Boudoir Photos - and some thoughts

 So, maybe you didn't know, maybe you did, regardless, not only do I write, but I also model. That by the way was a terribly long run on sentence. I enjoy modeling, and posing, and all the things that go along with it. However, I do not enjoy the mentality that showing any skin is vulgar, or even pornographic. There seems to be this notion that as a woman, if I choose to show skin I am becoming something suddenly more sexualized.
There's beauty in the body.
There's beauty in the female form.
Everything becomes sexualized though.
I'm really trying to show women you can be curvy and love your bodies.


Photo credit goes to Lindsey Worthington Photography
Model is of course me, Elizabeth Azpurua

Website here has more photos - lots more.

Nyctophilia

Do you like standing beneath the stars, their light and patterns comforting, soothing, calming and yet sometimes exhilarating?
I love night walks and gazing at the phases of the moon, tracking its dance across the sky; far more at peace beneath its cool light than the blazing sun.
I like foggy twilight as it settles in, the sun gone down, night birds alive with the hush of woods.
I like dark wooded paths, haunted places, and spooky trees; I wish to say "I have arrived friends, let me haunt with you".
Some of us like the darkness, revel in the night, the crisp air, the cool wind.
Where there are souls aching for bright days with outstretched arms to the sun, there are those of us in shadow, running out into sunsets, dancing with crickets and bats as the stars become brighter and the sky darker.
We like black and midnight blue, we like deep purple and dark grey - we are the ones content to sit in darkness with no light or candle at peace with the night.
We are the ones captivated by the enormity of the universe above us and marveling at shadows cast by the moon.
For us, 3am is not uncommon a time to be awake, vibrant, and unafraid.
Balmy nights with cicada symphonies, brisk chilly nights with falling snowflakes, thunderous storm rich nights of lightning wars and still autumn nights of October chill are our playgrounds.
What separates us from others? Nyctophelia some call it. A love of night? Oh, yes. A nocturnal need and a lust for starlight. The moon is our beacon, and the darkness our solace.

By: Elizabeth Azpurua

Circles

Do you ever have those moments of clarity where you suddenly realize you have been allowing yourself to suffer for the same thing for months and months? Or years and years?
Do you ever just wonder why you cannot step out of the circle you keep walking?
Why do we put ourselves through so much instead of letting go and moving on?
It is like we enjoy these circles.
These endless days of never moving forward.

I want to keep walking.
I want to let it go.

Not Normal

Let me take a moment to congratulate you on being normal! Congrats on having normal desires that God gave you; congrats on being able to express your desires in an institution called marriage, so that you can live without the weight of Satan using your desires against you. What a relief it must be to know God's great love for you because he established a way for you to love and express your love behind closed doors in a sensual, even erotic way (you wouldn't tell your friends about!), but also that you can express affection in public with the one you love - in fact, just be grateful you live in such a great Nation where you can hold hands with the one you love! You can propose to them in a restaurant and people will clap! How awesome is that?! You must feel incredibly blessed that you were born normal, with natural desires, and your first crush was considered "cute" in your household; what a blessing to know that you don't have to live a life of celibacy to stay away from such evil enticings that will lead you down a road of misery. Congrats on not having to ever turn off such a core part of your being - you must feel so blessed! You can look at your husband or wife as if they're dessert and you've been on a diet for a month! That's awesome! Life must be great for you! No wonder you're trying so hard to help everyone have what you have! No wonder you're trying to save them from a life ruled by Satan! The happiness you have is fantastic, and it's no wonder you want everyone to feel the way you feel - it's a shame they weren't all born that way! That's just their trial in life, to put off the natural man, and to feel the spirit and let go of unnatural desires, turning all of themselves to God - I mean, you've done it right? You've had to shut off the part of you that is attraction, desire, and the need for comfort from the ones you have feelings for - it wasn't that hard, right? The love for your spouse is completely based on their beautiful soul, and no amount of sexual desire is ever present, right? You have given up "the natural man" completely and have lived a life of angelic, pure, love that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the service - right? Oh. I see. You haven't done that because your desires expressed behind closed doors in your marriage are acceptable in God's eyes. You've never had to feel wrong, or sinful, or evil for something so natural in your nature as expressing your love through intimacy, creating a bond between you and your spouse through shared physical joys. Hrmmmm.... perhaps you should handle those not born "normal" like yourself a little more delicately since you've never gone through that and aren't forced to live the life you're telling them is the right way to live. Perhaps you should be a little kinder in your approach. In fact, maybe you should go home and hug your spouse and think about your wedding, and the benefits of your marriage, and how lucky you are to have the life you have rather than trying to convince everyone they should have the same life as you. But what do I know about it? I wasn't born in a way to understand where you're coming from. I was born to understand where THEY are coming from. I know God still loves me regardless, and I know He loves you, and I know He loves everyone and wants everyone to be happy, not miserable. Life is so short and so hard just as it is, surely you can make someone's day a little easier without feeling the need to tell them they're unnatural desires are being used against them by Satan and that you will love them as a sinner but you just can't accept the sin. Surely, you could have looked at them and said instead, "Have I told you lately how much I love seeing you happy?" or "What a beautiful place this is when you're around." or, "I love you just the way you are." But what I do know? I'm not normal.

My Problem With Friends

My biggest problem with life seems to be that my definition of friendship and loyalty is always different from everyone else's regardless of what they say or feel or what they claim to stand for. So, I'm constantly let down, or see the "true" colors of people and I get upset - but why?
I can't expect everyone to view things as I do, or to put as much into relationships as I do; I must have been a knight in a former life or something similar. I'm the type of girl who when I give you my all I give you my all. If I am on your side, I tell the truth, I don't hide things, your enemies are my enemies and I will stand by you through it all - - - but then I realize, sadly, that those who I suppose will act as I act don't feel the need to do such things. I realize most relationships are shallow, technology based, or rather relying on the convenience of technology, and most people lie and hide things - a lot.
They say everyone's a liar. True, but I think it comes down to why and what the lies are about - I mean, there's just things you aren't supposed to do if you love people. There's things you're supposed to share. There's supposed to be some type of fierce loyalty involved in the strong bonds of any form of a relationship - but where the hell did it go?
So, I'm left with brief encounters, texting, small chit chat, etc etc etc.
The fact it upsets me is my own problem, I guess.
We're all busy.
We live busy lives.
We pass briefly, smile, and move on.
I'm beginning to think this notion of always having someone who has your back is non-existent.
Maybe if I let go of wanting that I'll be able to be happy.
Happy with the lesser form of friendship the world offers.
It just doesn't feel right.
It feels sad.
I always wanted someone I could stand by until I take my last breath because I said I would and I wanted someone to want to do the same for me.
I know I have a purpose here in this time and life, in this place, in this sense of "now", but if I had a dollar for every time I felt like I belonged elsewhere in a different time I know I'd have a lot of useless paper.
Loyalty.
Define it.
Define it again.
Define it better than you just defined it.
You don't know what it is.
You probably lie and make excuses and avoid and gossip and turn your back on, ignore, pretend, hide, covet, mock, accuse, and judge the very people you shouldn't and then, you probably put cute emoticons in your messages, or give fake smiles, or pretend to have fun.
That's what this life is reducing us to.
We don't have to fight for each other's lives, or stand guard to defend each other, or toil side by side in order to stay alive - we just exist from one moment of hanging out and catching up to the other and all depth or bonds of loyalty needn't exist in such a shallow world.
So I'm fighting it.
I'm upset by it.
Why?
Because it's wrong.
But no one has the energy or desire to change it.
No one has the time.
I'll just be swept up in these shallow waters of rapid moving life
           I'll travel the currents near the shores
           I'll hit rocks, and I'll hit sand,
           and one day I'll change course
I'll sink beneath the surface and swim down to a deeper life
           I'll travel into waters seeking more
           I'll go down, and find a hand
           leading me to what I was looking for

Love and Heart Ache

She loved him not knowing how her heart could have such a cavernous capacity to contain the eruptive force that spread into her limbs like a dam breaking, flooding villages and eroding the land into a quaking mess.
Her whispered words in the darkness caressed the air like moths flying towards a light on a hot summer's eve, wings beating against humid air, mesmerized by a glow against a velvet world.
In ever facet of her life, she marveled at his ways, his movements, his voice and the way his heart beat beneath her fingertips, sure, steady and rhythmic, so full of life and passion; a carousel of joy.
His shoulders became the platform from which her lips propelled themselves over and over in sequence to the frenzied beating of her birdlike heart making music that could only escape from her when translated into touch.
The way his eyelashes graced his eyes reminiscent of the finest thread would weave upon her aching mind like weighted dreams wherewith she could never quite recover from the image she had seen.
There would never be another quite like him to ease into her world so perfectly and plant an everlasting garden of joy and wonder to spring upwards inside her soul.
For this, she loved him not knowing how her heart was ever granted such depth to contain such an emotion as the one overflowing from her in spiralling rivulets that surely he felt every time she smiled and said "I love you."

~**~

At night, the darkness is an anchor to keep one at bay in a bed of linen, like a prison, to contain ones grief, longing and need.
The air is the sorceress giving the power to continue while the edges of sanity unravel into tendrils of woe.
This is not love, but a breaking heart; not hope, but an ageless sorrow.
They do not prepare you for the weight of the pain that sinks down around you like a shadowed fist to steal away the life you once had known.
They do not prepare you for the way a heart breaks, slowly, in increments, then all at once.
Translate that feeling into sound and you'd go deaf.
Translate it into sight and you'd go blind.
If you could taste it, you'd never taste again.
The scent would leave you unable to breathe.
That is why the only way to understand it, is to feel it -  inside.

What If....?

Where would we all be if all ship builders believed that the only means of travel is to travel on the sea?
Where might we live if all mothers did believe that only in the mountains are children meant to be?
What would we eat if all farmers hated corn and only planted beans inside their fields?
What would have happened if soldiers only carried swords and never carried shields?
Where would you go if the train conductors feared the tracks beneath the trains and where would you sleep if no one thought to build shelters from the rains?
You want all the world to match your views and believe all that you believe yet you never stop to think or really to conceive
What might the land look like if all gardens hated green and if all children were taught to see only what is seen?
If the world were all the same, we would all be like drones, little robots in lines not like multicolored stones
The beauty in our faces comes from the stories that we tell and what we tell depends upon what we all see
If our eyes were all the same then our stories too would be and nothing would be rare and nothing would be free

~Elizabeth

I Need.........

I think the stars are aligning in a way to cause havoc and mayhem for this Libra. Why is it so hard to find someone to share the beauty in life with? I'm left exhausted by "Hey Liz", "Damn ur sexyyy" and "what r u doin?" and find myself seeking someone capable of higher intelligence and deeper spirituality. Why can I not find someone who goes outside and feels the echo of nature in his bones? I want to find someone who gets the need I have for standing beneath the sky and marveling at how very small I am in the universe, and yet, I can stand in awe at such beauty around me. Why can I not find someone who reads what I write and loves that I write so much he will buy me a cottage near a coast so that I may listen to the sea as I write. I do not want hookups. I do not want to waste my time on someone who is only pursuing me so that he can eventually have sex with me. I want someone who is astounded by my view of the world and finds it incredible and wants to share with me his view. He doesn't have to cook - but he has to love meals cooked on an open fire. He doesn't have to sing - but he has to love me singing as I clean. He doesn't have to understand why I like pretty things, he just has to let me like them and have them and fill a home with them. He must understand that I, as a Libra, may love all the lace and pearls and satin of the world - but I also like weapons and never shy away from a good fight. Like a General, in satin and velvet. I need swords and knives and necessary artillery along with pretty pillows and curtains. I need books and music and the sound of birds. Ah, why can I not find someone with whom to share the world with? It's so beautiful and life is so short.... and I'm perishing in a world I feel ill equipped to harbor one such as I. To quote C.S. Lewis: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Gathering Inspiration Part I

My friend Johnny and I were discussing inspiration and I didn't realize that perhaps the process in which I gather inspiration might help others also to become inspired, whether for art, photography, music, poetry, or life in general.
I wanted to focus on a few areas in which I gather inspiration.

:Nature:
The Light Side
The Dark Side

:Emotive:
Moody
Anger
Joy
Sorrow

:Love:
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

:Metaphors:

In each of these I will briefly describe the ways in which I gather inspiration.

Nature: The Light Side
In order to feel the light energy of nature, it is important to be out in it. On a porch, in the yard, the woods, a beach, a park, the sea, or in a river - these places offer an abundance of inspiring moments, from the light on a leaf to the sound of a bird, the gurgle of water over rocks or the wind through your hair, finding the uniqueness of the place you're in is key to gathering inspiration.
I often find myself mesmerized by clouds. I find their shapes to be intriguing, how they change and morph into something new. I find the way light comes through them to be uplifting. The churning storm clouds and the fluffy clouds of a pretty day, the wispy tendrils across the sky, and the way the sun sets behind clouds colored in cotton candy pink or salmon, or lavender.
The sun is forever inspiring - it adds light and depth to everything we see. It changes dark corners into brightened places and changes shapeless fields into wonders of shadowed blades of grass.
Insects buzzing and birds chirping, wind rustling and rain falling - sounds; sounds truly are transporters into new realms.
I enjoy the changing sights and smells of the seasons. Each season has an abundance of new smells and sights to behold. The scent of one season may inspire in you an entirely different emotion from another season. Think of the lilies in Spring, the fresh cut grass smell of Summer, the smell of fog and wet leaves in Autumn and the crisp scent in the air on a blustery Winter day.
Whether the waves of the sea inspire you, or the sound of an owl, or the changing stars  - the feelings of nature can become great companions throughout your day.
If you've never watched the moon on a cloudless night, nor waited in wonder for a shooting star, nor seen the sunrise nor watched a storm pass, surely your head has been turned down too long.
The next time you are out and about, contemplate the trees, the flowers, bark, ants and the smell of the wind; capture the energy inside you and let it lighten you.

Nature: The Dark Side
I am morbid. First off, do not let the former words fool you, I too, am inspired by the decaying world of nature. I am inspired by death, and the destruction of storms; I'm inspired by battered boats and broken windows from wayward tree limbs. I'm inspired by fallen trees and scorched earth. I find inspiration in the smell of smoke and how one vine can completely choke the life from another plant. I find the hunting predator's victory a marvel and the the macabre and creepy world of darkness to be intriguing. There is an unsettling feel to the woods at night; a feeling of vulnerability not found in daylight. The howling wind and creaking wood - these things can fuel inspired works of a darker sort.
If you've never walked the road at dusk while bats flew overhead, nor watched a hurricane bend palms towards the ground, nor walked in the aftermath of a fire, you've not seen the darker side of nature. It too, has inspiring bits - even if sharper edged.

Emotive: Moody
Ah, the term "moody" can apply to many moods, too many usually, all battling inside you. Inspiration that comes from our moods if by far the most common - our moods change everything we behold in front of us. "Moody" is the term I use when I have emotions battling each other like dragons in a coffin  - not enough room and it's hard to see the victor in such a tight space. I feel like I'm up, down, sideways and sprawled on a floor inside my soul - "moody" is inspiring for many reasons, but mostly, in your journey to unlock each emotion you find a tapestry of threads to draw from; each mood is a new layer to uncover, and each discovery is more fuel for your Muse.

Emotive: Anger
That crushing, snapping, want to scream, shout, kick, throw, stomp, beat, tear apart feeling we sometimes get. It's hot and bubbly inside or cold and calculated. It either bursts out from us or seethes inwardly. Anger is an emotion to let out  - not hold in. Being inspired by anger can be tricky. How does one let it be inspiration without taking oneself over? Such a balancing act - but truly potent fuel for your works if used right - if used wrong, it becomes poison that eats away at our other inspirations. Anger is an emotion to capture quickly and use swiftly.

Emotive: Joy
I didn't want to focus on simply "happy" because for most artists "happy" is too light, too shallow - our "happy" is really "joy". It's the feeling after struggle. It's the feeling we discover after we've seen all the darkened corners and dismal places. Joy is the feeling that gives our soul wings, if even but for a moment. It's inspired by moments or memories or utter exhilarating feelings and through us we wish to propel the joy outward. Joy is an inspiration meant to be shared. It's something one knows only after one has experienced the opposite. In joy, we learn the truest depth of happiness.

Emotive: Sorrow
Truly, the best remedy of sorrow is to turn it into art. We learn the bottom of our souls in sorrow. We walk that place at the bottom and our feet mold into the floor. We taste it in the air and sometimes we make for ourselves a cloak of sorrow and wear it on us like a shield. We project "I am hurt" as if to ward off further hurt. Our sorrow becomes the chains we use to bind us. Sorrow should be released with time. It will change, but give it wings to fly away, not roots to sink in deeper. I find often sorrow is in my writing, it's in the spaces between my words. If I were a painter, my trees might be tinged in colors of sorrow. It casts blurred shadows over what we see.

Love: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
I could write an entire blog on love. Oh wait, I have. I write endlessly of the many forms of love. It seeps into every ounce of what I do. The good is like wind chimes blowing through my heart, the bad is like shattering glass on the floor of my soul and the ugly is my wishing for daggers and claws to wound the one causing my pain. Love is always going to be the number one inspiration in life. We're all touched by love. Whether it was a gentle touch, a punch, or searing mark left on us, love is that one thing we all want, need, seek, find, lose, and wish we could escape from - and it fuels us. It fuels our lives. Love is our drive. It's the combustible force in desire and the earthquake to shake us apart and rebuild us into something new.
The good things of love leave us starry eyed. They leave us with that look of bloomed flowers.
The bad things of love tear us apart and wrench our souls and leave us in shreds.
The ugly things of love cause us to feel for someone what we never intended, and can lead from anger into hate, the most destructive thing to a human being.
I don't think I have to tell anyone to let love inspire them. I don't see how you could keep yourself from being manipulated by love  -  it's in all we do.


Metaphors
By now, you have gathered my usage of metaphors (and similes) is the way I explain emotions with words. I'm not sure how to describe the way I view the world in metaphors. Your happiness is palpable scent I wish to place in a candle and burn on cold nights; your voice is like honey to soothe my soul; his eyes reminded me of windows reflecting sky, and the balloon she held fled and burst in the wind like childhood dreams often rise and die with time. I think anyone reading my poems probably thinks I write when I'm high - I write sober, actually, but regardless I compare things to rodeos and whales and an albatross, to mazes and doors and toadstools; I have symbolism for myself in all that I write and each thing means something else usually. My mind is a labyrinth of murals painted in the colors of memories. I don't know how to view the world but in metaphors.

For now, this is all I am focusing on. I would like to further write regarding the inspiration I gather through observation of people; also, inspiration from dreams and memories.
I hope I have helped to inspire through my words, or simply gave you an insight into how I draw inspiration from the world around me.
Thank you again to Johnny, who is a wonderfully talented individual who also inspires me and at some point I will write on the inspiration of music, until then, fuel your Muse, feed your soul and embody inspiration in your life.

~Elizabeth Azpurua

What is Love?

Amber: It's like swallowing fire, endlessly, choking on the scorched remnants of your core and the smoke filling the air around you ceases oxygen and slowly you see the world fading....and when you are reborn you always carry the memory of that moment; it never fully leaves and there is an ache forever inside you for nothing, nothing can undo you the way that love can.

Ruth: It's the unalterable knowledge that no matter where they go, or who they love, or who they are with - you want to be by their side. It doesn't matter for where they are, that is home. That is the only place you can conceive of being. Where else would you exist after them, if not by their side?

Dara: It's a type of poison. Slow. Then fast. Then slow again. First, it makes the world a fake happy and then it makes the world a happy fake and after, it's all fake. There's no happy.

Felicity: I feel as if it is like an eternal Spring. It is always blooming, flowering, budding into something so beautiful that each moment is a glorious new start. It makes up for all the winters, which had been so barren, and it replaces their memory with that of joy, and life, and wonder. It's forever growing and blossoming into something incredible.

Jade: Have you ever chewed on razor blades? Your heart is the tongue and their love is the razor.

Summer: It's knowing no matter the depth of your woe, the length of your grief, that it's all worth it to hear them laugh. To see them smile. All the endless torment of life and hardships and stormy seas - it all disappears with the sound of their happiness. Their happiness becomes so important that if you become the reason they aren't happy, you would leave, remove yourself, just to know they'd be happy. It's all about their laugh. Their smile.

Jill: It all becomes one familiar ache. Like that old pair of shoes you can't throw out, but leaves blisters- yeah, you know the one I'm talking about. That's what it's like. If you find yourself in familiar waters, you know what's coming. You just sorta' swim and hope for the best - until you drown.

Alice: Well, after love, the world never is the same. Love is the only lesson that teaches you everything you need to know in life. You need it. You'll seek it. It will change the world around you, sometimes into a fairytale, and sometimes into a nightmare, but your world will never be the same after love.

Grace: It's falling. It's sometimes flying and sometimes landing and sometimes hurting, but it always starts with falling. Sometimes, people are terrified of falling. Sometimes, they love the feeling. I always loved it when I was caught. Love is falling hoping for a safe landing.