Campbell's soup for the sole.....

Today I bought these amazing andy warhol shoes on melrose ave.....they were $79 and i talked them down to $49...which is still kind of out of budget right now, but they make my knees weak <3
if i werent trying to stay away from cheese and bread i'd pop these babies on and make myself a grilled cheese. but believe me, having these on even makes my fruit & yogurt taste better.
speaking of shoes, i've met so many traveling models that have "wish lists". one girl i shot with last week in san francisco actually scored a new red bmw, an ipad, and an ipod touch. she said nothings required, theres just alot of rich men that want to buy pretty young girls stuff because theyre lonely etc... i just dont think i could ever pull that off. i am way too skeptical of free gifts. one guy wanted to pay me $5,000 thru pay pal to skype with him 1 hr a week. nothing sexual, just the company. i blocked him. this same model asked for his contact info. apparently she does this often and makes the big bucks.
another model i worked with in NY last month asked what the weirdest thing i ever did for money was. i made a confused face. she works "foot fetish" seminars once a week and banks about 2,000 just in one day at them. so these guys (much like a photography seminar/shoot out) book you for a one-on-one (usually going at 100-200 for a 1/2hour) and spend that time massaging your feet and kissing your feet. because they have a fetish with feet. have you ever heard of such a thing?!?! i went one time to a "foot model" casting and well, it was for foot fetish videos. paid about $700 for 3 hours of film, just moving your feet and what not, in hoes, heels, what have you. before i was aware of what was really going on with this casting, he asked to see my foot, i took my shoe off and stuck my foot out and then he grabbed it and started moaning as he rubbed my foot on his thigh. i jerked my foot back and froze up. grabbed my shoe and ran out.
writing about this makes me near nauseated and i suppose it doesnt really need to be told, but these stories just boggle my mind.
if you didnt know, i used to be married. yes, im only 25, and divorced. but people in the south, especially san antonio, get married young. but not in austin, its the #1 single city in america...there are just too many opportunities for all these hipsters and bartenders to want to be tied down. heck, you make a friend every day in this amazing city. im addicted to meeting people, and thats why i call it home. the chicken landed in the coupe, and thought she had been there all along. i dont regret my marriage one bit. although supposedly i am to have 4 significant relationships in my lifetime, and my marriage is not one of them. it is a faded memory. i cant remember the smell of his skin anymore, or the sound of his voice. it is all lost. but i loved him very much, that alone can still make me cry. we simply got married too young. i looked at him in high school, in his green 73 vw bug, and his extremely moralized character and thought, theres a man who will never hit me, cheat on me, leave me, there is a good man. and at that i started to fall. but as you can read, those are no reasons to marry. i was a confused little girl. and he was an amazing and golden charactered man. 2 years into the marriage 1 of 2 things happened. either i realized the chemistry was gone 100% for the last year, feeling as if i was no longer an interest nor was intimacy in the least bit, begged him to take me on dates and start up in marriage counseling, and at the fail of this the marriage failed. i failed. or 2, i realized how effed up i am and can be, and my mind pulled its little dis-association crap on me, forbidding me to feel anything at all. at that i started to disappear into another person. the person i am today. the person i ran to. the scared little girl that wanted to be taken care of. i felt nothing as all this happened. and i mean nothing. it wasnt until almost 6 months later as i was unpacking all my silverware in my new apt in austin, that the realization hit me. i looked at a utensil, and thought about the meals we used to eat. and i weeped like a baby. i had left my best friend, the man i thought i would be with as we played with our grandchildren. i had left his family, the closest thing i had ever had to a father. and i barely remember any of it.
but did he really know me. was i me then? am i me now? who the hell is me? can i compare myself to the augusteum in rome?

"The the Augusteum was transformed somehow into a vineyard, then a Renaissance garden, then a bullring, then a fireworks depository, then a concert hall.  In the 1930s, Mussolini seized the property and restored it down to its classical foundations, so that it could someday be the final resting place for his remains. Today the Augusteum is one of the quietest and loneliest places in Rome, buried deep in the ground.  The city has grown up around it over the centuries. Traffic above the monument spins in a hectic circle, and nobody ever goes down there–from what I can tell–except to use the place as a public bathroom.  But the building still exists, holding its Roman ground with dignity, waiting for its next incarnation. 
I find the endurance of Augusteum so reassuring, that this structure has had such an erratic career, yet always adjusted to the particular wildness of the times.  To me, the Augusteum is like a person who’s led a totally crazy life–who maybe started out as a housewife, the unexpectedly became a widow, then took up fan-dancing to make money, ended up somehow as the first female dentist in outer space, and then tried her hand at national politics–yet who has managed to hold an intact sense of herself throughout every upheaval.
I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been sochaotic, after all.  It is merely this world that is chaotic, bring changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated.  The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.  Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough–but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository.  Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.”
i got this message today - 
"Jade I know there was a time when we use to laugh and talk about non sense. Miss it really and I see how all that your doing really happy for you wish i could be walking in those shoes some times . You are doing so much and impacting lives everywhere who would of thought that one decision would get you all this.. I know your busy as ever but if i can ask you anything it would be.. How did you know that good would come out of leaving your marriage??? I dont mean this bad at all but a lot of girls just take what ever card they are delt with afraid for what might happen if they dont...."

Did good come out of it? if i stayed married who would i be today? would i have a family? a degree? would i have still gone to uganda to help change little babies lives? would i have fallen deeply in love with a good man and grown old? or am i meant to be a free spirit roaming this earth like the gypsy i feel i am, fundraising for schools and building water wells and taking peektures as i play life by ear? is this who i am? this vagabond gypsy afraid to get attached to anything or anybody, planning only to make a difference? helping a child in need as my sole desire and letting that be my romance in life?

i only know this, whatever is supposed to happen, does happen. if i were to draw a circle around myself today, it would be exactly where i am meant to be, with these people and these lovely shoes. it doesnt mean i dont miss my faded memories, or the laughter of them, it just means i am content wherever i am, and in whatever stage i am in. the journey is the destination.

-Make peace with your past so it wont spoil the present.