A window to all I find awesome...
I am loving the NYT coverage of the Berlin Wall memorial. Especially the fun interactive things…
Here is my own pic from adventuring there in January with Steffi B., one of my favorite Germans in the whole wide world.
This is a mural on part of the wall left standing. If it has a cold, icy bluish look, that’s because of all of the history of sadness and isolation it is supposed to commemorate. Or, because it was like 25 degrees out.
Why must you be so full of interesting and distracting things?
While catching up on my blog consumption (instead of writing my paper), via my wonderful friend Kevin Gotkin’s blog, I Have a Crush On Paris (which I read instead of writing my paper), I discovered my new favorite blog: Hour of Departure.
Apparently by two NYU photo majors, the photo based blog is beautiful, poignant and suggestive. I looked through the entire thing (instead of writing my paper).
Go there and see for yourself. I find a great time to do this is .2 pages through 5-7 page paper.
Thanks again internet/attention span!
This past week, after an excellent adventure to Yakiniku West, a Korean style Japanese restaurant (I had to look up on city search how to officially classify it), and a trip to the local Hong Kong Supermarket for my Culture through Food class, I am loving some Asian cuisine. At Yakiniku West, you remove your shoes before entering the restaurant, sit at low tables with “secret leg holes,” as we decided to coin them, and cook your own delicious food in a small BBQ at your table (hence the Korean BBQ style, but we cooked Japanese food).
It is extremely hands on and fantastic (and delicious). The next hot and homey dish I am craving now that temps in NY are dipping into the 30’s at night, a big bad bowl of ramen…
Lovin’ it.
I am 1799 words through a 3000 word essay about poop and dirt.
The year 1799 started on a Tuesday.
Last Tuesday, I did yoga with my friends from Earth Matters after our weekly meeting and we jammed to Sarah’s guitar.
My friend Scott’s guitar is sitting in my entryway, he has been letting me borrow it for the last two years.
Scott is playing minor league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and was named starting pitcher of the year for 2009.
I have known him since he was born we used to try to build tree forts.
Currently, my lifestyle in New York couldn’t support any type of tree fort-like structure, though it still remains a life goal to make one and there is serious potential for a fire escape fort.
Thus far in this academic essay I have used the word shit 12 times.
Shitting in a tree fort would likely have disasterous effects, although you might be able to pull it off from a fire escape fort.
Relieving yourself from a fire escape would likely be in violation of CDC public defecation laws.
Defecation has appeared 9 times.
Me: “Do you think you would be bummed if your kids were ugly?”
Sam: “No I don’t think I would notice. I think I would just love them so much I wouldn’t even see it. Maybe I would realize when they were adults but it wouldn’t matter.”
I think I am going to start a new category called “reasons I should be sterilized.”
Also, me: Dude wouldn’t is a word. What are you talking about?
Sam: What?
Me: I was talking out loud to WordPress.
The food service industry: proving that you can put a price on your mental well being. It starts around $200 per night or so. The shifts literally make you want to stick your hands in the deep fryer, imposing severe third degree burns, because maybe, just maybe you would get to go home and to a quiet happy safe place, but by the time you are clocking out with cash in hand, you can’t help but feel, “that wasn’t so bad.”
Really the question you have to ask yourself is: Do you want to spend your life making your habits and patterns stronger? Or do you want some kind of transformation to happen? — so that your strength and your confidence and your capacity to love and to care for people can begin to surface— you’re not always blocking it.
I love Miranda July, as a creative human, artist, etc, etc. She created the website Learning to Love You More, and the book which followed it (if you like Post Secret, you will like both, though the site is no longer accepting submissions), as well as the film Me, You, and Everyone We Know. Which is beautiful. One of the things that I remember the most of her work is also the title of her collection of short stories: No one belongs here more than you do.
I remember it when I feel an attack of complacency, or restlessness. When I feel like other people are doing a better job living their life than I am. That my life is boring. That I am not making the most of my time here. All of those times when you are reminded that you don’t actually live in a movie.
I love it. It is so simple and so good to remind yourself of. Today, Sunday, has proved to be an emotional day for many people in my life, though not for me personally. Despite my stable Sunday, I still subscribe to the idea that people move through emotional ebbs and flows together in some ways, unbeknownst to them. Something about the energy in the universe today, or this weekend I guess, resulted in many people in my life uncovering tender emotional truths, ones that are scary and uncomfortable to deal with. Ones which shake up your sense that you are chugging right along, somehow “keeping up” with how you should be doing _________ (at this point in your life/compared to other people/since x, y, or z happened). Ones which shine a light on some uncertain part of your life, and leave you exposed to yourself and the world.
What the good times lack in length, they make up for in height.
The story of Peter Pan was originally published as a few chapters in a book for adults, entitled The Little White Bird, and became so popular it was made into a novel and a play and much later a movie and eventually a cultural icon. A story about the eternal boyish spirit and escapism from a cruel reality, targeted at adults. Because we all want to keep some of our childish nature alive and well–despite how overwhelmingly real the real world can be. Real as in not fantasy, real as in mundane, real as in challenging, real as in compromise, real as in consequences. No wonder everyone loves to escape it for an hour or two…
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I have bug bites on my butt, an essay to write, a club meeting to go to, groceries to buy, books to read, research projects to do, and not a single slice of cheese to go with all of this whine. 
I am on my computer looking through pictures from the summer to procrastinate. This lovely one is from Beacon, New York a little town up in the Hudson River Valley which is popularly known as the location of Dia:Beacon, a very cool former Nabisco Factory cum modern art gallery. One of the many good adventures this summer.
Sigh. School.
You know how music has that uncanny ability to bring you back to a super specific memory? Kind of like the auditory version of when you smell someone else wearing your friend’s perfume and you involuntarily think of them. Or when you smell someone wearing your Mom’s perfume and suddenly remember that you forgot her and your Dad’s anniversary over a week ago… (Sorry parents)
I heard this song at work the other day and was transported back to the summer of 2007 (?) I believe, back when I was spending at least 40 hours per week in a lifeguard tower, on the beach, listening to the radio, which played this song every 30 seconds.
I was on iTunes looking to buy it and my dearest roommate showed me this extremely excellent video her friend made to the Peter, Bjorn and John song, Young Folks. He did all of it himself as his application to NYU’s Film program. It’s pretty impressive.
Enjoy.
