___ times

I've figured out a way to complete avoid digital camera use! Crisis averted, everyone!! The good old scan n' post! Is it time to bring back the disposable and get pictures on my computer the prehistoric way?!?

It seems to work pretty well albeit a bit more time consuming! Here we are taking photos after a skate session in Union Square.

___ times! ("Good" is not an option)

frazzled

Am I going brain dead? I haven't felt the urge to really write in here lately despite the copious amount of free time available to me. Maybe it's time to start over with a new blog. I think a primary reason for this lack of posting is that I am no longer the (naively?) self-assured college student I once was and don't feel at all comfortable with making strong assertions about me or my life. I'm trying to love the transitions, but I think my instincts are hating them. Yet interestingly enough, one of my biggest fears is stagnating right now, that I’ll stop learning and growing and challenging myself. I know that in retrospect I will look back on this time and realize how endearingly 'early 20's' I was, yet riding this wave of uncertainty about who the hell I am and where the hell I am going is making me feel a bit...frazzled. I mentioned in an earlier post that sometimes my first instinct is to just run away, and right now I am strongly considering the peace corps, not only for an opportunity to work in sustainable development more long term but also for the sense of comforting solitude being immersed in a completely disparate culture can afford, not unlike my sentiments when in Honduras or Paris. It may also have to do with the fact that I did not have that much stuff there and got along just fine. Sometimes I look around my room and wonder how I accumulated so much junk that I can't get myself to throw away either. At the same time, I don’t want to possess any romanticized notions of what peace corps can bring me, that somehow I will experience miraculous epiphanies just because I am stripped of my comforts and amongst people I don't know. After all, the answers I am seeking about myself are probably not going to manifest whether I am a mile from home or a million miles from home if I don’t just learn to embrace the questions themselves, right? Sometimes I wish the greatest level of introspection I can possess involves what I would like to eat for dinner and if I need to poop..you know like…back in the good ol’ days in that baby crib..

I just finished Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet..such beautiful and breathless writing and a read I could not have encountered any sooner..

"You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train your for that - but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don't hate anything."

But, Rilke, so much easier said than done!

I need to get out of my own head.

I hope all you readers (Hello!?? You there??? Anyone???) enjoy your holidays and know that I think of all of my friends warmly and very often even if I do come off as aloof at times!

P.S. no pictures for a while, my camera broke! :(

precita eyes x ExCEL x Dolores Park

Precita Eyes is a "community-based mural arts organization" located in the SF Mission and is behind many of the murals you will find in the area. One of my recent projects at work was to coordinate a collaboration between a Precita artist and students in our afterschool programs. The artist laid the groundwork by tracing out the mural, and students were given the creative freedom of painting it in a way they saw fit for their park. The result was a beautiful new mural on a boat in the Dolores Park Playground that had previously been painted many times over with an ugly gray due to multiple instances of vandalism. Of course, I had to restrain myself from plowing past all the students and hoarding the paints/brushes to myself, as I hadn't painted in a while!

Some of Precita Eye's work:

And here's what we did:

good books and cold weather

like peas and carrots!

just finished:


just started:
I got tired of reading about social inequities, (it's important, but so draining sometimes..) and decided to switch it up with some David Sedaris, an author several people have recommended to me on separate occasions. I'm only a few pages in, but I think I want to marry him.

el torrente

rediscovering songs

pure style

I watched "This is It" this past week, entering the movie skeptical that Michael Jackson could actually pull off a show to, as hailed, rival other shows given his age and his hiatus from the spotlight for such a long time. Was I ever mistaken, as I had to fight the urge to get up and dance every time one of my favorites (all?) came on. Loved especially the 'They Don't Care About Us' piece..and his moves are as fluid as they were when he was 25. The movie consists of footage of his rehearsals as well as short interjections from the people involved in creating the spectacle - music directors, special effects directors, dancers, etc. Check out his style also, which I'm sorry to say I only began to really appreciate after his passing..current trends like sequins outerwear and military style jackets..he's been rocking since foreverago. uhh uhh get it get it

signs of Fall

Today finally felt like fall..the air was crisp, the sun just warm enough to merit a slightly warmer sweater. Of course, there is no better excuse for hot cocoa either! I got some from Peet's today with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Since I did not take a picture of it, here's a throwback:


Should I institute a Throwback Tuesdays? I miss my short hair..