Peep

Yesterday, I was sitting at my computer, actually getting some work done on my thesis (no joke) when one of my best friends in LA sent me a text:

"Crazy!!! Did you hear Michael Jackson died!"

I screamed out to my roommate, "Holy shit Michael Jackson's dead!"

Gasps and utterances about Billie Jean and needing to get a drink ensued, while we texted friends like chain mail and scrambled back to our computers to Google for more details. Oddly, only one source said Jacko was a dead man: TMZ. It'd be another 45 minutes before LA Times would confirm his death.

Although the celeb gossip site is no CNN or the New York Times, I knew I could trust it, much like I knew I could trust my friend. Why? They are both based out of LA; they are both linked to Twitter. (Side note: I used to work for a newswire service in LA that got most of their best tips from TMZ.)

No longer do the paparazzi have to bribe paramedic insiders and ER nurses. Now, thanks to Twitter, hospital staff can be news-bearing glory hogs themselves! At first I thought it was weird that tens of thousands of obsessive Twittering phone junkies and faceless cubicle heads can know when tragedy strikes strangers (I can think of three plane crashes earlier this year) before these strangers' loved ones do. But then in the case of MJ I realized: Do his parents, or his plastic siblings, or his nephews named Jermajesty, count as loved ones? I think it was more fitting that fans were the first to find out.

Newspapers are caving, magazines are shrinking. No one wants to print words anymore and no one wants to pay anyone to report and relay them either. (Trust me. I know.) So I joined the town crier of the 21st century last night. (Okay, I joined Twitter months ago but didn't do a damn thing with it. I thought of it as another distractionary extension of Facebook but for the worst type of narcissist and compulsive status updater. But then I realized most of those over-updating moms still haven't caught on to tweeting yet. And even if they do, I don't have to feel bad about not following them.) I even added a link to the left of the blog. (Warning: I'm still standing on the outside of the playground waiting to jump in.)

Oh well, there goes all that thesis momentum I was building.

Devour

This is a photo I snapped over the weekend.

I like food. I admire food. I'll even go as far as to say I think food is art just to justify why I felt the need to document something I've eaten, oh, I don't know, about 4,000 times! (Really, when did I become this weird, or this obessessed with bacon, half-cooked bacon at that? Sure, it was Sunday, but I wasn't even that hungover.)

Looking back on a year of iPhotos, I came across more than 20 pictures of food items. I know as I've gotten older I'm less apt to take woo-hoo drunk, buddy-buddy pictures (Put up your peace signs! Act street tough and laugh, ladies!), or pictures of me or loved ones standing like statues in front of semi-important arhitecture (like the house from Goonies or my favorite bar in LA), but this isn't because I'm too sophisticated for such endeavors, this is more about vanity (going through iPhotos, it also occurs to me I'm not in my prime anymore, and need to be in significantly less pictures.) Regardless, some of these food photos are outright ridiculous.

But to make a weak argument that there was some sort of point to all this food obsession, I've decided to make a gallery of sorts and let the art the speak for itself (aside from the accompanying titles and mini artist statements). So track my progression, if you will, and see how far I've come as an artist. (Note this is less about the photography, and more about the subject matter.)

"Dainty, delectable, sweet" - How three young women interpret themselves on holiday. (Montreal, QC, May 2009)

"Transgression" - A metaphor for one last horrah, a phase where a young lady says goodbye to junk food consumerism and beer pong keggers, and much like the vehicle her goods were on, has to move forward, feel the air roll through her cabin and take flight, past all the Chinese buffets, tire shops and Wendy's drive-thrus along the I-87, to become the poised artist of the work noted above. (Bumfuck, NY, May 2009)

"Fate" - Moment of awe captured on film. Greeted by three menus and thirty ways to make a peanut butter sandwich at the JFK airport. Also referenced as "Girl Arrives Home." (New York, NY, March 2009)

"Sugar Bomb" - Materials: Zippy's Apple Napple, broken plastic fork. Documentation on how hard it is to eat through 20 layers of flaky pastry with a plastic fork, especially when drunk. (Kahala, HI, December 2008)

"Grassy Knoll" - Inspiration: tequila, the humor of a 13-year-old boy. Process: Spontaneous, collaborative piece that came about after professionally-made artwork was left in a fridge many miles away, and four road-tripping drunks got a hold of confectionary squirt tubes and battery-operated candles. (Newport Beach, OR, August 2008)

Noise

Noise comes up a lot in my writing. I seek loud, musical, buzzing distraction when I want to escape my own head; I absorb sensational disturbances to mask internal ones. For instance, I often put on my iPod to walk three blocks to a boisterous bar because I've been sitting at my desk all day, struggling to admit on the page that I've turned into my mother.

One of the things that's always attracted me to New York is, in fact, noise. But unlike the pretentious noise I succumbed to when I lived in LA--paparazzi flash, celebrity buzz, the jingle of keys given to the valet--NY noise has always seemed more authentic. I romanticized the notion that because one was surrounded by Manhattan's constant chaos--umbrellas clashing down Lexington, the stress of honking cabs, men muttering various languages in front of bodegas--one couldn't help but be aware, alive even, especially as a newcomer. In the only U.S. city that matters, every moment would be The Moment. 

Now that I'm here (okay, I'm only one week in), I have yet to concede my romantic delusions of NY, but now I believe that sometimes noise is just that. Noise.

There's one place I've grown accustomed to quiet--my home. It's my refuge. Currently, I'm staying in a loft where the JMZ trains run one story above me and the tracks block the view of my living room window. 

My view

Alright, so the cheesy part of me loves the sound of trains rushing by every four minutes. ("I am so in NY!" this cheesy part of me boasts.) But I'm also right at a train stop, convenient for traveling, but inconvenient for sleeping. Screeching tires and the recorded voice of "You are on the westbound J train. The next stop is Marcy Avenue. Watch for the closing doors, please," are constants. Although I do admit, it does get a little meditative after awhile.

In a converted loft (under the train in Brooklyn), conversions are made cheaply. I'm convinced that not only the walls in my apartment are made of plywood but so are the walls in the entire building. Apparently one neighbor has a drum set and the another just likes to play Rock Band. On one side of my bedroom wall, my neighbors always seem to either be chatting or cooking bacon, and on the other, I can hear my roommate punching the buttons on her Blackberry, which means that I can also hear every sigh she breathes into the phone and vice versa. Last night, as I lay in bed trying to read (yup, I was home and actually reading), my two roommates had a rant session about their exes after one walked through the door at midnight. "I hate her so much. If she comes back here, I will beat her," one says of the other's ex-girlfriend. About her own failed relationship she adds, "I'm realizing I can be without him. I'm working on my support system. [Phone rings.] Oh wait, I gotta take this. So-and-so just sent me this link on Facebook and maybe I can get into such-and-such for free on Friday."

Nothing against my temporary roommates; they are actually very sweet and accommodating. And living with them here in this apartment is very New York, or very young New York--in a large building with affordable rent in a hip area, surrounded by the sounds of all night partying and trains letting people off at 5 a.m. But my current living situation also serves as a reminder that I'm glad I'm no longer 25. 

Me at 25. Yikes.

Representin

This is my first time officially introducing myself as "from Portland" to a group of people I have never met, people from places like Singapore and Louisville, Kentucky. I've quickly learned that I have to clarify that I am not from Portland, Maine, (a city that I thought was second rate because of its near absence in all my previous "Portland" Google searches). I'm okay with losing my west coast centricity now that I'm out east. I don't mind readjusting. 

But for once, I feel semi-competent, dare I say proud even, to represent the city I live in. Back when I lived in LA, I would utter those two loaded letters with a snarl and an "eww" grimace when someone asked where I was from. I was usually quick to add the disclaimer, "but I'm originally from Hawaii." Yet with further prodding, anyone would discover that my Hawaiinness was a disappointment. I don't surf; I don't do the hula; I still get lost driving to the North Shore on a 100-mile loop of an island. Portland, however, is a place I feel qualified to speak of because I've been living there for a decent stretch of time (two and half years) and my job is to research and write about city happenings. Read any culture feature I've ever written about Portland and it essentially says the same thing: Portland is under-the-radar cool. Or at least it's still trying to be. 

Portland is no longer sooooo under the radar that the NY Times still regularly writes about how edgy it is. Recently, we've been ranked as both the nation's most depressed and most unmanly city. While this backlash just heightens our emo cred, it also asserts that our radar is, if not radiating, beaconing perhaps. We have arrived. But the rise and fall of our popularity is of no consequence to us. We Portlanders like to spout that we don't care what people think anyway; we innately know that we're cool, but we're also introverted and passive aggressive, and therefore, we'd never say "we're cool" aloud, and instead we'd skulk around in an air of cool. Thus making us even more cool. Or just kinda annoying.

Regardless, here on the east coast, these intricacies of coolness aren't common knowledge. Here, at my residency, I am one of the few from the west, one of three from the northwest. Since most people don't have much to culturally associate with Seattle besides grunge, and the only thing I have to associate with Olympia is that grunge song by Courtney Love, therefore, between the two Washington gals and myself, I am the urban "other." 

This is not to be confused with the exotic other. Exotic was what I thought I was when I would brag that I was from Hawaii. Unfortunately for my naivete (hell, I was from an island), unless I was speaking to someone not from the States, most people already knew, met or worked with someone from Hawaii. And usually that person was very proud about being from Hawaii, talked about Hawaii all the time and frequently dared people to try weird food. My bubble of paradise was officially popped when someone asked me recently, "Doesn't Hawaii have a lot of meth addicts and trannies?" Thank you Dog The Bounty Hunter for that glowing, yet sadly truthful, depiction.  

Anyway, Portland still has a smidge of mystique. Here, in an international artists' colony, I get to brag about how there's either a coffee shop or a bar on every corner; how it's the easiest city to navigate and how transportation's a breeze; how we don't close ourselves off to the rest of the world, or change, or creativity, but we still manage to shun national superstores and chains, and buy, grow and reuse what's made locally. And when people ask if the weather is depressing, I say yes, but then I listen to these same people complain about the gray skies here in Vermont, and I think about how I enjoyed listening to the rain fall on the roof of the old mill I slept in last night, and while everyone decides not to tour the town of Johnson because they don't want to get wet, I don't mind going for a walk in the drizzle. I feel a slight charge from the moodiness of a bloated cloudy sky, from the sound of rain washing away the day, and from the sun peeking out in surprise. And while I'm neither Portland's stereotypical flannel-and-Converse-clad hipster, nor am I some Northface-wearing sustainability advocate (heck, I don't even ride a bike or drink much craft beer), I do feel comfortable about where I come from. I may not be convinced that Portland's my home, or that I'll ever really know what home truly feels like, but I have made very few smart alek asides about Portland in the last few days, (okay, I did say a few things about the coolness factor), which is something out of my comfort zone, and that feels nice.