Texts from the Attic
29 September, 2027
3:23AM — Jordana
What happens in the future stays in the future
I think I tweeted that
But sometimes it stays in the past
3:46AM — Jordana
I was in the old attic today. It still hasn’t been recarpeted and it was hard to avoid the splinters as I crested the stairs. Reminding me of the feeling of opening an app
On the far end of the attic I could see the small box resting on the windowsill. …
Measurement is a simple, beautiful experience. That’s what Lapka’s Personal Environment Monitor taught us. That’s what you taught Lapka. We see thousands of measurements every month from all over the world show up on our real time map: radiation in California, electromagnetic fields in Dublin, humidity in São Paulo, the nitrate levels of an avocado from a suburb in Tokyo.
A new conversation with our environment was starting.
With Lapka, measurement wasn’t simply something that you recorded, it was something you wore. …
Jordana is 16 and from Oak Park, Illinois, which has easy access to downtown Chicago via the Chicago Loop. She has been trying to convince her parents that college is not a valid option since she was nine in 4th grade, when she met her classmate Tavi Gevinson. Every chance they got, they would make Word document after Word document of daily musings: Why High School Musical sucked. Boys they thought should be expelled. Getting dressed for school. They became inseparable by the end of the year.
During the first few weeks of their Summer vacation, they decided to print out all of their writings. They organized them by topic or theme. Tavi was going away for the rest of the Summer, but come Fall, they agreed to make a zine called What Can We Do After School? They both believed there should be a bigger conversation about college alternatives for their generation. Tavi came back at the end of August with a big report for Jordana. She stopped at Grant Park for Lollapalooza a few weeks prior, where she witnessed the future of feminism and maybe journalism during a performance by Lady Gaga and Lady Starlight. …
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