Mimi Ilnitskaya

While going through new Lana Del Rey photos as I sometimes do because I am a crazy fan, I stumbled upon this beautiful illustration by graphic designer, Mimi Ilnitskaya, who hails from Kazakhstan (thanks Facebook!).

Now while I love beautiful things, I cannot draw them at all and so I am always in awe of someone who can. I think Mimi is incredibly talented, her designs are either very dreamy or very trippy. I went in search of more visual delights and this is what I found.

These are a few of my favourites – you can have a look at more over here. 

Nostalgia

I have always had an affinity for words that sound pretty. And by pretty I mean – oh, I don’t know but you know, words that look so gorgeous in print and sound so magical at the tip of your tongue. Words like evanescent and myriad and nostalgia. I was very little when I first heard the word nostalgia and although I had no idea what it meant, I made a point to remember it.

Now that I have gained some years and enough experience to know the true meaning of nostalgia, I can confirm that it is associated with the most beautiful and at the same time the most heartbreaking things ever.

Nostos/home and algos/pain: the pain of longing to return home.
To a place better than here.
A place we’ve already visited.
A place which is who knows where.
Maybe tucked into a space in our minds where what we remember casts a hazy glow over what really happened.

In the past few days, I've had to make some difficult decisions that involved letting go and moving on.  Except I haven’t moved on. I now remember only the good bits and forget all the things that made me decide to walk away in the first place. And that’s nostalgia for you.  It’s only half-real. It’s bittersweet. It’s torture and it’s irresistible. But if we allow ourselves to let the longing for the past stop us from moving ahead, well that would be a terrible terrible thing, wouldn't it?

So I have decided to go with it. Remember the good. But also remind myself that if those were the happy times, then life can only get better. And if when it does, of course I shall let you know all about it.

C

Just some ink and paper...

Ah the things that make a Journalism student excited! This time it was a deviation from our usual lecture in favour of a trip to the Eastern Star museum in Grahamstown, home to some of the original machinery used for printing newspapers back in the day. It was "so hipster" as one person remarked. 

I'm embarrassed to say that until yesterday. I had no idea the museum existed. What a delightful discovery though. The inside of the building smelt like ink and paper, and everything seemed to be in wonderful shades of black and brown and grey. Add to that the sound of a roaring printing machine and the scene was set for us to learn to manually print our own words.

This rather scary looking contraption was used for printing onto the larger newspaper pages. Originally it ran on steam and 130 years later, it stills works but this time with electricity. 

To make sentences, individual letter blocks were used to create words and those were placed together manually on frames to create sentences. This had to then be redone for every single combination of letters and words (clearly requiring loads of patience!)

This was not just time-consuming, but also difficult because all the letters are facing the opposite way. The saying, "mind your p's and q's" comes from the fact that people had to be careful not to use the letters p and q interchangeably as they look quite similar when they face a different way. 

As a journalism student, a lot of my life is spent in front of my computer screen, typing away until the words become fuzzy. After experiencing the arduous process of good old fashioned newspaper printing, I don’t think I’ll complain again about simply typing and clicking 'print'!

Painting the town purple

One of the things I am incredibly grateful for is the opportunity to study at one of the coolest universities in South Africa. Rhodes University is full of vibrant, ambitious, fun and diverse people all studying together on one beautiful campus.

Everyone here is so full of love for the university we call our home and one way we show it is through Purple Thursdays. Every Thursday, we wear purple (the official Rhodes colour) to show our gees (that's a slang word for 'spirit' for all the non South Africans). This Thursday, I got a chance to snap some of the Rhodents who had their faces and arms painted purple.