between where I'm going & where I've been

Photographer. Writer. Occasional Actress. Insta-Musings. 365ish. Lover of music and mismatched shoes. Always in Pursuit of you.

[myfavoritealias]

For the last decade, I have been a thriving woman living in Los Angeles. Every day I woke up with zeal, ready to explore different avenues and create art based on what I saw, always up for the challenge of trying something new. Until one day, a pandemic struck, leaving my various sources of income unviable. Because of that, I put my résumé up, crossed my fingers and started job hunting, but a largely varied job history and no in person interviews (which I typically excel at) meant I wasn’t even getting past the first stage to a callback. It was a tough time, reevaluating everything I had spent over 10 years cultivating. I felt like a failure. Because of that, I fell into a state of worry. I spent a couple of days, a week, a month in this state, hoping for a lifeline, before I decided to take my fate back into my own hands. I went on a search for a new career, something varied and fun like I am used to, but with more stability. I took personality tests, asked my close friends, even consulted something called my “natal chart” in an effort to exhaust all resources Google provided me. I looked for industries that were growing, and jobs that would stretch both my creative and analytical muscles, and I found digital marketing, a mixture of analytics, creativity, and psychology, all things I am interested in. Ever since then, I’m hopeful for the future and excited about what is to come.

[explodingdog]

[myfavoritealias]

🌳

[myfavoritealias]

you were always distant; I’d often sit and wonder what you were focusing on —

did you ever really see me clearly at all? I get it, honestly; it’s hard to focus when you’re surrounded by majesty. how could I even start to compete?

I wondered and I wandered so much I washed myself out —

finally content to be constantly out of focus when you’re around.

Photo of me by Stephen Borasch

[myfavoritealias]

Another city, another water tower with an old slogan painted over,

replaced with something trying too hard to resonate

But the city’s shrinking and there’s barely anyone driving through anymore to be captivated by the words. They respond with more exclamation marks and deepening desperation — just the kinds of things guaranteed to run people off.

We’ve been driving north for awhile now, but I haven’t noticed the time pass; it’s the change in the trees that we pass in rows that give it away. They add insulation as we chase lower temperatures. Eventually I know some will have to abandon the mission and instead drop it all and learn how to live exposed through the winter. I feel deciduous in that way - I look at the others around me, able to exist with their coats on, comfortably covered, revealing themselves only those they let get close enough. I never had the ability to keep it together; I’ve always been vulnerable. Some trees are just made that way, I guess. They all still grow, and so I make up my mind to trust that I will, too. 🍂

[myfavoritealias]

Phases

[myfavoritealias]

[myfavoritealias]

[myfavoritealias]

Happy Halloween

Fight off your demons.

Photo by @mikedempsey

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Odysseus Elytis, tr. by Olga Broumas & T. Begley, from “Maria Nephele,” wr. c. August 1963

[myfavoritealias]

A poem about a childhood memory. Sometimes you learn things from people who aren’t supposed to be teaching you those lessons.

[myfavoritealias]

Write Everyday.

[myfavoritealias]

My recent abundant consumption of e.e. cummings poetry h

as o n l y

increased.

My irreverence;

For punct.un.ation

(

not to mention:

Grammar)

[evokesart]

Jean-Michel Basquiat - Pegasus, 1987

[myfavoritealias]

The first time I saw a piece of that felt like home; it was this one.

[anancientheart]

“I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny they are small, and the fountain is in France where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. you used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you knew famous artists and most of them were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’s all right, go ahead, enter their lives, I’m not jealous because we’ve never met. we got close once in New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never touched. so you went with the famous and wrote about the famous, and, of course, what you found out is that the famous are worried about their fame – not the beautiful young girl in bed with them, who gives them that, and then awakens in the morning to write upper case poems about ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ve told us, but listening to you I wasn’t sure. maybe it was the upper case. you were one of the best female poets and I told the publishers, editors, "print her, print her, she’s mad but she’s magic. there’s no lie in her fire.” I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn’t happen. your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn’t help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide 3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you I would probably have been unfair to you or you to me. it was best like this.“

Charles Bukowski, an almost made up poem

[myfavoritealias]

People love to take you out of context;

Twist and mold and push and

Make you be what they want you to be.

I know;

Because they do the same to me.

[myfavoritealias]

🏋🏼‍♀️

[myfavoritealias]

[stufftoseeorhear]