it's been a week

it's been a week since we last spoke. 

i guess you thought it was funny i couldn't sleep (because of some cruel combination of having eaten too much garlic and having put the winter duvet on prematurely). as i lay there hallucinating from intoxication by allium, I saw the email that The Uncondemned would be making its world premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October, and had won the 2015 Brizzolara Family Foundation Award for a Film on Conflict and Resolution. 

i sent you a text to say congratulations and that i wanted to come:

'C O M E!!! Fly to JFK then "blade out" to the Hamptons'

'Does blade out mean rent a car at the airport and haul ass to the hamptons?' 

'Helicopter DUH'

'Oh right right. I should just take the g6 straight there, why bother with the chopper'

'I was going to say that first, but I really wanted to say "blade out"'

'Ok but really how does one get there? the more discrete people. rent a hyundai?'

'I think you should upgrade to the most affordable convertible.'

we chatted over text while you took a walk in central park. you made me laugh out loud while i passively reconciled my indigestion. then night fell over New York and we decided to continue the conversation over the phone the following day. you even put it in your calendar because you were totally reliable like that. we had a lot to catch up on. 

today it's been six days since you didn't call. 

i was not equipped to cope with the pain that is losing Nick Louvel. Nick was one of the most brilliant, kind, and funny people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. He was thoughtful and complex, but he also knew levity. He would make me burst out laughing in totally inappropriate moments. I was proud of his work and proud of who he was as a person, and proud to call him my friend. 

Nick and Michele's film The Uncondemned is a documentary about rape as an international war crime, and it was the centerpiece of Nick's life's work. They had just seen the project to completion and Nick was clearly proud of it, although he was more the type to try and downplay his talents. You can find details about how to support the film by accessing the Film At 11 website and signing up for the newsletter. For now upcoming screenings will be at the Hamptons Film Festival on October 9th and 11th, Skybar in West Hollywood on November 9th, and the Napa Valley Film Festival November 12-15.  

Lot's of love to Nick's family and friends and anyone who was fortunate enough to experience the joy that he will always be. 

Bolivia

I spent my 31st birthday in Bolivia this year and most have asked 'WHY?' Contrary to popular inquiry, the decision was not predicated on the uncanny truth that there exists a nation that rhymes with my name (?!?!?!), but rather a calculated reply to the excruciatingly boring event that is turning 31. In other words, boarding a flying tin can to a phantasmagorical territory was the only answer to avoiding a birthday highlight that would have otherwise manifested as me sitting on the sofa trying to reply to automated texts from my dentist and (piece of shit) gym reminding me to "have a happy birthday and stay fit". 

Bolivia is not an easy place. Nature is unforgiving when it's winter south of the equator and you're at 16,000 feet. It's dry and windy. My right nostril is still crusted shut. Accommodations compete for power outage tallies. Heating, light, and hot water are less afforded in the heart of the desert, and ain't nobody gonna give a single feck that it's -15C and your paresthesias have made their way to your upper lip. The hotel staff will (logically) explain that there are no logs on the fireplace because "it's too cold to chop wood".  And while you may fancy yourself an athlete, at this altitude even the most delicate of exertions as the consumption of a single Pringle potato chip will make you gasp for air like a cardiopathic patient on the stairmaster. Be prepared for your first-world passion of quinoa to be annihilated by the overconsumption of all things quinoa- quinoa soup, quinoa tea, quinoa burger, quinoa granola bar, quinoa chocolate. quinoa quinoa QUINOA. If your experience parallels mine you'll even get food poisoning (in the middle of the night during one of those power outages) and end up with twice-seen (if only you could) quinoa all over your fleece pants. You may also eat a llama or twenty. Your brain and genitals will continue to vibrate for weeks (possibly forever) after so many hours of riding around on unpaved roads. 

In exchange for your toughness, you will experience an extraordinary landscape minimally traversed and beautifully maintained. Erosions and colors that echo science fiction. Unbarricaded geysers of bubbling mud. Flamingos in a backdrop of snow. Green lagoons, pink lagoons. Giant, mythical cacti. A train cemetery. Mummies that have not yet been subject to archeological analysis. You are now in the home of the land that gave birth to over 200 varieties of potatoes, and makes the proud claim as being the only country with an island bordered by salt instead of water (I didn't have the heart).

You cannot dream up a more ethereal place or create a more fascinating history or imagine a President with a more provocative tongue [Evadas Cien Frases de Evo Morales para la historia]. You will drink a hundred coca teas for breakfast and if you're not into flan, chew the leaves for dessert. Your senses will awaken. And if it weren't for that diarrhoeic gift that keeps on giving, you will return home feeling like it was all too supernatural to have been anything but a dream. 

vive la femme

french for long live the woman and a phrase that represents an occasion impacting enough on my life to have it tattooed across my wrists. 

the story starts roughly ten years after the Rwandan Genocide, in the back of a taxi cab in South Korea. I'm with my new friend Laine, an expert of seemingly all life's things- from how to find the best french croissant in all of Seoul, to Kim Jong Il's passion for Hennessy. but it was her narrative of rape used as a weapon of war during the genocide that left me most captivated. 

I'm not sure what compels people to be emotionally impacted by certain things and not others. but for me, this was and continues to be an issue that fascinates me, that I care deeply about, and that I wish more people were privy to. 

sometimes the world has a funny way of conspiring in our favor. 

Last summer I was out with friends Giulia and Meghan in West Hollywood when we met Nick. Early in our conversation we were discussing documentaries, and I mentioned that I wished someone would make a film about the south sudan conflict. As a matter of ridiculously stupid coincidence, he and his partner Michele had just returned from Africa where they had been doing exactly that. Nick is also a stupidly fun human and went to Harvard and all that kind of stuff. This month The Uncondemned will make its debut in Kigali. 

If you can take three minutes, watch their trailer, maybe you'll find it's something that becomes important to you too. And if you like it and feel like sparing a buck, consider a donation to their cause on kickstarter. They've got one more week of fundraising before the film's premiere mid month. Oh, and let me know if you do so I can purchase the equivalent for you in beers the next time our paths cross. 

twentytoo legit to quit

The topic of getting older is kind of a prosaic one, ain't it? I mean, this is something that fundamentally happens to humans and yet when it happens to us we act as if the discussion of slowed metabolisms, sore joints, fatigue, wrinkles, and dissatisfaction with our accomplishments to date were original ideas. Age lamentation is a discourse I hear in passing so often that I can say with confidence is not limited to people who actually are older than sin, but extends also to those too young to differentiate a dick from an elbow, as my aussie friend Sinead would say. I mean, I GET IT that you're turning 22 and that's the oldest you've ever been in your life and all, ya'll, but just try and like, CALM DOWN for a second. Actually, this conversation amongst friends and acquaintances is so pervasive that I have come to the conclusion that people LIKE to talk about how old and rickety they are. they LIKE to fantasize about the nostalgia of their youth, the "youth" of course always being subjective to the individual, but nevertheless a constant entity irrespective of age. You will always have a time when you were younger and when things were different. You will always have your past as a point of comparison. I guess the lack of being able to effectively see into and experience our very own urinary and fecal incontinent diaper-wearing, disease-riddled, saggy-bodied, demented future, precludes us from being able to say "I'm 31 on my next birthday and I'm sooo young it's almost weird to think that I have enough hair on my head to necessitate an entire hairbrush."

Not trynna be anarchical or anything, but I have actually enjoyed the process of getting older and find the whole thing to be quite amusing. Last week while taking a stroll, i reached into my purse to fish out my cell phone. The contents of my bag included: a sack of Haribo assorted licorice, a bottle of Ferrari Rosé, a pack of Xanax, bottle of ibuprofen, a bag of almonds, a wet nap, pen, leatherbound journal, a tampon, my raybans, and the Pocket Medicine Handbook of Internal Medicine. The ordered chaos that is the content of my purse is the physical manifestation of why packing on the life years is just so damn fun. 

Another thing, memory. I am experiencing some mild cognitive decline and I LOVE it. I don't remember stupid and irrelevant things or stupid and irrelevant people or things people said that were stupid and irrelevant. Things have to be really significant to make it into my cortex for longterm memory storage. The holes in the filter of what I remember are somehow inversely correlated to the holes that filter the nonsense that comes out of my mouth. The collateral damage is of course that I get easily sidetracked and have a tendency to forget important things like where I set down my cup of tea. The aging thing coupled with my ADD means that in my efforts to complete tasks, I accumulate new things to do, and then I forget the original task. This continues for anywhere between minutes to days. I have to make to-do lists of to-do lists. Last week I found my teacup of the day prior on the bathroom shelf above the bidet.

Which reminds me, I found a full bottle of that perfumey stuff that you dip wooden infuser sticks into and that fills the air up with a pleasant quality. I didn't have any bona fide infuser sticks so I took the last of my shish kebab sticks and dropped them in. 

(has anyone seen where I left my teacup?)

.....

...Nevermind. So the other great thing about getting older is that the older you get, from the perspective of your community, the more legitimate you are considered for NOT DOING ANYTHING, meanwhile the more promptly you are forgiven and even glorified for being illegitimate. For instance, if you're 97 and you die on the dancefloor in Ibiza because you sniffed too much cocaine at a foam party, you're forever a legend.  If you do the same thing at age 22 you're unlucky at best, and most likely just a moron. 

The other thing I like about getting older is having the capacity to find amusement in even the most banal of life offerings. When I was 22 I would do stuff like buy a spontaneous ticket to Nicaragua and then go sandboard down a blackrock volcano wearing a neon orange jumpsuit. And you know what? Just 'cuz I did that doesn't preclude me from still riding the high from having ordered two (two!) new tufted dining room chairs three days ago (in color anthracite!). I have also become more dynamic. I still love and will always love a good music festival, but am somehow equally intoxicated by the experience of making a loaf of homemade bread at 2:00am and eating it until I pass out by myself on the kitchen floor, which is exactly what I've gotta go do right now. 

So cheers to being over the age of twenty two and being too legit to quit. 

you are my destiny

i vowed somewhere around the 20th of january that i would post an entry once a week - an apparently lofty endeavor i was only able to carry out for a meager 18 days (173/4 days longer than my efforts to abstain from sugar). 

between now and then i've unfortunately been leaving behind an impressing carbon footprint. i shall reconcile this by throwing money at one of those green campaigns. i hopped over the atlantic puddle to spend five weeks in california studying infectious diseases. this was followed by a brief return to italy for two weeks, during which i slammed myself into some work in a psychologically destructive way. Then i straddled another westbound plane, this time headed for mexico. (giddiup). i found this to be the most suitable destination whereby i could wedge myself into a lawn chair for 6 days and pass each consecutive afternoon recovering from the tequila and chilaquiles hangover of the day before. my brain melted faster than the contents of my blended margarita, and after a week i was resurrected. 

now i'm back in milan, back to work, and sufficiently regelated. although, i'm not sure if my usual bad attitude has changed, or it's just that spring has sprung over central europe and has cast a new light on this glorious city. Milan has kind of been killing it lately. 

Last week in the hospital we had an elderly, grumpy italian man admitted for chest pain. he was 70 something but looked about 113. he was snarky. while visiting him, i said something to one of the other students in english, then looked down at him in his bed and said "mi dispiace per aver parlato in inglese, qualche volta succede perché io sono Californiana." [sorry for speaking in english, sometimes it happens because I am from California]. His gaze softened and he looked up at me and sort of half smiled with his eyes. He then told me in Italian that he had never had an american doctor before, and that he knew only a few words in english. he asked if he could share some of them with me. 

"ma certo!" [of course!] i said. 

in a trembling and somewhat robotic tone he then dropped a beautifully brazen B-movie bomb on me:

"you are my destiny".

what an adorable little nugget of a human! this reminded me exactly of the tender way i feel every time i eat cake. so this weekend i made a personalized one in a cup with two of my many vices- chocolate and peanut butter. here ya go:

ingredients for you are my destiny chocolate peanut butter mugcake:

3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil or melted butter
1 tablespoon peanut butter

directions:

In a large mug, whisk together dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt). 

Add the milk, vegetable oil and peanut butter and whisk until smooth.

Cook in the microwave on high for 1 minute and 10 seconds. 

you are my destiny...