Loess. I love you

intuition

At first, I was totally intimidated by many (most) of the people I worked with at SFMOMA. It was a dream of mine to work at that museum. It was my first professional job after graduating from college. I know how to keep my cool, and I tend to air on the side of indifference- my default in a nervous or anxious state, but I was in the company of people I was genuinely interested in, people I wanted to know about, their history. But, of course, there is nothing worse than appearing too eager. It was a situation in which I had to ease my way in.

After I'd assimilated, wearing what I wanted and not giving a f*ck, my new friends urged me to sign up for Friendster. "You have to." That was the line. "You have to!" It didn't appeal to me at all. Back then. Back in 2003. I didn't like it. I didn't need it. I didn't want it.

But I signed up.

"Yeah! You did it!"

Weird. Strange. Too modern for me somehow.

I have the ability to keep moving forward and not dwell on the past. At times the past haunts me in the same way I can be sure it haunts many, but I keep going. Friendster, and now Facebook, posting about my life, sharing details of my self, being connected in an often superficial and meaningless way, to people I never think about, has a bizarre subconscious tax on my life experience. It connects me to the past in what feels like an unnatural bond. When I am near Chicago Lake on a perfect autumn afternoon, after having hiked many miles, the last thing I think to do is take a picture, let alone a picture to post on Facebook. That gesture makes my heart sink. And I don't mean to judge people who do, people who write and post and connect and share it all. But I want to let it all go.

I want to change, and challenge myself, and to have fun adventures always, but I want to do it for myself. I don't want to train my brain to need my experience to be validated by other people, to only feel it is worth something if it is known to others. I prefer to try and establish more of my own rules, and forget more of the systems, and expectations, that can feel so heavy.

And, I guess, what I realize is that I am a private person. I love and hate attention.

I hope that I continue to make conscious decisions about how I live my life based more on intuition than on social norms.

like Venice, CA, or Barcelona, or, for some reason, the American south

Once in college while I was driving, for whatever reason, the light, the weather, whatever I'd done that day, whatever I was going to do that night, something made me feel a sharp and remarkable, overwhelming sense of gratitude to be alive. Maybe it's because I was going through a Thoreau phase? I felt joyful and happy and light. Right after the feeling struck I looked up and there was a heart-shaped cloud in the sky. The outline of a heart. Unbelievable. And, I was either listening to All Is Full of Love by Bjork or it came on at just that moment- my memory is foggy on this detail (Bjork's birthday is today, November 21st, I found out on Radio 1190 this morning). That feeling of pronounced gratitude I felt back then, I've experienced it multiple times since. It happens a lot when I travel. Really free and inspired and in harmony with the environment. When I am in a place I just love love.

i love inspiring interviews

One interview I remember having a profound influence on me was in ELLE magazine, circa 2000. It was my sophomore year of college, and the interview was with Uma Thurman. She'd just had a baby, and so the interview had that filter about it- where so many aspects of a persona seem heightened or changed or attuned to the poetic nuances of motherhood. She was 27 at the time, and according to the interview, many thought she was young to be having a baby.

Something about that interview caught my attention. Something about what she said, and the mood of it, and the images produced by the writing, that moment in time... it must have wrenched my heart a little. I always pay more attention when my heart is in minor distress. I remember reading that interview and feeling strongly the importance of taking risks, forgetting what anybody else might have to say about my decisions, and answering to myself. In the interview Uma has this I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude, but it came across so gracefully. The author captured the free spirited power of new motherhood.

There's this part at the end where Uma talks about the decision to become a mother (as I recall). And she gives a metaphor of: the bus is going to show up, and you have a ticket in your hand, and sometimes you just have to get on the bus and go and never look back. You don't need prodding or pushing, you just get on and go. And I love that. I loved that back then in 2000. Take the chance.

friendship.

     I was just returning an email to my dear old friend Abbie, who wrote from Mexico, when she informed me that at that very moment she was compiling an email to me with photos (from December 2008, when we met up in NYC).  Stars align. Galaxies find balance. We think of one another at the same time.
     Seeing the photos made me feel so happy- to see myself with her, a lifelong friend from boarding school, and with Kyle and Dan, two of my best friends from college, together in Brooklyn. When worlds collide. Brought back so many memories! Crazy kids. I love these people. It also amuses me to no end when I see photos that I never remember taking. Like the time my friend Dan told me he had a photo of me holding a rifle in a bed in Virginia... uh, don't remember that! Oh, to be young. Oh, to be alive.

The bottom two are notes I wrote Abbie while at boarding school circa 1996-1998. We were close friends from the first moments we met on Hyphen-3, the third floor hallway where I would make a top-ten list of things for lonely lovers to do on Valentines Day, where we would bond over our love for Pearl Jam, and adventure, and making mischief, and finding love, and being wild. 

I love you Abbie. 

(And Kyle. And Dan.)

fall.

The wild country- indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky- provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut.
- writer Annie Proulx, Close Range, 1999

What love feels like in the fall.

idea.

I worked at the Denver Art Museum for a while, and during my time there I encountered and learned many things that hover in the realm of disbelief. Details of lives, stories so subtle and accidental, yet managed to change my perspective by making life ever so slightly more poetic.

One day I was invited to take a look at a newly arrived set of prints by a Japanese printer named Sadao Watanabe. He had a very distinctive style, depicting primarily Christian scenes in graphic outlines and blocks of color. The prints arrived from the home of a recently deceased Watanabe collector in Boulder. In addition to the prints, the collector donated an entire personal library of art books. The curatorial assistant told me a story about the book collection.

Every book held within it a trove of letters and notes and tickets, housing details of the time the book was read, or new, or available as a container. Can you imagine that? An entire collection of art books, each one with its own assortment of objects and memories. It blows my mind. Of course, I immediately adopted the same practice. How could I not? There is something beautiful and obvious about giving books that purpose. Beyond changing lives, beyond simply objects.

music for cinema

* * * 

West Side

I have loved Venice Beach and its surrounding neighborhoods for a long time. I went in my late teens to visit somebody, and ended up buying the best pair of jeans that I sadly regret giving away. I love the architecture of the houses there, the bungalows, the flora, that walking around you can pick fruit off people's trees and eat it... Everything about it inspires me. My love has less to do with the beachfront Venice that many associate with that geography, and much more to do with the overall neighborhood, the mood of it, and of course that I can get vegan hot and sour soup at Mao's, trust me, a rarity. I'm super happy to be headed in that direction for my birthday this year. What better gift to give myself than the gift of inspiration?

p.s. This is a photo from Mao's, featuring my friend Brigid's sunglasses.

Early morning in California.