To not real endings and not real new beginnings

This is going to be a bittersweet week, with endings and new beginnings. Although the more I think about it, it isn’t a real ending or really moving on from something, or maybe it is, I just can’t really put my finger on the right word yet, and I don’t know if I actually realize that I am ending something and starting something else. After 2 years of working at 200 Orchard (and believe me, it feels like it has been a lot longer than that), I will be doing my last shifts there tonight and tomorrow night. After being offered a full-time mainly managing position at Taqueria I had to decide whether I wanted to take it and leave 200 or just remain on the same schedule as I have been for a while now, working in both places, side by side. Both jobs have been the best I have ever had, not just because of the actual work, but also because of the people I work with, the bosses I have, people who have become friends, and the fact that  I have always been given my own independence and trusted with the responsibility of making sure I keep a work place open on the nights that I am working there.

Over the past few years I have met many people, some who have become very close friends (you know who you are), people I would never have met if I hadn’t been working at 200 Orchard. There have been nights when I wanted to run home and hide under the covers, but continued to serve drinks to annoying people with a smile on my face. There has been many a night when I had the best times ever, be it at work, or just hanging out in the bar with friends. There have been times that I’ll never forget, and other times that I would rather forget (flooding the basement being one of them). There are places that you work that are just work places, and then there are places that you work that become part of your life, part of your family and that you will never forget.

In any case, it’s not like I will be going far away, just next door, and it’s not like I won’t be at the bar again, just as a customer and not an employee anymore. I just want to thank Ramie, James and Damo for giving me the opportunity to work in such a wonderful place, and for also putting up with me over the past couple of years (and Luis too of course). There are many parts of the job that I will miss a lot… Come on down tonight or tomorrow (and both) – I am sure there is going to be a lot of fun to be had. And a lot of good music will be played, as always.

Photography - Bushwick Street Art 2013

A few years ago I started walking around Bushwick with my camera, capturing some of the pretty amazing street art that is around the area. There are spots that are covered in murals and paintings and words, entire blocks and walls that are vibrant in colour and meaning, and then spots where you will find a small piece of artwork, hidden amongst the brick walls of a house or a warehouse. I love living in Bushwick (which is probably why I haven't moved anywhere else over the past 5 years), but I haven't spent much time walking around the neighbourhood recently, and didn't even go to any of the events that were taking place during the Bushwick Collective 1 year anniversary party this past weekend. My room mate has been much better at becoming part of the community here than I have and knows everything that is going on, where the cool bars are and what restaurants are better than others. When we moved here over 5 years ago there wasn't much around except for a few bodegas, the gas station and KFC. Now there is a great selection of restaurants on Seamlessweb alone and a bunch of cool places to hang out in.

In any case, yesterday I took a visitor from Europe for a walk around the neighbourhood and was amazed by all of the new murals and artwork that exists on my street and the streets surrounding it. I noticed a lot of new pieces, but also old pieces that have been covered up by new ones. HERE is the link to the full collection of photos I took yesterday, mainly along Troutman St and Starr St. Below you will find links to different street art sets that I put together in 2011 and 2012.

For more information on The Bushwick Collective, check out their Facebook page HERE.

Bushwick Street Art 2013, a set on Flickr.

One Block in Bushwick - Photos
Bushwick Street Art May 2011 - Photos
NYC Street Art - Photos

Exhibition - NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star

1993 was a year of changes for me. A month in India with my family where the colours and the smells and the people transformed my horizons. Listening to Tim Buckley’s Sefronia in the boiling bathtub after a month of bucket-baths that were scheduled every three days, and finally appreciating how lucky I was to have constant hot, running water. Hearing Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam on the radio and connecting with this music scene so intensely, but still not knowing how much it would actually affect the rest of my life. I remember school still being a nightmare, but at least with new friends who shared my passions, my interests, my hopes and my fears. Family falling apart around me and tensions were always riding high at home.

1993 was the last year in Sassenage, a village next to Grenoble, nestled at the bottom of the Vercors mountains. It was long summer nights listening to Led Zeppelin and Tori Amos, writing in my journals and dreaming of cute boys and good-looking musicians. It was cold winter treks home from school on the A tram and still sometimes struggling with the French language when my shyness overcame me. 1993 brings me back to my early teens. Emotional, happy, depressed, full of dreams, angst and smiles. And a lot of good music!

How could I miss a museum exhibition named after a Sonic Youth album that focuses on the year 1993? NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star has been on at the New Museum for a few months now and I had  wanted to go since it opened but finally made it there last Friday. The exhibition focuses on artwork that was exhibited in 1993, and goes from the 5^th floor all the way down to the ground floor. Outside of my own personal life in 1993 I remember all of the different things that were happening, conflicts in the Middle East and Yugoslavia, AIDS, demonstrations against racism in my home town… 

While walking through the exhibition I felt that I was walking through a moment in time, but also a moment that is still completely relevant today. Politics and culture and history melded together to create sometimes amazing, sometimes shocking, but mainly inspiring pieces of art that still tell stories. I love that they grouped together a wide collection of artwork and artists that define a year, and even the beginning of a decade, but that it is not focused on one group or artists, but more a span of well-known artists, lesser known artists, New York based artists and foreign artists whose work was exhibited in New York in 1993. Altogether it creates an experience of walking through similar ideas and clashing viewpoints, difference, changes, ideas and personal views. I felt like I was walking through a minefield of inspiration, which lead to me being inspired to go back home and pick up everything that I have put aside and finish off what I started, for better or for worse. 

From beauty to pain, via controversy and anger, artists such as Lina Bertucci, Nan Goldin, Nicole Eisenman, Charles Ray, Paul McCarthy, Sean Landers, Gillian Wearing, Pepon Osorio and Larry Clark (among many others) are exhibited. Sculpture, paintings, photography, writing, quotes and collages: all forms of artwork are displayed on all of the floors of the museum. I walked through listening to Nine Inch Nails on my iPod, and felt how perfectly it all worked together, so much that I am still thinking about it today. I love going to museums alone and getting lost in the artwork and in all of the thoughts that it inspires in my own head, and thinking about it for days afterwards. This exhibition is only on until the end of the month, so if you haven’t seen it yet I highly recommend it.

New Museum

Ramblings: The end of 2012 (and the beginning of 2013)

Last night I was lying in bed with the lights out, listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds No More Shall We Part, ready to drift off to sleep when I was suddenly transported back to 2001. Same music, same position, probably even facing the same direction, but thousands of miles apart, in a different country and a different time. It was such a weird feeling, being in two places, two times, all at once, showing me that some things just never really change…

2012 has been an interesting, strange, ultimately good, sometimes bad year, with moments of pure sadness and happiness, moments that I would love to relive and moments I would rather bury deep in the ground and forget forever. Some missteps, many bounds forward, quite a few stumbles and some big tumbles. I feel like I was very diligent in my writing during the first six months of the year, but let it drop to the background due to procrastination, a loss of inspiration and confidence during the last quarter. Although I do find that what I wrote over the summer and the autumn is better than anything I wrote last year. Some of it I am ready to show to others and already have done, other pieces will remain unread by anyone other than myself for a while. I have several different projects in the pipeline for 2013, but they will remain in my head until I feel ready enough to fully complete them. I feel that I have failed in certain ways this year and don’t want these new projects to follow the same trajectory. 

As with my writing, I started 2012 off with many photography projects, and since August haven’t really picked up my camera, let alone taken it out on a tour anywhere. I feel I made great steps forward when I finally managed to fully use the manual settings on my DSLR properly and start experimenting with different shots, but then lost all inspiration again. I took some film, remembered how much I absolutely adored black and white prints, and then lost interest again. I already have different plans for the New Year, and a new lens that will be arriving shortly that will hopefully help mimic my film prints on my DSLR. I am also intent on buying the Fuji camera that I have wanted for over a year now, once I finally save up for it properly. That won’t come until after my holiday in Jamaica though!

This time last year I was completely broke, trying (and failing) to make ends meet and trying to figure out what I actually really wanted to do with myself. Everything sorted itself out brilliantly after several stints working in different places, as I now work at my old job as well as in a restaurant right next door, and feel happy to be at both places. At least now I am financially stable again, although I still need to find a balance between work that pays the rent and everything else I want to do. I need to go back to writing at least 5,000 words a week, instead of less than 1,000. Finish more books again instead of tiring of them after 100 pages. Spending more time at home and being productive rather than on Orchard St getting myself into trouble. Finding my focus again this week after letting it go astray for months has been a complete blessing. Now it’s time to rein it in and wrap it around myself again, never to let it off its leash again.

Friendships come and go over time, but this year has seen the definite end of some and the beginning of others. The sadness from seeing some friends disappear is more than cancelled out by the blossoming of other amazing friendships. In my opinion friendship is never a one way road, it takes time, work, give and take on both sides, and while some people will surprise you with their consistency and love, others disappoint you with their willingness to give up in front of a hurdle that seems a little bit too high to step over. There are times that you need to take a leap to be rewarded, so if you never take it, how on earth are you ever going to really feel happy? Friendships that end are never a one-sided problem, they come from both sides, there aren’t any real right or wrongs, just not enough effort put in and probably not enough love to see it through to the other side. And, in a way, that’s OK. Time goes by, and others are always there, not to replace anyone, because one friend can never replace another, but just to take part of the love that you can no longer give to those who are just not around anymore. I feel like this year I have met some absolutely wonderful people who I can’t imagine my life without anymore. People who make you laugh and who care about you, who motivate you and who have the guts to tell you (kindly) when you are making a mess of things, and vice versa. I cherish these new friendships as much as I cherish the old friendships that are still going strong.

I’m not very good at summing up an entire year in a few words, especially not the last one, and some things are just too personal to post on here. Instead I will just post a few links to blog posts that I feel highlighted certain aspects of it, ups and downs, and leave it at that.

Words:

So much ANGER

Eulogy for my Nana

My right to choose

Ramblings: Siblings

Short Story: Paris and the Garden Gnomes

Short Story/Essay: Paradise Within

Short Story: Wine Days

Short Story: Autumn’s Place

Love Story for Bella

Ramblings: Hurricane Sandy

Ramblings: Inspired by a quotation

Short Story: Of Instability and Growing Roots

Photography:

Words on Walls

Bushwick 2009-2012

Portraits

Back to Film

Photography & Nostalgia – Scanned Pictures 1993 – 2004

And as I can never write a post without some kind of music reference, I will just post a link to a playlist I made for this year. All of the songs except for one were released during the year and all come from albums that helped me get through this year in one piece.

2012 in Music (direct link to Spotify)

Happy New Year! May 2013 be rich in happiness and productivity!

Literature/Poetry: Megan Falley

Poetry and I have a love/hate relationship. There will be days that I will only read poetry, and then I won't read any for months on end. Sometimes even years. I have written my own poetry from the darkest days of my early teenage years, and then of and on in splurts. All of these poems are hidden within journals and books, and sometimes I come across one that I had forgotten I had written, standing out on a page, in my scrawling handwriting. I stare at it with surprise, and then with recognition. Ah yes. You. I remember you.

I've been inspired lately. Not only to compile some of my own poems (more about that another time), but to write poetry again, and especially, to read it. Around the time that all this started again I picked up Megan Falley's After the Witch Hunt at the book store I work at, after one of my colleagues had recommended it to me. I started reading it on the train home, and nearly missed my connection stop. You know that feeling of being punched in the stomach and completely elated at the same time? The feeling of all of your senses buzzing against and with each other, vertigo and stability at once? Yes, that. You can open the book on any page and will probably need to hold your breath while you live through the poem. Live, laugh, cry and breathe against until you start on the next one. Each poem inserts itself into your brain and your heart, melds with your own experiences and life and tells you how it is. Out loud, raw, beautiful, personal but universal all at once. A voice that could be anyone's, but has the talent to create lines of words that are so intensely woven together that it is difficult to pull yourself away and forget what you have just read. I know I sometimes overuse the hyperbole, but, honestly, I am not exaggerating here. Megan Falley is just brilliant. And so inspiring.

I want to post lines from all of the poems in here, but for that you can just head over to Megan's website and/or buy her book. I'll just post some lines from Rain, the ones that I felt touched me the most today.

Give me that stupid, reliable cloud

because it might be the only thing

that never leaves

Because being only happy

is like having just one crayon - 

even if it's the prettiest crayon,

it sure gets boring.

Give me that cloud.

Give me this ache that lets me know

I'm alive.

Megan Falley's website
After the Witch Hunt

Short Story/Essay: Paradise Within

I actually wrote this for something else, in the hopes that it may be published there, but once I had sent it realised that I just wanted to post it on here too. So I waited a while and am just going to post here anyway, while I am sitting in my Mum's house in California on vacation, another spot in this world that I consider as slightly paradisaical in itself... Sunshine, palm trees, pure calm and relaxation, food directly picked from the garden and thrown into a salad or onto the barbeque... The theme I was writing for was Paradise, and this is what I was immediately inspired to write.

Paradise Within

I used to live in Paradise. But before I arrived in Paradise I lived in a place I can only consider as Hell, created by the people living on this planet around me and by the pitfalls of my own mind. I don’t live in Paradise anymore, but I live in a world that I have created for myself, part beauty and part darkness, part love and part evil. I call this my real world, and hope that I was able to bring some of my learnings from Paradise back to this world of mine.

Hell was the place I lived in just after 9/11. Watching the planes crash, the buildings plummet to the ground and imagining the horrific death of all of those people shifted my once idealistic approach of the world to one of terror and doom. How could I make any type of difference against a big machine of war that our planet was gearing up towards? Growing up at the tail end of the Cold War had been bad enough, but the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of nuclear threats gave us all hope that this world could become a better place if we tried. That is, until other forms of terror appeared, from both sides of the spectrum. 9/11, cumulated with the fact that I was writing my MA thesis on Sylvia Plath, led me to believe that Plath had had it all sorted and life under a Bell Jar was the only option for survival.

Hell was being scared to leave the house, panic attacks and acute weight loss, days of not being able to get out of bed, and nights of leaving my phone off the hook to avoid the constant phone calls and messages from my friends, worried why they hadn’t seen me and why I wasn’t out with them. Hell was a constant underlying anxiety of the unknown, and fear of never being able to rid myself of these feelings and feel happy again. Then Hell just became numbness. I came upon a crossroads: either I continued along this road or I chose to make a change, rip myself away from familiarity and throw myself into the unknown, where I would be able to lose myself, and where nobody knew me.

The flight to Paradise was long, and the first few days I was there were ones of complete panic, hidden by my creative ability to appear as calm as possible while my insides were churning. How would I ever be able to communicate with the people when I couldn’t even read their alphabet? Where would I know to stop on the bus in the middle of the desert where everything looks the same and different at the same time? How could I make sure that the food I was eating was really vegetarian? Who could I trust and who should I watch out for? And then I just let go. We humans have many a survival instinct, and I just let mine take over, in essence freeing myself from everything that was holding me back, and opening myself up to a brand new experience that would ultimately change my world.

Paradise was a country built on war, pain, love and passion. A place where the south was mainly desert and the north mainly green, where the sun would beat down on you during the day and the stars would shine brighter than I had ever seen them during the night. Paradise was where I lived among free spirits by the sea, working hard during the day, planting food that would be sold abroad once it was ready, making irrigation pipes for export in the factory, cooking food for over 500 people, serving it up and cleaning up after everyone. Paradise was where we would sit down after work and talk about our lives, a group of people from many different countries and cultures, brought together for different reasons, living together and coping together. No one goes to Paradise without their own personal reasons and expectations, and everyone leaves with some questions answered and new feelings that they never thought existed.

Paradise was the home that I made for myself among these people. Paradise was the ability to be myself and learn that I was a natural leader among others. Paradise helped me discover so many things about myself, helped me discard some of them and cherish others. Paradise taught me that it was OK to love, and that it was OK to get upset. If you don’t talk about what you feel and keep it all bottled up inside, it will only lead to explosion and damage. Paradise was the place where I learned that I could be passionate and that I could believe in a better world. Paradise helped me become the person I am today. I will always remember standing on the beach, with the little waves touching my toes, holding hands with the person I loved and imagining a future that would be full of warmth and sunshine. I let go and at the same time finally let people in.

I always knew Paradise couldn’t last forever, and when I had to leave I had already made up my mind to bring it back with me and plant those roots wherever I ended up. Seven years ago I packed my bags again and went off into the unknown and never left. I knew I had nothing to fear anymore. I planted my little roots here in the city, and let them grow deep. Every time I meet with fear, loneliness, pain and heartbreak I walk to the ocean and wash away the intense need to rip up my roots and run away. I let the ocean remind me of the days I spent in Paradise and the times that I learnt to trust myself and others, and go back to my real world revived and ready to fight any more battles that come my way. Life is a constant challenge and battle between highs and lows, pain and happiness and choices. The important part is to remember to be strong and to find the happy medium between the extremes.

Paradise does exist, and I will always carry a piece of my Paradise around with me, wherever I go. Whatever your paradise is, I promise that you will find it one day, maybe even create it for yourself. I’m happy in my real world nowadays, and always know that I can return to Paradise if I ever need to.