Every picture of my pseudo-nephew Landon, but this one especially.
Yoga starting to bring back the dancer callouses
(sorry for the gross picture of my feet!)
This photo and this boy, always this boy.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Just a couple things making me happy this week
Every picture of my pseudo-nephew Landon, but this one especially.
Yoga starting to bring back the dancer callouses
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Birds
I knew that birds flew south for the winter but I’d never thought that eventually they must fly back, and yet here they were. Hundreds and hundreds of bird silloutes appeared in front of the sunset. They rose from surrounding buildings like dust does when you blow on a shelf that has been left untouched for awhile. Joining together they flew in lines, one long ribbon into the northern sky. Another season was ending and it would be the last of this phase of my life. Southern California only has two seasons: summer and a pathetic excuse for winter. When the next season ends graduation will have passed and I will be an adult. I am terrified of the next season.
But I am comforted in the knowledge that some things will not change. Birds will stay in one place only as long as they are meant to. I watch until every last bird has disappeared to the north and the sky is blushed pink from the setting sun, and suddenly very clear.
*photo by me
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Feel it all
"And your own life while it's happening
to you never has any atmosphere until it's a memory."
-Andy Warhol
Say what you will about Andy Warhol, the man had his moments. We never think about the atmosphere of an experience until we find ourselves momentarily transported back to it. It's that way that a smell or a song can return you to a time in your life in a way that transcends the singular stimulation of one of your senses. Why does hearing Time to Pretend always make me feel a little bit less than sober? Andy nailed it. Atmosphere.
I have often tried to take note of these details, attempted to bottle that feeling up so I could recreate the moment again and again. These efforts have failed.
As I finalize my work schedule, buy books for my last semester of college, and happily return to beer of a normal alcohol percentage my head is still back in Park City. I could not capture the feeling of Sundance: of coming out of a midnight movie to a soft sparkly snow, of delirious sleep-deprived laughter and the electricity of thousands of people feeding on the creativity and passion of each other. I could not hold on to it and so instead I wait for it to find me. I wait for all the detail of a memory.
*Photo by me, through the hotel window in Park City
to you never has any atmosphere until it's a memory."-Andy Warhol
Say what you will about Andy Warhol, the man had his moments. We never think about the atmosphere of an experience until we find ourselves momentarily transported back to it. It's that way that a smell or a song can return you to a time in your life in a way that transcends the singular stimulation of one of your senses. Why does hearing Time to Pretend always make me feel a little bit less than sober? Andy nailed it. Atmosphere.
I have often tried to take note of these details, attempted to bottle that feeling up so I could recreate the moment again and again. These efforts have failed.
As I finalize my work schedule, buy books for my last semester of college, and happily return to beer of a normal alcohol percentage my head is still back in Park City. I could not capture the feeling of Sundance: of coming out of a midnight movie to a soft sparkly snow, of delirious sleep-deprived laughter and the electricity of thousands of people feeding on the creativity and passion of each other. I could not hold on to it and so instead I wait for it to find me. I wait for all the detail of a memory.
*Photo by me, through the hotel window in Park City
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
New Beginnings
"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again"
-Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi
It's been a year since I have posted. At the risk of sounding like melodramatic, I thought I'd left the author of this blog behind in Italy. Another layer of life has settled over my soul and I will never again be that girl.
Studying abroad was the manifestation of every fantasy I'd ever had. The romance of it made me brave. The excitment of it inspired me. For the first time in my life, I believed that what I had to say might be interesting. Despite my four suitcases, I'd left all my baggage back in America. So I wrote. I read. I had lunch by myself and didn't feel like a loser. I did optional work for my classes because I wanted to. I didn't feel guilty for eating whatever I wanted. I achieved a kind of satisfaction with my life that was unprecedented for me.
When I came back from Europe, I thought I'd lost that. I stopped writing. I didn't think anything more wonderful or exciting then a semester abroad could happen to me. But then it did.
I fell in love.
I used to write things and fear that people would notice I didn’t know what I was talking about. And then one day I realized, I did
I think it's time to start writing again.
-Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi
It's been a year since I have posted. At the risk of sounding like melodramatic, I thought I'd left the author of this blog behind in Italy. Another layer of life has settled over my soul and I will never again be that girl.
Studying abroad was the manifestation of every fantasy I'd ever had. The romance of it made me brave. The excitment of it inspired me. For the first time in my life, I believed that what I had to say might be interesting. Despite my four suitcases, I'd left all my baggage back in America. So I wrote. I read. I had lunch by myself and didn't feel like a loser. I did optional work for my classes because I wanted to. I didn't feel guilty for eating whatever I wanted. I achieved a kind of satisfaction with my life that was unprecedented for me.
When I came back from Europe, I thought I'd lost that. I stopped writing. I didn't think anything more wonderful or exciting then a semester abroad could happen to me. But then it did.
I fell in love.
I used to write things and fear that people would notice I didn’t know what I was talking about. And then one day I realized, I did
I think it's time to start writing again.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Arrivederci
As I trek home down narrow cobblestone roads I’ve trespassed a hundred times before, I fall into company with the realization (perhaps a bit prematurely) that this may be the last time these streets will see my shadow. Appropriately, this stroll on this street glorifies each step before it. I
t is the ultimate farewell, I couldn’t have directed a more beautiful scene. My boots crunch as I leave footprints on the snow-blanketed cobblestones, a conspicuous but fleeting documentation of my existence. That delicious and satisfactory crunch is among my favorite sounds in the world and better than any song I would have sound tracked. Flakes fall softly, gently speckling my steel gray pea coat in silence and collecting in the tangled mess of dark strands poking out from beneath my black knit beanie. My street is still. No cars go by and creaky old wooden shutters are closed against the frigid day. My eyes water, stinging from the cold and I shuffle a tad faster toward home accidentally squeezing the plastic cup in my hand too tight as I exhale a cloud of condensation. Hot wine sloshes over and dyes crimson a patch of snowflakes congregating on the front of my jacket. Wine flavored snow cone. Only in Italy.
t is the ultimate farewell, I couldn’t have directed a more beautiful scene. My boots crunch as I leave footprints on the snow-blanketed cobblestones, a conspicuous but fleeting documentation of my existence. That delicious and satisfactory crunch is among my favorite sounds in the world and better than any song I would have sound tracked. Flakes fall softly, gently speckling my steel gray pea coat in silence and collecting in the tangled mess of dark strands poking out from beneath my black knit beanie. My street is still. No cars go by and creaky old wooden shutters are closed against the frigid day. My eyes water, stinging from the cold and I shuffle a tad faster toward home accidentally squeezing the plastic cup in my hand too tight as I exhale a cloud of condensation. Hot wine sloshes over and dyes crimson a patch of snowflakes congregating on the front of my jacket. Wine flavored snow cone. Only in Italy.
My hushed walk home is a welcome escape from the asphyxiating sounds of the day. All day I’ve been imagining I heard my name. Hisses and whispers barely audible but vaguely familiar in sound. Shouted Italian words with homogenous syllabus. I turn around and no one’s there. It’s like Firenze it’s self is calling out to me, whether in tender farewell or a desperate plea not to leave I do not know. On either front snow was definitely the way to go to convey this. To see the city I love, the place I’ve grown to call home transformed into a winter wonderland makes the eminent goodbyes more bitter than sweet. An afternoon spent with some unlikely but not unwelcome company exposed the city in a magical new way: clean and sparkly under fresh white powder. The Duomo turned white, People laughed and threw snowballs, and every Christmas song cliché played out beautifully across the Italian landscape, no translation needed. The city turned out in it’s best and a beautiful new coat to say it’s farewells. The perfect goodbye made me oh so sad to go and as I left puddles and soggy layers around the radiator I curled up on my old woe begotten green couch and watched the snow fall in my backyard. I found my eyes watering again but this time from something very different then the cold.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Travel
She said to me
“Haven’t you ever loved something you were afraid of?”
You have no idea.
Sweaty palms, racing heart, trouble breathing
Why is it that to the body fear and love feel the same?
Cashmere sweaters folded in a bag weighing under 10 kilograms
Playing solitaire with my thoughts as I yawn to unpop my ears
She said to me
“Sometimes I feel like everything I say is being translated by someone far away in another country who has had to much to drink.”
You have no idea.
Parlez-vous anglais? Non capisco l’italiano. Voe ist the train station?
Relationships aren’t the only time things get lost in translation.
Kind confused eyes search crinkled maps for familiar names I have butchered.
I fold up and tuck sarcastic comments in my pocket for later, for people who will understand them
She said to me
“Did you ever find that you’d outgrown who you were? Cast it off like a snake sheds it’s skin and left a ghost of who it was?”
You have no idea.
A reflection I don’t recognize, words I can no longer define, déjà vu feeling with the scars to prove it’s real.
I squint, peering back into memories to make out the shape of the teenage girl in a uniform plaid skirt.
Words have all the translucence of a reflection. How do you describe something that is in one word everything?
Had to write this for travel writing and thought I'd share for a change of pace.
Thanksgiving/Amsterdam and Paris blogs are coming soon. Things are crazy with lots of wonderful visitors and only 11 days left in Florence.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
....
At some point on every weekend trip I find myself watching the Tuscan countryside fly by with my nose squished against the smudged glass window of a Eurostar bus. It’s one of those in between details, the unaccounted for and subsequently forgotten moments of transition that come between airports and train stations, hostels and home. Despite the hassle of the extra 7,50 and added hour of travel I love these bus rides. Caught in the handover between my home in Florence and adventures in a new place I am often inspired, prompted to consider my current life with the clarity of an outside perspective. It is during these jaunts that I make the majority of my notes for later writing, hunched over my journal squinting in the dark as my pen scribbles in even worse handwriting than usual, thrown off course by speed bumps and sudden turns. I’m in awe of everything I am experiencing and newly resolute to harden every detail into a flawless unbreakable memory of the moment. I take in every curve of blue silhouetted mountains in the distance, plowed fields of symmetrical rows of skinny leaved trees, and clotheslines burdened with sheets speckling the hills as they puff up and try to elope with the breeze.
One day I saw an entire patch of dead sunflowers. Hundreds and hundreds of them still standing but withered and brown, their heads all dropped in surrender the same direction as if they had met their end as the result of some mass suicide or a Medusa like sighting that instead of stone transformed them all to decay at the exact same moment. The image of this field has haunted me and even without effort I can still conjure it up as if I were back against that bus window what must have been two months ago now. For a long time I could not figure out what it was that made me so sad about this sight. Sunflowers are not among my preferred flowers and the enjoyment I get from them is mostly in that they remind me of one of my best friends who considers them among her own reasons d’être. No, it was not the sunflowers themselves at all that saddened me but instead the skeleton of a beautiful thing lost.
As the epitome of a hopeless romantic, I love flowers. Neatly pruned blooms along sidewalks, mismatched grocery store bouquets on sale for $9.99, untamed and unnamed wildflowers in a field, a single tiny blossom poking through a crack in a slab of concrete, I’ll take them all. Peonies, orchids and poppies are best but even carnations will do. When I have been lucky enough to receive flowers I have done everything I can to make them last. Sniping stems, adding plant food and goggling the species for tips and optimal lighting suggestions. Of course within a couple weeks they all die and I find myself a bit more upset about this than is probably healthy or normal. I also (in true failure-to-let-go fashion) refuse to throw them away. I leave them there until all of the petals have fallen off, the stems have dried out and hardened and the water in the vase has begun to grow some type of white mold. I refuse to admit that my flowers are gone, still hesitant to admit that I have lost such a beautiful thing.
One day I saw an entire patch of dead sunflowers. Hundreds and hundreds of them still standing but withered and brown, their heads all dropped in surrender the same direction as if they had met their end as the result of some mass suicide or a Medusa like sighting that instead of stone transformed them all to decay at the exact same moment. The image of this field has haunted me and even without effort I can still conjure it up as if I were back against that bus window what must have been two months ago now. For a long time I could not figure out what it was that made me so sad about this sight. Sunflowers are not among my preferred flowers and the enjoyment I get from them is mostly in that they remind me of one of my best friends who considers them among her own reasons d’être. No, it was not the sunflowers themselves at all that saddened me but instead the skeleton of a beautiful thing lost.
As the epitome of a hopeless romantic, I love flowers. Neatly pruned blooms along sidewalks, mismatched grocery store bouquets on sale for $9.99, untamed and unnamed wildflowers in a field, a single tiny blossom poking through a crack in a slab of concrete, I’ll take them all. Peonies, orchids and poppies are best but even carnations will do. When I have been lucky enough to receive flowers I have done everything I can to make them last. Sniping stems, adding plant food and goggling the species for tips and optimal lighting suggestions. Of course within a couple weeks they all die and I find myself a bit more upset about this than is probably healthy or normal. I also (in true failure-to-let-go fashion) refuse to throw them away. I leave them there until all of the petals have fallen off, the stems have dried out and hardened and the water in the vase has begun to grow some type of white mold. I refuse to admit that my flowers are gone, still hesitant to admit that I have lost such a beautiful thing.
This peculiarity of mine is also why I find myself sliding into depression whenever I leave San Diego. I am sorry to withdraw from a magnificent life of laughter, sunshine, kindred spirits, and ocean spray, sad to have such a beautiful thing taken back from me much as mother nature takes back her flowers. The first weeks back in Arizona, I find myself in mourning, afraid I have lost something and can’t get it back. This anxiety over having something beautiful and then losing it has nurtured my desperate wish for a better memory. Lamenting my departure from San Diego, I recall sand in the bottom of the shower, watching life unfold in the reflection of the mirrored wall in Emma and Brittany’s kitchen and the exact ratio of powdered sugar to butter in Laguna 201 homemade frosting. A vivid and carefully cultivated memory is something that can never be lost or taken from me and I take comfort in the clarity of these details.
This is why I try to take pictures as often as possible, and more importantly why I write. Because despite my most ardent and unyielding attempts to notice every detail and lock it away for later, so often my memory fails and I can no longer remember if the vase of flowers was
blue or green and whether we were in Lauren or Erin’s car when we brought home our Christmas tree. So I write. I write about the way that traveling has, for the first time in my life, given me a kind of solidarity with my own thoughts that makes being alone sometimes not feel lonely anymore. I write about bath room talks with roommates where alcohol loosened our tongues and brought the swelling on our egos down. I write about people I meet on planes and how the clocks on the buses are always inexplicably set to the wrong time. I write and I take pictures in the hopes that when this incredible adventure is over I will not feel that I have lost something that I had and loved but instead gained a collection of glorious experiences, carefully documented to later supplement omissions in rose colored cob-webby memories.
This is why I try to take pictures as often as possible, and more importantly why I write. Because despite my most ardent and unyielding attempts to notice every detail and lock it away for later, so often my memory fails and I can no longer remember if the vase of flowers was
blue or green and whether we were in Lauren or Erin’s car when we brought home our Christmas tree. So I write. I write about the way that traveling has, for the first time in my life, given me a kind of solidarity with my own thoughts that makes being alone sometimes not feel lonely anymore. I write about bath room talks with roommates where alcohol loosened our tongues and brought the swelling on our egos down. I write about people I meet on planes and how the clocks on the buses are always inexplicably set to the wrong time. I write and I take pictures in the hopes that when this incredible adventure is over I will not feel that I have lost something that I had and loved but instead gained a collection of glorious experiences, carefully documented to later supplement omissions in rose colored cob-webby memories.
* Image from We heart it tumbler
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