the right words were always hard to find

Philadelphia, PA
April 2009

A few of my photographs will be a group show that a handful of us casually pulled together in the last two days. I hope people like my stuff.

eeeeee



brb dying

Guess where I'll be on May 2nd:



The tenth and final show
zoestrauss.blogspot.com

"never mind. the self is the least of it. let our scars fall in love."

galway kinnell

I'm seeking out online communities of Korean ex-pats and/or members of the diaspora. Innocently searched "asian america" on lj, since I'd be reading my friends page anyway. Knew it was a mistake when the only community that came up is about haikus and all the user icons were anime.

oh ok


in other equally dull and recent news, i impulsively took a pair of dull shears to my bangs a few days ago. looks like it, too.

One remarkable thing I got out of my time in Philadelphia was this kind of quiet contentment and security I developed through increased independence and self-sufficiency. It's one of the things I'm most grateful for, and I can already tell the way it's changing the way I'm re-entering life in Oberlin after an eight-month hiatus. There's such pressure to keep up one's appearance here and it's such a status-based social scene overall but I've wanted to peel away from it for so long and finally feel like I can. It took so long for me to build up the courage to stop attending parties and start avoiding large groups because I never liked them anyway, but they're just what happen, you know? Instead I've been spending more time with people one-on-one or in small groups, which contributes well to this thing about intentional relationships and interactions that I idealize and strive towards. I leave town as often as I can because I still need the constant reminder that there's this whole other world out there that I can't lose touch with just because I'm in this insulated microcosm // warped society (that I admittedly loved and missed in contrast to everything I just said).

Last night my housemates and I cooked dinner together and then we snuggled in my giant cloud of a bed for two hours talking about crushes and our favorite foods. Then we made brownies and listened to Tender Forever and I'm really happy with my Saturday night looking like that.

things that make me feel like a grownup:
1. others trusting my judgment



i'm going to keep thinking about this & adding to the list as necessary.

Looks like I'm going to Korea at the end of December for about a month or so, living at my sister's and spending time with my gossipy relatives, trying to amend the difficulties of long-distance family relations. I spent the better part of this morning researching activities & opportunities to keep myself occupied for the remainder of my time there. I'd like to get involved in the emerging/contemporary art culture; a design internship or role at a non-profit would be nice, too. Too bad the level of my Korean speaking barely qualifies as broken.

It's likely that I'll do a photography project - which isn't mutually exclusive with the other possibilities I outlined - but for once I'm not totally seduced by this dynamic of composer and spectator that my photographer role usually occupies. There is something more that I'm looking to get out of this trip and I can't put my finger on it quite yet.


My hair's getting long; it reminds me that time always moves faster than I think it does.

I'm feeling more like myself now that I'm experiencing existential crises by the hour

liar, liar.

I was in Virginia from Thursday to Sunday for Best Friends Day. Our time was split about half and half in Richmond and Williamsburg. I think when the weekend came to a close most of us were pretty drained in every sense of the word because every day was full of these wildly disparate ups and downs.

This weekend pretty much achieved the impossible, too, in that it made me excited to go back to Oberlin. (In spite of the hours spent on my friend's porch Saturday night, immersed in discussions about our dread and disillusionment about returning to our respective institutions.) Plus, seeing new and old faces operating in different places is a total mindfuck, but it certainly brings perspective. I got lots of biased glimpses into life in unfamiliar territory and networks through select individuals, and the only way I could process all the information clusterfuck was to compare it to Oberlin. So in conclusion I'm really appreciative of what I have there, because it really is quite good to (and for) me.

Leaving Philadelphia, that's a whole other story.

Insomnia has been modulating my body clock the past few nights. It's currently seconds away from 3AM and my eyelids are fluttering relentlessly like little moths. I don't believe in a rigid mind/body dichotomy but in spite of the physiology of sleepiness, my mind is producing exclamation point upon exclamation point, as if to say, "Don't rest yet! You have so many things to think about and unrealized ideas and angles to consider!" My feet still carry the throbs of walking endless miles over Manhattan and Brooklyn's concrete jungle(s), respectively, the past two days; they come and go with the regularity of a pendulum swing.

Eugh I hate moths. I'm terrified of them with a severity I can't even begin to describe. One touched my ankle tonight as I was trekking home and I was so upset about it that I shed a few tears.

Byyy the way, have I mentioned that I have the best friends in the world? Wonderful people surround me left and right.

someone unintentionally did me a huge favor and syndicated my blog (where i'm more active) to livejournal.

so if you prefer lj over rss feeds, here you are: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/ofeverydayblog/

my updates there will then show up on yr friends pages.

in ohio for a little while to be with some of the people i love most in the world. it's like i never left.

i got this done yesterday:



by the talented & unbelievably kind michelle tarantelli
saved tattoo // brooklyn, ny

my extremities of moods leave me no space to transition to and from. this job's a fucking handful and i oscillate from bliss to agony in a matter of seconds, wholly dependent on my setting and activities. this weekend as a whole was wonderful, inspiring, and !fun!, yet folded in me and bobby arguing about (not even over) the last slice of pizza. he was mostly kidding, but i was fighting back tears. and simultaneously erupting in forceful chuckles because fuck it, we were fighting over pizza. it's the new spilled milk.

he became upset once realizing i was upset, and pressed me to talk about why i was upset full knowing that i hate expressing myself when i am feeling sour. before we knew it, twilight chased us as we sat on the stoop of a bolted door in the gentrified cement playground of northern liberties, cigarettes faithfully chained to our hands, our mouths struggling to compose broken sentences in our exhausted, frustrated delirium.

tangentially related, lauren and i realized that we share the common pattern of bipolar friends/acquaintances consistently telling us that we are moody.

this job is draining me; it's suppressing my curiosities, passions, and interests. i'm quitting once i muster up the courage. aside from compromised financial security i don't have much to lose. the time will be spent working on my photography, maybe heading back to the magazine office to do design work, reading books, flexing and curling my toes just because. hopefully the burden removed from my shoulders will lighten up a heavy heart.

I rediscovered Photo Booth tonight, so please allow me to share these very fresh photos of me being an insomniac.








I should now go to bed; I have a coffee date in approximate six and a half hours.

"His incompetence at ordinary living allowed him to see it more sharply."
- Leon Wieseltier on Walter Benjamin

south korea? january 2010?