Momentum Creates Momentum

I've always been an aspire-er. A person who aspires more than she does. It's a quality that I've struggled with for pretty much my whole life, and I still have a long way to go. But this year, I've been making minuscule progress. For the past couple of weeks, doing homework hasn't felt like pulling teeth. My done journal is more than just piddly little organizational tasks, but actually things like "Finished art history assignment" and "Wrote 800 words." I still have my share of lazy days (yesterday, for example), but where before it was hard to get back up after I fell off the productivity wagon, now I find it relatively easy to start fresh.

If you know me, you know that I'm kind of a productivity junkie. As a kid I was obsessed with routines and would spend hours imagining what my life would be like if every day was the same. (I know, I was a weird kid. Also I no longer wish every day was the same). Now I just read about famous writers' morning routines (my favorite is Darwin's: even with constant illness and anxiety about how his work would be received, he still found time to write, take long, meandering walks, and reply to every single letter he received). So really, nothing much has changed. But as much as I admired other people's orderly schedules and productive days, I was never really able to recreate that for myself.

One piece of advice I've heard over and over again is that momentum creates momentum, or in other words: the more you do things, the easier doing things becomes. A young Amelia Earhart echoes this beautifully in a letter to her mother: "Despite my unusual activity I am very well organized to do more the more I do. You know what I mean... I am not overdoing it and all that is needed for bouncing health is plenty to eat and happiness. Consider me bursting, please." Let's hope this isn't my characteristic beginning-of-the-semester optimism (see my post from last September if you don't believe me). This feels a little different, more stable, more like something taking root. No doubt there are other posts on this blog that sound like this: full of optimism and brimming with plans for the future. I was hesitant to post this for fear of sounding false or repetitive, or worse, jinxing myself out of my newfound productivity. But, what the heck.

Consider me bursting.

London Patchwork: Museums

London Patchwork is a series of posts dedicated to some of my favorite experiences in London (Spring 2016).

Let me get this out of the way first: I love museums. I love their vastness, their history, their quietude. Since going to London I've also become enamored with the concept of the Victorian-era museum, with its crowded, floor-to-ceiling picture galleries, its taxidermied animals, its crowding of diverse objects into the same glass case. One of my favorite things about London was its museums, and one of my favorite things about its museums was that stepping into them felt like going back in time.

One of the classes I took in London was a museums studies class, so I got to discover quite a few places that I might not have known about otherwise. In addition to learning about their history, we also talked a little bit about the role of museums today and how modern conventions such as gift shops and cafes change the museum-goers experience. Overall, it was a great experience, and the best part? Most of the major museums in London are free!

So, without further ado, here is my list of favorite museums in London:

1. The V&A
The Victoria and Albert Museum is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design. In addition to painting and sculpture, it has rooms for furniture, tapestry, dress, iron works, glass, and metalworks from all over the world. It's a huge, stately complex built in the 1850s, and I could definitely have spent several days here.

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2. The Petrie Museum
This little gem turned out to be one of my favorite museums we visited, and it also happens to be the smallest. Tucked away on the second floor of an unassuming brick building on the University College  London campus, this museum houses the archeological collection of Flinders Petrie, a British archeologist who excavated thousands of Egyptian artifacts during the 1880s. I've seen quite a few of Egyptian exhibits, but none have captivated me much as this. I've always been able to appreciate Egyptian art to a certain extent, but it's hard to make the leap from admiring the objects of ancient civilizations to actually imagining them as belonging to living, breathing human beings. The museum is only a couple of rooms, but it is packed with rows of glass cases that are full of everyday objects Egyptians would have used, from pottery to glass beads (I had no idea the Egyptians worked with glass!). The whole experience felt a little more like walking through a yard sale than a museum, and the result is a museum experience that feels profoundly intimate and personal.

3. The National Gallery
Who can visit London without seeing The National Gallery? It's basically a staple. This is a place you could get lost in. Think giant, gilded frames, walls hung with silk, and maze after maze of galleries. My favorite thing about it is that a lot of the paintings are hung on traditional colored walls instead of the modern white ones, so it feels both historic and decadent.

4. The Wellcome Collection
This one totally came out of nowhere as one my favorite places in London. We visited this museum during our "medical museums" unit, which meant we'd just spend a week looking at specimens in jars and pondering 18th century surgery.*shudder* This museum, however, was different. It's basically a cross between a modern art museum and a medical museum. Different artists are commissioned to do work on a certain theme related to health or the human body. While we were there there was an amazing exhibit on consciousness that had a room that used audio and video to explore the sensation of sleep paralysis, and a group of drawings meant to showcase how autistic children see the world differently.

5. The V&A Museum of Childhood
Okay, so this is a branch of the the V&A but it's worth mentioning on its own. This is not to be confused with your typical children's museum. Instead, this museum looks at the experience of childhood throughout history, as well as showcasing toys from around the world. While we were there they had an exhibit about Britain's children migrants, who were sent to Canada and Australia under the pretense that they would have a better life, and often never saw their families again. Not for the faint of heart, but definitely worth learning about.

"The Sarcophagus of Set I in Sir John Soane's Museum", Illustrated London News, 1864

7. Sir John Soane's Museum
This is an interesting one. Sir John Soane was a neoclassical architect whose life work consisted of collecting and displaying classical sculpture and architectural elements. He asked that his house be preserved as a museum from the time of his death, so stepping inside is like stepping into the past. After you walk through the parlor and breakfast room you come to an amazing three story atrium covered in Greek and Roman busts, architectural fragments, and even an Egyptian sarcophagus.

8. The Natural History Museum
This museum feels most closely related to the museums we have in the US. There are modern aspects to it, like a high tech dinosaur exhibit targeted at kids, and some more traditional exhibits on animals and biology. The real reason you should go though is to stand for a moment in the huge atrium at its center, which feels like it could be right out of Hogwarts.

Pitt Rivers Museum

9. Bonus! Oxford University Museum of Natural History + The Pitt Rivers Museum
If you want to make a day trip to Oxford, don't leave without visiting the Natural History Museum. This is classic natural history at its best, complete with skeletons and taxidermy (I have a weird fascination with taxidermy, okay?), plus it's super informative. Be absolutely sure you don't miss the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is in the same building. The Pitt Rivers museum is an archeological/anthropological museum which groups objects by type rather than culture or geographic region. The result is an insane grouping of objects from all over the world, where you can make comparisons between how different cultures solved the same problems.

Playing cards through the ages (Pitt Rivers)

Keys through the ages (Pit Rivers)

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10. Extra Bonus! Kew Gardens
But this is a garden, not a museum, you say! Well, not exactly. Built in the mid 1800s, the two oldest greenhouses in Kew Gardens functioned as a kind of botanical museum, showcasing plants from all over the world (mainly colonies of the British empire). Even the tulips that were blooming in front of the greenhouses were imports from the Netherlands. There is also a fantastic exhibit of botanical paintings that made me want to break out the watercolors.

ps. I'm hoping to do another post like this all about London gardens, so stay tuned!

Track Changes

I've met people who can look at their life and trace the trajectory of their personality. They chop up their life into categories and say things like, "Oh, that was my punk phase." While I recognize that we all go through phases, I've always found mine a little harder to pick out. For the most part I tend to like the same things, talk to the same people, and wear the same kinds of clothes. That's not to say I never change, just that it takes me longer to notice the divide between past me and present me. For the most part, I feel utterly, unequivocally, me. 

I look at what I wrote at the beginning of last semester, though, and I feel different. I had so many bright ideas. I wanted to blog more, write more. Now, everything I write here feels a little self indulgent. Who am I really writing to? What do I really have to say?

I don't know the answer to that. And for once, I'm not going to pretend that I do. What I've written here in the past doesn't seem untrue, just not true to my current self. For the first time in a long time, I feel the pull of my past selves -- the ones who were bright-eyed and who thought they could do everything on their own -- and I find myself tugging in the opposite direction.

I don't think I'll ever be the kind of person who sheds personalities like old skin. I'll always be the idealistic one who sets too many goals, who loves beautiful sentences, who wears stripes and tie-dye and sundresses. But there's also room for things to shift, and for them to settle in a slightly different place.

For now, I'm fine with picking them up where they fall.

Things I liked at the beginning of 2017:
-Fluffy blankets
-Huge books with epic stories
-Thinking about geological time
-Medieval illuminated manuscripts
-Cuddling with dogs
-Skype calls with the one I love
-My new tea maker
-The OA (Netflix show)
-Miyazaki films
-Russian literature
-Microsoft Word jokes (see the title of this post)

Until next time.

Apartment Life and Other Ephemera

I've been having trouble figuring out what to post here lately. There are so many things I could write about, but none of them seem quite substantial enough for their own post. Here instead is a smattering of thoughts in list form, because lists are great. (Like I said, the blogger in me isn't doing so hot. Please forgive the dumb generalizations like "Lists are great." Right. Moving on.)

1. School has started, and I'm living in an on-campus apartment with my friends. It's the first time we've all lived in the same space and it feels right, like this was how it was meant to be all along. We drink iced coffee in the mornings and marathon animated kid's shows at night. I've scattered some pictures throughout this post, because I know you're all curious.

2. Projects, projects, and more projects. Luckily school hasn't gotten too hectic yet, so I've been focusing on making things. I'm revising a manuscript of short stories for my Manuscript Workshop class. I'm chipping away at a novel, fifteen minutes a day. I'm thinking of ways to spice up Letters to October. I'm working on my bookbinding skills. I'm trying to bring a version of Letters Live to my school. I love having lots of projects going at once. As Annie Dillard timelessly said, "How we spend out days is, of course, how we spend our lives," and I want my days to be a wild kaleidoscope of my multiple loves.

3. While summer is still my favorite season, I have to admit I'm ready for fall. I'm ready to wear scarves again, drink apple cider, and curl up under a blanket with chilly rain drumming on the windowsill. I even made an autumn-themed playlist.

4. Currently Reading: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay, Truth and Beauty by Anne Patchett, Uprooted by Naomi Novik

5. Something I wrote in my notebook recently: "Being a senior in college feels a lot like standing on a very long diving board. I'm safe as long as I stay firmly planted on the thin strip of aluminum, but I have to keep moving towards the edge, and once I reach it, it's into the deep end I go. It's the leap that scares me, that moment when you have to squeeze your eyes shut and plug your nose and step into thin air."

6. Writers I'm most excited to see at The Texas Book Festival in November: Amor Towles, Shanon Hale, Allison Amend, Francine Prose, Carl Hiaasen, Nick Offerman, and Jane Alexander

7. Little nuisances: Dirty dishes that seem to repopulate the sink every five minutes, the price of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, accidentally drinking too much coffee late in the day

8. Little joys: Sharing my favorite childhood films with my friends who are watching them for the first time, pancakes for dinner, meetings with enthusiastic professors, getting letters from friends and family

9. I miss London. Florence will always have a special place in my heart, but London captured my imagination. It's an amazingly vibrant city- constantly creating, moving, and altering your perception of it, even as you learn your way around. It's at once iconic and utterly unexpected and little old Cedar Rapids just completely pales in comparison. Some things quell my London cravings, so I thought I'd share them here: London in Fiction, Daughterland, Marion Honey's Blog, A Sketching Trip to the National Portrait Gallery

10. I'm going to leave you with this video chronicling two friends' trip to Norway. I don't know what it is about this little travelogue, but there's just something so calming and magical about it. It makes me think of Copenhagen, where they put candles on the tables in coffee shops, too. *sigh* Youtube can be really pretty sometimes.

Until next time.

Why I Listen to Podcasts

If you know me at all you know that I’m always talking about this podcast or that podcast, and usually doing a poor job of trying to retell whatever story it was that I listened to. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a review of one of my favorite podcasts, Nocturne. The review was inspired by another podcast review website, The Timbre, that created something I didn’t know I needed: a place for people discuss podcasts in a meaningful, thoughtful way. The writers of that website recently moved on to other things, and the absence they created has been weighing heavily on my mind for a while.

So, what’s the deal with podcasts anyway? Why do I spend time on them when there are so many other forms of entertainment out there? I suppose we should start from the beginning.

I’ve always had a soft spot for public radio. NPR was usually on in my parent’s bedroom when I was little, and on Saturday mornings we would sometimes listen to Car Talk or Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. Sometimes we would listen to the news in the car. I could be wrong, but I’ve always gotten the impression that people who work in public radio are happier than other people. Of course, you can’t paint an entire profession in a single stroke, but my overall impression was one of a thoughtful, kind, and endlessly curious bunch.

While I had a casual relationship to radio from a young age, I didn’t start listening to podcasts until I was in high school. My mom tried to get me to listen to an architecture and design podcast called 99% Invisible, but I was skeptical. Architecture and design? How could you make an audio show about something so visual? And who’s to say it would even be interesting?

I still remember the episode that got me hooked. It was about secret staircases tucked into Los Angeles neighborhoods. The episode opens with the reporter following directions to a set of partially hidden public stairs. You can hear the surprise in his voice when finally stumbles across them, and the exclamation, "Holy Moly I totally missed this! I almost walked right past these steps." With those words, I felt like I’d been lifted out of my dull life and shown something miraculous. If there were secret staircases in Los Angeles, why couldn’t there be other secrets hidden just below the surface in other cities, in my city?

My favorite books have the power to make me see the world a little bit differently when I'm finished. My favorite podcasts, I've found, share this ability. What's more, I simply enjoy the act of listening to audio. Podcasts fall into the sweet spot between television and books. Like television, you can be doing something else while a podcast is on: making dinner, or doing laundry, or driving (don't drive and watch TV at the same time, kids). Like books, podcasts let you do the imaginative work of putting images to the sounds you're hearing.  I'm fascinated not only by the people who populate the podcasts I listen to, but the sounds, too. How is it that a familiar sound immediately sparks an image in your brain? When you think about it, it's truly amazing that you know exactly what the sound of a car door slamming or boiling water in a kettle looks like. Besides, there's something so very human about listening to another person's voice. Who wouldn't want to feel that kind of connection every day on their drive to work?

Podcasts fuel my curiosity about the world. They introduce me to people I never would have met, and allow me to be privy to conversations I never would have had. I've laughed and cried while listening to podcasts. They are source of knowledge, of comfort, a window into the vastly interesting world we live in. I want to do more podcast reviews on this blog. I want to talk about the things I listen to. Because curiosity is important. Because using your imagination in a world full of screens and handed-to-you ultimatums is so, so important.

If you're new to your own podcasting journey, here are some of my favorite episodes of all time. Pick one. Listen. When it's over, you might just see things a little differently.

"Heyoon" - 99% Invisible
"Things" - Radiolab
"Today's the Day!" - Reply All
"The Living Room" - Love + Radio
"Mary Oliver - Listening to the World" - On Being
"Nothing to Lose" - Millennial
"Some Summer Stories" - Home of the Brave
"Champion of Nothing" - 30 Minutes West
"9 Things We Learned About Phones from a Teenager" - Note to Self
"Wild Ones Live" - 99% Invisible

A Drop in the Bucket: Making a Collage

I've been thinking a lot lately about the way that I prioritize my creative projects. Often I catch myself putting my ideas into arbitrary categories. Writing fiction trumps blogging. Working on the dessert cookbook I want to make trumps painting in my watercolor notebook. I want to do all of these things equally, and yet I still catch myself assigning value to things, often based on what I think other people  expect. I've told people I want to write fiction, so doing anything else feels somehow less important. That's why, today, I decided to make something that didn't have any perceived importance attached to it.

I've been daydreaming about working with paper recently. I love the idea that you can create a picture out of shapes alone, so I decided to try my hand at making a collage. The inspiration for the subject matter came from two of my favorite things: soft, warm light that stretches across a room at sunset, and succulents.

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Of course, creating the illusion of light falling on anything with paper alone was an ambitious task for a novice collage-er like me. It took a little while to separate out what papers I should use for different areas (especially that parts that fell into the light), and building a semi-realistic looking cactus out of shapes was no easy task either. Once I had the most important shapes cut out I had to figure out what order to glue them down in. It should have been simple, but one wrong move and I had to peel up the shape and move it without ripping the layers underneath it.

I have so many big, long term ideas in the works, that I think I'd forgotten you could still make something in a single day. By all accounts, this little project should have been last on my list of priorities. It has nothing to do with anything else I'm working on. I don't know what I'm going to do with the finished product. And yet, I got to reconnect with what it feels like to make for the sake of making. One of my favorite quotes about the creative process comes from the writer Brenda Ueland, and while it's specifically about writing, I think it applies to all creative acts: "I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten: happy, absorbed, and quietly putting one bead on after another." This is how I felt while I was gluing paper today. And if I can feel that way while gluing paper, then maybe I can feel that way while writing a novel and making a cookbook and juggling all the things I want to do.  We all have to pick and choose how we spend our time, so there should be joy in the decision making, and joy in the doing.

** A Drop in the Bucket is a series of posts where I complete one item on my creative bucket list, and share the results **

Podcast Review: Nocturne

Nocturne is the kind of podcast that begs to be listened to in the dark. Not just because its focus is the night, but because it captures the atmosphere of those lonely, quiet hours between sunset and sunrise.  Nocturne was created by Vanessa Lowe, a self-proclaimed morning person, as a way to combat her own uneasiness about darkness.
While it would be easy to speculate that a show about nighttime could be especially dark and brooding, Lowe presents a broad range of nighttime experience. Episodes about the wonder and awe of stargazing sit comfortably next to the story of a father's terrifying night-time walk with his infant son.
What I love about Nocturne is the way that Lowe is able to weave her own self discovery into the episodes. Some are profiles of people who have a unique relationship to night, while others feature Lowe facing her fears and challenging her own preconceived notions about what it means to be awake in the dark.
What Nocturne does especially well, however, is go beyond simply talking about the subject matter, but evoking the feeling of night as well. The theme song for the show is an open, atmospheric piano melody, prefaced by the sounds we unconsciously associate with night: a symphony of crickets, the hoot of an owl, the mournful bellow of a distant train whistle. The best episodes of Nocturne capitalize on this atmosphere throughout the entire show, the most notable example being Episode 3: What the Baker Saw.
I've listened to this episode probably ten times since it came out, and it still gives me chills. It's a simple story- a baker, working late into the night at a remote art center, witnesses an encounter between two animals and feels somehow pulled into their world. I am fascinated by the way sounds can evoke feelings without needing an explanation or modifier, and the sound design of this episode somehow evokes the isolation of the Marin Headlands, as well as the narrative tension that drives the story forward.
Pegged on its website as "radio essay: a hybrid form of radio storytelling that blends elements of documentary, fiction, and sound art," Nocturne is the atmospheric, sound-rich podcast I'd been waiting for. Wether you listen on a crowded commuter car at eight in the morning, or to stave off insomnia in the wee hours of the night, Nocturne is a treat for anyone who's ever been captivated by darkness.

Recommended episodes:
Episode 3: What the Baker Saw
Episode 8: Into, Under, Through
Episode 9: Forward Momentum
Episode 11: Triumph's Ring
Episode 15: To a Distant Continent