as far as epiphanies go

Today I am 24 and I am fresh off the plane from Butte. I am happy to report that I am comfortably accepting my mid-twenties. I think they’ll be good for me.

In other news, I think I had an epiphany on the plane yesterday. I had a wonderful coffee with Elisa yesterday and she filled me in on the ins and outs of graduate studies. I got to thinking about my own grad-school endeavor and how I was going to go about stating the (very intimidating) purpose for study. Anyway, I realized that in order to make it happen I have to be more aware my surroundings and must be diligent and descriptive when conveying my perception of those places. If I intend to succeed in conveying who I am through my experience of place then this must happen. Therefore, I’m making a bold statement: I will attempt to write one descriptive sentence about my environment daily. It will be those directly experienced as well as those places of memory. I think, inevitably, I will end up with exactly what I need, that being some clear direction and a few achievable goals.

Happy New Year!!

on uninspiring aethetics and undercooked eggs

This past weekend was really fun. movies, friends, food, it was nothing short of fantastic. friday night aaron and i saw noah baumbach’s margot at the wedding at the harvard exit. the film is beautiful. the colors are soft and marred, imperfect--the scenes remind me of yellowed photos from the 1970s. And the acting, the acting is so spot on that at times I found myself so uncomfortable I had to look away and remind myself I wasn’t part of it. it is in this unexpected beauty of perfectly acted scenes that one of the meanest movies either of us had ever seen unfolded. I loved it, but god was it awful watching nicole kidman's character selfishly tear apart everyone around her in a vain effort to hide her own insecurities. on saturday I waded through seattle’s first snow absorbing the essence of winter. i went to the u-district to bake cookies with anne and megan. It was so wonderfully warm and cozy making fudge and baking cookies while listening to christmas carols play in the background. in the evening i went with aaron to a housewarming for one of his good friends. the home being warmed is a perfect 1914 Craftsman Bungalow--it is absolutely amazing and I sincerely hope to have one like it some day. the house has so many fantastic characteristics that it is hard not to be envious--warm and inviting colors grace its walls, awesome craftsman features are ever present including the large, open living space perfect for entertaining. afterward, aaron and i joined a group of my friends for our annual christmas sweater party. i had so much fun with my friends, but i drank too much red wine leaving me in dire need of a restorative breakfast.

which leads me to my next item of business...you know those few places that are so unsettling you find it challenging to even be in them for more than a few minutes without feeling despair, dirty or filmy (as in dirty film from something like syrup all over your hands and face and pants), sad, scared, cold, isolated, filmy or just generally unwell? well, there is such a place and i hauled myself there for breakfast today. it is called smith, a capitol hill bar in seattle. what is so bad about it? well, for starters, it is vacant and cold. secondly, it has bad food. the fake lived-in aesthetic makes it wholly uninviting, but, what is more disturbing is that this poorly executed lived-in aesthetic is supposed to be enhanced by the various varieties of taxidermied fowl (that's right folks, think pheasants, ducks and cranes) hanging on the walls. i think, though, the saddest part of the atmosphere was the job it did on my appetite. even if i were feeling well and the food were better than it was, i wouldn't have been able to enjoy it anyway. the barely dead food (my steak was so scarily raw and my eggs disastrously undercooked) was made all the more inedible by the uncomplimentary ambivalent isolated stares of the dead birds mounted above me. gross.

thusly, here is my advice to you: don't eat at smith, and if you do grace it with your presence, don't expect to be comfortable. instead, i suggest you join your friends in old homes and talk about hardwood floors and then drink too much red wine and laugh to your heart's content. i think it is better that way.

on my own two feet

I haven’t been getting around too much lately. I spend a good majority of my time in a select few neighborhoods and sadly my stomping grounds seem unusually un-stomped. There is barely a venture—not even on Saturday mornings—beyond the few blocks surrounding me in those areas. I can’t figure out if this is because I’m tired or if it is just natural winter hibernation. Recognizing a need to get out, last weekend I took the initiative and boarded a fully-packed Greyhound bus for a trip north to Bellingham, the “city of subdued excitement.” Normally I would feel bad about such a sad city moniker, but in this case it seems apt. Bellingham has a pace that is slower and, well, frankly, more subdued than Seattle. For some reason, it is just easier for me to relax there. I spent last weekend lounging with Anne and her parents. Their home is one of the most peaceful places on earth. It is quiet and serene; through the west-facing windows is the most striking panoramic view of tree-tops and the San Juan Islands and it just begs you to wrap yourself in a blanket and lay on the couch, which I did with several cups of peppermint tea and a new book.

In the meantime, Anne and I did a lot of talking while trying to restore our tired-out selves. Her dad mentioned something about the Thanksgiving where we spent five straight days doing homework and washing “piles” of clothes. And we both got to thinking about how exhausted we were during senior year and how for some reason that student-leaden-with-homework-exhaustion was somehow more worthwhile than the sit-at-a-desk-50-hours-a-week kind. We decided the answer must be because we are growing up. What is the deal with adulthood? I now completely grasp my mother’s need for a nightly bath behind a locked door. Seriously, things come in the mail with your name on them and you have to pay attention to them. You have to choose healthcare plans and retirement plans and set up accounts to manage money. You have to choose whether or not your relationships are healthy. You have to be responsible enough to manage the day to day as well as navigate the uncertain waters of realizing that despite what I think in the end no one else will take care of me but myself. Ugh. Is this why my new favorite place is home? Am I longing for the sanctity of my parent’s house, a place that represents the comforts of my childhood and all of the good, free-for-all memories I associate with that time in life? I think growing up is realizing that the answer to this is yes.

The phases of life are interesting. I am maneuvering myself through a number of tricky things—learning how to assert myself professionally, while maintaining a balance with outside life, learning more about relationships and the time and compromise they require and that they too are susceptible to growth. Earlier today I read an article commenting on the new sex and the city movie being filmed in new york and there was a comment made about the role the city will play in the film and I found appropriate for today, “for me the whole movie is the streets…because that’s where all the promise and potential is. That’s the romance. That’s the hope. That’s where single women walk out the door every day, and they just don’t know what is two steps away.”

No matter what, I have to embrace the inevitable and grow up. I must realize that home will always feel like home, but it will not ever be home again. I can’t put time on hold to wander in hours of childhood whimsy; I can only briefly put it on pause. For now, I must accept that my future is in my own hands. Well, perhaps not my hands, but under my feet.

bricks and mortar

I’ve always talked about who I am in relation to my environment. It is likely that this fact subconsciously influenced why I chose to go on and study urban policy during my undergrad years and why I intend to pursue urban planning at the graduate level at some point in the future. Simply put, I have always viewed a person’s surrounding environment as one of the most affecting circumstances of life. Whether it is immediate surroundings or the larger built-environment of our cities and towns, the influence of location on our psyche inevitably has profound implications on our happiness; at least it does for me.

Environment has the ability to transform and enliven, motivate and inspire, it has the ability to make believing possible. It is everywhere and it is everything. It is walls, buildings, cupboards, floors, stairs, vases, curtains, photos, flowers, sidewalks, cafes, storefronts, art, businesses, layout, details and design, policies, economics, and most importantly, people. Environment is important; it shapes who we are and who we can ultimately become.

So here I embark, to reflect upon the structures of memory. It will be writings about the bricks and mortar, the steel and stone, the wood and nails that give context to my world. It will be an endeavor to understand exactly how and why the structures of our life are, in a way, the story of our life.

a casual inception

well begun is half done, or so they say. let's see if they're right...