{bold}: a bio

I don't know where to start.  My brain is on total overload.  I spent this weekend in a space overflowing with inspiration.  A Writing Workshop with by writing crush, Alexandra Franzen.
I can't go into how the dots are connecting for me right now.  I don't think I even fully undertand it yet. 
But what I can share and what I did complete for the weekend is this: An updated definition of who I am.  This is me,  Mad Libs style: 
Make no mistakes, she's got some mojo a-workin', this girl. Just like her tattoos, she wears her heart on her sleeve.
Lauren Coughlan believes:  that conversations should be fearless and questions should be bold.  As a 911 operator, she's a full time chaos wrangler, but what you really should know... is that she's a writer who speaks from her heart and a photographer who believes in the beauty of a timeless image. Her work has been called honest and authentic.
In her spare time, she can be found travelling the globe trying to quench her wanderlust, inhaling calm on her yoga mat, or wrestling with her adopted German Shepherd who every day makes her wonder who really rescued who?   She invites you to be part of her crazy, beautiful life,  so Go! Quick! Now! Find her at: me & my beautifulmess.blogspot.com 

{10} things that make me happy

Day 14: 10 things that make you really {Happy}   1. gummy bears

2. people watching in the airport 3. country music 4. THIS dog! I love her!!!  

5. Summer nights 6. the {warm} sun on my skin 7. pleasant surprises 8. travelling 9. babies/kids laughing 10. roadtrips  

 

{400} Oak Trees: what my dreams are made of

Well, it is really no secret that I've had quite the long standing love affair with the South. Say...since I was 12 years old and read through Gone with the Wind one Summer like it was a nursery rhyme. A really long, petulent nursery rhyme.   Fast forward to Nicholas Sparks and every novel he's ever written and every movie that's ever been translated to a screenplay and well there you have it. This place {collective deep sigh}:   

Source: Uploaded by user via Jessica on Pinterest

   The Wormsloe Plantation in Savannah, GA. It was on my travel bucket list when I went to visit, oh a year and  half ago, but...I never made it. I half suspect that I had to keep something still on the list so that I'd have a good reason to go back again. I think that in this year that I've declared to be one where I get back to what makes me think and dream and feel free again - the one that feels authentically me again, travel is a must.  I must go see this beautiful place that haunts my happy thoughts.   You see, in the movie version of my life, I live in a place like this. My driveway has 400 sentinel oak trees that welcome me home every day and an army of 400,000 crickets that lull me to sleep every night.    The only thing that could make this better is if I was at home watching these movies  next to my fireplace while listening to the rain beat down on my tin roof.   Be still my mossy oak tree driveway lined, balmy weather, accent lovin' heart. Be still. It's coming all in due time.   <3   This blog post was brought you you courtesty of: the ABC Family channel and their full night of Nicholas Sparks-esq movies.

7 {wants}

It's Tuesday! Time for another You Challenge: 
This week is {7} Wants: 
1) I want a nap.

Source: via Karin on Pinterest

  Seriously, just about every day, I want a nap at some point. Figure those things are for the really young or the really old,  but I think we need a campaign to bring those back for all the people in between.  I'll sign that petition. 
2) I want to be debt-free someday.
but if I had extra $, I would totally do this next thing: 
3) I want to go here: 

Source: adelto.co.uk via Lauren on Pinterest

I want to go yesterday, today, tomorrow, each time for a long time,  and then on the regular for many, many years after that. 
4. I want November 7th to come quickly.  I hate politics, but I find myself neck deep in the local ones around here  and unable to escape the coverage of the state and local ones.  It's exhausting (and we're just getting started) I'll be glad when it's all over.
5.  more tattoos (if you have any, you know just how addicting  they are)

Source: fuckyeahtattoos.tumblr.com via Lauren on Pinterest

6)  a fresh zip code, a new career, a start of a new chapter

Source: releasemecreations.com via Lauren on Pinterest

and lastly... 7.  I wan(t)na love you, and treat you right.   I wanna love you every day and every night...  ~ Bob Marley 
What do you want?  Head over to Lauren or Tiffany's blogs and join in!
 

I'm also linking up to the GFC Blog Hop with 
Melissa @ Life of a Not So Ordinary House Wife

sea.{sun}.sand.sanity

 Friday.  

The day I broke the vicious cycle of busy before I let it break me. 

It went a little like this: 

slept in ~ spent 30 minutes looking for a bathing suit top ~ arrived 2 hours late (I'm on Filipino time) to get Mellissa for our Beach Date ~ listened to 90's on 9 aaalllll day ~ made the mandatory caffeine stop before we got on the road ~ grabbed an incredible lunch to-go @ La Boulange on Fillmore: portabella brie sandwich - Parmesan truffle oil fries...oh my!

to the left                                      to the front                                              to the right

Destination: Baker Beach, the weather was perfect, just about 68*, which is warm for this part of the Pacific Coast.

 Inland, where we came from was projected to be 100*+.  Save me now. 

A day with no agenda, no deadline, nothing on the to-do list...just what a girl needed.

“My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me.” 
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The beach was hardly crowded, a handful of people there, couples cuddled up against the breeze, dog walkers, mostly tourists with cameras in hand, gasping at the sight of the GG Bridge from this vantage point.  I had to smile and shake my head at myself, like I occasionally  often do.  Home is home for me, and living this close to such a great landmark and such a great city, well...until I'm reminded, I forget how beautiful my little part of the world is. 

After a nice little nap in the sun, we took a little stroll down the beach to see how close we could get to the Bridge.  Sans shoes, walking barefoot in the sand, we opted not to climb the rocks to crawl under the bridge.  It was windy, self-portraits were challenging, but that was hardly a complaint on such a great day.  Well, no complaints but let me just give you the one caution should you choose to visit: there is a small portion of the beach down near the rocks as you walk towards the bridge, that is "clothing optional" and by "clothing optional" I mean, "really, guy, how do you just let those shrivelly things just hang  all out in the direct sun and not burn them?" 

As we walked off the beach, I saw this little old couple sitting close and I had to sneak a picture of them. He had his arm wrapped around her, she had her hand resting on his knee.  They weren't talking, just sitting there with each other, looking content together and staring out at the sea.  These sights make my heart happy. 

“Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away.” 
― Sarah Kay

A look out point just near the Presidio and just south of the 101 Northbound entrance - these trees, that Bridge, the vastness of the Bay...I could sit and stare for hours.

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge as seen out of my sunroof, a bucket list item for some, a quick day trip for me.  It's always an awesome sight no matter how many times I get to see it.

One of these days, I do believe I will have to create 

The Sunroof Series: A Photojournal as Seen from my Car in Motion 

I have a tradition, no trip to the beach is complete without stopping at Guymas for dinner, which is right on the Bay, a ferry port in Tiburon.  We timed it just right and hit happy hour: $2 oyster shooters, street tacos, and appetizers.  

A stroll through the Friday night street fair and a couple of wildberry mojitos  later, I couldn't help but notice that the drink must have gotten it's purple inspiration from the the colors that the sun was using to paint portraits in the sky.  

I simply cannot get enough of the sunsets/sunrises in the last few weeks.  

This picture is just as my camera took it, no filter, no edit, no added saturation.  

The sky is just incredible this time of year but a visit to the San Francisco Bay is good any day of the year.  

When the lights go down in the City
And the sun shines on the bay
Do I want to be there in my City

~ Journey 

My {Southern} Bonaventure

If you look closely at a tree, you'll notice it's knots and dead branches, just like our bodies.  What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully.

~ Matthew Fox

One of my absolute favorite things about photography is that it can transport you to

a different, unseen, past or forgotten moment in time. 

It.is.time-travel.

I love being able to visually walk in someone else's shoes or share a moment from my life-in-pictures with someone who may never get to travel to the places I've been blessed to have seen.

Last year, this day exactly, July 13th, I was in Savannah, GA and more specifically I was wandering through the hauntingly beautiful, moss-draped tree canopy of the Bonaventure Cemetery.

The cemetery is a short drive from Downtown Savannah, near the end of a well-established neighborhood.

This caution sign, least of my worries, was more of a beacon. 

I love the character in the drapery of the trees in this part of the country.

Someday, I will live where trees like this are indigenous.

Even now, a year later, I have hardly posted these pictures. 

Always with intention to share them with all my friends and family, somehow they got lost in "edit" and stuck in a file, not to be resurrected until today.

I wandered the Cemetery for the better part of two hours, camera in hand. 

I took hundreds of pictures in that time.

Every row, every around the corner was a snapshot back in time.

Off the beaten path, no major roadways nearby, with hardly a breeze, as I walked around, I stepped carefully over grave markers, respecting that was on hollowed ground.

All I could hear was the hum of insects and the occasional cry of a bird overhead. 

I could attempt to describe the vastness of the row and rows of family names and plots centuries old, but as they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words."

I did not stumble upon this place by chance.

My very intention for visiting Savannah, GA last Summer was for this cemetery.

I have been in love with the South since I was a kid.

When I was a kid there was no Internet or Kindle.

There was the library, where you had to fill out a paper application to get a paper card to gain access to get inside to short-term "borrow" a book that belonged to the community.
There were books, mostly old ones, an occasional few new ones.

They were short books, there were hardbacks, there were a few on tape, but then, there were the novels.

At the ripe age of twelve, I read (devoured) Gone With The Wind.

After I spend the better part of a week turning through the used, and worn pages of that library rental, I turned it in and then I checked out the VHS tapes. 

In words and cinematography, it was Southern love at first sight. 

    

This gravesite is a library, rows of plots the shelves, headstones the books.

Each one bearing a name with a set of beginning and end dates, the - in between, the summation of an entire life that left me wondering what stories each of the people buried beneath the soil lived.

This place, this historical site, completely drew me in. 

I studied the faces of the sculptures, reveled in the vines that grew over markers, stood in awe underneath the trees that stood tall and surrounded this place like sentinels.

This cemetery, hauntingly beautiful and comfortably quiet, was like going back in a time untouched.

There was hardly anyone else visiting that day.

A small handful of others, adventurers, off-the-path wanderers, with their own cameras in hand {my fellow photographers, we recognized each other}.
We smiled quietly at each other as we passed in silence.

Even void of color and light, these images are beautiful.

They are both bold & delicate.

They are a question & and an answer.

"To forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without root" ~ Chinese proverb

This trip, this place, this day is one of my favorite pages in my Book of Wanderlust.

These pictures are my memory, my tribute to the history of this place, to the people buried here,
and they are my gift to you, my reader.


~ Lauren