Month: October 2007

Life

Inspiration by image

Christa Avampato

I am most moved by beautiful words, though increasingly I am also impressed with images, especially when those images are taken to create a narrative. Last week, I watched Pop!Tech (http://www.poptech.com/) on-line as the conference was streamed completely free by Yahoo. One of the speakers was Jonathan Harris, a photographer who lives in New York City. He built a photographic narrative of a whale hunt in Alaska. The candence of his picture taking mirrored the level of excitement, energy, and the beat of his heart during the hunt. Quite an incredible idea, and the pictures tell the story better than I think any words could do.
His talk made me realize there is a time for tell and a time for show. That art and its creation can and should be inextricably linked to the body and to the world around us. Pictures can contain energy, they live, they breathe. There is something to be said for great story telling, for capturing moments in time and then paginating them to form a continuous stream.
In my lifetime, it is likely that I will never be able to experience a traditional, subsistence whale hunt, or any other countless journeys that Jonathan takes us on. I’m sure glad he has his camera so that I can relive pieces of those spectacular scenes.
Life

The Move Toward Sameness

Christa Avampato

For the first time in this blog, I am writing from a location other than my home in New York. I am in Portland, Maine, with my good friend, Dan, who will be guest-blogging within the next week. After driving 8 hours from New York, we arrived here very late – around 1:30am. We got up this morning, had some breakfast and headed out to downtown Portland to do some sight-seeing.

While there were quaint little shops, and some one-of-a-kind hand-made items here and there, Maine really had not struck us any different than New Jersey. It is so similar in fact that when we pulled into the Sunoco Station to get gas this morning. I hesitated for a split second before recognizing that I needed to get out of the car and pump my own gas. (In New Jersey, it is illegal to pump your own gas – an attendant always does it for you.)

In my mind this begs the question, “why travel?” Granted both New Jersey and Maine are in the Northeast, though you would imagine that 8 hours apart cultures would vary to some extent. This lack of change gave me pause; maybe travel isn’t worth it unless we are traveling internationally, or into nature to place such as Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.

There are many good reasons to travel with a companion; though I would say that in the past I have been much more successful traveling alone than with company. However, that has much more to do with the fact that I am truly lousy at picking travel partners. Dan, is a great exception. He’s the perfect travel buddy – played DJ the entire trip, is a good conversationalist, is unfailingly optimistic, and tells me to knock it off in a very kind way when I lapse into my neuroses. As we were taking a rest back in the hotel before dinner, Dan reclined on his bed and said “the great thing about traveling is that it gives you permission to completely slack off.” I would never have realized this on my own. I am by nature a manic traveler – I must see everything, do everything, try everything, or else I feel I’ve wasted my money. In on sentence, Dan gave me some food for thought.

I don’t take time to slow down when I’m at home. If I did, I’d miss out. I write in my blog while I read a magazine, eat dinner, watch the news, and create yet another to-do list. It’s maddening, and it’s my fault that it’s maddening. There is much to be said for slowing down, serial tasking rather than multi-tasking, and then choosing to not task at all for a bit. Travel, regardless of where we go, lets us step away from our lives and our responsibilities and just be in the world. It’s a different lens through which to view living, even if that living looks similar to life at home.

career, dreams, job, retail

The first 100 days of an MBA grad

Christa Avampato

I was recently asked to write an article for my alumni newspaper. The article had to be cut down quite a bit due to space constraints. Here is the article in its entirety.

“First off, a big hello from the other side to my second year friends and to those first years whom I had the pleasure to meet during Darden Days and various other “please come join our community” events where we tried our best to woo you into accepting at Darden. I’m glad you’re there, and in many ways I am very sorry I am not there with you. Darden is one of the most incredible places I have ever had the privilege to call home.

Can it really be 100 days since I graduated? How did the days get by me so quickly? I have done my best blocking and tackling job, and still time is slipping by at a dizzying pace. Such is the life of a retailer (me).

I graduated without a job – so if you are still in the hunt, don’t despair. I moved to NYC with no job, no money, and a desire to be in an industry that has zero interest in MBAs, or so I was told. And now I live in my favorite area of Manhattan on Riverside Park, work for the best boss I’ve ever had (he’s so brilliant, insightful, and unfailingly supportive and kind that I’m considering asking him, and his equally wonderful wife, to adopt me), and got a dream job at a toy company. I’m not kidding – sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.

If you want the details of my job hunt, I’m glad to share them. (The story is a bit too long for the purposes of this article so if you want the full details or you need someone’s success story to keep you motivated, please email me. Seriously – I check my email obsessively.) You can also ask Kellogg Leliveld – without her, I wouldn’t have gotten to my current company. In short, I can tell you I squeezed every last drop of learning out of Darden that I could get, I researched and contacted companies like a mad woman, I kept smiling, even when I felt like crying (which was often), I refused to take a job that wasn’t perfect for me, and I had an absolutely miserable summer between my first and second years – the worst summer on record. And now I am so grateful for that miserable summer because it forced me to stop compromising in every area of my life, personal and professional. In these first 100 days, I have learned that comprising your happiness for what you think you should do and what others think you should do is a road that can only lead to a very unhappy life and a job that ultimately you will hate.

Joël graciously provided me with some talking points, which I am very appreciative of, so I am going to answer those now:

Fear:
I had a lot of fears when going through Darden, when graduating, and when taking a job. I was really afraid that I wasn’t up to the challenge. Darden asked more from me than I ever asked from myself, and as a harsh self-critic, that is saying a lot. And what I learned through my interview process with my now boss is that we have to commit. It is incredible what developing a strong, true, deep sense of commitment will do – it will eradicate fear. I am someone completely obsessed with worry and fear. I know what you’re going through. And what I was missing all along was commitment to asking for and getting exactly what I wanted. Don’t do that. Take out a piece of paper, right now, and write out your perfect job, your perfect boss, your perfect whatever-you-want, and refuse to take anything less. Make a sealed promise to yourself to get exactly what is on that paper.

Fun at work:
I work for a retailer as the Senior Analyst Manager of Trend and Innovation, which is to say I am a nerdy version of Tom Hanks in Big. I have fun about 10 hours a day (and my boss is horrified by how much I work! Can you believe that?) We are charged with infusing the company with creativity, and then daily making the business case for innovation and re-invention. We are actively helping to turn the ship around. I run to work every morning, and have made shopping a scientific experiment and a sport (which is the only way I can stand to be in a store longer than 5 minutes. Secretly, I hate shopping, which I’m learning makes me a good retailer.)

Why Darden mattered:
I got a do-over by going to Darden. I was a job switcher in every sense of the word. I was so non-traditional that some people wondered what in the world I was doing at Darden and what in the world I would ever do after. That’s okay. And when I turned down a very lucrative job in a top-rate training program with one of the largest companies in the world, some people told me I was crazy. Absolutely nuts. And that’s okay, too. I knew me better than they did. There’s a great video on You Tube that gets me through criticism like this; it’s the 60-second ad that Apple ran in their “Think Different” campaign. It’s their salute to the Crazy Ones – have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvn_Ied9t4M. This little clip keeps me going. Crazy ones are the ones who make a difference. “The right answer” is not always essential, and many times is counter-productive. Darden showed me that humility, creativity, and diligence will get you everywhere.

And finally a word about toy recalls:
My boss was recently put in charge of managing and communicating safety initiatives across the enterprise. Right now, he is up in Toronto walking our Canadian stores with the CEO and President, and preparing to address the Board tomorrow morning on the issue of toy safety. Because we are privately held, the Board is made up entirely of private equity investors. When they did their investment analysis, I can guarantee that they did not account for tens of millions of toys being recalled by the world’s largest toy manufacturer right before the Christmas shopping season. My boss and I have agonized over the presentation deck for weeks, and now it’s show time.

We will be a better company for going through this, even as every analyst on Wall Street speculates about what this will do to the holiday shopping season. We will have better relationships throughout our supply chain as a result. We will hold ourselves to higher standards of responsibility and accountability. I have had a front-row seat to the end of an era in this industry – the days of cheap product without consequences are over. Manufacturers can no longer squeeze overseas production facilities – there is nothing left for them to give. We thought we were in the toy business; we’re not. Fundamentally, we are in the trust business, and it will take some work to regain that trust and to use it to define who we are and what we mean to our guests. It’s about re-invention and re-purposing, and it is the most critical work a company can ever do. And we’re doing it.

Not bad for the first 100 days. We do 80% of our revenue between October 1st and December 31st so I am sure the next 100 will be just as eventful! Stay tuned – this is going to be exciting.

Life

Running Toward Sunshine

Christa Avampato

I live in an apartment just off of Riverside Park. Every time I take a walk there, I see kids playing in one of the many playgrounds. The other day I saw one dashing away from her mom toward the sunny side of the jungle gym. It made me think of how often we go running toward light, toward something that will reveal to us some kind of warmth, comfort, and joy.

In this spirit, I went to see H.H. the Dalai Lama on Sunday with my friend, Rob. I have had a hard time writing this piece for this blog party because I am afraid that no words I am able to express will lend the kind of simplistic beauty that his message sends. However, after reading in the paper today about China’s threat to destroy relations with the U.S. if H.H. is given the Congressional Gold Medal tomorrow at the White House made me realize I must spread his message. We all must. As he says, “dialogue is the only way.”

His most incredible attribute is without doubt his unbridled humility. He sat center stage in lotus pose, with matching visor because the lights were so bright, and spoke to us for two hours. No notes, no teleprompter. It was as if we had been invited to his living room to ask our questions and tell him our fears. He made very clear that if we came to be fixed, to be enlightened, that we would be very disappointed. He could only tell us how he saw things. This was ironic because just as my friend, Rob, and I entered Radio City, I was thinking of the spiritual song whose verses end “oh lord, fix me.”

H.H. made clear that he does not think prayer fixes anything. There is no magic in it. It will not stir change. The only way forward is effort, failure. More effort, more failure. And again, and again. The only way forward, quite simply, is to keep going.

Fundamentally, he believes we may all be non-believers because for most of our lives, including his own, we do not practice our faith at every moment. It is in the background. We are human.

His talk was entitled Peace and Prosperity. He explained to us that this awful gap between rich and poor in the world must be closed. We will never all have peace if we don’t all have prosperity. It is almost as if the two must be achieved jointly. Not one before the other.

Despite his professing that he does not know the answers to most of our difficult situations in the world, people asked. They wanted to know how he felt about Burma. He replied, “This is very difficult. Very sad. The monks there wear robes similar in colors to mine. And I don’t know how to help them. I don’t know.”

He does believe fervently that war is outdated. That while we see so much tragedy and hardship, the world is getting better. He says there is no cause for hopelessness. There are only pockets of distress. By and large, the world is vastly improved from when he was a young man.

Exactly two hours after he began he put up his hands and said, “well that’s it. Until our next meeting, take care.” And with that simple statement, he stood up, bowed with his hands in prayer position, and bid us farewell. No fanfare, no excess. Just, “until we see each other again.” And I believe that moment will come. I really will see him again.

The thing I remember most about him is his rich deep laugh that enveloped all of us, took us into his comfort, and held us for a little while. A man who has suffered so much, who will undoubtedly never see his homeland again in this lifetime despite his constant effort to free his people, was by and large a happy, even joyful, man. And it made me think that regardless of my hardships in life, they are nothing compared to his. If he could laugh, and mean in, then so can I.

A few years ago I read H.H.’s book “Happiness at Work”. And at the end of the book the author was looking for some piece of pure wisdom. He asked the Dalai Lama how he could get up every day and work so tirelessly with seemingly little results. What would he do if he was not able to free his people in his lifetime? “Well, we will do the best we can.” And that was that. He would do his best. It’s all he could promise. And that small phrase gave me freedom. No matter what terrible loss or sadness or disappointment I may suffer, I had to know in my heart that the most I could was my best. If H.H. asked no more of himself, and he is enlightened, then how could I ask more of myself.

There was the sunshine I was looking for. I didn’t have to run toward it. It has been with me all along. It is with all of us, at every moment.

Life

Knowing our strength

Christa Avampato

I couldn’t help myself. A brand new Target store opened close to work, and my boss asked me to poke around at retail stores on Thursday afternoon for a project we’re working on. It was pouring rain,but I didn’t get wet. On top of being an absolutely gorgeous store, the new Target has a covered parking garage. I could hardly believe it. $144 later I left Target, and felt good about it. And I NEVER feel good about spending money.

Because of the rain, it took 2 hours for me to get home. And by a remarkable stroke of luck, there was a parking space right as I exited the West Side Highway, three blocks from my apartment. I pulled in, and was thrilled that I would not have to hunt for a space on the flooded streets. I bought a few groceries while at Target, including some perishables, and I wanted to get them inside. I had forgotten that I bought 9 bags worth of groceries, and that my apartment is not only 3 blocks away, but three blocks away – uphill. I struggled uphill, stopping every half block to switch arms and give myself a little break. Thankfully it was only drizzling. It wasn’t until halfway home that I realized this was a very bad idea, and to turn back would be just as far as it would be to get home. So, I kept on toward home.

I am sure that I looked ridiculous. I got more than one strange look from the doormen that line Riverside Drive. Neighborhood folks regarded me suspiciously, even though I was wearing business casual clothing. I guess it was covered up by all the bags. At least they were Target bags so I looked like a stylish crazy person.

Once I got inside I let out a big side and fell on my couch laughing. I always think I am stronger than I am, and then through sheer stubbornness I push through to do what I should not have attempted in the first place. The first step to recovery is recognizing you have a problem. So I’m finally at step one.

When I do things like this, I tend to think that everyone in the world would never do anything so ridiculous. That’s one of the reasons I moved to New York City. No matter how nuts you think you are, there’s always someone just a little more nuts right around the corner.

Today on the subway, a woman entered the train with a giant planting pot. I could have taken a nap in it is was so large. When she entered the train, there were very few people so it wasn’t too hard for her to manuveur. By the time she needed to exit the train, it was packed. So she gave fair warning that she would be getting off the train, and everyone just started to laugh outloud. A strapping man helped her lift the pot above everyone’s heads and then off she went dragging the pot behind her. How she planned to get through the turnstile I wasn’t sure. But I was grateful for the laugh.

Life

How do we escape consumption?

Christa Avampato

I laugh when my friend Kelly says she’d like to find a boyfriend who doesn’t suck her will to live. It’s only funny because it’s true – I know what she means. I have strange phases of love, regardless of whether or not my love is a man, a job, a hobby, a piece of writing. I become so enchanted with my love that I literally wear myself out. Then I fall over in exhaustion, and inevitable sadness and disappointment, only to repeat the process once I feel stronger again.

Today I felt a little bit better when I read that even Mother Teresa struggled with this idea when she said that “what we need is to love without getting tired.” And she won the Nobel Peace Prize. If someone up for sainthood is having trouble figuring this out, then why am I so hard on myself for having difficulty with love?

The consideration of how to love without wearing out is something I catch myself thinking about very often as of late. I’ll be walking along in my neighborhood or in the park or to meet friends, and all of a sudden I’ll find myself thinking that I’m not ready again for love, of anything. I’m not ready again to be consumed by it. And then I remember how intoxicating and magical it can be.

I do love my job, though I manage to keep it in check. I think about how I can improve all the time. I stop in to competitors to check around. I mull over how what I’m learning will fit into my life down the road, into the big picture.

I love my neighborhood and my apartment, despite the fact that I’m spending so much on rent. It is a cozy, comfortable haven for me. It’s quiet and beautiful, while also being filled with conveniences that make every day life easier.

I love my friends and family, though I am careful to take time for myself when I can because I know of my inability to turn down going out and having fun. Luckily my huge impending loan payments are making me mindful of how I spend my money, and more importantly how I save it.

The piece that still alludes me, that still has me wincing when I think of it, is starting another romantic relationship. Sometimes I think it’s past disappointments or failures that have me running scared. And sometimes I think it’s that all-too-memorable pain that my relationships have caused. Though these are only excuses, and not reasons. What really has me scared is that I really love my life, and my independence, and my ability to dream unencumbered by responsibility to someone else. I can go anywhere, doing anything, spend time with anyone, or completely alone if that’s what I need. The question becomes not whether I can love without growing tired; it’s can I learn how to love without losing who I am now that I’ve become a person I am really happy to be.

Life

Did you say there’s meat in my mojito?

Christa Avampato

Nuance is on my mind today. I had brunch with my friend, Dan, over the weekend and I was explaining to him that during dinner with my very sweet and handsome neighbor, I had sometimes had trouble with his accent. He would say a word like “axe” and I thought he was saying the letter “x”. He would say phrases like “my brother is in the army” and I would here “my brother’s my enemy”. The more this happens the more embarrassing it gets.

Dan said he had a similar experience when he first met his friend, Giel, who is from France. Giel would say a phrase like “mojitos are great. They have “meat” in them.” And Dan would look at him with a face of confusion. They would go back and forth for a little while until the reverted to spelling out words, or in my case, I would make hand motions to be understood, despite the fact that both people are speaking the same language. And invariably, these conversations end with the person coming out of the fog of confusion saying something like “oh, MINT in the mojitos.” We seek to be understood.

I’ve noticed that this also happens to me lately with emails. I immediately assume all emails are hostile until I see them laden with smiley faces and xo’s. I’m exaggerating here (slightly) though I have a really uncanny knack for assuming that anyone emailing me is actually yelling at me. Then I read a “decidedly” mean-spirited email to an unbiased friend, and that friend will say, “um, Christa, I think you’re completely making up that tone of voice. It sounds fine to me.” And I reply, “oh! Now I see.”

I wonder how responsible nuance and mutual misunderstanding are for where our lives end up. Do we infer things that are not there, and in turn walk away from situations that we should have stayed in, or vice versa? How do we clear up this business of nuance? How do we hear what’s really there, and really isn’t there though it should be?

There’s a case to be made for spelling out the world as we see it, and having the humility and grace to accept correction when we misstep. This is hard word, and it takes time and patience, on both sides. I’m making a pact to listen more completely and more openly, and making myself understood in the way I wish to be understood. Again I am reminded that constant, clear communication can make all the difference, or at the very least keep meat out of my mojito.

Life

Truly awful

Christa Avampato

My natural culinary inclination is toward Italian cooking, mostly because I was raised with it and those ingredients make sense to me. They’re comforting, and they remind me of simpler times. I am a good cook because I love eating, and I have a need to eat ALL THE TIME! I have my regular dishes, what I consider my tried and true standards. Lately though I’ve become more adventurous in my tiny hovel of a kitchen. And the results have been, well, awful.

I’ve been experimenting with recipes that combine different cuisines and flavors, especially ones that on the surface sound counter-intuitive to me. Though in my efforts to keep an open mind and try new things, even if they sound strange, I have been giving the weirdest of combos a shot.

My mistakes have begun by thinking that every recipe that is published must be somewhat decent. After all, publishing is expensive (not to mention competitive) and supposedly these recipes have been tested before going to print. I am learning that these assumptions are complete fallacies, and my poor taste buds, not to mention my stomach, are paying the price. I am also realizing just now that I have been watching too many episodes of Iron Chef America. The other day a culinary master made ice cream out of – are you ready for this – asparagus. I’m not kidding. And the judges raved about how delicious it was. This has completely screwed up my sense of cooking logic.

To be fair, I have been making tiny substitutions – kosher salt for sea salt, soy milk for cow’s milk. Nothing drastic. Grocery shopping in NYC is challenging to say the least so if I can keep from making an extra trip and making due with what I have on hand, I cheat a bit. Still, that is no excuse for the simply horrible things I have turned out from my stove top and oven in the past two weeks.

An example: I found a recipe in one of my favorite magazines for sweet and sour chicken with a twist. Using apricots for the sweet part, and onion soup mix and vinegar for the salty and sour. I winced a little when I saw it but thought I should give it a shot. If asparagus could be made into ice cream, then surely this odd mélange of flavors could create a sweet and sour chicken. Nope. I’m sad to say that it may have just been the most disgusting chicken dish on record. Straight from the oven and into the trash.

The other additive into this situation is that I absolutely refuse to ever be discouraged by anything. I was determined not to lose my battle for home-grown food adventure because of one little silly chicken recipe. So this week I found another odd-on-the-surface recipe in yet another one of my favorite magazines. This one for warm red cabbage salad. It looked lovely in the photograph. A beautiful purple color. Very autumnal. And I hate cabbage (another side effect of growing up in an Italian household), so maybe this recipe will make me like this good for you vegetable. Give me a new outlook on it.

I packed up a serving for lunch today and my stomach is furious. It’s actually screaming at me right now. “How could you do this to me AGAIN???? Didn’t you learn your lesson from that chicken? Are you trying to kill me???” I’m feeling bad. Very, very bad. Red cabbage is not my friend. I have developed a new disdain for it. I am nearly through my small travel pack of Tums.

There are times and places meant for adventure. My kitchen is not one of them. It’s back to my Italian mavens, Giada and Rachel Ray, for me. I will leave the combining of strange and exotic flavors to the experts in New York’s fantastic restaurants that I love to frequent.

Life

What do we not see?

Christa Avampato

I am now engrossed in a book about vampires. A side effect of working at a toy company is that I have become quite interested in all things kids and tweens. And that includes young adult fiction. Stephanie Meyer has written a trilogy of books, the last of which is Eclipse. I did not read the first two books – I actually didn’t know it was a trilogy until about 100 pages in. And now, I’m hooked. Yes, I should be reading books like “Leading Minds” and “The Innovator’s Dilemma” which actually relate to my everyday work. Instead, I’m spending my time wondering why vampires sometimes kill humans or turn them into other vampires, all with a bite. I don’t get it – why does the same action produce two different results?

Maybe it’s just my Halloween state-of-mind. (I actually adore the holiday). While I don’t believe in vampires and werewolves, I do know that there are energies around us all the time. There are systems operating in our world which we cannot detect with even the most sophisticated technology. So once I get frustrated thinking about the whole vampire conundrum, I begin thinking about what might be around me every day that I don’t see.

When we talk about serendipity, what is it that’s really causing these wonderful coincidences? And when we seem to be able to do nothing but get in our own way, so much so that we think we may have been better off just staying in bed some days, what invisible hand is actually responsible? And I think these same energies may serve to connect us to those who have gone before us, those who we will never have the opportunity to meet in this life, though we may have met them on some other plane.

My friend, Ken, told me a story about two beautiful huskies who literally just showed up at his door one morning, as if they belonged there. He had never seen them before in his neighborhood and he has not seen them since. He called me to say he thinks he may be crazy, but he had this overwhelming feeling that they had been there before.

I have most certainly felt this way about people. There are times when I meet someone and instantly there is a connection, as if I have known these people my whole life. Or many times I have visited places for what I think is the first time, and then I somehow am able to navigate them with the greatest of ease, despite my terrible sense of direction. I know these places, I have walked these streets, it all makes sense to me. The same has happened to me with books. I read some and it’s as if I know this story so well, as if the author is writing my life for me. And it happens in writing all the time. These characters show up in your life, with their own story to tell, and you coax it out of them, and write it all down.

Despite the initial chill that these thoughts sometimes bring to me, I also experience a good amount of comfort in this. It makes me feel connected. It makes me believe in magic, and who doesn’t need a little magic in their lives? Isn’t that what keeps us all going?

The picture above can be found at http://7art-screensavers.com/screens/magic-tree-clock/magic-tree-clock.jpg

Life

What’s in front of us

Christa Avampato

I’ve spent some time recently doing some long-range planning on my life. With so many people around me starting businesses, starting school, moving to far-flung locations, trading in one job for another, I cannot help but spend my long walks in the park imagining life. New York City, as exciting as it is, can be a distracting place. It seems that everywhere you look, there is something new and interesting going on. There is another road to take, another person to meet, another thing to do. And before I know it, I’ve completely forgotten where it is I’m going.

Last weekend I walked from Chinatown to the Upper West Side. For those of you who are not too familiar with New York, that’s roughly seven miles. Most of it I walked with my friend, Dan, and we talked about direction and vision and taking advantage of being young and having the freedom to capitalize on possibility. And that’s the thing about New York: possibility really is everywhere. It’s so abundant that it’s very difficult to discern exactly which possibility is the right one right now. And so, we wait. For inspiration, for a sign, for a directional arrow to get us going.

Paul Gauguin is one of my favorite painters and when asked about how he envisioned his paintings before putting brush to canvas, he said “I shut my eyes in order to see.” There is too much fear in the world, too much intimidation, too much competition. If all we did was look out for direction, we’d never find our way.

So rather than evaluating possibilities, I am considering that really we just have to make our own. There are places I go to shut my eyes in order to see, which is to say places I go to imagine. And sometimes that’s in a museum or Riverside or Central Park. Sometimes its on my yoga mat. Or snuggled up in my warm, comfy bed with a book that lights up my sense of wonder. Often it’s to this computer screen to put together words that communicate what I’m thinking about, what I’m feeling, and what I’m wishing for. I shut my eyes, open my ears, and let my fingers dance in order to see life as I want it to be.
The picture above is “Tahitian Landscape” by Paul Gauguin, 1891.