Getting Older

Sifting through old journals, I came across some words from 2017 that really resonate with me now. Funny how your younger self can teach you a thing or two about feeling. Feels like I’m getting older.

in and out of life,

you came and went,

and flames burnt,

you scarred yourself into the palms of my hand,

and we woke up lost again.

i tried to take it all in,

hold onto your touch,

sugary smell, like home but warmer —

and when we laughed

I bottled it up like a music box.

the pictures are burnt on the backs of my eyeballs,

it will take some time to carve out and sift,

woken up, i’ll be somewhere else, and we —

we won’t exist anymore.

I write to remind, to forget, to not-think —

because there will come a time —

we will both become stories of youth.

Galaxy Girl

12321

Lucky number my lucky star

The Galaxy Girl - an Otherworldly Being 

She Who Brings The Glitter 

Pours it on so thick 

You don’t even remember what it feels like not to sparkle  

Lucky Star

You are every wish 

Every hope 

Every dream 

A Glimmering aura of stardust in every lifetime

You can’t learn that kind of love on Earth

Which defies the laws of physics 

Pushes against the reality of gravity 

And shoots up past the moon and through the neighboring planets 

She embodies everything we once were many billions of years ago

A purity only found in the first singular point 

A laughter only heard in the first sound that boomed through the universe 

Queen Midas they call her 

Though her fingertips transform all essence not into gold 

But into stars

For nothing is more powerful in this universe 

Nothing stronger 

Nothing more resilient 

Than the very stars that are responsible for all existence 

Galaxy Girl you are number one

The truest form of love 

The mightiest form of being 

Lucky Star you are Inifinity

Too Bad

Fire Fears

Every year, as the end of summer nears, my fire safety vision begins to heighten, and everything around me is suddenly dead, dry, grade A fire starter. I am afraid. I click through potential images of flames completely engulfing the trees and brush surrounding me, flickering between present reality and inevitable reality. In this attempt to fully comprehend the severity of the situation, I too attempt to latch onto every second I have with what exists in the present moment. Accepting the chaos of time is peaceful.

I took a few pictures of what I wanted to hold onto. I knew this might be my last hike for a little while as the air quality here isn’t safe to breathe. I latch onto the present and then let it go.

Zuma Canyon Loop of Hell

If you ever want to experience a heat-induced hallucination, by all means, hike this trail when the sun is at its highest point in the middle of August. The Zuma Canyon Loop (of Hell) is a 10.7-mile loop in Malibu that takes you up and down mountains (three times!) with would-be stream and waterfall crossings (would-be because everything was completely bone dry). The elevation gain was significant and seemingly constant. The entire trail was covered in dry, very very scratchy brush. I wore shorts on this trail which was a huge mistake. Please do me a favor and wear pants! Getting constantly scratched on my legs by big buggy sticks for 10.7 miles is really not my idea of a good time. I also didn’t pre-hydrate or eat enough before I set off and boy did I really feel the consequences. A slight headache set in after a steep 3-mile incline so I immediately downed my electrolytes and chugged along.

The thing about this hike is that it’s really incredibly beautiful in the spring when the hills are covered in multicolored wildflowers and the streams are fresh and active. The weather is also undeniably more comfortable. But my fatal flaw has always been my impatience, and I may have just ruined one of my favorite spots by embarking on this trek at precisely the wrong time. I am sure I also would have been better off if I took advantage of the little bits of shade that dotted the trail every mile or so and just allowed myself to rest for a few minutes. Instead of doing the smart thing, I tried to go as fast as I could without stopping for many miles at a time, desperately wishing for shade when I completely wore myself out. I didn’t listen to my body!

On another note, the aridity really scares me. Fire season has started in California and though this entire area was ravaged by the Woolsey Fire in 2018, there is definitely not a shortage of fuel. Every plant was crispy dry and the brush was taller than me at many points. I kept trying to search for the beauty in the dry landscape, but only found a deep sense of panic. That may have contributed to the complete unpleasantness of the experience. I am already grieving the land that has not yet burned.

Morning Explorations

Lately I have been going on earlier morning explorations of the Mountain - chasing the fog and finding dewey spider webs in my path. There is a serenity in tracing the movement of the clouds and being the only person to see it.

Basecamp 01: Backyard Camping at Mountainhaus

Brook and Kuma enjoying the view.

As Hikergorlz, we wanted to test out our basecamp model and create a launchpad for our expeditions and explorations into the Santa Monica Mountains. Mountainhaus is nestled within these mountains and acts as our official trailhead. So far, we’ve gone on 2 treks - the first of which was 10 miles with a 2,000 ft climb, the second was 8 miles with a 3,000 ft climb. This trek would be our longest and most difficult yet - 15 miles with a 4,000 ft climb.

The only way we would be able to attempt to accomplish this trek would be to start super early in the morning. Normally, Gina and Brook would come to Mountainhaus in the early afternoon and we would set off for a few hours, getting back in time for dinner. This time would be different - largely due to the heatwave that we’ve been experiencing in California. In order to beat the heat, we thought it would be best to leave early morning. How do you make a safe sleepover happen? My backyard was our best friend.

Our first attempt at camping at Mountainhaus was pretty successful. We made a big pasta dinner with our mini stoves outside, s’mores using my weber grill, and drank wine under the stars. Each of our tents matched our personalities perfectly.

Gina’s tent was a classic 4 person, big family tent that you’d bring along car camping at a fishing-friendly campsite. She brought an inflatable mattress but it was completely useless due to a mini hole that refused to be patched up. I had an outdoor lounge-chair mat that worked as a great substitute. Gina basically had tempur-pedic level comfort.

Our Camp Kitchen.

Brook’s tent was an ultralight Big Agnes 1 person tent that she was able to pitch in about 2 minutes. Hers actually was the coziest - she created a cocoon of blankets and pillows atop a cushy sleeping pad. Brook has the most camping experience, and it showed in how quickly and efficiently she was able to set up.

I wanted my camp to feel like a sort of Wes Anderson nostalgia. I found a beautiful Nordisk Ydun 5.5, which could sleep 4+ people with plenty of room to spare. It looks like an old canvas boy scout tent but feels modern thanks to the technical cotton flysheet, tarpaulin floor, and mesh mosquito net panels that keep the little bugs out (or try to!). The tent was surprisingly easy to set up, though it does require stakes. My sleeping situation started out minimal, but then more pillows were added, so was a comfy dog bed for Milou. I had an inflatable ultralight sleeping pad (Nemo Tensor Insulated), Therm-a-Rest Vesper Quilt (also ultralight and very very compact), and my beautiful white Mountain Hardwear Lamina Eco-AF sleeping bag, which is made out of recycled materials and saves gallons of water due to its undyed nature!

What would we do differently next time? Well, for starters, we would bring coolers with us. I had to keep running into the house to get snacks and ingredients - so obviously we would need to imagine that the house doesn’t exist and that whatever we brought with us is what we have. We would also need to go more minimalist next time. Having all the comforts of home is nice, but not necessary. We ultimately want to go backpacking and having 4 comfy pillows and insulated thermoses is just not practical or possible. We definitely need to make breakfast a priority and not an afterthought. Fueling up properly before a long heatwave trek is the most important part of preparation. We hastily made thick toast with peanut butter before packing up, not thinking much about just how many calories we would be burning on our trek. I also realized that I need to sleep outside more often with my 8-month old puppy to accustom him to more wildlife noises. He was up and alert all night, growling at every bird and coyote howl he heard. Completely normal, but something to consider if getting a good night’s sleep is a top priority.

I did love my sleeping setup, though I could have been fine without a sleeping bag. A quilt would have been more than enough in this heat! My tent was great, though I should have checked for little bug entrances and completely zipped everything up before bed. I woke up next to a couple of creepy crawlies… I ordered some citronella candles and incense to combat them next time. Let’s see how well that works!

The next post will cover our heatwave trek into the mountains along with a video documenting our mini-expedition.

\ Hikergorlz

Welcome to Mountainhaus Basecamp

Mountainhaus Basecamp is the space of connections. A Connection to nature, to friends, to the aesthetics of the outdoors, and to oneself. I sought out to create a space in which all of these connections could happen simultaneously and used a House in the Mountains to do so.

All of this started because I got really angry. I was angry about coronavirus, about my dad’s cancer, about my own inability to get a fucking grip on my mental state, and about the world falling apart for so many people. I was so angry in fact, that I just ran out of my house and kept running. I ran uphill and into the mountains, a place that would soon become my daily stomping grounds. I kept running and running until my lungs exploded and my feet were covered in blisters. Even though the physical pain was basically unbearable, the emotional pain that propelled my body uphill started to dissipate. I felt a mental freedom akin to meditation. I guess they call it "endorphins”. I kept going back up the mountain every day, and with each day I learned how to go farther, how to stay safe, how to navigate, and how to find that meditative space within myself.

The funny thing about all of this is that I used to hate “hiking”. I associated it with extreme discomfort, unknown variables, and the pressure to stay on the designated path. I have since learned to take it less seriously and to appreciate all of the unknown variables that used to scare me. I am definitely a nature newbie, but I do want to share my experiences outside as well as my lessons learned in order to inspire others who may have felt the same way about getting outside as I once did.

I have also become somewhat obsessed with lightening my pack load and understanding how to find the most functional gear so that I can venture farther out into the mountains. The obsession extends to the aesthetics of my gear, which should not take precedence over functionality, but are important to my experience outside. I don’t want to wake up in a neon green tent or a red and purple sleeping bag. My gear doesn’t have to be butt-ugly to be functional.

After a few months of my solo treks into the mountains, I finally felt comfortable enough to invite my friends along. I had spoken to them about the mysterious mountains full of clarity and beauty, but I didn’t know how to share my experience with them while social distancing. Turns out, it’s a lot easier than I thought. Hiking is pretty social distancing friendly! We’ve since made it a weekly routine - one which is evolving as much as our friendship. Brook, Gina, and I are experiencing a new kind of friendship - one in which hugs cannot be exchanged and food cannot be shared. We are wearing masks and frantically sanitizing our hands. We can either complain about our situation or create something new out of it. In the process of understanding how to be around each other safely, we’ve created Mountainhaus.

We will be making videos and sharing photo essays of all our Mountainhaus expeditions - from our grueling treks into the bone dry mountains to the backpacking trips we hope to accomplish in the coming months. We will be backyard camping and backcountry camping and car camping and glamping. We’ll do short hikes and long hikes and maybe even thru-hikes. We’ll make quite a few mistakes and we certainly will learn from those mistakes - and we’ll share them all. We are hiker girls - not pros or athletes or mountaineers. Just girls who want to hang out in nature during a pandemic.

We hope you learn a thing or two!

5 Pick-Me-Ups

I’ve said it 57 times today, and I’m going to say it again: this is a terrible, terrible moment in history.

We all have good days and bad days. Here are some pick-me-ups for the bad days. 

1. This Playlist

   https://open.spotify.com/playlist/25vBikBqggrlsl8A6t5hUB?si=ZXIFSIUJT8iwn0lcRtSqog

   SoHo House made a playlist to keep on all day. Whether you’re doing absolutely nothing or absolutely something from morning ’til night, this playlist will fill your ears with some groovy tunes.

2. “Shockingly Easy No-Knead Focaccia”

   https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/easy-no-knead-focaccia

   Everyone loves bread. Everyone REALLY loves homemade focaccia straight out of the oven. Eat the entire loaf immediately upon preparation for a complete pick-me-up experience. 

3. Kuma’s instagram

   https://www.instagram.com/kumaisadog/

   Absolutely no explanation required here. 

4. Refrain from checking the news. 

   I swear to God every time I so much as glance at the New York Times or NPR, my serotonin levels plummet and I fall into a deep, unbearable depression. Doing anything other than checking the news is a fabulous pick-me-up.

5. A decadent cup of hot chocolate.

   My recipe is as follows:

   1 c. Hot Coconut Cream

   2 squares melted chocolate 

   1 TB Cacao Powder 

   1 TB Maple Syrup 

   Cinnamon 

   Step 1. Blend all ingredients on high. Sip on chocolate bliss. 

Think

On the morning of March 18, 2020, in the moments immediately after I opened my eyes for the first time that day, I felt some peace. I was calm, and ready to begin yet another day of isolation. I would work from home, call my friends, and try some new recipes. I did not think of the crying or the drinking or staring at the ceiling. Only peace. 

I glanced at my phone, and this peace I was feeling immediately disintegrated into thin air. 10 missed calls from my mama. My eyes widened and my stomach dropped. I knew that something must have happened to my dad.

“He’s on the floor, the paramedics are on their way. I can’t drive, your sister isn’t home. I don’t know what to do.”

I froze. I stayed in a single instant for what felt like an eternity. My imagination created tens of thousands of future realities in half a second. I stopped breathing and understood that I needed to move my body and start thinking clearly. 

In the hour drive on the way to the hospital, I had some time to think. Clarity only visits one’s mind when it’s often too late. I thought about our last conversation, the computer monitor he shipped over to me so I could work from home, and every single waking moment of my life that I didn’t spend right by his side. I thought of every time I created so much unnecessary stress in his life and of every car ride we spent talking about outer space, design, and life philosophies. I missed him without even knowing if I needed to. I felt a surge of MDMA-like emotion and an urge to call up everyone I loved and to tell them exactly how much I cared for them. I also thought about how I should be spending my days on this Earth. I thought about my dad’s entire philosophy - one which is based on following your heart and doing whatever the fuck you want, even if that means living in a cardboard box. I needed to press pause. 

Prior to the hell that is the COVID-19 Pandemic, was I living the life I genuinely wanted to live? Was I making the most out of my life? Was I spending my days doing the things that I really wanted to do, or that I felt pressured to do? I think this is an issue for a lot of people, and I think that we are all beginning to understand that life should not be taken for granted. My dad has been living his truth ever since he decided he would stop at nothing to live and breathe art. And that’s all he does, every single day of his life. 

Thankfully, my dad is ok. He’s been FaceTiming me from his special quarantined room in the hospital, reassuring me that he will be fine and that no matter what, I must not piss off my mother and my little sister. But that doesn’t change the fact that I will someday lose everyone I love, whether I die first or they do. So please, give some thought to the life you have been living, and contemplate whether you would like to continue that life post-COVID-19 or if something needs to change. Tell your parents you love them and try to be more understanding of others. 

Think about it.

B

The Situation

Every citizen of the World is thinking in unison. Just as much as our bodies are plagued, so too are our minds. If you are terrified of losing the people you love, or of complete isolation, or of financial precarity, or all of the above, it is clear that you are not alone. For the first time in perhaps all of history, the people of the planet are wholly unified in thought and in spirit. So even though it might be pouring rain, bits of sunlight crack through the thick, bulbous clouds. If you look close enough, you can see the emerging rainbows, each with their pots of gold by their seemingly infinite bookends. 

Yes, it is so difficult to stay positive right now. I cannot do it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to. As I am sure you have heard a million times over, keeping your mind occupied is helpful in getting through the various waves of anxiety and depression we will all surely experience throughout this long and arduous global journey. But there are times when nothing can keep the mind occupied, and so we must think and we must feel. In those times, the best tool that we can all access is our own creativity. Creation blossoms when we allow ourselves to feel. 

It has taken me a few days to sit down and write something. I didn’t know what to say and I felt that everything had already been said. I sat on my couch for hours crying and hoping that my favorite people would keep themselves alive. I drank and drank until my vision clouded. I figured that my mind’s eye would go blind as well. It did not. I deleted social media and tried to read a book, but the first paragraph I read was a hypothetical about the apocalypse. I tried to occupy my mind and to ignore what I was feeling, but in the end, I realized that succumbing to these feelings would be my only way out. So here I am, writing something to share with you. After all, The Aléatoire is supposed to be unfiltered and 100% pulp. If you too would like to share any work or thoughts related to this oddly universal experience, please do send it along to aleatoiremag@gmail.com

We all have a lot of time on our hands to think, and it’s good to let it out in whatever medium helps us all the most. 

B 

What I Read This Week: The Future of Work and Marketing

In an attempt to continue my education beyond the classroom setting, I have made a point to read more on what I know little about. My default is to continue to learn about topics I’m already pretty familiar with because it’s comfortable and easy. Obviously, stepping out of my comfort zone will be the only way I can actually grow as a person. It’s definitely humbling.

In order to keep myself accountable, I thought I’d share the articles that I find most interesting every Friday. I’ll summarize the key points, and you can decide for yourself whether or not you’d like to read them too!

I want to get back to my original purpose in creating The Aleatoire, which was always to share Knowledge, Experience, and Art, as non-pretentiously and unfiltered as possible. It is challenging to share my thoughts about the things I’m interested in out in the open, as there will always be critics and so-called “haters” who dislike the content I create. So far, I haven’t encountered any haters, so I think I’m in the clear. For now.

Anyway, without further ado, here is what I read this week:

1. Young People are going to save us all from office life

   https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/style/generation-z-millennials-work-life-balance.html

   1. Younger workers demand flexibility – paid leave for a new baby, generous vacation time, the ability to work remotely, come in late or leave early, or make time for exercise or meditation.

   2. A survey by PwC, an accounting and consulting firm, found that for millennials, work is a thing, not a place.

   3. The flexibility stigma: women get penalized when they use flexible schedules, and their careers often never recover in terms of pay or promotions.

   4. The youngest people entering the work force don’t remember a time when people weren’t always reachable, so they don’t see why they would need to sit in an office to work.

2. ‘True Gen’: Generation Z and its implications for companies

   ://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/true-gen-generation-z-and-its-implications-for-companies

1. Companies should be attuned to three implications for this generation: consumption as access rather than possession, consumption as an expression of individual identity, and consumption as a matter of ethical concern.

2. As access becomes the new form of consumption, unlimited access to goods and services creates value. Products become services, and services connect consumers.

3. 48% of Gen Zers said they value brands that don’t classify items as male or female.

4. Two-track model: the first for scale and mass consumption, the other for customization catering to specific groups of consumers or to the most loyal consumers.

5. 63% say that recommendations from friends are their most trusted source for learning about products and brands. They trust instagrammers with 6,000-20,000 followers, as these are “closer connections” that might be more honest about the products they use.

6. “The Search for truth” at the center of Gen Z’s characteristic behavior and consumption patterns.

1. The Future of Work in America: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-future-of-work-in-america-people-and-places-today-and-tomorrow

1. The day to day nature of work could change for nearly everyone as intelligent machines become fixtures in the American workplace.

2. High-growth hubs, small powerhouses, and silver cities have grown by more than 10% since 2007.

3. Many americans in lower-growth areas are not migrating to high-growth places.

4. Automation will not be felt evenly across places or occupational categories. – the coming wave of automation will affect some of the largest occupational categories in the US economy: office support, food service, production work, and customer service and retail sales.

5. The largest occupational categories in the US economy have the highest potential displacement rates: 40% of US jobs are currently in occupational categories that could shrink between now and 2030. There will be strong job growth in healthcare, STEM occupations, creative fields, and business services.

6. Individuals with a high school degree or less are 4x more likely to be in a highly automatable role than individuals with a bachelor’s degree or higher, and as much as 14x more vulnerable than someone with a graduate degree.

7. Question: how to connect displaced workers to new, growing jobs?

8. The old model of front-loading education early in life needs to give way to lifelong learning.

9. The challenge is not fighting against technology but preparing US workers to succeed alongside it.                                                     

1. What We learned about 10,000 professionals’ digital marketing skills: https://theindex.generalassemb.ly/what-we-learned-about-10-000-professionals-digital-marketing-skills-ef1374c7ffce

1. In 2005, 1 Billion people had internet access (spent only 10 hours a week online), now there are 4 billion internet users who are constantly connected.

2. 2017 was the first year that marketers spent more money on internet advertising than they did on TV.

3. Skills gap between digital-native marketers and corporate marketers – digital natives scored 73% higher

4. The top 5% of performers did not just come from marketing backgrounds, meaning that you don’t necessarily need marketing experience to have some of the core skills needed in digital marketing.

1. When Employees are open with each other, but not management: https://hbr.org/2020/01/when-employees-are-open-with-each-other-but-not-management

1. Side conversations occur because people believe it’s not acceptable to tell the truth publicly

2. Side conversations about substantive issues are a source of organizational pathology – it starts with senior executive building a culture of psychological safety where employees believe that candor is expected and welcome.

Finding Ideas in Unusual Places

After becoming aware of my creative ebb and flow that seems to come as naturally to me as it does to bodies of water, I have been kinder to myself in times of waning creative productivity. But even during those times, I keep my eyes peeled. Sometimes the inspiration I’ve needed all along is right in front of me, but it’s not completely obvious until it slaps me in the face.

Lately, it feels like I have no creative outlet at all. I haven’t taken any pictures, written anything interesting or worth sharing, and I really haven’t drawn or designed anything either. For a person whose mental I.V. is the creation of Art, needless to say it’s been quite difficult. I used to think that I stopped creating when I was happy or really socially busy, but since I am neither lately, it looks like the creative block does not discriminate. And at this point, I’m exhausted. I feel like an empty ghost that floats around and consumes consumes consumes.

So I looked to history. Historically speaking, I usually make Art related to what consumes me. What am I focused on at the moment? How can communicate my fixation to others in order to share human commonality? In order to express something that is deeply internal.

Then it clicked. Lately, I have been fixated on the concept of Corporate Work Culture, email niceties, hierarchies, everyday human communication, cancer, and death. It’s now a matter of turning those fixations into relatable conceptual expressions, communicating whatever I may be feeling about each concept.

If anything, it’s a start. Looking at the world and your experiences from a perspective of potential can change the way you perceive challenges in life. If you look at your debilitating health problems and see nothing but that, the future will seem grim. But when you see the potential for Art in your struggles, that’s when, despite the challenge itself, the future suddenly fills with hope and excitement. Whenever I only see a lack of Art in my future, I start to lose hope.

Please stay tuned for the mind dump that will result from this newfound inspiration.

B

Memory Editing

I recently started this book by Hans Ulrich Obrist called “Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects”. I think Mr. Obrist is one of the most inspiring human beings on the planet. He is not only a brilliant curator, but he also has the most impressive reference bank in his brain as well as the most impressive phone book. He travels constantly and really never stops learning. I aspire to live a life as vast and open as I imagine Mr. Obrist’s to be.

I first discovered Hans Ulrich Obrist two years ago in London, when I picked up a silly little book called “Somewhere Totally Else”. I found the name to be totally insane, and I thought that whoever chose such a name would also be totally insane. Turns out, I was right. Mr. Obrist’s writing is disturbingly relatable, and his ideas are unconventional but still attainable - like the idea of having a monthly meeting in the middle of the night at a cafe, and projecting onto the wall of said cafe. I am always pushed to create when reading his essays and interviews. He really is a pusher.

And so I was pushed by “Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects” to write something. This book is a compilation of loose interviews with really iconic, brilliant artists. I see it as a transcribed podcast, but even more casual than that. The interviews feel more like intimate conversations between old friends, and at certain points during the interviews, I feel like I’ve somehow made it into that intimate friend group. And I’ve only gotten through a single interview! Delving back into the world of Mr. H.U.O, I am reminded of a few things.

First of all, I remember that I picked up “Somewhere Totally Else” right around the time I started The Aléatoire. I was inspired to make something that would bring people together. I love people, and I love their ideas. I felt like there was a possibility of curating ideas online in a really fun, collaborative way. Of course, the Aléatoire has really become a personal space for me to share my work and my own thoughts, but I like that it was born out of this notion of completely liberated and collaborative creativity. Thanks Monsieur Obrist for helping me jumpstart the Second Wave of my art journey.

Secondly, I am reminded of the idea that talking to people and really listening to what they have to say is an incredibly undervalued form of learning. I am obsessed with perspective, yet I often forget how important it is to sit back and really let other perspectives sink in, even if I may not agree with them.

Thirdly, HUO always encourages me to think outside of the so-called “Box”. And this is where the idea of Memory Editing came in.

Woolsey, 1st Edition

I went through my Woolsey Fire Narrative images yesterday, and I realized that my memory of the post-fire experience has shifted really dramatically. The images I produced last year did not match up with my current memory of the experience. I felt a need to alter the images to match what I felt would be a more accurate representation of my memory. Of course, who knows what the post-fire scene was in reality - the only images that exist of this particular spot in that particular moment are the images I have produced. So in a sense, they represent a possibility of what the scene must have resembled.

I created a folder with 1st and 2nd Editions of my interpretations of the Woolsey Fire. I call these collections “Narratives” because they are, in a sense, a very visual story of a series of events.

Woolsey Fire, 1st Edition

Woolsey Fire, 2nd Edition

Side by Side, most of the images are not terribly different from one another. The First Edition of images is completely documentary. My initial reasoning for the roll of film was to capture the experience of returning to my childhood home after a particularly traumatizing fire. I wanted to remember, to preserve a feeling. The Second Edition of images is warmer, darker, and generally more surreal. The images feel more apocalyptic and even cinematic.

Woolsey Fire, 1st Edition

Woolsey Fire, 2nd Edition

Memory does shift though, and neither set is more truthful than the other. They both represent my interpretation of a memory, just in a year interval.

I have posted the Second Edition of the Woolsey Fire Narrative under the Projects tab, all in preparation for the next Thought Letters issue… Stay tuned.

New Perspective: Airplane Images

I love window seats. Whenever I’m lucky enough to snatch a window, I spend the whole flight looking outside. I am always amazed by the idea of being in the sky and being able to capture such a diverse range of places. As cliché as it might sound, looking out at the world reminds me of how small everything is. Both physically and abstractly as well. You can fly over a mountain range and then find yourself amongst pink salt ponds. You can imagine the millions of people or the complete lack of people that might live in these places. You can imagine that you might never see these places ever again.

I don’t take as many airplane pictures as I’d like to - mostly because I try not to be super disruptive out of respect for my fellow travelers. But as I was thinking about writing this post, I thought of an interesting project that would involve flying around the world only during daylight hours and only over interesting places. I would spend the entirety of each flight taking pictures of the journey. Imagine capturing an entire flight path around the world. Magic.

Most people don’t pay much attention to their surroundings. I am guilty of looking at my phone more than I think is healthy, but every once in a while, I realize what I’m doing and I panic. I want to pay attention and I want to take advantage of all of the perspectives I am given each day.

These images are incredible to me because I have no idea where any of them are, and I don’t even want to know. The magic is in the mystery.

I like the idea of making up stories about each of these places, like in Invisible Cities - perhaps each one of these places says something about humanity. As a collective, I see a lot happening. Mostly, an environmental crisis. But also, the beauty in a created world.

It’s good to get your head up out of your phone and look out the window. You can learn a lot about yourself if you just let your imagination roam around.

Welcome Home

I want to talk about the experience of visiting a ghost town. Not a town void of humans or human activity, but rather a place that exists and operates as a ghost on an individual level. If you’ve ever called a place “home”, and if you’ve ever felt a sense of belonging and community in that place, then that place would have been actually alive. Once you stop calling a place “home” - either because you move away or no longer feel a sense of belonging and community, that places dies in your brain, yet still exists physically. Hence, Ghost Town.

I have a few Ghost Towns under my belt, but what was really different about my most recent Ghost Town experience was that this was the place I still called home whilst I lived in temporary other homes. I always came back to go home, to the thing that I belonged to. Now, I belong to nothing there. It’s eerie too, driving past a house that was once yours; a house that you would wake up to and fall asleep to. Now, if I tried to fall asleep in that house, I would get arrested for breaking and entering. I do not belong to it and it does not belong to me.

I really felt like I was going home the other day. It felt like LA was just a temporary fever dream, and that I would go back to Berkeley with my Birkenstocks and political aggression. I would go to Timeless Coffee down the street and walk to class. I would go back to normal.

I’m fixated on places that no longer are but still continue for someone else. Ghost Towns are simultaneously destroyed and reborn. Like Magic.

Transitions

I graduated from Berkeley in May. It is now the end of August, and the summer is coming to a graceful close. For the first time in my life, I won’t be returning to school in the fall. It’s really unsettling to think that I can actually relax — that there won’t be any papers, lectures, 3 a.m. panic attacks over unfinished paragraphs, study guides, group projects, arguments over the specifics of a reading — it’s over. And I guess I was supposed to relax this summer.

Lake Tahoe, July 2019.

Blake, Malibu, August 2019.

In hindsight, I really did maximize my freedom. I came home without knowing the city I grew up in because I always had my nose buried deep in books during high school. Now, I feel as though this city and I may have moved far past acquaintances. I came home and realized that I didn’t have any real friends who live nearby, again, a consequence of my priorities in high school. Three months later, I can say with confidence that I’ve made some incredible life-long friends here. I’ve watched hours of TV, danced so much that my shoes wore out, slept in, and sometimes did absolutely nothing.

Matt Bautista, Leo Carillo State Park, August 2019.

Brook, Leo Carillo State Park, August 2019.

This period between graduation and “life”, I suppose, is a transition. At least, that’s what everyone keeps calling it. I don’t know if i feel comfortable compartmentalizing each of the moments in my life, but I do know that the past few months have been uncomfortable. I was supposed to relax, after all, I have been studying my entire life to get to this point. And it may have seemed as though I was relaxing — what with all the friends, the road trips, the laughing, the jumping in the ocean — but I was certainly not relaxing. The stress is from uncertainty, that’s for sure. But it’s also linked in part to my own expectations of myself. I have been an over-achiever my entire existence, so “relax” has never really been a word in my vocabulary. I may have been more relaxed in periods of extreme stress than I am now. I am craving a challenge; something that will keep me up at night and consume my every thought and action. I am craving a problem that requires solving and a project that I spend hundreds of hours working on. I just don’t think I like relaxing very much, and so I’m in anguish over it, and yet paralyzed at the same time.

San Francisco, August 2019.

I never thought I’d genuinely say or mean this, but I do miss Berkeley. I miss how hard it was. I miss the feeling of finally understanding a really difficult concept or getting an A on a paper I felt proud of. As much as I complained over the past four years, I have to say that I now fully appreciate the difficulty of the place. I don’t think I’m cut out for transitions, but I am glad I allowed myself to transition. Without it, I may have longed for a break without really knowing what it feels like. But as the summer comes to an end, I realize that this transition may have been a challenge in disguise.

Decline and Regrowth

A body of water ebbs and flows without much choice in the matter. It creeps in and out and cycles through periods of decline and regrowth forever. Can a body of water be forced to ebb or flow on demand? Can you manually control the tides? Would it be natural for there to be constant growth and no stagnation?

Have you been on a hike in Southern California? During a drought, the waterfalls dry up and some would say you were blessed by an angel if you could point out a single wildflower. Shades of brown and beige and lots of crunching footsteps. Surrounded by death. And when things start to dry up, they often go up in flames. Rolling black hills and tree stumps; a real apocalyptic scene. But for some reason, after a few months of rain and sun, you can go back to that same spot and only see wildflowers in every direction. Decline and regrowth.

I think it’s pretty natural that humans ebb and flow. We dry up, burn out, and blossom. After all, we must be driven by nature in some regard. Decline and regrowth; how much can you relate to that? I feel pretty cyclical, like my mind is governed by a biannual tide and shifts gears every 6 months. Eventually my passions dry up until I hit a low point and then all of a sudden I’m hit with an unstoppable surge of creativity. I don’t want to feel guilty about it, but i don’t know how else to process being human. Does a body of water feel guilty about submitting to the tides? Or what about a mountain, which houses so many living beings? Does it feel bad when it succumbs to the forces of nature, ignites, and then proceeds to destroy everything it has created?

For the past couple of years, I’ve really succumbed to my own nature and i’ve accepted that I will always operate like a tide. I think back to some of the moments when I really feel like I should write something or I should pull out my camera or God forbid, even my pencils — and the action of creating seems physically painful, so I don’t do it. These moments are worse than death, because I know that the only things that could fulfill me are not only entirely out of reach, but they are so because of my own doing. I could just start drawing or writing or photographing, but I don’t because I decide not to. And whenever I’m stuck in these moments, I remind myself of Kafka, who despite being entirely uninspired and disgusted by his own writing in his periods of decline, still wrote about how shitty he was. I don’t know if I’ll be happier pulling a Kafka or just accepting stagnation, but I do know that I would make a lot more stuff!

And what of the periods of regrowth? How do they come about? I don’t know myself that well to be honest, but from what I can tell, it seems as though creative regrowth happens when I’ve hit a low emotionally. It’s confusing because I can’t be both euphoric and depressed at the same time, and yet that seems to be the only explanation. But I cannot put myself through sadness for the rest of my life just so I can make stuff. That feels wrong and weird. I guess you can’t force a body of water to ebb and flow on demand.

Good Morning Berlin

I said, Good Morning Berlin!

there’s a constant midnight haze over the city

thick and swirly, makes you wanna dance

like your toes won’t ever go numb

and your heart won’t ever stop

I raced around the floor

picking up graffiti with my fingertips

placing letters on the pavement

while a handsome friend held my gaze

and he said, no don’t go!

They say there’s something in the water,

how can everyone sparkle in combat boots and mesh jumpers?

lips like a God, a kinda twinkle I felt when we went back to back,

I swear we moved to the same beat for hours,

even though we could’ve gone on for days.

How could we be so young in a single instant,

teasing time as I take another shot and throw myself into the sounds,

how will I remember my shoes when my feet have no purpose?

I can only imagine dying with regrets,

and so I learned how to do say fuck it and follow the Devil.

But I had a cigarette covered breakfast instead

and looking at the sun,

I said, Good Morning Berlin!

The Sky

The Sky

How Do You Mend A Broken Heart

First of all, i do want to apologize for my depressing musings. I can’t help it, for these are the things i just happen to be thinking about. And i don’t think they’re all that depressing in all honesty, these feelings are a part of life. 

Broken hearts. How to mend them. I will begin. 

I really want to say, before anything, that being broken-hearted is so painful that it’s almost magical. You’re living a completely different kind of existence, in this kind of limbo where you wonder how you’ll ever feel complete again. You know logically that being broken isn’t permanent, that you’ll fix yourself right up and throw yourself back into the world once more. But it’s hard. Every love song on the planet has made the observation that days feel like years, that even the most intense of intoxications can’t dull the unending pain, and that there really isn’t a way to mend a broken heart. 

Like I’ve said before, love is really weird. It defies logic and drives the most rational of people absolutely insane. Love lingers for a long time in heartbreak, and any positive attempts at removing its presence usually results in failure. It’s a lose-lose situation, and the more you try to get rid of it, the more you totally fall on your face and bleed all over the floor, hitting yourself because you saw this exact moment in your past minds-eye. 

And I’ve been broken-hearted before, I’ve healed, and I’ve become normal again. But how did i do it? If i try and think really hard about recovering from a heartbreak and specifically, what i did to be normal again, i honestly can’t remember. It’s like i blocked all of the pain of recovery from my memory. This happens whenever i try and think about something really excruciatingly painful — writing academic papers for example. Those are horrible processes filled with anguish and acne, yet i can’t remember writing a single paper. Surely I’ve written over 30 papers in the past 4 years, but i can’t remember ever actually doing any work. Completely erased, totally recovered. It never happened. Here i am again, back at square one. 

Southwold, UK, summer 2018

I guess there is some consolation in knowing that I’ll forget about all of this in a year or two. That I’ll be ok in time, and that whatever i do now will be whatever i need to do to feel better. I just have to live day by day and think of what will bring me happiness in each moment. This philosophy doesn’t differ from what i should be doing anyway, but i think it’s particularly relevant for those of us who are struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I ask myself if I’ll ever be ready to be emotionally and physically with someone again, and then i think, hey, that’s ridiculous. When i experienced heartbreak for the first time, i was certain that i would never love anyone like i loved him. Nothing could ever beat that love! But lo and behold, i fell in love even harder the next time around. I morphed into a woman, i shifted my perspective of the world, and i made incredible memories with an incredible man. Who could be next? How will i fall in love again? I’m excited for the future, and I’m excited to experience more incredible human beings when I’m ready. 

So on this road of recovery and discovery, i shall savor the magic of heartbreak and when that’s not enough, think of the endless possibilities in my future loves. No mending, just a different perspective maybe.