Tunnel of Dreams

Leave my door open just a crack.. please take me away from here.. 'cause I feel like such an insomniac... please take me away from here... Why do I tire of counting sheep when I'm far too tired to fall asleep?



Owl City hits the heart for me in his Fireflies song even though its been severely overplayed. My brain still processes it as yummy ear candy every time the whimsical chords and melodies strike my open ear drums. Hearing the song in a store while stopping by the vet's office for my kitty's inevitable appointment, the lyrics reminded me of my unending tunnel of dreams that my deep, deep subconscious likes to run me through. But as someone recently told me, better to exciting and endless rather than dull and dreary.

If you know me, I dream every night. The cascading episodes of my fantasy world that plays off of constant worldly observations, simple fears, and small appetites. Sometimes I have dreams of real people, then cartoon heroes. Sometimes I dream of giant umbrellas turning into jet planes, then apocalyptic tragedies where everything I know of fails. Sometimes I dream of dreams that I previously dreamed YEARS ago and I relive the same dream to turn it around and change what happens. My dreaming subconscious wears me out while I sleep and most of the time I wake up more tired than I was before I decided to finally shut my eyelids over my eyeballs.

Maybe to sleep such splendid nights I need to strap myself to a rocket ship again and sail under the ocean to finally discover those deep sea aliens that are meticulously hiding at the bottom of the Earth's crust somewhere.

Or maybe I'll dive into my latest issue of National Geographic.
Yeah. Let's explore their August Issue.

Speaking of National Geographic, I'm going to be finding myself in Washington D.C. this weekend. The headquarters for this worldly organization gathers and collects all of its awesomeness in the capital city of this great nation and the museum is going to find me as excited as a child at Christmas eagerly awaiting for parents to awaken in the wee hours of the morning. I cannot wait. On top of that, I will have a chance to see LIGHTS once again in concert this time performing my favorite heart-warming acoustic versions of my favorite songs. Maybe Washington might bring me closer to my rocket ship adventure that my heart so overwhelming seeks.

River... Take Me Away

The last few days have been a blur to me. I woke up this morning, sore and achy, but still completely in love with life.


Thursday night, me, my friend Jessie, and my sister Holly decided last minute to embark on our 11 hour journey to Hilton Head, SC for our weekend getaway. It really did take 11 hours to get there and leaving at 10pm and getting there at 9am, I will honestly vow to say I don't remember a lot of it. I do believe I fell asleep with my eyes open at times...



Nevertheless, we did arrive though safely in Hilton Head around 9am and since check in time at the hotel wasn't until 4, we made our way to the beach and decided to tan it up.... or burn our skin to the ground >.< But also enjoy the sites and sounds of the island and immerse ourselves in the experience of exploration, kayaking, and creating happiness that we haven't shared together in a long time <3





All in all it was an awesome and amazing trip but I'm sad it went so quickly :( It's so difficult to find time these days to do all the things I want to do with everyone but I guess if you ever want something badly enough, you can make anything happen. Hence this trip :) It's definatly something I want to do with them again in the future.

In other news, moving out is happening next month one way or another. The AC finally broke here and being stuck at my parents dampens the feeling of freedom and independence. I've held off for the longest time moving out because I wanted the extra money to save and to go on trips and explore around. I've reached the point though where everyday life would be a vacation being out of here and I could reach my old inspiration, motivation, and happiness that used to linger in my every day life. I've used this situation to my fullest advantage so far but now its time to move onto something entirely new in my life. It's happening next month.

And before I go, I'm SUPER excited that LIGHTS is releasing her acoustic EP tomorrow and her concert is next weekend for me! My favorite acoustic of all time is her song River. Recently discovered her cover of Coldplay's Lost too. Hooray for good music!

Now its time for a little Doctor Who before bed.
Maybe that's a small reason as to why I have such crazy dreams....

BROOKE

The Last Thing On Your Mind

Skelator is the now only thing left over from the giant "Touchdown Jesus" Statue after that huge thunderstorm we had a few weeks ago. Before fire burned the Jesus statue to the ground, Touchdown Jesus was a relic for many passerbys as it sat right on the highway 75 which is a main artery of the eastern U.S. connecting Michigan to Florida. It was quite famous and many people knew about this awesomely strange addition to human society. Now the only thing that remains is possibly the building blocks for the next terminator. Being the curious one, I stopped by Solid Rock Church, home of the former Jesus, and snapped this quick pic on my cell phone.

On another note - I am heading to Hilton Head, SC this weekend! All girl road trip that's going to last through over 11 hours of driving :] Never technically done such a thing so I'm really excited about it. Ironically, the majority of the trip will be traveling on highway 75 as mentioned above until we take a slight detour at Knoxville toward the coast. Hopefully good weather will follow us! Found a nice little hotel right on the beach so a good suntan is coming my way ^_^

ALSO! As I failed to mention anytime before... my online store is now up :) For anyone that does pass by my blog check it out here:

http://brooketownsend.zenfolio.com/

It's currently having some renovations done to get it talking to all my pages and sites. I've built myself quite the network :) I'm pretty proud of it all. Now I just need to get more and more photos to add to it all. Horray!

Brooke

Hello Sparklers.. You are mighty shiny

"Time's glory is to command contending kings and to unmask falsehood and to bring truth to the light." William Shakespeare



"This thing up here, this consciousness, thinks its running the shop. It's a secondary organ of a total human being and it must not put itself in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body." Joseph Campbell



"All religions, arts, and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom." Albert Einstein



So I'm sure you have figured out that my sister and I broke out the sparklers for 4th of July but I got bored very quickly as we do this every year. So, I wanted to paint pictures with them through long exposures with my handy dandy assistant (aka my crafty cousin) clicking away at the shutter. They turned out pretty good! They're not photoshopped in the slightest except for the rounded crop as I thought they didn't need extra processing :) I will admit too that I actually did better writing my name backwards than I did regularly. Who knew?!

Happy freedom to all people, anywhere and everywhere.

Brooke

Tail of the Dragon

Last weekend my family and I took a motorcycle trip to the Smokies to do some adventure riding. The last motorcycle trip I did, I drove to Cleveland, Ohio on a small 250 CC Ninja. And that was last July.



This time, I got to ride on the back of Paul's and got to enjoy the scenic views of the journey through Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. We rode the Cherohala Skyway, Tail of the Dragon, Moonshiners Run, and also the connecting route between Cherokee, NC and Gatlinburg, TN. We did a little less than 1000 miles within 2 days.



And the majority of the time I had my camera strapped around my neck and snapped things that caught my eye as we were driving along. It kind of reminded me of the many train rides I experienced back in 2007 when we were going all over England. Of course, the train had MUCH more comfortable seats :)








There were many stops along the way. One of them being Deals Gap, which hosted a motorcycle resort right before the Tail of the Dragon. It was pretty neat because the entire ceiling of the indoor restaurant was covered in t-shirts from sponsors, competitions, and donations from all the riders that find their way to the dragon.



And I mustn't fail to mention the Tree of Shame: bits and pieces from people's bikes who have crashed riding the Dragon. Some people have actually died running themselves right off the edge of the road since there are no guard rails, signs, or warnings of any oncoming drivers. But after experiencing it myself, you have to be pretty reckless to have such high stakes on your side.



I did however turn sport mode on while riding the Dragon with the multi-shot setting selected to piece together a time lapse to test out the speed of my Canon cameras processor and I was EXTREMELY pleased. Check it out. But that's about as reckless as it got for me :P

On the way home it seemed like the longest and most undesirable stretch you could possibly hope to find yourself on. Note to self: DO NOT FALL ASLEEP WHILE RIDING THE BIKE. :) As soon as we crossed the Ohio River and found ourselves in home territory of Cincinnati, cops were lurking in the dark corners hoping for speeders. Witnessed a car that literally burst into flames with 3 firetrucks blocking 3 lanes of the 4 lane high way. AND got stuck in a huge, ridiculous storm with winds that blew us off the road and made us have to stop at a gas station for an hour until it passed with us only 20 minutes from home. Thumbs up for adventure though!



That is all for now though. It is time for some sleep tonight. <3 Good night all

P.S. After seeing the shopping cart above I do now believe anything is possible..! Here I come pirate ship soaring through space! :D

Brooke

a never ending dream

I've been way too restless for sleep the past few days and it's keeping me up into the early hours of the morning to accomplish things and put my mind at ease. I've been spending the night uploading photos to my online store that I'm trying to put together and coming across old photos that I totally forgot about. Not ones that I want to sell but it just reminds me how far I've come in the past few years... especially with the know-hows of photography.



Well, a fellow photographer friend of mine helped me out and gave me a mini tutorial on how to create simple rounded edges to photographs. Obviously people wouldn't want them printed this way BUT it's a nice way to portray photographs online. It's different :) Kind of reminds me of polaroids.



I've been feeling the need to do a long cover on my weekend adventure but I kind of want to wait until I have all pictures and possible video clips together :) I turned sport mode on while riding on the bike to record a time lapse to piece together. I love the way that stop motion animation looks. I found a youtube video that really went all out and made a time lapse AWESOME.



I'm super excited for the next month. A few adventures call my name going on a trip to Hilton Head with my friend Jessie and my sister/best friend Holly. I've never taken an all girl road trip before and even though I do recall mentioning this in a previous blog, I can't help but explode some excitement into this little weblog window :) It's much needed for all of us. Then, I'm heading to Washington D.C. to see LIGHTS acoustic performance. I'm pretty much obsessed with her. I have never in my lifetime found a female individual that I actually admire (that doesn't exist in the virtual/fantasy world) and feel so personally close and attached to. I've met her in person 2 times. Of course she's all too famous to remember me :) But her and I have weird similarities that I instantly noticed online, and offline. Then, I want to end the summer with a bang: skydiving.



I feel kind of self centered for posting all these self portraits of mine lol. But I thought it would be nice to post some photos here that I haven't posted anywhere else. All these photos have been taken in the past year. I look at photos of me from the beginning of 2009 and I look COMPLETELY different..? Or maybe, I just see myself differently.



Or maybe we could go back to when I was repelling and I was 17 :) There really isn't that big of a difference. I knew a lot about life then and I've experienced it a lot more now. And from now til the end there will be EVER MORE. The adventure of life is waiting to be explored.



I'm finally calling it a night though. I have to wake up for work in 4 and a half hours :). Happy 4th of July to everyone! Break out the fireworks, grill up some burgers, drive recklessly :P, and enjoy the beautiful weather that it looks like we're going to have here in the midwest (horray for monsoon season being finished! midwest isn't supposed to experience monsoons lol).



Good Night!
Brooke