Do I Think This Song Is About Me? Do I? I Think So.

Today as I was helping my recently retired mother move 16 years worth of boxed teaching supplies out of her classroom and into the trunk of her Passat, I thought about the art of packing. I looked and my mother’s boxes. It was obvious that some had been planned out. Markers, crayons, and pastels composed the “Art Supplies” box. The box with felt bats, paper pumpkin cutouts, and fake cobwebs was appropriately labeled “Halloween Stuff.” However there were some boxes that were so random that, if they did have a label, the only fitting description would be “Things That Have Mass.”
However, it was not her method of packing that interested me, but rather it was the process of how she chose each particular item to take along with her.

Watching her pensively trying to decide whether of not to keep hand-drawn paper cuts of scared black cats she had once used for an art project, I thought about what I would pack if I had to leave my room in Oxnard and box up 22 years of my life. What would I bring along with me? What are the things that are most important to me? What could I simply not live without?

I would love to say that my first response to this question was something practical like a Swiss army knife or even something that shows my depth such my favorite classic novel. Needless to say it wasn’t deep at all. My answer was probably the shallowest thing ever. “My curling iron,” I mentally replied without any hesitation. Simply stated I would bring Vanity.

The answer shocked me. I did not realize that I was so vain. “What does this say about me?” I thought. “What does this say about my character, my morals, and my priorities in life?” Even the answer to the question was so high maintenance that I realized within my response I assumed that the place where I would be staying would have a power outlet. “So much for the ‘living on a deserted island’ scenario. My island has to have electricity and a mirror.” I thought.

I never realized how vanity has significantly affected my life. One specific occasion when vanity got the best of me is one morning when I was studying in Rome. I woke up at 7 AM an started to get ready for school when I looked in the mirror only to find that my right eye was red and my eyelids were so puffy and swollen that they were to the point of almost being shut. I looked like a Filipina Quasimodo. Better yet, I looked like someone had gotten a basketball/eyelid pump and attacked my face in the night. I did everything to try and get the swelling to go down including frantically whining to my mother. “What do I do? I look horrible, but I have class. We have site visit, but I can’t go out looking like this! No, I cannot wear sunglasses in a church! It is just weird!” I complained over the phone.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not one to miss school. Even when I was in first grade and I was sick with a horrible cough, I would beg my mother to let me stay home. Even though I hated missing class my eye was so puffed out that I ditched my Medieval Art class site-visit to the Xeno Chapel.

After they consoled me for about an hour, Nabihah and Niki left for school and I stayed at home dipping the inflamed portion of my face in tea, which was suggested by Niki. As my eyelids rested atop a pool of passion fruit black tea from Castroni, I thought to myself, “I am the embodiment of Vanity and Vanity is not going to school today!” (When I retold this story to my friend Jessie so laughed so hard that to this day she calls me “Vanity.”)

I pictured myself as the lady in the mirror of Bosch’s Vanity panel in his painting of the seven deadly sins. Except instead of adjusting my bonnet, I would be curling my locks with my Turbo Revlon curling/ straightening iron.



The fact that vanity is a sin also made me examine the question “Is vanity really that bad?” When you break down the concept of vanity and put a bit of a positive spin on it, the deadly sin becomes the basic idea of caring about your appearance. This is something that can pertain to many occasions. If you arrive at a job interview wearing an ensemble that is too shabby and less chic it could jeopardize your chances of getting that job. Also, you probably will not get a phone call from your date after the night is over if you go on a blind date and the first impression you give is that you never brush your teeth because your breath reeks and you never cut your toenails because they are so overgrown that your date knows you could climb trees with no problem at all.

I do not know how I developed this need of looking presentable every time I leave the house, but I do not think it is a bad thing. Having a kept appearance is something that makes me happy. I know it sounds like a frivolous thing to worry about, but it feels good when I glance at my reflection in a store window and notice that my eye shadow is still in tact and that it matches my outfit. It sounds shallow, but it’s true.

In about a week I am leaving for the Philippines and I will be staying there for two months. We plan to visit lots of family and hopefully make it to some of the famous, touristy parts too. I am going to start packing in a couple days and you can bet that when I do my beloved curling iron is coming with me because in the Philippines I may quite literally be on a deserted island…Well, a deserted island with an outlet, of course!

LeVar Burton Would Be Proud

If you had asked me about 5 months ago, “Cristina, read any good books lately?” I would have replied simply with this lame but truthful response, “I don’t read.” It was a sad thing to admit. This truth was especially depressing because in college I was assigned to read books. The only books I read prior to going to Rome were Harry Potter books. To me J.K. Rowling is a god. In the past I had read books for school, but that was rare and I truly had to be interested in the subject matter in order for an attempt to even be made. I liked to believe in my own psychological theories on human behavior rather than listen to Piaget, Kohlberg, or Freud.

My father had gotten me into the habit of occasionally perusing the headline stories in the newspaper. “You are going to be traveling and living in Europe. Europeans know so much more than the average American about even American politics!” It made sense to me that I should know what is going on it the world if I was going to travel around it. So I started to read a few articles here and there, but that was it.

Reading was never something that I did in my spare time. I never waited to get home so I could curl up in a blanket on the couch and read my favorite classic. I even remember in elementary school checking out books from the library and just looking at the pictures. I would turn it to my favorite picture page and take out a blank sheet of paper during SSR (silent sustained reading) and draw. I do not remember actually reading anything. I think my teachers never stopped me from doing this because I was a good student. It was either for that reason or the fact that drawing was also a quiet activity.

I loved stories being read to me and I liked even more to create my own books during writer’s workshop and illustrate them. I would much rather create something than try to understand something that someone else created.

I guess I have always been a bit like that. My mother loves to recount the story of when I was 3 years old and taking ballet. I do not know whether or not these are my own memories or memories that I have formed because of what my mother told me, but I “remember” her teaching me the correct way to do the ballet moves and me completely rejecting her tutelage. “Cristina, Teacher Pam said that it is like this,” she would say. “No it’s not,” I would state matter-of-factly. “It is like this,” I explained as I made up a move that was both dramatic and ridiculous. These moves and poses usually involved my neck to bend to one side almost to the point of breaking, my arms outstretched embracing the sky, and my foot completely turned in as if I had some horrible birth defect that would make old women who saw me stop and say, "Poor little thing." My mother just shook her head and breathed a sigh of hopelessness as she suffered through my "lessons."


(This is a picture of my cousin Ala and me getting ready to make up some more of our own ballet moves. I am the one with the broken neck who looks as though she needs to stop the performance and use the restroom. haha)

Some people might listen to this story and think of it as an early example of stubbornness. I like to see it more as a story about creativity and complete freedom. Now I find that this lack of inhibition and complete creativity that practically oozed out of me in my early years does not come as easily to me anymore. I do not write my own stories complete with crayon-colored illustrations and an “About the Author” with a Xeroxed copy of my most recent school picture on the back. At the age of 22 I find it easier to lose myself in a world that has been created for me rather than one I have conjured up on my own. I become attached to characters that I know I would have never met if Dan Brown had not created them and I become overtaken with emotion by the dire unthinkable circumstances of the blind victims in Jose Saramago’s The Blindness.

In less than a month I have read 3 books. My next book is The Inferno. Today after finishing Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris I thought to myself, “I have finished another book and I am looking forward to starting on the next one. Who am I? Where is that little ballerina with the broken neck who never liked to read? Did I leave her in Rome?” I think I will try to find a happy medium between being spoon fed new imagery from an author and creating my own new stories. Maybe mid-canto while reading Dante I’ll be inspired to take out a blank sheet of paper and quietly draw my own interpretation of my favorite scene.

Yay! I have a bit of direction!

Yes. It's true. I have graduated. It feels odd to be done with school. I feel happy, but I also feel unemployed. haha. It was an exciting moment at 4 AM a couple of nights ago when I figured out what I want to study in graduate school. I have decided that I am would like to attend graduate school for art therapy. This is an alternative form of therapy that can be used on everyone. It is especially useful for people with autism and dementia. Also it can be used to deal with emotional pain and stress. The therapy uses all forms of art such as painting and music. What I want to do is combine these ideas with art history and make a program for elementary school students. The education system in the US is horrible. In California the students are made to take standardized tests. This causes the teachers to only teach the material that will be on the test and it creates a stressful environment for the students. Since art and music are not on the test these subjects are pushed aside and ignored. They are seen as unimportant when in fact they are vital. They teach children how to focus and calm themselves down.

I am quite passionate about this subject matter and it actually coincides a lot with the work that I was doing for my co-ed music fraternity Kappa Kappa Psi. As VP of the Chapter for two years I had to put together a curriculum for the continuing members and the new members. I created worksheets and discussion questions that incorporated elements of art history while examining the strengths, weaknesses and differences between many mediums of art. I also made worksheets specifically for a visit to the Getty museum. I loved creating it! (I know... I'm a nerd, but that's fine. haha)

I know all of you must be thinking, "She was so bad about updating her other blog. Like hell she is going to keep this one updated!" I'm not going to lie. This point is quite valid. I figure now that I am done with school I will have more time on my hands to inform the world of my inane ideas and hobbies. haha.

I miss Roma more and more each day. I miss speaking Italian. I miss having Italian words in my mouth. I don't really know how to explain it. In Italian, dramatic inflection is needed in order to be understood. This is something I find incredibly liberating because the whole day you can be as intense and expressive as you want to be and you will not be considered dramatic. I feel my Italian slipping away. It is as if for everyday that passes, an Italian word dies. I can picture a vocabulary cemetery. "May we take this time to remember 'Arachide.' She was a good word and Cristina used her well." (Arachide is peanut in Italian.) It is so hard to keep a language alive if no one around you speaks it.

I think the thing I miss most about living in Roma is having to problem-solve and experience something new each day. Each time I went anywhere I had to figure out what I was going to say in order to be understood. I was constantly translating things in my head so that I could get my point across. A lot of my fellow classmates found this bothersome and would say things like, "Why don't they know English?" I relished conjugating Italian verbs in my head, figuring out different tenses on my own, and looking up random words in my pocket dictionary. "Hmmm... I wonder what the word for 'donkey' is... 'asino'... and it's masculine... Fascinating!" The constant mental activity spurred purely from necessity and curiosity is something that I miss. After 5 months in Roma, it got to the point where the struggle to understand Italian social norms and to express myself in Italian were comfortable and so rewarding. I remember feeling so proud every time I found a useful source for my art history papers in the chaotic illogical mess that is the Palazzo Venezia Library or even when I successfully haggled with the vendors in Italian for a necklace at the flea market.

These little daily triumphs made me feel as if I could take on anything. It is my memories of the these Roman moments that remind me that I CAN be successful if I try to break down barriers and overcome obstacles by using my problem-solving skills. This reflection has given me new hope for my future career in psychology and a clearer outlook on life.