I don't know if you've figured me out yet, but there are three main things that interest me when I visit a new place: the art, the food and the parks.

Eungbong Mountain Park is a bit of a trek outside of downtown Seoul, and I guess a lot of romantic scenes have been filmed there for Korean dramas. After somehow successfully navigating the transfer between Seoul's metro to a type of commuter line (successful in that I walked back and forth between the staircase to the eastward train and the westward train for about nine minutes, unable to figure out which one was which), I alighted at Eungbong Station and walked -- again, uphill through a residential neighborhood -- for about 15 minutes before I found myself at the base of Eungbong Mountain Park.

This is the sight I found before me:


It took me another three minutes to figure out where the start of the hike upwards was: a staircase hidden behind the restroom building off to the left of this rock climbing behemoth.

The hike was not easy but it wasn't particularly treacherous either. It was definitely sweaty. I encountered a number of older women along the way who seemed to live in the neighborhood, for whom the uphill climb seemed to be part of their daily exercise. They passed as I stopped for photos at each landing, though they would've passed me anyway, for they were in better shape than I.

Naturally, the views got progressively better as I climbed.


We tried to figure out how the lending process actually works, as we didn't see any checkout machines or kiosks. Does anyone know?

After roaming around the mall for a bit and deciding that we wanted to save our coins, we hopped on a bus towards the Banpo Bridge, which was on my itinerary.

On this 25 minute bus ride along one street, we spotted about 15 Olive Youngs and no fewer than 5 We Works. Business is booming.

I had no idea why Banpo Bridge had made it onto my list of must-sees, to be honest. When we stumbled off the bus, we just followed the small crowd and found ourselves in what may have been considered a seedy area in New York City, but was teeming with young people and lots of couples. A few minutes later, a water show began.

I did what I had to: picked up my KT pocket wifi, got a T-Money card, and took the lengthy subway ride to Myeong-dong, where I'd booked a bunk bed hostel room. (And let me tell you, the Incheon International Airport was probably one of the most confusing "touristy" spots I came across during my trip. The signs, in my opinion, were not clear and it took me about 30 minutes to figure out where the subway was.)

I wasn't allowed to check in for another 40 minutes, so I dropped off my luggage and trudged to the Myeongdong Tourist Center, then immediately over to the 7-11 across the street for the largest bottle of water I could carry. I sat and people-watched for 20 minutes before heading back to check in at 3pm.

... and then I slept on and off until the next morning.

My first official (conscious) day in South Korea was a Sunday, and I set out early to make up for lost time. I wanted to hit up all the spots my friend wouldn't have any interest in seeing before she arrived the next afternoon.

Hello, hello! It truly has been a very long time since I last checked in here. Does anyone still read this thing? Around 2016, I turned my focus from this blog to my YouTube channel, which is now mostly dormant. And I have Timothée Chalamet to blame for that.

In one of the (many) Timothée Chalamet interviews I watched or listened to, he spoke in what I would consider an abstract way of his fear of being "boring." I still don't feel I 100% grasp what he means by "boring," but what he said got me thinking: are my videos helpful? Do they add value? Are they entertaining, if nothing else?

And even before I fell down the TC rabbit hole, I'd long thought my videos were becoming less and less interesting, helpful, valuable. Simply said, I was running out of original, fresh ideas. There are (and were, before I even started) so many people doing the same thing I'm doing on the internet, and I don't feel that I need to be adding onto that.

Timothée, in another interview, stated that he uses social media as "another expression of self" rather than self-promotion. John Mayer shared a similar, if not less positive, view of social media back in 2011 when he quit Twitter. (Never fear: not only is he back on Twitter and other forms of social media now, but he hosts a mostly weekly Instagram show called "Current Mood.") John made what I thought were very valid points about social media taking over one's mental energy and draining them of their creativity.

Overall, it seems there is a growing sentiment towards going back to a simpler time. Natural beauty. Whole, organic foods. And, maybe more for environmental reasons than anything else, a greater focus on reducing and reusing rather than recycling.

In a paragraph, in the three years since I last really wrote in here, I've: moved back to New York City, started a new job, seen Harry Styles in concert!, gone back to London!, seen John Mayer in concert!, visited the Canadian Rockies! (2017 was an exciting year), gotten my own place, visited Washington, D.C., seen Gary Clark, Jr. in concert, seen James Bay in concert. Most of which has been documented on my Instagram.

But in my everyday life, I've pared down my beauty "routine" to a place I'm mostly happy with, in terms of number of products and "cleanliness." Since 2013, I've worked on switching over to more natural beauty products, and while I'm not 100% there yet, I would say 80% of the products I use are free of chemicals that I find questionable. This year, I've also made more of an effort to consume things in a more sustainable way, whether that's in the foods I buy and eat, or the materials of the products I buy. It's early days yet, but I've been earnestly seeking ways to cut down on the plastic that comes into my life, and I've begun collecting my food waste and dropping it off with GrowNYC every week to create compost.

And in my everyday life, to go back to Timothée Chalamet and John Mayer, I've missed creating. Writing, mostly. If you haven't already noticed, my blog is called "Maxine Writes." There are some things about me that will probably never change: I will always love consuming pop culture, I will always love food, I will always love music, I will always love traveling, and I will always love writing.

So here we are.

I don't know how many people are reading or have ever really read this blog, but I'm writing in here because I love writing, and that's really all that matters, right?

I hope to make this a regular thing, but I want it to be mindful writing rather than content that's pushed out for the sake of this blog being active. And I don't really know what form this blog is going to take. Will it be about clean beauty, sustainability, music, Timothée Chalamet, life in general ... all of the above? I guess only time will tell.

But thank you for reading, if you're still with me at the end of this long soliloquy, or after years of being away. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

"Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away."
- Sarah Kay

I started this blog on the first day of 2011, but it was christened "Maxine Writes" three years ago tomorrow. This blog has been many things over the past three years -- it started out as a bit of a travel blog, journaling my travels through Taiwan and some of its neighbors in the Australasia region. There was a bit of New York City love thrown in, and then as I changed, it grew into more of a natural beauty product blog. Throughout all of these changes, two things have remained constant: my love for music and my love for food.

As you may know, I am heading to graduate school this fall. It's been a "few" years since I've last been in school, taken classes, done homework. I don't really know what my schedule will be like. Earlier this year, I started up a "Tunes Tuesday," but then soon realized that I wouldn't have the time (especially once I start school) to always be on the lookout for new music, so we're back to just Music Mondays (or, as far as this blog's concerned, "what I'm listening to/#nowplaying").

I will try my very best to keep my Music Mondays going once I get to school, and recipes or food-related entries when I can (I can't imagine graduate school plus internships will leave me much time to experiment with too many new recipes). Maybe I'll have time to do a little traveling during school breaks -- I am heading to the Midwest for school, which is basically uncharted territory for me. I've been to Chicago before and ... that's about it. I might suffer culture shock, but probably the good kind.

So updates to this blog will probably slow down to about two entries a week until I find my footing, which may take a month or two or maybe the entire length of my graduate program (I plan on finishing in late 2015).

But anyway, new adventures of a completely different kind -- school! The Midwest! Football! (Maybe?)

I hope you'll stick around to find out with me.

One of the artists I remember quite distinctly from my childhood is Sophie B. Hawkins. Her song "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" became a huge hit in 1992 and served as an almost elicit backdrop to my childhood. ("Damn" was bad enough to me then, never mind the song's raw sexuality.) It wasn't until I was about middle-school aged that I came to know her as "Sophie B. Hawkins" rather than "the lady who sings 'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover'".

I remember thinking, even back then, that her name had such a nice quality to it. There are some names and some numbers that have such a beautiful symmetry to them, or roll off the tongue like pudding, and hers it one of them. As a child, I thought the "B." was so mysterious, and made her seem extra intelligent, like an author or academic. She wasn't just Sophie Hawkins, but Sophie B. Hawkins, and what about the hundreds of names the "B" could stand for? (It's "Ballantine," which does nothing to whet the intellectual-ness of her name.)

When I was in junior high on a mid-January night, I settled myself in front of the little television in my parents' room and watched the pilot of "Dawson's Creek." A handful of scenes in, done in a manner so simple and so beautiful that it's forever imprinted in my mind: Sophie B. Hawkins' "As I Lay Me Down" played over a wide shot of the sun beginning to set over water, all pinks and golds and the spectrum between, and a girl sitting alone on a wooden pier.

I had no idea it was the same lady who was behind "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover." For years, I thought it was Donna Lewis, the lady behind "I Love You Always Forever." The songs were so incredibly different in tone, style, vocals, etc. Lyrically, Sophie B. Hawkins has consistently seemed a poet set to music, whether angsty or wispy, always smithing words to fit her story.

The other day when I was listening to the '90s Pop station on Pandora, and "As I Lay Me Down" came on. Though the song was released in 1995, the first image that came to my head, unsurprisingly, was the "Dawson's Creek" scene. And then memories from 1998 came crashing down on me. I'd never really listened closely to the lyrics of "As I Lay Me Down" before, but now I know that Sophie B. Hawkins wrote the song in memory of her late father. It's such a simple song, lyrically, vocally, melodically, and there's something incredibly touching about its simplicity. Lyrically, the song was an ill-fitting choice for the introduction of the Jen Lindley-Dawson Leery storyline, but the mood cast was spot on: soft and gentle, half-child, half-grown, and wondrous. Something like me in 1998.

MTV found the original video to "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" so "erotic" that it was banned, though somehow this was the version I remember seeing in my adolescence. Maybe the Britneys and Christinas brought the video to an acceptable, broadcast-ready level.

Photo: Sophie B. Hawkins' Facebook page

Spring is turning to summer in just about every part in the United States. I'm heading back to school in the fall. I haven't really gone into my personal life in quite a while because I've been working towards things and not actually "doing" things, if you know what I mean. There was a turning point in my job search after I returned from Taiwan when I decided to let it take a back seat and work on getting my ducks in a row for graduate school applications. Since I am switching into a new industry/career, I took a lot of time off to build up experience I could present to the schools. Just before application season went into full swing, I moved. (Again?)

And now that I've heard back from all of the schools and gone through the tough decision-making process of which school to go to, I feel sort of in an in-between stage. The first week after having handed in my last application was such a weird time for me. It was the first time since early 2013, maybe even arguably late 2009 (when I first started tinkling with the idea of going back to school, and studying for the GRE), that I felt I was free of this "project" and that finally, maybe, the fruits of my labor were finally going to go somewhere.

This "in-between" stage or idea has fascinated me for some time now. I grew up going to schools that had small, tight-knit classes or grades. I was in a special program from first through sixth grade and more or less had the same 33 classmates the entire time. High school was the same, another six years (seventh through twelfth) with the same 180 students in an entirely neighborhood. But by the time I was 17, I knew that there was a world out there that I didn't know, and I was met with really mixed feelings about leaving New York City and my "family" of six years. The summer after senior year was probably one of the oddest times in my life, one of the most "in-between" times ever. It's that feeling of sitting next to someone, but not being able to touch them or talk to them. We were all here, but few of us were "here" anymore.

But "in-between" stages, at least for me, have brought a lot of joy and new experiences, too. It's during those periods when I tend to branch out beyond what I've known. In the last eight months of my six years in high school, I grew closer to people I'd only been acquaintances or classmates of before. The same goes for the last semester of college -- I found people I really, really connected to, and I brooded over why it'd taken so long for me to find them.

So here I am, finding myself at another "in-between" stage, except this time I'm on my own with it, so there are few joyful moments, and only a handful of quiet, new revelations about myself. I'm ready to start "doing," but of course, not without a helping of trepidation. My neighbor recently told me that the "not knowing" is one of the worst feelings -- oftentimes it's better to get a straight "yes" or "no" (or, in this case, a "stop" or "go"). I hope he's right.

Songs that come to mind that describe the "in-between" feeling (though some are decidedly not about the in-betweens of Life), including one of my all-time favorite songs, "Living In Twilight" by The Weepies:

I've been in love with the idea of "twilight" for quite some time now. It's kind of telling -- after all, I was the 8-year-old kid whose favorite song was Mariah Carey's rendition of "Without You." But I don't necessarily see twilight, or the "blue hour," as the beginning of the end of something. I see in it its own beauty, of having become something already and growing comfortable with it ... just with the expectation that it, too, will eventually be gone.

Here's some of my favorite writing on the idea of the "blue hour" or "twilight":

“What does it cost to lose those weeks, that light, the very nights in the year preferred over all others? Can you evade the dying of the brightness? Or do you evade only its warning? Where are you left if you miss the message the blue nights bring?”
― Joan Didion, "Blue Nights" 

"So it goes, though no one knows you like they used to do

Have a drink the sky is sinking toward a deeper blue

And you're still all right

Step out into twilight

So I stumble home at night

Like I've stumbled through my life

With ghosts and visions in my sight

We are always living in twilight"

― The Weepies, "Living in Twilight" 

“I lay on my mattress on the screen porch and waited for him to leave, watching the blue of the evening turn velvet, indigo lingering like an unspoken hope …”
― Janet Fitch, "White Oleander" 

Nearby, there's a small eating pavilion, with a gourmet popsicle stand and other types of surprisingly eclectic pop-up eateries. I saw a teenaged girl walking alone on the beach, backpack hanging loosely from her sunkissed shoulders and a bright red, half-eaten popsicle in her hand ... and I wondered what it would've been like to have grown up in a place like this, with the country's so-called best beach as your afterschool hangout. And how difficult it must be to pull yourself away, when it's time to go.

This week for Tunes Tuesday, I am stepping into a "genre" of music that should inherently be outside of everyone's comfort zone. I'm dipping into the experimental music genre this week with Liverpool three-piece Ninetails.

Experimental music, today, seems to cover a lot of ground in terms of genre, rather than random sounds ... which also means that it doesn't have to be intimidating. I remember my first real experience of experimental music -- back in my 7th grade music class, where we listened to Philip Glass and tried to make sense of it. Ninetails is not quite as anachronistic as Philip Glass was to me in the '90s, but a lot of the mixing and layering is unpredictable and asks for you to stop and think for a moment.

Ninetails started out as an indie band in Liverpool, England, and began gravitating towards a more unconventional sound following their previous release, 2012's "Slept And Did Not Sleep." The "Quiet Confidence" EP was written entirely by Ninetails' singer and guitarist, Jordan Balaber, and has an overall sultry, cosmopolitan South American feel, in spite of using an eclectic pool of sounds and beats that sometimes sounds cacophonous -- until it doesn't.

It appears that amidst the chaos, there is a method to the madness. And as scientific and experimental as it may be, "Quiet Confidence" retains the best aspect of music -- the ability to call upon the emotions of the listener.



Photo: Ninetails' Facebook page

This photo was taken on the grounds of the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. (If you look inside, it's empty.)

Now that we're in our third month of 2014, I think I can begin to reflect on meditation efforts. (I vowed to meditate every day this year.) Meditation is such a strange concept, really. How do we know when we've succeeded? It's similar to those questions that run around in my head: how do I know that what tastes bitter to me also tastes bitter to you? And what do growing pains really feel like? Did I just experience growing pains, or are they some other kind of pain that I just don't have the words for?

When I first started meditating, I couldn't really fathom what it was to "clear my head of all thought." I tried my best to focus on my breathing, which I knew meant I was still thinking about breathing. But eventually, it seemed right. Like thinking about breathing was the only thing I should've been doing at that place and time, that it was the key to being in the here and now. But once in a while, breathing turns into drifting. Not daydreaming, not sleeping, but something in between. Sort of like that little empty void you fall into before you really fall asleep, and the moments you wake up from only to wonder how long it's been, or what you were doing during that time.

That's been the highest level of meditation I've reached. I'm not sure if there's something more to it.

I started meditating, first and foremost, because I wanted to retrain my focus. I feel that over the years of increasing technological attachment, my attention span has suffered. Meditation has helped, truly. I'm just not sure that it's helped in my every day life yet. But it has helped me focus on any given moment when I make a conscious effort to.

The secondary reason for wanting to meditate was to eliminate some stress from my life, or have a better handle on my stress. Again, I'm not sure that I've gotten to a point where I've been able to eliminate any stress from my everyday life, but I have found it easier to fall asleep, and that definitely counts for something.

What does meditation mean to you? How do you know when you've been successful at it?