POV: Pursuits.

I met my fiance, Rob, on a blind date—or, I suppose, as close to blind as you can get these days. Leading up to our meeting, my sister-in-law, the one responsible for our meeting, filled me in on a few key details: “He’s tall,” she said. “He’s funny. And he has a clean apartment.” Aside from that, I also knew that he was a violinist and that he loved wine. My sister-in-law had written an article that revealed the lengths he’d gone to properly store it in his apartment, including taping down the lights in his refrigerator, and investing in a device outfitted with a surgical-grade needle that allows wine drinkers to taste sips from an aging bottle without removing the cork.

“I hear you like wine,” I said at some point on our date, prepared to confess how little I knew on the subject, and that whenever I’d ordered a glass in the past, I’d made my choice based on which had the easiest name to pronounce.

“We don’t have to talk about stupid wine,” he said. It’s a line we repeat often—usually just before talking about wine—and laugh.

Cirera + Espinet on Clever.

I recently had the pleasure of writing about this 540 square-foot bachelor pad in Barcelona, which features red marble countertops, dark green micro-cement floors, and terracotta velvet curtains instead of doors. Designed by local firm Cirera + Espinet, the apartment is full of unique solutions to a host of common small-space conundrums: cramped corners, lack of light, inadequate storage. What I love most about it, though, is that despite its bright colors (and all that luxurious velvet), it's a space that somehow still manages to feel minimal. “We wanted to create a multifunctional apartment,” the designers say, “that was daring and simple at the same time.”

Read more on Clever. Photos by Enric Badrinas.

Recommended Reading / 64.

From the New York Times: a 2016 interview with Jenny Slate, who talks about her love of tiny wooden animals, which she keeps around her house (and occasionally in her purse). This caught my attention, as someone who has a few of the very same wooden creatures scattered around my apartment: a cat on the bookshelf, an orange fox near the sugar bowl, a moose in the closet. Says the comedian, "I love having a little secret that doesn’t hurt anybody and that’s a reassertion of myself. I tend to be calm and happy when I’m looking at things like this rabbit, which remind me of when I was younger and only knew how to be myself." Read the interview in its entirety, here.

Three more, just because: 
-In Sweden: real homes become museums for a day.
-"I hate slick and pretty things."
-While not technically a "read," this episode of the podcast Song Exploder—which features the story behind a song by the South African singer Nakhane—is full of beautiful words. I've listened to the episode twice, and have had the song, "New Brighton," on repeat for days.

More recommended reads, here. Wishing you a wonderful Monday.

POV: Presence.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV focuses on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories.

I tried acupuncture for the first time recently, spending an hour in a brightly-lit office, discussing sleep and stress levels and the color of my tongue; then, another 30 minutes on a bed in a dark room, my body a constellation of thread-thin needles. A tiny lamp, burning orange, shone on my toes.

As the pins went in, I recounted past needle encounters gone wrong, and my unfortunate tendency to faint post-puncture. “Meditate,” said the doctor, most certainly reading my mind. “Your thoughts may drift, but just remember to breathe.” An assistant switched off the foot warmer, draped me in a blanket, and shut the door.

Dutifully, I focused on my breath. But not a minute passed before I was trying to figure out what time it must be, picturing the clock on the door counting down the seconds. I thought about the 78-degree weather in the next day’s forecast and the final sentence of a freelance assignment due that week. I wondered whether paper invitations were a worthwhile wedding expense. I studied a vent in the corner of the ceiling and asked myself what would happen to the needles in my legs if I went to sleep and let them fall slack.

The assistant reappeared. “That was 30 minutes?” I asked. She told me that it had in fact been a little longer, then set to work removing the pins. The light was back on, buzzing.

—

One of my earliest memories is being picked up at nursery school, and telling my dad I hadn’t slept at naptime. “I was thinking instead,” I said. “What about?” he asked. “Wars,” I answered. “And hospitals.”

Later, when I was a little older, I remember going on field trips with my elementary school classes—sitting in plays, wandering museums, shuffling single-file through the kitchen of the local bagel shop—and using the time to daydream. If something didn’t hold my attention, there was a never-ending queue of other things to think about.

Many years later, my ability to focus has improved. But there are moments—regularly, every day—when I find I’ve tuned out what’s in front of me. A stranger at a dinner party may be talking and I’ll come to the terrifying realization that I haven’t heard a word they’ve said. Reading on the subway, I’ll reach the end of a news article having read the first line but skipped over everything else. Sometimes, still, I daydream through plays and movies, absorbing nothing of them.

Of course, there’s nothing special about this. Everyone gets distracted; it’s healthy—and healing—to daydream. But I notice these small daily allowances now more than ever—now, when it feels imperative to stay awake, to hear others, to read the words and understand the full story. It’s made me realize how easy it is to drop out of the present. To find a way out of engaging with what isn’t easy or immediately attention-grabbing. To miss things completely: strings of words, entire stories, precious opportunities to lie down and breathe deeply.

—

My fiance, Rob, and I took a trip to Aarhus, Denmark last year, arriving on a Sunday in mid-November. The day and a half prior had been frenzied. A nine-hour delay out of New York, a whirlwind stop in Oslo, and a mishmash of wintry weather made for a weekend that seemed to represent a microcosm of the year leading up to it—exhausting, full of joys and frustrations, and over in an instant. The first day, I barely left our hotel room. On the morning of the second, I went for a walk alone while Rob, a musician, rehearsed for a symphony performance at a nearby concert hall.

With no international phone plan, there were no calls to take, no texts to write, no breaking news to read. Instead I hobbled on cobblestones, drank three cups of coffee in three different coffee shops, and met the people who made them. I ate the world’s best lunch—crumbly, caramel-y cheese on the densest, stickiest bread imaginable—plucking the crusts from the plate as the waiter came to retrieve it: “Wait! I’ll take those with me.” I read a book. I thought of things to write about. (In fact, I planned to write this piece there, and then, as always, the time flew.)

Later in the afternoon, I slipped into the concert hall to watch the last hour of rehearsal. I felt a very particular kind of happy, awake to my senses and a little overwhelmed. I’d feel the same way months later in New Orleans, licking sugar off my fingers to the tune of a lone trumpet, and again, more recently, catching up with a crowd of familiar faces in the sunlight at a friend’s art opening. But in that moment, in Aarhus, none of this had happened yet. There was only this humming hall and its glowing, wood-paneled walls.

The symphony was playing sections of the same piece over and over with Rob conducting, standing on his toes in polka-dotted socks.

When I was younger, ignorant to the bliss of music without words, I might have daydreamed it all away. Now, alone in the audience, I was convinced I could hear every note.

—

You can find my previous POV entries, here. Thank you so much for reading.

Many Voices.

In belated celebration of International Women's Day (but also because it's never the wrong time to recognize creative women), here are snippets from conversations with five inspiring artists I've been lucky enough to interview.

1) Arpana Rayamajhi, Jewelry Designer, New York City

Photo by Anna Rose

For The Weekender (translated to German): “I’ve always made things, and ultimately, the reason I do what I do hasn’t changed. It’s just that the language I use to talk about it has gotten a little more sophisticated. When I was younger, I would say, ‘I do this because I love it.’ Now it’s, ‘This is a medium for me to connect with myself and the world.’ In ten years it could be something completely different.”

2) Nicole Katz, Director of Paper Chase Press, Los Angeles

For Sight Unseen: "Being a manufacturer in California is important to us, now more than ever. We live in a state that’s approaching a $15 minimum wage, has some of the most stringent environmental and labor laws in the country, and supports a huge immigrant population—my family included. These are values we care about and that we live by."

3) Carla Fernández, Fashion Designer, Mexico City

Photo by Ana Hop 

For Freunde von Freunden: "We want to prevent the extinction of Mexican crafts. My clothing is very fashion-forward but if you look at how it’s made, you’ll understand that it has traditional roots. I’m always thinking, how can we allow these people, who do such amazing work with their hands, to keep their skills?"

4) Megan Eaton Griswold, Owner of Little Moving Spaces, Jackson, WY

Photo by Jenny Pfeiffer

For Architectural Digest: "I wanted to make something small and affordable, yet give it a style we hadn’t seen in a yurt before." (Griswold on her Wyoming yurt, which boasts "the lattice structure and mobility of its traditional Mongolian counterpart, but also a porcelain stove, Michael Anastassiades lighting, and a kitchen built using 800 pounds of Carrara marble hauled in by sled on a trail she forged herself.")

5) Carly Jo Morgan, Furniture Designer, Los Angeles

Photo via the artist's website

For Sight Unseen: "I spent most of my life identifying more with men, which I grew to realize was more out of my own insecurities. Something has softened in me, especially since becoming a mother, and now strong, inspiring women are flowing into all aspects of my life. The sisterhood is deep."

Many thanks to these women, and all the many others I've had the pleasure of interviewing over the last few years—your stories continue to inspire me.

All Day Drifting.

I’ve been trying for weeks now to write something on the subject of paying attention (and trying, also, not to let those weeks turn into months). For that reason, I was all the more charmed to come across Accidental Haiku, a 2009 project by artist Lenka Clayton that’s a true testament to the value of looking closely.

Outlined here, the project features pages from an anonymous diary written in the 70s, in which Clayton found several instances of unintentional haiku (rules of the form include the “use of three [or fewer] lines of 17 or fewer syllables” and a seasonal reference).

This isn’t the first time something like this has caught my eye (see: the spines of books, Google autocomplete, Times Haiku), but I’m grateful for the timing of this particular find—and the happy reminder that there’s poetry to be found everywhere, even in basements that need cleaning, in trips to the hairdresser, in snow on just another winter day.

More art in the everyday:
-Leeks / love
-Coincidental captures 

See more from Lenka Clayton, here.

Moon Lists.

The holiday rush now behind me, I've realized that again, several weeks have passed in a flash. I spent most of the last four with my family in California, doing everything we typically do this time of year: watch home videos; rummage through boxes of old photos; indulge in our signature rotation of classic Christmas meals and my mom's virtuosic Japanese dinners, which feature dozens of familiar dishes she (and we) grew up eating. Around the holidays, as always, there's so much of the past present.

2017, as I mentioned here, passed in a blur. This year, I'm making it a goal to focus attention on paying attention—and I'm very happy to have found inspiration in Moon Lists, a site created by writer, editor, and fellow FvF contributor Leigh Patterson. Inspired by a project by photographer Sam Abell, Leigh asks three women every month to reflect on the past 30 days with a short series of questions.

I've particularly liked entries from other writers, like Stephanie Madewell, whose experience of nature last April was punctuated with birdsong:

"...the staccato hops of a woodpecker moving deliberately up and down the trunk of the cedar tree; a swallow flying across the sky, wings out, then in, a swift and joyful looping like writing in cursive with a calligrapher’s pen; the racket of wings from a pair of doves kicked up from the brush; songs and calls in the trees, more and more all the time."

Or Marion Seury of Paris, who stumbled on a breathtaking read in June:

"...someone forgot the book 'à ce soir' by writer/journalist laure adler at my place. she is a marguerite duras specialist and you can feel an influence on her writing i think. a very personal and emotional book. I read it straight. It shook my heart."

Or Su Wu of Mexico City, who received a thrilling call in May:

"I’m pregnant, my best friend said into the phone without hello, and I yelled, holy fuck, on the street in another country. Some guy turned, rushed over and asked, are you okay?, and it was a new kind of joy for me, a whole joy running headlong into kindness, and I said, I’m okay, and really, more than ever this month, I was."

Each year seems to pass quicker than the last. It's easy to forget what happened a week ago, or three months ago, or twelve. I don't like the idea of holding on to the past, but I do like the idea of finding ways to preserve the moments, images, tastes, sounds, smells, and interactions that are the tiles in a year's mosaic—and that make reflecting on the past an act of staying alert, awake, aware.

This makes me think of something my dad wrote the day after drinking a 75-year-old wine in honor of his 75th birthday: "It took me back. And forward."

---
Find all of Leigh Patterson's Moon Lists (including those excerpted above in their entirety), here. Photo by Emily Johnston.

POV: Return.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV focuses on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories.

I got lost on election night, sometime between 11 and 12, before the results were posted. I was heading home from a friend’s apartment only a few blocks from mine, empty-handed—I’d brought wine, cheese, a box of chocolate cake mix but left it all behind in various states of destruction. It was cold and mind-bogglingly quiet save for the rattle of a beer can tumbleweed. In the dark, I considered prayer. I wracked my brain for mantras. I reminded myself of my insistent, if ill-defined, belief in magic. I traveled four blocks before realizing I was walking in the wrong direction.

—

I posted to this blog the day after; then not a single time again until today. To say that I was at a loss for words wouldn’t be quite right—it was more like a significant loss of focus. Truth be told, there were a number of things in the past twelve months that contributed to my absence here: changes in work, a transition to a new neighborhood, the blossoming of a happy relationship, travel, new friends.

But there was something else, too. I suddenly had a lot of questions. At first, post-election, I wondered if I had the skills—and the smarts—to be a useful member of what suddenly felt like a very different world. I wondered how to ask the right questions, do the right reading, respond effectively. Mostly, I wondered about how best to use my time—and ironically, a lot of time passed as I thought about that.

In the meantime, there were jobs to do, friends to see, a partner I fiercely wanted to stay present for. And still more questions arose: Was it possible to balance the personal, professional, and political, and still have time to myself—to write, to reflect, to rest, to do nothing? To give these kinds of big questions the space and attention required for them not to remain just questions?

Days, weeks, months flew by. Somehow—in a haze of city traffic, airplane flights, news headlines, deadlines—a year passed.

I had no plans not to post here, or to disappear without saying anything (I apologize for that!). I always assumed I’d write something tomorrow. Or the next day, or the day after that.

I’m still asking myself many of the same questions. But I’ve liked the process of working out the skills needed to answer them. I’ve learned that different times require different things—different ways of thinking, doing, asking. So that we can continue to grow. Meet new challenges. Equip ourselves to live the kinds of lives we find ourselves living.

—

One gray October afternoon, I sat with Emily in the living room of her rented upstate farmhouse and watched her build a fire—a skill, having only known her as a city dweller, I wasn’t aware she possessed. Crouched at the hearth in this drafty house, she told me it was something she’d learned out of necessity and had grown better at with practice. I watched as she layered wood and paper, erecting a structure that looked a lot like the “houses” I built from leaves and sticks when I was little, anxious to attract the sorts of small animals that lived nowhere near Los Angeles: hedgehogs, chipmunks, prairie dogs.

I remembered something else from that era of my life, too. It was the feeling of seeing fire, wondering what it was and deciding that it existed only in the realm of magic. If I’m being honest, as an adult—with limited knowledge of science, in a city apartment far from the wilderness—it still does. It’s a skill that’s always struck me as otherworldly—and yet here was my friend, blowing air through her fingers, building fire slowly, the room growing brighter with every breath.

—

You can find my previous POV entries, here.

To whoever is still out there—thank you so much for reading! I’m sorry, again, for disappearing without explanation for such a long time. Starting after Thanksgiving, I plan to post more often—perhaps not every day, but a few times per month. I'm so grateful to the community I’ve found and connected with here. Thank you for your time, and your notes and emails over the past few months! I’m so glad to be back.

Truth / Love.

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here's how to make a difference.

Seeing Double.

I last wrote about French curator Sandrine Kerfante—whose blog, Twin-Niwt, explores themes of symmetry and twinned identities—three years ago. Last week, I received an email from her announcing the release of a book of images based on her finds. (Chronicle Books says that it's just right for friends "who feel as close as sisters, actual sisters who feel as close as twins, and actual twins who will see their duality reflected in...new ways.")

"I hope you'll like it," Sandrine wrote in her email. I do.

POV: Waves.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV focuses on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories.

Recommended Reading / 62.

Words to start the week. 

This week, from The Atlantic: reflections on the resonance of Arnold Lobel's 1970s children's book series Frog and Toad—a mainstay at my house growing up, and a current favorite of my three-year-old nephew's.

Writes Bert Clere on another of Lobel's masterpieces, Owl at Home: "Probably the most unique story in Owl at Home is 'Tear-Water Tea,' in which Owl makes a special tea brewed from his tears. To produce the tears, he thinks of sad things like 'songs that cannot be sung because the words have been forgotten' and 'pencils that are too short to use'...Owl’s tears come from those broken and disjointed parts of existence that make no sense, so all that is to be done with them is to accept them, and drink them with a pot of tea."

Read more at The Atlantic. Illustration by Arnold Lobel.

Three more, just because: 
-Violent rabbits.
-"Brief raptures in deserted places."
-Loved doing this interview with industrial designer Todd Bracher: "A tree is the result of an ecosystem. And the way I design is to consider what something’s ecosystem is. There are loads of things that define any given project: the market, financial constraints, client needs, et cetera. But tie all those things together with a singular solution—the way a tree does in its ecosystem—and you have, in my opinion, something that’s truly timeless and universal."

More recommended reads, here. Wishing you a very happy Monday—and more to come!

Douglas & Bec on Sight Unseen.

Thrilled to have been able to interview Bec Dowie of Douglas + Bec, a New Zealand-based furniture and lighting design studio, a few weeks ago for Sight Unseen. Bec, who founded the company alongside her father, Douglas, lives 45 minutes outside of Auckland in a converted barn designed to serve as both home and studio.

With bedrooms on movable pods, the space transforms in minutes flat. Not surprisingly, it's furnished almost entirely with family-made pieces—but only just as many as the trio need. During the renovation, Bec says, “We lived with very little for a long time, and [that experience] really ended up informing the design of our home. We had a lovely education that we didn’t need a lot. So when we built the house, everything was very simple. The design shows a lot of restraint.”

Find the full interview on Sight Unseen. Beautiful photos by Pippa Drummond.

More from my Sight Unseen archive: Group Partner / Todd St. John / Material Lust. Thanks so much, as always, for reading.

Recommended Reading / 61.

Words to start the week. 

This week, from T: words from seven modern feminists, including Tavi Gevinson, Emily Gould, and Beth Ditto. Says Hari Nef of Transparent: "Who gets to decide what a woman is? If one woman is different from another woman, then what unites them as women?"

Find the slideshow, here. Photos by Scott Trindle.

Three more, just because: 
-Daily letters to the ocean.
-The contents of Prince's fridge: microgreens, Dunkaroos, 18 types of mustard.
-Says Georgia O'Keeffe: "I get out my work and have a show for myself before I have it publicly. I make up my own mind about it—how good or bad or indifferent it is. After that the critics can write what they please. I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free."

More recommended reads, here. Wishing you a very happy Monday.

Pocket Watch.

Melissa Kaseman photographs the contents of her three-year-old son's pockets as part of what she calls "a taxonomy report of a child's imagination." Among the spoils: pipe cleaners, paper clips, and a crumpled plate that, on first glance, looks like crystal.



More on Melissa's website, here. Have a wonderful Monday.

Live In Yourself.

Words for Monday, courtesy of Mina Loy: "Forget that you live in houses, that you may live in yourself."

A few recommended reads for the week:
-Exquisite dirt.
-My most recent interview for Sight Unseen, with Ladies & Gentlemen Studio.
-Beautiful words from Ai Bihr, via Apiece Apart: "In Japanese we say, ‘ashita wa asu no kaze ga huku’—tomorrow a new wind blows. Tomorrow is a new day."

Photos via my Instagram.

POV: Protection.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV focuses on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories.

Under Repair.

Please excuse the lack of posts this week as I figure out the best way to fix quite a big photo issue on the site—thank you for your understanding as I sort things out. I'll be back next week with an update; until then, wishing you a wonderful week!

A few (picture-less) POVs in the meantime:
-On rotations.
-On being heard.
-On settling (in the best possible way).

Thank you so much for reading. Photo by Max Wanger.

Material Lust on Sight Unseen.

Although I'd met Material Lust designers Christian Swafford and Lauren Larson before, it wasn't until I visited their studio on assignment for Sight Unseen that I learned the story behind their brand, which produces furniture and home goods with decidedly dark flair. It was lovely to spend a fall morning in their space—to see their latest work, pore over their beautiful (and non-digital!) inspiration boards, and learn more about what inspires their cutting-edge aesthetic.

As it turns out, that aesthetic is one that's routinely confused for demonic. Says Christian: “We posted a photo on Instagram recently of a pentagram and a few of our chairs, and someone commented, ‘Unfollow these Satanists.’ Our design was based off of DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. It was historical, but it had nothing to do with devil worship. Everyone feels the need to categorize.”

Find the full interview on Sight Unseen. Photos by Emily Johnston.

More from my Sight Unseen archive: Group Partner / Todd St. John / Ladies & Gentlmen Studio. Thanks so much for reading.

Recommended Reading / 60.

Every Monday, words to start the week.  



This week, from Studiocanoe: a short film called "Sum" that offers up an enormous dose of perspective in just four minutes. According to the film, we may spend 30 years of our life asleep, 200 days showering, six weeks waiting for green lights, and 18 days gazing into refrigerators—but spread over decades, these moments are just tiny, magnificent pieces of a much bigger picture. See it all, above.

Thanks to Freunde von Freunden for the link. More from Studiocanoe, here.

Three more, just because: 
-"Speed Dating for Rabbits."
-Louise Ma makes art of hard-to-describe emotions.
-Preschool pastimes: "We're playing sunset. We just travel around, like how the sun sets."

More recommended reads, here. Wishing you a happy Monday.