ashore

dad hands, doing things.

2013-06-18T22:56:00.003-07:00

Father's Day Weekend, both photos are so classically my dad.

friday: painting the foundation of my sister's first house and then laying out plans to remodel her laundry room while eating a pile of cherries from her (twelve acre!) backyard.

saturday: that thing at the upper right corner is uni - or sea urchin - my dads "favorite food on the planet." My sister and I think it's the color of baby poo and has a surface texture like a human tongue but he says it tastes like "a mouthful of sea water." I guess nowadays sushi is more of a yuppie food, but it's something I always associate with my parents who met and lived the first half of their life together in San Francisco. Growing up, they would take us to the one ten-seat sushi bar in our little town for birthday dinner. Even just twenty years ago, sushi was pretty unusual and I always felt it was a special that my parents knew about California things.

He's a pretty great guy.

p.s. he gives good advice...

how to end things gracefully.

how to deal with stress.

how (not) to use spray paint.

weekenders | Clarity

2013-06-14T11:28:00.004-07:00

I haven't had cable for a few years (and for the last year, I haven't even had a TV set!) so I'm pretty out of the loop when it comes to popular culture. This week, I went over to Tessa and Andy's, where we made garam masala and watched The Voice. Do you guys watch that show? Maybe I've just been away from TV for too long, but I was totally into it! Tessa's fav contestant, Michelle Chamuel, sang this dance song "Clarity" ...which may or may not have led me to purchasing it on iTunes. And I don't even really like dance music.

weekend reading | unst unst unst

maybe it awakened the Hannah-Horvath-in-a-mesh-shirt part of me.
speaking of dance music, the GQ profile of Avicii is so sharp! And the writing is irresistible - I clicked through to read all six pages of the article (that's commitment in internet time!)
awesome truth and awesomeness: Kanye West on Kanye West.

(photo) iPhone + vsco app | summer light through the window at Andy's

two for | Letting The Light Go

2013-06-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes they
go outside, maybe
move a rosebush
to the back yard or
clean a window.
Usually they
simply stand,
under a maple
They don’t do
much. That’s for
others. They know
how to take things
for granted, know
what to miss.
Every morning
they make breakfast.
And when the sun
sets, they let it go."

from The Neighbors by Jack Ridl

(photos) on film with Leica CL | the road to Amherst, at almost dark.

in which the world is green again.

2013-06-11T11:18:00.002-07:00

In March, when the ground is still hard and banks of brown snow cling to the street curb, the Botanic Garden at Smith College hosts their spring Bulb Show. They fill the front two rooms of the green houses with daffodils and tulips in every color, a densely packed preview of the spring to come.

My fellow flower fan, Alison, invited me along since she's a Pioneer Valley local and she knows about these things - fun events and ways to survive the winter. All these photos are of their "permanent collection" and the palm room. I guess I skipped a season and went straight on to summer.

(photos) on film with Pentax K1000 | greenhouses at Smith College

loud & clear | When We Think About Change

2013-06-10T10:24:00.002-07:00

Now that I'm back on the West Coast, I find myself talking a lot about Northampton - you know, the classic "home for break" question: so, how do you like it there? The answer has changed since my last trip home, because something has changed between me and my little New England town.

My displacement must have been wicked-away slowly, gradually - yet, it seemed as sudden as a closing window. I remember standing infront of a magnolia tree, when I looked around and wondered how did I get here? All of my resistance had faded and It felt like could finally see this place. I understood it. It felt like mine.

I wrote about this particular moment over on The Equals Record ...

"Philosophers call moments like that a “paradigm shift,” because it wasn’t just about a bird's beak for Darwin. Suddenly, it was about everything. He saw turtles and trumpet vines and all sorts of creatures—and he wondered how they had come to be there."

you can read the full essay here!

I couldn't go back to seeing Northampton the way I had before, as flat and far-away. Because that's the thing about paradigm shifts: once they happen, you live in the everything after.

(photos) on film with Leica CL | blossoms on Main St.

oh, hey LA!

2013-06-05T22:44:00.005-07:00

For the last month I've been just about everywhere ... except this internet space! But, I'm not too hip to admit that I've just been the luckiest lately. This week, I'm photographing a wedding in San Diego - a place I once called home. I decided to make a little trip out of it, with a stop in LA and Joshua Tree before settling in that coastal city to do what I consider the best summer job in the world: taking pictures of people in love.

since those photos are still in my camera (oh, film! you teach me patience) here is a nice one of a palm tree from my last trip to socal. Can't you just hear their swishing?

(photo) on film with Pentax K1000

locals only.

2013-05-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

forecasted for a full week: one good eighty degree day. We ditched our final paper writing and climbed behind the row of houses on Elm Street, down to the Mill River. A swimming hole complete with twenty yards of sandy "beach" and a solid rope swing. I consider this the official moment I became a local.

(photos) on film with Leica CL | Mill River in Northampton, MA

since grown to love.

2013-05-29T11:45:00.004-07:00

"I remember once calling my daddy to collect me from a place but was sad when he came because I'd since grown to love the place. Death takes us like that."

DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little.

I'm leaving New England today to spend the summer in Portland. And you know, it feels like this (well, not the whole death part. I'm not that dramatic). I'm going to a place that I've longed for - a place that I've missed and that I call home - but I suddenly want to stay.

(photo) on film with Pentax K1000 | Northampton, MA

weekenders | Helpless

2013-05-24T15:38:00.001-07:00

I like when songs are from a place. Not about something, but about a feeling. "Helpless" sounds like being on your own and missing somewhere. I still need a place to go. It sounds like missing the feeling of home.

weekend reading | Tell Tale Signs.

a poem that completely captures the excitement in the first warm evenings.
Susannah Howe's portfolio is full of laugh out loud anecdotes, like photographing some brothers from her highschool for Vogue Homme and being rejected by Deepak Chopra.
also funny: an illustration for anyone whose ever lived in a tiny apartment
this short story called Missing Women was recommended by one of my favorite essay writers, Sloane Crosley. It's really stuck with me.

(listen) Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Helpless (photo) out of focus and on film | Milwaukee

two for | Barricades

2013-05-23T11:01:00.002-07:00

"How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open: it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world."

from Sylvia Plath's Three Women

Sylvia attended Smith college, just down the street from my house here in Northampton. Some days - like today, when the humidity brings everything to a heavy and damp stillness - I like to walk the grounds and think of her. Heavy and damp.

(photos) on film with Leica CL | Smith College (p.s) another one of daffodils on my Flickr.

loud & clear | The Things We Lose

2013-05-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

Around this time last year, I took a trip to Chicago for my best friend Laura’s bridal shower. A few weeks before I left, my grandmother visited me in Portland and over lunch we talked about how excited I was to see the city. Grammy grew up just outside of Chicago, and she told me about going to Cubs games with her brothers and about her Dad taking the El from their little suburban town to his law office in the city. Her town, called Lombard, was famous for their Lilacs. And, at the end of the season, there was a Lilac Parade and the crowing of a Lilac Queen.

When I arrived in Chicago, I told Laura this story as we drove out to her childhood home. With much surprise, on both our parts, it turned out that Lombard is just one town over from her own (They even share a high school - which both my grandmother and Laura attended, all be it about five decades apart!)

So, the next afternoon Laura took me to Lilacia Park, right in the center of Lombard. It was one of those funny full-circle moments that make life feel unexpected and predictable - all at once.

Each may, I look forward to the Lilacs blooming because they remind me of my mother. Each Spring, she would put bunches of them on every end-table and counter top in our house. My essay for Equals Record this week is about how they make me feel close to her and about the slow process of learning to see your parents as people.

"It’s a different kind of hurt, as I’ve grown older, to lose a person—not just the figure of my mother. I wish I knew how she was funny or how she was sad; if there were things she lost that she never stopped missing."

you can read the full essay here.

It was only after my trip to lilacs that I realized the lineage and the place that connects us all. I think of my mother, remembering her own mother standing with clippers in her childhood backyard. Grammy is trimming off the lilacs and thinking of Lilacia Park.

(photos) on film with Pentax K1000 | Lilacia Park in Lombard, IL

for two.

2013-05-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

I happily finished the semester last Tuesday - which, not only included writing 43 pages of my own term papers, but also grading my student's term papers! Then, the very next day, it was off to Milwaukee with my boyfriend to wind-down after a few long weeks (months?) of school.

And somehow summer break is even better than I remember! Tyler and I traded day-long coffees for afternoon margaritas. You know, there are a few perks to being twenty-six year old student.

(photo) drinks for two | February v. May

off we go to Milwaukee!

2013-05-16T15:49:00.003-07:00

for the rest of the week, I'll be off to Milwaukee! I'm so excited to spend time in a place that appreciates two of my greatest summer loves: beer and large bodies of water (preferably together!)

(photo) the view of Lake Michigan from the plane. (p.s) view from the shores of Chicago

technicolor dream day.

2013-05-14T06:17:00.002-07:00

On the first really warm day of spring, Tyler and I finished work early and brought our books to the knoll overlooking Paradise Pond (here are a few pictures of it in fall!) I thought maybe I was just a little high on sunshine, because I couldn't stop pointing out how green the grass/trees/leaves/lawns were. When I got these negative scans back though they gave me a laugh. Everything is almost offensively bright! I guess that fluorescent "spring green" color in the box of crayons was more accurate than I realized.

Doesn't this bottom one remind you of Andy Warhol's Flowers?

(photos) on film with Leica CL, straight out of the camera.

traits.

2013-05-12T08:35:00.003-07:00

I hope you take the time today to thank your mom for all the things she's given you - genetic or otherwise! xo.

burn bright.

2013-05-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

Burning bright means finishing with a flourish. It means finishing even better than you began. You can give the last bit of yourself reluctantly, almost begrudgingly. You do it because you need to. Or, you can give like you've been waiting for this moment. You can rush with open hands towards the relief of being empty It's going to be hard either way, but your given a choice for the "how" of it. You can either burn or you can burn bright.

The tulips remind me of that, this time of year. As they finish, they're more fearless than in the beginning It's a last burning moment before their season is done. Now, they're absolutely ablaze with ending.

been there | Smith Canteen in Brooklyn

2013-05-07T07:34:00.003-07:00

a lesson learned in Brooklyn: Live in New York for only as long as it makes you beautiful. Only as long as the rough surfaces of the city are smoothing your edges or rubbing away layers you thought were necessary, to reveal something truer. And when it starts to harden you, let yourself walk away. If only over the bridge to Brooklyn. The skyline is quiet and glimmers in the distance - the city, a memory to climb into.

Smith Canteen located at 343 Smith St. in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn: a perfect place for a coffee date with one ms. wily brunette. Smith Canteen is deliberately cool - so it's surprisingly relaxed. Like "yeah ... this is on purpose. We know you love oiled dark wood and geraniums." (Rather than the dilapidated cool which is more like "Oh this? it only became cool yesterday because it's 'authentic'" which is always stressful to me because I'm thinking "wait. are we allowed to be enthusiastic about this or does that make it less authentic?")

(photos) on drugstore brand film with Pentax K1000

postscript | Spring Evenings

2013-05-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

Lately, I haven't had as much to share here as I used to. Graduate school - despite my best efforts - gets
the best of me creatively. So, the film photos are fewer and epiphanies are farther between. But, I don't feel that I'm done with this space yet, you know? I think there's just a bit of a disconnect between the shape of this blog and the shape of my life - and I'm working this summer to get back on track and back to a place where this feels good. Where it feels like the stakes are lower, more day to-day, more honest. My boyfriend (who is a Creative Suite wiz and patiently listens to my kooky ideas "can it have ... like, tiny gold tacks?") is working on a little layout to use for Mondays. The post wont be anything mind-blowing or too artistic, usually just a few scenes from the weekend.

A "postscript" is the last part of a text - that's actually what "p.s." stands for. So, it felt like a fitting name for a look back at the week past. A quick way to record the last fleeting details, for me and for you.

(photos) iPhone | the less snazzy previous version of the "after the weekend" post was called review.

loud & clear | Be Boundless.

2013-05-01T10:34:00.001-07:00

During an especially hard sequence in my yoga class, the teacher said something that made me feel called-out. He was talking about effort and going beyond our limits, about how rewarding it is to push onward. "Only by giving one hundred percent" he said "are we able to get one hundred percent back."

He's not the first person to say you get what you give, but I think he meant something deeper than that. When we give less than our best, like eighty percent, we actually get far less than that returned. It's not a direct exchange - it's more like sixty or seventy - because the product of our work falls short. And the cruel irony here is that eighty percent isn't easy! It's exhausting, and it's hard, and it hurts. We give a lot of ourselves, even when we don't give everything, so we often feel it's enough.

My short essay for The Equals Record today is about learning to let go of the boundaries I've created for myself, because I'm scared of being caught empty.

"We learn early on how to give just enough—to burn, but just a little, and be done. It’s smart to save a part of yourself, because what if this only gets harder?"

It's about the beauty that's made by reckless hearts. By giving more than you think it is wise to.

p.s. more writings from my column, Loud & Clear, which focuses on outward - and inward - exploration!
emily dickinson + the hard part of dreams
the first snow + falling in love

stonebarns + coming full circle

moving to massachusetts + redefinition

fog + being alone

weekenders | Out of Cape Cod

2013-04-26T07:27:00.001-07:00

It's the last full week of classes for the semester and everyone here has their sights set on summer. The other day my friend Patrick (who is from Sandwich, a hilariously named Cape Cod town) put on the old Vampire Weekend. I basically wore a hole in that album four years ago, and just enough time has finally passed that I can listen to it and feel nostalgic rather than absolutely sick of it. Living in Massachusetts now, the words all mean something different and it made me laugh to think of myself listening to them as a senior in college in San Diego. Now, here I am, teaching kids who are seniors in college themselves. Sometimes that feels like a long time ago. But, summer and this song make it feel like yesterday.

weekend reading | Atlantic Seaboard

I want to live inside the Bon Appetite story on designer John Derian.
an accidental oyster haiku from the New York Times
slide film photos of the cape by Brian W. Ferry
giant lobsters in a National Geographic photo from 1915
the original Cape Cod prep: Jack Kennedy

p.s.
UMass Amherst has one of the few heterodox (read: Marxist) economics departments in the country, which results in graduate research like this. I'm proud to be at a school that questions basic assumptions about capitalism! Also featured on the Colbert Report.

(listen) Walcott by Vampire Weekend (photo) on film with Leica CL | lobster claws in Provincetown, MA

index | What Comes Next

2013-04-25T14:29:00.001-07:00

It was cold last night, but the wind was warm as if it was blowing here from June.

these four photos feel like suspended seconds, like something about to start.

1. Sisters, Heather Hester | 2. Eggs, Daniella Marie

3. Release Party, Willow Ships | 4. Top Knot #14 painting, Elizabeth Mayville

two for | Spring, Just Beginning, in Brooklyn.

2013-04-24T10:33:00.004-07:00

"From heaven it falls, just the opposite
of prayer, which I send up
at the traffic light: please

let me begin over again, one
more time over again, wipe the slate
clean, the same way after school
janitors, keys jangling from
belt loops, will use a wet rag and wipe

the school day off, so there is only
the residue, faint white on the smooth
surface."

from A Cold Rain on the Day Before Spring by Stuart Kestenbaum

(photos) on film with Pentax K1000 | view across the harbor and daffodils in the window in Brooklyn
(p.s) two for San Francisco's changing light | winter blue

weekenders | Loveland

2013-04-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

This week was a doozy here in Massachusetts (yep, I think The Onion put it best). Even though I live almost 2 hours from Boston, my town just felt fearful and dark all over.

The picture above is a few of my friends viewing an installation by Charles Stankievech on our trip to the MASS MoCa. It's a video of purple smoke clouds in the arctic titled Loveland. I decided to share an excerpt from it today - instead of the usual weekend song - since I think we could all use a little time in a place like that.

weekend reading | person to person

"All I have to do is to decide how much fear to let inside my heart in this fragile, created place" -Under the Magnolias by Carolyn Miller
if I had to show someone what being a human is like on earth, I'd use these photos accidentally captured by google street view. (via Sho and Tell)
it cracks me up the way grandmothers write letters and e-mails in such an explanatory way!
related: when parents text. The ones from dads are my favorite.

loud & clear | The Feathered Thing

2013-04-16T10:53:00.004-07:00

After I committed to UMass, I took a red eye flight with my sister to see the place I'd be calling home. At the time, the anticipation of moving here was everything to me. In the wake of a break-up, I had thrown myself into my graduate school applications. And, after I submitted them, I held on to the single hope of a place I could create, any way I wanted.

That weekend, we visited the house of Emily Dickinson, Amherst's most notable resident. She was a delicate recluse and, in my quiet fear, I found myself to relating to her so deeply. I wanted to go back to being "about to begin", to the part that's just imagining.

Today's post for The Equals Record was inspired Emily and the comfort in unknowing
You can read it here!

When I got home from the trip, I locked myself in the bathroom and just sobbed on the floor of my studio apartment. I was overwhelmed with trying to find a place to live, and shipping my things, and figuring out my new health insurance. It turned out that the shiny goal I had of being professor was made up of lots of hellacious logistical details.

I was crying for another reason too. Now that my dream had come true, it wasn't a dream anymore. There was no longer a fictional far-off place for me to put my joy. Instead, there was a very real town in western New England, that was wonderful but different than I'd imagined.

When I stopped sniffling and called my best friend, Laura, she told me something that I've held on to:

"There's always going to be an oh shit moment after getting exactly what you wanted." She's right about that, isn't she? It's a beautiful thing to have a dream, but it can be really hard to live it.

(photos) on film with Pentax K1000 | Emily Dickinson's House. Amherst, MA

been there | Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

2013-04-15T08:10:00.001-07:00

It doesn't quite make sense to say that MASS MoCa was "worth the drive", since the drive itself was a work of art. We went a few weeks ago, so there was still snow on the ground and the winter sun was shining through the bare-tree trunks. The museum is housed in a converted 19th century factory and the white brick walls are basically made of windows. Between that and the polished concrete floors, I was tempted to lease it as an apartment.

The current exhibit is called Oh, Canada! and it features - you guessed it - contemporary Canadian artists. Some of it was a little heavy handed (like this pannel by John Will, featuring the names of the participating artists spray painted with the word "Northing.") But, a few pieces really resonated with me

I think contemporary art has the power to be especially evocative, because it takes work to make sense of what we're seeing. When we recognize the abstract sounds and images, it's because they connect with something we know.

Memories, because they're so deeply personal, feel unique to us. But, both of my favorite pieces pointed to the commonalities in both our present feelings and in our past. Maybe the moments I cherish most are more universal than I realize.

my two favorite works ...

Sarah Anne Johnson, Fireworks: a boat bobs in the arctic, under a sky of watercolored fireworks. I loved how the color runs into the ocean, the same way that the light of a firework starts to fall and is reflected before it burns out. In the New Yorker, she says that she adds paint to photos to "...create a more honest image. To show not just what I saw but how I feel about what I saw."
Michael Snow, Solar Breath: an hour long video of curtains being blown against a glass-patio door. In the audio you hear catydids and the sounds of plates scraping at dinner time. It sounded like home.

other arty things...

a trip to The Art Institute of Chicago (my favorite museum ever!!)
also saw Cloud Gate when I was there.
Urban Light at LACMA.
the costumes from Black Swan at Rodarte's States of Matter.

(photos) on film with Pentax k1000 | in the last they're standing under Xu Bing's Phoenix, which you can see on the Mass MoCa Pinterest