Floral Design School: Day 3

 Today at school (yes, I feel like I'm 8 years old saying that) we discussed color theory and designed a few more arrangements!  The days are jammed full of information and work.  My commute to and from school on I-5 is long, but, I have been making it more enjoyable by hitting the shuffle button on all of my Itunes songs currently downloaded.  It's always interesting to see what the next song will be.  Today I was "that girl" driving down the freeway singing at the top of my lungs and dancing to:

Buoy by The Nightgowns
Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles
Share Your Love With Me by Aretha Franklin
Cheated Hearts by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Shoulda Known by Atmosphere
Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz
Mr. Hurricane by Beast
Hummingbird by Wilco
No Strings by Mayer Hawthorne
Ocean Breathes Salty by Modest Mouse
Giving Up The Gun by Vampire Weekend
Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer
Barefoot Blue Jean Night by Jake Owen
No Rain by Blind Melon
Ni**as in Paris by Kanye West & JAY Z**
Lullaby by Priscilla Ahn
Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake by Zola Jesus
I Belong In Your Arms by Chairlift
Nocturne No. 17 in B, Op. 62 No.1 by Chopin (Ok, I probably wasn't dancing to this one in the car)
Sweet Disposition by The Temper Trap
Dream A Little Dream by Mama Cass
General Patton by Big Boi **(this song really gets me in the mood to design flowers...well, not really but it does get me in the hardened Southern California commuter spirit)

**These songs may be explicit. And to my good friend I share music back and forth with, I know you will only think 50% of these songs are good.

 Anyhow, besides lots of random music on my commute I'm having a great time designing.  I've included a few pieces I crafted in class today! By the way, anyone who wants to get together while I'm in Southern California is almost guaranteed a floral arrangement! If you are back home in Northern California I will text you a photo in leiu of the actual arrangement.

The teacher has passed along lots of quotes to inspire his students.  Today, he handed me a few pieces of copied paper stapled together for my after school reading assignment. Here was what was written on it:

Life is an island in a ocean of solitude and seclusion.   Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees are its dreams, and flowers its loneliness and it is in the middle of an ocean of solitude and seclusion your life my friend is an island separated from all other islands and continents.  Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness and faraway in its compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries.

I saw you my friend sitting upon a mound of gold happy in your wealth and great in your riches and believing that a handful of gold is the secret chain that links the thoughts of the people with your own thoughts and links their feelings with your own.

I saw you as a great conqueror leading a conquering army toward the fortress, then destroying and capturing it. On second glance I found beyond the wall of your treasures a heart trembling in its solitude and seclusion like the trembling of a thirsty man within a cage of gold and jewels, but without water.

I saw you, my friend sitting on a throne of glory, surrounded by people extolling your charity, enumerating your gifts, gazing upon you as if they were in the presence of a prophet lifting their souls up into the planets and starts.  I saw you looking at them, contentment and strength upon your face, as if you were to them as the soul is to the body.

On the second look I saw your secluded self standing beside your throne suffering in its seclusion and quaking in its loneliness.  I saw that self stretching its hands as if begging from unseen hosts.  I saw it looking above the shoulders of the people to a far horizon, empty of everything except its solitude and seclusion.

I saw you my friend passionately in love with a beautiful woman, filling her palms with your kisses as she looked at you with sympathy and affection in her eyes and the sweetness of motherhood on her lips; I said, secrectly, that love has erased his solitude and removed his seclusion and he is now within the eternal soul which draws towards itself, with love, those who were separated by solitude and seclusion.

On the second look I saw behind your soul another lonely soul, like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop of tears in the pam of that woman.

Your life, my friend, is a residence far away from other homes named after you.

If this residence is dark, you cannot light it with your neighbors lamp; if it is empty you cannot fill it with the riches of your neighbor; were it in the middle of the desert, you could not move it to a garden planted by someone else.

Your inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and seclusion you would not be you and I would not be I.  If it were not for that solitude and seclusion, I would, if I heard your voice, think myself to be talking, yet, if I saw your face, I would imagine that I were looking into a mirror.

-Kahlil Gibran