A guide for your enjoyment.
A reminder to trust the process.
This piece deconstructs books, instructions, and magazines to reinterpret the idea of a guide.
As a collage, the images and phrases can be interpreted many ways. There is no right way of reading it. Not following instructions based on an order or sequence. One can connect to another or not. It’s more like a Word Search or Chutes & Ladders.
Sometimes you climb a ladder and next thing you know you’re going down a slide. It may not be in the direction we anticipated, but hey we’re going down a slide. Here you have the option to prepare and embrace the fall.
One way to do so is trying to make sense of the world and look for answers. Culture, particularly through media, feeds us short cuts. These instructions that keep us looking for external validation.
This piece was me trusting the process, looking at what’s outside and seeing how I interpret it. In this case, a collage that tries to say something.
Leaving Our Mark
Growth traced on the rocks by the changing tide,
Laughter stamped on the sand by the playing children,
Conversations marked on the table by the bleeding candle (sorry mom),
Memories etched on the grass by the struggling truck,
Love printed on the shirt by the embracing grandma.
Water stains
Of the emotional gains
(Or pains)
Is all that will remain.
Shipwreck Soirée
Calling all sailors, sirens, sea creatures... & potentially a few jack sparrows.
With the changing tides of feeling washed-up version of your early twenties, searching for the treasures within yourself, and catching glimpses of your reflection in the water. We have no other choice, but to beach it.
Exiting the wreckage, you drudge through the seaweed and trash, just nearly exiting the ocean with the support of the tides (Little Mermaid’s A Whole New World plays in the background). We've reached the shore (turning 25)! You're neither in the ocean nor on land. I'm no longer a kid, but we also know I'm not fully an adult.
On shore, you spot a message in a bottle. It reads: Let's Celebrate!
(Funny enough you were thinking the same thing (funnier enough it fell from your boat))
On a walk & what do I find: Peacocks.
Usually when I see them in my backyard, I chase them away. That’s only because they poop everywhere and my family doesn’t like that.
Today, I wasn’t in my backyard. I decided to slowly follow. I tried not to scare them, so I stayed a block away. Holding my breath, I stood very still. Enamored by them, I captured the moment.
I’m on my usual route. I take slightly different variations every time to change it up, but the main directions stay the same. Sometimes I even do my path in the opposite direction to change it up. I thought I knew the ins and outs of this neighborhood. I’d done this same path more times than I could count (to school in high school, on bike with my family, en pied during covid, and now).
Today was different. Befriending the peacocks, observing in awe, just before I decided to part ways. I stood at a cross walk and turned right, oblivious to the street I was on, thinking it was one of the usual ones (you know since I’ve done so many routes).
Today, it was a new one. My intuition led me down my new favorite street. A tree deeply rooted framing the sidewalk (it looked like a portal Narnia).
Yes. Tomorrow I will pass through it again.