fumbling

I Netflixed a good movie recently- Joyeux Noel, or Merry Christmas in the English-subtitled version. Which is not to say other films I've seen aren't worth noting, of course, just ruminating on this one....

The film, which, though dramatic and sad, was also thoughtful, and was a selection at Cannes. It's about the common experiences of those fighting against eachother in WWI, and it was one of those examples of an instance when I am reminded of how we are all limited in our understanding of humanity by our individual experiences. Sounds esoteric, yeah, but time and distance prevent us from grasping the meaning of being a human during World War One, or in struggling Bangladesh, or during the middle ages. Our identities and experiences are all significantly defined by when and where we happen to begin our lives. There are billions of us here on earth now, all alive for the first time and learning how to be human and interact with eachother, and no matter what the human race experiences over its history, we will never inherit any type of inherent understanding of the "human condition." We are all, as people, going through life for the first time, and no matter how much reading, learning, and thinking we do, we are still limited to our own personal experience of humanity and the world. Perhaps that explains why we're not rid of racism, or war, or other crimes people commit against eachother.

An uplifting holiday message, I know: just something I'm chewing on.

bad drunken haiku

Christmas vacation
plus many mixed drinks equals
entire Cheetos bag

Not Dreaming

Seattle is known as rainy for a reason. When we have precipitation it's rarely in gaseous or frozen form.

This morning, after being harassed out of my warm bed by my mother for presents and pastries, I sat wrapped in a quilt on the braid rug next to the tree. After opening up tens of tiny, lovingly wrapped-and-ribboned stocking stuffers, I reached for one of her gifts to me (which, I was about to find out, was a "Big Ball of Guilt- because passing on guilt to others shows you care!" - such an appropriate gift from my mother), and I glanced out the tall farmhouse windows to see the air thick with giant snowflakes, dramatically silhouetted against the firs at woods' edge. Now, we get snow a couple times a year in the Northwest, but it's usually odd timing, like November or March. We don't really consider "white christmases" as even being an option. But it was like the land of the Sugar Plum Fairies right then, as I hadn't been paying attention to weather forecasts and the flakes took me entirely by surprise, and I was far from the city at the family farmhouse. To be drinking coffee under a blanket on Christmas morning while it snowed (and stuck!) was more than a girl from the temperate rainforest would think to ask, but it was the perfect gift. The atmosphere was mute, as it is when the clouds blanket from above, and the snow insulates below. With the woods at the perimeter, and the little farmhouse in the field without context or sound from the world beyond, it was like being in your own Christmas snowglobe. As stereotyped and cliche that may sound, it was lovely.

As a scene in a snowglobe is temporal, and the flakes settle quickly, so was our Christmas dusting. A few hours later the falling snow turned to slush, and ate holes through the white carpet over the grass until it was gone. But it left a good imprint on the day of presents, when people all over were turning from the unwrapping of their computer games, foot massagers, and cordless drills toward the window to enjoy the pure surprise together. It's a present you that you can't custom-order, and don't mind sharing... way cool.

Do you ever wonder...

Sometimes when I'm in public places, like sitting among others on the bus, I wonder what their stories are. Where are they coming from, what is their house like? What time do they get up in the morning? A lot of times I like to think about all the people in my vicinity, in the city, and how we are all buzzing around eachother closely within the urban grid, accomplishing things in our own little worlds, with very little interaction. I wonder, if I could float above and watch people moving through the city, where would they be coming from, and heading? I'd like to tie never-ending ribbons to everyone's belt loops, attaching the spool to their bedpost in the morning, and be able to see their paths throughout the day. It could be beautiful, all these streamers fluttering about. Though then we'd have to have special slits made in our jackets.... Sometimes I also think it would be interesting to hover over an apartment building, or an office tower, and peel away the skin of the structure to see the people going about their day, having perfectly mundane, private moments, watching The Price is Right, making soup, or checking their personal email and bidding on eBay in the middle of the workday- these very isolated, independent existences within very close proximity.

Maybe that sounds like Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts", or Mary-Catherine Gallagher from Saturday Night Live, but oh well, if I'm outed for being a weirdo, so be it. I'm not sure if I haven't been outed already.

Reunion

I've been able to spend time with friends I grew up and went to high school with lately, after all having been off doing our own things in different places during college and after. There's something lovely and refreshing about getting together with these people you've known so long, and can feel at ease with; after the awkwardness of adolescence, and any pretenses of college, people seem to be settling into themselves, finding who they really want to be and what they want to do (at least for now). I went back to my hometown to see my high-school choir's annual winter concert for the first time since my freshman year in college, and the stars aligned so that a few alumni from our year had a bit of a reunion. There were all sorts of hilarious extraneous characters from our choir and high school career, also, but seeing these people, with whom you were very close to as different, more awkward and higher-energy versions of yourself, was really rewarding. Lately I've been through a lot of change, and have been ready to embrace more change in my life (which, if you know me, may seem out of character), but this was a reminder of how important, at least to me, balancing the new/fresh/exciting with the classic, comfortable and true things and people in your life, is. So to those I may have fallen out of contact with over the years....

Here We Go

As a child, I was the kid who dreaded receiving journals as gifts. I always liked them as objects, as I liked books- pretty, new cover, soft, smooth pages to touch. I admired their purpose, that of imprinting images of the mind into a medium where they could be kept for reference; it seemed noble, and important. But unlike my beloved books, their identity was nebulous- no beginning, middle, or end, and no inherent entertainment value, just seemingly unending space demanding that you find the correct things to fill up the lines. The perfectionist in me dreaded unwrapping the little book, so pure and new with a soft-looking white bunny on the cover, a spine that made little cracking noises when opened for the first time, and pale pink sheets with lines that morphed into tendrils at the beginning and end of each page. I knew, at that moment my ears heard the cracking, and I took the cap off the pen, that this pure thing was only going to be marred by my gawky handwriting and rambling thoughts. It's all downhill from the moment you slice open the wrapper.

And thus is an early example of my mind's career in worry and self-deprecation. I would never say that thoughtfulness and consideration have not been good qualities to have, as I stand by their importance to humanity, but in extremes they can eat away at spirit and ambition like global warming to an igloo. I was the one who filled a few hours and an equal amount of pages of attempts in that journal, was unimpressed by her tone of writing and inconsistency of penmanship, and became uninterested in her failed attempt to capture thoughts and meaning in her life. No more pages were filled, and the journal went into a shoebox.

Perhaps it is this type of recognition of the importance of aesthetics and context that sent me to be a designer, and want to create things that were real, and physical in their meaning. I always have liked words and language, however. A creative spirit, I tested the waters of words after spelling bees by going to young writers' workshops when I was in elementary school, then writing extensive puppet-show plays of books in middle school, and finally taking creative writing and poetry courses in high school, and eventually, college. Somewhere in high school, thanks to patient and inspiring teachers, I started developing a voice in my writing that I could begin to embrace, and I wrote with less hesitance, and cringed less when someone read my words. Always searching for the correct description to evoke a thought or feeling, I vascillate between looking for the perfect words and combining a string of them in hopes that something will elicit the correct response. For me, language can be the yin to design's yang; where design shows you exactly what is and how it works, how it makes you feel, illiciting feelings externally, language describes what could be and shows what cannot be seen or touched, bringing feeling from an amorphous, internal place.

As someone who spends more time with the art of design and aesthetics, the lingual and literary part of me seems to ask the rest of me, "when is it my turn?" Do I look to find a niche in my field where I can write and use words in design? As language, like design, is an art, they both serve to invoke emotion, and elicit feeling, and can work to strengthen eachother, as an art history lecture and textbook is essential to a well-rounded degree in sculpture. However, I personally struggle with where and when I will inject words into my creativity...will it take a shift of focus within my career, or should I look to picking up a separate pursuit, such as delving into short fiction or poetry again? Should good conversations and correspondence be quenching my pursuit of verbal communication? I recently wrote a narrative for a design that took the form of a children's book, and I thought, I could get back into writing. The girl who once idealized words to the point of fear, of publicly drowning in a sea of verbal self-humiliation, would like to get her toes wet again.

We'll see how it goes. Hopefully this time I might get more than a few days in on these pages.