A Reminder

Realizing that nearly everyone I’ve talked to this week is at a crossroads.

Not sure if it’s just now.

Or if it’s just always.

Oddly comforting.

Three sets of my friends who’ve never met before.

My worlds colliding in New York.

Golden people like these… are golden.

:)

(Taken with Instagram at Ace Hotel)

all we see is the sea.

↵ Reblogged from sometimesatourist

Played 30 times

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

A track I’ve had on repeat the days leading up to my trip to NYC and still on heavy rotation now that I’m here. Walking around. Doing my thing.

I had been thinking about social, online connectivity all week before I left Berlin. The pros. The cons.

I decided after I landed here in NYC that I’d take a bit of a break from the social networking “usual suspects” of Facebook and Twitter and focus on spending time catching up with the friends here I haven’t seen in awhile and also clear my head. I think that like so many other people, I get lost into thinking that the photos and virtual updates of various friends in my life are a way to really connect or understand what’s going on in their lives no matter how geographically near or far. And vice-versa, that my updates or online habits and quick virtual actions are a way to know what’s really happening with me.

But of course, it is all rarely the case.

Beyond sharing a link or an article, it is sometimes a lazy and numbing way to make assumptions about the awesome and honest happenings of actual life and forget to really connect. Even when we are at home. You know, like IRL. :)

So now I’m gonna take my social networking break a bit further and extend it to every other service and site while I’m here and see how it feels to just think and walk and write and listen and catch up. Maybe this will become a longer-term trend. Easing back a bit in general, who knows. Sounds easy but for someone who is fairly social and loves to share, I bet it will be a challenge, hence this post. :P

Maybe it took the NYC streets and good hip-hop in the ears to remind me how rad is it to just think and be present. I mean, I figured this out a long time ago - I have spent and continue to spend plenty of time alone, just existing and wandering around - but somehow, I so easily forget…and sometimes I also feel judged.

So I leave it with this track. So good! Bob your head and take a walk and look up:

“Brooklyn you crazy. Look how you made me, razor blades in my mouth walk around behaving all demented.

Black hoodies and timberlanded. Always scheming, ‘You see the gleam on that n*ggas pendent?’

Hello Brooklyn, you bad influence look what you had me doing but I ain’t mad at you.

Look at my attitude. It says my life’s too real. Check out my ice grill. Baby I’m cold as ice like I’m from Brownsville.”

@Nat_s left me her cute little Chelsea studio for some days. Perfect for coffee in bed and solo hang out time. :) (Taken with Instagram at Natalie’s Cute Studio )

# Google Creative Lab

These are all so great. Click through and take a look.

valdean:

Photos of Brookyln from the summer of 1974

↵ Reblogged from valdean

“I know you’ve supported me for a long time.
Somehow I’m not impressed.”

# NYC

# Interpol

# Turn On The Bright Lights

Hindsight.

(via Igor)

About four times a year I fall (back) in love with Dave Eggers.

I lived in San Francisco for three years but I’ve only been to 826 Valencia twice. The first time I went, he was the one who sold me the pirate gear I bought. I was in awe of what he described was behind the register.

His TED talk above speaks to the importance of that store and what was behind that register. And to the importance of similar stores, the writers they might produce, their teachers and their readers.

—-

YSKOV was the first novel of his that I completed. I found it in my trunk in 2008 after an ex-boyfriend left it there a year earlier. I took it to Dolores Park in San Francisco that day and finished it a year later at a cafe in Prague. Every time I picked it up again, I laughed so hard I cried.

I started AHWOSG in Croatia in and finished it a week later in Italy.

I started WITW in New York City. I’m still getting through it.

I just started HWAH in Berlin. I’m still getting through it.

I saw Away We Go in a theater in NYC. It’s nice. I even cried a lot.

And I read McSweeney’s almost daily. Thanks to another ex-boyfriend in London, I started with that, years before any of his books.

Ex-boyfriends are good for something. :)

Dave Eggers is just plain good.

“The day Obama got into office rap was less important, because Obama gave kids an alternative. But will rap ever go away? No. There will always be a need for poets.”

Interesting read on Jay-Z found over at The Guardian.

“The day Obama got into office rap was less important, because Obama gave kids an alternative. But will rap ever go away? No. There will always be a need for poets.”

Interesting read on Jay-Z found over at The Guardian.

An afternoon at my friend Matt’s house meant packing up all of my belongings that have been here since I moved to Berlin in April and moving them to a storage facility for awhile longer. But the dates of these items go back much further than April 2010. I managed to dig up a high school yearbook from 1997 and international travel journals throughout the 2000s from various other places I’ve lived, including South Africa, South Korea, Vietnam, London as well as random excursions in between.

Among the rest, I quickly snagged photos of these items:

A few of my lonely 70 or so books: these being some of the basics around political economy, development and geopolitics in Africa.
My Masters Thesis entitled “Rolling Back the State? The Paradox of Structural Adjustment in Mozambique”
The iBook G4 I used to write that and other papers during graduate school in London.
A 19th Birthday present from my first boyfriend: an alabaster jewelry box with a cute message inside.

I don’t mind my mobility right now. But I will in the near future. And that’s why I’m still holding onto this stuff, for wherever I end up staying…