Anxiety.
It’s that ugly word no one likes to take ownership of. It can conjure up irrational feelings of jealousy, delusions, and paranoia. Anxiety can show up unannounced and uninvited. And while there are many ways to soothe your chest of the pain and settle your heart’s frantic beating, does the anxiety ever really go away? That is the frame of mind I was in last week. I was feeling a little less than inspired and bogged down in anxious thoughts.
One of the things I miss the most about my previous job, besides the smell of freshly sharpened pencils, is teaching science. I used to absolutely love exposing children to rotting plants and going off on tangents about how we needed to find ways to live sustainably. You would be surprised how many 4th graders in the inner-city had never planted their own seeds. Surprisingly, since I began exploring Miami more deeply, I have found that we are emerging as a sustainable city. If you don’t believe me, let me tell you about three amazing projects happening right now in some of the most unexpected places.
I love a good story, especially when that story comes with the disclaimer “based on real events”, that is the butter on the popcorn.
Enter Faruk Bishevac of Food Tours in Miami, a true Miami researcher and semi-historian in his own right. Armed with old photographs of Miami Beach, connections to the yummiest local spots, and enough knowledge of South Beach’s History to stump even the nosiest busybody most curious tourist, Faruk walked us through the Art Deco lined streets and truly lectured on this food tour. Taking breaks in between multi-cultural meals and clever photo ops, we ended up tasting foods from four different countries which have influenced Miami’s cuisine at five of South Beach’s best restaurants.
Here were my top five moments on the tour:
Estimado expatriado venezolano recién llegado a Miami,
Ayer te vi. Te vi en el estadio de los Marlins, asistiendo al evento del día de herencia Venezolana. Tú no me reconociste y no te culpo. Tengo que admitir que, a veces, ni yo me reconozco. Pero, hagamos memoria a ver si te acuerdas y como cada gran historia…comenzaremos desde el principio.
Even before arriving at Vanity Projects, I was already feeling the pressure of writing this post; pressure which manifested itself in the form of worry, anxiety, and fear; three emotional states which have become synonymous with me in the past year. I knew for my first blog post I had to choose something that felt as though it represented Miami, while at the same time, it had to be a project that resonated with me personally. So, I chose Vanity Projects to write about for a simple reason: any friend of poetry is a friend of mine. Their involvement at O, Miami’s annual month-long poetry festival inspired me to think about art in a new way. I never thought to unite art with vanity. In this case, uniting the written word with aesthetic vanity would never have appealed to me because in the past that had seemed so, well…vain.