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pagetwo · 1 year

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New York City: Feb. 14- Feb. 19

Friday, March 10, 2023

From February 14th-19th, I had the opportunity to go on a university class trip to New York City to meet with professionals in the Art History field and to explore the rich art scene of the city. This is the second trip of this sort that I have gone on with my school, but this trip was special because of the emphasis on meeting with art museum professionals- the field which I will be entering after graduation. During the week I was in the city, I visited the New York Public Library, the Morgan Library, MoMA, the MET, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Rubin Museum. We met with so many amazing professionals, including the chief curator of the Egyptian exhibit at the MET and one of the Egyptian artifact conservators who works at the MET as well.

On my first night in NYC, a couple of classmates and I explored the city in search of Anish Kapoor’s mini-bean under the jenga building. Visiting this newest iteration of Cloud Gate was a great way to start our art history trip- seeing this new piece of history that had recently been installed in the Big Apple. Visiting such an iconic piece of art, regardless of how one feels about Kapoor, was a grand way to kick off the trip!

On the 15th, after visiting some of the photo archives at the NYPL, our class attended a guided tour of the Morgan Library. We got to have such a surreal, humanizing, and unique experience during the tour when the docent pulled out a 5000 year old cylinder seal from ancient Mesopotamia and let us each hold it. My passion for art history was sparked when I first learned about ancient visual culture, so being able to hold this piece of history was a full-circle moment for me and my peers. It brought to life what we often can only view in photos or behind glass.

At the Morgan Library, we toured the exhibit “She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca 3400-2000 BC.” It was all about the women of ancient Mesopotamia and how womanhood was understood during those times. We learned so many beautiful things about women deities who were bringers and takers of life, or wagers and enders of wars. A piece that really stood out to me was the costume for a Mesopotamian queen. The beading was gorgeous, featuring lapis lazuli- indicating the reliable trade the Mesopotamians would have had in what is considered modern-day Afghanistan. I noted that her headdress must have been an inspiration for Queen Amidala’s styling in the Star Wars franchise, calling back to the powerful women of our ancient civilizations.

After visiting the Morgan Library, we went to the MoMA. This being my second time at the museum in the last 10 months, I was comfortable visiting the pieces I missed the most- one of which being Matisse’s Dance. This painting always stuns me due to the grand scale of it and the use of vast fields of cool toned colors- green and blue.

On the 16th we spent the entire day at the MET. This was my second time at the MET as well, so I spent a majority of my time catching up where I left off last year- finally entering the wing of the Greek and Roman galleries where the cubiculi and mosaics are housed. The Chroma exhibit throughout the galleries was stunning to put it lightly! Classical sculpture is where my heart lies and finally I was seeing what the people I admire so much were seeing when these sculptures were at their prime. The Boxer sculpture has always been one of my favorites, so seeing it in such surreal detail was overwhelming and unforgettable. The Chroma exhibit had me imagining what my life would be like if I worked in the MET and got to study sculptures and look for remnants of pigment on them. It is groundbreaking research and I have such immense respect and appreciation for the brilliant art historians and scientists who are doing geeks like me this service.

Some things that were stunning and gripped me in tears for an hour were a mosaic of a woman in a wreath, coins depicting Trajan, and the vibrant cubiculi that I did not have a chance to visit last year. These are what it is all about for me. These are what my discipline mean to me! Seeing the mosaic mere inches from my face, as opposed to from around a roped-off corner as I did last year, allowed me to see all of the individual tesserae and imagine how it would have looked inside of a Roman villa. The coins with Trajan on them made me incredibly emotional, as I am somebody who studies Roman emperors. These were undeniable visual evidence that these subjects I devote so much of my studies to were real people! Real people who had real impacts on the world and who I only wish I could have met. The star of the show for me though were the cubiculi. I had been dying to finally enter one ever since I first studied Roman villas, particularly Pompeiian villas. As I stood inside of the cubiculum pictured, I took my time admiring all of the gorgeous frescoes. Frescoes I had only seen in textbooks and on powerpoint slides. There they were, right in front of my face. All the room needed was the proper furniture and I would have been exactly where my heart longs to be.

Lastly, on Friday the 17th, we visited the Brooklyn Museum as a class and later some of us visited the Rubin for a free guided experiential tour and DJ event. At the Brooklyn Museum, we got a tour from one of their museum educators of the Thiery Mugler exhibit. My goal is to be a museum educator, and to make museums enjoyable and understandable for every visitor. Our tour guide did exactly that for us. Part of our tour included ten minutes for us to go around the exhibit with provided paper and pencils, to draw any of the costumes we were drawn to and to think about the material or how the costume must have felt. She provided us with an activity that I definitely would have done if I were in the same position. That activity engaged our intrinsic motivation, allowing us to connect with a piece of our choosing, but it also encouraged us to think critically about the pieces in the exhibit. How would they have felt? Who would wear them? Why am I connecting to it? She showed me exactly how effective and necessary museum educators are in order to engage all visitors and to break down barriers of intimidation in museum spaces.

The Brooklyn Museum had a lounge area that I connected with during my individual expiration of the museum. Museum fatigue is real and can be a huge barrier to enjoyment for museum-goers. Not only was this room visually stunning, the ottomans were also art and welcomed visitors to be comfortable and relaxed. This is something that I am passionate about as I prepare for my future in museums. I know how important comfort is when people have so much going on in their days and lives. My respect for the Brooklyn Museum only went up that day, as I went down and laid on one of the ottomans.

At the end of the night, at the Rubin museum, I attended a guided tour of the galleries. The Rubin is a museum of Himalayan art and visual culture. The gallery is meant to be experienced rather than viewed. We explored our senses as we explored the galleries, we meditated, we transformed our energy into something beautiful. The whole design of the museum and tour were a unique take to museums and welcomed visitors into Himalayan Buddhist culture and practice. I think that this is a museum that everybody should visit if they have the opportunity to do so.

Overall, this trip did a lot to prepare and excite me mentally for my impending future. Soon I will be released into the world, no longer in school, no longer in a classroom. The professionals we met with during our trip provided a lot of insight into the many avenues and journeys one may endeavor to get to where they are going. My journey so far has had so many twists and turns, and it was comforting and affirming to hear their stories. I related to so many of them and I felt assured that at the end of the day, if I continue chasing my dream and my happiness, I will end up exactly where I belong. Being an art historian is so much more than being a student or being an academic. Art can be found anywhere: on the street, under buildings, in libraries, or in museums. Wherever there are people, there is art. Wherever there is art, there are art historians. Not everybody in the museum or art historical world comes from an art history background. The greatest thing I took away from this trip and the stories I heard at these various institutions is that achieving one's goals is all about accepting any and every opportunity for growth, as opposed to making some sort of five or ten-year plan and adhering strictly to it. I came out of the trip knowing that my path to being a museum educator is unclear but that I will get there as long as I continue chasing it.

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pagetwo · 3 years

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Two Months On... Jun. 17

Long post ahead, I won’t say “sorry in advance,” because sorry is a word I don’t use like that, but haha guess this is a warning that my word count was 1499 words. It’s two months of thoughts and feelings though.

Thursday, June 17, 2021

Today is hard. The past two months haven’t been incredibly hard, they’ve just been a lot. But today, things just caught up with me.

It feels like my life has been revolving around this failed relationship and I think about what happened every day. I’ve been angry for awhile now, after learning and realizing that I was in a toxic relationship. I haven’t been upset with myself, because I know it’s not myself. It’s not my fault that I liked and then seemingly loved somebody that was mostly great to me. It’s not my fault that in my first serious relationship, I wasn’t able to recognize the signs of manipulation. And it’s not my fault that I wasn’t ready to let go.

I learned that toxic or manipulative relationships aren’t just hostile, aggressive relationships. I think if they were then less people would find themselves in one. Those toxic relationships can be with people that are nice to you, buy you things, and compliment you. You might feel guilty for ever being uncomfortable with things they say or do- later learning that that was just you seeing the red flags- because your partner isn’t just being flat out mean to you. You might beat yourself down for ever doubting your partner and their intentions. You might make excuses for their behavior, as if that will make the behavior acceptable.

For me it was all of that. Looking back now, I don’t understand how I was happy with them. I went into the relationship knowing that my partner had just gotten out of a relationship a few weeks prior, and I knew that he was being dishonest with me about his past relationship. I knew he was talking to me when he was still with his ex. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, but it happened. He knew my boundaries before we dated and yet he pushed those boundaries constantly throughout the relationship. I felt like I was a bad person for telling him how my past relationships failed, but I did it so that he knew what type of character he was investing in. He said he understood me and was okay with my boundaries. So of course I was upset when his actions directly contradicted his words.

Through talks with people close to me, I realized that I wasn’t just an a-hole by being annoyed or upset by things he said and did. And when I imagined one of my friends telling me about my relationship as if it were theirs, I knew I would tell them to get away from said relationship. I asked myself how I could have possibly let myself get into that relationship? Let my feelings and boundaries be completely walked over time and time again. Asked myself why I kept making excuses for a guy I had only been dating for mere months. I thought, going into the relationship, that if things ended, it would be easy. I didn’t want to get too invested into the relationship because I felt like I was a rebound. This guy had just gotten cheated on in a two-year relationship. Why would I have thought that his feelings for me were real? I don’t blame myself for any of that now.

I’ve learned about love-bombing and other manipulation tactics. I know that I felt overwhelmed and trapped in the relationship for most of it. I moved to a new town and made zero friends, I stopped talking to my close friends from before the relationship- because he made it clear that he didn’t trust me to talk to anybody but himself. So I don’t blame myself now. I wasn’t the one in control. I wasn’t the person four years older than the other, with several long-term relationships and a reputation under my belt. I ended the relationship, but I still don’t blame myself.

The relationship didn’t end at the breakup though, which I’m sure is no surprise to most people. I tried to stay friends with him because we were both hurting too much after the relationship, and we thought we had a strong friendship. This didn’t stop him from treating me like his partner. Asking me if every human I interacted with was a new love interest of mine- with time, I realized this aspect was his bi-phobia. He ignored my feelings and boundaries still, even when I told him we’re no longer in a relationship and I could end the friendship easier than a relationship. It sounds cold, but this is just how it was. He visited me days before my birthday and we went on a trip. All we did was argue and I finally confronted him about how I suspected he had manipulated me. Then he- as much as I hate the term- gaslighted me. I felt like the worst person on earth for days. He left the next day and I was alone on my birthday, still feeling awful.

Our friendship was rocky because by then I knew to look out for the manipulation and toxicity. I distanced myself and started talking to old friends and meeting people in this new town. It started to feel like I was finally accepting this new phase of my life. Until recently when he and I had a huge blowout and I blocked him because I was finally fed up. When I realized his bi-phobia. That was the final straw for me. For weeks he had already been making me feel like shit, and then I recognized the bi-phobia and ended things for real. I was furious. I removed him everywhere. I deleted the songs we shared, the pictures we took, and I tried to forget the memories of him. He was constantly checking my social media even though I removed him, so I finally caved and blocked him there. I was angry for a week. Until today.

Today I felt all of the other feelings from the past two months. Mostly heartache. I wasn’t even that happy with him, but I felt heartache over the loss. The switch flipped when I opened Spotify and saw I hadn’t removed him there. I saw he made a new playlist, filled with all the songs he would play for us. Y’know, he never played songs I liked. He only played his favorite artists. It’s a dumb thing to be upset about now, but I can’t help it. He made a playlist for the two of us when we were together but it was all his favorite music. And so now he still relates our relationship with his favorite songs. He didn’t listen to my music the way I listened to his. I cared so much about showing interest in his interests and incorporating his tastes into my routine so that he would be satisfied. It only upsets me now because I just feel like I cared more about the little things than he did. I really did try, and yet I keep thinking I must not have since I’m the one that did the dumping.

I’ve listened to my music today. Crying, feeling empty, feeling sadness, feeling regret. There isn’t any anger today. I can’t handle the anger right now. I recovered some of our pictures and cried over them. I don’t miss him, so I don’t know why I’m feeling the ways I’m feeling. I don’t want to be upset with myself for not being able to identify why I’m feeling this way. He yelled at me for not being able to identify my feelings, so I won’t allow myself to treat me the way he did.

When I broke up with him, I thought I was going to feel everything completely and let those feelings heal me. I thought I had been healing. I thought I was over everything, so I just don’t understand why today has been so hard. I think getting everything out like this will help me move past it all. I’m tired of having all of these thoughts and experiences bottled up in my head when I want to move on. This will just have to be part of me feeling my feelings. I want to say goodbye to this part of my life and move forward. This person was my experience in what relationships shouldn’t feel like. I wasn’t happy. I don’t miss him, I don’t miss the relationship. I’m going to get all of this stuff out, accept what happened and move the fuck on.

If you actually read any of this, thanks I guess. It’s probably just a jumbled mess of words and thoughts and feelings, but this is the only way I can think of to get past what happened. I want my life to be about happiness and satisfaction again. I want to go a day and not think about a failed relationship. This is the last thing I think I can do to get to that. Let’s see what happens next.

#MovingOn #healing #post-breakup thoughts #long post #pagetwo #journal

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pagetwo · 3 years

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Page One, Apr. 11

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Today I went to my first yoga class, a day after my first real breakup. My first love. I asked what I should do after a breakup to help with the healing and to grow myself, and the consensus seems to be to just focus on me and to feel what I’m feeling. Feel it fully. I’m really trying, I want to heal and grow so badly. That’s why I knew we needed to breakup in the first place- we both need to grow as individuals.

I moved out for the first time three months ago, almost to the day and I haven’t really settled in here yet. I was holding on to this person for so long and I relied so much on them for happiness and support and I started letting myself put their happiness before mine. I was happy but not Happy. I want to settle here and cultivate my own true happiness and to grow in this new place while I experience all of these new things. I still love them, but that can’t be the only thing keeping me holding on and out. So it was time to start my growing. And that’s what I’m trying to do. Starting with this yoga class.

Today I went to my first yoga class. I was very honest with the instructor as soon as I showed up to the studio- told them that I’ve never done yoga before and that I’m going through a breakup so I want to start new. The class really helped. It was a yin yoga class, to contrast and balance the active, busy, yang parts of life. Deep stretches, connecting to ourselves and letting our selves think our thoughts and be mindful. The biggest thing I took away from the class today was that I need to let go.

Letting go is so important. The instructor read a passage from a book and they basically said to just let go. Let go of what is bothering me, let go of the dreams I had and let go of what I thought my plans would be. It has stuck with me so much because I really do need to let go. This breakup is the worst pain I’ve felt, and it’s because I’m having to accept that my normal life is missing its biggest piece now and I’m also having to mourn all of the fantasies and dreams I had about my future. All of the dreams and goals we shared and wanted to be together for.

I have to let go of the image of us moving into the tiny apartment in New York we both dreamed of. I have to let go of the dream of getting pets with them and living with them. Doing dishes with them and cooking with them. I have to let go of the thought that I’d always have them around to make my bed for me when I have a busy day. There’s so many things I have envisioned about us and I’m only just now realizing how much I had emotionally invested into our futures together. It’s so hard letting go of all of that. I knew that I wasn’t Happy, but I still wanted this future together. I still wanted all of the boba dates and dinners at Chili’s. I wanted the inside jokes and goofy character voices we used. I wanted the video calls where we just made goofy faces to each other. I wanted so much, but I still wasn’t taking care of myself.

Another passage that the instructor read said something about not racing through life because one day each of us- everybody- will meet our finish line. For my whole life I always thought of that finish line we all meet as death. But today it hit me that the finish line could be different. The finish line could be success, or further it could be happiness. I shouldn’t be racing through my life and making all of these plans and letting them hurt me now when eventually I’m going to reach that finish line. One way or another, I’m going to be truly happy. This happiness won’t be something I seek from a partner and it won’t be superficial. It’ll be a happiness with my Self and my being. I need to let go of the things that I know I can’t control. I need to accept that the only person’s feelings I’m responsible for are my own. I need to take my life at my own pace, because I’m still going to reach that finish line either way.

I want so badly to feel this pain so that I can grow and heal from it, so that I can ultimately let it go. Today was the first page of this newest chapter of my life and this chapter started on a page of vulnerability and pain, but it also started on a page of self-discovery and the first step of healing. I can’t make myself stop crying, but I can do things to benefit myself and help myself feel better. I can look at things that remind me of them and instead of thinking about how hard it is to think of them and see these things, I can think about how they’re pages from the last chapter and without them, this chapter and the next ones won’t make any sense. I want to look at all of the things that remind me of my first love and just be happy that they happened. I need to let go of the pain I associate to everything. I need to feel my feelings and accept that this is the part of life that I’m in.

So this is page one of whatever chapter I’m in, and I’m going to accept everything that comes with all of the seconds that are on the way. On to page two.

#pageTwo happiness journey nextStep blog movingOn heartbreak yoga #journal

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