Eye Yam Wh0 Eye Yam

A teacher I was close with in high school used to remind us that we were all just "bags of skin", so it was up to each of us to individualize ourselves and give our experiences meaning. It has taken me a while to get to where I am now in my life, and I am realizing more and more that I may not ever be able to answer, "Who do you think you are?", with all certainty nor any finality.
I feel that I have defined myself thus far in my life by the relationships I have cultivated with others. That is not to say I define myself by others but in the past year, my life has changed dramatically--I believe for the better. I have been struggling to accept that trite old adage, "the only certainty is change." See, I used to be stuck. Stuck in my home town, stuck in toxic co-dependence with toxic people, stuck ruminating and halfheartedly making plans; I was paralyzed by fear of moving forward because I was so worried about making a mistake. It dawned on me that in each minute I am the youngest I will ever be and I need to seize upon anything and everything I can. I moved to New York City from South Florida this past summer. Pushing myself out of familiar circumstances and necessitating growth, even if I have been burdened with some discomfort, has shocked me out of a strange, myopic haze I had been squinting through. All of the facets of my life that I was afraid of disturbing have remained steadfast and all that was not essential fell away, shed like an itchy old skin.
My interest in media kindled kind of slowly. I have a long love affair with fashion: I remember devouring W and Vogue with my stylish aunt when I was very young. I still love the artistry, craftsmanship and the rare visionaries of it but my blind awe of the fantastic is now much withered. I started feeling inundated with too much banality, poor taste, just uninspired consumerism. Instead of trying to be completely autodidactic, I decided to dedicate my time and engage with this system of ideas completely here at Hunter College. I have presented my interest in pursuing it to the adults in my life emphasizing that media is a versatile, expanding subject with myriad practical applications. I actually think I believe that though. I'm minoring in Women and Gender Studies to round out my liberal arts education and ensure my complete despair of and frustration with society.

Philip Treacy is an extraordinary milliner. (The late Isabella Blow was his close friend and muse.)

I am a bit of an art history nerd: The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch. (The image would completely mess up the formatting of this blog because of scale)


A blog that I happened upon and have found to be insightful and engaging for a few years: SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGES
...and this is just AWESOME