#createartforearth

The Trump administration (!) report says the continued release of greenhouse gases from cars, factories and other sources will make fires more frequent, including very large fires that burn more than 12,400 acres. And so this means, wildfire risk in the United States won’t just be a Western problem anymore. ⁠ .⁠ This is just another example of human-caused climate change that can be prevented. Even during the new Covid world order, please encourage Congress to enact new laws that limit carbon emission, require polluters to pay for the emissions they produce, stop offshore drilling and help protect public lands. Use your vote for candidates who take global warming and science seriously in November.⁠ . "twitter.com/paradise_ca", 2019⁠ Archival pigment print⁠ Edition of 3 + 2AP⁠ 54 x 72 inches⁠

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flickr.com/photos/usforestservice/45912334351/in/photolist 2019  Archival pigment print Edition of 3 + 2AP 54 x 72 inches .

pinterest.com/jenniferw/unusual-landscapes/ 2019 Archival pigment print edition of 3 + 2AP 54 x 72 inches

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@sfmoma #fridaysubmission #submissionfridays #tabithasoren #surfacetension

Human-caused warming has increased the area burned by wildfire in the Western United States, according to the most recent report by the Trump administration, “particularly by drying forests and making them more susceptible to burning.”⁠ .⁠ A warmer world makes for a more combustible country. 2018 was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season in California history.⁠ "westernjournal.com/california-highway-fire-shutdown/"⁠ 2019⁠ Archival pigment print⁠ Edition of 3  54 x 72 inches⁠

#tabithasoren @sfmoma #submissionfridays #fridaysubmission #surfacetension

After years of working on this SURFACE TENSION series, I've thought a lot about how human touch causes incremental damage to the very beauty we seek out. The Great Barrier Reef, the Arctic, Greenland, and other places that were once beyond human touch are succumbing to it.⁠ .⁠ It’s perplexing but the same people who fail to recognize at the beauty in front of their nose will respond to it if it is presented in a photograph. We’re growing  accustomed to being served our experience, to having it mediated, before we accept and embrace it as our own.⁠ .⁠ "Katie’s_Vacation_Phone_Photo," 2019⁠ 59” x 80”⁠ Edition of 3  Archival Pigment Print⁠

#gettymuseum, @sfmoma, #fridaysubmission #submissionfridays #tabithasoren

Human touch causes incremental damage to the very beauty we seek out. The Great Barrier Reef, the Arctic, Greenland, and other places that were once beyond human touch are succumbing to it.⁠ .⁠ “Over the last few decades," says Artist @Judy.Chicago, "we have witnessed the melting of Arctic ice; the warming of the oceans; massive wildfires; dramatic changes in weather patterns; the extinction of hundreds of living creatures; a series of pandemics and now, the coronavirus which is upending human behavior all over the planet, causing the disruption of economic systems at a level never seen before and death for many thousands of people. Will we finally pay attention and wake up before it is too late for all of us?”⁠ .⁠ Shown here along with three details and an installation shot from @TransformerStation:⁠ .⁠ "theguardian.com/tourists_change_great_barrier_reef_⁠ forever/" ,  2019⁠ 59” x 80”⁠ Edition of 3 / 2 AP⁠ Archival Pigment Print⁠

Land ice and sea ice are melting, and humanity is slowly losing the refrigerator of the Northern Hemisphere, which could have drastic implications for iconic wildlife, global weather patterns and valuable infrastructure.⁠ .⁠ We live in a political moment where it seems⁠ reason has gone out the door. Nothing is what it seems. This image is of Greenland, which is a dazzling place but which is shrinking due to humans shaping the surface of the land. Greenland is only one example of the way human touch causes damage to the very beauty we are in search of by visiting.⁠ .⁠ Shown here along with two details:⁠ "pbs.org/nova/earth/greenland_is_shrinking/," 2019⁠

59” x 80”⁠

Edition of 3 / 2 AP⁠

Archival Pigment Print⁠

#Tabitha Soren

#submissionfridays @sfmoma

There is a connection between what troubles us and what distracts us in my project SURFACE TENSION. Gazing at the frayed world behind the seamless screens of our devices can make reality seem manageable. - even during a pandemic.⁠ .

The Surface Tension photographs are made from analogue 8"x10" negatives. The background image shows through the fingerprints that accumulate on my iPad. Technology and the internet creates the illusion that we have transcended the natural world -- until the natural world drops in to remind us exactly who’s boss.⁠ 

"instagram.com/emv_911/", 2020⁠ 

[Woolsey Fire, Santa Paula, CA]⁠ 

30” x 40”⁠ Edition of 5 / 2 AP⁠ 

Archival Pigment Print⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ 

#createartforearth @hansulrichobrist @ThroughtheFlowerArtSpace @SwoonHQ #JudyChicago #JaneFonda #Swoon  #HansUlrichObrist #serpentine #WomenintheArts #NMWA #GreenPeace #FireDrillFridays #ThroughtheFlower #TTFArtSpace #EarthDay #ClimateChange⁠

Listen to the COUP radical political early rap from oakland i think - super melodic and catchy too

April 10

April 10

Last week I went on a road trip and it was an incredible way for this adventure to come to near its end.  

I left for the road trip at 8am on Wednesday morning, packing my clothes in a trash bag I found under the kitchen sink.  It was decided that I was going to be the driver for the road trip and, therefore, I would be renting the car in my own name.  That process really hit me as an adult thing to do.  The only time I’ve seen a car be rented is by my parents.  Now, I’m the one signing the release form and grabbing the keys. To say I was nervous was an understatement.  I was flooded with anxiety about driving.  Firstly, I didn’t know where we were or where we were going because I am entirely unfamiliar with the area.  Secondly, in South Africa, you drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right.  This means the usual mindset I have of where I need to check for space is entirely thrown off and I need to re-calibrate the way I think of a car when I drive it.  Thirdly, I had never driven the car we were about to take off in.  Most cars here are manual— but I can’t drive manual so I paid extra for an automatic.  Calling the car an automatic is a drastic overstatement.  It was more like an automatic that had the brain of the car taken out so you cant change the gears, and it doesn’t know how to either. Moreover, when it would accelerate if I really just floored it, the engine would hit 500-600 RPMs.  That’s not supposed to happen in a Toyota Corolla.   The first stop after getting the car and camping gear was Hout Bay.  This is on the other side of Table Mountain from where I live.  It’s secluded and smaller than the other alcove-like beaches around Cape Town.  There was a long pier and a dock that was filled with little fishing boats that looked like they were off of a postcard from the 1970s.  The entire scene was beautiful— except for one thing.  There was an obese seal.  Now, the image of an obese seal is kind of funny in a ridiculous way.  But the reason it’s so fat is that a man sits with a huge bucket of fish and feeds it constantly so it’s more human-friendly and dependent on him.  This seal is so fat it can’t hunt anymore. This is an animal that a human has taken out of the wild and essentially ruined it’s life through isolation from its own species and overfeeding.  It was so fat it could barely move.  I got over it though and got a large tray of fish and chips with salt and vinegar.  It was fried heaven.   Hout Bay is surrounded by mountains.  When you’re there, it feels sort of like it could be God’s fish bowl.  It’s so contained and observable from above, a little biome all by itself.  We started from the bottom of the fishbowl and drove up the side along the mountain, eventually coming to Chapman’s peak, which looks down on all of Hout Bay.  It was so surreal to see the tiny little dock where I had been 20 minutes before as a little speck and simultaneously knowing how many people with stories and families and dreams were sitting there, munching on fish and chips.   After Chapman’s Peak, we headed down to Cape of Good Hope— the most Southwestern tip of the African continent. If that definition is confusing, it basically means there is one other place that is farther South than it, and it’s in the Eastern Cape.  So, their claim to fame is the farthest Southwestern tip. The view was so incredible and expansive, that it actually looked like you could see the curve of the Earth on the horizon. On one hand, that makes sense because the slope of a sphere would be steepest at the poles.  On the other hand, maybe I was just overexcited. There are two ways to describe what happened at the Cape of Good Hope.  One is that we were adventurous and unconventional and hiked on a ledge to a cliff nobody else dared to go to.  The other is that we lost the trail to the main peak with a lighthouse and just went with it.  You can choose which narrative you like better-  full reader’s discretion.   We finished up the first day by driving to the first town we were staying at.  It was night by then.  We bought a cooking pot and pasta supplies for the rest of the week.  I was absolutely starving even during grocery shopping, so by the time we pitched the tent and were lighting the fire it was not only pitch black outside but I was also getting grumpy.  I made the responsible and courteous decision to curb my hunger with white wine instead of being snippy until I had finished cooking.  The pasta was heaven by the time I finished, even though the mushroom cream sauce was out of a plastic bag container we had bought for approximately $1.50.  We ate directly out of the pot of pasta with forks and were asleep by 10pm. The next morning was magical.  I woke up to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach that was 50 yards from where I slept: in a tent, on a lawn, under a tree with a little fire pit near it.  I walked down to the beach after eating leftover pasta for breakfast and it was breathtaking.  I was so calm.  Sand between my toes, watching the waves crash on the shore at 7:30am.  That is me at my calmest.  The second day was a long day of driving, so we pulled out of the camping grounds around 8.  We drove up towards the Eastern Cape coast.  The highway was mainly empty.  For lunch we pulled into this little farm stand with a cafe and got amazing cheeseburgers.  I don’t like driving for extended periods of time, especially on the opposite side of the road in a place I don’t know for more than 5 hours.  But, the company and music in the car made it more than tolerable— I was blissed-out behind the wheel of a 2005 Toyota Corolla.  Past that, I bought a huge bag of peanut M&Ms.  The blue ones are my favorite.  The right company is everything.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever laughed that much in a single car ride, whether you measure that by straight time or percentage of time laughing, the statement holds.   The best part was that I got to go to Myoli Beach again.  This is my heaven on earth.  This is me in my element.  This is what bliss looks like and feels like to me.  It is a sacred space.  I will only go there with people I love.  I also know that when I am an adult, if I ever need time or an escape, that’s where I am going to go.  I don’t care about the flight time.  I don’t care about the distance.  I am going to make it happen.  When we got there, I almost sprinted into the water.  Soon, the lifeguards were screaming at me because apparently the currents are so chaotic and powerful that you have to swim between two cones they set up.  I was mildly irritated by this because I wanted to just be alone, but I didn’t let it cramp my style.  I was too happy.  I was so proud.  I did it.  The first time I was there, I promised myself I would go back, and I executed.   I think execution is one of my strengths.  I am very creative and I dream a lot, but I also make the dreams happen.  I don’t allow myself to be overwhelmed to the point of being paralyzed by all of the options and ideas my brain can create.  It is really wonderful to live that way.  However, there is a slight drawback and that is that I don’t really believe in just “letting things turn out the way they should”.  I don’t buy a laissez-faire mindset.  I don’t think things just work themselves out.  You make things turn out the way they should and I don’t really cut people slack around that, because I know that you can make things happen because I do all the time.  It’s hard.  It takes a toll on me.  There’s pressure and sacrifice, but I am always trying my hardest to execute and a lot of the time it happens.  I think the harder you try, the more things fall in your direction.  Effort generates luck.   The camping grounds we went to next we were staying at for two nights, so the drive was efficient and worth it.  We pulled in and my jaw dropped.  In front of us was the Indian Ocean.  When I mean in front of us, I mean the tent was maybe 30 feet from the sea.  Huge waves, crashing on the rocks that were the only thing in between us and the most beautiful thing in the world: the ocean.  The other day, a friend asked me if I thought the ocean was conscious.  I said I think it’s more complicated than that and I don’t really see it as a united, conscious being per say.  I was then met with a brilliant observation: foam.  There is so much yucky foam from the ocean that is filled with the pollutants of the sea.  The ocean cleans itself.  If the ocean wasn’t conscious, why would it clean foreign objects from itself? Food for thought. Now onto the real food.  For dinner that night I made an absolutely stunning pot of spaghetti and meatballs.  I really was proud of myself for this one.  I made it out of various ingredients and cans of meatballs all from the OK-minimark.  It irritates me that it’s not called the mini-mart, but instead the minimark, like market.  Why not just use mart? C’mon now people, I can’t be the one supplying all the good ideas.  While the pasta cooked, I went and took a super quick shower in the facilities graciously provided by the camping site.  I was walking out of the bathroom, towel securely turban-ed in my hair, and I saw the ocean light up in front of me.  I thought I was hallucinating.  Then I remembered that my friend Tim told me about seeing bioluminescent waves on one of his road trips, and I started sprinting towards my tent.  I was completely out of breath upon arrival because I am in literally the worst shape of my life.  I just said “bioluminescent… waves *gasps*” and pointed towards the ocean.  Then, miracles took place in front of my eyes.  For the next hour, the ocean was alive.  The waves were lighting up.  Millions, maybe even trillions, of plankton were crashing against each other and lighting up the waves as they curled and crashed in front of us.  It was magic.  Every time, it felt like my brain was glitching, but it was real.  This was really happening.  Then Mother Nature decided to test whether or not she could give us a heart attack and the clouds above us parted, revealing the Milky Way.  In front of us, bioluminescent waves.  Above us, the Milky Way.  In our tummies, amazing spaghetti and meatballs.  If this isn’t what life is about, what is? The next day was quite lazy.  It was raining and super windy.  To the point where we were afraid to leave our little tent all alone in the storm in fear it might be blown away.  Thankfully, as we went and got breakfast at the restaurant that was on the nature reserve we were camping at, it held it’s ground. It was not completely out of the question that the tent could have blown into the sea. I’m not sure what we would have done.  That would have been no bueno.   Because it was so rainy and cold, we decided to forgo the hike we had planned and went to a vineyard instead.  No complaints from my end.  Give me a tapas-style restaurant and a wine tasting and I am, literally, a happy-camper.  The food was delicious and we were so full that we ended up just heating up the leftovers of the spaghetti that we had negligently left in the pot and eating that for dinner.  The next morning, we packed up fairly early and hit the road.  We stopped at a gas station for breakfast and I got a grilled cheese with tomato and a large cappuccino.  This was the second to last day and I was in no way ready for this magical adventure to be over.  The route to get to the last site was so incredibly scenic.  We drove through ravines and over the mountains of Africa.  The ground here is incredibly red and it contrasted with the green of the plants growing on it.  The scientific reason for the redness is because there is a lot of iron in the soil.  The locals say that the reason the earth is so red is the blood that has spilled over it.   The last place we went to was in the mountains, our first venture inland away from the beach.  Naturally, I was a little hesitant about this because the beach is my happy place.  Oh, how wrong I was.  And happily so.  We stayed at an amazing hot springs in the middle of the South African Mountains.  The pools each varied in temperature.  It was all outside and directly out of the mountain beneath us.  There was iron in the water, naturally, so it was a little reddish-brown.  I loved it.  I was so at-ease.   Africa has pushed me to grow in many ways.  One of the biggest, most important ways, is the groundedness I feel here.  I am not a laid-back person.  But the closest I get to that is feeling rooted and calm within myself.  I don’t look for other people to tell me that I’m doing the right thing as much as I used to, I just know what is right and I pursue it.  That’s how I feel here.  Feet on the ground, heart in my chest, lungs full of beautiful air, eyes staring directly ahead: I am here.  I am here.  I am hopeful and present at the same time.  I am settled in my own body and mind.  I am centered in my own existence.  I am ambitious without being discontent with my own reality.  I am seeking and finding and accepting balance in my life.  Namaste, motherfucker. That night, we made the most complex dinner yet.  It was the last night of the road trip, so the special occasion warranted extravagance.  We made fish and pasta.  I made the pasta, naturally.  It was all delicious and wonderful.  The stars were so clear.  It blows my mind to look up and think about the infinite expanse of space that we are hurtling around in like a little speck of dust carrying over 7 billion individual realities.  It was freezing.  Even when we were cooking dinner, I was shivering.  The wind was impressively strong, blowing anything under 5 pounds at will.  I felt a little annoyed at Mother Nature for that kind of treatment, given the amount of appreciation I had for her during the rest of the road trip.  I thought she might do me a solid for that, turns out she really just doesn’t care.  It’s alright.  My feelings were only a little hurt.  I can bounce back with pesto pasta.  And I did.  That night we stayed up late.  Talking about the universe and morality and politics.   It always amazes me when people say they don’t like politics.  I understand not liking conflict.  That’s one thing.  But not “liking” politics doesn’t really seem like an option to me.  Politics is your life.  It’s your education.  It’s your job.  It’s your health.  It’s your rights.  How can you not “like” politics?  That being said, I generally don’t like conflict.  It feels like an attack and takes a lot of energy from me.  Talking about conflicting political views taxes me a lot (no pun intended).  When I hear about political issues, I want to do something about it.  I want to take the steering wheel and fix all of the unfairness and damage that the world is doing to itself right now.  I am usually an empathetic person, but when people don’t have that same urge, I find it really hard to understand.  I think a large aspect of this is immaturity.  My passion blinds me to an extent.  I get carried away.  I get overwhelmed by how necessary the issue is.  I am unable to moderate my tone or conversation points to make what I’m saying digestible.  This is somewhat of a pattern for me.  It makes me feel very immature, embarrassed, and like I lack self-control.  I know that if I really wanted to convince people of my views, if I wanted to really get the outcome I want, I would actually moderate what I’m saying.  People don’t respond well to accusation and conflict.  If I defend somebody or a view of mine, the natural response for the other person is to either take the offensive or see what I’m saying as the offensive and take the defensive of their (wrong…) opinion.  It makes me think of an Albert Einstein quote: “insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.  I go into arguments with the same amount of stubbornness and passion and intensity, and expect it to sway people.  I get tunnel-vision and let go of what I know is persuasive and just unleash my feelings and views in one huge Tsunami Quinn.  I am very evangelical about what I believe.  When I really care, I suddenly become a Mormon with a picket sign screaming at girls in skirts that God hates them.  When I think I know I’m right, usually because I’ve done extensive research I assume most people are way too lazy to even do a fraction of, my words slap people in the face like a verbal picket sign. This is one of the things I’m working on this year.  I think I’ve become significantly more aware of it and it’s going to take time, but I’ll get there.  I know I can execute, this goal will just take some more time than is ideal.   Another point of self-improvement I am working on is self-image.  That is, I don’t balance confidence and self-assurance well.  I am either entirely confident, set in my views, plowing forward with full force and self-righteousness, or I am entirely insecure and see myself as the problem of a situation.  Neither of these is ideal.  The goal is to moderate.  To find a point of confidence and humility and implement that into the way I approach the world.  To be assured in my values and who I know I am, without being so confident that I have a closed-mindset and, therefore, close myself off to more improvement and learning.  I have a very complex mind and am able to see a lot of nuance in the world.  I am also empathetic.  I can see the different elements and viewpoints of any situation.  For example, I see why ISIS would be a persuasive institution to join in a desperate, isolating, and unfair situation.  That being said, there are some absolute truths that I believe that I am not sure if it helps or harms me to see as absolute truths.  The main of these is that I don’t believe in cutting others more slack than I would cut myself.  I don’t think anyone who is persuaded to join ISIS is a good person.  I think a bad person can regret and then move towards becoming a good person.  I think a bad person can become a good person.  I don’t think there is a fixed state of goodness or badness.  Your goodness or badness hinges entirely on your actions and beliefs.  That being said, if you are convinced that the right thing to do is kill others in an act of Jihad because they are Shi’iet Muslims instead of Sunni Muslims, or because they are of Western Culture, you’re a bad person.  There is never a “right” reason to kill people you don’t know.  Those people are stories.  They are families.  They are lives and experiences and relationships and heartbreak and loss and happiness and complexity in the same way anyone else is.  It is so selfish and entitled to claim a life that is not your own.  To intervene in somebody’s path like that.  To step into a family’s reality forever.  To influence hundreds of people in an act of destruction.  There is no information, persuasion, or excuse that justifies that mindset.  That is an absolute badness to me.  I hesitate to say evil because it is weighted by the connotation of Satan and religion and I don’t want this to be about that.  It’s about goodness and badness.  Killing people is bad.  That is an absolute truth to me.  Stealing from people is bad.  That is an absolute truth to me.  Whether that is robbing people of objects, of experiences, or of honesty, it’s all stealing.  Material stealing is the least important.  Money, objects, material, it’s all societally constructed and most of the time doesn’t destroy somebody’s wellbeing or happiness.  Not to say that’s never the case, but *usually* it is not the case.  However there are more dramatic versions of stealing.  Lying is stealing the truth from somebody.  Cheating is stealing a natural, right sequence of events from somebody.  It’s all stealing, and it is deceptive, and selfish.  Nobody has the right to change what should happen.  Nobody has the right to pretend the truth is something it isn’t.  That’s an absolute wrong to me.  How am I supposed to live in a world where I have to doubt what the people around me say?  That is an incredibly exhausting existence.   That mindset towards lying and trust is another thing I have recently realized about myself.  When I begin a relationship with anyone, friendship, professional, romantic, etc., I give that person my trust.  I am vulnerable.  I am open.  I am true and I don’t hold back unless it will cause damage to somebody other than myself.  However, if that trust is exploited, it is taken away by me in an extreme way.  I withdraw entirely.  It hurts me deeply to be betrayed, and it has happened many times.  Yet, I would rather be hurt many times, than not keep my heart as open as I do.  I feel everything so deeply and connect with people in an honest way on a daily basis, because I am brave enough to open myself to betrayal and pain.  Often, I feel that pain.  But, the worst pain and biggest loss of all is if I would let that betrayal make me close my heart off, and I need to have the courage to preserve that.   A sort-of example of this is making dear friends here in South Africa.  The wise thing to do is to keep my heart to myself.  We all live on separate continents.  Why would I get attached? I don’t accept that.  I’ve thrown my heart to people here and, when they leave, it breaks.  But I would rather feel love, loss, and pain than nothing at all.  

- Q

p.s. I haven’t written yet about april 10+11 but that will come when the time is right.  stay patient.  

p.p.s if you haven’t listened to the Fugees seriously, do it now.  You might die tomorrow without hearing this genius.  

Why didn’t Sebastian or Parker help?

Of course it’s Friday the 13th.

Friday the 13th lived up to it’s stigma, in a way.  The true horror occurred on Thursday the 12th but it was close enough to midnight that I think it’s the 13th’s fault.  I’ve been a mess today.  

Thursday night started off great.  We had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and I got thirds of everything.  Then, I sat on the couch in my PJs with my white wine and wrote the last post you read.  It was very nice and I was sleepy. The meatballs really took it out of me.  Then, I got a text.  From my friend Sebastian.  He was apart of the old crew of friends that has all left by now.  He’s still in Cape Town though, studying for an English certificate.  He said that he’s surprising everyone tonight and coming back.  This was so comforting and an absolute rush of energy went through my body.  I threw on pants and was so happy to see him.  We went to the Thirsty Turtle, the place we always go on Thursdays because its 2 for 1 and nobody has any money.  It was a great time for the first two hours.   A little bit in, that girl Danni showed up which I was a little surprised about because she’s not on project any more and has had some drama with some girls she screwed over.  Basically, at dinner on Monday, Lucy was telling me that Danni told her they had plans to rent a house together and she was ready to do so but then she just bailed and didn’t even tell Lucy to her face, she just found out through the grapevine that Danni was going off project and doing something else entirely.  I told her that I wasn’t at all surprised because her behavior towards me has been nothing short of appalling.  She would be so snarky when she spoke to me and sometimes just pretend that I don’t exist, even when the conversation is at a table of 4 people and she’s directly across from me.  She would come in our room and ignore me when I asked her how she was or what she had done that day.  I have no idea why she was so horrible to me.  I think she was jealous and upset that I was so close with Tim, Lucas, and other people at Dunbar instead of being interested in following her and her group around.  If it matters that much to you, be more interesting, smart, and/or funny,  and I’ll spend my time with you.  Until then, no thanks. Back to Thursday night.  I knew Danni would ignore me.  Honestly, I didn’t even really think about it.  I want nothing to do with her so good riddance.  People started leaving around 11 but my friends were still hanging around.  I went to the bathroom.  When I came back, people had kind of shifted around the table so my old spot was taken and I found myself standing next to Danni, no big deal I don’t need to talk to her.  Within moments, I feel a hand grab my arm and turn me around.  Of course, it’s Danni.  Panic floods my stomach.  “You know that I am fûcking pissed at you”, she shoots at me.  I don’t even blink.  “Alright”, I respond.  I am sober and she is clearly not.  I don’t want to engage.  I have no interest in how she feels, especially not about me.  Not my monkey, not my circus.  I try to turn away but she physically holds me in place.  By the way, did I mention she���s literally a linebacker? I’m tiny.  This is not a position I want to be in.  My back is literally against the wall and she is standing in front of my only exit to the other side of the table.  I try to move around me, and she steps in my way.  “I’m talking to you”.  “I can see that”.  “Im so fûcking pissed at you, you bįtch”. “Danni, stop.” “Im so angry” “I don’t care” “You don’t care that you’re a fûcking bįtch?” “No, I don’t, please move out of my way” She doesn’t move and I can tell she has no intention of moving, so I turn to my friend Parker who is sitting on the bench against the wall behind me.  She pushes me from behind so I fall forward a little.  “You little bįtch” she sneers at me, loud enough that I’m pretty sure the whole table heard.  I hate confrontation.  I’m panicking at this point.  I don’t know how to handle this.  I turn around and try to move past her again and, again, she blocks my way and puts her hands on me.  “Take your hands off of me”. “You fûcking bįtch.  When I have a problem I just say so. You talk behind my back. You lying bįtch” “Danni, stop it.  Let me past you” “Let’s talk outside” “Danni, no, move.” By now I’m really panicking.  My fight or flight instincts are kicking in, thats how terrified I am.  I can tell I’m either going to punch her in the face or start sobbing right there.  My natural default is always sadness over anger.  I feel the tears coming on.  I turn back to Parker.  “Parker, help me.  Help.  Me.  Help Me. Please”.  He tells Danni to back off, but she’s still screaming at me even though my back is turned.  More and more people around me are noticing.  She pushes me again from behind.  I turn, leave the only jacket I have on the continent of Africa, and sprint away.  I sprint all the way home.  It is super dangerous for me to have left alone.  Like beyond risky.  But I couldn’t stand it.  I felt entirely broken and so overwhelmed.  By the time I got home, I was breathless and sobbing from sprinting and the absolute terror the situation had caused me.  I can’t remember the last time I was that upset.  I have nobody here.  Nobody stood up for me.  Nobody helped me even though I was freezing and panicking.  I could barely walk to the wall next to the pool.  I was shaking head to toe.  Sobbing alone on the dirty, stone ground, next to an empty pool in the middle of South Africa, far away from anyone who cares or loves me.   I started hyperventilating from the amount of pain, stress, and panic the entire interaction had cost me.  Next thing I know, I am face down, laying beside the pool, having a full-fledged panic attack.  I was entirely alone.  The world was spinning.  I lost where the sky was.  My lungs were burning and grabbing for air entirely on their own accord.  After a while, I have no idea how long, somebody from the house heard me.  It was this really shy, sweet British guy named David.  He called out to me, asking what was wrong.  I gasped out that I was having a panic attack and needed space.  I was sobbing on the ground, clutching my sides.  I have never been so vulnerable and so alone at the same time.  Somehow, I called Lucy who was back at the main hostel and told her it was an emergency and I was at Dunbar.  Within minutes (I think) I heard the main gate slam.  I am generally not religious, but I was praying at that moment that it was help coming.  My entire body was convulsing and I had no control over anything.  I couldn’t feel anything.  Even my lips were shaking.  I couldn’t use my eyes to understand the reality around me.  Next thing I know, Jenine, Lucy, and Luisa are around me, turning me around and laying me down.  My entire body is shaking so hard they can barely get me to lay right-side-up so I could breathe properly.  They’re holding my head so it doesn’t hit the concrete.  My lungs still are opening and closing faster than I could think to close them.  My head feels like its rolling around, completely independent of my body.  I can’t find reality.  I can’t find gravity.  I am entirely alone.  Then things slow.  The spinning becomes less incoherent and more dizzying.  I start crying hard again.  Sobbing.  I probably was so loud that all of the new volunteers got to wake up to the end back-end of my panic attack.  When they can get me to sit up, I do, and start to explain, through my sobbing, what happened.   This entire experience was beyond traumatic. Firstly, I have spent almost an entire year on my own, in countries that are not my own, surrounded by new and stressful experiences and I have been fine.  I haven’t had a panic attack like this in at least two years.  And now, four days before I am due to end my adventure and go home, I lose control.  It felt like such a failure. Like such a regression.  A loss.  A humiliation.  A display of my weakness.  It broke me.   I couldn’t sleep all night and have been recovering all today.  There were riots in Dunoon, so I didn’t have project, which was in the end actually a good thing for me.  In the afternoon I started feeling good enough to drink water and eat something instead of just being in bed filled with anxiety and sadness.  I needed somebody who loves me.  And I had nobody.  I have never felt so alone.  So helpless.  So vulnerable.   I went to the ocean around 3pm with this new guy from the UK named Simon.  He seams great.  Definitely someone I would be friends with if I was sticking around longer.  That being said, I have never been more ready to leave than I am now.  I told him briefly about last night and he was appalled by the situation.  I told him it’s okay, just scary because it’s so far from how I view humanity.  I would never dream of seeking conflict and hatred that way.  It makes me scared of what humans are capable of. How can somebody have that much violence and harm in them and actively try to drag people into it? What does that say about the human race? I feel like an Elephant.  I am a big personality.  I don’t mind taking up space in a room.  I like to feel noticed.  But at the end of the day, I eat leaves.  I don’t attack, I don’t kill, I just live my life in a bold way, but entirely avoiding conflict.  The only way to get me to attack is if you threaten my loved-ones.  If you encroach on their territory and wellbeing, expect me to push back.  But the second the threat leaves, I am back to munching my leaves and letting little birds chill out on my tusks.  At the end of the day, even though I am huge, if a lion really wants to take me down, it can.  That’s exactly what happened with Danni.  She sensed that I’m an elephant.  She could see my aversion to her attacks and knew she was the lion and she loves the hunt.  I felt like prey.  I’ve been thinking about this all day unrelentingly.  I don’t care what she thinks of me.  I am broken though.  She shouldn’t have done that.  She shouldn’t have pushed me this far.  Now, I am in a defensive mood.  If I see her tonight and she attacks again, I’ll end her.  Mom, Dad, Grandma, Mitchell, anyone back in the States, I love you and, if she assaults me like that again, I might break her nose.  Please be on stand-by in case I need to call somebody from Capetonian jail.  

Sometimes a punch is what a nasty (former) roommate needs.

Of course it’s Friday the 13th.

Friday the 13th lived up to it’s stigma, in a way.  The true horror occurred on Thursday the 12th but it was close enough to midnight that I think it’s the 13th’s fault.  I’ve been a mess today.  

Thursday night started off great.  We had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and I got thirds of everything.  Then, I sat on the couch in my PJs with my white wine and wrote the last post you read.  It was very nice and I was sleepy. The meatballs really took it out of me.  Then, I got a text.  From my friend Sebastian.  He was apart of the old crew of friends that has all left by now.  He’s still in Cape Town though, studying for an English certificate.  He said that he’s surprising everyone tonight and coming back.  This was so comforting and an absolute rush of energy went through my body.  I threw on pants and was so happy to see him.  We went to the Thirsty Turtle, the place we always go on Thursdays because its 2 for 1 and nobody has any money.  It was a great time for the first two hours.   A little bit in, that girl Danni showed up which I was a little surprised about because she’s not on project any more and has had some drama with some girls she screwed over.  Basically, at dinner on Monday, Lucy was telling me that Danni told her they had plans to rent a house together and she was ready to do so but then she just bailed and didn’t even tell Lucy to her face, she just found out through the grapevine that Danni was going off project and doing something else entirely.  I told her that I wasn’t at all surprised because her behavior towards me has been nothing short of appalling.  She would be so snarky when she spoke to me and sometimes just pretend that I don’t exist, even when the conversation is at a table of 4 people and she’s directly across from me.  She would come in our room and ignore me when I asked her how she was or what she had done that day.  I have no idea why she was so horrible to me.  I think she was jealous and upset that I was so close with Tim, Lucas, and other people at Dunbar instead of being interested in following her and her group around.  If it matters that much to you, be more interesting, smart, and/or funny,  and I’ll spend my time with you.  Until then, no thanks. Back to Thursday night.  I knew Danni would ignore me.  Honestly, I didn’t even really think about it.  I want nothing to do with her so good riddance.  People started leaving around 11 but my friends were still hanging around.  I went to the bathroom.  When I came back, people had kind of shifted around the table so my old spot was taken and I found myself standing next to Danni, no big deal I don’t need to talk to her.  Within moments, I feel a hand grab my arm and turn me around.  Of course, it’s Danni.  Panic floods my stomach.  “You know that I am fûcking pissed at you”, she shoots at me.  I don’t even blink.  “Alright”, I respond.  I am sober and she is clearly not.  I don’t want to engage.  I have no interest in how she feels, especially not about me.  Not my monkey, not my circus.  I try to turn away but she physically holds me in place.  By the way, did I mention she’s literally a linebacker? I’m tiny.  This is not a position I want to be in.  My back is literally against the wall and she is standing in front of my only exit to the other side of the table.  I try to move around me, and she steps in my way.  “I’m talking to you”.  “I can see that”.  “Im so fûcking pissed at you, you bįtch”. “Danni, stop.” “Im so angry” “I don’t care” “You don’t care that you’re a fûcking bįtch?” “No, I don’t, please move out of my way” She doesn’t move and I can tell she has no intention of moving, so I turn to my friend Parker who is sitting on the bench against the wall behind me.  She pushes me from behind so I fall forward a little.  “You little bįtch” she sneers at me, loud enough that I’m pretty sure the whole table heard.  I hate confrontation.  I’m panicking at this point.  I don’t know how to handle this.  I turn around and try to move past her again and, again, she blocks my way and puts her hands on me.  “Take your hands off of me”. “You fûcking bįtch.  When I have a problem I just say so. You talk behind my back. You lying bįtch” “Danni, stop it.  Let me past you” “Let’s talk outside” “Danni, no, move.” By now I’m really panicking.  My fight or flight instincts are kicking in, thats how terrified I am.  I can tell I’m either going to punch her in the face or start sobbing right there.  My natural default is always sadness over anger.  I feel the tears coming on.  I turn back to Parker.  “Parker, help me.  Help.  Me.  Help Me. Please”.  He tells Danni to back off, but she’s still screaming at me even though my back is turned.  More and more people around me are noticing.  She pushes me again from behind.  I turn, leave the only jacket I have on the continent of Africa, and sprint away.  I sprint all the way home.  It is super dangerous for me to have left alone.  Like beyond risky.  But I couldn’t stand it.  I felt entirely broken and so overwhelmed.  By the time I got home, I was breathless and sobbing from sprinting and the absolute terror the situation had caused me.  I can’t remember the last time I was that upset.  I have nobody here.  Nobody stood up for me.  Nobody helped me even though I was freezing and panicking.  I could barely walk to the wall next to the pool.  I was shaking head to toe.  Sobbing alone on the dirty, stone ground, next to an empty pool in the middle of South Africa, far away from anyone who cares or loves me.   I started hyperventilating from the amount of pain, stress, and panic the entire interaction had cost me.  Next thing I know, I am face down, laying beside the pool, having a full-fledged panic attack.  I was entirely alone.  The world was spinning.  I lost where the sky was.  My lungs were burning and grabbing for air entirely on their own accord.  After a while, I have no idea how long, somebody from the house heard me.  It was this really shy, sweet British guy named David.  He called out to me, asking what was wrong.  I gasped out that I was having a panic attack and needed space.  I was sobbing on the ground, clutching my sides.  I have never been so vulnerable and so alone at the same time.  Somehow, I called Lucy who was back at the main hostel and told her it was an emergency and I was at Dunbar.  Within minutes (I think) I heard the main gate slam.  I am generally not religious, but I was praying at that moment that it was help coming.  My entire body was convulsing and I had no control over anything.  I couldn’t feel anything.  Even my lips were shaking.  I couldn’t use my eyes to understand the reality around me.  Next thing I know, Jenine, Lucy, and Luisa are around me, turning me around and laying me down.  My entire body is shaking so hard they can barely get me to lay right-side-up so I could breathe properly.  They’re holding my head so it doesn’t hit the concrete.  My lungs still are opening and closing faster than I could think to close them.  My head feels like its rolling around, completely independent of my body.  I can’t find reality.  I can’t find gravity.  I am entirely alone.  Then things slow.  The spinning becomes less incoherent and more dizzying.  I start crying hard again.  Sobbing.  I probably was so loud that all of the new volunteers got to wake up to the end back-end of my panic attack.  When they can get me to sit up, I do, and start to explain, through my sobbing, what happened.   This entire experience was beyond traumatic. Firstly, I have spent almost an entire year on my own, in countries that are not my own, surrounded by new and stressful experiences and I have been fine.  I haven’t had a panic attack like this in at least two years.  And now, four days before I am due to end my adventure and go home, I lose control.  It felt like such a failure. Like such a regression.  A loss.  A humiliation.  A display of my weakness.  It broke me.   I couldn’t sleep all night and have been recovering all today.  There were riots in Dunoon, so I didn’t have project, which was in the end actually a good thing for me.  In the afternoon I started feeling good enough to drink water and eat something instead of just being in bed filled with anxiety and sadness.  I needed somebody who loves me.  And I had nobody.  I have never felt so alone.  So helpless.  So vulnerable.   I went to the ocean around 3pm with this new guy from the UK named Simon.  He seams great.  Definitely someone I would be friends with if I was sticking around longer.  That being said, I have never been more ready to leave than I am now.  I told him briefly about last night and he was appalled by the situation.  I told him it’s okay, just scary because it’s so far from how I view humanity.  I would never dream of seeking conflict and hatred that way.  It makes me scared of what humans are capable of. How can somebody have that much violence and harm in them and actively try to drag people into it? What does that say about the human race? I feel like an Elephant.  I am a big personality.  I don’t mind taking up space in a room.  I like to feel noticed.  But at the end of the day, I eat leaves.  I don’t attack, I don’t kill, I just live my life in a bold way, but entirely avoiding conflict.  The only way to get me to attack is if you threaten my loved-ones.  If you encroach on their territory and wellbeing, expect me to push back.  But the second the threat leaves, I am back to munching my leaves and letting little birds chill out on my tusks.  At the end of the day, even though I am huge, if a lion really wants to take me down, it can.  That’s exactly what happened with Danni.  She sensed that I’m an elephant.  She could see my aversion to her attacks and knew she was the lion and she loves the hunt.  I felt like prey.  I’ve been thinking about this all day unrelentingly.  I don’t care what she thinks of me.  I am broken though.  She shouldn’t have done that.  She shouldn’t have pushed me this far.  Now, I am in a defensive mood.  If I see her tonight and she attacks again, I’ll end her.  Mom, Dad, Grandma, Mitchell, anyone back in the States, I love you and, if she assaults me like that again, I might break her nose.  Please be on stand-by in case I need to call somebody from Capetonian jail.  

First Blog Post: Cape Town Day 1

Sunday Feb 11 2018

Growing Pains

I landed in Cape Town at 7:30am local time (CTT= Cape Town Time/ CT= Cape Town).  Because I slept from SFO to Heathrow, I got little to no sleep from Heathrow to Cape Town, resulting in my accidental all-nighter from 11:30pm CTT.  Everything is sort of hazy and out of whack.  It seems like everything that could have gone slightly wrong, has gone slightly wrong.  Or, at least, very far from the expected result.  The first of these instances was in the CT airport.  There was a driver that was supposed to meet me at 8am CTT and by 8:20am I was starting to feel quite nervous, as it is easy to direct my unease about the general situation of moving continents towards a short-term, tangible problem like my transportation.  By this time, I am sweating from nerves and general physical exhaustion from hauling my duffle bag around looking for the guy who is supposed to have a sign directing me to him.  Finally, I call the emergency number of the program I’m going through and they tell me to go to the information desk and wait for him to meet me there.  So I do.   Another 20 minutes later, all is well and my driver, Kyle, is blasting Lil’ Jon while speeding down the highway past the poorest parts of CT.  There are thousands of houses made out of scrap metal.  I saw roofs held onto structures by the weight of fractured concrete, wooden planks and sheets of tin propped up against each other, some structures were even two stories high.  Then we were zooming through Cape Town, the first thing I saw was the prison, which was almost as depressing as the slums.  But once we cleared the poorer outskirts, the water was visible and it was stunning.  It was like the surface was covered in gold glitter it was sparkling so much.  We stopped in front of a house in a rundown neighborhood, directly facing a large, white, and mostly windowless primary school.  Kyle grabs my duffle bag out of the car (bless him) and dispassionately drops me and it at the front door of a dusty, brick-red house.  I ring the doorbell as Kyle drives off.  Nobody answers.  After a minute, I ring again.  Still, nobody answers.  I reach past the metal grate blocking the wooden door and knock.  I am starting to panic (again) and am knocking and ringing, feeling stranded and mildly disgusted at the dead, partially-squished rat I had to walk over to get to the door.  10 minutes pass.  I am still frantically knocking.  Then, I hear something. A short girl answers the door.  She’s maybe 24, with a sleeve of tattoos- one of which is a large elephant with a very South African looking tree next to it.  I introduce myself and she says her name is Cassie and she essentially runs the hostel.  She takes me upstairs and shows me my room with three bunkbeds lining the walls, and a file-cabinet-like dresser against the fourth.  The floor is covered in clothes and there is a girl sleeping in her underwear surrounded by around 5 half-empty fanta bottles and two sticky glasses with flat soda in them.  I say hello and she makes no noise, clearly a bit irritated her sleep has been interrupted.  Cassie tells me to meet her downstairs in a few minutes when I settle in.  I sit down on the bed and basically curl up in a ball of confusion, anxiety, and relief.   When I have taken some deep breaths, reapply deodorant, and listed things I am grateful for and things I want to learn, I hop down the dirty stairs in the dim  house and find Cassie.  She gives me a brief tour of the house and shows me how I have to shower in a bucket and then dump the bucket in a larger bucket.  Then, when you want to take a number 2 you have to walk to the big bucket, fill up a small bucket with water, then find a way to dump the water in the small bucket into the toilet tank so you can flush.  This is way harder than it sounds and it an extremely awkward process that is almost as stressful as it is embarrassing for me because if you grab the bucket everyone knows you aren’t just going number 1.  Most of my stress here hinges on the idea of making myself more embarrassed than I already am by fûcking up this process in one way (technically this whole extravaganza is called a grey-water system). After the somewhat unnerving house tour, I am starting to realize how incredibly foreign all of this is.  Moving to and living in Florence was traveling to another country, Cape Town is another planet. ��Everything feels slightly uneasy when you walk down the streets.  I felt very watched and distrustful of anyone around me because I had been warned so thoroughly about the impressive theft that was pulled off, even in broad daylight. Then, the first genuinely positive interaction of my day happens.  Three girls, Jonna (Sweden), Ella (Sweden), and Natália (Brazil) say that they’re gong to the beach and if I don’t have any plans I should come with them to get lunch and then go to the beach.  The tight little ball in my chest loosens. We all go to the grocery store and upon our return, Cassie comes up to me and tells me that tomorrow I am moving to a HomeStay.  My reaction is:  “WHAAAT??!?!?!?!??!?!????”.  I was NOT supposed to be at a Home-Stay and was clearly told by the volunteer service that I would be based at the volunteer hostel.  I was completely caught off-guard and this was the LAST mix-up I would expect to happen.  I make her double-check that it’s the right person she’s talking about and she confirms that yes, in fact my program is in an area much closer to the poorer neighborhoods, because those are the kids we are serving.  Thus, I need to live close to them and that means living with a family.  WHAT THE FÜCK?  I regain my zen and try to just be a “go with the flow” kind of person, but I feel like a rock being unwillingly dragged down a river by the force of the water.  After many minutes of mindful breathing and sunscreen application, we are in the uber to the beach.   The beach is gorgeous.  The South African Sun was incredibly intense.  Even when applying several layers of thick sunscreen and sitting entirely in the shade, my skin was very offended I had decided to move to this continent.  That being said, there were white fluffy sand, colored umbrellas, beautiful and tan, beachy South Africans everywhere, so I told my skin to shut up.  My particular favorite of all my people-watching specimen was a 50-something woman in a hot pink bikini who was so freckled she passed it off as a deep tan.  She had a lower back tattoo that said “Brooklyn Forever” in swirly writing, some Chinese characters on her back, a ring of thorns around her bicep, and a kiss mark on her lower right hip.  Her small white lap dog came over and chilled on my towel while she drank some alcoholic beverage and told her four-year-old daughter to move out of her tanning chair because “I’m an ádult” (only self-important people say adult as aaaaadult).  She also told her friend to “stay on the hunt”, when a 20 year old lifeguard passed and they both obviously checked him out, even though they were both wearing wedding rings and surrounded by their own children.  From eavesdropping on their conversations I learned her name was Lisa, which fits all too well.   I hang out with my new friends and learn lots of cool information.  For example, Natalia has breast implants her boyfriend paid for as a present to her 5 months ago and is very happy to talk about them as a point of braggadocio (as it turns out, two americans in this volunteer hostel also have breast implants”.  Ella has four tattoos, one of which is very large on her forearm that says “There is no progress without struggle”.  She says she almost ran to the tattoo parlor on her 18th birthday to get it— but now she thinks it’s cliche.  Jonna is amazed at my ability to recite facts I learned from various podcasts I listened during my unintentional all-nighter to Cape Town.  For example, your likelihood of getting cancer increases by 40% if you average less than 7 hours of sleep per night over your lifetime.  Cassie and her sister Ashley end up joining us.  By that time I was entirely exhausted.  My face was telling me it was time to get out of the sun even though I was in the shade, with a hat and sunscreen on.  And, again, I was entirely exhausted so interaction with new people was a strain I was really not feeling.   Finally, we call and uber and go back to the hostel. I cannot get the idea of the host family off of my mind as I am moving there tomorrow and have exactly no information on who they are, where they live, what the conditions will be, how many people live there, etc.. I decide the best way to ease my anxiety is to get something done.  So, I go to the drug store down the street, Click-It.  I buy around 10 items and when I’m checking out, the cashier does something very odd.  He looks at me, smiles, and says “when you leave the alarm by the door might go off, just keep walking”.  I kind of smile and then process what he’s really said, then process the fact that him and his female co-worker at the other register just smiled at each other clearly in regards to what he has just said.  “Why” I ask.  “Because I am not going to scan all the items they want me to scan.  Don’t worry about it.  Just keep walking”.  At this point I’m like WHAT THE FÜCK IS GOING ON PART 2.  Is he saying he is giving me some of my items for free? What on earth is happening.  Well, then I go to pay with my Charles Schwab card that is supposed to be perfect and seamless to use and it’s DECLINED.  So I pay with Wells Fargo and the world starts turning again.  Right after I pick up my bag he reminds me “dont forget: DO NOT stop walking”. And Im like “Dude I just wanted my leave-in conditioner, I don’t need Mission-Impossible”  But, whatever, I’m only 95% sure I can understand the gist of what he is saying because I am still having trouble understanding South African English accents. I scurry home, through the accusatorially beeping metal detector with my newly aquired, and possibly partially stolen goods and take my brief, bucket shower.  Now, I am hiding in my top bunk, trying to collect myself and hide from human interaction because honestly, I’m getting close to being at wits-end.  I am too overwhelmed to edit this so #nofilter yay I completed my first blog post.  Happy First Day In South Africa, Bitches.

xoxo Q

STILL IN THE GAME ! Obama Portraits Blend Paint and Politics, and Fact and Fiction

My daughter lands in Capetown.

First Blog Post: Cape Town Day 1

Sunday Feb 11 2018

Growing Pains

I landed in Cape Town at 7:30am local time (CTT= Cape Town Time/ CT= Cape Town).  Because I slept from SFO to Heathrow, I got little to no sleep from Heathrow to Cape Town, resulting in my accidental all-nighter from 11:30pm CTT.  Everything is sort of hazy and out of whack.  It seems like everything that could have gone slightly wrong, has gone slightly wrong.  Or, at least, very far from the expected result.  The first of these instances was in the CT airport.  There was a driver that was supposed to meet me at 8am CTT and by 8:20am I was starting to feel quite nervous, as it is easy to direct my unease about the general situation of moving continents towards a short-term, tangible problem like my transportation.  By this time, I am sweating from nerves and general physical exhaustion from hauling my duffle bag around looking for the guy who is supposed to have a sign directing me to him.  Finally, I call the emergency number of the program I’m going through and they tell me to go to the information desk and wait for him to meet me there.  So I do.   Another 20 minutes later, all is well and my driver, Kyle, is blasting Lil’ Jon while speeding down the highway past the poorest parts of CT.  There are thousands of houses made out of scrap metal.  I saw roofs held onto structures by the weight of fractured concrete, wooden planks and sheets of tin propped up against each other, some structures were even two stories high.  Then we were zooming through Cape Town, the first thing I saw was the prison, which was almost as depressing as the slums.  But once we cleared the poorer outskirts, the water was visible and it was stunning.  It was like the surface was covered in gold glitter it was sparkling so much.  We stopped in front of a house in a rundown neighborhood, directly facing a large, white, and mostly windowless primary school.  Kyle grabs my duffle bag out of the car (bless him) and dispassionately drops me and it at the front door of a dusty, brick-red house.  I ring the doorbell as Kyle drives off.  Nobody answers.  After a minute, I ring again.  Still, nobody answers.  I reach past the metal grate blocking the wooden door and knock.  I am starting to panic (again) and am knocking and ringing, feeling stranded and mildly disgusted at the dead, partially-squished rat I had to walk over to get to the door.  10 minutes pass.  I am still frantically knocking.  Then, I hear something. A short girl answers the door.  She’s maybe 24, with a sleeve of tattoos- one of which is a large elephant with a very South African looking tree next to it.  I introduce myself and she says her name is Cassie and she essentially runs the hostel.  She takes me upstairs and shows me my room with three bunkbeds lining the walls, and a file-cabinet-like dresser against the fourth.  The floor is covered in clothes and there is a girl sleeping in her underwear surrounded by around 5 half-empty fanta bottles and two sticky glasses with flat soda in them.  I say hello and she makes no noise, clearly a bit irritated her sleep has been interrupted.  Cassie tells me to meet her downstairs in a few minutes when I settle in.  I sit down on the bed and basically curl up in a ball of confusion, anxiety, and relief.   When I have taken some deep breaths, reapply deodorant, and listed things I am grateful for and things I want to learn, I hop down the dirty stairs in the dim  house and find Cassie.  She gives me a brief tour of the house and shows me how I have to shower in a bucket and then dump the bucket in a larger bucket.  Then, when you want to take a number 2 you have to walk to the big bucket, fill up a small bucket with water, then find a way to dump the water in the small bucket into the toilet tank so you can flush.  This is way harder than it sounds and it an extremely awkward process that is almost as stressful as it is embarrassing for me because if you grab the bucket everyone knows you aren’t just going number 1.  Most of my stress here hinges on the idea of making myself more embarrassed than I already am by fûcking up this process in one way (technically this whole extravaganza is called a grey-water system). After the somewhat unnerving house tour, I am starting to realize how incredibly foreign all of this is.  Moving to and living in Florence was traveling to another country, Cape Town is another planet.  Everything feels slightly uneasy when you walk down the streets.  I felt very watched and distrustful of anyone around me because I had been warned so thoroughly about the impressive theft that was pulled off, even in broad daylight. Then, the first genuinely positive interaction of my day happens.  Three girls, Jonna (Sweden), Ella (Sweden), and Natália (Brazil) say that they’re gong to the beach and if I don’t have any plans I should come with them to get lunch and then go to the beach.  The tight little ball in my chest loosens. We all go to the grocery store and upon our return, Cassie comes up to me and tells me that tomorrow I am moving to a HomeStay.  My reaction is:  “WHAAAT??!?!?!?!??!?!????”.  I was NOT supposed to be at a Home-Stay and was clearly told by the volunteer service that I would be based at the volunteer hostel.  I was completely caught off-guard and this was the LAST mix-up I would expect to happen.  I make her double-check that it’s the right person she’s talking about and she confirms that yes, in fact my program is in an area much closer to the poorer neighborhoods, because those are the kids we are serving.  Thus, I need to live close to them and that means living with a family.  WHAT THE FÜCK?  I regain my zen and try to just be a “go with the flow” kind of person, but I feel like a rock being unwillingly dragged down a river by the force of the water.  After many minutes of mindful breathing and sunscreen application, we are in the uber to the beach.   The beach is gorgeous.  The South African Sun was incredibly intense.  Even when applying several layers of thick sunscreen and sitting entirely in the shade, my skin was very offended I had decided to move to this continent.  That being said, there were white fluffy sand, colored umbrellas, beautiful and tan, beachy South Africans everywhere, so I told my skin to shut up.  My particular favorite of all my people-watching specimen was a 50-something woman in a hot pink bikini who was so freckled she passed it off as a deep tan.  She had a lower back tattoo that said “Brooklyn Forever” in swirly writing, some Chinese characters on her back, a ring of thorns around her bicep, and a kiss mark on her lower right hip.  Her small white lap dog came over and chilled on my towel while she drank some alcoholic beverage and told her four-year-old daughter to move out of her tanning chair because “I’m an ádult” (only self-important people say adult as aaaaadult).  She also told her friend to “stay on the hunt”, when a 20 year old lifeguard passed and they both obviously checked him out, even though they were both wearing wedding rings and surrounded by their own children.  From eavesdropping on their conversations I learned her name was Lisa, which fits all too well.   I hang out with my new friends and learn lots of cool information.  For example, Natalia has breast implants her boyfriend paid for as a present to her 5 months ago and is very happy to talk about them as a point of braggadocio (as it turns out, two americans in this volunteer hostel also have breast implants”.  Ella has four tattoos, one of which is very large on her forearm that says “There is no progress without struggle”.  She says she almost ran to the tattoo parlor on her 18th birthday to get it— but now she thinks it’s cliche.  Jonna is amazed at my ability to recite facts I learned from various podcasts I listened during my unintentional all-nighter to Cape Town.  For example, your likelihood of getting cancer increases by 40% if you average less than 7 hours of sleep per night over your lifetime.  Cassie and her sister Ashley end up joining us.  By that time I was entirely exhausted.  My face was telling me it was time to get out of the sun even though I was in the shade, with a hat and sunscreen on.  And, again, I was entirely exhausted so interaction with new people was a strain I was really not feeling.   Finally, we call and uber and go back to the hostel. I cannot get the idea of the host family off of my mind as I am moving there tomorrow and have exactly no information on who they are, where they live, what the conditions will be, how many people live there, etc.. I decide the best way to ease my anxiety is to get something done.  So, I go to the drug store down the street, Click-It.  I buy around 10 items and when I’m checking out, the cashier does something very odd.  He looks at me, smiles, and says “when you leave the alarm by the door might go off, just keep walking”.  I kind of smile and then process what he’s really said, then process the fact that him and his female co-worker at the other register just smiled at each other clearly in regards to what he has just said.  “Why” I ask.  “Because I am not going to scan all the items they want me to scan.  Don’t worry about it.  Just keep walking”.  At this point I’m like WHAT THE FÜCK IS GOING ON PART 2.  Is he saying he is giving me some of my items for free? What on earth is happening.  Well, then I go to pay with my Charles Schwab card that is supposed to be perfect and seamless to use and it’s DECLINED.  So I pay with Wells Fargo and the world starts turning again.  Right after I pick up my bag he reminds me “dont forget: DO NOT stop walking”. And Im like “Dude I just wanted my leave-in conditioner, I don’t need Mission-Impossible”  But, whatever, I’m only 95% sure I can understand the gist of what he is saying because I am still having trouble understanding South African English accents. I scurry home, through the accusatorially beeping metal detector with my newly aquired, and possibly partially stolen goods and take my brief, bucket shower.  Now, I am hiding in my top bunk, trying to collect myself and hide from human interaction because honestly, I’m getting close to being at wits-end.  I am too overwhelmed to edit this so #nofilter yay I completed my first blog post.  Happy First Day In South Africa, Bitches.

xoxo Q

FROM THE SURFACE TENSION series Detail, FCK-YEAH-SONIC-YOUTH.TUMBLR.COM, C-Print 2016 . . . #artoftheday #fingerprints #tabithasoren #sonicyouthdirty @anothermagazine @itsnicethat @juddfoundation (at IHOP)

FROM THE SURFACE TENSION series⠀ Detail, FCK-YEAH-SONIC-YOUTH.TUMBLR.COM, ⠀ C-Print 2016⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ #artoftheday #fingerprints #tabithasoren #sonicyouthdirty⠀ @alisonpincus @rolartadvisory @fotografiska

FROM THE SURFACE TENSION series⠀ Detail, FCK-YEAH-SONIC-YOUTH.TUMBLR.COM, ⠀ C-Print 2016⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ #artoftheday #fingerprints #tabithasoren #sonicyouthdirty