keep your head up.

 

 

Andrew Tipton

Alchemy

(Ryan McGinley)  

 

To be in love with ourselves is the boldest undertaking I know of.


To forgo the instinct of personal fear,
and the hesitation that accompanies doubt.. 
To take our sanity forward {yes, as always}, but also our madness.
To know what we are here for,  and not pass it by or shut our eyes.
This is everything / every speck and dusty thought:  colliding.  
This is the transformation,  of a self.  our self.  the self.  
Acknowledging our frailty and despite it, our readiness for belief.
I see
greatness happening,
I feel
 greatness.  here.  now.  happening.
and it is as if everything rests on the shoulders of the dreamers
the ones who know that time is infinite and
that love is a disease - contagious. no such cure.
We are beautiful.  straight ahead.. as our eyes wander
and somehow we both know that nothing else matters.
not our flawed voices, and not our scars.
    This is the root of Alchemy.
To take our wildness and our virtuousness and to obey them both.  


 
     Andrew Tipton
 
 
 

 

 



speak it up. thirsty

Thank you for sharing my place of sunset,  for teaching me the art of randomness..   for meeting me when I did not ask to be met.    For listening and for speaking sincerity.    For the loose-leaf yerba mate which I am constantly sipping.   Thank you for your kindness, and for unravelling your sorrows.     For discovering our stories in the labels, and for your pursuit of darkness. 

           

Andrew Tipton

Stay in Touch

 

 

 

 

 

Andrew Tipton

 

 

/Emerson

We must be our own before we can be another's.    
-Emerson

I Love You for What You Will Become

Two days ago I had a conversation with a new friend, and her words have left dents inside my heart..  
We were talking about travelling, about exploring the vastness and beauty of America and other countries;  she is well-travelled and offered some incredible stories!     At some point during our conversation, I asked her if she had ever visited the South..  I invited her to come to Alabama.
"That place scares me", she said, "I can't think of any reason to visit there..  I've heard terrible things."     
Those words were a sledge hammer against the strings of my heart.    As much as I wanted to disagree with her and vehemently protect the ego of my home..   I just stared back at her with a hot sadness.  Because although in many ways she is right...  she doesn't know what I know about my home - that there is hope.    I feel sometimes it is impossible to accurately describe hope to someone who doesn't have the will yet to believe in it.   

I come from a place that many people do not associate with enlightenment or positive vibes..   truthfully my friend's comment is not an isolated thought..   she shares the same view as many people.   The South, and especially Alabama are places that have a reputation as backwards-thinking, non-progressive, severely racist, uneducated, and hopeless..     our past has not given us room for a second breath..  we are still choking a bit on the influence of previous generations.  
But...   we will not stay that way.    Change is happening.  Right.  Now.     

The only reason a place stays the same is if the people living there remain the same. 
There are no spells holding a city or a community, or a state, or a culture to its past..   there is nothing in the land that says,  "You must always be this way."     
Our future is malleable, it is merely a reflection of our own presence or absence.  
I believe that many of us are born into cultures - and it seems as if the present way of thought is all that has ever existed.   We often don't question the ability for change,  because (in our minds)  that culture seems so permanent and so rooted in a place.     But that is an illusion!
The only thing required for changing a place, is loving it -  bringing affection to it, and not abandoning it to its past.  


I have a vision for my home.  For Montevallo, for Alabama, for the South,  for the New South.   I believe in the transformation of our culture from the inside out; not losing our traditions, or our 'Southern-ness'..   but becoming a place that generates goodness and no longer apathy.      I am discovering friends with the same vision, who share the same hostility towards repression..   friends who are investing their abilities and intention into our home.   That gives me so much raging joy!
I think that before we can fully love anyone or any other place in the world..  we must first begin to love the place we are from.    The more desperate it is..  the more love you must create for it.           
   
My home..  Alabama. 
I love you for what you will become.





Andrew Tipton

/Oriah

"..Show me how you follow your deepest desires,
spiraling down into the ache within the ache,
and I will show you how I reach inward and open outward
to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, every day.
Don’t tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.
Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.
Tell me a story of who you are,
and see who I am in the stories I live.
And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.
Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day. Show me you can risk being completely at peace,
truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next. . ." 

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer.