The pieces in Experiences That Stayed show what the practice produces — the dinners, the tastings, the drawings, the things that came home in the suitcase. Field Notes is the appendix for the careful reader. These pieces show what the practice looks like in operation, on me, before any client is involved.
Two scenes from two systems. A Shinkansen running every five minutes; a Santorini ferry cancelled with no plan. A Brittany boulangerie with a line down the block; a chain bakery in Atlanta with a heat lamp. The cumulative effect of trains versus parking decks. The cumulative effect of public benches versus none.
If you've worked with me, this is what we'll be debriefing when you return from your own trip.
Each Field Note is a short observation — usually 300–600 words. I try to stay in scenes, not generalizations. The thinking happens in the gap between two specific things, not in any conclusion I'd want to draw out loud.
Some of these will be about food. Most won't. Field Notes is the non-food register — environments, transit, design, public space, the small workplace observations that compound, the things you only see if you've spent enough time looking at two different versions of the same idea.
New pieces every 4–6 weeks. The full list builds over time.
Working on this now. Subscribe to my Instagram if you want to know when it goes live.
A specific encounter with a piece of art in New York that I'm still working out how to describe. The observation is doing something I want to write carefully — about scale, about attention, about what changes when you slow down inside a city that demands you don't.
Outlined, not yet written. Order may shift based on what surfaces in the weeks ahead.
A Shinkansen that left every five minutes. A Santorini ferry cancelled with no plan. The same trip showed me both. What changes when the system assumes you'll wait versus assumes you won't.
A boulangerie in Brittany with a queue every morning at 6:30. A chain bakery in Atlanta with a heat lamp and no one waiting. Same product, two civilizations.
For twenty years, on every trip, I've done my mornings alone. Even with my husband. Even with friends. This is the piece about what that hour produces, and why I think it's the most replicable part of the practice.
If you're reading Field Notes and starting to recognize your own way of looking — places you've noticed something nobody else seemed to be noticing, juxtapositions you've held onto without writing down — that's the signal. Not everyone has it. The people who do tend to be hungry for company.
The pieces here are my versions. If you've worked with me, the debrief at the end of an engagement is when we surface yours.
Twenty-five minutes. No pitch, no pressure. We'll talk about what's coming up for you and whether the practice is the right fit. If it isn't, I'll tell you.
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