on writer's block

did you know that humor only works
when you sacrifice yourself first?
fact.

as an existential person i cant help but apply the questions of my life to this blog. what is its purpose? what does it contribute to creative fulfillment? what does it contribute to other life?

i think a lot of these questions - and perhaps a fear of audience - have held me back from sharing as much as i would like to. it's not really growth, just to age. you have to actively work at keeping your sense of youthful abandon, especially as a creative.

it dawned on me that without this output, im the only one in conversation with myself. people don't know what's going on in here, in this brain. the sunflowers. the music playing with the art. the smiles with strangers. the tears welling up with a song, surging. the meaning i see in just about anything.

for a while, too, i was thinking: what value are my words and posts when there are millions and billions of words, images and articles posted to the internet everyday? perhaps you, reader, can relate. i'm just contributing to the noise, i thought.

but there is a place for what i do, i must remind myself. from the start, my goal has been not on gaining readers, but on curating meaningful internet experiences - for myself, definitely, but also others. it's meant to be a respite from the noise, something you read late at night it's dark and you're in your room doing whatever and no one else is awake. possibly my favorite thing in the world is to experience - and express - the ways music and art and text engage with one another in my head, forming a sort of intersectional poetry. it's something you and i can get our thoughts lost in, and we don't even have to talk.

i cant go back and fill you in on it all, and i realize i dont need to - after all, wouldn't that just be noise? what's more important than recording everything is accepting that your life story is never all going to be in one place. digital tools certainly exacerbate feelings of disconnected storylines - you've got different ones on every fuckin social media platform you're on - but it's always been this way. our life stories have always been told by everyone around us, with us, hopefully.

once im gone, maybe you'll find my various journals and scribbles and iphone notes, my slew of unsorted images of artworks and personal photos, and make a story out of it. if you're reading this: oh, it's worth it. i rarely am what you may think!

in the meantime, i should probably wrap up writing about writing and just start writing!

julia ciccarone

~~~

the beginning of a story if i was going to write one

she was almost done tying the boat together. she wrapped the sea grass delicately around the mature bamboo sticks, a sacrifice the forest had to make for her escape. the launch was premeditated, postponed by days watching the storms pass through the inlet. she twisted a knot at the corner of the last two bamboo and looked back at a drenched pile of her clothes laying in the sand. beyond, the sea glimmered in the hot midday sun, finally still after the storms save for the subtle crashing and lapping of translucent blue waves against the rocks by the shore. she walked to the pile and inspected a white linen blouse, holding it limply up to the sun as it dripped warm beads of water on to her ankles, providing temporary relief from the scalding sand engulfing her feet. the events of the night before had not been washed away with the early morning's downpour; a blood stain in the shape of a hand was still soaked on her sleeve, reminding her of the hooded man that grabbed her arm at the edge of the city walls and her breathless dash back to the beach, to safety. mae threw the white blouse over her shoulder, and laid the rest of her mud-encrusted garments out flat on the sand. as they dried in the sun, mae slashed and sectioned off pieces of a sail, weaving them together with a thinner beach grass she had collected near the fortified city gates. the coastal council had been helpful on some of her negotiations, offering their protection and more access to their resources than a foreign girl, arrived alone by boat, should be offered. mae was blessed with convincing words and a genuine, though sometimes debaucherous, smile; she was hard to say no to.


what they failed to say yes to, though, was the amulet she rolled over in her fingers in her pocket as she looked out over the wind lines in the distance. wisps of sandy brown hair crossed the bridge of her nose, veiling her lazuli eyes from the bright rays of sun. she released the small, heavy object deep into her pocket, letting the weight pull at her pant leg. she grabbed the two ties of her leather belt and tightened them. she patted the amulet, buttoned her pant pocket and shifted her attention to the cliffs.

a man squatted in the tall grass on the edge of the highest crag, a sparrow in the distance staring down at her. mae squinted, one hand held to the sun and the other balanced on her hip, akimbo. she returned his stare. the young sentry was going to let her go, only on the condition she would return. it was his trunk out of which the amulet came, out of which mae had provided the lost key. mae of course had stripped the key from lucas' neck to begin with - but he trusted her too generously, admired her so in the candlelight, and never saw her for a theft when he awoke. lucas, thin with long, brown hair, was a typical archivist, too gentle to defend the city. it was a trait which drew his blind fate and his ignorance on this occasion had almost left the two on miraculously agreeable terms. it was only when lucas' guard, one of his family's men whom mae had previously employed, ironically, the last time she was in Claire, followed mae through the ghettos of the city did she realize he didn't expect her to leave. with a short bow over her shoulder, moving quicker than the guard around the corners she knew so well, she eventually scurried out through her own tunnel and plunged into the black moat below. i could leave forever, burn the bridge, she thought as she swam, but she knew he would speak eventually. he said he would. if the amulet was one piece of the puzzle on this confidential mission, she could return it when it provides her the information she needs it to. if it does, mae thought. 

mae's father, benito de savoy, hadn't always kept his promises to mae and her sister when they were children.

~~

2018

the underlying questions of this year related to things much larger than myself: what is life, and how do i grapple with the opposite? without self-indulging too much, these questions were rooted in an uncharacteristically dark ongoing reflection after my 26th birthday that my time is finite, which is not a brand new understanding of course, but one i tend to address every few years around life transitions.

as a self-professed "peter pan" i think what was different about this year was that i began to face my age honestly, seeing myself as beyond youth, but also seeing all of the beauty and fullness that comes with it: having the tools and credibility to pursue my realest dreams, and realizing now is the time to do so, knowing i will always only be as young as i am today and using that pressure to prioritize.

this sort of truth-facing allowed me to begin to imagine a more sustainable trajectory for my adult life that reflects my values in the deepest sense, from the major to the mundane. when i allow the pressures of the world to fade into the background, what is front and center? what do i really want? how to continue to become my best self and not rely on achievements of the past?

on a major level, it's practicing gratitude everyday and with intention. in moments of fear and anxiety about time, about life, this is what i kept coming back to and what settled me. all we can do is be grateful for life and change in the greatest sense. there's not much beyond that; i can't think of anything that is more important - or even basic - than remembering and celebrating how fortunate we are to have the gift of living.

for the mundane, my reflections this year have sparked a renewed interest in my body and health -- after all, what more have we? ive doubled my time at the gym with my brazilian dance class, which allows me to perform again - albeit in front of older women and gym rats who watch on if only to question if our class is really exercise, or just glorified ass shaking - and has nurtured an actually pretty intense interest in brazilian music and culture at large. like quebec, like NOLA, brazil is a hybrid culture, undefinable, made up of myriad identities and fused societies, which is probably why i take to it. and i picked up where i left off on childhood joys, including taking ballet classes again and starting to coach the new trier  high school figure skating club, which i founded as a student over 10 years ago(!).

i'm spending more time experimenting and prepping lunches in the kitchen, and had my first real fine dining experience at boka, where nikki, hana and i enjoyed a five course meal which involved picking salmon roe out of a dainty hollow egg shell with a miniature spoon and ordering my first ever veal as an entree (i called it what it was: "deer.") nikki and i enjoyed our third annual visit to the thoughtful french restaurant bistro campagne, this year eating a few weeks earlier than our usual october date to enjoy the last few warm days of the year on their leafy, fairy light-sprinkled terrace with its quaint tables and views into the luxuriously-lit interior.

krista tippet's book "becoming wise" was a sure growth moment in considering wholistic wisdom - from body, to mind, to world. her chapters on words, flesh, love, hope, and faith illustrate the ways straining to work with - not against - the Other (from our environments to other humans and cultures) reveals an understanding sans acid that our growth is intrinsically a part of the growth of our surroundings. by giving up a bit of ourselves - whether thats having faith in the other side of a political argument, giving precious time to a soup kitchen and those in need, or cultivating good food from the land, profits aside - allows us to create a better, more caring world, which inherently does have the power to heal us all, if only we try in earnest to relate ourselves with that which lives outside of the self. the golden rule, expanded.

as a consequence, i sought out literature that sits uncomfortably outside of my world view, from maya angelou's heartbreaking "cage bird sings" to stories of indian immigrants living in america. rather than sit and complete my own list, i sought recommendations from others. i found that my aunts, uncles, friends, and grandparents became the voices of the books they wanted me to read, the narrators of the authors' words. while i imagined my grandpa reading to me the pages of "the road to character" - sharing what felt like his wisdom and recommendations for living - my own voice took over the pages of david sedaris's "calypso", the only book i selected for myself.

with family, i had the immense privilege of playing 18 holes with my grandpa on his 80th birthday, reclaiming my prowess on the golf course under years of his tutelage with an 85. i enjoyed watching my brother move from second city grad to producer, creating his own improv series from soup to nuts, from renting the space to performing with his troupe throughout november. around that time, one of my aunts appeared on national tv as an audience participant on the stephen colbert show. then, in december, i was lucky (or unlucky, depending who you ask) enough to host the extended family for the first time for christmas, showing them by way of my home that my teenage rebellion has yielded an organized adult, albeit one extraordinarily obsessed with 'zen' aesthetics, hand crafted furniture and thrifted artworks. one of my truly greatest joys in 2018 was helping my grandpa list his prints online, where i am native and he is not, and just getting to have a project to work on alone together.

other cross-generational 'wins' included seeing greta van fleet at aragon ballroom with my dad, where we came together over our shared love for zeppelin and left understanding each other better. while it didnt quite have the same spiritual outcome, my mom took me to 50 cent at ravinia, which was as amusing and contradictory as it sounds. as always, i had many notable concert experiences this year, ranging from the chicago symphony orchestra at millenium park, to george clinton and the flaming lips at the taste of chicago, to tame impala and mount kimbie at pitchfork, and doja cat and all of the bitches who dressed like cows for her show at chop shop.

cold months were spent well, including watching unprecedented figure skating in the pyeongchang olympic season - a 15 year old taking the gold from the 18 year old she trains with (ouch), and nathan chen, the quad king, changing the evolution of skating altogether. we spent chilly fall sundays having brunch and watching football as part of an all-girls fantasy football team, and for halloween, nikki and i ventured west to san francisco, soaking in some of the last warm days out there on a private cove called 'shell beach,' eating fresh oysters, and soaking in the size of the great redwood trees and the quiet forest floor in their shade. dressed as a sheep and ed sheeran, with my former montreal roommate sydney, we went to a freaky afro-funk halloween party in downtown oakland, where we burned sage and herbs under palm trees and stars and watched performers in purple feathered costumes deliver drum solos that made your heart feel its thumping presence and exploded with passion and fury, as if this were the last concert on earth, our last nights to be alive. the morning after, we made bagels and walked through golden gate state park, taking in the felt energy of the hashed and re-hashed peace sign spray painted at the base of strawberry hill, where the hippies buried their beads at the end of the summer of love. we went on to explore the intersection of haight and asbury, and later that night, learned backgammon in the oldest bar in the city.

around the corner from halloween was thanksgiving and birthday season, and for nikki's birthday we went bowling at pinstripes with her family and introduced them for the first time to my mom, and we also went out for a highly recommended experience at chicago magic lounge (it is full of surprises, so i'm not going to spoil it for you.) for my birthday, i invited friends for a creative evening in the west loop, eating lou malnattis pizza and trying out ice curling for the first time at kaiser tiger after.

nikki, hana, and i enjoyed moving in to a new apartment in the spring with an excess of space and my first ever dining room and backyard. our house philosophy, "reckless hospitality", is a spin off the museum world's notion of "radical hospitality" which is a commitment to going out of your way to provide visitors a warm welcome. our version merits not only going out of our ways for our guests but making questionable decisions for them that ends up prioritizing our parties over our neighbors, because fuck it. to this point, we hosted late-night bonfires for our friends around 3 nights a week over the summer, which opened and closed with two massive house parties with friends of all different groups, neighbors our age trickling in from down the block, and a DJ who got away with playing electronic music into the wee hours of the morning on our porch outside. the spot also granted us room to grow herbs and vegetables and plant bulbs that we picked up on a bike adventure to the chicago botanic garden (set to bloom in spring 2019.)

the summer was kicked off with my best wedding experience to-date; for whatever reason, weddings have tended to be tear-jerkers for me in the last few years, and not always in a good way. but this time, i saw my best childhood friend caroline marry a man that reminds me of her beloved childhood golden lab, wrigley, making me feel oddly comfortable with the arrangement and overall lucky to be a part of the bridal party. after the early june trip to the wisconsin dells, to experience "the best and worst of america in one place," as i often repeated when telling back the story of the bachelorette party, the weather started to turn for the better and i began to enjoy a summer filled with sailing, kayaking, and long, beautiful days at the north end of gillson sailing beach.

the scene - hammocks and slack lines tied to trees, fire over the open grill, congregations of multiple generations of sailors and "north end" tagged onto the picnic tables as the sunset painted the skies with surreal pinks, corals, and reds - is where my heart lives. one evening we cooked mussels and pasta, playing beach golf with real clubs and frisbee with Sky, the kokes' icy-blue-eyed mini shepherd who twirls, and sometimes flips, to catch whatever is thrown. one night, we invited my mom to join, and we watched the beach go from day to night, and she must have been a good luck charm, because we also saw a real, red fox come down from the hill, and Sky was a good by and stayed still. another evening, i remember ripping downwind on a southeaster into a setting sunset, breaking over waves and blasting tunes with an all-girl crew, laughing at the boys on shore, and relishing in our community that appears each year around a lake and a small piece of land that we have claimed as our own.

we took some beach friends up to nikki's lake house in wisconsin, where we dunked ourselves in the frigid natural spring that feeds the lake and partied (almost to a fault) with a sailing family we met next door (nikki even delivered on a promise to sail a regatta with the dad the next morning, while the rest of us slept through our hangovers.) on another trip up to wisconsin, we entertained our friends niki and josh the week before their engagement, keeping the secret of josh's proposal while watching the shooting stars strike across the sky all night long and waves lapped quietly against the pier. at the end of the beach season, nikki and i enjoyed our first hike at the indiana dunes, where i was swept by seeing lake michigan and the 'other view' of chicago as we emerged out of the cool forest and onto the sandy peaks that rise and fall for stretches and stretches of beach, untouched by gators, multi-million dollar homes, and 'no swimming' signs.

as i reflect on my blessed life, i also must make room for hopes and shortcomings, and while i have achieved increasing professional satisfaction with my day-to-day work, and my writing there, i know there is more i can be doing to grow personally. i dream of carving out more time to experiment and create, and each hour spent with eyes fixed on a screen or reading friends posts on social media makes it easier and easier for my creative aspirations to slip away. i contributed to this blog, but not nearly as much as i could; i spent time taking photos, but haven't spent the time to organize or give value to them. i have potential projects sitting around the house, and a head full of ideas to bring the beauty of the world to light and to others.

while i continue to focus on my body and health, i want to ring in a new year of meaningful contributions and more thoughtful time management: not a second to waste these beautiful thoughts. in a time when the world needs optimism and a reason to keep on, i wonder if i can help. i dare myself to be more vulnerable in my writing and in my relationships, to throw caution into the wind, to say the unpopular thing, to immerse myself in the uncomfortable and lead others to take that leap with me.

~ ~ ~

thought sprawl

how long can our intermittent generational obsessions with outer space last? the 1950s featured retro futurism, the 60s brought us the space race, the 80s created space odyssey, and the millenium chucked us the internet. each generation holds their own deep charm and fascination with the technological advancement of their era, evidenced in periods of future-obsessed media that sprawls beyond scientists and academics into mass imagination. these moments emerge in whimsical costumes, horrible visual effects and a distorted future of a green alien-filled space saucer and girls in silver clothing. popular culture takes on a new aspirational identity, dreaming up a future as a way to define their own time, on the brink of what feels like riding a wave of great progress for human kind. 

just as our parents, and their parents and their parents, we are the most technologically sophisticated generation that ever existed to date, and that feeling is wild and fills the world with things like psytrance and sci-fi but also black mirror, and that's a lot to shoulder. how long does the magic of what we've created give us such a cosmic feeling before we - and the generations which came before us - start to see with open eyes again the physical realities that hold us, like how the wall paint is peeling and time and flesh and gravity are binding in this world, before we even ask how our innovations are radically changing everything. 

ultimately those physical realities are a relief, a tether back down to earth. when the web connects us to endless realities unknown, our mind-bodies are what we actually have, what indeed feed us and move us and make us feel alive and lovely. those physical realities brought us masterful poetry and art that lasts the ages, pinned up in this timeless shared mindspace, our map of the evolution of ideas. hand by hand, mind to material, these relics are pure, holding our cultural stories in the same world in which those stories unfolded. the world of information today - its constellations of internet profiles, chatter, and an infinite spiderweb of links - democratizes the power of knowledge while saturating this power, asking people to curate their own narrow view of existence, a sure benefit in the short term taken over a long view of history. 

images by beeple

in the meantime, i look up, i take my notebook with me, i see the sunflowers through the window, and the paint is peeling, and i am checking for everyone - i havent seen any aliens yet.

~ ~ ~

i'm back

surprise!

life is a tragedy for those who feel

and a comedy for those who think

jaison cianelli

i luckily get to meet a lot of artists through my job, probably the best part about it. i always wonder the path that brought them to that point - if they knew it would work out for them. my best guess is no, and that's why it's always so satisfying to see and meet these anomalies. there's inherently a bit of resistance involved, and i admire that.

the other day i met a special artist who put a smile on my face, which i later told him in the elevator - federico herrero is inspired by the landscape of costa rica, where he is from, and the ways people there paint their houses and fences in pretty pastels, spilling color onto their surroundings in a habit that is inherited and assumed, playing with the sunlight.

he described the commission - a large-scale mural - as a part of one continuous landscape that he is painting all the time, on different surfaces, to surround people with a musical arrangement of color. he hopes it encourages presence, an experience of the way colors - like sounds - move through a space in our minds that is beyond words and borders, like a universal alphabet. it is where light is, the artist says. i couldn't have articulated it better. i was always smiling at him.

i love him so much

oh! and did i tell you he does playgrounds:

this brings me to my next point which is that there was a playground design competition in surface magazine, leading me to believe that creators are grasping the aesthetic value of playgrounds, that something i humbly premeditated is taking hold.

my play and place essay touched on a lot of emerging concerns - a lack of awareness of the spaces around us, i am guilty as well, and the bleeding together of the private and public simulacra, the external and internal via devices, apps, and spellcheck.

people are beginning to wake up to the power of the playground to initiate out-of-routine contact with the world, a creative experience stewarded by the hands and the body that feeds the absorbing mind. it's great - i love it. we should all make playgrounds out of unconventional materials and see what happens!

"If there’s anything that ties these projects together, it’s the idea of the multifunctional—that good, sound playground design needs to be something that’s fluid and can be experienced in many different ways, from various angles, with no one-size-fits-all model."

"Fluid worlds of exploration, independent of scripted beginnings and ends, they invert the notion that new playspace requires new ground. This design uses infrastructure’s free gifts, providing shelter from sun and rain and robust structures capable of suspending miles of play, to create new playgrounds in underserved urban neighborhoods and activate spaces vulnerable to privatization. Connecting neighborhoods separated by the world of on and off ramps, the aerial play spaces are constructed from the recycled debris of temporary infrastructures: netting, tubes, cables and scaffolding, concrete pipes and water-filled highway barriers. These materials change from one geographic location to the next—an infinite variety in an infinite world of leftover space.”


more later!

i hate the internet

im concerned that the intellectual mind is under siege by insurance, loans, mortgages

advertisements

laundry

and twitter.

i'm concerned that we are the greatest population of college educated people in human history

driving our own selves into the ground

overpopulation, mass extinction

paychecks, tho.

im concerned there are too many people talking instead of organizing

shouting in the comments section

sitting quietly next to each other on the train

emoji emoji emoji.

im concerned we focus too much on individual issues 

as if they're not all connected

equality, climate change

it's complicated.

im concerned that recording ourselves is the same as being recorded

that the internet is too big

scary

we need to put our clothes back on.

im concerned that there is so much noise

we'll all lose our hearing or worse,

our listening.

im concerned i too am consumed by the culture of distraction 

others' ideas that pay way into your view

and become all about you

all about you.

collages by bryan olson

~

the perfect christmas

happy holidays

fanny tavastila

i have to admit something. usually i think christmas is pretty lame. all the hallmark holiday cheer, the same decorations out each year without fail - yes, the neighbors have had the same nativity scene for so long the heads of mary and jesus are pale from sun damage - and of course the major lead up to a day that simply passes like the rest of them. some ups, some downs, and overall still a real, rather than magical, day. (i've looked everywhere to find magic, travelled all over the world, but everything is real, i have confirmed, and you can't easily escape that fact).

but here's the shocker: im looking forward to christmas this year. my eyes sparkle in the strung christmas lights and my heart delights at seeing the snowflakes floating in the air outside my window.  i feel like frank sanatra. christmas music settles my soul and i watch the yuletide log on netflix with a hat and mittens on so i can actually feel the heat. nikki and i even bought a miniature (but real!) christmas tree and trimmed it with gold chains, dead flowers, cat toys, and other small mementos from around the apartment. i bring - no, i am - the christmas spirit. 

christmas commericals on youtube put tears in my eyes. i have turned the christmas tree into a shrine with my stuffed animal sheep collection at the base, to emulate snow. christmas is like a wave of pine scented candle washing over me. im literally watching polar express right now and i bought tickets i cant afford to the nutrcracker ballet next week. im reading a book about winter i received for christmas last year and my favorite chapter? the one about christmas, of course.

in that book, i learned that the holiday is pagan in origin, which i like. its about worshipping the cycle of the sun, illuminating candles in its name in the otherwise dark, silent night that is the winter season. channukah is also about lighting candles for this very reason. but this post is about christmas, obviously.

the author adam gopnik sees a dual purpose of the festival at play: that of reversal, and renewal. on christmas, we do the opposite of what we might consider rational: we dedicate the hours of the day to giving rather than receiving resources, and congregate with others of disparate interests and political dispositions, purposely. thus the observers of christmas turn the day into a holiday through a reversal of normal behavior.

but this process of christmas is also, in a way, suppose to renew us: george bailey realizes there's no place like bedford falls, and scrooge ends up giving tiny tim a turkey. they cast aside their obligations to the capitalist wheelhouse and lift their eyes to see they have a family, a community, one perhaps that's been there the whole time. george grasps the value of his average life, scrooge can finally give without receiving. on christmas there are miracles, and not only do reindeers fly, people transform into a better, frankly more likable version of themselves.

we're supposed to remember we're loved and that we love ourselves, which is something i personally think should be celebrated everyday, or at least i don't know how people live if they don't. i think that contributes to why gopnik eventually argues this reversal and renewal thing on the same day ends up leading to a lot of anxiety and holiday-induced depression. so wait, we can only find love and joy if we completely reverse the norms of the world we live in? well, that's uplifting.

he has a point. the myth that christmas will finally cure all the ills of the year, giving way to a brand new one only seven short sleeps away, puts a lot of pressure on us to make the renewal work. it puts a lot of pressure on us at the mall deciding what to buy our estranged family members so they believe our relationship exists. we are all striving to make it the perfect day. and for christmas sake, i would like for us all to let go of that.

this year i have let go of thinking that the same sun-damaged nativity scene on my neighbors lawn is lame. i have let go of how cheesy i think ugly sweater parties are, and i feel instead like being that girl in the meme whose eyes are like, really wide (over-attached girlfriend i believe) while wearing a wintry rudolph-themed ensemble drinking eggnog out of a solo cup. i've embraced all of its outlandishness, its stupidity and turned it into a joke, a source of internal laughter at every wreath, ornament, and bulb i see.

the greatest part about christmas is that it has so many expectations and traditions that it by necessity never fails to surprise us. you imagine it one way, and it goes another. christmas just magnifies this truth of life, that nothing goes as planned and that to live, to enjoy is to embrace what sometimes doesn't work out the way you wish it would. christmas may not be magical, but its our attempt at making it magical, year after year, for no apparent reason, knowing it fails, that brings out the best in us.

~

adela andea