things missed, part 1.

staying out past my bed-time.


nights of collective CD burnings n the Smith household.


ostensibly deep conversations.


exploring abandoned buildings with someone else.


night walks full of pleasurable discoveries and ancient treasures. with TWO photographers. or three.

feels like it's been forever

admittedly, i'm pretty nostalgic right now. i miss you like crazy jules. when i go on walks through the neighborhood i can't help but think of what we'd be discussing if you were here. college is supposed to be one of the most joyful times in life, supposedly, but i beg to differ. it's as absurd as astrology, which claims that all aries or all leos in the world have the same predetermined horoscope and attributes. it's not the time period that makes a stage of life great. hell, high school could have been the pits had i not had a a group of friends who all shared the same friends. i think it's the people in your life who determine it's course. maybe next year at this time i won't feel so fragmented...maybe i won't feel like i'm on the road to somewhere but not yet there...maybe i'll feel like i'm there. that's what high school was for me: there. even though i was unhappy and confused at times and undoubtedly had my share of teenage angst, i always had ju and john and karah and em. i had other fellow party poopers. and we had collective memories. that's the difference. that's what's absent now...that universalism. college lacks community: it's a haphazard hodgepodge of individuals, some driven and some driving themselves into the ground. summer only amplifies the individuality of college. and as much as i love talking on the phone, it's not the same as physically...being. with ju, with john, with em. breathing the same air, laying on the same couch while giving each other hand massages or back massages, taking in the same familiar surroundings...john's basement, jules' eclectic room. always a sense of place.

coldplay is singing it loud and clear: "the truth is, I miss you."

but i'm not going to let this dominate. that's why when nostalgia hits, i call you. that's why when i remember and feel myself getting sad, i write. i write you. that's why when i'm bored and wanting badly to talk to friends, i call. i call you, and i call new friends too, because i can't hide in the past.

already not yet.

i wonder if most of life is spent with one foot in the 'old' and one foot in the 'new.' there will be times when 80 percent of your body will be in the 'old' and 20 percent in the new. and vice versa. but always a split. i just hope it will meld together at some point...the old coming here. the new meeting the old.

so i'll pass the time...with reading, and writing, and photographing, and trying to find babysitting jobs. trying to meet more people, trying to cultivate those north carolina relationships that have already begun, trying to find new ones, and trying to not let my mind wander too far back into st. louis and high school.

here it goes.

what and why and how i think.

i know i've been mentioning memories a lot, but it's a topic that's been on my mind lately. (no pun intended).

i wonder what constitutes a memory. why is it that certain inconsequential things stand out in my mind more so than the ostensibly 'important' events that one ought to remember...like birthdays, the first day of school, christmas morning? while turning onto burlington mills from capitol blvd today i was reminded of a drive i took with beth jaxon through the boonies near st. charles last may. I had my windows rolled down allowing that familiar, pungent woodsy smell to infiltrate my car. the wind was dampening my arm as i dangled it outide the rolled down window, 'flying,' the way jules taught me. beth an i had gotten horribly lost as we were driving from creve couer lake to my house and ended up following some windy path through the hills in the pitch blackness.

why that memory? i suppose it's because i had placed myself in a similar environment: windows down, same humid air, same time of night, same desolate countryside landscape, same pitch-darkness. and somewhere in the process my mind connected the tangible scenery with my slight nostalgia for st. louis and old summers that have now passed. for best friends and my sister and joe and beth.

i wondered if i realized then that that summer evening spent being lost with beth would be a memory. 95% of my day is gone forgotten, and i suppose 95% of my life is gone forgotten as well. (don't read into this too much...i'm not lamenting this, just speculating). it's like when you edit a photo on photoshop and then save the image, compressing all those pixels of information. the more you save, the more information is compressed and ultimately lost.

I don't remember events. I don't remember names or dates or facts. I remember moods...tones and colors and hues and emotions. I don't remember the content of those 'deep conversations,' but i remember that they were had...with the midnight sky, the cool breeze on my bare arms. i inhale the sweet second-hand smell of cloves, and jules' blonde hair is tangled. i am confused or blissfully happy and in love with st. louis, with summer, with spontaneity and idealism...for the moment, at least, even though they come back to haunt me.

I wonder what it takes to make something 'memorable.' what's in a memory?

better yet, what will i remember from this summer?

My first inclination is this: I will not remember very much if I spend much more time alone. Those st. louis memories...those high school memories...those childhood memories...the strongest and sweetest ones deal with best friends or my sister. interactions...because when you're with other people they introduce new concepts and tecnhiques and preferences and flavors into your life which are worthy of being recorded in your mind. why remember the times sitting in your room, bored, and watching t.v. to pass the time? why remember the mundane and the monotonous?

and when i do remember monotony...i remember writing karah or jules a flowery note on a tattered piece of notebook paper in geometry class. i remember what i was thinking about, rather, who i was thinking about, to break up the monotony.

if i were stranded on an island, i wonder what kinds of memories i would have. i wonder if i would talk to the dolphins and the coconut trees and draw pictures in the sand.

alcachofas

I was first introduced to the artichoke in Andalucia. Rosario put a china bowl of lentil and artichoke soup in front of me, and I remember asking her what the weird leafy things protruding through the surface's layer of film were.

"Son alchachofas. No comas la parte dura."

Well, I did eat the hard part. And I nearly choked on it.

I've only known artichokes as alcachofas. Even now, when I request them for dinner I have to stop for a split-second to think of how the word translates into english. Alcachofa is just so much more fitting than artichoke. i like the way it rolls off my toungue with effort... 'oomph'...how i have to form four different shapes with my lips to get the word out. Al-CA-CHO-FA.

The second time I ate artichokes was in Chile. In fact, the only times i've eaten them have been in the context of spanish-speaking countries. Andrea made artichoke a couple of weeks ago at her mother's house in Las Condes, and i was one of the only dinner guests who knew how to properly eat them, thank you very much. How entertaining it was to watch Jay, an overgrown thirty-year-old with a red beard, discover the joy of artichokes. First the confusion..."how do you eat these goddamn things?"...then the look of disgust as Andrea makes chilean mayonaise dip in front of him. Then the first tentative bite...and then the next one, a bit more enthusiastic. it's a complicated process...especially when you reach the heart. andrea cut it up for him, and airplane-fed the heart into his mouth. I think he was wearing a bib.

He had three artichokes.

It took him an hour to eat them.

When I stumbled across Pablo Neruda's "Oda al Alcachofa," I wasn't the least bit surprised. It's no wonder I connote the Spanish language and culture with artichokes...Pablo Neruda, Chile's national poet, emblemized the alcahofa, turning it into the vegetable of all spanish-speaking peoples (in my opinion).

perhaps i'll write a song and make lyrics out of his poem. :) :) :)

Ode to an Artichoke:

The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable,
By its side
The crazy vegetables
Uncurled
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,
Throbbing bulbs,
In the sub-soil
The carrot
With its red mustaches
Was sleeping,
The grapevine
Hung out to dry its branches
Through which the wine will rise,
The cabbage
Dedicated itself
To trying on skirts,
The oregano
To perfuming the world,
And the sweet
Artichoke
There in the garden,
Dressed like a warrior,
Burnished
Like a proud
Pomegrante.

And one day
Side by side
In big wicker baskets
Walking through the market
To realize their dream
The artichoke army
In formation.
Never was it so military
Like on parade.
The men
In their white shirts
Among the vegetables
Were
The Marshals
Of the artichokes
Lines in close order
Command voices,
And the bang
Of a falling box.

But
Then
Maria
Comes
With her basket
She chooses
An artichoke,
She's not afraid of it.
She examines it, she observes it
Up against the light like it was an egg,
She buys it,
She mixes it up
In her handbag
With a pair of shoes
With a cabbage head and a
Bottle
Of vinegar
Until
She enters the kitchen
And submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends
In peace
This career
Of the armed vegetable
Which is called an artichoke,
Then
Scale by scale,
We strip off
The delicacy
And eat
The peaceful mush
Of its green heart.

old portraits

"memories are like a still life painted by ten different student artists: some will be blue-based; others red; some will be as stark as Picasso and others as rich as Rembrandt; some will be foreshortened and others distant. Recollectionas are in the eye of the beholder; no wo held up side by side will ever quite match."

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It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment - but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer? ~Lord Byron

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i just finished a thought-provoking book that dealt with memory as an underlying theme. memory, in it's ephemeral state...it is fragmented and not empirical, but we define our lives based off of those fragments, treating them as objectivity.

it's strange, the things we remember. a memory is never a video filmstrip. it's not even a photograph...perhaps just bits of a photograph. a flowery scent, an off-key note, the silhouette of a long-lost friend. we can't force ourselves to remember; a memory is a separate entity with its own soul and its own volition. it chooses when it wants to resurface, however belated or inopportune that moment may be.

things or not

you can boil your life down to a single suitcase, if you desperately have to. Ask yourself what you really need, and it won't be what you imagine--you will easily toss aside unfinished work, and bills, and your daily calendar to make room for the pair of flannel pajamas you wear when it rains; and the stone your child gave you that is shaped like a heart; and the battered paperback you revisit every April, because it was what you were reading the first time you were in love. It turns out that what's important is not everythig that youve accumulated all these years, but those few things you can carry with you.

--jodi picoult

straddling many spheres

my mind is on overload, but for once it is externally and not internally motivated. there is so much to write about...because there is so much to explore. not in a tangible way, necessarily. so many thoughts germinated in chile, but I never had the time or privacy to allow those thoughts to maturate.

And so right now I am torn between two opposing spheres--I want to sit down in a quiet, private haven for hours on end to write....write about chile, photography, aspirations, evolving dreams and emotions...try to put my finger around the chilean culture and the chilean people and my experience with that. and then the other side of me wants to soak up everything that is happening right now. I want to revel in the privacy and familiarity of my room, albeit "mine" for only three days. i want to feel the sweat on my body from lifting boxes on end up the stairs. I want to feel the childish anticipation that is concomitant with opening a box and wondering what the hell is inside. and oh how i crave reality and normalcy. flirting online, facebooking, reading the da vinci code and watching movies. things i couldn't really do in chile...things i couldn't fully do in college. it's not so much the 'actions' that are giving me a thrill right now...it's more the place where they're being done. HOME. my new north carolina home. strange how it slowly became home over the course of nine months.

oh, and how badly i want to photograph everything that is happening under my nose! today, for example, grandma was laying on her back on the couch with her legs crossed and bouncing up and down. she was talking on the phone and smiling broadly...it was just a picture perfect moment. i think about photographing the rooms in this house,composing portraits of my grandparents, documenting the feel of life here...which transcends more than the 'happy' moments. like the look of nostalgia on grandpa's face when he gazes outside from the screened in porch. i wonder what he is thinking about...there is such a sense of longing, or restlessness. i feel like this is singular and momentous time that i am experiencing right now...and i want so badly to document it. if only i had a camera....or could find my gosh darn charger for my dinky little point and shoot. (reminds herself: it's not the equipment, it's not the equipment. good photographers don't need fancy tools.)

coming back from a foreign country is such a singular feeling. for me, at least, it's sort of a surreal, in limbo state. the two spheres return: on the one hand, I am ecstatic to be back to familiarity, normalcy, and comfort. eating what i like, knowing the rules of decorum and common courtesy, being able to shut myself in my room for a couple of hours to read, watch a movie, or use the internet at my leisure. on the other hand, i miss many aspects of chile. not the country itself, but the sensation of being immersed in another culture. actually, i mostly miss the journalism culture...which is indeed a culture in and of itself. photography, photoshp, webdesign, audiostories, photostories, content gathering, the arduous work and meticulous attention...all of the aspects are foreign to family and friends. such is life...not everyone can understand what you do and why you like it and what it entails. and while i suppose many people are dumbfounded as to how i could be so unhappy while in chile...so gloomy with regards to my relationship to photography, to journalism, and to my colleagues...and then how my demeanor could so drastically change here to optimistic. i suppose part of it is my romanticist tendencies...i can pick and choose what i want to remember from chile. yet another part is that i'm so ecstatic to be settled, at a home, and at MY home, that i can look back on the turn of events with optimism and ocntendness. and then the rest of it remains as such: though chile wasn't always fun, it wasn't supposed to be all smiles 24-7. it was a learning lab and a learning experience...and perhaps the longing and homesickness God placed within me was meant to prepare me for north carolina and these present circumstances.

i will end this entry here, for brevity's sake.
buenas noches and goodnight.

update, as if life was on hold.

i ought to be writing a book as opposed to a blog post, as i don´t know where to begin. i have too many thoughts, too many experiences. my brain is thinking visually, spatially, audially...anything but in written form. i could discuss long hours in the newsroom spent imaging, sequencing, splicing, captioning, and saving for web design. i could discuss everything that happens afterwards...the discotecas, the piscolas, the carretes, the madrugadas. sights...the desert or santiago? smog. andes. flamingos. photography. splash pages, maya, 3d design, adobe rgb. jargon suffices, indeed.

and then there´s all the stuff that can´t be documented in word or photograph but exists as mere growing experiences. learning how to work with an incompatible editor. learning how to live with seemingly incompatible roomates. and then seeing deeper. lesson of the day: people are more than skin-deep. those who seem most unlovable, most abrasive and unreachable, are usually the most beautiful. and all of life is a paradox.

but perhaps i´ll save that for later. perhaps i´ll write a book about this month. perhaps i´ll write it down in my chilean notebook with its graph paper lines. or maybe i´ll just keep it in my mind, like the rest of my memories that are aching to be put on paper but lie dormant until further notice.