Monthly Archives: June 2008

Baby Face

Baby on shoulder

Thumbnail: Baby pout
Thumbnail: Baby furrow
Thumbnail: Baby yawns
Thumbnail: Baby wants beer
Thumbnail: Baby glances to the side
Thumbnail: Baby pensive
Thumbnail: Baby sleeping

Babies seem to have a dif­fer­ent expres­sion every sec­ond, and the expres­sions are so inno­cent. They hide noth­ing. I like to think each expres­sion reveals the drift­ing thoughts going on in their tiny lit­tle brains. Rather dif­fi­cult to pho­to­graph because the face they wear when you press the shut­ter release but­ton is invari­ably dif­fer­ent from the one you get.

Rosella here is half-Persian, half-Caucasian. Aside from being so cute you could chew her cheeks off, you can already tell how beau­ti­ful her mixed blood is going to make her.

The Eyes

The eyes

The first thing I notice about a girl is her face, but the eyes are what hold my atten­tion.

Especially eyes like this.

Big, round, and pure. They’re the ulti­mate sign of fem­i­nin­i­ty, because they con­vey inno­cence, youth, vital­i­ty.

Sometimes, the most inti­mate and per­son­al thing you can do — from hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion to mak­ing love — is make eye-con­tact.

My Relationship with Frederic and Misun

I con­nect with Frédéric and Misun in two very dif­fer­ent ways.

With Frédéric, we relate through our emo­tions, our dri­ve, and the need to express our­selves. We also have a ten­den­cy to feel like out­siders, per­haps because we’re often judged or mis­un­der­stood. In this way we com­fort each oth­er, because it’s as if we feel less odd or alone.

Misun, on the oth­er hand, is like my big sis­ter. She cares about me, takes an inter­est in what I do, and gives me advice the way I imag­ine a sib­ling does. I can share my inse­cu­ri­ties, my dreams, my feel­ings with her, as if I’ve known her my entire life.

Together, they encour­age and sup­port me, although nev­er to the point of flat­tery. In this way, I know that I can trust them to be hon­est; some­thing increas­ing­ly rare nowa­days, as peo­ple hide behind smiles and emp­ty words. When I’m with them, I feel like I’m whol­ly under­stood and accept­ed.

I always leave their house with a tremen­dous sense of hope, because they believe in me the way no one else ever has.

Design Robbery

After my Perishable Press inter­view, and hav­ing Version 10 fea­tured in a Crestock arti­cle titled “13 Minimalist Designs You Really Should See”, this site has seen a surge in design-relat­ed traf­fic. But increased expo­sure is a dou­ble-edged sword. Higher pro­file sites make you a big­ger tar­get for secu­ri­ty issues, spam, and design rob­bery.

Such as the case with eric-akmal.com.

Does this look famil­iar?

Eric Akmal Dot Com top

Eric Akmal Dot Com bottom

Continue read­ing “Design Robbery”…

A Reason For All

The crooked become straight
The emp­ty become full
The worn become new
Have lit­tle and gain much
Have much and be con­fused
So the Sage embraces the One and becomes a mod­el for the world

Verse 22, Tao Te Ching

Yesterday, I woke up from a nap at four in the after­noon. Usually, when I wake up from a long nap, I feel grog­gy and uneasy, but this time I was bright and rest­ed.

When I went out­side, the rain had stopped. It washed the bird poop off my wind­shield, it filled the air with the lin­ger­ing scent of clean­li­ness. In my car, Becky start­ed singing in the stereo.

I had You Broke My Heart by Lavender Diamond play­ing here

And every time she hit me with the words “cav­al­ry of light” in her waver­ing vibra­to, I had to sing at the top of my lungs along with her, my voice crack­ing, my dig­ni­ty left behind me.

I can’t even remem­ber the last time I’ve been so hap­py.

This morn­ing, I was run­ning late for work. But by the time I got to the car, the sun had been out long enough to warm the breeze. I could roll the win­dows down and let the air in. The traf­fic made me even more late, but it let me take my time too. It gave me the chance to enjoy Lenny croon­ing to me about how true love leaves no traces.

It’s like I’m wait­ing for some­thing to go wrong, because I’m not used to things going this well. But noth­ing’s going wrong. Things are be work­ing out. Everything has a rea­son, no mat­ter how small or triv­ial.

Taoist the­o­ry says that sur­ren­der brings per­fec­tion. Don’t force any­thing. Allow things to hap­pen, and they’ll nat­u­ral­ly bal­ance out. Perhaps I’m final­ly believ­ing this, instead of sim­ply under­stand­ing it.

When things are going bad­ly, you’re not real­ly behind.

You’re just wait­ing for the good that would­n’t be pos­si­ble oth­er­wise.