hello to all of you out there who still keep up with this blog. don't mind the copious amount of tumbleweeds accumulating as we speak, cos i am finally back. in all honestly, it feels really strange to finally sit down and write again - but alas, ya gotta start somewhere. the photos in this post are photos i snapped during our travels on the road from LA to San Francisco this summer, which felt appropriate for a returning post, as i have made up my mind to sort of let go of the tight grip i have had over this blog in terms of its intended direction and sort of attempt to "go with the flow" from now own. what i mean by that, is that if there is one thing i have come to realize about myself more and more, it is that i am a perfectionist to the point of crippling my self-growth. in combination with my glowing indecisiveness, it's just plain old bad. needless to say, i am trying to step away from the control panel a bit more. (not to say that i am not a spontaneous person, i am. its just that when it comes to decision making and execution, i drag my feet like there is no tomorrow out of fear of not being good enough or producing work that is less than perfect. but more on that in a future post.) so in line with just doing, i have decided to just ramble about shit that i feel like rambling about on here. so there.
and it just so happens to be, that one of the subjects that have currently been on my mind is the subject of travel. a friend of mine recently said that life is made up of equal parts heimweh and wanderlust and i immediately committed this phrase to memory because i wholeheartedly agree. i used to say that i never really felt any sense of homesickness because i have travelled all of my life starting with my adoption from south korea at the age of four months old. throughout my many travels many places have earned the title of "home". (this title has most recently been given to berlin.) when i was young i spent summers at sleep away camps in various states. some of my cabin mates' homesickness would get the better of them and they would cry out for their parents or friends back home. i never experienced this. however, these memories may be why i specifically associated homesickness with relationships and the people who we become separated from via the physical distance placed between. in this sense, i do not experience homesickness. there are many important people in my life, but i have never really "missed" people. phones, email, and skype allow me to keep those close to me who may or may not share the same time zone. however, i do miss things. i miss smells. the atmosphere. specific flavors. and in the end, even if it took me 26 years to realize, the combination of these components are a form of homesickness. and as for shorter stretches of time spent away from home: vacations can also only last so long before we tire of doing nothing and the inviting smell of freshly bleached sheets begin to smell foreign and we just want to sleep in our own beds again. life is a combination of heimweh and wanderlust.
sometimes, with so many places to call home, these feelings manifest themselves simultaneously. i am currently dreaming of traveling through eastern asia or surfing the waves off of the coast of australia because it is new and unexplored. i long for adventures i can only conjecture about which i cannot wait to realize and commit to memory. but i am also counting down the days until nick and i return to the united states for winter holidays. i am craving the dumbest shit like those pre-made pillsbury cookies that come in that plastic tube with the metal clips on both ends. or being able to drive everywhere, despite loving being able to take public transportation everywhere. or giant superstores, despite being opposed to large corporations. it has come to the point where i am irrationally romanticizing sub-par pre-made cookies and turbo-consumerism simply because i miss america. berlin has ceased to be shiny and now looks like a dull characterless city which is trying too hard to continue to be relevant and after 4 years i feel a bit as though i have seen what there is to see. it may be a signal that the time to move on as finally come again. then again, maybe not.
lg, Rae
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photography and post-production: me
