosely flew to left and right-

The leaves upon her falling light-

Through the noises of the night

She floated down to Camelot;

And as the boat-head wound along

The willowy hills and fields among;

They heard her singing her last song,

The Lady of Shallot.

-Tennyson 

So Human

“I'm not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.”-C. JoyBell C.

Pretty Not Pretty

I was inspired by this artist to do some self portraits; and as I was posing for my pictures of course I found myself trying to look pretty! Doesn't everyone want to look pretty in a picture? But then I got sick of all that- the pictures never turned out as pretty as I wanted them to, or as pretty as so and so or so and so's picture. I thought to myself, what if I didn't try to be pretty? Would it be so terrible for someone to see an ugly picture of me? We are always posing, always wanting to be seen a certain way-and the way we want to be seen often changes from group to group. We all make judgements whether we want to or not because appearances are often the first thing we know about a person we haven't met. Unfortunately, we make these judgements so quickly and so unconsciously that sometimes we may be surprised to learn something new about someone we've already pegged. The good thing is, everyone else is worried about their image too, so most likely they won't notice that tiny little zit on your nose or that scar or those few grey hairs. 

But maybe they will and who cares!?

So here is my little homage to ugly, go out and get ugly today!

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
- Oscar Wilde