My new boss in Tel Aviv for summer told me today, "it's going to be hard, but you are going to have to get your creativity brain on when you come here."
This is like someone telling me, "now, you can shave your head and everyone will still love you." or, "go ahead, cook naked."
This is going to be the most liberating experience ever.
And the words of Steve Jobs suddenly come to life, suddenly shed their cáscara: "Avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. YOU ARE ALREADY NAKED. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
... And in my heart, Picasso talks: "I am always doing things I can't do. That is how I get to do them." So here I am, in my kitchen without real clothes on, hair up, thinking how in the heck am I going to decorate my new apartment. Make jokes in Hebrew to the Israeli bus drivers; ooo! Doodle through meetings. Be as weird and as beautiful as possible. Let go of the expectations of Mexico for a while. Find a totally new type of exhilarating.
I guess I've gone through this before. Patterns of restraint, release; restraint, release. I think I've found it. I think I've found release in this corporate cycle. Not the last one, but a damn important one. Some sort of 'me' ness is let out, like a little bird or mosquito in the wind, wings flapping.
Now if I can just add data science and changing the world, I'm freaking found.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Ok. To make it less overwhelming. Let me put it like this. For me, Mexico City is not a destination. It is a mirror of the past and the future of civilization. It's an intellectual explosion of what humanity itself comes from and is going towards. This is why I am excited about this city.
When you begin to unpeel the layers, you begin to time-travel in both directions at once, and there is so much to think about, and so many secrets.
As you begin to read these articles, you may begin to understand what I'm talking about. For me, Mexico City is Rome combined with Thailand. You have fat ladies with children strapped on their backs selling organic hand-smashed tlalpapas in-between traffic on four-story megahighways which bend around an old abandoned 16th-century church.
If I am a good curator, these articles (all of them) should serve the purpose of making your brain crawl. This brain crawliness is exactly what is most enjoyable about Mexico City. The purpose is not so much to show you tour guides(just accept that you cannot digest the geography of this city), but rather historical context for this place. Today, we are in a wild transformation point that reflects where development all around the world can and may move. This is where my enthusiasm comes from. Being overwhelmed is the drug in itself.
hat to read if you are excited
Its a wildly chaotic international overdeveloped 3rd world capital, but its also the fanciest gourmet playground full of jungle plants, palaces, infinite art galleries, museums, and more.
Ok.
My favorite topic EVER which makes me go into a hallucinogenic fit is this (sorry... I'd say I was exxagerating but it makes my skin crawl since this is like, unwrapping millennia in both past and future):
Things to do in my neighborhood
Bakeries tour - tiny pastry tasting
Art gallery crawl
Architecture (art nouveau, deco, palaces, mansions) tour
Tacos tour
Amazing tropical plants tour
Cool repurposed spaces tour
Vertical gardens tour
Vivid colors tour
Local/artesenal food goodies tour
Beautiful courtyards and painted allies tour
Nooks and Books tour
Wonderful chefs tour (1 small plate perhttp://highlife.ba.com/
Community movements tour
What can you make with a cactus tour
We can do all these things in my neighborhood alone! And combine them. Maybe we can play bingo with your top 5 categories of interest while walking around drinking papaya juice.
Tour guides and portraits of the city
Interesting thought to consider MX: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/
Oh, do you like design and architecture? These are all AMAZING in my personal opinion...
The basics:
Social conversation:
Water house:
Upcycling:
Smog eating tile:
Vertical garden mania: (no good article on just mexico city but I'd say we have 30+):
Oh good! Mexico city vertical gardens:
Hotel Downtown:
La Palma:
Condesa DF:
Mercado Roma:
Mobile art library:
Portal of awareness:
Cool house:
Cool apartments (green wall use):
The Willy Wonka of beer industry:
Tea room:
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
MexiArabia
I am the only woman in the Aeromexico lounge, which is full before the 6am flights. With all due respect to Persians and grandmothers, I feel like I am in Iran, or 1942.
It doesn't help that it is freezing and I feel invisible in my all-black business suit hidden by gigantic black pashmina. Under the capes instead of jewels and corsets, I have PowerPoint. Today Mexico is cold and dark. Thank goodness I land in the Caribbean in under two hours and have a full day ahead of important men listening to me. I am proud to be a subversive from the north.
Monday, December 9, 2013
2013 Year in Review
Exciting as all hell. Raw, inspired, growth. You have stunned me, 2013. You have made me feel like a 12 year old, freshly picked off some vine.
The world is grand and exposed. Tile in old colonial quarters... sour, tropical drinks. Hunger and angst and a shuffling of dreamscapes and the ocean on my feet! Biking through the smog and returning with the cinematic rhythm of falling in love with life, confused, just like an adolescent again.
The world is grand and exposed. Tile in old colonial quarters... sour, tropical drinks. Hunger and angst and a shuffling of dreamscapes and the ocean on my feet! Biking through the smog and returning with the cinematic rhythm of falling in love with life, confused, just like an adolescent again.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Business trip to cancun
sola in Cancun. Have to stay focused
Its easy to feel like I'm in the last dream sequence from eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, or inception or life of pi something.
The ocean is so big, so loud, and so damn empty. There is so much black air and water and I can feel it all at once. I need a tiger to cuddle with. Better than PowerPoint. All this will change tomorrow, when I wake up and see a collassal wad of rippling turquesa and I will return to the Truman show, testing the limits of what is real not by waking up and being baffled by the infinite solitude of things but the opposite - by jabbing at the walls of the babble with the spoke of my sailing vessel. Is this Toy life real? I'll think.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The legless man
Its dreams week.
So many dreams happening. Businesses opening. Tasting menus. Private gatherings about social innovation. Redefining the face of countries through wildly futuristic media. Beachfront celebrations. Experimental afterparties. Its dreams week.
An old man with no leg- literally, the femur was removed at age 16 - told me, "I try to make it seem like I just sprained my ankle, cuz I work out too much." He pointed to his head. "It's all in here. You know what I decided would lift my spirits, when I was 18, and realized I'd be in crutches for the next 50 years?" "What?" I said, while watching the game and eating a portabello burger. "Always score really hot girlfriends. Then people would be envious of me and not vice versa."
He spends his life improving public works for the handicapped & lives in a penthouse during the week.
Find your own way, people, and go big.... its dreams week!!!
Monday, October 14, 2013
Failed hidden dinner date
Clandestine activity.
Meet @ secret location, Zimm will notify you the same afternoon
Hour loaded wrong- I meant to put 7:48pm
Punctuality required
Highly recommended: difficult afternoon run before event
Dress code: like a million dollars having fun
Hint: I am dressing Russian
Any cancellations please give 48 hours.
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