DTLA

I want to tell you the names of places so alien I believe they exist only on paper: 

Auckland 

Oshkosh 

Tibet 

Brixton 

Brighton 

Kerry 

Odessa 

Santa Fe 

Kiev 

Brittany 

Osaka 

Kun’lun 

Tyrol 

Trieste 

Zanzibar 

Big Sur 

The sum of my feelings about each of these places begins and ends within its name; the few pictures thart name gives-off. Kent: mint sprig over the back of a fast horse heading toward the gravesite of her rider in fog. Dover: when the air tasted the way blue paint does licked off a bleached seashell.

My best friend recently sent me a collection of poems by a brilliant man named Marco Maisto. The above excerpt is one of my faves from the series because of the way Maisto masterfully manages to juxtapose nothing against everything. He opens with a list of places that have no meaning to him followed by sentences that further highlight his apathy and then he turns the tables on you and presents two places that have more meaning than you can ever grasp. You know this because of the very specific/quirky/enigmatic way he writes about these places. He wants to show you his ghosts but only in a way that you'll never 100% understand because can anyone truly understand someone else's ghosts? Do you want anyone to truly understand yours? Plus, they're not on the list. I had to go back and double check, which is why I love Maisto so much; reading his words is like walking through a maze of hidden gems, you're constantly backtracking to make sure you didn't miss something spectacular and when you go back you always find something mind-blowing. 

After reading these lines, I was hurled into my own haunts. Into my own Kents and Dovers. 

Carlsbad. Chicago. London.  

It is beautiful and it is tragic. The way a place can haunt you. For a while I was scared to go back to some of my places because it's hard to confront the memories you still want to live in. But recently I've learned to embrace the haunts. The places my subconscious self and my physical self always end up going back to. There's something poetic about it or maybe I'm just an emotional masochist. Who knows these things. As a cosmophage, however, I'm also voraciously exploring new places. Places that will perhaps, one day, serve as sources of ghostly memories themselves. See above for photos of me in those places. All shot by photographer extraordinaire Nicole Toczauer. 

Oh, and here's a list of songs that haunt me. 

Ordinary Girl by Rebelution

River Flows In You by Yiruma

Realize by Colbie Caillat 

Come Together by The Beatles 

Don't Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin

xx