Pristine Pompousness
Good day good week good month,
It hath been a long while, sorryest
I've been caught up in life stuff, was in a slump, am out of the slump, or maybe not? I'm almost 18, in literally a week (March 24th hoes) and I don't know how to feel. I went to Paris, and upon my return I announced (to myself) that I've got some post-Paris clarity. There's a lot to say, a lot to update on.
My current favorite photo:
Roger Koch aka Frank Vickers: From the “Roger” Series
Robert Mapplethorpe 1983
I guess I should talk about Paris
PARIS
I meant to make a blog post when I came back from Paris, but I wasn't quite in the mood so I forgot about it.
I left for Paris on Feb 14th 2024, Valentines day, and I returned on Feb 20th 2024 (went with my motha)
This is my google maps accumulation of places I went to / didn't go to. The blue is stuff I went to and the croissants are places I did not get to go to.
- The biggest place I didn't go to was the Louvre. Ruh-roh amiright? We couldn't buy tickets in advance to any museum or any other attraction because it flat out wasn't working on safari on my phone (any my mom's phone). Our plan was to go to Musée d'Orsay in the morning and the Louvre in the afternoon on this one day that it was raining because we assumed the line would be shorter. We went to Musée d'Orsay and walked to the Louvre, but we got there and the line was like 2 hours long, no thanks! Backup plan was for me to go to the Louvre on the Tuesday morning that we would leave (because our flight was at like 6pm ish), but I didn't realize that the museum was closed on Tuesdays until Tuesday morning. In retrospect, the Louvre would have taken sooo many hours to traverse, so maybe rushing it would not have been the best idea.
- That Tuesday, instead of going to the Louvre, I went to all the smaller spots that we didn't get to hit earlier. I, alone, went to Napoleon's tomb, Paris' statue of liberty, and ended up meeting up with my mom in the Marais district. Wandered around and stumbled upon the Henri Cartier Bresson Foundation and saw an awesome Weegee exhibition that really lifted my spirits and let me leave Paris on a contented note.
- I met up with 3 people in Paris
- Picture this: You and your mother just got off your flight from NYC to Paris. You find your way to the train platform which will bring forth a train that will take you to your hotel. You and your mother are standing around, suitcases in hand, just waiting for the train to arrive. Out of the corner of your ear you hear your name being called: "Konstantina!" You turn around, it's Lizzie T Harris. Shock, confusion, lots of "what the fuck"s being said. We had no idea that the other was going to be in Paris, let alone that we would arrive on the same day. It was a crazy sight to see a stuy head in my first few hours in Paris. We did not officially hang out until Monday Feb 19th where we went to the Montparnasse Cemetery and saw the graves of Jean Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (statue of Liberty guy), and Alfred Dreyfus.
- Linked with Daria on Feb 16th, met Amelie who knows Joey and Summer Arachnid. Went to a houseparty consisting of people who go to the American University of Paris. Met some interesting characters that I'm never going to see ever again unless fate so chooses it. Here is a photo from that night taken on Bella's camera.
- Met up with Ellynn who goes to Sciences Po (Uni in Paris) on Feb 17th. I met her at Eli + Chloe Lizama's joint birthday party (twin alert!), she's one of Chloe's friends, they know each other through dance. We were chit chatting at the party, we talked in French. I remembered that she studies in Paris, so I hit her up when I arrived. We ate at Bouillon Pigalle, we tried escargot (pretty good, just seafood taste, so if you like seafood you'll also like snails), and then she showed me around Montmartre and it was chill at night without all the tourists that flood the streets in the daytime.
- I could fill up this blog post with photos, but I've already posted all of them on my instagram. I should make a highlight of all the stories I posted in Paris. I'll do that the next time I redownload it.
- I bought so many clothes. I bought 3 leather jackets for 30 euros, some shirts, some other jackets, and my favorite belt ever. I also bought a lot of postcards. I love postcards, they're just affordable pieces of art that I can put up anywhere.
- Paris graffiti was bombbb. It reminded me a lot of NYC graffiti, and I even saw some familiar names (ROID and ZOOT). Athens graffiti is a lot more political, Paris was a lot more on NYC's side of the political vs. personal spectrum of a city's graffiti.
- There are currently 3 Walk Faster's in Paris.
Ever since I've been back, I've been noticing a lot more of the Paris/NYC connections. I won't elaborate because I don't remember them, but I just wanted to note this fact.
POST-PARIS CLARITY
Senior year is strange. College apps are done and we've been playing the waiting game for months. I learned how to do work/manage my time efficiently in the first semester when I had to do college apps, and now that I don't have any work to do, I find myself bored. I'm trying to revert back to my Sophomore and Junior year levels of existence. I used to write a fuck ton a letters, I still have that pile on my desk, untouched for months. I used to watch a lot more movies. I was also on my phone a lot more. I'm trying to get back into doing the things I enjoy now that I hate my phone and I no longer have the overwhelming gloom of college apps hanging over my head.
What have I been doing? You may ask.
A lot but also not enough.
Ok I'm getting ahead of myself, let me start over with the basics.
My Paris trip was my instagram relapse. I redownloaded it during that week so I could communicate with the NYC world and post all my Paris photos. When I came back, I was bingeing on instagram again so I decided to block it off my phone completely, I was sick of getting stuck on the instagram reels spiral, "doomscrolling" as the internet calls it, so I downloaded this app that blocks insta thru a vpn (blocking the site thru iPhone settings was not inconvenient enough, I could just press a button that says "unblock" and boom I was on the sit again, not efficient blocking). But THEN, I got stuck on youtube shorts. After calling Isaac, I was convinced to also block youtube on my phone. SO now I've got insta and youtube blocked on my phone, and my screen time is down to 2-3 hours with messages, safari, and spotify taking up most of my time on my phone.
I slowly started journaling in the notebook that we got (for free) from the hotel in Paris. I've been doing it like once a week, either saturday or sunday, not purposefully but it just so happened like that. Weekends are usually the time when I am bored enough to just sit down and write a lot.
School has been boring. My classes are not as engaging as they used to be. I have no history electives and the rest of my classes are just... mediocre. This is not necessarily due to the teachers, it is mainly because everyone at Stuyvesant has just turned their brains off for second semester. Nobody wants to do anything, and it's just boring.
- I've taken to just entertaining myself in the hallways of Stuyvesant High School. Interacting with people I usually don't interact with, playing rock paper scissors is a recent favorite of mine. I've also been playing a lot of papa's freezeria in certain classes because I literally have no other work to do that could fill up my time in a boring class where we are allowed to have computers out.
- One day in the Stuyvesant library, I was so bored because I finished all my homework, that I decided to browse through the books, an action I have never taken at the Stuyvesant library. I found Just Kids by Patti Smith. I have been aware of this book for so long, but I never read it, so I took my boredom as a sign to read this book. I've gotten through almost all of it, I have ~50 pages left. Reading it makes me feel inspired, I get this romanticized view of what NYC was and what NYC could be and I get this feeling of excitement at all the possibilities and opportunities that NYC has to offer. It's also where I see a lot of Paris/NYC connections.
Feb 15th, Friday night, I was walking down Chambers St after S!NG (I'll explain this in a bit). 9:30pm, the sky was dark and the streets were not-entirely empty. Leonard Cohen was playing in my ears, I took a look around, and I saw the streets with an entirely new attitude. I'm so used to walking up and down Chambers on my way to school or on my way out of school. During the day, it's full of finance people, rich people, students, and other New Yorkers, I pay them no mind. But at 9:30 pm, I looked up at the skyscrapers that I fundamentally detest and I saw beauty in the way the shapes of the buildings cut into the night sky and move as I walk, the way the light reflects off the glass in those oh so tall buildings, how the street seemed so quiet. I looked at the moon, and the moment when a cloud covered the moon fit perfectly with the Leonard Cohen song that was playing in my ears (The Butcher, for anyone wondering).
- I think I experienced this moment of beauty for two reasons. 1. Having just been to Paris and 2. Patti Smith.
- Post-Paris clarity is real. On the night of Feb 17th 2024, after walking around Montmartre with Ellynn, I waas walking back to my hotel from the train station around 11pm, and I got filled with love of my surroundings. I was looking around and really feeeling like I was IN Paris. There's so much walking around, so much to take in of your surroundings during the day time, at night I get a chance to reflect. The night sky really does something for me. I got a similar feeling when I returned from Greece this past September and we were on the Reach Roof and I was just filled with love as I looked over the NYC skyline, also at night. Granted that was because I missed NYC so much over the summer and I was so grateful that I was back, but still that feeling of overwhelming love erupted at night. This goes back to what I said that "a city at night is the truest representation of what it feels like to live in that city."
- I already went over the Patti Smith effect. But yeah I think that I felt love for NYC in that moment because I'm able to see NYC in a different light through Just Kids.
Oh shit I should explain S!NG.
- Ok so. Stuyvesant High School has a schoolwide musical competition every year. Freshmen and Sophomores (Sophfrosh) make a musical, Juniors make a musical, and Seniors make a musical. We have like a month (?) to prepare (last year we had 4 weeks and this year we had 7?? I was told this) and then year grade performs their respective musicals over three days: Thursday (cheapest tickets), Friday, and Saturday.
- Last year, I helped with costumes and then on show days I helped move around stuff on stage with tech. I did the same thing this year.
- From January until the start of February I was working a job after school 3 days a week and then after that ended I started helping out with S!NG, so while I thought I would have an easy breezy second semester, I still had shit to do.
- The final S!NG performance was yesterday, Saturday March 16th 2024. Seniors won by a big margin. Thank god we did because last year, as Juniors, we came in last place and Sophfrosh won, embarrassiiinnnggg. We redeemed ourselves and put on a pretty good show that I somewhat helped with. I didn't invest my entire life to S!NG so I'm not too sad that it's over, but its just another reminder that senior year is almost coming to an end. Like damn, it's the middle of March. My important college decisions come out at the end of this month. Shit, man.
Ok on a less depressing note, I think it's time to go over media:
MEDIA
Music
- Revamped my playlist. I got sick of a lot of stuff. Here is most recent main playlist link:
- https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0hiHoxGfogfe73aVnMqWv8?si=39614dddac6e4dc9
- Listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen, Urban Waste, Kimya Dawson, Negative Approach, and NYHC.
- I recently listened to all the songs that Dystopia and Sunami have to offer. I mainly enjoy early Dystopia, the more recent the more I dislike it, too much ragh ragh voice, not enough clarity. Sunami honestly sounds the same, I didn't notice a progression in my liking/disliking of the songs.
- I bought a Side by Side shirt that I was obsessed with the moment I saw it. Backfire by Side by Side was basically my favorite song a few months ago, on repeat and on repeaaattttt.
- I've been fucking with the song Insight by Wide Awake
- My fav Reagan Youth song is (Are You) Happy?
- I love the line "your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder" in the song Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen.
- I listen to Chelsea Hotel #2 by Leonard Cohen when I'm feeling
- Carbon Copy and Out of my Head by Urban Waste are my two fav Urban Waste songs
- Fav Kimya Dawson song is Velvet Rabbit, but I've been replaying Chemistry recently as well (Personally, I would end the song at the lines "And no matter how this ends/I know I'll never, ever, ever, be alone" because I don't relate to the rest of the ending)
Movies
I've been trying to get back into my movie watching grind now that I have the time for it.
Letterboxd is @konstantuba as per usual
- Most recently I watched My Own Private Idaho. Beautiful movie, the campfire scene really stuck with me, added to my nonexistent list of favorite movie scenes ever.
- I would go over all the movies I've watched since my last blog post, but I log it all into letterboxd and I've already written my thoughts out there, so look at that if you care enough.
- Movies I want to see: la haine, the 400 blows, fargo (referenced in my forensics class which is how I got reminded of it's existence), the godfather (lol), interstellar (zoe and tim have been on my ass for not having watched interstellar yet, I'll get to it eventually...)
Books
We already know the Patti Smith book.
But I also want to mention that I've been reading The Homosexualization of America by Dennis Altman for months now. It's not a long book, but I've just been inching closer to the end over the course of many months, way too many months. I have 78 pages left, but I've sidestepped it for the Patti Smith book. Lol.
FIN
I have no more that I want to add to this blog. It is currently 59° in the middle of March. Global warming, but it's nice to have my window open and hear the birds chirping.
I've been kind of feeling like these photos by William Eggleston:
