All posts filed under: Travel + Place

“Kodachrome” outfit

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Kodachrome / They give us those nice bright colors. / They give us the greens of summers. / Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day. / I got a Nikon camera. / I love to take a photograph. / So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away. For years, in the spring, my BFF Amanda and I have gone to the deserts of Utah to backpack. This year, deep on the road to Escalante, the weather did not abide. Rain, rain everywhere. Every road with a wash and every slot canyon (so nearly every route available) became a flash flood hazard. So we spontaneously found a little state park called Kodachrome. Like the Paul Simon song. It’s a wonderland. Where the natural wonders mostly resemble penises. We hiked most of the park yesterday, and ran every single trail remaining this morning. Breathtaking. Arches. Canyons. Views. Spires. Phallic symbols hard-pressed from 180 million years of geologic history. By in a flash. H&M red knit sweater, $4. Unlabeled flower print ’90s skirt, $3.75. BCBGirls leather strap-on kitten heels, $7. August silk black camisole (slightly …

“Portal to Another Dimension” outfit

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“I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in.” —Patti Smith I read Just Kids on the plane back home. The book is a wardrobe-esque passageway into the Chelsea Hotel and New York City of the ’60s and ’70s. As seen through the looking glass/lens of Patti Smith—and the snapshots of Robert Mapplethorpe—from the perspective of when they were both nobodies. Just some hungry, curious, passion-struck bodies—risking poverty and vertigo to plumb the depths of art, their voices, their setting, their souls. At the end of Rauschenberg’s reflecting pool, in front of his giant Studio, stands an off-kilter stone sculpture. “Hey, hey,” I would whisper conspiratorially to anyone around, those just dipping their toes in, “This is a portal to another dimension.” They blinked back at me, lizard-like, unsaying, “OK, weirdo.” But I went through it. This is what I found: Fear is a thin membrane. And …

“The future is unwritten” outfit

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During our tour of Rauschenberg’s Captiva compound, I took a lopsided picture of this print on the wall of one of the Studios. “The future is unwritten,” it said. To say everything unsaid. This is the white hut where the writers go to write. This is the white path made of tiny white shells that leads to the hut where the writers go to write. It is all light. And all white. Except the inside. That is dark rich wood. That smells of cedar. Inside, there is a desk for you to write. A green chair to sit. To sweat it out into the white. Lauren Conrad flower print top $3.75 Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store  (I accidentally broke this top because I used it as an impromptu swim suit, then skinny dipped in a bioluminescent plankton glow high, and put it on rather hastily. Salty tears.)  | Bill Blass Sport hot pink button up top $7 – Bend, OR Goodwill | Official Boy Scout green cargo shorts with gold snaps and gold studs lining the pockets, $12, LUX Fashion Lounge) …

“Captiva” outfit

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I spent the last 5 days at the late great artist Robert Rauschenberg‘s compound on Captiva Island, Florida. The heat a record high. The humidity druggy. The experience magic born of darkness and light. Rumor has it, Captiva is named for the misdeeds of the infamous pirates who roamed here in the early 1800s, exploiting the isle to hold female prisoners for ransom. Instead, I was flown in, with enthsiastic consent, by the extraordinary Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, his legacy nonprofit that dropped a $30k money bomb on Story Story Night‘s lap 2 years ago. Back then, even after phenomenal popularity, we were barely making it as an organization, and as human beings, honestly. I was lost in a horrifying, devastation-slash-stage-stricken major depressive episode. All live and without notes. Even with sold out shows stoked by nervous energy, Story Story Night‘s budget barely squeaked by. Behind the scenes, we had no structure, no nonprofit status. I felt like a husk. Deep inside a panicking, burning, and weeping body, I thought everything I loved was actually a parasite—eating my soul …

Cheep story-time EARTH

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[Prologue: So this is the story I wanted to tell tonight at Story Story Night. I left a few crucial things out in the live telling, but that’s the nature of the beast. But, from what I’ve learned, the journey is the destination, anyway. So spin it however you want. I have abbreviated names to somewhat to protect the innocent, and the not so innocent.] This is a story about wildness, and wilderness, and about what really happens when you sow your wild oats, and are later forced to reap that sometimes bitter fruit. For me, the wild sowing really started when, at 20, I fell in the love for the first time with my first lover, perhaps the worst possible person to pair with my virginal, idealistic young soul. Let me explain. My upbringing was very sort of Dr. James Dobson Focus on the Family Christian. When time came for sex ed, it was abstinence-only all the way, baby. We used to have these sex ed books for young Christian teens. They were chose …

Cheep backgrounder

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Starting a public-facing blog begs self-examination. I think things like, “Seriously, who do you think you are? What do you know about any of this stuff? You think you’re a simulacrum of Tim Gunn and Padma Lakshmi and Anthony Bourdain and those Brits from Changing Rooms (the much better BBC precursor to Trading Spaces. And yes, I watch too much reality television) on a die-hard budget. But who are you really? A nobody.” Well that’s just it really. I am a nobody, and I felt like one nearly all my life. I wasn’t born with a 75% off Calvin Klein jumper on and a fabulous art-deco mobile over my vintage crib. I was a shy, utter depressive from the age of 11 to at least my mid-20s (RIP, soul-raking sadness). I dressed in rotations of cliché awfulness: like a hobo, like a punk, like a preppie conformist. I ate meat and potatoes and once-frozen vegetables for dinner nearly every night, along with all the processed crap that makes up the blighted American food landscape. I …