the light returns

Thanksgiving was almost a week ago, and the days following it for the long weekend were days of utter bliss. For hours at a time I did literally nothing, which at the time made me feel a little guilty, but looking back, the idleness equaled precious decompression time. Not at all do I regret the lazy hours spent with my sister on our freshly cleaned red couch, munching on two different types of Trader Joe's cookies, exchanging idle chatter/profound ideas, watching multiple episodes of Breaking Bad, then switching to Jim Jarmusch's 'Dead Man' when I got too stressed out about the former. Interspersed with visits from A, who came back down for a quick Thanksgiving break, as well as a long adventurous bike ride with my sister, it was a satisfying, languid long weekend.

A sorted out this multi-tool (you can see me in the spoon!) that my sister had picked up for me at a flea market over the summer, and now that all the components are unfolded I can clean it up real nicely. I handed him all my recent rock finds and listened intently as he patiently studied and identified them. The two close-ups are a really roughed-up quartz that I found on a hike in Griffith Park, and another dark quartz-ish chunk I found at the construction site in Hollywood. You all probably know this, but the translucent quality of both are the most obvious indicators of the presence of quartz in the rock. I like how they glow when the light hits them.

One more month until the year is over! Let us finish it strong.

trabajo en mi casa

Happy February! I worked from home today. I drank tea from my current favorite vintage pyrex mug/glass (?), wound my perpetual calendar to February (nice clean start), and James brought me lunch when he heard I was nearby (I'm grateful to have awesome considerate friends). I stepped into the backyard and plucked a tangerine from our tree, then went back inside to work some more. Dinner with sister and a trip back to the office and doing a little more work before bed. This is how it should always be, maybe. It's gonna be a busy weekend/week next week, whew...

happy october!

October is off to a busy start indeed! I found this silk maple leaf on the floor at work and brought it home where it now hangs on the living room chandelier - even if the leaves aren't turning colors outside yet there's one that's ready for fall right above me. A long letter stuffed into a pre-paid envelope from 1988 along with additional old stamps was sent out today (I hope it makes it to its destination...) Film, film, film, film, film. How many cameras do I take to New York? Until recently I was only going to bring my Canon Digital Rebel XT, the one I've faithfully been shooting with since 2005, as well as my Nikon FE, which is the one I'm going to use all that film in, but now I'm considering bringing along a Polaroid camera too. Too many cameras for only ten days? I don't know!

thank goodness

Good things equal happiness. Mango lassi, white roses salvaged from the weekly trimmings pile and shoved into a vintage drinking bottle, cheerful sunflowers left over from a Kindergarten art class, and more feathers - a little worse for wear but none the less cherished. I'm nearly finished with my work, it's kind of insane, I'm trying to figure out what I need for New York, and still happy about conversations I had with a cute boy coworker today. I need to take my vitamins and take a shower but there's so much more to do!

all things green and good

'I don't want to leave it, Hana, because what if I don't see it again.'

Frolicking under Taxodia mucronatum, the Montezuma Cypress, which Dan also took a great liking to.

There's a small maze at one end of the Huntington Library - made with earth mounds and carved-out paths and covered with a luxurious growth of St. Augustine. I meant to take a picture of the whole thing but I was the only big person in a flock of tiny little kids and I was too shy to point my camera their way.

23rd adventures

It was my birthday yesterday! My mom and sister surprised me by taking me to lunch at a Japanese Izakaya and at the last minute improvised to include my friend Jon, who was in town to shoot a wedding on Sunday. After lunch Jon and I went to LACMA to see the Tim Burton exhibit. While waiting to be let in we frolicked in the installation of neon-ish yellow tubes (I did a project like this my third year, but shorter, much less elegant and made of hundreds of strands of yarn!) and conversed a little too emphatically in the Ahmanson building (so much that we kind of got busted by a guard who demanded to see our tickets - we got out of that in a fit of giggles). The Tim Burton exhibit was good but I thought poorly curated/planned, although it was great to see his old Polaroid prints, the Edward Scissorhands costume, his design for the city of Burbank's trash collection, etc. After that we decided to see more art at the Norton Simon museum, where we got to see 'Woman With A Lute' on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art! The only Vermeer on the west coast, cool! And we were definitely not allowed to take pictures of it. We hung out in the garden right before it closed, then parted ways. Pizza party dinner and a tiny red velvet cake, then driving out to a friend's party where I could see city lights below the hill, sharing a hot potato baked in foil with my sister and washing it down with two beers, coming home and sobering up with a book and falling asleep to the nicest texts ever.

midnight at the gamble house

For any other Southern Californians, have you visited the Gamble House in Pasadena? I am ashamed to admit that for all my life I'd always passed by but never set foot in the famous Greene & Greene home but last night the two USC scholars-in-residence from my year threw a goodbye party there, so I finally got to check it out! We got a special nighttime tour of the house, which is why my photos are not beautiful (the lights are all 18W bulbs! how it used to be back in 1908), and it was so much fun! Such a memorable and special way to start my birthday!

tent for one.

I took a nap under this ridiculous, crazy citrus-patterned blanket (that I plan to steal from my mom some day)... and having felt a bit blue all day, realized that underneath said blanket everything became sunny and beautiful, like an extreme set of rose-colored (sunshine > roses) glasses. Now to construct a tent to house more than one person for this purpose...

my first 'camera'

This is the 1988 Fisher Price 'Crazy Camera.' I believe this was a hand-me-down from some of my cousins and the fact that it is the same age as me blows my mind. This thing has the works - a sweet flash, a film advance knob and shutter and four filter colors (plus a regular clear setting) and other crazy effect filters like a kaleidoscope effect, an extra-wide stretch effect, a split and a triple. I would entertain myself for whole afternoons with this, pretending to take pictures of my mom cooking dinner or my sister playing with toys on the living room floor. I remember I couldn't wait until I had my own camera, but until then I made do with the pictures I had to take with my imagination. This is one of a small handful of remaining childhood relics I have and stupidly, sentimentally I don't see myself parting with it. It sits on top of a shelf that displays all my cameras, along with a framed picture of my pop, and though I don't consider myself a photographer of great caliber, it is very special to me, a reminder of imaginative and unfettered days.

wurstkuche with steph

Steph flew out to L.A. from New York and is here for a little over a week and I got to spend the day with her today! Everything, meaning the-way-we-usually-do-things was slightly reversed - while in the past she often took us to our destinations (school, Disneyland, Sonic, Samy's), today I decided to drive! And back when she was still in L.A. she always showed me goood places to eat/shop/visit but today when she expressed no preference for lunch I took us to Wurstkuche. Steph got the duck & bacon sausage and I got the buffalo... and we snarfed them up with some fries. Steph bought the ridiculous box of water and upon drinking it she said un-ironically and with an air of surprise, "Well it doesn't taste any different..." to which I just guffawed out loud & said something silly about brilliant marketing. She then went to tell me how the water in New York tastes pretty good and I became so obsessed with that idea that she said "I'll bottle some and send it to you" but I told her no, this gives me another good reason to come visit you there! Then we went searching for the L.A. Gun Club which we will visit before she leaves next week (!!!), went to a small coffee shop in South Pas where we talked about movies and spent a lot of time laughing, and it made me happy to goof around and enjoy life with a good old friend whom I hadn't seen in half a year.

pleasing distractions

Found an old Polaroid Spectra for ten bucks at the Rose Bowl last Sunday, and I ordered a pack of Softtone film to try it out. The camera smells like stale cigarettes every time I open it but works like a charm otherwise and I am in love with the wider format of the final picture. This could begin the grounds of justifying the purchase of a Fuji Instax now...! Now I just need a couple hundred dollars to blow on film, a car and lots of gas and a companion or two to take on a road trip. hmmm...

what's keeping me going

It's been rough around these here parts, but I've compiled a haphazard list of things that are keeping my chin up:

- swimming.
- snuggling with my stuffed friend, Foxy.
- heart-to-hearts/rants with my sister.
- reading the webcomic Questionable Content from strip 1 on!
- driving & listening to awesome awesome tunes on 100.3 The Sound.
- listening to music by my good friend Joe Gil.
- catching up on a hike and a drive with an old friend.
- finally getting my shit together, slowly but surely.