Love. War. Long odds.
This is a story about making a place for yourself in the world and tiny houses. But first, I need to tell you a story about an LSD trip, Instagram, and making the best of a bad (plumbing) situation.
While this story starts with cat piss and a bunch of broken pipes, it ends in the Silverlake Hills. All's well that ends well, yeah? Cheers!
Hey assholes, remember when Tennyson wrote that it was better to have loved and crashed and burned than to have been a pussy all along alone in your studio apartment? I might have paraphrased some of that. For that, I am sorry. But I refuse to apologize for the sentiment.
A few days ago, I was trolling YouTube for some audiovisual inspiration and I stumbled on this short film produced by Oliver Peoples set to Brindo by Devendra Banhart. It served its purpose, but as I realized where it was filmed -- John Lautner's Rainbow House in Nichols Canyon -- it also triggered a surge of nostalgia. Or oxytocin.
As the first in two etymology lessons today, the word brindo is spanish for toast, as in the kind you make with champagne. The following is a story about living in Los Angeles. It is a story about french new wave film, mid-century modern architecture, and the hollywood hills. It's a story about the warm, golden light of long afternoons.
Needless to say, it's also a story about love.
xoxo, Jessa
Read MoreIn addition to keeping a private diary, I also keep a visual diary on this blog.
Diaries (of any kind) are a way to record experience. As a reader of this blog pointed out, I am a conscious observer. I spend a lot of time taking photos and people-watching.
I start more than my fair share of conversations with strangers. I talk about what I see and learn. The process itself brings me happiness; which is why I spend the *rest* of my time finding new ways to crystallize experiences and generate a discussion around them.
So, a small while ago, I got to work on another kind of visual diary - the one I keep on my body. I've written about my tattoos and what they mean to me before. But briefly, my tattoos are a way to condense transformative experiences permanently and artistically. They are inextricably connected to vivid moments in my life. They serve me as both reminders and conversation pieces.
My first tattoo -- the one on my left arm -- is the word ONWARD and people are always asking me what it is and what it means. This is mostly because it's vertical and in my quasi-illegible handwriting. But, in the spirit of recording and discussing...and moving on from each month, the visual diary on this blog The ONWARD Month in Review.
Here's some of February:
“My body is a journal in a way. It’s like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself, whether you do it yourself with a knife or with a professional tattoo artist.”
✱ Spring in SoCal ✱ serpents ✱ flying through the sky ✱ Cannery Row galleries in Redondo ✱ house parties with some dicks ✱ george lois ✱ local 4424 ✱ private property ✱ silk skirts from paris ✱ victory rolls ✱ sushi, sushi, sushi....more sushi ✱ visiting the new YouTube Space LA ✱ meta-hipsters ✱ coffee, coffee, coffee, Covell, & cats ✱ 'supervising' some ADR @ Maker Studios ✱ lounge lizards ✱ shopping indecision 2013 ✱ bougainvillea is coming back ✱ the best pep talk of all time from Per Ostman. ✱ sidewalk talk ✱ street art ✱ scientology + french toast ✱ dingbats @ night ✱ japanese spaghetti in Gardena ✱ ballet all day ✱ the love made me do it ✱ scenes on the streets of silverlake, los feliz, echo park... ✱
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#lovetoday.
