Thoughts & Thoughts & Thoughts....thoughts...

Honestly, Tavi Gevinson amazes me.

I remember when I was 13...terrified of my own reflection, let alone any thought I came up with without any particular back up from a particular source.

Her bravery, as a 13 year old, is something my 23 year old self admires.
Wisdom occasionally comes in packages, without copious heartbreak and without years of misery.
Sometimes wisdom has nothing to do with bitterness.
Sometimes it has everything to do with the bravery learning.

In this age of precociousness and hopefulness, I fully appreciate a girl who is able to be honest amongst a throng of "peers..."

who couldn't see beyond their own reflection.
Who loved something and, according to some vial of online information, had to have her parents fully informed in order to fully appear in a magazine article.

I admit I haven't done my research, and I try to cover my ass with pleas of rent and phone bills and health care, all of which fall on shoulders that shouldn't, and although I digress, I can't help myself because ultimately this is my brain stem and I am growing tired of filtering my own thought process.

No one reads this anyway.

I remember a time when I had it in my brain to organize a beach trip between myself and the two closest people to me at the time, my two best friends in the whole world. We went to the beach, the New Jersey Shore, and my mother had to bring my 7-years-younger little sister along for the ride. The trip as a whole faded somewhere into the mistier corners of my brain...

but one morning....

none of us could live with going home to the mundane existence of Yardley, PA without a true, real experience.

So one morning, the three of us and some chaperon....
I honestly can't remember which of the 3 mothers it was...
came with us to the surf of the great Ocean at Sunrise.

We laughed hysterically and made morbid jokes and kicked at the rushing surf while the infinity of youth remained untouched.
The sand melted underneath, and the laughter lived on, and even the perpetual reminder couldn't kill us then.
Life went on forever
...and the sun rose...
and I swear to a god I don't quite believe that I will remember that 'vacation' for the rest of my life...
because it included people who aren't with us,
and it included a portion of myself who no longer exists.

It took something beautiful to remain as a memory in order for my own living perspective to continue on.
The more years you accrue, the more pain it takes to keep the message.


Regardless...
I digress...
I digress...

Monday in the Snow

It snowed somewhere around 18 inches the other night.
When my job released me out into the world, my immediate universe happens to be Times Square. Seeing the entire metropolis covered in a blizzard was really surreal and beautiful. People were swarming all over the place, snow stinging their faces, throwing snowballs and laughing. Sometimes this universe is beautiful.

Regardless.

As our money grows towards getting a camera, all of my previous obsession with photography has swarmed my soul again and I spend hours hunting down every image I can on the internet. At one point in history, mainly the 60's and 70's, photography was a thriving part of the artistic community. Perhaps it's the advent of the internet's potential to catapult nearly anyone and everyone with a faint interest into global exposure that somewhat killed it off, or maybe it was the introduction of the pixel, and the whole digital age.
Somewhere, the "art" of it was lost.
What was so explosive was the concept of taking a medium, film, that was only what it was. It was a process involving light and chemicals. It was not for the impatient or the flighty. It was not something that someone could take a slight interest in. It was selective. In a way, it selected you. If you didn't have "the eye" you knew right off the bat, and you would be damned if you would spend another day of your life trying to develop an image that wasn't extraordinary.

Edward Weston was one of the first photographers to really capture my entire sensibilities. The image of the bell pepper is so brilliant in its obviousness. This is clearly a man who was born an artist. Given the strenuous and costly aspects of photography at this time, ideals of grandeur ran rampant. To see an every day object, an edible one at that, and see beyond the usual adjectives to see into the beauty of its contours, and to then be able to capture the humanistic aspect of those curves, is pure genius. Weston's sensibilities seemed to peer beyond first sight and able to delve into that rare second glance.

The Completion

Today I went to EIS to present to Audrey this beautiful .jpg, taken by a most benevolent and kind fellow artist. Her appreciation and excitement about this project is inspiring.

It's also kind of cool, because a PR guy from Marymount, my ex-college, came to talk with me about potential New York News 1 coverage and even coverage in Philadelphia, since Yardley is basically considered Philadelphia to the rest of the known universe.

It's amazing what a small idea can turn into. I never in my wildest dreams thought that this concept would be appreciated by anyone else but me and Audrey.

In other news....I can't stop listening to the Stones, particularly "Beggars Banquet" and "Their Satanic Majesties Request." Anyone who owns a "Best Of" album needs to be smacked in the face.
The Rolling Stones are more than "Paint It Black" and "Satisfaction."

And so, the day rolls forth into freezing temperatures and jobs as a Hostess in Times Square. Let's see what further adventures may unfold...

All I Want For Christmas...

...is everything Gemma Slack has ever created.

Art

During this year's month of September, I embarked upon a rather interesting project.
In an acting class I was taking in Philadelphia, my acting teacher gave us all a quote to help further our personal capabilities:
"boldness has genius and magic in it."-Goethe
It stuck with me, and inspired me to go forward with an idea that had been filed away into the dusty corners of my eternally buzzing brain.
During my last semester at college, I took a service learning class which required a minimum of 12 hours time spent over the course of the semester working with a Non-Profit Organization called EIS: Eviction Intervention Services. Since I didn't realize that I had signed up for something that required me to do more than doodle in my notes and spew out elegant BS on quizzes, I was somewhat upset. I didn't see how I could fit a few hours a week into my already bulging schedule, but as I also didn't have the emotional fortitude to go and switch classes, I just took it as a lesson to read the fine print next time.
I truly believe this is one of those situations where the most unexpected and somewhat distressing situations can really turn into something that changes your life a little bit. EIS is one of the most amazing organizations I have ever come in contact with. These people work long hours for a very insecure amount of payment, all to forward "homelessness prevention." EIS works with people who are at the end of their rope, who are about to be evicted from their housing either through unfairness of the landlord, or through faults of their own. These people come seeking help, fully admitting the error of their ways, and ready to cast any prideful foolishness aside in the hopes of keeping their homes.
One day, I was stuffing envelopes for an upcoming event of theirs, zoning out and staring at the clock. A woman came in and, due to the lack of sufficient office space in their tiny basement establishment, the woman had to have her meeting with the pro bono lawyer at the conference table in the middle of the room...with me at the other end. Her story was heartbreaking. She was a recovering alcoholic who had alienated everyone in her family, lost years of her life, and I believe lost the custody of her daughter. She finally found a way out of this deep, dark hole and now had to face the fact that her rent was overdue and her landlord had had enough. To have this woman, this complete and total stranger, have to relay the private details of her sad and troubled life while some bleary eyed college student is stuffing envelopes, trying politely not to be noticed, is a situation I can't picture from the other end. And then it occurred to me that this is a typical day at EIS. This story is just one in a million, which is the core of their foundation, the reason they wake up in the morning, just like the rest of us. Except instead of fighting off the afternoon haze with some absent minded internet browsing, you have to sit in a large room and have someone break your heart.
Sitting in their windowless and somewhat depressing waiting room one morning, the idea to give back to them came fully formed in my head. The head of EIS, Audrey, and I had been talking about my plans after college to paint a mural in some sort of lower-income area that needed something cheerful. While that plan fell through, I decided that the idea itself shouldn't get lost in the shuffle and so, new Goethe quote in hand, I called up Audrey months after I had been in her office and proposed my idea to paint a picture for their waiting room. She responded far more enthusiastically than I could have ever hoped for, and in a flurry of mild press (my college's alumni magazine did a brief interview with me about the process) the painting is essentially completed! A few details will be administered tomorrow, and then...it's complete.
It feels really good to be doing something that I believe in. I'm not getting any profit off of this project. EIS has offered to reimburse me the materials I needed to acquire to make it happen, just the canvas, some paint, and some paintbrushes, and here we are. It's going to be strange to not have it sitting around the apartment anymore, but I'm extremely pleased to know that it will be doing some good in the world.