For years I was a collector and mother of plants, building a jungle inside of my Queen’s apartment during the pandemic so I could feel life around me. When I couldn’t be outside nearly as much, it became very apparent that I was missing life in my apartment. Lucky for me, one Astoria plant store was open and Amazon had the supplies I would need to start creating an indoor oasis of plants. With my own hands I planted, and potted; I made macrame plant hangers and designed an outdoor patio inside with a bench, bamboo chairs, and a woven rug. Here I would sit and read and, later, begin painting. Over the course of 3 years I had amassed so many plants that my girlfriends swore “One day those plants are going to eat you alive Tina. They’re taking over the apartment.” I wondered if I would be alone and swallowed whole by a snake plant that grew a mouth and found me in the night but, sadly, COVID got to me first.

While I built a world of wild vines, I also started painting. Before and after work, where I was less than enthusiastic to be participating, but grateful for steady work and income, I imagined colors, women, shapes and another universe - all within the four walls of my once very beige apartment. The more I stayed inside, the greater my call was to feel alive. Eventually the walls of my home, the dressers included, were lined with my artwork. The artwork to plant ratio was somewhat equivalent and I found comfort in simply creating. I built a world and dreamed, but I never dreamed of leaving my home or quitting my job. I supposed getting sick changed things and shook up my world, causing me to wonder “What am I here for anyway? What do I need to let go of and do to be free? To be wild? To live out in the world again?”

After 3 months + of rehabilitating from COVID, and trying to buy a house that I did not end up getting, I left my job in April of 2022. I chose Oaxaca for a vacation, on a whim, based on a recommendation from a friend. The flight was delayed, horrible, and took 19 hours vs 9. I was tired, irritated and entered my hotel at 1am in a mood and in what looked, at the time, to be a pitch black alley. I woke up in the morning to sunshine and a courtyard filled with plants and left the hotel to take my first walk. Within moments, steps, of leaving my hotel I realized that what I created inside of my apartment existed in the real world. Color and life existed in Oaxaca. A few turns outside of my hotel, on to seemingly normal tiny cobblestone streets, I encountered plants growing with wild abandon; the same ones I cared for in my home. The murals on building walls even bore a likeness to my very own paintings. The colors of the walls, 90 shades of sherbet and creamy, fruit flavored gelato. I had never seen anything so beautiful. The architecture, composed primarily of chipped and cracked buildings, reminded me of my own skin and the perfectly imperfect women that I painted. My paintings were alive; not only on the walls of my heart and inside of my New York apartment.

Do we, as humans, have the ability to imagine a world we didn’t know existed before we even knew about it?

Neuroscience says that when we open our hearts, meditate and consciously create, we are capable of changing our lives. The science says that we are creators. But when I bought the plants and painted into the night, I wasn’t consciously creating Oaxaca and making it my reality, at least I don’t think so. I didn’t even know anything about this state that ended up stealing my heart. I was working in news, semi-depressed, and wanted to decorate because I was alone and my walls were bare. I also had some savings to burn and I couldn’t travel so I allowed my mind to travel. I allowed my heart to travel into design books, art books and, to fill my alone time, I started reading a creativity workbook that asked me to get in touch with my young, abandoned artist. I also didn’t realize that I had an inner young, abandoned artist until I started answering some really hard questions about my life.

Sure, in the past I had fantasized about leaving New York, but certainly not for Mexico. I believe that what existed in the creative center of my mind, in a state of pure imagination, clearly existed in the real world - but I hadn’t seen it yet. I hadn’t had the adventure I really longed for. Plants and painting, I supposed, were the birth of my adventure, of creation.

Within 5 days of walking, sitting in courtyards filled with plants, hearing God and the walls whisper to me, I decided I would stay in the city for 5 more days. Then I went to the beach and didn’t get on my flight back to New York. I stayed in Oaxaca for 6 months and returned 6 months later in 2023 - only to find myself back here again in 2024. Except, now, the apartment where I dreamed and created is no longer mine. The walls of my apartment belong to someone and something else. There is no more outdoor patio indoors. There is no Queens apartment to return to.

I now live in the world I imagined before I even knew it existed or met it.

And, well, I can’t help but wonder if love works the same way? If, much like this plant, it can bloom in the most unexpected places. Being in Oaxaca constantly surprises me with natural beauty and growth. In NY all I saw were weeds growing from concrete, but here wild plants thrive and grow out of stones. Is this simply perspective and me seeing what I want to see? Or is it true that some environments simply allow living things to thrive in the ways they are meant to; in the ways we can only imagine? Are you tired? Are you overwhelmed? Is there a world you’ve been imagining, but you’re afraid to let go? What might happen if you used the time to dream a new life?

A World Of Pure Imagination