let's just do a photo diary

out of the blue, i thought i'd see how my blog was doing--as if someone might have updated it for me. i typed in the url on my browser and saw the photos from my last post "jesuit juliet" that feel to me, as if they were taken a year ago. dayum it has been hella long since i've written a blog post, or maybe reality just distorts...reality (?!?!). but now i seriously don't expect much consistency from myself when it comes to my blogspot, which is unfortunate. it's like taking care of your old stuffed animals in your room back home after going to college. maybe (?!?!). i will say that i've been writing pages on pages about alice in wonderland, social death, what reality means, what Facebook means, the ethnography of fashion blogging, yeah, let's talk about college. i love being able to learn and soaking in texts, words, someone's thoughts and identities established through prose and film. school is cool and nyu has shown me that liberty and what a true education can do and did not do for me in schooling ever before.

although most of my life as of recent has been me stringing words together on a laptop somewhere in the city, i have tried fairly consistently document my outfits. there is something about it that is exciting and familiar for me. i also just really want to share it because i have fun wearing what i wear, and i'd hope that maybe youll have fun seeing how i wore things. but clothes don't mean too much if you aren't actually living in your clothes, so here's a photo diary, or maybe let's call it a montage of how i wore my language of life in this so called world.

one of my favorite outfits. i felt so happy in this get up. bright orange, comfortable (kid's) dress (with pockets), a button down, a button down with polka dots, tights, a relevant bouffant, scissor brooch, brooch on quirky location of shirt--this is discoveries and dreams in a look for me!

more photos i took of kate nash at the wsn highlighter. she is a great storyteller and puts on a smashing, honest and personal concert--how they should be. also take a moment to appreciate those bats on her dress. kick ass-ery at its finest. 

trying to look elegant for Elegance at the Met Museum

french connection dress

Inwood Park

anthropologie dress, silence + noise varsity jacket, bebe purse

  

one of my buddies asked me to prom! it's not what it sounds like, in many more ways than one. it was for a fabulous group of nyu admissions ambassadors and i was asked by a dashing gay ginger boy and you have no idea how happy i was when he texted me. i felt like i wouldve said yes if his text asked me to marry him. 

The strap part of the dress was too long for my short body/torso/etc. so I safety pinned the straps to shorten the length. But who wants to really show their safety pin boo boo out in the open. I had dark blue earrings I had been itching to incorporate into my outfits and I finally found their moment. So there's a trick for you--earrings for buttons and brooches! Instant DIY done deal.

Song of the moment

never wanted your love - she & him (check out volume 3 on npr first listen!! google it)

also check out this amazing moodboard by the le sigh--an indie girl blog i write for! yes! more news to tell you that is relevant. the le sigh! we all sigh, we all breathe, we all love ladies and know that art is worth it so visit and browse

oh oh, i also want to tell you that i'm working on a piece of nonfiction writing that i can't wait to share with you soon. :) it will definitely--maybe--be my favorite piece i wrote this year, actually i dont know about the latter half of that sentence, but i will definitely be excite to share it. brace yourselves for a few days. in the mean time, i am on twitter and tumblr pretty regularly. hohoho, boy, do i love this city and this life.

"maturity"

This post all began from attending a journalism seminar at a graduate school, when a lovely man happened to sit next to me and say something kind.

I always let these opportunities go. I get so flustered. I become not myself. 

During the seminar on longform journalism, I ended up not paying attention and finding more excitement in drawing the guest speakers. I thought I was in my personal zone, by myself. But to my surprise, the well-groomed dashing blonde male graduate Journalism student next to me whispers over my right shoulder "That's nice." and I reply, digging my chin toward my chest, eyes looking somewhere I don't even remember, my mouth forming a pursed, smitten smile, "thanks." I felt my cheeks begin to blush then start to flare as I realize what just happened.

--

I never think I'm cool enough to associate with cool older people like that or people who think they're older and cooler or people who don't even think they themselves are cool but they are just older so they look cool. I feel like they don't appreciate me. Maybe that whole Perks of Being a Wallflower quote was right, "you love the people you think you deserve." I can't love or simply like these people even if they are just like me but happen to have a facade of cool. I can't do it, because I don't think I deserve it. So, I somehow make men who don't deserve me begin to love me instead. Like the security guard at the Met, and the regular at 30 Rock. That's what they all are. Regulars. But I know I'm not regular...

--

The fellow chats with the lady sitting on the other side of him. She is older than me. She wears glasses, an embroidered pencil skirt probably from Anthropologie with a nice blouse maybe from an indie version of Ann Taylor. She looks like she reads. She looks average height. She looks well-bred, appreciative of groceries at Whole Foods. She is "mature" I suppose. They talk about this discussion, exhibit their knowledge. I remain conversating through my red pen, sketching and taking notes. I am a party of one.

--

He quietly sneezes. I whisper bless you because I don't think it'd be awkward since he complimented my personal doodles. He takes a glance at me and hushes back thank you. We establish an official charming recreational relationship.

--

He goes up to the mic in the aisle to ask his question, to get his fair share of intellectual excitement. As he comes back to sit, he looks at my size 5 oxford shoes, and says he likes them, and excitedly shows me his, pointing out that our shoes are identical except his more manly. Of course, I had already noticed ten minutes ago that we were wearing similar shoes when he crossed his legs so his right foot flirted with my personal space. I laugh, "oh yeah! they're the same! Except mine are ten times smaller." He says, "yeah, they're much cuter that way." He talked to me like I was just like him. I guess if I stripped myself of my insecurities, ignored the fact that he is kind of hulkingly dashing and I am miniscule-y young, we would be equals.

--

As the seminar is over, she leaves. He leaves. They talk about "J school." I put on my earmuffs, feeling childish as everyone else around me envelopes themselves in stiff coats and adult jackets. I proceed to wear my powder blue gloves with gold charms. He suggests grabbing coffee with her, talking about journalism thesis. I keep packing up, as if I have somewhere to go. I pretend I don't remember our recreational relationship, just like when I feigned surprise at our twin shoes and when I realized we are alike in our honesty, in our friendship, in an aspiration for intellectualism.

We are all leaving the auditorium and he pauses at the door, probably to catch her number. I walk past, I push the door open, I have work to do. I turn left and speedwalk down the block. I am busy. I make a right at Madison Ave. I just came here for business. I turn left on 33rd. I had no meaning, no place here. I sprint down the station steps, swipe my card and ride the train home. Every step reminds me of how much further I am from him. He's lost me. I lost him. Good. He probably forgot about me as soon as he left the building, while I just thought about how I needed to write out this powerful elixir of emotions that I am so frustrated to feel yet again but this time with a vengeance.

He has more mature friends anyway. He will probably have a sophisticated coffee chat on journalism theses with the glasses girl. They will exchange mature phone numbers. They will have a mature cup of coffee. They will have a mature date. They will exchange mature glances. They will make mature love.

But I realize, I am actually that mature. I am just like him. I seem incapable of accepting the fact that my size and my penchant for patterned earmuffs does not define my maturity. I am no longer of the maturity where I need to succumb to shyness if someone flatters my doodles. I can accept that as an adult, as a...wait for it...twenty year old.

I always wonder, what kind of "dude" will end up being the guy "for me?" I scan the list of males in my age range--all of them instigating negative feedback. But maybe, a daunting graduate student is something I should no longer be afraid of. Maybe I should realize, I can deserve a lot more than what's been said is love for the stereotypical college girl. I guess this is twenty. But who am I to know about age or about love, I am so small, I could never deserve something so mature.

oh silent night: a huge blog post for hugely awesome friends and holidays

foreword: i tried to keep the following thoughts and emotions in one paragraph (LOL, what a joke on my part). then i started writing and it kept going and i decided, imma just write dis for myself. i think these next paragraphs were written more to for me--not for me to read, but for me to write.

POST SCRIPT IN THE FOREWORD. after writing all this i have decided this makes no sense and you shouldn't read it because i think it's dumb. but at least you have some photos if you don't read it. heck i dont even know if you're reading this.

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cousins, brothers, sisters. aunts, uncles, grandparents. relative seems to piece family back into place when it's the holidays. no matter what the cost, nothing stops family from getting together during "the most wonderful time of year." thanksgiving gets close to winning the award for best family-gatherer, but christmas gets me out of school for like friggin 4 weeks. thanksgiving? 2 days--the winner is obvious.

despite the obvi ness of family getting together during the holy holidays, for me, it's always been a rough ride. it's just the four of us--my brother, my mom, dad, and me. but we're all somewhere else. we're all up to something at different parts of the world. this year, i felt the distance, but more than the distance, i felt the brokenness that lies between the cracks that have always existed in our four piece puzzle.

after getting lost in translation with japanese stewardesses of Japanese Airlines, i traveled across continents to find myself planted in a christmas that was missing someone. whenever i go to korea, he's always there. whenever i pass customs and stroll my luggage out of the airport, he's always there. or at least he's supposed to be. but he wasn't. well, i guess it's more accurate to say that he was there for a second, he picked me up at the airport and put me down and then he left my mom and me. alone. in a quiet home. no tree. no promise. just broken expectations of what family means to me. of what i thought home was supposed to be.

on the day of christmas, mom and i sat around and listened to my "AHHHHHH" playlist (i.e. christmas playlist, because christmas is worthy of screaming AHHHH) on spotify while trying to find some decent american films on demand via korean tv--no success. i didnt mind nor really notice him not being there until i called him. hey its a holly jolly day so i should call my pops even if he is dumb and not home on christmas, or so i thought. i dial his cell to face a redundant obnoxious ring. that's when his absence began to burn. 

underlying that situation, is my mom. she's in a very keen, sensitive, complicated and not happy state. her hurt hit me when she broke it down--erin, the house is so empty, her voice fragile, as unsteady and as thin as seran wrap. and while i sat and listened to her telling me what's happening with our family, while as i listened to a situation so real, i felt a sense of quiet like some haunting heatwave--except it was cold, like the chill i imagine it'd feel in an old abandoned haunted house. like in that one poem, not a thing was stirring not even a mouse? it was kind of like that--i felt the houses' silence, the vacancy of a family. the sad truth that was our state of a "merry christmas." the emptiness makes a home here, it stays and haunts, quietly whispering devastation through the my mother's veins, seeping in like some awful nyc humidity.

while i realized our situation--i will spare you and myself of the logistics, i tasted what it was like for many people, many quiet people, who don't actually have a merry christmas. who don't actually get to instagram a festive family photo. who don't actually have friends to tag in their facebook photos for holiday polaroids and camera photos. the emptiness pierces. to the experience-ee it is a quiet fog, but as my mom relayed those words to me, the situation's sudden overbearing nature was miserable and sharp. i can't even say i tasted this emptiness because i know i can't feel what my mom feels. a white man can't become a black man. a student can't become her teacher. a daughter can't become her mom. but the emptiness was right there before me and it hurt to see it and to know that it was so real.

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i thought about that emptiness that some feel during the holidays. nobody to share a gift with. or maybe somebody, but then the list ends there. merry christmas, to nobody and nothing. i remembered a contrasting experience related to silence/emptiness after a shindig i held a few weeks ago. after some friends and i pasted scraps of paper together to make holiday cards and after we consumed apple cider and chocolate wafers and verde salsa and after many smiles and happy feet walked in and out the doors of my humble soho abode, a mist of a feeling came over me. i sunk into a silence from the absence of my friends who had once illuminated my night.

the small space was full of such laughter that even initiated crying--laughs on me. a corner of camera posing, a dollop of shouting at our cards for not being perfect and living up to our artistic dreams ("where is MINTY MOOSE"), a brief revisit to ol' degrassi. my not so capacious space was jammed with joyful noises, enough so to inspire an RA to tell us to shut up before quiet hours--of all rooms mine... LOL, they dun know me.

then after all that, when we finally got tired from camera posing, and finally acknowledged that our cards cant be perfect, and finally finished talking about degrassi, i sunk into the quiet and finished the night: i moved the mosaics of scrap paper from awkward table crevices. i whipped out my laptop. i updated my facebook photo to one from the night's collection of many poses. i wrote some of what youre reading write now in my tumblr journal as i always do when i feel moody. then i closed my laptop. all was silent. everything and everyone had gone.

despite the banter, car horns, obnoxious drunken discussion--i.e. the downtown soundtrack that invites itself into my room to make it so characteristically citylike, despite all that, for that moment, i realized how quiet my room actually was.

but in that silence there was an unheard din--the beautiful melody that is friendship. i realized how awesome the evening was, for me. i realized--yet again--how lucky i am to have friends like these. there was maybe 10 people that passed in and out those doors that evening, not too many, and yet each one meaning so much and breathing so much life.

in that silence, i felt warmth. as i walked around my room i felt the laughs and excitement and smiles that wandered the same space. yes, it was silent, but my room wasn't empty.

in that silence, i felt life. i felt joy because that is the scent of friendship. as a few true friends study abroad next semester and judging from my dynamic check-in-history (born in jersey, lived in south korea, lived in seattle, now in nyc--had to move all da time errywhere, thus less stable friends), i'm never sure who my 'best friends 4 lyfe' are. i feel inseparable with some people. i think they're awesome. we've got to be friends ten years from now.' and yet who knows. i always think i do, but looking back, i know nothing.

in that silence, i felt the present. i didn't feel worried about friends not getting along with others even if they're new. somehow my friends are awesome in the way that they can be awesome with new people since they are all awesome. do you understand?! it's magic. it's an open heart. in these moments i didn't worry about anything because i knew they were all my friends, not the cream of the crop of my favorite clique-y groups or whatever. it was all about the moment. IT WAS A CIRCLE OF LIFE

in that silence, it felt like a postcard or a polaroid. i felt reality from a few moments ago and i was soaking it in. the moments were musky in my head because they weren't happening in front of my face, yet, thinking in that silence, i felt everything. i felt love. i felt the silence unwrap itself into life, into the present, into friendship.

i can never thank god enough for the people that he has placed in my life. and i have come to terms with the fact that many of these people, i will not be in regular contact with 10 years from now. 1 year from now. or next month. or ever. but in that silence i felt a gratitude for the fact that i have these friends that i do today.

in that silence, i knew the warmth that lingered invisibly in my room might fade. in the same way, these friends may not even see me again, but i also knew that in the chaos that exists beyond my quiet space, in the chaos that is the city, in the chaos that is the noise of facebook and in the chaos that is the way of life, in the chaos is joy, a hushed peace and happiness. and that is what makes the holidays. that is what makes every day a bit more worth while. and that is what makes up for the emptiness.

merry christmas. and thank you for being my friend today.

(and if you're not, then, thanks for...reading!....?) 

photos and gifs--that's right GIFS--from the night (oh that merry x-mas sign is cute ikr. well i guess i'll laud myself some praise for creating it. actually no that's really vain. well, too late, just did. don't even know if you can laud somebody but i just lauded.)

 

photobombing per usual

trying to recreate brooklyn fierceness

for added hip points, put a filter on it. 

EVEN THOUGHT CHRISTMAS WAS A FEW DAYS AGO. MERRY CHRISTMAS. AND HAPPY NEW YEAR. like i said, the holidays are about them universal themes like joy, happiness, warmth and all that jazz, so why should we only be excited to say celebrate the season during the month of december? celebrate christmas all year round. #ErinsTwoCents #ErinsFiftyCents

 

song of the moment/the night

merry x-mas - dragonette 

a morbid attraction

Some weekends you just never know what's coming next. This weekend was that kind of collection of events. 

1. I bought a pair of kick ass ankle booties from Aldo (on sale forever and always). They're black and suede so they're chic enough for most occasions. They have some heel so I don't feel as short as I actually am when I wear them. All around, they kick ass--hopefully I won't run into a situation where I will literally have to do so. Here are some photos and then I will tell such an enchanting tale to sweep you off your slippers.

I can never take myself seriously

2. I "went out." This semester I think I have fulfilled society's definition of that phrase about thrice or maybe fivce-ish. None of them were really going out though. I never actually really do. So I didn't actually fulfill society's definition of it. So nvm, according to society it would then be zero. Which is fine by Erin Kim. Ok, you'll see what I mean. So I "went out" to a creative writing party of sorts held at the very classiest of New England sites, The Players Club, which housed the late Sir Edwin Booth, brother of the man that is known for killing Abe. I imagined this gathering to be much hipper and trendier than it turned out to be--I mean they said there'd be polaroids, so you know. But I freaking loved how it turned out. I am such a grandma, it is unreal. 

After I took a cheeseball pic with my beloved Jimmy Fallon (he gets mentioned two blog posts in a row, now that's love. Also, why he has a painted portrait, I do not know, but I would steal it.), I realized there was also a tour going on and apparently Edwin's crib is just the same as it was since the day he died. FREAKIN AWESOME! It's like I'm standing there with him, watching him sleep, holding his hand, breathing the air he breathed, touching the hand rail he touched, stepping the steps he stepped, living the life he lived!!!! I have no idea why I loved it so much, but I was enamored. I think I have some innately wry fetish for death and classy/antique-y homes. I have no doubt it relates to my appreciation for garage sales held by elderly people. 

some last minute foolin' around at edwin's place. i got cozy there. i could sleepover. 

"polaroids" at the "party" (this is at the beloved restaurant that is Chat n' Chew) 

coat - free people (on loan from sherry), blazer - urban outz, top - anthropologize, boots - aldo, sass - you'll never know (p.s. i guess this is now "my spot")

song of the moment
phoenix - girlfriend (you have no idea how excited i was to hear them play at the diner--after partying with edwin's ghost obvi)

between the lines

although i just tried to pick a witty title for this post, i realized that it's actually quite relevant to my current situation. feeding off from what happened in my last post, things have been a bit rickety. the future seems simply hazy and i wish i could guide my life in the right way, the way that'll not only continue my personal happiness but inspire others, the way that'll not only fulfill my life but achieve god's will--most of all. 

there are so many careers defined by a few letters: doctor, journalist, photographer, artist, this, that, what. i love so many things that i'm confused about having to pick one. i dont want to pick one. and i know that the real world wants me to specialize, but, can't i specialize in.. not picking one career pathway? 

anywho, i'm not so worried anymore because i know there's an awesome future lying ahead of me, there has always been, and that's why i'm loving where i am now. i know the best is yet to come and i know and yet i don't. eee the 1AM gibberish is getting to me so i'm going to stop myself. one thing i know for sure, i like clothes! here's a recent outfit that i enjoyed putting together :) 

(this was when someone caught me self timing myself and said "HA! I got to see it all happen!" or something like that and i was embarassed and yeah)

shirt - anthropologie,  necklace - brooklyn flea market, skirt - south korea street store, tights - anthropologie, shoes - aldo

song of the moment