The Great Gatsby: A Book Review

I finally read The Great Gatsby!

My friend had loaned me the book after my confession I had not read it yet. Upon that, my high school was not one for really getting into the books that everyone seems to read in school. Yes, I missed out on a lot of Shakespeare too. Though, there are a few that I did get to read in school and that have stuck with me, such as, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Night by Elie Wiesel (an amazing man whom I actually got to meet).

Let me say this, I had some frame of mind as to what I was expecting from The Great Gatsby, and it seriously fell short. I’m not saying it was a bad read, absolutely not, I rather enjoyed it, I guess I expected it to read as if I were watching the exciting bits of the film, The Wolf of Wall Street. What with the glamour and the parties, and Leonardo DiCaprio being irresistibly charming and sexy.

So yes, I fully expected Gatsby to always have champagne in his hand and his yacht always at the ready. While the book mentioned the parties, it was more about the romances, or lack thereof. By the end of the book, I only liked the man telling the story, Nick Carraway who seemed to be Gatsby’s one and only true friend. Honestly, the book over all is a bit disheartening in that way.

You’re rich, you have parties, everyone wants to be around you, and then, no one wants to be around you at all. I guess in that way, society is still finicky and many people are still that fake. I wonder if I would have felt the same about the world in 1925 as I do now – wanting it to implode and take us all out already…  Yes, I know, it’s awfully dark, and things could be so much worse in the world, but I think a lot goes without saying, and I’m tired of all the bull, and with this story I’m trying to write, I feel like things would be much more beneficial without the human race.

Quick side note, but I actually refused to believe Gatsby was dead until his father had shown up and was pretty much crying over him.

I’m not really sorry if that’s a spoiler, I’m probably one of the last few who hasn’t read this book. I wish I had seen the movie so I could compare it, alas, it’s not on Netflix, but when it is, or when I do finally see it, I have every intention of nitpicking every little detail, right or wrong. 

Let's Talk About Love

Last night it was my absolute pleasure to watch the Tony Awards hosted by James Corden, and let me tell you, I went into it only wanting to see anything that had to do with Hamilton because I don’t watch awards shows. However, the Tony’s were exceptionally different than any other show and brought tears to my eyes between the performances and my own nostalgia.

                If you follow me on Instagram, then you know I’m latest post, I talked about growing up and being a theatre kid. Theatre and band were passions, but when I moved from the boonies to the city, and changed schools not once, but twice, band and theatre weren’t high on the list of activities that schools offered. Band went first, no one had a music program, and then theatre, which in my high school was a joke.

We had two performances that first year and I had been in one. The teacher who took over doubled as the Physics’ teacher, whose class I was not particularly good in. The students who made the cut, were all her A+ students and their closest friends. I know I seem dramatic but it was true. The entire clique, and I was devastated and heartbroken. Not long after, my best friend, who had been my friend for years, who lived across the street from me, stabbed me in the back and before long I was the outcast I had always been.

I stopped talking for the most part, I started cutting and people always thought I was in a good mood because they couldn’t read my facial expressions. I got good at not caring, and even better at lying.

Even before I moved to the city, the school I went to was a great school, but everyone that went there had money, very few of us didn’t and I was one of them. It probably didn’t help I never came out of the hoodies either, but even being a little girl in elementary school and then middle school, I was self-conscious, I always had friends but they always had a better friend, and I was completely aware of it.

By the time I was a senior in high school, they were just introducing AP classes, and yes, while I was able to get into a few colleges, it wasn’t enough. I still didn’t have the grades I wanted (I was a B average) or the funds to really get me anywhere. I will forever say high school was the worst time of my life.

If there was one thing I learned while watching the Tony’s, it was that theater is so diverse, the people, cast and crew, came from all over and from every sort of upbringing, and my heart absolutely aches to be part of something like that.

Anyone watching who didn’t tear up watching Lin-Manuel Miranda reading a sonnet to his wife and speaking from the heart about love, especially went the events that happened in Orlando over the weekend has no soul. And this is coming from the woman who is often joked about not having one myself.

Let this blog post be a testament to the fact I do have one. One that people just get to see on very rare occasions if I let them see it at all. I have been hurt, burned and broken, and if duct tape was metaphysical just as it is literal, then I am wrapped up in it, mummified if you will.

I have always worn my heart on my sleeve, and have done whatever I could for whoever my partner was at the time, but this last time around, I didn’t think there was any coming back from it. It took me along the lines of a year to be able to get out of bed and just be okay with myself. To be okay with the fact I left someone behind, I left three years of my life behind and was starting over, well, except for a lot of the debt that came with me.

However, along with the debt and the heartbreak, came some good. I was able to buy a new car and stop trying to fix the beaters I was driving. I was making friends, reading tarot within a brilliant online community and slowly starting to write again. Oh, and I’m back in school! I had given up so many passions because of the man I was with, that it shocked me, and I felt silly when I started doing things again. To top things off, I do have that best friend, and without her, I don’t think I would have had the courage to leave my now ex, or have had the confidence to move on. She’s a lovely young woman with her shit together and I still don’t think she knows how inspiring she is to me. She’s the reason I know who and what Hamilton is, and without either of them, I would not be tearing up and writing this post!

Lin’s sonnet took my heart and did something with it I cannot describe in words, but I think I’m ready to believe in love again, and if I leave this world without being part or something big and magical, then I’ve seriously lived this life wrong. I may be twenty-six in a few months, but I think I’ve still got some time. 

Some Planner Love

Phew! Talk about a way to spend a Saturday afternoon… and no, I’m not talking about extreme sports or anything, though, that would be insanely fun, and way out of my league. No, I’m talking about completing class assignments for the first time in almost seven years. Haha, I know, not funny, right? However, it is the truth and I’m feeling quite a bit proud of myself. So what if the test let me have multiple attempts to score ALL the points, you better believe I was going to take it. In all seriousness though, going back to school has been a long time coming, and so has this blog post.

I’ve been nervous all week about this class starting, even more so once I logged in and realized that people had already begun posting discussion topics and I didn’t have a clue what was going on! Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true as I spent some time on the phone the other day with my Academic Advisor who showed me how to do lots of things – I’m kind of the deer in headlights type, and definitely get bent out of shape before anything has actually, really, happened.

So, there’s an assignment and a quiz behind me and I’m already feeling a lot better about things. Plus, to make sure I keep up with things, I went out and splurged on a Happy Planner! Believe me when I say I could spend ridiculous amounts of money on their site! http://shop.meandmybigideas.com/collections/create-365 I actually had gone to Michael’s because there was no way in hell I was going to Walmart to try and find a planner, I know what their stock looks like, and it just wasn’t worth the drive, albeit a short drive, but a shitty one. So, Michaels was the choice, but I had no idea they’d have the Happy Planner’s in stock so after multiple attempts of trying to talk myself out of one, well, obviously I brought home anyway.

I also bought cute stickers and little paper pockets yes for the planner, but they screamed for my Travelers Journal as well, and I cannot leave that beauty hanging, now can I?

If it’s not clear by now, I’m absolutely addicted to cute journals, stationary and just about anything leather bound. I know there are a lot of people out there who can turn their planners into an artful masterpiece, and though I am not one of them, I still love them all the same, and it’s really nice to have some quality pieces myself now.

I cannot help but say I look forward to my first class in years, to putting use to this planner and really making it a part of me, and being able to actually travel with my Traveler’s Journal. 

Wicked Tarot Deck Review

It is with great reservations that I write this Tarot review at all. I finally received the Wicked Tarot deck the other day, after months of waiting, and little to no updates.

The Wicked Tarot started as Kickstarter project that launched sometime in September, and I wound up helping/ funding it, back in October 2015. Mind you, it is the end of May 2016 now. There were very few updates about the work of the deck during the time myself, and anyone else awaited their arrival, and when we did start getting these updates, it wasn't until the very end and they were being shipped out within the week,

"Tarot has never been this..wicked!"

(An actual quote from their page)

That quote alone really inspired me, and set my heart aflame when it came to the deck, and the images that were shown to represent the art of the cards blew my mind. I will always say I have a love for the darker things, and these cards knocked it out of the park! Skeletons, creatures, and spooky-cool colours, how could I not be in love?

The above are just a few of the cards, such as the Kings of the Minor Arcana, my favorite card in any deck, The Hanged Man, and Death just happens to look like a skeletal centaur. There's no way I', going to deny being smitten with such a card.

As excited as I was for them, even upon arrival and holding the deck box in my hand, I was still over the moon, however, it quickly fell into despair... Now, I don't have a fancy camera or anything, but other than cropping the photos, no adjusments have been made, and while I noticed some issues right off the bat, they became ever more clear as I laid out the cards for this post in general.

Right off the bat, after removing the shrink wrap from the cards, I noticed the edges of the deck. In the second picture you can see all the white dotting the edges. I didn't know how to explain it at first, it tends to be a look of wear and tear, at least in my case, after a long handling and shuffling of decks in general. Cards get beat up, it happens, not brand new, right out of a book they don't.

They could have been printed or cut badly, either way, it's not quality work, and upon a friend's recommendation, the people behind the project were emailed the same day the cards arrived.

Some other things to note, the card stock is light weight and the cards themselves scuff easily. I actually damaged a card lying it out for the photos. The guide booklet doesn't have much in the ways of inspiration or explanations, just the basic info about each card. Yes, the booklet is meant to be a guide, but I', the kind of person who like a bit of background to the cards, who they are, where they came from, the mindset of their creator. Hell, they even went about adding additions to the well know Celtic Cross spread without reasons as to why (see below).

The last thing I ever want to do is to complain about someones hard work. At some point, I have to believe that there was love and time invested into the art and these cards but at that same time, everything looks and feels completely rushed. The cards themselves give off more of an abandoned feel and there's certainly no means at the moment for them to be worked with. I've already thought about setting them aside, or putting them together like a giant picture and framing them, but then, there's still the issue of all the scuff marks...

So, while I love the art and the idea of these cards, I'm not happy with them in the slightest, and I actually ache for the beings in the cards themselves. Now maybe if I hear a response back from the team and something changes, my attitude will change, but until then, they're going to sit in their box and I'm going to be glad I didn't spend much more money on them or the offered Kickstarter rewards then I did.

 In all hopes though, I just received a bad deck and everyone else out there will be pleased with theirs, as well as any prints or inked guitars and everything else that was purchased between the tiers.

Wanderlust

Travel photos, blogs, people's leather bound journals, I could stare at some of these things all day when it comes to people documenting their adventures, and I think I'm bordering that line of obsession if I haven't already crossed it. 

    Traveling, adventuring, back packing and road trips, one or all of them, it's something I always wanted to do, to be able to get up and go. To be able to see sights and and hear stories and maybe pick up little things like post cards, stamps, key chains and whatever else might be able to decorate my own (in the near future) journal, that says I've been there, and I've seen and as a writer, it's a really big deal to me. 

    I'm writing this post as I long for such things. I tell you this as I've spent the last two days browsing the internet looking for the Midori travel journals, and cute pages and stickers to go in them. This post is a before and after planning has begun, as my dreams, though small, are slowly starting to happen. 

    Sure, it's not Ireland or Greece or Spain in my near future, but states I haven't been too. Seriously, being stuck in Ohio blows, and it's not fun driving anywhere either when every other street is construction and or filled with the same potholes that just grow every year. I was almost considering taking a five hour trip in my car until Mapquest showed me the eighty construction images along the way, and my anxiety is bad enough when it comes to driving some place new, but trying to navigate through orange cones and doing 45 when the speed limit is 70 is not my cup of tea.

    It's a bit whiny, but Kentucky and Chicago are right around the corner and I couldn't be more excited! We all have to start somewhere, and while I continue to read the pretty posts about people touring islands I've never even heard of, I do hope people will share their own stories with me too, big or small. I wouldn't complain if a few words of advice were thrown in there as well.

    Cheers fellow adventurers! 

The Alchemyst: A Book Review

      I'm not going to lie, Picking up The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, by Michael Scott, was a spontaneous, I'm just in it for the Alchemy bit, sort of buy, and let me tell you, I was not disappointed in the slightest. 

    Nicholas Flamel is the immortal of legend, and he's dying. You're introduced to him and his plight right off the bat with a letter to you, as the reader. Of course I dove in immediately, and needed to know what happened to him! Spoiler alert, this is a series, and nothing is resolved right way, alas, I must wait to find out what happens until the rest of the series have made it to my hands. 

    Nicholas and his wife Perenelle are protectors of an ancient book known as the Codex which was written into existence by Abraham the Mage. The book itself is pretty much a mystery, but Nicholas uncovered the elixir for immortality, the Philosopher's Stone.  The couple are hundreds of years old and in hiding, working across the street from one another and in the company of twins, a brother and sister, Josh and Sophie Newman. Everything is normal until an evil man, Dr. John Dee, a teriffying Necromancer, and his golems, come to steal the book. They Ransack the shop Nicholas and Josh work at, kidnaps Perenelle and set the twins on a dangerous course towards their fated destiny. A destiny that was foretold in the Codex itself. 

    There is no time to rest as the trio must drive out of the city of San Francisco to meet allies that put even Flamel on edge. A warrior ninja with a deadly secret they call Scatty, an elder who happens to the goddess Hekate and The Witch that all witches come from. Magic is abound, and no one can deny the fact that ancient creatures exist and all myths have a dark root of truth to them. 

    The only downfall I have to this book is the concept of history and myth. There were small points that irritated me, such as the fact that the dark elders had created everything, or that every god and goddess were one in the same person, just took different names and forms, or that a certain ancient artifact could be used in the hands of such evil. Again, they were really only minor bits that were easily looked over once the action set into motion.

     If there's anything to know about magic, is that in all uses, it come with a cost, there's always a price to pay and this book held true to that too. Even the elders grew weary after intense sessions, and needed a recharge. I was happy to see the rule still rang true in this book as well.

     I am a sucker for magic and myth, and it was why this book was such a spontaneous buy. I'm more than happy to give it 4 out of 5 stars. I find that lately, a lot of the young adult novels I've been picking up have been incredibly amazing as far as ratings go, and I am happy to add "The Alchemyst" among them. I cannot wait to read the rest of this series and I would definitely recommend this book to any fan of magic or someone that needs a light and quick read!

Full Moon in Sagittarius

    So It's been a really off week, plenty of ups and downs, a cold that won't make up its mind if it's staying or going, and do not even get me started on the weather. Furthermore I haven't done much in the ways of Tarot or writing, though I've made a good dent in the book I've recently started (and haven't dropped it yet to start something else). I guess that's why I felt the need to do this Full Moon spread by @ethony on Instagram. Not just because the question are some I definitely need to be asking myself, but being a Sagittarian, I feel a little connected to this moon I did have dreams about elves and centaurs last night after all). 

    Apparently, with this moon being a blue moon, it is aligned with fate, and it is the first of two full moons that will take place in Sagittarius.

     I've been seeing this quote around a lot

"The universe is throwing us a wild card—one last chance at getting the hand we’ve been gambling for all along."

     What I take from this is that we've got a shot at whatever chances we've been taking to actually seeing them comes to fruition by the end of the full moon in June. This actually delights me seeing as I've got a lot of plans for the next few months, I don't know if I would say they're huge plans, but for me, they are, and I do not take lightly the decisions I'm making with them. 

    I'm not sure if that comes off as mysterious or not, but a girl does have to keep a few things to herself. 

    Anyways, the spread consists of five cards asking the following questions.: 

     1. What impulses need taming? Two of Wands 

     2. Where can I best direct my energy? Knight of Cups (Rx)
     3. How can I best redirect my aggression? Four of Wands (Rx) 
     4. Should I speak up or stay quiet? (look for clues in the card you pull as to what this card is trying to tell you) The Empress (Rx) 
     5. What spiritual and personal beliefs need re-examining? Ace of Wands (Rx)

 I always worry when my cards are reversed, and there's a lot of them this time. Believe me when I say I shuffled the hell out of them. I even let the floor get involved. 

     Without going into detail about every card, I remind myself that tarot cards tend to not beat around the bush and they don't really care about what you want to hear, and will snarkingly tell you how it is. 

    The cards tell of a choice that needs to be made, and that there may be more than one, but I only have the energy to make, follow through, and put the energy into that one choice. That choice being ( I think ) what I want to do in the next few months, while the Knight of Cups speaks to my selfishness. I know, I know, and I know, that being selfish isn't a nice thing, but my entire life I've always put everyone before me, always put off what I wanted to do, or what I wanted in general. Sometimes, being an adult really sucks, but then, I think that a lot of the time I spent as a kid, I wasn't really much of a kid either. 

    The Four of Wands, along with the Empress are powerful cards, full of magic and energy, and definitely cards you want on your side, and then you reverse them, and that all disappears. The Four pretty much reiterates what I've already thought about, that whether I have support from others or not, that what I'm doing is mine to do alone, no one can really help me now, and they can't. 

     That being said, the last thing I should be doing is putting any of this on blast... That's not really saying anything about what I'm doing except it's for me and I'm willing to admit that I am going to take some time to be selfish. 

    I guess this is where I admit that I don't really know how to read the reversed Ace of Wands in this context. It could either be if I go ahead with this, my spirit will grow dull and lazy and my plans will be thwarted, it could be that if I don't keep my mouth shut, OR, and this is what I'm feeling a little more, and maybe that's just me jumping at a glimmer of hope in an otherwise depressing set of cards, that, doing this will help me to work on my lazy spirit and currently thwarted plans. 

    My thoughts are ones of a mostly made up mind, and while I plan on looking further into the choice I am making, there is still that "I have to do this" feeling that I cannot ignore. Perhaps I will find a better way of doing things, and I'm hoping the full moon can shed some much needed light into this ever growing darkness, but for now, I'm perfectly aware, and completely fine with the face that I am on my own.