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.