Everything A Girl Needs To Be Happy

Photo by Sarah

...Herself.

Always,

Penelope ♥

Yes We Can

Photos from the New York Times

In the six months that I've been running Cocoa, I've made it my goal to be as optimistic as humanly possible - to show people that life is what you make it and that the world is a dizzying, wonderful place. Nevertheless, it's hard to ignore what the world is going through today. We're in a crisis. We're struggling. People from all around the world are suffering in so many different ways, some losing their jobs, some losing their houses, some losing hope.

But today, all of that will change.

For the first time in my entire life, I can truly say that I am proud to be an American - that I love my country. I feel something today that I have never felt before, and it's a fizzy cocktail of pride and joy, but above all I feel hope - hope and the belief that this is the only country in the world where anything can happen. Where anyone can make a difference. Where anyone can change the world. America has just made history. We have come together for a common cause, and I truly believe that President Barack Obama will be the glue that keeps us together. Because we are one nation, one world, one voice. And yes, we can.

Always,
Penelope ♥

Daily Inspiration - August 23rd

Photo by Missy

There's something spectacular - something earth-quaking, china-shattering, spell-binding, something poetic that makes your heart swell as though it's been soaking in the bubbliest of champagne your whole life, something thrilling in all ways imaginable - about your first kiss.

It's a daydream of baby girls in babydoll dresses, swinging on tire swings or from tree branches or observing the ever-spinning world from the seashore that is their bedroom. We can all admit to spending at least part of our sleepy childhood with our head in our hands, thinking about those mysterious boys who will sweep us away with that sizzling effervescent kiss of womanhood. We wonder, blowing the amoxicillin-pink bubbles of summertime dreams, what they will look like - whether they will have ice-rink blue eyes that seem to sweep over us with a bittersweet chill, or a crooked smile that always comforts us, even in our most tart of times. What kind of music will define them? Will they be rocker boys who can strum out chords on our bedroom floor, serenading us with Radiohead and Kurt Cobain love songs? Or will they be jazz types who sneak into their father's study in the dead of night to have gin-spun rendezvous with Billie Holiday and Wynton Marsalis? How will these dream boys, so different yet so the same, find us in this ever-growing world - and more importantly, how will we know when they are here?

We ask ourselves these silly things while trudging through girl-hood, yet when we finally do slip into the open arms of our first lovers it seems so correct, like those first two puzzle-pieces we get to lay down in life, and suddenly questioning those beautiful boys seems simply absurd. These boys - with their strange stories and mystifying eyes - they give us butterfly kisses deep in our bellies, like an aviary suddenly shaken into a fury and the flapping of hundreds of neon wings. Life seems to float around them, and we suddenly find ourselves wrapped up with them, tied up in their electric lives - watching the entire universe circle in slow motion. We're atwitter with small talk and passed smiles, hand-holding and poetic words that still could never quite explain how we feel.

And when it finally does happen, that ruby red cherry on the cake of adolescence,
when we finally do kiss - all we can see are fireworks.

It's an explosion in small scale, a soda pop sip that fizzes through you like a high-speed chase. It's witchy women who slam-dance on the beach and throw themselves at the moon and stare into the bonfire as though searching for answers. It's all-night diners and midnight festivals all lit up in a neon glaze and hand-spun circus spectaculars deep into the night. We feel like thundering tides so glassy that a single touch could shatter the sea - our hearts heavy bongo drums meeting the beat of clattering subway trains. In that single moment, we become electric, anew. We are something more than tiny girls in an infinite world. We have been brought closer, closer to the Earth and the sea, the sky and the wind, closer to another human, to another planet, to ourselves.

The kisses never end, all from different boys who show us different worlds, and all of them bring us closer to something different. They show us the joy and magic in our lives, the tiny spectaculars that we pass over in an average day, and we become more alive because of them. We become more than just girls.

And we cannot explain what has happened to us, what storybook tale these boys have left us with, what piece of worldliness has been instilled all with the help of a single kiss, where that folded map of kisses will lead us - all we know is that we are not the same.

Always,

Penelope ♥

Daily Inspiration - August 6th

Photo by Brichphotos

For one reason or another, most folks on this tiny little planet seem to be mesmerized by fireworks. Maybe it's the sheer pyrotechnics of it all, the power we have to make beautiful explosions. Maybe it's the overwhelming brilliance that comes with that final pop of light. Or maybe yet it's that child-like thrill imprinted into us that comes from the unexplained phenomenon of Night Fires - something that still hasn't dissipated even after our however-many years of living.

But maybe we see something more in fireworks. Something that most others can't recognize. Maybe we love these glorious shows of light because we can relate.

Like these fiery lights, we are strong, explosive, thundering in unspoken magnitude, yet so incredibly mesmerizing. Quietly we shoot to life, shattering into a million tiny pieces of broken glass, and then in an instant we sizzle away into the night, leaving the world wide-eyed and staring. We disappear, the explosion gone, but that hazy trail, our smoky sweet dust powdered across the night sky will forever be there for others to blaze. We are tiny explosions all over the world, popping with every brush of greatness, and collectively we form a gloriously blinding blanket of light and life.

We are stunning, captivating - explosive diamonds broken across the night sky, falling back down to Earth and leaving our mark on the world. Sometimes we may not shimmer like we intended and instead only stun our audience with a quiet pop; other times we may not fire at all. Nevertheless, our potential is there. And when we become kinetic, nothing can stop us.

We are beautiful and strong. Brilliant and graceful. We are the fireworks show of the world, running year-round. And nothing could ever come close to the beauty we leave behind.

Always,

Penelope ♥

The Truth About Being Wild

Photo by Christine Day Lorico

There are two types of girls in this world: those who are the perfect, timid matriarchs born only for marriage - the bread-and-butter kind of girls who carry family photos of distant cousins in their wallet and will do everything in their power to avoid an argument - the girls who sit crisscross applesauce on their twin-sized bed and daydream about wedding dresses and first kisses and plastic pink dollhouse homes. There are these small-town girls with their quiet smiles and television dreams, and then there are those who are wild.

While the small-town girls are daydreaming about Tupperware parties and joining the PTA, these concrete goddesses are taking off their heels and jumping carelessly into public fountains. They are dancing wildly to live music, whether it be pulsing trance or cafe jazz, and wearing hand-strung popcorn necklaces as crowns. These swinging cafe-au-lait kind of girls belt out karaoke standards without missing a beat and scribble little crumbs of encouragement on bathroom walls - they slip in and our of our world, cart-wheeling and backflipping through life, and the tragedy is that sometimes we only notice their presence when they're gone. Sometimes they fall into our laps as best friends and curious strangers. Sometimes we are those wild girls.

We are the ones who will always sing, even when nobody's listening. We are the ones who will never hesitate to ride loop-de-loop roller coasters, no matter how daunting they may seem. We are the ones who will never be afraid to speak our minds, and we will do whatever it takes to change the world. Others may never understand us - the simple girls will stare scornfully, scratching away our encouraging graffiti with a manicured nail, but these shortcomings never seems to faze us - until it comes to the matter of love. When beautiful boys are involved, boys who thrill us and chill us and yet could never begin to comprehend us, the whole world begins to slow.

These boys with their expensive watches and stunning punctuality, they are afraid. They see who we are and what we have, all of our madness wrapped up neatly in lace and tulle, and they realize that they could never tame us. They know that we, with our ever-changing nail polish, would never rear their perfect Oxford child - that we, with our dreams of baking cupcakes for notorious authors, could never settle to be part of a conventional family. In us they see instability and calamity - they fear the fact that we will never submit to their American dream. And so they run. Even those with love in their hearts still run, tumbling towards unwed sweethearts in Lily Pulitzer sweaters. And these silly boys settle down with sleepy girls that we will never understand. And we are left standing barefoot in pubic fountains. Or star-struck on that karaoke stage. Or staring blankly at a bathroom stall with pen in hand. We realize that love has eluded us, tricked us, shattered us with its fickle sense of humor, but maybe we are the ones who have been doing the eluding. Are we wrong in our slam-dancing ways? Have we become too much to handle? Somewhere along the highway of life, have we made a wrong turn and somehow forgotten to change lanes and become simple?

When did love begin to dictate who we are and not the other way around? No matter how lovely or sweet those dashing boys are, sometimes we just have to accept that we are too wild for them - too complicated and untamed. At the end of the day we have to ask ourselves, is it better to be loved or free?

We may be unconventional darlings, or gothic prom queens, or mysterious concrete conquistadors, but we know what we have, and we will always embrace it, no matter the heartache it may bring us. Because we are wild. We are free. And we are not afraid.

Always,
Penelope ♥

Daily Inspiration - July 4th

Photo by Jo Santiago

In South Florida, The fourth of July is always a spectacular. Fireworks shoot off at midnight, shattering like champagne bottles, announcing the national holiday's vivid presence. We have beach-side celebrations with sand castle building contests, young and old alike meeting to build ocean-side doll houses or life-sized hot dogs or glowing sand angels or the Statue of Liberty. We barbecue in the park while shimmying around to Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run, forever talking about the time that he suddenly appeared in Palm Beach and strolled around the very park we're standing in. There's tropical soda pop in every glass, so fizzy that the ice crackles and snaps indefinitely, and every table boasts Americana classics from apple pie to hamburger buns frosted with sesame seeds. The local taquerias fly American flags from the roof and blast thrift-shop cassettes of Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys, humming out their Spanish equivalents. 

The downtown district is littered with families picnicking by the intercostal, sprawled out on old tablecloths with feasts of peanut butter sandwiches and Mallorca sweet bread and cranberry spring salads and ice cold pop. Their children do cartwheels and handstands on the water's edge, peering over the concrete divider and into the sunwarmed inlet below, watching expectantly for a glimpse of a twenty-foot shark or some other elusive beast. They howl out in desire while tugging on their mother's pant leg, begging for a cotton-candy ice cream cone from the nearby tiny pink shop while mom and dad slow-dance barefoot in the grass to Louis Armstrong.

When the sun begins to set over that ever-expansive ocean, the entire city seems to spontaneously light up in a sudden flicker of fireworks. They shoot into the sky leaving smoky mascara trails, popping into pinks and blues like a wine-bottle cork pulled from the bottle. If all the lights in the tiny city of Palm Beach were to be turned off all at once, the light from those shimmering fireworks alone would be enough to keep the world spinning madly on. They crackle deep into the night, even after everyone has packed up their picnic blankets and carried their sleeping children back to the car, lulled into sleep by the wistful light show. No, those fireworks seem to keep on going, even when their audience has long since been laid to bed.

They just keep on shooting, illuminating the sleepy sky until the stroke of midnight when they too can finally be laid to rest. And there they lay, resting their tired eyes until the next forth of July when they get the chance to mesmerize the world again.

Always,

Penelope ♥