Shanlife abroad: Turning your packing nightmares into designer dreams, one pair of Mosley Tribes at a time

Italy essentials. And a song while you look.



I know this post will be irrelevant for people who aren't studying abroad this fall, but where tf else am I supposed to put this stuff.  If you are studying abroad, you already know all the packing tips and hints they tell you, so we won't talk about that. We'll talk about what you're going to need in real life, in real Europe.  Because the most important question that runs through your head every morning -but what should I wear- (pout optional) is going to get a whole lot harder. And because if you think for one second you're going to walk on that plane in your Norts.. think again.

Disclaimer: If you're thinking an InDesign graphic would have been much nicer for this, I know. I don't have it on this laptop so forget it. Anyway this post is just a brain spill/draft of the stuff I'm packing, so. Appreciate the spacing design or die. Each link opens in a new window! 



















Top Shop maxis
The jersey knit maxi skirt leaves all other bottoms behind in both style and comfort. It's like the socially acceptable way to walk out the door with your sheets still wrapped around you. I'm packing at least 3 for travel and emergency outfits. Seriously, you could sit for hours on a train or walk around town all day in one of these and guys wonder why we love em so much.  Now before you leave for the airport, take off the Norts and pair one of these with a white ribbed tank (god I hate the term wife-beater) and look at youuuuuuu, ya jet-setter.



Mosley Tribe Cardens
Had to find some cheapies at Urban Outfitters but I don't think I could set foot in the most fashionable country in the world without some American designer pride.  Oliver People's Mosley Tribes have been on my eye since Mary-Kate and Ashley and these 2012's have recently become everything to me.  Although we maintain a strictly screen-interface relationship. ($245 worth of butterflies and starry eyes going on over here)



The hoodie
It's already paid for itself working in my chilly lab, so naturally --despite it's grungy I-look-hungover-or-like-I-don't-do-laundry sex appeal-- I'm bringing it along for freezing planes and 12-hour studio class days.



Beaded cuff bracelet
The one I have was made by a jewelry artist in my grandma's little surf town on Lake Michigan, so I obviously couldn't find the exact one, but this one from Swell is similar enough.  I didn't like it at first and literally never wore it, but it re-surfaced recently so I gave it a go on my bare, right wrist. Haven't taken it off.  Bringing it as a travel essential because it adds effortless color and accessory to the infamous plain travel wardrobe. And goes with virtually everything.



Chucks
Lab shoes prove sturdy and reliable. Stonewashed because black is for gamers. You know the ones. Who eat potato chips and wear the wrinkly black t shirts that say stuff like "I'm out of bed, what more do you want?" Yes. I knew you knew the ones.



UO SkarGorn tee
I started the summer out with the Daydreamer LA tie-front boyfriend tee, but a summer spent living with one of your best friends means you both end up with half the clothes you started with because the other has the other half. So while this SkarGorn tee doesn't have any intention of tying the knot (haha pun definitely intended) I have every intention of setting her up with those new light-wash Citizens that just came in the mail. Oh look, now my clothes date.

I have a few more nicer tops, jeans, of course, and one of those short, stretchy going-out skirts that you're supposed to wear going out but I've worn more to the pool/beach than I have going out, in the suitcase, but honestly.......this is it.

 Happy Packing homies, hope it's everything you dreamed it'd be!

Could've been a princess and why living in the moment has become my greatest downfall

 

What is it about looking forward to something that makes you so happy? The satisfying distraction from the present. The excitement of the unknown. The possibilities of the future. The idea that it really can get better than this. 

I wouldn't know.

I have this problem- although most people would call it a gift- where I"m stuck in the present.  I can't look forward to anything.  To me, it doesn't get better than this. The Now. Thinking about what's next has always stressed me out to the point where I am crying myself to sleep or snapping back at the people around me (often the ones trying to help me) or even skipping meals.  I think, if I'm focusing on tomorrow, why bother with today?  And then today is shot to hell.

It's frustrating when things need to get done/something big is happening/I'm going to art school in Italy for a semester in less than a month.  I should be skipping around the house at just the sight of those words at this point, but here I am sitting on my couch with my mind on this bagel I just put in the toaster and whether I'm going to want cream cheese or butter. One on each? Jelly?  C's texting me. My bunny is licking my ankle.

It's like I can't find a balance.  This is a nice trait when I'm say, babysitting or out to dinner, doing something I can be fully engaged in something in which I'm supposed to be fully engaged.  But it gets complicated when things slow down, lists start to formulate, logistics start to matter and what's supposed to happen 3 weeks from now is more important that what's happening right now.

I don't know how to pack my charcoals in a suitcase.  They're all going to crumble.  Where do I put my turpentine? What if my brushes get messed up in my suitcase? Do I bring a bathing suit?  I want to wear my bathing suit today.  Email your adviser.  You have to eat every day, make sure you set aside money to pay for food.  What if I spend all my money on dresses in Milan? Why isn't that bad?

Why aren't any of these questions running through my head? I'm leaving in 3 weeks. The only thing I care that's in my suitcase are my paints and some Advil. My mom is asking me questions.  I don't know the answers. My adviser is asking if I have questions.  I don't.  Will it work out in the end? Hopefully. Probably not. Doesn't it always?

I'm going to help my best friend move in to her new place at her beach school now.  She started packing last night.

I was flying on a jet pack and then hit a stump

Well hi! I haven't dropped by in a while. Partly because I've been homeless and partly because I really don't have a reason.  The convenience of one lease ending 5 days before the next one begins should be starred and circled under the "ways to make life easier" section in the Popular Mechanics for College Living. That was supremely sarcastic, if you didn't pick up. So here we are at home home, late morning on a Friday just me and the littlest brother with the house to ourselves, and I'm stopping by to say whatever it is I've been meaning to say.  I asked little brother what I should say for why I haven't posted in so long and he said, "say you were flying on a jet pack and then hit a stump."
 ....So that's where that came from. In case we fooled you into thinking they were awesome lyrics or something. Nah.. just Kev offering a perfectly fitting story for this blog. We have the same mind.

I guess I could tell you about my morning. Not that it was particularly interesting, but because it was particularly wonderful.  I woke up early with that feeling that you just can't go back to sleep until you wash your mouth out immediately. Sexy, I know but I fell into bed last night extremely late and a little bit drunk so brushing my teeth didn't happen.  Anyway, I didn't end up going back to sleep but I found equally heavenly laziness on the couch with one of those intensely soft Target blankets and music videos on Vh1. I rewinded No Doubt's Settle Down 3 times. Later Kev came down and asked if I wanted eggs. First of all.. aw.  Second of all, he didn't mean just eggs.  A few music videos and low-budget lawyer commercials later, he brings out 2 glasses of this pineapple orange juice he mixed up and 2 bagel sandwiches so good, we ended up talking for 45 minutes about the restaurant we're going to open up and serve them at.  And how we couldn't call it Kev's Kitchen because that's the kind of place that would be in an abandoned strip mall with old flyers taped on the storefront window and the sign in white Arial-font letters with the lights burned out in the "tc" and the "ev's." haha! Instead he said it should be called Shannon's Art Room and he would hang up all my paintings on the walls so old rich people having brunch would look at the one above their table and be like hmm. ohh. That's nice, isn't it Kath? That would look nice in the parlor. I told him jackpot and he would have to play live music on his ukulele/guitar/piano/harmonica/electric banjo at lunch and dinner. (He really plays anything classified as "instrument.") We've got big dreams, him and me.

Here's the thing about the bagel sandwich. Just so you don't think I'm this obsessed with just any old breakfast food. Which I am so.. never mind.

Bagel toasted
idk why I wrote it like that
1. Toasted bagel
Baby swiss cheese (? I think it might have just been American from the deli, but I love how baby swiss cheese is called baby swiss cheese)
Onion
Lettuce
Bacon
Egg, sunny side up
One secret ingredient that I was instructed not to disclose. You know, in case the whole Shannon's Art Room thing takes shape. Thinking ahead.

Have lovely Fridays, it really is the best day of the week. And if I don't talk to you before the weekend is over, have lovely ones of those too. Mine's about to be spent with tax-free clothing and the people I'm going to miss most this fall.

CIAO
(I can start saying that now, right?)

Okay I get it let me think I guess it's my turn

Current flings

fling (fleeng) n. 1. A brief sexual or romantic relationship. 

So.. like these: 

1.  Lupe circa 2007. Read: Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor

2.  e.l.f everything and I'm rolling in the $$$

3.  The thing my hair does when I don't brush it when I get out of the shower

4. Narnia-like Neuse River trails that are actually non-existent, but to C and me, are very much there and hike-able. 

5.  Freshly pierced ear cartlidge. (mm sounds hawt)

6. C's homemade guacamole. Goodness is just the first of too many words to describe. 

7. Bus lines. And all the friends I've been making each morning I refuse to make because I hate public transportation and will continue to walk on board with my no-drinks-allowed coffee drink blatantly in hand and sit down in my awful Bill-Cosby-sweater-like-carpet-coated bus seat keeping my sunglasses on and my earphones in until I am safely to the comfort and familiarity of the elevator in my lab building that talks to me like an old college friend. She says, "Which floor would you like to go to?" And I say "4th, please," and she says, "4th floor your highness" and it's like we're sophomores again. I don't take the sunglasses off or the earphones out until I stop to unlock the door to my lab. The whole thing of it makes you feel like you're Mila Kunis in Book of Eli.

8. The package of 4 chocolate chip muffins from the HT bakery of which I refused to look at the fat content, but did anyway and multiplied it by 3.5 and proceeded to nod my head like, good. That's just about how much I needed today.

What else I need today: for it to be over so I can get on with this LDOC of this godforsaken summer session that has taken 6 weeks longer than expected to arrive. 

Here's a song while we wait. R's favorite. haha

I'ma tell you 1 time

Here's me the day after my wreck before I left the apartment for the day. I couldn't stop busting out laughing about nothing until like lunch.  If you saw me you might have thought I was on drugs or something. I'm not! I'm just alive. And I'll tell you what, it's like the best drug ever. 

I'm about to be a little bit existential, so don't mind this post, because I don't even know if it will make sense in words. But it was the weirdest thing, waking up. One of my doctors said I'd be in pain for 72 hours and even prescribed me painkillers. Not that I got any injuries at all, but because of all the muscle tension during the flipping, I was ready to wake up very sore. But it wasn't like that.  It was different. For that very first moment entering consciousness, I wasn't anywhere. I was awake, but I wasn't my body in my bed. I was just like a brain somewhere in time and space.  I wasn't thinking about anything, I didn't feel anything physically or emotionally. I was just existing. 

And just that, that pure existence, was perfect.  

Maybe that's what heaven's like. 

The whole everything of the wreck is such a personal experience, it almost seems removed from me, myself.  Perhaps because we live such a public lives on blogs and Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, when something so drastic happens to you, it seems like it should go right up on the digital timeline of your life, like everything else.  (If it doesn't, doesn't it kind of make you feel like it never happened?) And I can do that, sure, but then I feel like that leaves something out.

By posting all the moments in our lives on those sites, we crave a published, permanent effect.  Something to look back on.  We tell virtually everyone that we want that part in our lives to forever be represented by that one moment- a photo taken with your phone, a status update, a perfectly constructed 140-character statement. I'm not saying that an Instagram picture can't be meaningful or a tweet can't speak from your heart; I bank on that to be true almost every time. What I'm saying is that when it comes down to retelling the truth, a nostalgic filter won't capture the shock.  A hundred well-meaning comments won't make it something to look back on. A couple re-tweets only take your words and deliver them further and further away from you.  

So, I don't think I can social media-ize my accident any more than I already have.  What I really wanted to say was that my wreck isn't going to be something to look back on.  It's really doing something to me, and I think for the better.  I have had so much fun these past 2 days and for no reason at all. It's like someone gave me a round 2 and I don't even know what to do with myself! Someone was like.. Ok, fine, you don't have to go yet, but you better start giving me a good reason why not.

I think it was God.
(!!!)

Hope you're all out doing everything you want to be doing. And if you're not, I hope everything you want to be doing is what you're doing.

Cheers/Evviva/הידד/Chok dee/ هتاف/to life!

Something for the Weekend

I'd like to take a second to talk about one of my favorite jewelry artists, Cindy Man Wai Chan, who's jewelry line, Dotoly, is cool as shit. It originally stole my heart with the precious elephant ring that clings to your finger like a baby koala. I shared the link to it in a post earlier this year, but because of my downright obsession with basically everything she creates, I decided it was about time to highlight Chan's treasures on here for round 2.  Also, because one of my alternate choices for classes at SACI is jewelry design. (I'm laughing at myself, too). 

Even if you're tired of me telling you to buy rings, you can't deny your heart melts at the mere sight of these guys-

1. For C


Sometimes C and I are the same person, but always we are our own spirit animals.  I don't know when we grew into our respective spirit animals it kind of happened right around the time months before animal jewelry became trendy. But every time I see something with a giraffe on it, I have to tell her.  If you and your best friend don't have spirit animals.... sucks.

2. For the Carolina girl 


The description says "mountain sheep" but I say Ram.  Wear this to all the football games in the fall for me.  I'll be sporting it in Florence and people will either think that I like sheep or that I am a UNC student. In Italy, probably the former.  Maybe I'll meet a shepherd.

3. Swamp Life 



It's actually Salt Life, but Gator fans think they're being cute. Speaking of college mascots, I couldn't leave out the other love of my life, K. My cousin goes to UF and makes orange and blue look better than Tebow. And that's saying something.  When we were younger, our families treated us to resort-like daycations every summer in the Everglades.  Plenty of sun sunburned earlobes that hurt so bad you have to hold wet napkins on them while you cry at the Steak n' Shake, sand sulfurous swamp mud, and tropical umbrella drinks Cokes we had to share with the snotty lips of our sweaty little brothers. I'm kidding, it was always pretty fun.  And we'd get alligator for lunch that we always felt so bad ass eating, but it really just tastes like chicken fingers. Shh!

4. "Snake"


This description doesn't have anything to do with these posts- which I think are really sexy- but I have a snake story. One August morning when C and I were visiting my grandparents' little bungalow in Florida, we went out (key word) to go surfing during a small hurricane. (I know, we're so cool.)  One of the other brave souls out there was a hot (duh) surfer, whose wild drug-dealing stories would be sure to get us to his hot tub party that night (what.. he's a surfer). But when I told my uncle about "how cool it was that he goes by "Snake" by his surfer friends!", we weren't allowed to talk to him anymore. I think C and I I won the naive-as-shit-boy-crazy award in my teen years.

5.  "Oh Fifty!"


If you know me in real life, you know that I actually can't stand the Fifty Shades books.  Despise isn't even the word.  Really bad literature (not news to anyone) and Christian might be hot but he strips a smart girl of her freedom, personality and..don't want to ruin it for anyone but.. future.  Ok I'm done. But since it is a really popular series and so many women do enjoy it, I think it'd be kind of hot to wear this necklace as a tribute to Ana  Miss Steele.

6. Princess 


Ending on a good note. I love these posts.  Since it's summer, I've been trying to color-up my normally neutral wardrobe and I'm thinking these would do just that with this [neutral] cotton number I recently ordered from American Apparel. Not telling which one. For Italy, I tell my mom.

...no. For this weekend. 

Seems like everywhere I go, the more I see, the less I know

Between midnight moscato and instant grits in blue cups and pizza hut delivery boys taking their shirts off and wearing them as turbans, I came across this Blake photo shoot on BNQT.com .

I then proceeded to update my *matching* cover photo and twitter background with one gorgeous black and white picture that encompasses everything I want for my own black and white prints in this photo class I'm taking: grayscale, darks, lights, composition, style. Blake Lively. Men in wetsuits. 

Here it is so that you don't have to go to my profile on your laptop wherever you are to see it and look like you're stalking me.  In case you don't already do.

This photo class is seriously affecting me, and I think it has to do with the chemicals soaking my brain each day more than anything I've actually learned.  Leaving the photo lab last night, I found myself critiquing the outdoor darkness and its perfection.  That grayscale! The darks, the lights! That tonality! Look how the edges are burned just so! I find myself looking at real life and seeing it as millions of photos, my surroundings a series of negatives my head develops in seconds. Why am I doing that? Isn't the purpose of photography to take a negative and develop it to appear as close to reality as possible? 

And here I am doing the opposite, just wanting my reality to freeze so I can take it with me in all its sharp and tonal perfection.  I think maybe I'm starting to realize the disparity between my prints and good prints.  Good prints mimic this perfection of reality. My prints just don't capture it.  

Yet, that is. Will they by the end of the semester? Yes.  If it takes 15 more 15-hour sessions in the darkroom. Yes. 


It's the reality of that photo up there that I crave. It's like magic. And I'm not giving up until I get it.