Lifestyle: Annie Fay Blog

Lessons at 21

10/18/2020

21

When I consider how far I’ve come since this time last year I am blown away. Time is a curious thing...I was on a completely different path when I was 20 turning 21. This year has been everything but expected but, just as I set out to do, it was a year of extreme evolution—my Butterfly Year. I am currently living and loving in my very own apartment, teaching art lessons, and devoting my time to introspection in action—self-growth.

My year is book ended by experiences and achievements. I celebrated my 21st birthday adventuring around Kauai with my mom, and I am ending this year grounded in California celebrating with my friends and family. I am beginning this new year by seeking beauty in nature and enjoying the company of the people I love most.

Each day I have worked on connecting with my core, advocating for change, learning how to communicate, living life with lightheartedness, and of course, following truth.

As I reflect on this past revolution around the sun, I normally say: I cannot believe how quickly the last 12 months sped by. This year is more than a little different. Last October feels like a lifetime ago, so it feels good to pause and recognize the passing of time. It feels good to accept the world I’m in rather than live in denial of it. Despite the state of things, I am full of appreciation for the challenges that motivated me towards empowerment.

Today I am sharing a few lessons I have learned at 21 along with 21 photos from this year ((although, I will add that these lessons are things that need to be constantly re-learned and put into practice)).

Enjoy.

October 2019: Double rainbow landing in Kauai

#1: Control is a myth.

October 2019: Seashell hunting in Kauai

October 2019: Swimming under a lil waterfall in Kauai

#2: Spontaneity, impulsivity, and a bit of chaos lead to some of the best adventures and life lessons.

October 2019: Secret beach in Kauai

#3: Healing isn’t linear.

October 2019: In Kauai (:

#4: Reclaiming and developing power through trust and communication feels like magic.

October 2019: Hindu monastery in Kauai where we did a healing ritual of writing down things we wanted to release and then burned the papers

October 2019: Turtle in Kauai

#5: I think the meaning of life is in seashell hunting which demands presence of heart, mind, and spirit. I walk the beach ((and more largely, this planet)) believing that there are treasures waiting for me if I simply look.

December 2019: Visiting Katie at Pitzer (:

December 2019: Exploring Quint Gallery

#6: Allow yourself time and space to be completely unattainable and unavailable to anyone but yourself. And not out of lack or when there’s no other option. Choose this. Plan time for and with yourself.

#7: Be someone who you can depend on and enjoy without any doubt or hesitation.

December 2019: Hiking Annie's Canyon Trail with the family ((photo by Katie))

March 2020: Accepted to USD's grad program

December 2019: Me and Katie watching the last sunset of 2019 at the beach with Mom

#8: Give a full 100% to all you do, but not 150%. Allow others to do their 100% too, not just 50%. Other people are capable.

April 2020: Painting thank you cards for my professors at The New School

#9: Don’t wait on the world to give you permission to fully live your life. I am my own permission slip. Signed and dated.

May 2020: Photo of me, by Katie

May 2020: My graduation cap

June 2020: BLM!!

August 2020: Proud teacher moment (:

#10: Love takes on many forms and I consistently find that when I love a lot, everything is better. It seems so obvious, but emitting that frequency...it returns to me at random and that feels like magic.

#11: Advocacy is often met with animosity.

August 2020: Dad helping me move into my apartment and hanging up my mirror (:

September 2020: Sharing my space with Grandma <3

#12: There’s a certain universality to sitting in a café to write and observe people. So why is it so common to crave this simple act in a foreign country? Strangers are strangers.

September 2020: Drawing oil pastel sunsets at the beach

October 2020: Me and Kiva <3

#13: Travel reinstills a sense of gratitude. When you can’t find it within, you can search without.

Top Songs This Year:

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes by Paul Simon
Today by Omar Apollo, Teo Halm
Inside Out by Spoon
Audience Of One by Cold War Kids
Back in Your Head by Tegan and Sara
Heavyweight Champion Of The Year by Nilüfer Yanya
Hey Moon by John Maus
Just Wait Til Next Year by John Maus
Love Me for Real by Rim Kwaku Obeng, KASA
Weakness (Huey Lewis) by Lennon Stella, Maisy Stella
Strange Overtones by David Byrne
Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel
Mice by Billie Marten
Rosa by Grimes
Say It by Flume, Tove Lo
hello! by ROLE MODEL
VERY ALONE by Zaia
If Love Is Just a Word by Bleib Modern
Cry Me a River by Justin Timberlake
Get Low by James Vincent McMorrow
Dionne by The Japanese House, Justin Vernon
Cherry-coloured Funk by Cocteau Twins
Over the Hills and Far Away by Led Zeppelin
Where Do You Go To My Lovely by Peter Sarstedt
You Needed Love, I Needed You by Angelo De Augustine
Today by Jefferson Airplane

Related Posts:

Lessons at 20: https://www.anniefay.com/lifestyle/lessons-at-20
Lessons at 19: http://www.anniefay.com/lifestyle/lessons-at-19
18 Things I Learned at 18: http://www.anniefay.com/lifestyle/18-things-i-learned-at-18

© Annie Fay Meitchik. All Rights Reserved. All content on anniefay.com is my own or credit is given when applicable, please do not use any of my images before contacting me above or @ anniefaymeitchik@gmail.com.

Comments

Orchestra

7/12/2020

Comments

"Orchestra" is the fourth of a few pieces I will be slowly sharing from my Senior Capstone, Oh, The Places.

Oh, The Places, is a collection of 15 short, creative nonfiction essays focusing on the theme of place. This project was meant to be like a plein air painting (but with words), like sketches. I wanted readers to feel like a close friend handed over their personal journal or a box of intimate letters. I wanted the collection to be a delicate thing of beauty like a single flower or a rabbit in the night.

I was inspired by many artists (Jenny Slate, Patti Smith, Lauren Elkin, Durga Chew-Bose, Rebecca Solnit, Robert Smithson, Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer, Lewis Carroll, Maggie Nelson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Charlie Mackesy, Jamaica Kincaid, and Greta Gerwig in particular) and I have immense gratitude and respect for my wonderful professors at The New School for motivating me to refine my voice and use it. This project would not be possible without Rebecca Reilly, Richard Tayson, Timothy Quigley, Laura Cronk, and, of course, the incredible Lisa Freedman.

Music That Inspired My Project:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fA25bbB4fh7KUcUzlBoOw

Behind The Scenes:
This piece was inspired by something someone said to me about sunsets, and by the Philosophy for the 21st Century course I was taking from Professor Tim Quigley at the time. We had an assignment where we needed to write a philosophical letter to someone with things we had been learning and the basis for this essay came about in that process. Technique-wise, I went to the beach to write this essay in the same way I go to the lagoon when I’m writing about it, or a café, or my car, or wherever else. Whenever I am writing, I do my best to write from the place or at the place I am writing about.

Orchestra

I drove to the beach's edge at 5:29 pm to write to you. There is a tantalizing shape of orange in the blue-gray sky but the sun is long gone—it’s December. “Black Sun” by Death Cab for Cutie is playing through my phone. My passenger window is rolled down enough to let in the chilling sea air. My entire car smells like salt and the hairs on my arms stand up straight. My throat is still hot from the tea I just drank. I have been meaning to tell you about the Philosophy course I took this semester. I know you also took Philosophy and I would love to hear about what you learned, too. Did you happen to learn about Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, or his Aesthetic Theory? Looking at the sky and the ocean, I cannot help but to consider it.

You know, light exists in frequencies beyond what we can see as humans—like bees can see in the ultraviolet range and we cannot. Even dogs can hear things that humans cannot perceive and other animals can use sonar to navigate their environments. Our perceptions are limited by our species. So, maybe the colors I see in the sky are not really there, or they look completely different through the eyes of another creature. I wonder what the sky looks like to a bee. Maybe the blue-gray I think I see is actually made up of a million little pixels all in slightly different shades: cyan, cerulean, charcoal, and slate. What do you think?

I can try and imagine how a bee would view the night sky over the ocean, but I can never truly be inside a bee’s mind—unless I am reincarnated as one, of course.

Almost every night I roll what you told me over in my mind—that maybe in heaven (if there is such a thing) everyone gets the chance to orchestrate a sunset. It is one of the best things you have ever said. It makes me wonder who is responsible for nights like this. Nights that begin by obscuring the sky in a dark gray cloak. I look for shapes in the negative spaces between the clouds. The shapes serve as a stimulus, and as I sense something visually without truly knowing what it is, that is when perception has occurred. The longer I look, I intrinsically draw upon my imagination and concepts enter my mind. The gaps in the clouds go from being abstract to concrete and I begin to see a face not unlike the one I drew in my sketchbook. I can barely make out the whitewash on the waves rolling towards the shoreline. The glow of yellow lights outside of the houses makes the sky to the distant right look almost red. Kant said that beautiful objects are perceived as having purposefulness without purpose, and I love that. Don’t you? The sky does not need to look a certain way to function as the sky. Yet, we still hold ideals about what a beautiful sky looks like. And that ideal can change with the seasons. To humans, a beautiful sky might be cloudless and blue, but in a drought, a beautiful sky to the plants might be dark gray and raining.

I can see a house in my sideview mirror too. The little palm trees out front are swaying in the wind and the building stands still. I could fall asleep sitting in my car here watching as the sky goes from gray to pale blue to black. A plane moves amongst the clouds like a runaway star. It is frustrating how I cannot tell the difference between stars and satellites. I just want to know what is real and what is fake—or at least natural and inorganic.

The weather makes me want to hibernate. But sleeping does not actually stop time. Going from summer to summer still involves growing up or maybe just plain growing. And isn’t growth a good thing? Don’t we all aspire to grow? Or is growing scary because it means having to change? I guess it is a little bit of both. Socrates thinks that we should act in our own best interests, that we should do what is best for ourselves. But, isn’t doing what is best for yourself, what forces you to grow and adapt, sometimes the scariest thing to do? I bite at the skin on my middle finger. For no particular reason. Just because it’s there and I don’t know what I want to say.

I’ve been thinking about versions and layers of self lately. Analyzing what I want on various levels of my identity and what’s standing in my way because it’s usually just another version of myself. I want to check in with myself. But I don’t know which self to start with.

As artists, you and I both make subjective discoveries every time we pick up a camera, a paint brush, or push fabric through a sewing machine. Sartre believed that things can be discovered through the process of creating. I agree. Art is like science to me. You go into any project with an idea or hypothesis about how it will turn out and you wind up with a final product or theory at the end. Do we even have control over that? I think I believe in free will but lately, determinism seems more likely. When I see you in person I would like to talk about it all. For now, maybe you can write me back and share something you learned in your philosophy class.

Comments

Animals

7/5/2020

Comments

"Animals" is the third of a few pieces I will be slowly sharing from my Senior Capstone, Oh, The Places.

Oh, The Places, is a collection of 15 short, creative nonfiction essays focusing on the theme of place. This project was meant to be like a plein air painting (but with words), like sketches. I wanted readers to feel like a close friend handed over their personal journal or a box of intimate letters. I wanted the collection to be a delicate thing of beauty like a single flower or a rabbit in the night.

I was inspired by many artists (Jenny Slate, Patti Smith, Lauren Elkin, Durga Chew-Bose, Rebecca Solnit, Robert Smithson, Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer, Lewis Carroll, Maggie Nelson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Charlie Mackesy, Jamaica Kincaid, and Greta Gerwig in particular) and I have immense gratitude and respect for my wonderful professors at The New School for motivating me to refine my voice and use it. This project would not be possible without Rebecca Reilly, Richard Tayson, Timothy Quigley, Laura Cronk, and, of course, the incredible Lisa Freedman.

Music That Inspired My Project:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fA25bbB4fh7KUcUzlBoOw

Behind The Scenes:
I love the looseness and negative space in the illustration I did here of my cats, Cookie and Gracee. This piece was inspired by eavesdropping. And Googling AR penguins—please do that. (:

Animals

Something new that I love that I discovered recently is AR animals on Google. Type in Penguin and see what you get. It’s hilarious.

It’s funny how we like to place wild things in our manmade spaces. We do it with cats and dogs all the time. These tiny, fur-covered, wild creatures that we domesticate and let trod around our homes and breathe softly on down feathered comforters in our beds.

I think I hear crying. Voices sniffling to be strong. Vulnerability is strong. And so was that last snotty inhale I could feel through the wall. The essence of sadness drifts in a blue cloud up nine stairs to where I am sitting between one gray and one orange cat. The orange light from the hallway beneath me illuminates nothing. I can’t hear the words, but I can feel the tears. There’s really something extraordinarily heartbreaking about a man crying. Well, even a man child. A 19 year-old. A gemini. The sobs remind me of the shrieking yowls emitted from my cats mouths as they wrestle, clawing into each other’s ears with talons. These beautiful, charming little creatures, innocent little kittens I brought from the wild into my manmade space are capable of harm. Maybe that’s some of their beauty though. Remembering that although they lick each other and that’s endearing, and I sometimes catch them with their paws around each other like an old couple in a movie theater from the 20s, they’re animals.

And so are we.

I’ve never been drunk but I’ve made foolish enough decisions pretending to be while drinking a sip of vodka mixed into a hot chocolate in the swimming pool on a summer night.

It’s funny how relationships bring out the animals in us. Here’s this other person of my same species and together we can go from being wild to tame just based on setting. As animals we tear into each other stripping back to the nothingness we entered this world wearing on our backs. We claw and gnaw at each other’s homes until we’re pink and blush colored. And just as easily, we settle down around dining tables or walk around museums and libraries behaving totally civilized.

Resources:

Comments

<<Previous

Lessons at 21

21

Top Songs This Year:

Orchestra

Orchestra

Animals

Animals

Resources:

Categories

Archives

Lessons at 21

21

​Top Songs This Year:

Orchestra

​Orchestra

Animals

​Animals

Resources:

Categories

Archives

Top Songs This Year:

Orchestra

Animals