More about Places and Things

Jonah Lehrer has a new article about the effects of architecture and interior design on how our brain works: The Psychology of Architecture.

Places and Things

I think I had forgotten this blog in the whirlwind of plane flights and group papers of the last month, but this morning I stumbled upon this in my Google Reader. It reminded me that maybe writing in here sometimes helps me organize my thoughts and feel more cohesive as a person than I do when I ignore this space for too long. Sometimes I think of this blog as a way to waste time, not as something that's actually helpful in my life. But thank you, Becoming Minimalist, for reminding me that there are more benefits to writing about my life than just procrastination.

So anyway.

Yesterday I got back from a weekend in Massachusetts. The wedding was in Sturbridge and it was beautiful. My friend Tim, who went to school with me from sixth grade through college, is now married to a wonderful woman named Kate, whom he met on vacation in Maine in 2002 and whom I mistakenly thought was fake until at least 2005.

Then, since we were in the area, Maggie and I spent all day yesterday in Boston, which was a new city for me. I'm sure the beautiful weather helped shape my opinion, but I really loved it there. I love their open spaces and weird-looking/confusing T stations and the mixture of old and new buildings. I felt like Boston would feel very homey if I lived there. But I thought the same thing about Austin and Seattle and Philadelphia and Antigua, Guatemala.

At our last woman club meeting, we read Great House by Nicole Krauss. The story is very centered on furniture, houses, and locations. I think part of the reason I responded to the book as much as I did is because I in some ways feel like the places where I am and the items that are around me do shape my life and my experience. I invest a lot of meaning in the ugly end tables my mother pawned off on me so she could get new ones or in the house on Cary Street (even when the doorknob fell off or the sideyard was full of uncooked meat and cornhole or the chestnut pods were stabbing my feet through my shoes). These things and these places have in some way impacted my life and made it different than it would have been otherwise. I put feelings and memories into furniture and into trees in my parents' yard. I think this process of growing into and around my belongings and my space is part of why I always love anywhere I live and then feel nostalgic about it after I've gone. It becomes a part of me, a part of my growth and development.

When I visit new places, I always picture how I would situate a life there, how me and my furniture and my habits would fit in when I first moved and how they (we) would all change the longer I lived there. Sometimes I think I could live almost anywhere and dig out a small niche of comfort and home and be satisfied. I'm lucky I ended up in DC because I feel like it's made me create a more ambitious life than I would have some other places. If I'd moved back to Roanoke, I wouldn't have felt as motivated to go to grad school, for example. If I'd moved somewhere else, maybe I wouldn't have tried online dating for that short time. I probably wouldn't have started hosting trivia somewhere else either. Or have joined a woman club(!). In so much of what I do, I see the cause being where I am and what and who are around me.

I had a grand idea of where this was going when I started, but I'm obviously out of practice at organizing my thoughts for internet publication. Mostly I am happy to have spent time in some new cities in the last year because it's been fun to (1) see how friends are living there but also (2) imagine what I would be like under the influence of that place. Everywhere is just so quirky and exciting!

I'll probably be posting some pictures from my recent travels pretty soon. You know I got some good pictures of the Boston Public Library.

How do people successfully have two blogs? I accidentally posted one of my snooze-worthy "article reviews" for school here earlier. I since deleted it, but it still showed up in my RSS. SORRY, GUYS.

Unrelated:

I really love when people holler at you on the street and you instinctively respond with something that ends up being nonsensical. Yesterday, when I got off the bus, a guy said, "Cold enough for you?" and I responded, "NEVER. NEVER cold enough." That doesn't make any sense and does not accurately reflect my feelings, but it just flowed out of my mouth without my brain processing it first. How silly.

People are funny.

Some Dates

Maybe it was the nice weather, but I got hit with a case of the wanderlust in the last week. To remind myself that I have wandering (and other things) ahead, here are some plans/dates for the next few months:

February 28th: Woman Club

March 7th to the 13th: Spring Break

March 16th to the 20th: Austin

April 9th to the 10th: Massachusetts

April 27th: Last day of class for the semester

June 6th to the 10th & 13th to the 17th: Modern Archives Institute at National Archives

June 10th to the 11th: Eastern Shore

June 23rdish to the 28thish: New Orleans

Sometime in July or August: Grandma's at the beach

Three plane tickets, three new states!

Frame Monster

I took the DCist photo of the day for today! Thanks, new camera!

Yo La Tengo

I am currently listening to Yo La Tengo act out the "Chinese Restaurant" episode of Seinfeld. This seems like the perfect time for me to remind my blog that I love Yo La Tengo. It's been over two years since I last wrote on this subject, and my feelings haven't changed. The last.fm doesn't lie. I love tracks like "The Crying of Lot G" or "Last Days of Disco" when it feels like Ira's sharing a very personal story with you, and I love Georgia's low smoky(?) whispery voice always. I love the more upbeat numbers from other albums, and I love And Then Nothing... in its peaceful entirety.

I recently got to see them at 9:30 Club (with most of the people who read this blog, incidentally), and I think my favorite part was seeing them interact with each other. They've been a band longer than I've been a person, and you can feel that they know and like each other and that they really enjoy playing around together. In addition to all of the positive unsubstantiated characteristics that my brain has attributed to them over the years, I feel confident in saying that they're funny and they're talented and they're getting to do the types of silly things that come along with having been respectable and consistent and GOOD for so many years.

I also just looked at the Wikipedia page for the band and then at Georgia's page, and I really like this description of how Georgia and Ira met:

She is married to the group's other founding member, Ira Kaplan. They would often see each other in record shops and at the same shows. Finding a common ground in music, and a love of New York Mets baseball, they began hanging out and jamming together.

Also James is wearing a pro-choice shirt on his Wikipedia page:

These guys are the best.

These Days

I'm back into reading about my personality type which is something I periodically become curious about even if I don't put much stock in it. For all of high school and college, I tested as an INTJ, which I thought was appropriate, yet in these last couple years I've somehow transitioned from thinking to feeling and I am now consistently an INFJ. As much as I don't like to accept arbitrary questionnaires as accurately capturing my personality, I do believe that I have noticed this as a real change in myself.

I got a Canon Rebel T2I camera last week because I wanted it and I decided I would have it. As I continue to learn how to use it properly, I'll maybe get more mileage out of my Flickr account. Most recently, I posted pictures from bopping around the Mall and Botanic Gardens with one of my peeps as well as some Peeps of a different variety. I think these are some of my favorites:

I also recently rediscovered an old sketchbook from college in which I had some pretty unintentionally cartoonish drawings from an art class and beyond as well as some amazing poetry. Oh it's so good. I may revisit some of the contents if I determine enough time has passed to not feel embarrassed by my past self. Until then, one of the high points: Snail Ghost.

And this guy who is obviously Snail Ghost's friend and confidante.