Santa Monica Photo Diary

If I went out now, at 3:00 AM, I would go to the pier. I would sit at the edge of the boardwalk and dangle my legs just right above the water and watch the sky turn from a deep, dark, royal blue, to a gradient that went from soft pink hues to a lighter shade of blue. Skies are different out here in LA, but they're just the way I liked them. 

At 3:00 AM, I would listen to the waves and breathe in the salty air, and then in the brief time it would've taken the sun to rise from its deep slumber, I would have since told myself to remember this. To remember the way I felt as I watched the waves crash against one another and then kiss the shoreline as if it had not just waged a war with itself. I want to remember the way the ocean's battle cry rung in my ears (as if I'd pressed them against a shell and heard my blood rushing), and then remember, too, the way that I could taste the salt of its tears with every breath I inhaled. 

I like it, the way the waves and the shoreline were a lot like forbidden lovers. Despite their circumstances ripping them apart continuously, giving them only a few seconds to be wrapped up in each other's embrace, they never give up, and I like that. I like that sometimes the way the world works could still work in your favor, so I tuck that in my memory and remind myself to be more like the waves: to never give up, even if the odds were against me.

Never forget this, I will tell myself. Never ever forget this moment. Never forget this feeling nor this peaceful sense of displacement, where—for a brief moment in time—you are unmoving, contented with just being. For once, you're not the one causing ripples in the water, but rather, a bystander watching it slow to a stillness that, in effect, stills your raging mind. 

For once, you were just you, and for once, there wasn't anything wrong with that. That's why, at 3:22AM, I've decided that I'd really really like to go to the pier right now, and just sit there 'til the sun came up and it was finally time for me to leave.

About a week ago, my cousin took my mom and I to the Santa Monica Pier and I fell so in love with the place and how it made me feel that in my sleep deprived state, I scribbled something out in my journal (in a frenzy, too, I might add). I just had to get it all down, otherwise it felt as though the memory would slip from my hands and into some sort of dark abyss where forgotten memories go.

It's a little cheesy, I know, and a little far-fetched—I'll probably get kicked out by patrolling officers if I even attempted to access the boardwalk in the dead hours of the night—but I'm not lying when I say that as I looked down below from the ferris wheel that day, I was overwhelmed by a sense of peacefulness, appreciation, and gratitude that I never wanted to forget. In my head, I kept telling myself, 'don't forget this feeling, don't forget these sights, don't you ever dare forget, Nina,' and apparently, I stayed true to my word. I still remember all the tiny details that went on during the day trip.

The chanting of 'don't forget' is something I've started doing recently, usually every time something good happens to me. I chanted it in the back of my head during the Bombay Bicycle Club concert, for example, and then during the Disclosure set, and then even more so during the 1D concert at the Rose Bowl.

I don't know if anyone else does this, but my reason for it is because back then, way before I discovered that it worked wonders for me (bye-bye scratching my head when I forget things while writing blog posts!), I used to get excited about things that I'd forget all about it and thus disable me from going back to it on sadder days.

As a writer, it gets really upsetting to forget these things (or maybe it's just me). After all, everything that happens to you could be channeled into your work, as content or reference, or even just for inspiration.
But I seriously think that maybe it's just me.