I found these images this weekend tucked away in a folder. Early August in India was pretty great.
On this day, so many months ago now, TT, Jess, and I made the short boat ride out to Elephanta Island from Mumbai. What I remember most from this place is the color. Everything seemed to glow.
Today in Chapel Hill, I’m wearing fur and its winter, but its just as bright and sparkly as it was in India on this day.
Yesterday, I learned the basics of sailing. And went swimming. And walked through a swamp.
Today, I’ll sit on a bus for a few hours.
[Photo: GoPro + I go sailing. Bacalar, Mexico//Grace Farson]
“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” – Jack Kerouac
[Photos: Something like paradise, Tulum, Mexico//Grace Farson]
Although I still have almost a week left here in beautiful Mexico, I already feel that there is not enough time!
I’m currently staying at a funny little hostel (*Hostel Chalupa. No joke) on an awkward street in central Tulum. I’m in a big dorm room filled all my favorite types of backpackers. Everything I have is coated with a thin layer of sand and my body is marked with hundreds of bug bites, but I’m incredibly content here.
I’ve spent my day: on the beach, editing photos, walking nowhere just to find pretty light and big bottles of water, trying to understand and communicate my feelings with my limited understanding of Spanish, contemplating just how sick I would get if I did drink the water, making plans, not making plans, and most of all quietly observing my surroundings.
I welcome the heat, the gorgeous water, and the sand. And most of all, days spent like these.
My eyes are happy seeing new things (as always) and over the course of the past three days, I’ve taken over three thousand photos!
[Photo: On a reserve, Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico// Grace Farson]
Yesterday on a bench outside on the most beautiful of all fall days, I asked J what I should do when I grow up. He tried to avoid the question and then with some hesitancy, said: an artist of sorts.
Later, I got this email:
When we talked today, I didn’t mean you should be an artist. Rather, you are an artist. I think it means seeing the world a certain way. With your own eyes. With eyes that are uncertain and curious.. . .“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what’s next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” – Agnes de Miller
I’m currently working through my third year here . . . And, if I had done things right (* er, not abandoned school for a year), I’d be graduating in May.
Happy and thankful right now I’m only doing school // work // relationships // making life plans . . . but I find that within me there is this growing pressure to know what I want out of life after this. After all, so much of our college careers are wrapped up in that question. Sometimes, it is hard to ignore.
I find that all I want, all I’ve ever really wanted was to be an artist. I want to create. To feel. To be curious (always). And to not shrink back from challenges.
If college has done one thing for me, it has given me a sense of possibility. Each and everyday, us kids are bombarded by possibility and just all we could do if there were more hours in a day// if we were more talented//etc.
I find that I’m dissatisfied by my work and how I spend my days unless I’m touching // molding // and creating things with my mind // my eyes and most of all, my hands.
I find that I want to do. . . I want to do everything and cannot comfortably (*just) learn without actually doing.
I’m certainly a work in progress, but I’m enjoying the process for the most part. . .
[Photo: Swallowed in the sea. Depock beach, Indonesia//Grace Farson]
Warmer days are coming. . .
“Always there comes an hour when one is weary of one’s work and devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.” – Albert Camus
[Photos: Parangtritis Beach, Indonesia. Summer 2012//Grace Farson]
More from a blue weekend in Wilmington.
Break is full. It is a pleasant place to be at, but I thought wrongly when I assumed I’d have all the time in the world to take care of business back in Chapel Hill//Carrboro. Eleven hour work days and oddly spaced breaks = life right now.
That said, it feels good to not worry about essays, projects, performances. . . yes, even for just a week.
I’m happy I stayed. I stayed and felt no real need to leave. I guess I’m changing. . .
“Consciousness itself does not hinder living in the present. In fact,it is only to a heightened awareness that the great door to the present opens up at all. Even a certain amount of interior verbalization is helpful to enforce the memory of whatever it is that is taking place. . . ” – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
[Photos: Wilmington, NC. March 2013//Grace Farson]
GRACE FARSON 