I've Moved

It's official.  My new website is up.  To that end, I'm ending my blog will be updated henceforth on my website.  All the old posts, (including the shitty ones), have been migrated.  Check it:  www.vanessafiola.com/blog.  See you there!

Goodbye, Eugene (Gene) Dalton Havis

**Someone I loved dearly passed away on Tuesday morning. Technically speaking, he was the father of my ex-boyfriend (whom I was with for almost ten years). But that description doesn’t begin to tell the story of how much Gene meant to me. More than just a parent of my ex-boyfriend’s, he was a father to me too. At his visitation and funeral, an empty “memory book” was passed around for people to write down the time(s) they shared with Gene. I’ve written all of my life. And yet, when it came to journaling about someone I so deeply admired, putting my pen to paper rendered me mute. Nothing captured the depth of my sentiment. As a writer, not being able to express oneself is akin to being a running back with a broken leg. Finally, I wrote anyway. This is what came out.**

Gene,

I’m at a loss.

I wanted to tell you a specific memory that would embody just how I feel about you. I replayed the last fifteen years: driving up to first meet you and Ruth in my Ford Taurus and your interest in my car and really, all things Ford; the beach at Port A, your 50th wedding anniversary and the great love in your marriage, your enthusiasm, support and moving expertise when Scott and I bought our first house, watching us as we played kickball at Christmas, the rhythmic way you emptied the pepper shaker, eating your popcorned eggs, your perfectly-timed witticisms, your quiet encouragement when it felt like the earth beneath my feet had given way, your peaceful resistance to speak poorly of others, the kind gratitude you showed when I plied you with homeopathic ointments. (You didn’t let on that they were futile.)

I held the notion that the mere snippets of you in my mind would belie the force you have been in my life. I thought if I could think of ONE BIG THING, to sum up my years with you, that that would be a better testament of my love for you than the many daily occurrences which came to mind. My memories felt inadequate.

But because I had to write something – your Memory Book deserves content – I had to let go. And when I stopped resisting what I remember about you, (“Easy does it,” as you would say), it was then I realized that maybe it is enough to recount those understated moments that pass without notice. Maybe they do epitomize how you lived your life, and what I loved about you so much.

I aspire to your modesty. I aspire to your humanity and gentle ways. I aspire to your steadiness. I miss you deeply.

Always,

Vanessa

The Year in Review

I actually had a pretty good 2010.  I had my first gallery showing this year, lost a bunch of weight, finished another art project, and co-founded Recovering Yogi.  Creatively, it's rocked.

But, not everyone has had that same experience.  In fact, my BFFs hated it.  And because artists will always find a way to express, this video was borne.  Leslie wrote it, Ryan produced it, and I acted in it.  I also did the main title and credits.  We used about 100 gallons of water flushing the toilet on retakes, so Ryan's grandma gets executive producer rights.  (Sorry about that water bill.)

Enjoy.

Know what time it is? Benchtime!

Today is my first official day of work on the bench in over four years.  In the consulting world, being on the bench means that you're not on a client project.  Think of it like the summer break that teachers get, only it doesn't last three months.  The last time I was on the bench I was too new in my consulting career to appreciate its awesomeness.  I was that girl begging project managers to give me projects to keep me busy.

I've learned.

This is what I looked like today at about 12:30.  It's also what I still look like right now.  It's 6:30 p.m.

At WholeFoods.  In my pajamas.

The thing about being on the bench is that no one knows what you look like when you take your conference calls.  So I didn't bother to get out of my pajamas when I phone-interviewed a candidate, sat on a training call, and met with one of the VPs about an upcoming project. 

This is gonna be great. 

The only downside I've seen so far is that I've literally eaten 14 Christmas cookies today.  I'm not sure what that has to do with being benched, but given that I've let my wardrobe go, I'm guessing the complete disregard for sensible eating is my attempt at consistency.

Don't worry. I'm being forced to pull it together in less than three weeks.  Until then, you can find me milling around at my favorite coffee shop on Cahuenga.   I'll be the homeless looking one.

Crafts: the gateway to insanity

Owing to a barbaric travel schedule of late, I have been lurking in a creative wasteland.  I attempted to make up for lost time this weekend by tackling two major art projects.  Which is a little bit like running a half marathon the day you roll yourself from the couch you've been glued to for the past year.  Read:  not smart.

My new-ish mantle

First, I turned our barren mantle into something with a little more personality.  I'm actually kind of pleased with the way this turned out.  Looking at the finished product belies what a pain in the ass it was to make it.  It took probably six hours of masking, arranging, making stuff, Kinkos, cussing, and good ole fashioned sweating.  Because of that, I am never moving again.  (Note:  If you plan on trying this in your own home, it's best you recruit slave labor like I did.  Good thing Ryan's cheap.)

With that success behind me, I figured I'd try my hand at a project I started 18 months ago.  It's been slow-going, but I kicked things into high gear when I bought my very first power tool this weekend!  When I last touched this project, I had painted it with three coats of Gesso, and then became completely demoralized from the countless hours spent sanding it by hand.  With that memory haunting me,  I broke down today and purchased a sander.  Buying your first real tool is a little bit like being allowed to drink coffee for the first time -- you just feel so grown up.  I really should have stopped there.  Emboldened by finding my new inner handyman,  I soldiered on, ignoring the instinct to work on it when I'm less tired/more patient/caffeinated.

The state of my project

Without going into all of the details, I failed miserably.  Fortunately, by the time I failed, it was getting dark, so I reasoned that the neighbors wouldn't like to hear power tools at 5 p.m. on a Sunday night.   The picture above illustrates where my project will likely remain for the next 18 months.

And since you can't leave the court on a missed shot, I ended the night with some fun in Photoshop.  It was easier than cleaning up my project mess.

If I were a corporation and I needed a new logo, here's what I'd make for myself.  Which I did.  (Though I'm not a corporation.)

©2010 vanessafiola

Marfa, TX... and other places you can't catch a cab

(Written last week, but I've only just gotten around to posting it.  I'm a very busy girl.)  


I have spent the last 3 days in West/Southwest Texas.  You know what you do in West and Southwest Texas?

You do?

Marfa, TX

Good.  Please share with me.  As far as I know, you don't do anything that involves technology.  Which is 95% of my life.  So I mostly just looked at plants and stars.  And my friends.  Thank god for my friends.  And plants and stars.

We started out on Friday.  I flew into Austin, also known as My Favorite City in the United States.  It's a bummer to fly into Austin and not take yoga or go to The Whole.  But, everyone was waiting so Hav picked me up and we were immediately on our way.  (I tried the ol' "Hey I forgot a jacket, so I should probably stop by Lululemon."  He told me I'd have to freeze before we'd delay our trip any further.  Or that's what I heard, anyway.)

Marfa is about seven hours, or roughly four Dairy Queens away from Austin.  It is a largely flat drive, punctuated only by stops for Blizzards and chew.  (I don't chew, Mom.)   We arrived at Hav's friend's house, an adorable adobe on a street with no sign.  This speaks more about the size of the town than the street.  We unpacked our stuff, and I immediately started searching for Internet connectivity.  I had a piece that I needed to post for a related article in Magazine of Yoga before 9 p.m.  I walked into the home office.  The router looked like no other wireless router I've seen before, and I know these things.  Ugh.  Hav made the mistake of suggesting that I post in the morning, which prompted an accusal from me that "You've never supported my writing!"  Fortunately, he has a high threshold for my outbursts.  Everyone left and I promised to catch up.  Which I did, but not until I had checked every place in town for some semblance of a connection.  (Whoa.  That sounds woo woo.) It wasn't until I resigned myself (surrendered, if you will) to missing my deadline that I walked into the bar where my friends were waiting and found a free internet connection.  Thank Krishna.

Padre's is, I think, the only bar in Marfa (pop. 2121).  On Friday night, the entire town pushed Padre's to its capacity to see Black Joe Lewis, a seriously fun band from Austin.  If the crowd were just a weensy bit more raucous, I think we would have seen undergarments flying.  That's how good they were.  Here's a little known fact about Marfa:  it contains the largest concentration of hipsters per capita of any city in the United States.  And if you were in Padre's that night, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a pair of Wayfarer spectacles.  Not that I swung any cats, deceased or otherwise.  I was too busy taking advantage of the four dollar Kettle One's w/ lemon wedges.

*Said eggs

On Saturday morning-ish the grand plans we made to ride bikes through town became grapefruit mimosas at Cochineal.  They know how to bake an egg*, sir.  Also, the host looks like Harry Potter in skinny jeans and topsiders.  After breakfast we headed through town to shop the wares.  First stop:  JM General Store, a great one-stop shop for all of your chic home and clothing finds.  The best part of shopping with friends around your birthday is that all you have to do is marvel over something, and said friends do things like buy it for you.  I recommend the approach.  Especially if you really want a Native American duvet.

Repetition.  Subtlety.  Whoa.

Post-shopping we hit Chinati, a museum in the middle of nowhere, and also the center of all things art in Marfa.  We ran into the guys from Black Joe Lewis and all sludged through exhibits on repetition and subtlety.  I feel like the artists were playing one big joke on me.  Endless fluorescent light exhibits ...  imperceptible differences between sheets of paper on a wall...  Good one, fellas.  This is probably the time when I should explain that Marfa is the kind of town where Type A artists go for rehab.  ("Rehab" mostly because, with spotty cell service and untrustworthy wireless connectivity, you are forced to withdraw from the wired life.) The town itself is one big exercise in artistic detail, from the post office font to the clean, modern lines of the laundromat logo.

Lo's expression, speaking for
itself.

On Saturday night we trekked up to the McDonald Observatory, which is about 40 minutes from town.  I'm sure you've heard of it.  It's the place that sponsors the Star Date vignettes on NPR.  I love those Star Dates.  We booked a tour for 6 p.m.   When we reached the observatory, our guide, Kevin, explained a bunch of neat stuff about stars, planets, nebulas (globular and planetary), and galaxies.  It was in this two and a half hour session when I realized I could have probably been good at science.  (#unfounded) Mostly because I relate everything back to metaphors.  For example, did you know that globular nebulas are where stars are born (kinda), while planetary nebulas are where stars go to die?  I like to picture a space aged hospital and a cemetery, respectively filled with comets in bathrobes.  Among our sitings:  Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus, M2, M15, and some other stuff.  Plus they fed us cookies, which I liked.  I considered the evening a success.

The drive.  Pretty, right?

On Sunday morning, we drove to Big Bend.   Big Bend is one of my favorite national parks for its expansiveness, beauty, and quietude.  I remember three years ago being in Patagonia and feeling like it was so similar to southern Texas, for those reasons.   I still do.  It is as if it hasn't been touched for centuries.  And, in the ten years that I've been traveling to Big Bend, its cell reception, in case you were wondering, has not improved.  (Although that could just be AT&T.  Verizon's probably better.)  On the drive, we stopped in Terlingua, to eat at a cafe which will remain nameless because I really liked the owners, but I was also kinda grossed out.  The restaurant held maybe six tables, and we were its only patrons.  They smoked while we ate (she a cigarette, he a pipe) without regard to things like laws prohibiting smoking in restaurants.  I wanted to see their fingernails.  As we left, their cat ran in the front door.  Hav tried to stop it, but the cat wasn't having any of it because well, you can tell, she is ALWAYS indoors.  On the tables, I'm sure, except for when people like us walk in and she's shooed through the back door.  It's not all health code doom and gloom though.  What they might have lacked in say, regulatory regard, they accounted for in heart.  Really sweet people.

A black bear.  (Not ours.)
 (Photo courtesy of
blackbear.biz)

After the questionable breakfast and stone hunting at a nearby rock shop, we finally arrived at Chisos Mountain Lodge in the Chisos Basin.  If you go, book Cabin 103.  We didn't get 103 because it was already booked, but you totally should.  We were in 104.  That's okay too.   Once checked in, we stashed our stuff and set out for a trail called The Window.  The pinnacle of this trail is a beautiful keyhole view of the mountains.   You have to walk a couple of miles to afford that site.  On the way, we passed a couple who told us there was a bear up ahead.  Sure enough, but 1/3 mile later, we saw the bear in the middle of the trail.  Actually Hav saw him first and jumped back, which frightened the bear into retreating up a small, wooded hill.  I assumed the bear defensive position, which varies depending on how you were raised, but it wasn't needed. 

The Window

We trekked the remaining mile and a half to the peak, stayed for about thirty seconds, and headed back.  I've been told before that I'm not about the journey, I'm about the destination.  I would agree.  I lose all perspective when I'm either cold or hungry.  I was both.

When we returned, I grabbed my laptop and headed to the lodge, where the only wireless connectivity for 40 miles could be found.  I had to.  I had a conference call I was supposed to be on and we had zero cell reception.  Yes, on Sunday.  My life is just that awesome sometimes.  I carefully chose a spot at the lodge, outside near the bathrooms, far away from anyone else so I wouldn't be that guy, and dialed my co-worker via Google Talk.  Apparently, I didn't get far enough away to escape the chiding of a lodge worker who delighted in walking by several times, just to snicker.  As if I go through a project plan on vacation on a Sunday in the middle of a beautiful national forest because I think it's fun, douche-kabob.  When I got off my call, I went into the gift store to buy a Scrabble board.  The lodge worker came in.  "Finish with your call?" he smirked.  And this is when I escaped into a magical dreamland.   One in which I stabbed a stranger without punishment while asking him if he felt better about the choices he'd made in his life by making fun of mine.  The price of the $32 game snapped me from my daydream.

After dinner we played a quick game of Scrabble and set our alarms for 6 a.m. so we could catch another hike before heading back to Austin.  Unfortunately, it doesn't get light until around 7:30 in southern Texas.  We didn't have time to wait around, so we decided to forego the hike.  And this is where Havis vowed to never travel with me again in a million years, ever.  (The first time was when we went to Norway and I made us late for our outbound flight.  Oops.)  The next significant town past Marathon is Ft. Stockton.  We had a quarter of a tank left of gas when we hit Ft. Stockton.  Hav told me to stop and get more.  He said there wouldn't be gas for another 100 miles.  Nuh uh, I countered.  I kept driving.  Turns out, he was pretty close to right.  Who knew?

About 65 miles in the gas gauge was below empty.  I grabbed my phone frantically searching the Around Me app for the nearest gas station.   I panicked as we went in and out of reception.  The screen finally displayed our choices:   deviate from I-10 and drive 14 miles out-of-the-way to Iraan, or continue on 35 miles to Ozona.  I chose the former, and we coasted the last few miles into town.  I tried to play it off like I knew all along that we'd make it, but the truth is, I was calculating how fast I could run per mile in the event that I needed to.

By the time we made it back into Austin**, we heard news that Hav's dad had to go back into the hospital, which is really sad.  Also sad was the looming knowledge that I had to get on another plane back to New Jersey within 24 hours, by way of LA.   Looking back over the weekend, I recall all of the failed connectivity attempts.  By the end of it, I had adjusted.  I'm considering it a major breakthrough because, while Mercury's retrograde was in its shadow and I obviously would have been totally justified in making it my scapegoat, I chose instead to figure out if I could appreciate the radio silence.   And while I wasn't exactly the picture of equanimity, I was better at it than I expected.  And that's what I call success.

**The highlight of Monday, just after staving off certain death at the hands of my travel companion, was seeing Leslie.  And busting her w/ this copy of Yoga Journal.  

I heart Magazine of Yoga

Recovering Yogi has its first press!  We're on the home page of Magazine of Yoga in a two-part piece where Joslyn and I dish about yoga, art, and the new and improved 700 Club.

Part 1 of 2, check it here:  http://themagazineofyoga.com/blog/2010/11/16/conversation-recoveringyogi/

Thank you, Magazine of Yoga, for being so cool.

Hi, my name is Vanessa and I'm a recovering yogi.

Holy Krishna.  I haven't been this excited about a new project in a while.  Since at least June.

My friend Joslyn had the brilliant idea last Spring to create a web community for people to talk about how ummm... funny the New Age industry can be, and specifically yoga.  To  a yoga teacher, this can feel heretical.  It's not.  I wholly believe that a privilege of being human is to laugh at oneself and maybe others while you're at it.  So she called the site Recovering Yogi, and I'm honored to say she's using my drawings throughout the site.  And my writing.  And my creative perspective.  And still, I'm most stoked about the artwork.  We've collaborated on a lot of it, so in many ways it feels like a natural expression of our friendship.  How lucky is that -- to get to do your favorite things with your best friends?  To boot, our friend Leslie has joined the mix so now we're a bonafide trifecta.  As if Mcsweeny's wasn't enough.

Several years ago I went to this awesome psychic who told me that I'd be a famous writer (they NEVER say those things to ANYONE), but that it wouldn't be on my own.  He said that instead, I'd be part of an established group of women.   It's been a while since that session, and in the interim I've met about ten wicked inspirational girls.   I always assume I'll work with each of them.  Incidentally, this psychic story is exactly the kind of thing I'll be making fun of on www.recoveringyogi.com.

Oh, and I almost forgot!   I was going to save this for my new site, but in the meantime, guess what?!

Okay, I'll tell you.  I'm easy like that.  (And only that.)  We've got t-shirts coming.  They'll be sold on my site, and featured through Recovering Yogi.  Sooo cute.  Organic and all that other sustainable stuff.   Peep 'em: