Peace, love and Mel

Melissa and Ryan are getting married TOMORROW!! I cannot wait. I freaking love this girl and am so happy for them!

A night out in Shanghai, China (2007)

But... what I have been waiting for is to share her wedding invitations on the blog because they are the most gorgeous things to have ever graced my mailbox.

Note the peace signs in both photos and the wedding invitation.

If you want to read more about the designer and how these invitations Mel & Ryan picked are eco-friendly (yay!), check out the Mink Letterpress blog.

Eat, Pray, Love: Sending light and love

I'd had Eat, Pray, Love sitting on my counter for more than a week when I finally watched it. I read the book a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. I kind of got a little bored in the middle, but overall I remember I enjoyed it. I may read it again sometime soon.


Tangent: Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of Eat, Pray, Love (2006)) wrote a follow-up book last January called Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage. Oh man is that book good! It's about marriage and what it means to be in a marriage. I really recommend it whether you're single, in a relationship, have been married for a day or married for 25 years.


So this post is not for me to give a little review of the movie. I'm writing about what I want to take away from the movie.


There is this scene where Liz is in a fantasy dancing on a roof in India with her ex-husband. They're dancing like they did on their wedding day, and he tells her he misses her. She says, "Then miss me." 


She tells him when he thinks of her to just send her light and love, and then let it go.


I've found myself doing this several times already. Wishing someone light and love and then letting all other thoughts about that person go. It really works. I feel better at the end instead of obsessively thinking about stupid old things I cannot change that would inevitably make me feel worse.


I don't think you have to necessarily use this for someone you don't want to be thinking about. It's nice to think of someone and then send them light and love. Try it. I bet it will feel good for you, too.


Finally watching this movie inspired me to pick up a book I've been holding onto for a couple years. It's called Turtle Feet: The Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk (2008). It takes place in India, where Liz also went (well, I'm sure they weren't in the same place in India). I am definitely interested in the spiritual journey in the book, but I am also enjoying being transported back to a place of peace for me. Although I haven't been to India, I have visited  several monasteries in Thailand and China. Even though they are pretty bare (well, some are quite elaborate) and often dirty, they are also always beautiful and peaceful. 


So when I read about this monk in India, I pretend that he is in Lhasa, Tibet, and that I am there again, too, for just a little while:

Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet. Can you see the monk in his red robes?

On the roof of the same monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, with the market square below and Potala Palace in the background.

The Immortals

What is arguably my favorite band, Kings of Leon, released its new (fifth!) album, Come Around Sundown, yesterday. 


Quick anecdote: I throw the little fact about the fifth album in there because last month I was talking to my friend, W, about how I was seeing KOL in concert (yesss, they were amazinggg). I thought it was strange their show was on a Monday, but figured it might be to control the level of belligerency when people left the venue. She suggested it was because they're a newer band so maybe they wouldn't draw as large a crowd as a Friday or Saturday show would. So you see (fifth album!), they are not new. When I started loving them in the summer of 2007 thanks to my friend James playing Youth & Young Manhood in our shared office space at work, that album (their first) was actually released in 2003!


Anyways, I hadn't gone to a store in years to actually buy an album. Seriously, I think the last time I'd bought a hard copy was John Mayer's Heavier Things when I was a freshman in college. So I bought the Deluxe version of the album and was so giddy getting in my car to put it into my CD player and listen immediately. I then brought it home and played it through my BluRay player so I could hear it as loud as possible. I listened to every song while reading the lyrics that came with the album.


One song particularly touched me. It's track 6, "The Immortals." I saw a video interview with lead singer Caleb Followill, and he said he wrote the song imagining what he'd like to tell his future children. His fiancee cried the first time he read the lyrics to her. I didn't cry upon hearing it or anything, but its message resonated within me.


To me, the song is a reminder that life is fleeting. You don't get much time as it is here, so why waste it being fearful? If something isn't working for you, keep moving. Don't spend time trying to fix something that's not fixable. Or maybe it is fixable, but it's really not worth your time to fix it anyways. Prioritize.


I'm going to hope to make my priority in life this line: "Don't forget to love before you're gone."


Here's the song on YouTube if you want to give it a listen: