chocolate and self truth.

Saturday morning I got up, dressed, and ran my sleepy behind to the train station.  And you would have too...because Saturday was the opening day of the Euro Chocolate Festival in Perugia, Italy.

Oh hell yes.

I went with three of my close friends here (one of which just turned 20! happy birthday Laura!) to get away from some school stress and to just be...women for a day.  Chocolate-loving-emotional-but-ever-so-happy-women.

Our train was packed to the brim with people.  Most of whom were headed to the same event.  We ended up stuck between seating compartments and we made our own private little cabin in between cars.

The little space was pretty cold and the ground was not the greatest seat....but we had a blast the entire ride.  We sang and danced in our little compartment all the way to Perugia.

Once we arrived we stopped for a quick morning cappuccino before hiking up a rather gigantic hill to the festival.  (No one can tell me we didn't work for our chocolate.)  

As soon as we hit the escalator, (and thank you GOD for escalators.) you could smell the chocolate.  The first part of the festival was inside some beautiful historic building I don't know the name of (I was too busy drooling to remember.) where there were plenty of free samples from places like Chiapas Mexico, Venezuela...we tried cinnamon chocolate, thick slabs of DELICIOUS italian bread smothered in nutella...hazelnut chocolate...oh lord.  And that wasn't it.  Once you made your way through the samples you took yet another escalator out of the building to the HUGE open air chocolate festival.  It wrapped around two city blocks....and was Un. Real.  I'll shut up now and let you look... or drool.  Or both.

No, you aren't dreaming.  Yes, that is a solid chocolate rock climbing wall.

We tried so many wonderful little things.  Chocolate covered bananas and pears, chocolate PASTA with strawberries, chocolate liquor, and my personal favorite thing of the entire day:

That is what I call hot-freaking-chocolate.  It was infused with canella - cinnamon.  It will never be the same...

Something I noticed more often than not while at the festival....chocolate is for lovers.  People lit up around each stall, trying new things, grinning and cuddling closer to one another.  Kids were beyond excited....and I can't tell you how many men I saw with smug grins as they bought their girlfriends/wives chocolate.  The look said, "Yes, I know I'm getting lucky tonight."

After spending a good portion of the day in Perugia, we hopped on the train back home.  I passed out cold on the train.  (I woke up to the sound of my friends laughing at me.  Apparently I was scolding a squirrel for stealing my chocolate pears from me in my sleep.  Nice, Hayden.  Nice.)  The rest of the night, it was back to reality and back to the studio.  Before diving into work I had a really amazing talk with a woman here named Cindy.  She's an independent study student working on her masters.  I consider her a really amazing mentor.  She asked about my day and as I was talking about nothing in particular...things just clicked for me.  I don't know what the moment was or what triggered it, but Cindy and I talked for a solid hour about life and art and being human.  Being independent.  Being real.  Being yourself.

Everything fell into place for me.  Everything suddenly felt so possible.  The more we talked the more I realized how much I've done here.  But more importantly, how much I've changed.  Before I came here, I just had no idea.  No idea of what I was capable of.  I stopped myself from doing the things I wanted, or needed, things that fueled my spirit.  I talked myself out of even wearing the clothes I wanted, or the hair I wanted - convinced I was incapable of looking on the outside the way I felt on the inside.  I worked and slept and lost so much time to a tv screen.  I cared so much about what people thought.  I was scared an anxious all the time, whether or not I showed it.  My self esteem lived in the gutter.  I listened when people told me no.  When people told me "you can't."  

That night, talking to Cindy I was struck by lightening.  

I can do anything.

So simple.  I've known this somewhere inside myself all along.  But I didn't say yes to it until now.  I can because I can choose.  I am the only person stopping myself from completely accepting the gift of free will.  All things are possible.  It sounds so silly I know...this is not a new revelation.  But it is real to me in such a new way.

I feel like I'm seeing my life with a new set of eyes.  I feel like I am closer to being the person I've always wanted to be.  I'm saying yes to living. The life I want to lead, the life I WILL lead.  I want to make art and make music and laugh and be weird and love the SHIT out of people.  I want to be better.  Listen harder, work harder, take risks, learn....everything.  Cook more, bake more, be outside, see more shows, galleries, music, friends.  Write more, read more.  Wear funky jewelry just because I can.  I want to fill each day to the brim with the things that inspire me.  

It won't always be easy or happy.  I'm going to struggle too.  I'm not going to like myself every day or feel like taking on the world every moment.  It wouldn't be life if I didn't face that reality.  But I'm going to stop doing all my living in my head.   And anyone who ever made me feel like I can't, can sit back and eat their words.  Thank God for beautiful people like Cindy, who just....get it.  She looked at me like she recognized the moment of new understanding.  She let me cry and ramble and just...download.  She's an angel.

I'm so full of gratitude right now.  For this trip, for these moments, for this revolutionary living.  Revolution, evolution, soul.  It is beyond me and within me all at once.

:)

So that has been my week. A little chocolate, a little self truth.  And there is so much to come!  I'm disappearing from blog land for a little while for Fall Break.  It is time to say hello to the UK.    You can bet there will be a killer blog when I get back.   

I'm sending all of this love to you.  Hope you can feel it.  

Love, Hayden

lately...

This week has flown by me.  Midterms projects are all in motion right now and they are filling up every bit of extra time.  Yesterday alone I finished two paintings, five linoleum cuts, five practice prints, and did a little italian homework.  Got to school at 9:30am, didn't leave the studio until 11:00pm.  And I still have quite a bit to do.

5 still life paintings, 6 finished figure drawings, 5 editions of a lino-print series book (all handprinted, hand cut, covered and bound) oh and....an italian test to study for.

I know it sounds like a lot, but I am a very happy girl.  To be working this way, filling up the days to the brim...there is just something so satisfying about it.  This is the first time I've been allowed to take 3 studios during a semester (I usually take 2 at my home college because they are pretty intensive) and so its nice to have almost all of my homework be art related.  It doesn't always feel like work....which is when I know I'm doing something right.

Here's some of what I've finished so far for painting....

And here is a teeny tiny preview of my book arts/linoleum cut project...."Whimsical and Improbable Displacement..."

Today was actually sort of a mini-break from the work week.  It was a scheduled field trip day to Pisa and then to Lucca.  Pisa was pretty cool, although aside from the leaning tower and the few museums/the cathedral beside it...there wasn't much else going on.   Which was kind of perfect.  Today was not the day to for me to be overstimulated.  On top of the fatigue that comes with working long hours in the studio, just about every single one of us has come down with a nasty cold.  The pace of the field trips today ended up being perfect.  We still walked until our feet hurt, but it wasn't overwhelming.

Pisa did have a beautiful duomo, baptistry, and cemetery. The cemetery had some beautiful statues and incredible frescoes.  We even got to watch the painstaking restoration process as we saw two art restoration specialists take on a frescoe - one centimeter at a time.  The cemetery unfortunately was bombed in WWII.  Because of it, a lot of historical art was lost.  But....miraculously, art historians and restoration workers were able to reconstruct some enormous frescoes that had previously been in shreds after the bombing.  

Incredible.

We had a nice lunch in Pisa after seeing the sights before we literally just made our train to Lucca.  Lucca is beautiful....and so quiet and calm.  Its a medieval town that still has the surrounding medieval walls that have protected it for hundreds of years.  AND, because it was not bombed in WWII, the town inside the walls...is still intact.  

We walked inside what used to be a Roman ampitheater....we literally walked through the same tunnels the gladiators were sent through to face the gauntlet of roman "games."  Of course it is a beautiful open space now, with restaurants and housing, but you can see the stones, the original structure...still intact.  

We also walked by one of the oldest cafes in Lucca, where Puccini and "The Bohemians" - a movement of artists, poets and musicians - would all gather to share life and culture and ideas.  (Puccini wrote La Boheme...which I was introduced to in high school...it serves as the inspiration for the modern day musical, Rent.)

It was a great day trip.  :)  Tomorrow, to celebrate one of my room mates birthdays....we're taking a train to Perugia for the annual Euro-chocolate festival!  Rumor has it, this festival is so huge, you can smell the chocolate as soon as you enter the city.  

Oh yeah.  It's okay to be jealous.  But before you get tooo mad, remember that as soon as I get home tomorrow afternoon, it's back to the studio for me.  homeworkhomeworkhomework.

I'd say I'd send you some chocolate, but I don't think it will make it home.  ;)  So instead I'll just send you more of my love.  Sooooooooooo much love.

~Hayden