D-bag.

Yes, I said it.

Before you misunderstand my message let me preface: I use NIKON for my cameras and lenses. My very first camera was a little D60. I then upgraded to a D300s. I am now looking to upgrade into another D-something for my camera bag...

Gear has been on my mind lately for a few varying reasons. First, it's time for an upgrade. I have outgrown my current camera and itching for more. Fair enough, right? Second, and unfortunately, gear has been on my mind because over the past week I have allowed someone's comments to affect me.

I said I could swim, remember? Then the sharks reminded me why I so often stay away from the water.

Someone asked me, flatly, if the photos I was showing were actually mine. Surely, this was merely an ice breaker, right? The hurtful comment, however, were the words inquiring how I could photograph with such an old camera. Yikes! I could have sworn I was using a digital camera and not a disposable Kodak...

Please excuse my pungent humor.

I have to make myself giggle or else I think I'd burrow myself into a corner. Some people are mean while others have an exquisite way of making you feel so much better. The past week and half I have received both hurtful and happy words. I could opt to dwell in the former but I choose the latter. I want to thank the kind people, my fellow peers, who have been nothing but kind to me recently, in the future, and from the very beginning. It's nice to have genuine hearts to cheer you on! Thank you Melissa, Amanda, Raymond and Che, who in the span of a few days made me smile!

{1.3 megapixels... can you believe that?!}

Let's have a great day friends!!! 

Smile.

Being the boss has its perks... but a major con is definitely forgetting what day it is on a given weekday. Let me rephrase, I have trouble distinguishing a Monday from a Friday. But I am most certain it is because I have yet to find and settle on a routine and/or schedule to meticulously follow or at least attempt to.

Back to the perks! I love enjoying the world... and everything in it.

That, my friends, makes me smile. Best feeling in a long while!


Cheers to a great week!

Vintage Purse.

Yesterday I took a break from being at the office all day and took a stroll down the street to visit the antique stores in hopes of finding neat treasures, and I did! I found some more mason jars for my collection but the prettiest find was a cute little evening purse. I love purses, handbags, totes... they all scream femininity. 

When I came across this cute little black purse I squealed and knew I was taking it home. It's small and holds my phone, wallet, car keys and Chapstick. It is velvet with gold trimming and a row of six little rhinestones to add some sparkle. 

The best part, it cost me SIX DOLLARS! Wahoo! I found it at a cute little store called Coco's Vintage down Texas Boulevard in Weslaco. It is literally right across my office so I often do venture into it when I'm around. I searched for them online and found their Facebook page HERE. 






If you're in the area, you should take a stroll down Texas Boulevard and visit the antique stores!

Xoxo :)

Featured: Valley Wedding Social & Events Magazine

Ahhh!!!!

I may have slightly forgotten to share with you some great news!!! For the first time, ever!, my work has been featured and published in a magazine! 

{I am doing a happy dance at this exact moment. No, really I am.}

The Valley Wedding Pages is a local magazine that has grown into a hot magazine for local brides on their journey to planning a wedding. I've been a fan of collecting this magazine for years now!! I have always enjoyed flipping through it and admiring all the beautiful weddings and pretty pictures in it. I'm not a bride but the magazine has a soft spot in my heart regardless. 

I always wished and dreamt of the day that my work would appear in its pages... and guess what?! It has!!!

The Valley Weddings & Social Events quarterly magazine has featured Christina and Marco's romantic November wedding in their Spring issue. I am beyond excited. It is a small step for me here, but a giant leap of confidence I will treasure forever. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I have met a great new contact and am so delighted Rebecca, with the Valley Wedding Pages, gave me a call. Again, thank you!

{To view Christina and Marco's Wedding Blog Post, CLICK HERE.}




Here I am... with all my cheesy glory! Ha ha!


For more information on the Valley Wedding Pages and Valley Weddings & Social Events, please visit their website at http://valleyweddingpages.com/. Don't forget to pick up your FREE copy of the magazine from many local shops around the Rio Grande Valley. You can find Christina and Marco's wedding on pages 26 and 27.

Have a great day friends!

Dasein.

"Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it." 
....

"The kind of Being which belongs to Dasein is rather such that, in understanding its own Being, it has a tendency to do so in terms of that entity towards which it comports itself proximally and in a way which is essentially constant - in terms of the 'world.' "
....

"Dasein's falling into the 'they' and the 'world' of its concern, is what we have called a 'fleeing' in the face of itself. But one is not necessarily fleeing whenever one shrinks back in the face of something or turns away from it."
...

"What oppresses us is not this or that, nor is it the summation of everything present-at-hand; it is rather the possibility of the ready-to-hand in general; that is to say, it is the world itself."
...

"The 'nothing' of readiness-to-hand is grounded in the most primordial 'something' - in the world. Ontologically, however, the world belongs essentially to Dasein's Being as Being-in-the-world. So if the 'nothing' - that is, the world as such- exhibits itself as that in the face of which one has anxiety, this means that Being-in-the-world itself is that in the face of which anxiety is anxious. 

Being-anxious discloses, primordially and directly, the world as world."
...

"Anxiety makes manifest in Dasein its Being towards its own-most potentiality-for-Being - that is , its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself. "
...

"Anxiety can arise in the most innocuous Situations." 

--- From Being and Time. Martin Heidegger, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Oxford: Blackwell, 1967. 

You may not be well-versed in Heidegger's philosophically ontological views, and that's okay because this post is about me: my being, my existence, Dasein in the being of me. 

When this world fades and washes away, I have faith in one thing... the worries of this world, the sorrow, and the pain will be surpassed by an infinite amount of goodness - a goodness I dare not even attempt to describe. I don't wish for it nor do I pray for it; I merely have faith for it. 

All of my life, the 26 years I've lived, has matured me into the young woman I am today. I cringe at the thought of writing the word woman. As a favorite of mine, Simone de Beauvoir once went on to write that a man never dares to start out a sentence with the description "I am man." Thus, to actively refer to my sociologically given identifier, woman, makes me cringe to an extent. But, as any human being, my feelings and emotions come into play. As much of a favorite as Ms. Beauvoir is for me, philosophically speaking, I also cannot help but cringe knowing that such a great thought we both shared could only make me further cringe in realization that in our feministic ways we still, nonetheless, differ vastly. 

Which brings me to the following point... Why am I so different? 

This is a question I struggle with daily. Webster identifies the ontological term different as, "partly or totally unlike in nature, form or quality." Ladies and gentleman, no matter how nicely my mother describes me as unique, the truth of the ontological fact is, I am different. My views, thoughts, and ideas vary greatly from everyone around me. Sure, there are many similarities and plenty of times when I agree but it is at that exact moment when I agree, such as in agreeance with Ms. Beauvoir's statements, that I automatically switch into some sort of autonomous mind set where my idealistic view literally prevents me from making any sense to this world. 

Emphasis on the statement of me not making sense to this world because I have never really felt like I belong in it. I cannot be any further explicit in attempting to make you, or any reader for that matter, fully comprehend what it is I mean because the point is you will probably not understand me.

Perhaps I am not meant to be understood.

For every person that has hurt me, I have long forgiven you. For any person who will hurt me in the future, know that you have my forgiveness. I am a kind spirit; I cannot help it. If I am meant to have a burden, then this would be it. My personality, my idealistic mentality, my hope and kindness. Interesting that I should quote Mr. Heidegger... But, as a believer of Christ, I need not have a burden. Any worry that I feel, as a good Christian, I should let it go. It is not easy. It will not be easy. The journey, however, is what further continues to shape me in whatever way God meant for me to be shaped, idealistic or realistic. My view of reality may be skewed to this world, but to me it is completely perfect in an imperfect sense of a term.  


Journey.
This lonely winter night
I took a quiet stroll
down the path of life
in hopes of knowing more.

Upon a hill I turned
and came to me a halt;
The answers to my questions,
the ideas of my thoughts.

No longer need I fear.
The truth behold me stopped.
The path before me laid,
the journey I survived. 

-Marisol Izaguirre

Above is a poem I wrote a long time ago. I found it appropriate to share with you, if any, within today's blog post. My business is me. I am my business. My photography, the art I create, is merely an extension of who I am as a human being. I share with you because it is who I am. Remember, I'll blog about the mundane to the most intricate of subjects. Furthermore, I share with you my life, in photographs, in poetry, in lyrics, in words. I share and I will continue to share so that one day, as I have always believed when I set out to create this photography journal, I may look back and read my struggles to deeper appreciate where I am at that exact moment in my life. 

A toast, to my idealistic mentality... a mentality which further tears me apart from this world. By all means, cheers!

{Running... to the sea.}

:) Happy day friends!

Poesia.

Mienten los que dijeron que yo perdí la luna,
los que profetizaron mi porvenir de arena,
aseveraron tantas cosas con lenguas frías:
quisieron prohibir la flor del universo. 

"Ya no cantara mas el ámbar insurgente
de la sirena, no tiene sino pueblo."
Y masticaban sus incesantes papeles
patrocinando para mi guitarra el olvido.

Yo les lance a los ojos las lanzas deslumbrantes
de nuestro amor clavando tu corazón y el mío,
yo reclame el jazmín que dejaban tus huellas,

yo me perdi de noche sin luz bajo tus párpados
y cuando me envolvió la claridad
nací de nuevo, dueño de mi propia tiniebla. 

- Pablo Neruda


In between laundry this afternoon, I opened one of my favorite books and came across this poem on the first page turn... Thought I'd appropriately share so here's the English translation...

They're liars, those who say I lost the moon,
who foretold a future like a public desert for me,
who gossiped so much with their cold tongues:
they tried to ban the flower of the universe.

"The quick spontaneous mermaids' amber
is finished. Now he has only the people."
And they gnawed on their incessant papers,
they plotted an oblivion on my guitar.

But I tossed -- ha! into their eyes! -- the dazzling lances
of our love, piercing your heart and mine.
I gathered the jasmine your footsteps left behind.

I got lost in the night, without the light
of your eyelids, and when the night surrounded me
I was born again: I was the owner of my own darkness.

- Pablo Neruda
English translation by Stephen Tapscott


Have a great day my friends!
Be blessed :)