"Does anybody really represent anymore?" - Lil John

Like any other relationship it is complex and malleable and defining. Artists, writers, creators have historically been conflicted and challenged by their relationship with home. I find it hard to articulate while, paradoxically, it has utterly and profoundly shaped and defined who I am, inescapably so. For years I tried to run from it, throw it from my shoulders and my speech and carefully remove it from my foundation, piece by piece, like a tedious game of Jenga. But as in the game it only proves to make the structure unstable. It may be the distance in time and space, it may be getting older, but beyond appreciating it I'm learning to accept and even to miss it. For the first time my mind wondered, "could I ever really live here again?"

Wide-eyed, quiet, I couldn't pull my gaze from the windows. Mountains, sublime in the Romantic Epic Poetry sense, rising guard from all directions. I saw the sunset, I saw the stars. Home. I have found myself recently saying, "I really wish I wasn't from Utah becuase I think one day I'd like to live there," encapsulating my own conflict in its simplest form. Is it everyone everywhere, or is it concentrated in the West? Our relationship with the land? "Sublime" is not intended hyperbole, this is the meat of Stegner, of Williams, of Abbey, of Steinbeck. I feel a tangible security and wonder in that landscape. Although it's comfortable, for the first time in my life my mind has difficulty grasping the visionary expanse. Lack of such vast views once overwhelmed me with claustrophobia. I wanted to plant my hands in those wide, old oaks and crash my head above the canopy suface, gasping to breathe the view. Now I feel dizzied by the open space... I almost didn't go. I packed a bag when I should have been calling a car, I wore the same clothes all week. The sight of the land drew my broken-down body to appreciate an ease of life I'm familiar with, made it delicious, although I also know it is not what I want right now. Distance is a funny thing, the way it stirs and toys with your emotions.

I'm not so naive to quickly forget that the difficulties there are just different from those here in New York. My daydreaming hasn't gotten the best of me just yet. Trying to process the reality of packing a truck and moving life back to Utah? My hometown?? That sounds hard. It's a choice, then, as to which set of troubles you'd rather take on in the moment. Looking side by side, the juxtaposition of where I come from and where I am now is mind bending. It's no comparison (flamingos or dish soap?), and each makes sense in my longing. Although I've been very challenged, I haven't given up hope that I can make it here in the city. Last week just happened to be exceptionally hard. I'm still learning about the balance and order of things here. The good days are the best, and in parallel energy the bad days can really blow. I'm going to stay positive. I still believe that I can find my niche.

Most frequently I am asked, "How long do you think you'll stay in New York?" and truthfully I can't answer that. I just got here. But I still feel in my bones I'm a Western girl. 

Where do you find home?

Bad Dream {Reality}

 

Images 1 and 2 from plastic-sfoonss.xanga.com; image 3 from everyeskimo

Coney Island + Columbus Day

One of the last summer days.

Yesterday on the train I noticed that not only the warmth from the air, but the color from wardrobes vanished this week. The seasons are turning, I've never seen so many neutrals. I suppose it's better than the blackness that coats the city (head to toe) come winter, I'm not ready to go there just yet. I am enjoying the graceful fall shift, it's getting really cozy and pretty out here in that iconic Autumn in New York kind of way.

We had Columbus Day off and we decided to take advantage of the unexpected high temps and head for the beach. I had hopes that Coney Island would be hokier, instead it just felt like a run down Venice Beach or Santa Monica Pier. It had this weird, janky California vibe to it. Absolutely bizarre to imagine we were so close to home, we felt so far out. It's pretty amazing that you can jump on the train in your neighborhood and jump off at the beach though, eh?

Nathan's hot dogs, naps in the sand, tide wading.

Next time we'll be prepared with a blanket, some books, and a proper picnic.

Sissy Jupe Turns Three

Hi. How's it goin?

Yes, yes, I'm still here. Although nothing in my life feels settled and everything has undergone major changes in the last four months, my first thought is to say that things are just the same around here. That's weird, but true. (This is why the kids need to stop watching so much television.) I feel that today I should pay some dues to this blog. After I began typing up the post, I realized that I missed my third year blog birthday/anniversary by seven days. Have I really been writing in this space for three years? That's the second weird but true statement in seven measly sentences...

Although myself, my writing, and content sharing have undergone many transitions (more than I've probably ever let on) since its inception, this blog has served to connect and reconnect me with people. It's strange and amazing, and at times those shared moments were what I was looking for. This past weekend I was visited by a thoughtful, kind, friend (she writes a beautiful blog) who, in a past life, came to my 12th birthday party (where, she reminded me, we scrapbooked for our activity 1. This is on the list of things that reveal where I grew up and 2. This also let's you in on just how cool I was in middle school. I appreciate that anyone humored me enough to show up). As someone who hasn't kept in touch with more than a handful of people from the past, who hasn't lived in the same area for long enough to run into folks, I have to ask myself how does that even happen? Oddly enough, my answer is: through blogging. I hadn't seen her in over seven years, our lives are different as can be, and hanging out for four days felt totally normal. This I credit to the realness in the connections of shared writing. Real enough to show up at your door at 7AM on a rainy Thursday.

Writing is one of the most intimate ways to communicate. It's why reading the book is always better than watching the movie. When done honestly and intentionally, it's like standing stripped and naked before your audience. On the receiving end it feels like a quiet, trusted secret, a baring of souls. I think people are exponentially more self-conscious of this as they comfortably build up the safety buffers in their highly-edited, retouched, contrived, online profile lives. I am pressed to think of a time I've seen a person more panic stricken than when someone was about to read what they had written without permission. In my school days, the majority of my peers would never allow anyone to edit their papers. They weren't as concerned with becoming better writers as they were with maintaining their dignity in privacy. Countless notes scrawled with the sacred, "For your eyes only" have passed through my fingertips, the smudged contents carefully read only after they had been wedged safely in the shelter of a dark desk. This process of externalizing what is inherently internal draws human hearts together.

So it was because of idea sharing and emailing that I spent all weekend like a 15 year old girl, staying up until 2AM chatting and laughing about the serious and the nonsensical. I spent days wandering villages and parks and neighborhood shops, seeing the buildings and writings and art of the geniuses we admire. We spent hours in cafes and restaurants indulgently snacking on the buttery, the fatty, the bready. (One night I only ate cheese for dinner...)

I know I don't make a very good guide to the city as I'm still getting lost all the time. Couple that with all the weekend construction and you'll see that a few of the plans were foiled, but for me, the change in pace and socialization was so enjoyable. The blog once again providing just what I was looking for. And on that note I thank you, Sissy Jupe. You've been awfully sweet to me.

Tell me, why do you blog or read blogs?

“Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.” ― Woody Allen

 {View from the roof of the Met. What a beautiful, Indian Summer day}

Sunday we went to the Met. I really love the Met for its hushed elegance. As I have more opportunities to indulge in high-art experiences my awareness increases and I realize that I love paintings. My words may mean very little as I have no formal training or education in art or art history but here I'm just speaking of perceptions. I believe it's something in the creation process, the physical force of the hand moving the brush across the canvas, pushing the little mounds of color into form translates to a tangible motion still evidenced (sometimes hundreds of) years later. This is why paintings feel alive while photographs serve to encapsulate a past moment.

I find it bewildering then, that hoards of tourists run around the museum frantically to snap photos of anything by anyone with a name they (kind of?) recognize. Two snaps for each work. Click. Click. One for the work itself and one for its description plaque. Firstly, all van Gogh's are not created equally. Isn't the point of the museum to experience the museum? Look Up! For the tiny display view on the back of your camera is no way to connect! Is it the insatiable desire of humans to consume, obtain, to have that causes this manic, incessant snapping? I would think if you needed to have a specific work you love the best solution would be a high quality print. So it appears that it's not that you can't live without this image but that you're looking for a mediator between your physical person and the location/experience. As if you can take all of it home with you and experience it there, where you're comfortable in your computer chair, when you "have more time?" Why not just spend a few hours on google? Why go all the way to the Upper East Side of New York, then? Why must you see all of it? You can't convince me that seeing more things rapidly is a better experience than being startled by a few stand-out works. Because, ah, you miss so much (the entire point) of Picasso when you view it on a screen made up of flat pixels, no matter the resolution. The unabashed boldness is lost, compressed. You miss the neuroticism and obsession of the impressionists. And all of the theatrical drama of light and darkness which separates the good from the truly awesome.

I'll try to spare you some of my opinions on the audio tours but feel inclined to state here that I find those ridiculous also. There are plenty of resources to further study something that strikes you, but why must you have a recorded voice in your ear, mediating for the mind and the eye, telling you what is good and why you should like it? It's so simple: do you like it, or don't you? Please have the courage to make the choice. I think that audio can be interesting for artifacts, or say, historical places but I advocate saving your money, takeing what you like, and going on your way while leaving the rest.

And all this has got me thinking, about what it is we (I) want to take away from our experiences. Recently I've felt a void of a certain fervor for something, anything. I hate to use the word passion because I feel its one of those words that got over-played and has now lost its meaning, but I want desperately to feel that hot flush of drive toward something specific. And feel it intrinsically, unmediated, off-leash (if you will) where the reward for the action is the action itself. (Gah, and now you begin to see why I love Whitman.) I know I've always had more passive-aggressive tendencies, but am I really so passive? Do I have unrealistic expectations? Can I be critical of others' passivity, then? How much is the object of drive a choice and how much of it happens to find you through experiences and twists of fate? Am I growing out of my idealistic twenties when I once thought there was beauty in simplicity and everyone else's problem was that they had complicated it all too much (surely I knew it all)? I hope (and seek) this awkward time to be just the ground work for a real creative out lash.

I love good writing, I love dancing, choreography and live performance, I find cooking to be cathartic but it's been awhile since I've felt really empowered. I want my boots knocked off. 

What makes you feel empowered enough to look up?