A Commonplace Thing

PostAcademia

2011-05-04T11:06:00.001-04:00

I haven't blogged as much this year, nothing like last year when I was living in Switzerland. As Gerty would say, living abroad is living outside of yourself, the best place for a writer to live. But living in Charleston this year--it has been very much about living inside of myself. Where the whirling words dwell and procreate and go no where fast. It has been chattier year in my mind and body, and I've also liked it very very good.

Sometimes I think about discontinuing A Commonplace Thing in favor of something more CV worthy, something less closely linked to my Googable name. But I have four years on this blogspotdotcom now and what is posted is posted is posted. Employable? meh. Readable? yes. Honest? true. Summer brings new things, posts to come in new, breathable moments. But here are a few shots of home, the chaos and the quiet-- the first morning post-academia.

Achtung! AchtUNG!! Die Bewegung 490

2011-04-25T11:19:00.000-04:00

Friday night was my German play-- Freedom Happening! Die Bewegung 490. It started out as a class project for my German Literature in Revolution class, but grew strangely into something that seemed a lot more important. Really it wasn't a play, it was a "Happening," an all-German, theatrical hodge-podge of improv, interpretive dance, poetry, and parody that illustrated in 45 minutes the literature we had studied throughout the semester. Here are the highlights:

Locking the theatre doors and staging a violent "sit-in," demanding that none of the 100 some audience members leave until they have become "aufgeklärt" (enlightened).

Reciting Schiller's Prometheus with interpretive movement and calls of anger toward the gods.

Re-telling Büchner's play, Woyzeck, as a fairy tale with sock puppets.

Staging a mock Presse Club featuring different types of mid-20th Century intellectuals: a radical feminist, an RAF terrorist, a member of a free love commune.

Imitating avant-garde theatre forms with a mini-production of Müller's Hamletmaschine (completely verrückt!)

If it sounds crazy, it's because it was. But throughout the process, our prof, Herr Morgan Koerner, demanded our enthusiasm and energized us with his own example. A project that could have been a pain to perform, uncomfortable to watch, and overall just another tedious project, actually turned out to be a very stimulating, fun experience. The seven students in the class really got into it, everyone rehearsed their lines religiously and contributed to directing and producing the show. The audience, mostly composed of local German speakers and friends of the performers, was also completely engaged. Did they leave enlightened? Ich kann nicht sagen, but without a doubt, they were as impressed with us as we were with ourselves.

We took a member of the audience, Herr Della Lana, hostage and forced him to read our Forderungen. But then he escaped!

After terrifying the audience with the cacophony of Hamletmaschine, we danced our our rage against the machine and took a bow.

Lauren Moore, Iron Maiden

2011-03-20T10:34:00.001-04:00

My article for College of Charleston Magazine on Lauren Moore came out this week. This was a really special piece for me to write given that Lauren was the first friend that I made when I came to college. I interviewed her late one night on the edge of my bed and as I was writing I thought a lot about how far we have come as friends and as people. When we started school, we were just little fresh-faced, over-achievers. In four years, we have really sculpted ourselves into well, people of greater conviction. Be sure to check out the article and have a look at Lauren's art on her website.

Clips and Cake

2011-03-14T11:49:00.000-04:00

It's my birthday, today I am 22. Not that this has anything to do with the present post, I still thought I would mention it. Because while my birthday seemed exceedingly unimportant in the days leading up to it, today it feels rightfully special, because it's my friends who say so.

So getting down to it, here are some clips of my semi-recent work, soon to be transferred to my personal portfolio website ("soon" meaning this summer, when all stops zooming at the speed of light).

Charleston City Paper mentions my essay in Surcee Press' hand-bound guide to Charleston.

A mini profile of Adam Crowell, melodic drum maker, published in Charleston Magazine's March issue

A profile of Wendy Allen, gyotaku printer, published in Charleston Magazine's January issue

A profile of Tim Hussey, painter and illustrator, published in Charleston Magazine's November issue

A profile of Karin Olah, canvas quilter, published in Charleston Magazine's October issue

A profile of Brian Bustos, artist and graphic novelist, published in Charleston Magazine's September issue

A profile of Rhett Thurman, Lowcountry landscape painter, published in Charleston Magazine's July issue

Copy for Blue Bicycle Books website

There are many more things still on the printing block, including a profile of the ever-more fantastic Lauren Francis Moore, an expose of the the black women in local broadcast media, a look at Tivoli Art Studios and Gardens, and sneak-peak at Spoleto's spring line-up and copy for some beautifully designed websites... more links to come as they are published.

Florida Florida Land of Euphoria

2011-02-12T13:15:00.000-05:00

I put the top down as soon as we arrive.
The temperature's trying to pass fifty-five
I'm freezing but at least I'm alive.

Nothing on earth can diminish my glee
This is Florida Florida land of Euphoria
Florida to the highest degree.

-Laurel Blossom, "The Fight"

In a retro-post (I have time now because I am all set up here at the library to work on my thesis of course...), a few photos from Mason's florida homestead that I visited in January. His mother raises heirloom roses from their garden and his dad restores boats and other found objects. They built this fantastic swamp tree house themselves and it turns out its full of buried treasure.

Check out the Premier Issue of Native Magazine!

2011-02-08T18:24:00.000-05:00

In October, a man came into the bookstore to drop off a stack of magazine mock-ups. His business card read Kurt Walker, Native Magazine, Publisher. I told him that I do a bit of writing for Charleston Magazine and he went on to tell me all about Native, his African-American Charleston Culture Magazine that he was starting up with his friend and editor, Deona Smith. A short while later, I sent him some of my clips and he passed them along to Deona. She liked my work and after interviewing me and sharing her vision for the magazine, she gave me two assignments: world-renowned artist, Jonathan Green and heart-pounding Adande African Dance Company. Today she sent me the online preview of the issue and I couldn't be more excited! A daunting thing it is to launch into catty, cliquey Charleston print media, but by the looks of it, Native is doing it with a surefire niche and incredible style!

Click here to see the online issue! Be sure to check out my articles on p. 16 and p. 32!!

I Know I'm SuPOST to, but....

2011-02-03T09:57:00.000-05:00

My blog has been neglected this year due to an annoying change in my Google account. Boo... what a shoddy excusy. I had this blog long before I had my gmail address (Commonplace and I are going on four years together!) Once I got my new gmail address, I couldn't add this blog to it (maybe there is a way and I am too dumb to figure it out.) Now I have to sign out of my gmail then sign into my old account, then sign into Blogger just to post a picture. Hassledassle it is!

That and I've been doing a lot of writing for other publications, namely Charleston Mag, Native Mag, and CofC Mag. And I've been trying to simplify me life a bit. I'm going in a million different directions this semester. I've got my last semester of school (French, German, and Italian classes galore!), my thesis (An Analysis of S.C. Press Framing of Illegal Immigration), my little jobby at the bookstore, babysitting/English lessons here and there, books to read, people to love, art/zines/plans to make.

I've toiled with the idea of starting a new blog, one of just interviews and profiles of people I find interesting. That might be a summer project. For now, I will try to periodically throw nuggets on here and keep a little momentum. Thanks for your patience...

Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T19:19:00.000-05:00

The lake's frozen solid and silent. Two hours till the roast is done, two hours to walk on water.

An Interview with Jonathan Green

2010-12-24T12:31:00.004-05:00

Last week, I had the honor to interview world-renowned artist, Jonathan Green in his home studio for Native Magazine. The 900-word article will print in February, but for now, here is a portion of the interview text.

Q: How do you see the relationship between your art and today’s contemporary culture?

Jonathan Green: What we learn in life truly comes from the arts. We are the visionaries, the carriers of our culture. Our perspective represents a continual history, a visual interpretation of our culture. We have the power to encapsulate history as it is happening. When you remove the arts from a culture, it ceases to be. You know how they say that in a war, the first casualty is always art.

I think that we live in a world that is creating a certain mindlessness of self in our youth. But I am not afraid for the power of the image. Considering all that we know from cave paintings, it’s clear that culture transcends generations and it is not best preserved in writing or stories or music, it is best preserved in the image.

Q: Tell me about your art background, I understand that you are one of the few Gullah artisans to ever receive a BFA.

Jonathan Green: Yes, I had the honor to study at the Art Institute of Chicago in my late twenties. I come from an oral culture where imagery is the most powerful and profound force, yet these images did not yet have a place in the art world. For that reason, I took my role at the Art Institute very seriously. I studied very close to the Institute’s museum, one of the finest art collections in the world—As much as I loved walking through there, it pained me to see in the entire museum only two images of black faces: one by Jacob Lawrence and the other by Alex Katz, two artists who later became very influential to my work.

Q: Can you tell me more about your childhood and the oral culture that you grew up in?

Jonathan Green: My childhood in Gardens Corner, down in Sheldon Township, South Carolina, was wonderful, beautiful, normal, and supportive. It’s interesting because I don’t think that I was ever aware of money until about the age of 12 when I started passing the offering plate at Tabernacle Baptist Church. It was a bartering culture, where people traded goods and services and seldom used money.

I was raised by my grandmother. I learned that the role of the grandmother is absolutely crucial in the passing of culture. It’s not the mother who tells the stores, it’s the grandmother. She raised me to adhere to a well-disciplined schedule. I woke up early in the morning and did my school work before school. It was kind of like living in a monastery. She felt that I was different from the other children. Perhaps I was. Maybe it was my sexuality or my artistic abilities…

But she raised me to be prepared to deal with issues in life. At a young age, I understood life and death; by the time the Civil Rights Movement came along, I was already prepared to understand what was happening.

Q: How does your history and childhood experience impact your work today?

Jonathan Green: My work portrays scenes from my childhood: weddings, certain family members, relationships between my relatives. Many pieces display a deep connection to plantation life. I’ve traced my roots back to the Twickenham Plantation in Beaufort, the Bull Point Plantation, and one called the Tomatle… My work also speaks to the Euro-American heritage because they have a long history of mixing with the African slaves. My images are about a people with a 300-year landscape. The atmosphere remains consistent: there are people, the presence of water, a flat landscape. They are visual memories that portray a level of honesty that could only come from the imagination of a child.

Q: I’ve read that you are a painter of an authentic Southern experience. Would you say that the innocence of your paintings represents a truly authentic experience or a more stylized one?

Jonathan Green: I do paint an authentic Southern experience, but it is also a stylized experience. I think that I have the artistic right to eliminate some of my ancestor’s hardship. You will never see a mobile home in my work; you will never see poverty or oppression. I am not interested in painting angst or negativity. As a child, I first learned about the goodness of people. I can’t spend hours and hours painting out of anger. I try to just paint a simple message: We were here, we are here, and we hope to stay here.

UnionnnHope: tooloudtolivein

2010-12-20T14:59:00.025-05:00

You can glare down the loud people, the talky talk talk people, in the hollow public spaces shouldered by "serenity." Where you are trying to write, to artikulate your artikel, to stay warm and tappy and eesole-ate-d.

But still there's nothing between you and the table over there of seven women and their new jobs and new husbands and new babies on the way, drinking organic java that three years ago they could not afford back when they had more interesting things to talk about.

Outgoing: Cutup Catalog Christmas Cards

2010-12-16T00:10:00.000-05:00

Incoming Post: Cold December

2010-12-06T16:15:00.001-05:00

I always believe that there are miracles in change. It brings new blood. I'm always on a road which shows the ways of discovering myself. Everyday I'm in a different way... I think I take care of my soul well.

--Yasmin

"Des Lieux virtuels recueilleront nos racines réticulaires. Des villages situes nulle part offriront des adresses a l'arrière des écrans. Des forums sans géographie recueilleront nos paroles, nos alliances, nos passions. Nous aurons notre Lieu topographique et nos Lieux électroniques virtuels…D'autres vivront des dépersonnalisations effrayantes dans les reflets de leurs écrans...Mais certains hommes - les voir, les imaginer …ils vivront ces phénomènes en eux répercutes, les possédant tous et possèdes par eux, conscient interfacé de ces vivacités qui se féconderont et féconderont l'entour. Belle charge d'annonce (et d'envie) pour l'Ecrire." -- Ross

(My rough translation: The virtual places collect our reticular roots. The villages situated no where offer addresses behind the screens. The forums without geographie collect our speech, our trust, our passions. We have our topographical place and our virtual-electric place… Some live off of frightening depersonnalizations that are reflected in the screen. But others, certain men… they see it. They imagine it. They live out these phenomenons and then pass them on. They possess everything and are possessed by everything, consciously interfaced by the life that impregnates themselves and impregnates the world. A high call and a high desire for Writing.)

"I mean, they were always the same SOULS! But the manifestations they've found are just inspiring. We are going to take a 35 hour train to Delhi, visit the Sikh Golden Temple, visit one of their freinds in Punjab and attend her wedding, trek in the Himalayas, and then partake in a camel safari in Rajasthan..."

-LBG, from India

thought you were off having the time of your life. ..

seems that returning things are hard to accomodate, when you're trying to soar

take hold of what you can Kristen, be great. rationalize what you can, from other perspectives

- **know that we are not at our best always.**

- m.

Apparemment tu te sens différent face à ta vie quotidienne, normale et américaine. Est-ce tu penses que tu es moins américaine ou plus européen ? Apres être revenu de l’Italie, il y a un an, j’avais aussi change. En fait, j’apprécie maintenant plus ma ville, ma région, je vois sa beauté, son caractère extraordinaire. Je sens les émotions qui sont connectes a ce lieu, et surtout aux personnes.

--Manuel

I bought this card before I met that guy. Accident? destiny. hahaha! -- AB

"KK--Thought you might want to know that I'm not stuck anymore." -Ludt

"I believe that you can 'LOSE' places. They expire, you outgrow them. That's the thing with Groningen. It actually made me strong and kept me safe and now it discharges me from it's warm cozy stroopwaffel-cocoon. Or maybe I'm breaking free because I really need some speed, Berlin's pace is right for me at the moment, it kicks my lazy Groningen-spoiled ass and gives me real life. Ugly some times but moving and most of all creating!!"

- Clio

Boogie Woogie Butterflies

2010-11-28T09:53:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving bubbles up a year's worth of thanky-fullness and leaves in the heart piles to rake and boogie. Something's a slow cooking for the spring. For now it's all cryptic and opposumystic--watching, waiting, bigger than big, ebbing on the horizon. new.

All that to say, I gotsa Silvan Zingg on me playlist this morning, dancing around this silly chilly Charlietown house.

Badabingbangboom.

Tart Juice

2010-11-22T18:15:00.000-05:00

One day after dad bought me a mini space heater and window draft sealer tape, the ozone layer popped over Charleston. We've been drinking sunshine and coffee on the porch every a.m. since. No knowing how long the heat will hold out, but the oranges are only getting orangier and at some point, every living thing has got to be squeezed.

Corrinne May Botz: When the Stuff Takes OVERRRRR..

2010-11-14T00:09:00.025-05:00

Sorry blog, I have so neglected you. I've been so the b-word (busy) with the new job and school and new found happiness that my inspiration has been vacationing elsewhere. I know it's not very nice of me to say, but you've been getting on my nerves lately too. You are just so poorly programmed. I know you can't help it, but what's the deal? I've tried to upload these photos three times and you get all pissy on me with your HTML code. Grrrr... Well, this is a personal problem we will just have to work out on our own time, but for now I'll stick up this guest post I did on the Feminist Art blog...don't roll your eyes at me, blog.

Ever since photographer Corinne May Botzwas featured in the New York Times on November 3, I've been thinking about my stuff. All my STUFF. The stuff stuff stuffy stuff that I keep and collect and stash away. I don't even think of myself as a packrat, not at all. Actually, I have always been somewhat of a biannual purger, a spring and Christmas out-cleaner. But still there remains the stuff. The CrackerJack charms taped to my window, the cigar boxes full of letters, the Halloween candies, the not-yet-read books, the jewels and trinkets and scarves on my dresser, the printer, the papers, the coffee mugs full of pens, the heat-blowing hair tools, the dirty dishes, the laundry pile, the pile of shoes... And then there's the way that I arrange it and store it and allow it to occupy my space. Why this stuff? Why is it put there, set like like that?

Corrinne May Botz considers this idea but to the extreme of agoraphobia, or the fear of public spaces, and how it particularly effects women. She uses photography to document the living spaces of women who rarely leave them. Her Parameter photographs are considered portraits without faces, showing only possessions, no people.

Her artist statement examines agoraphobia in light of feminist theory: "This spatial conditioned emerged during the birth of the modern city and cannot be separated from the critique that modern space is produced for and by men. Known as the "housewives disease," it is estimated that 80-85% of agoraphobiacs are women. Ultimately it is the delicate relationship between space and self-- the fear of losing control of one's body and one's place in the world-- that forces individuals into hermetically sealed spaces."

In reference to Botz's work, the New York Times stated that "a feminist will tell you that an agoraphobic is internalizing social ills, meaning her terror contains both the idea of the home as a prison and the notion that public space is inhospitable to women."

This notion got me thinking not only about how I accumulate and manage my stuff, but also how this habit is particular to women. Pardon the sweeping generalization, but it seems to me that women are more likely to cling to things of sentimental value. Many men also live in clutter, but it's my impression that this clutter is related more to negligent housekeeping than attachment or nostalgia. Maybe I'm wrong, but when I think pack rat, I think of a somebody's grandma.

So the world is full of these packratty women, and I wonder how many of them are agoraphobiacs and don't even realize it. How common it seems for women to retract from society and stay home as they age. We don't think too much of it, but maybe it has a lot to do with them feeling displaced in society. Perhaps these women find more security in their own stuff, in their own home than they do in a public that is often driven by power, money, competition... masculine ideals.

I wish wish wish that there were more photographs in this series to flip through. For now though, I've got an idea to chew on. I think I will expand on this for my final project, pushing the question: Where is a woman's place? Meh. It needs some more time in the oven, but I think Botz's work is a good launching point.

The Best of Times, pt. 4

2010-10-31T10:08:00.000-04:00

It's been a little while since I've done a "Best of Times" post. My Delicious has really piled up this fall, and now I gots ta pick and choose which ones to use. Also, I haven't been reading the NY Times as religiously as I used to-- I've taken a liking for BBC and Le Monde-- and the Times print edition is FREE at the stand in the Buist lobby, a necessary pitstop should I want to survive another two hours of Feminist Art (gah!). So anyway, enjoy the articles if you haven't already.

What is it about 20-somethings? : Aug 18--So here we are kiddies in the thick of what sociologists are calling an evolution in the timetable of adulthood. The big question: Why are 20-somethings taking longer than ever to grow up? Apparently we are getting married later, entering the "workforce" later, moving back in with our parents, deferring our loans, running from reality. Huh.

Happiness with less STUFF: Aug 7---A suburban couple reduce their number of material possessions to 100 items each. That includes dishes, toothbrush, pens, books, EVERYTHING, 100 items. Suddenly there is room in their suburban house for happiness. Sensational.

Does Your Language Shape the Way You Think?:Aug 26-- I first learned about this idea in an intro to communication theory course. It's technically called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and holds that native speakers of different languages think and reason differently because the structure of our language dictates our entire thought process.

New York City's Last Smokers: Aug 27-- I always knew smoking was undesirable, but I feel a little sorry for these victims of such harsh discrimination. They've banded together to claim their one and only sidewalk slab and commiserate about their $11 packs. If you have any self-respect, you'll think twice before bumming.

36 Hours in Charleston: Sept. 9-- This one only makes the list because Leigh Magar extraordinaire is the front page photo. She is the only person I've ever known to be in the Times! While I commend the inclusion of Wild Flower Bakery, Macaroon Boutique and Blue Bicycle Books, the other hotspot choices have me wondering if the writer has ever actually been to Charleston.

DIY Foreign Aid: Oct. 20-- NGO self starter projects. Yes. yes. YES. This woman figures out what the UN could not: the real reason women in Mozambique weren't getting their careers off the ground wasn't necessarily a lack of training or investment, it was the simple fact that they could not afford hygiene products to absorb their periods, putting them too often out of service.

The Great Unwashed: Oct. 29 -- Consciously choosing to smell au naturel. Living without the pore-clogging, oil-botching damage of deo and taking three showers a week as opposed to seven or eight. Huh.

On sale at Boekie Woekie, Amsterdamn!

2010-10-30T00:25:00.001-04:00

Big thanks to Friso for snapping the photo! I'm the yellow guy in the center.

Boekie Woekie

Berenstraat 16

1016 GH Amsterdam, Netherlands

020 6390507

Late October, Maya Angelou

2010-10-24T14:46:00.000-04:00

Carefully
the leaves of autumn
sprinkle down the tinny
sound of little dyings
and skies sated
of ruddy sunsets
of roseate dawns
roil ceaselessly in
cobweb greys and turn
to black
for comfort

Only lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order simply
to begin
again.

Sweet Sweet Sunday Mornin'

2010-10-19T09:07:00.000-04:00

Incoming: Crisp October

2010-10-15T23:47:00.000-04:00

Dear Legs,

Yes, Sorry is back... You knew it would happen. I can't have children, so I make him my own. I figure as long as my heart goes out to him, I owe it to us to continue to try. Besides, 40mg of Prozac can make agreeable a lot of things. Perhaps they should put it in the public water supply... October is falling quickly and I've yet to tackle the first challenge... being to leave something made, bought or found, anonymously for someone who could stand to have their day made better. The example given to me was to leave a bouquet of flowers at a nursing home and request it be delivered to some random room. This is to be done 4x throughout October. I don't know if it's fair of me to relay my chickens before they've hatched, but 3 of the 4 ideas are:

make 2-4 bookmarkers and leave in children's books at the library.
make a Weary Traveler Treat Package that would contain maybe $2, some magazines, hand disinfectant, scratch off loto ticket, travel-size aspirin, tissues, small sketch pad and pencil, things of the sort.
pick a name out of the phone book and mail that person something inspirational.

Ok. I've been sucked into a cheesy movie and have a mound of dishes towering over my day. I'm much looking forward to the Market O' Fleas with you on Saturday. I'm enclosing a lovely dress I bought at the thrift store and cannot squeeze into. I was hoping you could be its next model hanger...it does scream for lithe, leggy and tan... you, my dove.

The smell of 4 o'clocks at 2pm, Your favorite Color in an Unexpected Place, Sleep until 10 am, A Friendly Foreign Cat Winding around your ankles, Clear Skin and The Last Bite of Anything You Crave,

P.S. As a postal employee, I've been collecting a list of names who live together:

-Burns, Little

-Small, Fox

Turck, Feathers

-Pretty, Buys

-Small, Greif

-Freezer, Burns

-Kitchens, Cobb

-Parrish, Hightower

-Parramore, Sinn

*********

Kristen, my 1950's queen, sturdy, solid--

The prophecy of autumn: a fresh, cool breeze whose breath tickles the inside of my shirt; an unwanted, willing summer chafing. About getting some, some has been neither got not git, but a tickle here or there, well, hope's hand's 'round the corner. To the glaze over my teeth after a meal, or at the end of the journée: From where did you come? A letter might entice you: like, sultry, like jazz, like sass.

As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain, As a neurological process in the brain.

...I absorb a sensory experience to a, not cynical, sentimental finish.

RG

*********

Kristen my Darling!

Vielen Dank für deine Karte, sie war in perfekten Deutsch geschrieben. Ich habe gar nicht gemerkt, dass sie von dir war! Ich dachte sie war aus Deutschland! I'd been travelling a lot and every time I got home, I immediately had this feeling that I didn't belong here. And I carried this longing around with me for an entire year, only to pack up and leave again. This time, it is different. I'm able to take all the inspirations, impressions and ideas and just easily mend them into my life here. I keep doing our morning ritual: french-press, newspaper, Fruhstuck. I threw the tv OUT, planted herbs in the spot where it was before. I go on bike rides and I cook....the world seems smaller since I met you and all your attachments, everything seems more connected, everything makes more sense. In a random schoolbook I found something about Alexander Calder! I just read: "De Kunst van het leven is thuiste zyn alsof men op reis is" (The art of life is being at home as if you are always traveling.) I think that is what I'm trying to do at the moment. America, but especially Charleston, is so vivid in my mind, so close, and memory so accessible, free...

big big kuss,

**********

Dear Krissy,

Had my bridge club here this afternoon-- I had absolutely terrible cards. We always have a good time though. We've been playing together for 50 years. It really seems like fall and I love it-my favorite time of the year. Now I have to get busy and get my yard put to bed for winter. Need Mary to mow a few more times. Football season started, been going down to see the kids play,the team's not so good this year...

-GJa

America in Color: 1939-1943

2010-10-14T17:57:00.000-04:00

These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs of the effects of the Great Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. I am struck by how real and artificial they look. On one hand, the colors seem stagey, the clothes seem costume-y, but the bodies and expressions.... oh wow! They carry a pure kind of living that we can never know.

Chopping cotton on rented land near White Plains. White Plains, Greene County, Georgia, June 1941. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

At the Vermont state fair. Rutland, Vermont, September 1941. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The Faro Caudill family eating dinner in their dugout. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Garden adjacent to the dugout home of Jack Whinery, homesteader. Pie Town, New Mexico, September 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Road cut into the barren hills which lead into Emmett. Emmett, Idaho, July 1941. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Boy building a model airplane as girl watches. Robstown, Texas, January 1942. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Children gathering potatoes on a large farm. Vicinity of Caribou, Aroostook County, Maine, October 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Outgoing

2010-10-12T13:58:00.000-04:00

Smashing, Crashing, Kulture Klashing

2010-10-10T14:40:00.002-04:00

Kulture Klash 6 last night. The results? Cool, weird, scenester, predictable, unexpected, EXPENSIVE, grooving, wild, chill, fun, awesome, sexy, sweet-- the words I picked up from note n' quote taking the crowd for the George Street Observer. In my own words? It was fun, because well, my people are fun... and because the pint-size latina chicas mannin' the Macs on stage and that DJ with the birds on his head were a rockin' (no snub to previous post intended)! There was a lot of art--cool and all, but it was kind of just there. A well-hung hipster excuse to come-out in droves, drink micro-brewery beer, dance, see and be seen. I thought the overall klash could've done without the lollipoppin' Roller Derby Girls, Vitamin Water and ginormous $20 wristband price (luckily, being "Press" got it passed), but I was ALL about the music, the color and the crowd. No doubt, a smashing, clashing local success.

That loofah on my head? It's the one I bought for a ridiculous amount of money at a roadtrip antique store. But what can I say? It caught camera lenses all night. It's paired with an UO zip-up, granny diamond-disque clip-ons, and the Nine West booties I've been clopping around in all season. Lauren's wearing a belted, hot pink poncho from the never-failing Factor V, a hot-damn furry mini and blue lace-up witch booties.

Ingress/Engress, Lauren's latest installation, one of only two sculptures at KK6 and one of only one student pieces. Made with welded iron, pink insulation stuff, and saran wrap.

Sanaz on the silent disco. Through the glass it looks like a mass of crazies jammin' to nothing, but the headsets are all synchronized techno. Energy, sweat and body heat seaping out every pore: novelty take pleasure, Europe take note.

Michelle, red wristbands

Jarod Charzewski

Clearly more photos are needed. Anyway, now it's 2:30p.m. Sunday and I am STILL in my pajamas and there seems to be popcorn all over the kitchen... that's to say that the night ended late and well. Got a lot of writing to do today and guys, can we puh-lease do something about these roaches in the kitchen?! Oh yeah-- the Blume art-disco fest is on Thursday and mid-terms next week, and the ocean's now too cold for a swim, and the research is actually coming along, and a morning of blogging's got my wheels a turn-turn-turnin'. Good riddance and good rubbish!

All that's to say: Charleston for a klash of reasons, I love. love. love thee.

Symphony slays hyperreal

2010-10-10T13:20:00.002-04:00

Friday night was Beethovan's 9th at the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. Their 75th Anniversary concert, really more of an attempt to save to save the musical sinking ship, turned out to be a parlay of local power and a glorious slaying of the hyperreal (see PiT 5.1). Pow! Thinking about the concert, it struck me how our idea of concert music today typically includes a three-man band and a Macbook. Usually we hear music through headphones or at best, laptop and car speakers. I know a few coolies with old turntables and acoustic guitars, but I would still say that our idea of "music"has been outsourced to the output of modern technology. But thank God, in Charleston, as of last night, there still exists the symphony. And at the symphony, there are no microphones, no amplifiers, no cords, no cables, no screaming and dancing to computer chip music-- just 300 musicians, 2,700 audience members...music directly from pipe to ear.

Below I've pasted an article I wrote for the Chas. Mag. Newsletter, Oct. 2010 (from whence the tickets came). Music from the spectacle can be heard on the CSO 75th website.

Charleston Symphony Orchestra rings Ode to Joy

Beethovan’s Symphony No. 9-- you’ve got to know it. It’s that triumphant tune that rings fireworks of “Ode to Joy” that stop your mind reeling and turn your heart heavenward. If you don’t know the one, try the Charleston Symphony Orchestra’s 75^th Anniversary concert webpage and you’ll hear what we’re talking about. But the real question is not have you heard it, but have you heard it live?

The Charleston Symphony Orchestra will celebrate 75 years of Holy City music making with a gala event larger than any symphony performance we’ve seen around here in a decade. The three-piece concert will be under the graceful baton of world-class maestro Stuart Malina, who conducted the New York Pops in Carnegie Hall in 2007 and won a TONY Award alongside singer-songwriter Billy Joel for the orchestration of Broadway-hit musical Movin’ Out in 2003.

Struck by the economic crisis, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra chose what is arguably Beethovan’s most genius masterpiece to make a clear statement: our local philaharmonic is sustainable, supportable, and oh-so jaw-dropping. The force of 180 voices matched with the strength of a 90-member orchestra will float, startle and mesmerize the audience through a program hand-selected to show off the ensemble’s dynamic range.

Opening with the dramatic fanfare of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, the program glides into Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espangol to showcase the talent of soloists and individual sections. Not until the end will the Gaillard Auditorium quake with the power of “The Choral,” Beethovan’s ninth and final symphony.

“We fully expect the Gaillard to sell out for this concert, attracting a broad cross-section of the community,” says Daniel Beckley, Chairman of the 75^th Anniversary Concert Committee. “We have already heard of people who have never attended a symphony concert before purchasing tickets.”

Despite the precariousness of the economy, Charleston remains a renaissance city for the arts. If anything can reinvigorate local support for the exhilaration of live classical music, a standing-ovation program like this one can. No longer is the symphony orchestra reserved for patrons of small chamber halls, says Beckley. “This concert is about everyone hearing and feeling live orchestral music, the anticipation is tangible. This music has the power to unify.”

Keyword: Racial Breakdown

2010-10-06T17:43:00.001-04:00

Turn to the Opinion section of this week's GSO and you will find my article about Eric Fisher's Racial Breakdown maps (found originally on Matthew's blog). Unfortunately, the images printed in black and white kind of kill the point of the article... So here are the images blown-up and in-color. The printed article is copied and pasted below.

These maps show the racial breakdown of America's largest cities with each dot representing 25 people. Red for white, Blue for black, Green for Asian, Orange for Latino/a.

DETROIT: notice the straight-line break along 8 mile road

WASHINGTON, D.C. : notice the famous east/west side divide

LOS ANGELES: hello Hispanics

NEW YORK CITY: diverse, yes, but integrated?

SAN ANTONIO: well mixed, but happy?

George Street Observer: Sept. 30, 2010

Yesterday, while panning the blogosphere, I came across Eric Fisher’s maps of the racial breakdown of America’s largest cities on the UK’s Daily Mail site. Of course we have heard of infamous black-white divides in cities like Detroit and Washington D.C. and the influx of Hispanics in Southwestern cities like Los Angeles and Houston, but Fisher’s maps color code the truth about the American melting pot. The maps are speckeled, some more colorful than others, with each dot representing 25 people: red for White, blue for Black, orange for Hispanic, and green for Asian.

Now my family hails originally from the Detroit area, where the urban center, known by locals as the ‘hood, is known for being poor, rough, and dangerous. But the way that Fisher’s maps show a linear divide right down the infamous 8-mile-- red dots on one side, blue dots on the other--is startling. It’s like barbed-wire fence cuts the city in half.

On the New York City map, the dots are so concentrated it’s as if a child colored them in with a marker. You can see the white space of Times Square with red color blocks on either side. The Jersey shore is predominantly orange and Brooklyn is decidedly blue. Looking for Chinatown? It’s that neon green knot on the bottom of Mannhattan.

As I was looking at these maps, I started wondering, what would Charleston look like? If I gave CofC students red, blue, orange, and green markers and a map of the city, how would they color it? I’m not looking at any Census data here, but my guess is there probably would not be a lot of green downtown, except perhaps to represent the slew of visiting Asian physicians at MUSC. Orange? I hear there is a strong Brazilian population in Goose Creek, and many other Hispanics in surrounding areas, but downtown? I’m not so sure. My guess is that the peninsula could be flanked with blue and red. South of Broad? Red. Colonial Lake? Red. Burke High School? Blue. Nassau Street? Blue. But what about the streets we students live on? I’m thinking about Rutledge, Ashley, Spring, Cannon, King, St. Phillip, and surrounding streets. Or better yet, what about the College of Charleston?

I wonder what a map like this could tell us about our city and how we could use the information to be better, more open-minded residents. Is there a city planning problem that is not being addressed? Why is it that a Civil War racial divide persists between the rich and the poor? How does the College contribute to the integration of blue and red dots in downtown neighborhoods? Do we represent progress or a threat to racial diversity?

Racial integration in urban environments is a tricky thing. I am not sure it is possible or desirable to have a mucky brown city map with all of the colored dots melted together. I think that when different people groups band together, they can, as a united body, contribute to cultural diversity. The question for me is how can being aware of the divides in Charleston teach me to better embrace and learn from them?

Check out Eric Fisher’s maps at http://www.dailymail.co.uk, search keyword: racial breakdown

Dried Squid and Mochi Balls

2010-10-04T21:48:00.001-04:00

"I want something to HAPPEN!" I don't know what that something is, but it better be something good. But waiting for something to fall upon us suits me not at all. Making things fall upon us, or us falling upon things-- that suits me much much better. So when the glee collided with ennui this passed Saturday, me, M. and Sanaz headed to North Charleston (also known as the 10th most dangerous city in America, after Detroit and Flint of course) to play around at the enormous Asian supermarket on Rivers Ave. We all had our reasons: Sanaz was looking for Mochi ice cream balls-- these frozen, gelly coated lumps that her sister gets from her Asian friends at school, M. has a thing for oriental pastes, i.e. miso, and uh.. well, I don't know what else, and I really just wanted to browse the science project shelves.

The first thing to greet you at the door, aside from the rows of smiley Buddhas, is the smell. I can't quite pin point it, something like dead fish and soy sauce and maybe a little mold. It's kind of like the apocalypse happened and the remaining survivors filled up an old BiLo with a sea-scraping of 100 shipping containers from China and maybe three or four from Mexico. There are dry packaged bonbons with happy pandas and Hello Kittys on the boxes that seem very extra-terrestrial to me. Like they were made by slave children or like they were dug out of a bomb shelter or something. There are glass jars of eel, fish eyes, jujubes, livers, kidneys, that's not to mention the dried goods-- An entire bin of dried squid, dried minnow-looking fish in snack-size bags, dried puffer fish... I think what made it so eerie was the lack of shoppers. There were only a few cashiers, the claw-hand guy manning the live lobster tank, a little Latina and her madre, and a sinister looking couple scrambling through the lychees.

Here's warum Deutsch ist IMPOSSIBLE!

2010-09-29T22:52:00.000-04:00

I've finally figured out why Germans speak English so well. It's not because they have genetically gifted tongues, no, no, no... it's because their language is simply impossible! Let's look at the word "impossible".. zum Beispiel. French: impossible, Spanish: imposible, Italian: impossibile, German: unmöglich.

If it's not the ridiculous words that bring you down (Führerausweis, Blumenzweibel, Wirtschaftwissenschaft, Schülerlotse, Amtsführung), it's the word order and the f@#$%@& prepositions!

So here I am studying for my test in German Advanced Grammar and Syntax and I am trying for the life of me to learn all of the ways that Germans say "to think about." If you speak German, and presumably English, read and know just how easy you have it.

Denken an: to think about, to have in mind, to call to mind, to remember. Never used to express deep thoughts.
Woran denkst du gerade? What are you thinking about now?

Denken über: to think about, to judge, to have an opinion regarding the value of something
Wie denkt ihr über den Vorschlag? What do you think about the suggestion?

nachdenken (über): to think carefully/seriously about, to ponder, to reflect upon
Denk mal gut nach. Think hard for a moment.
Darüber muss ich erst mal nachdenken. I have to think about it.

sich überlegen: to think about carefully on something that requires a decision
Wir haben uns noch nicht überlegt, wenn wir zur Party einladen wollen. We have not yet thought about if we want to throw a party.

überlegen: to stop to think about, non-reflexive is used in superficial situations
Ohne zu überlegen, gab er dem Mann seinen Kontonummer. Without thinking about it, the man gave his account number.

halten von: to think about, to have an opinion regarding the value of something
Was hält dem Chefin von dem Plan? What does the boss think about the plan?

halten für: to think about, to consider to be (followed by adjective)
Halten Sie den Mann für einen guten Menschen? Do you think about (of) this mann as a good person?

That's seven ways to say the same thing, except it's not the same thing because there are seven different ways to say it. And if you say it incorrectly, it doesn't mean the same thing. Or if you say something you don't mean, it doesn't make any sense at all. I'm going to have to think about this for a while (Ich muss darüber nachdenken....right?)

Anyway, blog updated? check. Test reviewed? check check. If two birds were sitting on my window right now, I'd take pleasure in killing them with one huge stone. RoAr!

Lost highway

2010-09-29T16:51:00.002-04:00

We think it could lead us out of the Holy City.

Head Portrait

2010-09-26T17:49:00.002-04:00

"Nur die Vorstellung lohnt die Mühe, nicht die Verwirklichung."

(only the imagination is worth the effort, not the realization)

Tim Hussey: "Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to squeeze praise out of this town."

"In the economically developed world, the disappearing public sphere plays people into the hands of the social web. Where can you meet face to face except in a noisy café, a transitory undifferentiated mall, or a parking lot? The French philosopher Marc auge adds highways, airports, and hotels to this list and calls them “non-places.” Where do you go and play as a suburban kid when your parents are too scared to let you explore the deep dark woods? Add a dose of American culture of fear and American individualism and it’s not just youth that is affected."

-- Trebor Scultz,"Where the Activism Is," Digital Media and Democracy, dug up in bachelor's essay research

New resolution-- see Infos on profile:

I try to keep my Facebook friends under 100 by making reonal, it's just keeping the virtual in line with reality. Hope to stay in touch.

Dear Legs, two men one writer does not a good decision make. -LA

Two biographies one weekend does also not a good decision make

"Vincent began a diary she called Rosemary, in which she charted the upheavals of her domestic life and of her struggle to surpass the limits of a Camden girlhood. If Rosemary provides the mementos of that girlhood, it also bears witness to Millay's passionate interior life, which was never entirely bound to her family or at east within her community." -- Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Paris in June 1939 was sparkling. The chestnut trees were in blossom and the air was warm. Ella Maillart, who, at thirty-six, had already found considerable fulfillment in her independent way of life, suddenly found tears streaming down her cheeks. 'It was as if the flesh and spirit of Paris were maimed, martyred, torn apart and as if I had become a mass of compassion large enough to envelope the whole witty capital I knew so well." --The Cruel Way: The voyages of Ella K. Maillart

Tavi Gevinson of Style Rookie at Dior Spring, Paris

"Tavi Says..." in this week's New Yorker: Tavi lives on a quiet street, in a 1910 American Foursquare house. It's exterior-- blue aluminum siding, woodsy overgrowth, jungle gym-- wasfailiar from the modelling photgraphs on Style Rookie. Inside, the house has the sam hodge podge look as the blog. Every inch of floor and table space is crammed with stuff: guitars, books, plaster-of-Paris sculptures, a loom. Tavi's mother, Berit-- a weaver and a part-time Hebrew instructor--came downstairs in bare feet...Assessing the clutter, she said "It's a work space. If the kids are playing with toys, I don't think they should have to clean up the project until the project is done."

Yesterday I saw a leaf fall red. I went to the beach with mom and saw the sun set gold. Kristen, you think and do at the same time. ROAR! to the old life. ROOAAR! to the new.

Zine Season

2010-09-18T21:24:00.003-04:00

Premature in Theory issue 5 is well, done. It's kind of just sitting here, spread all over my room, waiting to be put together. It's been nearly a YEAR (gups!) since I've put out an issue! I thought I had the printing and production down to a science, but then Issue 4 was so tedious-- I sewed the bindings on the train from Berlin to Basel-- that I shelved my zine-ing for a bit. But blogging just doesn't satisfy! I need to print things too. I need to cut and paste and pull out my hair and rack my brain and fear reception and all that. I need to fuss over margins and straight edges and fret that the page numbers are not right. I need, what I really need, is to create something to hold, more solid than webcode, more concrete than concrete. You can read it, you can pass it around, you can throw it away if you want-- I don't care as long as I can put it in your hands.

The new theories are exceptionally personal. I hope you don't mind. Naturally, they are as aloof and fetal and lacking as ever, but my head has been exploding over and over with a million neuron bombs, so being trivial just for the heck of it would be a waste of glue sticks. Of course there are some pagination problems (some will get special editions with 5.3 in front of 5.2) and I cut some words off the edges, but thanks to dad's gift of printer and outrageously expensive Epson ink (like holy cow!), they look well, satisfactory.

Comment, email, facebook, text your address if you want one. I'm printing 50 copies, I have 39 done and I am waiting for ink cartridge #2 to arrive. And if you can spare a dollar, friend, I'd be most grateful. If not, I await your response of awe and/or disgust via email or (preferably) post.

Cheers,

Kristen

Speaking of Waves...

2010-09-17T20:26:00.002-04:00

The heat broke in Charleston this week-- ever so slightly, it's feeling a little like fall. I've closeted my sandals for the winter and am breaking in some lace-up powerhouse boots that make me want to climb the Matterhorn. The temp still sizzled at 86 (30) degrees today-- and while a jacket seemed seasonably in tune with the morning breeze and leaves, a bathing suit and surf suited us better.

Colin's been working on my surf technique... I wouldn't say that Sanaz and I are one with the swell quite yet--I had my first solo riding session today and the ocean swirled me like a washing machine. But, I've been standing up on the board maybe 60% of the time and managed to catch a nice long ride a few times. Once you've done it, it's not so hard to understand where the surfer dudes and dudettes came from. Cliché, maybe, but it IS a rush, even on the baby waves, you feel this power pushing you back into the shore, back where you belong--but then you pull your feet out from under you and stand yourself up.

The heat should hold out for another month I think, enough time to ride and conquer the Peninsula. As long as Sanaz keeps giving me a lift to the Isle and Colin brings his board, who knows? Maybe I could manage the title of pseudo-sometimes-surfer? A gidget away from the real thing.

Thank God for the Second Wave

2010-09-15T11:25:00.000-04:00

Just when you start to think that we got an awfully long way to go girls, Glamour Magazines 1969 and 1971 come crumbling out of the Community Thrift Store to tell you that progress has been more than a sake of progress. If (kill me for saying it!) we still have to do 'bang me boys' advertising, at least we can flaunt our Gaga prowess. Anything's better than these weakness-at-a-lovely-price publicités that our mummies were raised on. Don't stop saying no! to the plastic and thank God you are not the first to do it.

Fresh baked Kibbles n' Bits

2010-09-10T10:09:00.000-04:00

I started this post while on the great American road trip and forgot about it, but as a nod to my snobself and Eurocounterparts, I deem it still too culturally significant to go unpublished.

So what's the deal America? We can't find a fresh baguette or buttery croissant anywhere to speak of, but every city boasts a gourmet DOG BAKERY! Inside, not only can you bring your pooch in, but you can select (with his help of course) homemade, oven-baked goodies to reward him for rolling over and pooping outside. La carte du jour? Boxer Brownies, Drooly Dream Bars, Frosted Pupcakes, Razzle Waggle Puptarts, Beastro Biscotti, Ciao Wow Foccacias, Snicker Poodles.... Woof! And we're not talking about some pukeable Paris Hilton poodle spa in Beverly Hills. No, no... all of these pop-ups were taken by my point and shoot in America's middleclassiest of cities. And they say our economy is tanking?!

Asheville, NC

Philadelphia, PA

Greenville, SC

Pittsburgh, PA

Michelle says we're just gonna have to roll our own dough on the weekends. But there is just no way that can be as good as fluffy, fresh Alpine bread for 1 franc before 9 am. And I am talking about the kind withOUT beef flavoring (ahem!).

The Women

2010-09-07T22:03:00.000-04:00

You know how there are certain thinkers, certain ouvrages that just stay with you? Of course there are a gazillion that you like for one reason or another, but there are a select few that your mind goes back to. There are five female avant gardistas that are currently occupying five different spheres in my head. In someway, I want to be all of them, or I hope that they, their work, their eyes show me something about who I want to be.

Philosopher: Chloe Delaume

Chloe Delaume

I first encountered Chloe Delaume in a class I took in Fribourg on the contemporary French novella. Without knowing who she was or what she wrote, I signed up to do a presentation on her largely because it was scheduled to be the second to last in the semester. Once I got my hands on her primary works, most of which are young, critical, and highly philosophical, I could not get this idea of media-generated hyperreality out of my head. Delaume uses this metaphor of "les oiseaux morts," the idea that the television sends out armies of birds that fly into our open and available minds, flap around for a minute as we laugh and enjoy our program, and then die inside our heads. We have no way to get them out, so their dead bodies just lay there, taking up space until there is no room for anything else. But then I started thinking about how hyper-realism has permeated into everything, the idea that what we know, what we buy, what we value is fabricated to be so real that it is more than real. It exists only because it exists to us.

More on Chloe Delaume (french):
www.chloedelaume.net
J'habite dans la television, 2006
Corpus Simsi, 2003
Dans ma maison sous terre, 2009

Writer: Gertrude Stein


Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein in their salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus, 1923

I know, I know-- grouchy old Gertrude. But I don't care what anybody says, she is the only woman who ever told Picasso and Hemingway what's what and her words have a staying power that, in my opinion, none of the other Lost Generationers could find. When I write, I try to roll my wheels like hers, when I seek friends, I try to seek people as she did, when I say what I think, I think about how she would've said it. She was a genius, and if you asked her, she would've told you herself: "I think I am a genius." There is power in that-- knowing when you are on to something, knowing when you have it, knowing how to sustain it. Gerty knew.

More on Gertude Stein:
The World of Gertrude Stein
"I think the reason that I'm important is that I know everything."
"It's not what France gave you, but what it did not take from you that was important."
"to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write."
"Is it worse to be scared than to be bored? That is the question." -G.S.

Icon: Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda Fitzgerald in tutu

Zelda Fitzgerald, wife to F. Scott of course, is my beautiful, wild, untameable, destructable icon. Your classic American muse for the most pureless of reasons, she threw ghastly parties for all the right people, convinced herself she could be a prima ballerina at age 30, emptied her soul into a book that was never read, screamed ferociously at her husband, traumatized her daughter, drank away her sorrows, died in an asylum-- and somehow her story still sparkles with a sort of fascinating glamor. She glitters of the Gilded Age, she was everything and had nothing. A beautiful, fashionable, captivating tragedy.

More on Zelda Fitzgerald:
Wikipedia
Zelda, A Biography byNancy Milford
"Mr. Fitzgerald -- I believe that is how he spells his name -- seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home." -ZF

Artist: Niki de Saint Phalle

Niki de Saint Phalle

Niki de Saint Phalle hails from the french school of Nouveau Realism, a movement that I had never heard of until last year. In her early years, she was obsessed with auto-destruction, the idea that we, along with the meaningless materials we create, will eventually self-destruct. She shot bullets into canvases to burst bags of paint slung behind them, she blew things up in the name of art. It was all out of this need to just scream--to make noise, to turn heads, to exist in a way that is so quietly LOUD. Later in her career, her work became strictly feminist. She focused on the demands of her own marriage, the constant competition she felt with her husband, Jean Tinguely. Her art became about the bold, bulbuous bobbles of womanhood--sculptures that are seamless, enormous and inviting.

My Other Place: Rutledge Cafe

2010-09-05T13:51:00.000-04:00

The morning I first moved into the new house (homemaking post still to come, I swear!), I woke up groggy from the fumes of mint ice cream latex paint and the lull of Heineken and Papa John's, coffee being desperately in order. Four houses and a highway up the street sits the long lost Rutledge Coffee and Cream, a kind of Holy City hippie hole that I only knew from my pre-urban dwelling days. I remember stopping in there once for a vegan burrito, running my fingers on the sooty counter and never going back. But sometime between my Swiss revolution and my Charleston restitution, the place closed, reopened under new management, and closed again.

Now it's reOpen again, this time under the heart and direction of Yasmine and Sam Mongy. The first morning I stopped in, I was delighted by the way the coffee bar contained all the best cream n' sugar accessories that never seem to be in my own fridge. You know, the Irish creme, the raw sugars, the whip cream and cinnamon on top... I walked out only $2.50 lighter with two gigantic javas in hand. I later went back to do a cover story for the George Street Observer about new and obscure local eateries when I officially met Yasmine and Mongy. They hail originally from Egypt, but moved here from Long Island two months ago where they left their conventional suburban jobs and opened the cafe July 24. Since then, they have been there from 7 am to 7 pm, 7 days a week struggling to get the place on its feet. Everyday, Yasmine makes the falafel, the baklava, and the babaganoush all from scratch. The floors and counters are scalded pristine and the sugar packets are neatly rearranged in symmetrical rows. The task of shedding the armpit reputation of the previous manager has meant a slow building loyalty, but as word spreads that there is indeed a sunny, non-threatening, budget-friendly restaurant above the crosstown, more and more students be stoppin' by.

Yasmine and I chatted it up for a while, I helped her set up a facebook page (Rutledge Cafe, ReOpened & ReVamped) and we ought to be working on a blog too. Her son sat down for help with his English homework, Sanaz dropped by for help with her Arabic homework, and we all talked about the cafe's survival skills.

In a new Sunday morning tradition, me and others brunched on falafel and sabosas today(a $5 meal, might I add) and were delighted to find that the cafe was miraculously full. Yasmine said that it was full yesterday too-- and not with the usual little black children asking for a sample of the"free wifi," but with students (the paying kind). Word of mouth, facebook, and menus in mailboxes is a powerful thing. When ever the Mongy's are ready to hire an extra employee so they can get out and enjoy this beautiful city, I really hope they will hook me up with a j-o-b.

Head Portrait

2010-08-30T22:45:00.001-04:00

German Expressions of Opinion:
Mir scheint, dass...
Meiner Meinung nach...
Ich bin der Meinung, dass...
Meiner Erfahrung nach...
Soweit ich das beurteilen kann,...

The lynchpin person is the one who somehow, in some small way, detonated the very sequence of events that changed everything. I have a lynchpin person, she sits behind me. She has no idea.

"I don't mean no disrespect girl. But wit legs like dat, you could be in Hollywood."
--neighborhood gent @ Sanaz

Last film of Charleston's French Film Festival will stay with me for a while. A chilly validation of high school fantasy, a mon avis.

TheSartorialist-- Summer in the City

CHARLESTON CRITICAL MASS

Critical Mass is a bicycling event typically held on the last Friday of every month in over 300 cities world.^[1] While the ride was originally founded in 1992 in San Francisco with the idea of drawing attention to how unfriendly the city was to cyclists,^[2] the leaderless structure of Critical Mass makes it impossible to assign it any one specific goal. In fact, the purpose of Critical Mass is not formalized beyond the direct action of meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city or town streets on bikes.

"People think we're guaranteed to exist, but I'm worried, really really worried. Sometimes I want to just ride around on my bike with a megaphone: 'You! Put down the plastic cup!'" --Katie

Beautiful, honest, funny award-winning magazine article sent to me by Devi. Someday if I write for a magazine, please let me write like this:

"The American Male at Age Ten" by Susan Orlean

If Colin Duffy and I were to get married, we would have matching superhero notebooks. We would ' wear shorts, big sneakers, and long, baggy Tshirts depicting famous athletes every single day, even in the winter. We would sleep in our clothes. We would both be good at Nintendo Street Fighter II, but Colin would be better than me. We would have some homework, but it would not be too hard and we would always have just finished it. We would eat pizza and candy for all of our meals. We wouldn't have sex, but we would have crushes on each other and, magically, babies would appear in our home. We would win the lottery and then buy land in Wyoming, where we would have one of every kind of cute animal. All the while, Colin would be working in law enforcement probably the FBI. Our favorite movie star, Morgan Freeman, would visit us occasionally. We would listen to the same Eurythmics song ("Here Comes the Rain Again") over and over again and watch two hours of television every Friday night. We would both be good at football, have best friends, and know how to drive; we would cure AIDS and the garbage problem and everything that hurts animals. We would hang out a lot with Colin's dad. For fun, we would load a slingshot with dog food and shoot it at my butt. We would have a very good life.

Put Out the Fire Boys


DH Lawrence with Aldous Huxley, 1929 (looking just fine to me)

How do fish sleep?

2010-08-29T01:13:00.000-04:00

I met Holland for the first time in two years this week. She is now (da-da!) four and a HALF! My first two years of college, I had her (and her broken stroller, and her diaper bag, and her lunch box, and her "luggage") three times a week. She was my light. I know I sound all mommy, but there is something to watching babies grow. When I first started caring for her, she had just learned to walk and was speaking only in very sophisticated baby sign. Within a year, she was running and jumping and had a very dynamic cast of imaginary friends including Unk and Unk, the ocelots and Mince, Moe, & Mae, her sisters eternally snowed in up in Boston. She learned the genus and species of every fish in the aquarium and could tell anyone who asked who was running for President.

If she was all that when she was two, imagine my delight in running around with her now that she is almost five. She has graduated from the caterpillar group to the butterfly group in preschool and says that she doesn't play so much with the other kids because they don't understand her games. She enlightened me to the fact that "some bugs eat bugs", that her two imaginary sisters in Boston now have a daughter, that fish have no eyelids and never stop swimming, and that when she was a "little girl" she used to pee her pants. We played Groovy Girls and held hands crossing the street and shared a frozen yogurt with fruit loops and cocoa pebbles.... I'll take that over housekeeping and pencil sharpening any old day.

I go to school now

2010-08-27T14:17:00.002-04:00

"Do you ever get this feeling when you are walking around on campus that the people aren't really there, that they could dissolve into sand and any moment and blow away in the wind?" -- M.

It's school time. And this year there was no supply shopping, no new pencil smell, no anticipation or preparation. Only anxiety, really. It's been a head crisis, a not-knowing where to insert myself back in. It's been an American grind-- an expensive, stressful over-extension, a killing to get in and a dying to get out, a re-plan of the re-plan to dry my hands in December and be on my merry way in the world. On the flight back from Switzerland, I resolved myself to just finish my thesis, get a degree (any degree) and move on to the next thing... buuuut... it's not supposed to happen that way. I've known it all along and the 4-year plan has to run it's course. The Media Studies degree will be had, the #@!%ing French degree will be finished, the German minor (god help me, someday I will talk it) will be course-ed through... and if it means anything to anybody, I will be an "Honors" student. The scholarships will be exploited to every last penny. Maximization is the only way I know how to walk away.

Classes:

African Literature of the French Expression
Le Concept de Marketing (mon Dieu!)
Studio Art Approaches to Third Wave Feminism
Wirtschaft Kommunikation auf Deutsch
German Advanced Grammar and Syntax
Bachelor's Essay: Ethical Interviewing of Immigrant Populations (or something like that)

And despite that Charleston seems to reek of pubescent sweat, despite that my fellow French students show no sign of actually parlay-ing fran-SAY, despite that I can't always think of a good reason to actually be IN college--I want to learn. I want to study. I want to be here. I think it's my people that will be my saving grace to see it through.

We got the fleas out of our house (full-fledged home-making post to come) and the roaches are finally packing their bags. The boys shall be moving in soon and as long as my smarty-pants keep coming over to hang out on our couch, I will survive it all with laughter and eye-rolling. I'll take art and feminism debates, Dakota Fanning and other gossip, vegan guilt-trips, french-presses and organic spicy wheat beer, Katie's rants against plastic bags, Sanaz's fear of surf conversion, and scrutiny of my magazine collection and generic canned vegetables over the surreal sand people any day. It's not about fitting myself back in, it's really more about sustenance.

Drugs and Addiction paging Dr. Kraus

2010-08-19T14:02:00.002-04:00

You would never know that Sarah Kraus studies... pharmacy. Not that I don't think she is perfectly well-suited to such a lofty forte, it's just that she's so, well-- cool. It's the bleached out cut-offs and microfloral-print rompahs, the sexy, straight i-don't-give-a-sh*t hair, the miss-phila-sassy know how, Lolita on the coffee table, Bob Marley on the wall... How is it then that she fraternizes, or should I say sororitizes, with A-list med-school over-achievers who have no idea that Late Renoir is showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art? Not that her pals aren't all nice people and cool in their honor roll kinda way, but I think Sarah belongs in Charleston with us. I'm just saying.

I met Sarah by-way of Lauren who met her by way of Christian high school. The way I've heard it, their shared their lonely child onliness, obsession with Czech teenagers, and love of strange and beautiful food brought them together. Me, A and C were lucky enough to sleep on blow-up beds in her big-porched, fire-staired, pre-war half of house.

Over cappuchos and a vegan cookie at the Green Line Cafe in West Philly, Sarah and I talked of ambitious vocation and creative frustration (and just how shoot fine Xavier is in that new Julia Roberts movie...).

K: I was wondering, since you are studying pharmacy, what do you think about all the corruption we hear about within the pharmaceutical industry?

S: Like how do you mean?

K: I mean, we are always hearing that Americans are over-drugged, that people want a pill for everything, that doctors are puppets to pharmaceutical reps, that insurance companies have financial interests in the drug industry....

S: I mean yeah, a lot of that stuff is true, and it's a big problem, but that's why we need more pharmacists. Pharmacists are the ones who actually know about drugs, how they should be distributed, mixed, handled. Doctors actually know very little.

K: So it's kind of strange that we get our prescriptions from doctors then.

S: For sure! Doctors are trained to diagnose problems, they don't know anything about drugs, but they know that their patient wants some kind of answer, so they write them a prescription-- usually based on what they know from drug reps and advertisements...

K: who WANT people to be medicated, consumers of their product.

S: Right. But it's like, if a patient comes in with anxiety problems and the doctor tells them to take a week off work, get more rest, eat healthier-- they are just going to go to another doctor who will write them a prescription.

K: So it seems like there is this huge gap: Patients go to doctors who diagnose their problem who then write them a prescription. The patient takes it to the pharmacy, the pharmacist disagrees with the dosage, and has to call the doctor who doesn't know anything about the other medications the patient is taking just to get permission to change it.

S: Right, then in the end, the pharmacist fills the prescription as the doctor says. If she doesn't fill it, the patient will take her business to another pharmacy that will.

K: So it's pretty much all about money. It doesn't really matter what the pharmacist knows about the drug. Most patients think their doctors are gods. There is no way they are going to listen to a twenty-something pharmacist at Walgreens, even if she happens to know WAY better than the doc.

S: That's sort of true-- it is frustrating. Pharmacists are so educated, but so powerless. The most they can do is talk with the other pharmacists in the area to map out the local addicts and try to talk reason into the doctors.

K: So where do you want to fit into all of this?

S: I'm not sure. I know that certain States are trying to put pharmacists in doctors offices. This would be the best thing... the doctors could see the patient, diagnose them, then send the pharmacist in to write the prescription. I'm also interested in working in a hospital pharmacy where you have more connection with the doctors and patients.

K: I never thought about it, but there SHOULD be pharmacists in doctor's offices. Why is healthcare in America so backwards?!

S: There is also the whole herbal side of pharmacy that I find really interesting. But I still don't know exactly.

K: I know, Xavier Bardem is just so hot! (not really, but the conversation eventually ended there two coffees and a rainstorm later)

Sarah and Steve Evans near South Street, Philadelphia

Sarah's street

Outside the Betsey Ross House (yes, Betsey Ross)

Pittsburgh Pittstop

2010-08-15T22:50:00.000-04:00

"Isn't Pittsburgh kind of a tough town?" my mom asked. Other words associated with Pittsburgh: dirty, sooty, stinky, rough... but I say it's none of the above. Though we really made our Pittstop to see Val, I was surprised and delighted by the efficient, neighborly, unsprawled, contentment these urban dwellers live in. The houses are close together, built into hills, down the street from Jewish bakeries and yoga pop-ups. People bike to work, grow little gardens, park on the street, walk their dogs, haul their own trash. It's just superbia!

Val's family hails from Bulgaria and landed in Squirrel Hill, Pitts. circa 1990. Their home is decidedly AmeroEastern European intentionally decorated with only lovely and useful things. Dolls and figurines brought from the homeland, red and orange clay oven pots on the shelves, fantastically retro peach tiles in the bathrooms, international newspapers on every table, sightly scared tomato pickins' on the counter, A Clockwork Orange on the coffee table, shoes in a pile at the front door. Val's mom made us a traditional recipe of pork stuffed peppers (well, actually turkey in case any of us were kosher) and cucumber feta salad. Between the four people in their family, they speak German, French, Russian, Bulgarian, Danish, Ukrainian? and a bit of Turkish. Well, actually, correction: her mom says she doesn't know German and Turkish, but she gets her news from deutsch podcasts and is planning to retire in a villa on the Bosphorus.

Head Portrait, The Road Edition

2010-08-15T13:32:00.002-04:00

All the drive time, the museum time, the corner bakery time, the diner time, the gas pumping time has got my wheels turning endlessly. The likes and don't likes keep stacking up, the beauty and the ugly have got me thinking about aesthetics and urban living, reality and hyperreality, foliage and concrete. With a wish to nail it all down, here's what I can muster:

Alexander Calder, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Alexander Calder is an American sculpturist who got his start in 1920's Paris with his famous toy circus. During the 40's and 50's, he built his most famous mobiles (also stabiles) using iron, glass, wire, cloth, porcelain, any material he could find and re-use. His pieces balance themselves with mathematic perfection. There are no starting points, there are no toppling points, each line and curve counterbalances the next. You know those plastic birds that you could miraculously balance on your finger when you were a kid? Calder uses the same idea, but with beauty and complexity that blows me away.

Exhibition Notes, 8/8/10

Mobiles vs. Stabiles, motion/ station
BALANCE, finding the point of... in everything
primary colors, the separation of yellow and red is better than orange
garbage materials: pottery pieces, bike reflectors, absinthe spoons, bottle caps, etc.
Paris, 1926 "Cirque Calder"

Milk and Honey Cafe, Bucktown, Chicago

Bucktown has what downtown Chicago has not: green, space, bikes, parks, dogs, neighbors. Milk and Honey Cafe has what Starbucks has not: white sunlight, avocado-gouda sandwiches, $1.20 coffee, vegan cookies, regulars. I like the idea of third place, not home, not school-- I'd like to find one like this.

Sane city living: Pittsburgh, PA

"Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, the, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics..." -- Jonathan Raban, Soft City (1974)

"In this big bustling city [Chicago] where the noise and the hectic of the downtown traffic seem to suck up all your energy and numb your senses and all the BAD and GOOD of the people hit you right in the face, you have to find your own little space of peace. Like listening to June anderson adore the Art of Balance or finding treasures in hippie hideaways, or eating Mamba and sundown while the giant bean is reflecting the endlessness of the universe."
-- Clio Saal, on Chicago and Blues

What I love about America: Diners

endless coffee, half n' half, two slices french toast, fresh fried homefries, two eggs sunnyside up, iron skillet ham, big orange melone slices = $5.95

Ross found a word I've been looking for: Hyperreality

Examples of hyperreality in our world:

magazine photo of a model that has been touched up with a computer.
A well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal).
Any massively promoted versions of historical or present "facts"
Professional sports athletes as super, invincible versions of the human beings.
Many world cities and places which did not evolve as functional places with some basis in reality, as if they were creatio ex nihilo (literally 'creation out of nothing'): Disney World; Dubai; Celebration, Florida; and Las Vegas.
A retail store that looks completely stocked and perfect due to facing, creating a world of endless identical products.
A newly made building or item designed to look old, or to recreate or reproduce an older artifact, by simulating the feel of age or aging.
Weak virtual reality which is greater than any possible simulation of physical reality.

Saugatuck by Sea

2010-08-14T00:28:00.000-04:00

Oh I am getting behind, so many places in such a short amount of time. I thought I would put in a quickie on Saugatuck before throwing myself into my endless list of muses.

On the Michigan hand, this lovely little lake village is about at the pinky joint. Originally, we thought we could take the big boat all the way to Chicago, but considering the big waves and Anna's shaky sea legs, we only made it about three hours down the coast to Saugatuck, an artsy town full of (ahem!) gays, as my grandpa describes it. I would say that it's more of a hand-painted pottery kind of place with your occasional rainbow flag window sticker, but that's me.

I spent more time than most on the Great Lakes as a kid, but never stopped in Saugatuck. I found the little harbour to be a trove of charms. Oversized bay-window cottages, ferry boats, American flags on every telephone pole, apple-pie pittstops, sunlit art studios, and shops that sold nothing but wind chimes and aprons. And aside from the postcard charm, my dad tells me that one time he and my mom camped here on the beach with some windsurfing buddies and a dead deer washed into their tent. I find this story very funny for some reason.

Then of course there was my cousin's "marine" wedding in Holland (the military not the aquatic kind). Anna, Clio and I had high hopes for drunken heros, but ended up riding the train with the kiddies. What can you do but enjoy?

road Talk pt. 2

2010-08-09T10:41:00.000-04:00

K: What is your favorite city, besides the Windy one of course? No wait, I hate superlative questions, I'll rephrase-- Tell me two cities you like and why.

C: My first is definitely Seattle. I stopped there last summer while I was hiking. Maybe it's because I was only there a short time and only saw the best parts of the city, but I really liked the vibe. I remember it as one of the best days-- I separated from my group and saw the city alone doing only what I wanted to do. I went to the independent bookstores, the museums, my kind of travel. I took the ferry, and looking out across the water at the skyline, I remember thinking now I am free.

A: And the other?

C: It's hard to say... Amsterdam. I think I need to be in a place where I feel like I belong, where I can find my way. Amsterdam is a big city, I guess, but it's so small too. When you are there, you can wander around and feel like you live there. I like the art shops, the little places you just couldn't find anywhere else.

K: Anna, yours?

A: Too many. I would say first Zurich, for kind of the same reasons. I did my Erasmus there and I got to know the city really well. It's beautiful and cozy, there's the lake around you and all of the sidewalks are clean. You can get around without ever having to go underground. Also, there are a lot of different kinds of people. The ones I met seemed, well cool.

A: The other, I would say New York, no, Charleston, no New York. You can walk around New York and be completely anonymous. Completely surrounded by people, you can still be completely alone. On one hand I like the coziness of Zurich, but on the other I like the chaos of New York... it's strange.

C: Kristen?

K: Pardon the cliche, but Paris. Always Paris. I think I must be a francophile.

C: You ARE! You for sure are!

K: I love how no matter where you are in Paris, you KNOW you are in Paris. It's the buildings, the cafes, the corners, the Art deco, the parisiens. Call me bourgeois and all that, but I kind of like the snobbery of it all. The chicness, the exclusiveness. It's like if you can just crack those people, you can be on the inside of that long long legacy of avant-garde.

A: The other?

K: I'm inclined to say Charleston, or Fribourg, or even Fenton, Michigan... but those reasons are obvious. I'll say Istanbul. It's easy to say because I had a near perfect experience there with Banu's family and I highly doubt that I could navigate the public transport alone... but, I really liked the city. The mix of Europe and Asia, the old backwards Muslim traditions mixed with the gaudy neon lights. The strange street instruments, the wildness of the bazaar, the way I could never get used to the call to prayer, the way the mosques smelled like feet. There are women covered to their eyes and women in American Apparel. It felt like everything that is happening in the world is happening there.

A: Oooo...now I want to add Charleston to my list. I could live in Charleston I think.

K:You both just HAVE to!

A: And Chicago too, we've been here one day, but I really like this city too.

C: I am still undecided. I haven't gotten a good feel. Maybe if we ran into Oprah.

A: Who's Oprah?

(Conversation re-typed from good but imperfect memory sans notes)

Appalachian Trail Terminus

2010-08-09T10:06:00.000-04:00

Last month I posted about my cousin, Cameron Gehrman, who was blistering his way to the end of the Appalachian Trail. I know I already mentioned that he is 18 and hiking solo. But he is 18 and hiked solo. Four pairs of shoes, a beard, kilos and kilos of dried oatmeal and a few less pounds later, he summited alone at the end of Baxter Trail in Maine. Those sticks in his hand? They came with him all the way from Georgia.

Cameron, you are a grown up now? That's what your dad says. I believe. Now you go to the University of Montana, is it? Where all the wide-eyed, done-nothing freshers will make you feel annoyed, excellent, and wise. And thanks for letting us all live through you a little bit.

There's a Zelda in the Attic

2010-08-06T00:30:00.001-04:00

I've been getting into this whole twenties, shock-value, pinup thing lately. Vamped with a new micro bob and mascaraless red lips, I've got the Gilded Age on the brain. Maybe it's the reincarnation of my Zelda obsession (see 12 month ago posts) or my antsiness to hit the Windy City speakeasies-- regardless, this attic is a source of knick-knacking inspiration, all of which I wish to take home. Alas, only the gray flower pompadour and big sparkly saucer earrings found their way into my valise. Surely they shall reappear in public, but where? That IS the question.

We have nearly exhausted Michigan, or Michigan has exhausted us. The lake followed by food followed by lake routine has left us brown, heathen and childish. Kyle and CK have gotten the waverunner flip and the skull-smack-to-water techniques to a science. Anna waterskied today after only three attempts and my less-than-professional instruction. I managed a few meager minutes on the wakeboard, something I will surely never try again. And Clio was subject to horrible therapy at Cedar Point on Monday, where we unintentionally scared the bejesus out of her on the Millenium Force.

Tomorrow we head west, it's Lake Michigan for us. We are taking the big boat to South Haven and maybe to (Papa's gay-man wrist wave) Saugatuk. Jonathan and Kellie "get married" on Saturday and Sunday it's the road again. The picture taking is just getting out of hand-- more to come.

We are here to play

2010-08-01T21:18:00.007-04:00

Michigan is where we come to play. That's all. Play play play. Leave your bachelor's thesis notes in the car, forget about any looming academic decisions, tell your employer that you are suffering from chronic influenza, because this magnificent state on a lake will suck any industry you got and grill it up for dinner with the corn and buffalo burgers. When my grandparents aren't traveling, as they do 80% of the year, they live in Michigan-- and in the summer, so do I and anyone else who enters the lakehouse. It's a brick and window wonder with a deck, dock and porch swing that face the sunset. My aunts, uncles, cousins, friends are always coming and going, yet somehow the fridge is always full of salami and cheese and there is always IBC and Coke in the garage. No matter how many people we pack into the bedrooms, there are always enough life vests and beach towels and seats around the picnic table. It's my coming home to place, a steady steady constant.

This summer, I have finally been able to share my secret lake with somebodies besides a rowdy slew of overwhelmingly male cousins and friends. Anna and Clio have taken to the boat life like corns to the cobs, fishes to the water. Though their extreme tube grip is not quite as tight as mine and they have yet to learn the difference between port, bow, stern, and starboard, they are regular old pros with the good life. Breeze, boats, bugs, books... now they understand my americana.

Head Portrait

2010-07-29T11:42:00.001-04:00

"She said she did not have any plans for the summer. No one was interested in this thing in whether she had any plans for the summer..... Some who were not interested in her not having made plans for the summer were interested in her not having made plans for the following winter. She had not made plans for the summer and she had not made plans for the following winter.... There was then coming to be the end of the summer and she was then not answering anything when any one asked her what were her plans for the winter." --Gertrude Stein, "Harriet"

Michigana Americana= the sweetness of corn, the redness of barns, the swiftness of storms, the coolness of water

"Kristen, did you see the moon last night?

First it was red

then it was orange

then it was yellow

then it was white."

-Gramma Jane

"Carol is like the perfect neighbor from a crazy television show," says Clio of my grandma's neighbor who invites us over for grapes and Biltmore wine to catch up on neighborhood gossip ("Did you know Tom next door is inviting girls over to his hot tub for 'titty Tuesday!?'") via live feed from her four personal security cameras. I think a fully dedicated post is in order, more to come.

Morteza Katouzian, walking a fine line between Iranian realism and surrealism. A fantastic spread of digital tableaux were sent to me from Fribourg cyberspace by my friend Mohammed, prompting me to a bit more research. While he prefers the real, I prefer the wildly abreal... and I think Dali should just step aside for a bit.

In Sweden, Men Can Have it All, NY Times, June 9, 2010 :
"In this land of Viking lore, men are at the heart of the gender-equality debate. The ponytailed center-right finance minister calls himself a feminist, ads for cleaning products rarely feature women as homemakers, and preschools vet books for gender stereotypes in animal characters. For nearly four decades, governments of all political hues have legislated to give women equal rights at work — and men equal rights at home."

"Kerouac had encouraged Burroughs and Cassady to write the story of their own lives, and he had even started his wife Joan on a project to describe her life "in utter detail from beginning to end," telling Cassady that she "reallyknows how to write from instinct & innocence. Few women can do this. Joan Kerouac... a new writer on this old horizon. I see me and her cutting around the world in tweeds, yass..."
--Intro to On the Road, (I think I will need a Jack-size dose of Benzadrine to ever finish it... Can I get some instinct and innocence ova' here?)

Art Deco TankStops

roadTalk pt.1

2010-07-26T01:07:00.000-04:00

En route to Michigan, somewhere between Lexington and Cinncinnati. (Posted with permission)

A: That's the thing about men. They don't talk about their problems like women do. Men do just do what they think, they don't try to work out things by talking with other people. Well, that's just my impression. Like I was in a group project with four guys and me. They all just wanted to do what they wanted to do and they had no inhibitions towards the others. I think that there is more social pressure for women to feel responsible for everyone else.

C: Social pressure? I think that women just have a different way of solving problems and expressing themselves.

A: Yeah, but don't you think power, or the impression of power, is more important to men? It's like the women kind of have to lead in the background. They have to manage everything while still letting the men "manage."

C: I think it depends on the man. I don't know, I agree with you but my opinion of gender roles is always changing. It depends on what I read, what I experience.

K: But don't you think that even still, we play into our gender roles? Like when you first meet a guy that you are interested in, don't you act a little more "female"?

C: It depends, if it's someone I am really interested in, I would try to impress him more, I think. I would try harder to show who I am, to make him think that who I am is interesting.

K: What would you say?

C: I don't know, I would just really try to keep the conversation going. Try to follow his lead, be the good listener and try to respond they way I thought he wanted me too.

A: Like you would follow him?

C: Yeah, I would ask more questions, be a little more like "help me." Not like in an inferior way or anything-- but I learned that guys don't really like it if you are such a know it all.

K: So kind of like playing stupid? Acting less intellectual?

C: It's not like playing stupid...

A: It's just letting the man feel like he can help you in some way-- Like I'm always trying to act nervous and shy.

K/C: You are not that shy, Anna!

A: On the inside, I am shy. On the outside, I always try to be the strong woman, actually I am not.

C: It's all theory, I think. I don't know. I dated this guy for a while-- I was good for him, good for his ego. I thought I would save him, he had all these problems.

K: What's the deal with guys with problems?

C: I know!! They make you feel so special because they tell you all these secrets about themselves.

K: Oh their tortured pasts! It's like they have this little gold nugget they give you to make you feel closer to them.

A: It's like opium! You get addicted to the "closeness."

C: "Oh he showed me his soul!" "He called me in the middle of the night!"

K: I really think part of it is because they don't have anyone else to share their secrets with. They don't seek help from other people's experiences.

C: But this is so hard for guys to do! They always need someone to "save" them. It's like they need a leader.

K: Interesting... didn't we start this conversation saying that men always need to be the leader?

A: Yeah, but that's the difference between their public and private lives. Men are so confusing... and they think we are confusing!

C: Yeah and I am so SICK of these artist types. They are absolutely the worst with all their broken hearts and problems. Give me a fireman!

A: CINNCINNATI!

K: But you have to admit, you like it. You like having someone need you like that.

Caffeine Fingers, Sunsoaked Skin

2010-07-24T00:02:00.001-04:00

The summer sugar and sucre is starting to get to me. The typing need is getting frantic. Time for a writing project. How about a bachelor's essay proposal? That's what I should be working on, but the sand and waves do not permit. While a good interview is long overdue (subject pending) and I've been itching to write about some beautiful Iranian art that Mohammed sent to me, I will still post a wave of beach photos. I think the clarity that the ocean brings merits that.

Living at the beach isn't nothing. It's something big, actually. Something that puts you on the edge of the land mass, the break between where you can stand and where you can't. Having access to open water, being able to go to that edge any afternoon you need, there is freedom in that. It's not vacation. You don't have to maximize sun exposure or surf jumping time. Margharitas and boomboxes are not required. Coolers, bocce ball and beach umbrella stake outs are optional. When you live at the beach, you can just show up. Whenever. You, towel, and a high-tide offering of your headaches, complications, stress. Let the waves pound on you a little bit, let the sun burn you rougey--everything on land seems a bit less important, you are left open, smiling, raw.

SummerFruit

2010-07-22T08:30:00.002-04:00

They say there is nothing bigger than the heart of a volunteer. But a volunteer who's been baked by the sun, eaten by spiders, and propositioned over and over again by piccadoros--it sounds like sadomasochistic resume building, it sounds like Sanaz. Looking to add agriculture credentials to her already stellar Peace Corps application, Sanaz took this haulin', pickin' job at Rosebank Farm on Kiawah Island. Every Tuesday and Thursday since May, she's been out there under the sweat of her brow and the charge of Farmer Sidi (pronounced Side-Eye), a gang of Guatemalens, and old dog Seven. The summer harvest is sweet and sticky-- everything from figs to blackberries to okra to peppers to soybeans to basil to melons to pomegranate-- and the rewards are even more bountiful. It turns out that Sanaz really is becoming the earthy, natural agriqueen she had hoped. It's as if the sun and the mud and the thorns are helping her sort it all out.

Anna and I drove out there really just to have a picnic and pet the mini horses, but Sanaz was able to use her charm and leverage to borrow us a field tour rig. She took us up and down the withering rows, showed us the remnants of the spectacular hydrangea festival, then down to the marsh. Honestly, when she first told me that she was being paid only in peaches and melons for this gig, I thought she was a little coo coo, but it's not that hard to see that the land is giving back to her the love that she puts in.

Weekly Head Portrait

2010-07-18T16:44:00.001-04:00

Agrandir le plan

The daunt of the road trip.

"We don't need to find a bunch of houses we like, we just need to find one."
-M. on house-hunting like wild animals in the Charleston heat

"Yo.
Were are for reals tryna live together.
Call me ASAP" - ZacMallard, ok uh what?!

Lauren Moore Making Things under whirling skies at the artist commune in Minnesota. I see these pictures and I am now glad that she is not here with me.

Alexander Wang, Fall 2010--the edges, the squares and the bellies for me.

Dear Kristen Snackin' Cake,

Someone upstairs, in the world, is extremely angry and about to throw water bottles across the room in a temperature tantrum. It's gonna throw down outside, roaring, roaring, roaring. Funny how scary thunder can be, how comforting and soothing the rain. I love my tin roof. I love my newly expanded big back bedroom. I might even upgrade to a queen-sized bed...

-Lisa-across-the-street, on Holy City monsoons

Fantastic 80's find on Sanaz's fantastic little frame

"She saw it all, and in a measure it was soothing. But it was all external. She didn't really care about it. She was herself, just the same, with all her anger and frustration inside her, and her incapacity to feel anything real. The child irritated her, and preyed on her peace of mind. She felt so horribly, ghastly responsible for him: as if she must be responsible for every breath he drew. And that was torture to her, to the child, and to everybody concerned."

- from "Sun", The Woman who Rode Away. D.H. Lawrence

It's Greener on the Other Side of them Hills

2010-07-15T23:34:00.001-04:00

When Anna Braun comes to town, oh how the music changes. I radiate smiles and tell all my stories, she tells me hers. Everything seems so good. Today we drove up to Asheville, it's only an hour away from Greenville, but it might as well be another country. Like Anna's Deutschland?... no. But like the exact opposite of the uppey city of green. No pure-bred dogs, Clemson tees, John McCain stickers or Coach bags in sight. Rather, a lot of dirty feet, dread locks, old men with guitars, girls without bras, streetside cafes, rockified bluegrass, vegan restaurants, outdoor art, bonsai trees, hand-screened cotton, letter-press cards, organic coffee, great haircuts-- all reaking the essence of cool.

We took to the streets in headbands (with shoes) and ate a picnic on the hot rocks in the park. Watching beautiful boys and hippie boys and wandering boys and music boys and barefoot boys, we roasted in the sun.

Tomorrow we go to Charleston, first priority- house hunting, second priority- beach.

I had to make SOMETHING

2010-07-14T00:43:00.000-04:00

The zines are not coming along. I tried. I brainstormed, mapped them out in a mock-up. I had plans to start a new one, something streamlined, something potent. But my brain has been a land mine lately. The minute I will get on to an idea, I think of recent events. The swirling cyclone of the bizarre and unexpected, the waxing and the waning. So I spread all of my cut outs on my bedroom floor like a crazy and separated the awesome 1985 National Geographics from the not-so-lovely Better Homes and Gardens. Out of respect for my one long-standing obsession of cutting magazines, the sorting was done with divine reverence. Some of the clippings I had kept for years in my ratty shoe box, waiting for something special enough to do with them. I still don't know what that is, perhaps one day I will make one glorified piece of art that I can mock. But for now, the cutting, the gluing, the making-- it's therapy for me, even when the words aren't coming.

When the rain comes

2010-07-12T00:38:00.001-04:00

The rain in July is sublime. In torrents it comes, sheet by sheet, a real monsoon. The clouds collect in twenty minutes, then they become darker, greener, meaner. The leaves swirl in baby wind cyclones and people run out to roll up their car windows. Get Raynor in, mom yells. The trees start to swing. Even the biggest branches make circles. Shhhhhhhhh.... At the first whip crack, we scramble to unplug all appliances of value remembering that time the house was hit by lightning and everything fried. The water begins to fall in big drops, like someone is spitting on us. They smack and sizzle the hot pavement. Steam rises and moves toward us, like those fajitas the sombrero waiter brings. We know the sky is about to open and pour. We rock on the porches and wait. Back and forth, where we can hear the music.

Weekly Head Portrait

2010-07-08T19:02:00.000-04:00

I get these things rolling around up there and I just got to attach them to something. In hopes of not turning A Commonplace Thing into a mental dumping ground, I'm going to start posting portraits of my brain (omitting, of course, certain personal muses) every um... what day is it today? Thursday. Every Thursday, then. Just stuff I need to share-- ideas and art that you should pay attention to.

The geometric fabric glue-quilts of Karin Olah, Redux Artist in Residence, Charleston

Tiny Vine 3

Air Blossom

"September 11th, 2001 saw an act of superlative terrorism carried out against every one of us: not just the hijacking and crashing of planes, but in the way the event was used to hijack and crash the budding sense that we could determine reality for ourselves. This consolidated power in the hands of the US Government, among others, who used it to further paralyze and distract people by starting a series of controversial wars. The question now-- the ultimate question-- on which all of life hinges, is how we can once more reframe the terms of this conflict...The question is now and always is: what can we do ourselves, what can we make of our lives? How can we NOT let the television tell us what to think?"

--Crimeth, Inc. "The Hijacking of Reality," someone was thinking on Sept.12th

Afghan weddings, Virginity-proving ceremonies, Kabul Beauty School by D. Rodriguez

"Didn't they broadcast the SuperBowl in Switzerland? Oh my god. And they clog up our ESPN for an entire month with that World Cup crap. I mean, who really cares?!"

--K. Krawczyk, (Americans may have tunnel vision, but at least they are honest about it)

The teen-love Italian perfection of Ligabue

Agrandir le plan

the great american roadtrip

How to Listen

Major Jackson

I am going to cock my head tonight like a dog
in front of McGlinchy's Tavern on Locust;
I am going to stand beside the man who works all day combing
his thatch of gray hair corkscrewed in every direction.
I am going to pay attention to our lives
unraveling between the forks of his fine-tooth comb.
For once, we won't talk about the end of the world
or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes.
For once, I am going to ignore the profanity and
the dancing and the jukebox so I can hear his head crackle
beneath the sky's stretch of faint stars.

What wild animal is Cameron Gehrman eating today?

2010-07-07T10:26:00.001-04:00

Cameron Gehrman is my cousin who is hiking the entire Appalachian Trail.

Alone.

He is 18.

After graduating early from his high school in Connecticut and being accepted to the University of Montana, he and a friend decided that they wanted to do this. They bought all the right gear and jetted down to Georgia in early February where the 2,178 mi (3,505 km) trail stretching all the way to Maine opens. Well the way I heard it, his friend ditched him after just a week or so because, surprise, the hike was frigid, hard, and exhausting. Cameron said he was slowing them down anyway and he was happy to be rid of him. However, he was not as isolated as you would think up there in the snow because apparently the "thru hikers" develop tight bonds with each other.

Sometime in early April, he made it to Asheville, NC where my parents picked him up and brought him home for one night of hot dinner, soft bed, and clean laundry before taking him right back into the wild. Other than that, my uncle says that he has been living on packets of dried Quaker Oatmeal, nutrition bars and Ramen noodles cooked over a pop can stove. He has no tent, but sleeps on the ground under a tarp or in the hiker shelters scattered along the trail. His pack is 12 lbs and he has been carrying the same sticks for months. He has burned through a few pairs of boots, but my uncle says it is too expensive and inconvenient to leave the trail to buy new ones. Averaging 20 miles per day, he's going like a Cherokee.

Last I heard, he recently passed his house in Connecticut and is on his way to Maine, where the trail is rumored to be the most difficult. His dad will pick him up, bring him home for a bath, and take him out to Montana for freshman orientation. Just when I thought that all the cool people were going extinct.... :)

If you happen to stop at a little mountain internet cafe, Cameron and get a chance to read this, you should know that I am scratching a bug bite on my foot from my puny 6km hike with dad this weekend and thinking about how many you must have. All the Gehrman's are talking about how awesome/totally nuts you are. Good luck to finish!

The Heat Slows Down Everything except my Macbook :)

2010-07-06T21:22:00.000-04:00

Ooooo la la! I got a Macbook today! I could just sing about it! What a beautiful beautiful machine. It's as if it were created by all the saints of computer hardship who have been hearing our woes and prayers all along. Every time my old clunker went black on me, every file I've lost, every hour I've waited to download, it's as if st. such n'such of cyberspace put a penny in my prayer jar and finally sent angels mom and dad to rescue me with this early graduation gift.

I will affiche the photos I wanted to add to my two previous posts and keep my stories running.

This is the South as the Charlestonians don't know it, as the Greenvillers don't know it. The rural wasteland that the developers don't want quite yet. It could still be Faulkner's dream, Morrison's muse. Dad and I laugh as we pull over and choose our caved in photo subjects, but at the same time, the landscape protects it's run-down country charm. The schools may be prehistoric, but a person can still make a living selling boiled peanuts and bait or raising ostriches and rusty radiators. The highway winds up and down for miles and the burnt orange clay stains your tires forever.

F-Mart, "Best Hotdogs in Town," Pumpkintown, SC

Food-Gifts Latte and an Opry, Pumpkintown, SC

Milk and Bait, Walhalla, SC

Table Rock Mountain

Swimming Hole

Even though the peaches are sweeter here...

2010-07-04T16:23:00.001-04:00

It's the Fourth of July--that means sweltering sun and sweet lemonade. I find myself in a bathing suit sharing my lawn chair with my dog and munching away on my summer reading. Nothing could be finer than the austere fences of suburbia and the anticipation of God Bless America tonight (ahem!). The book is the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (thanks Beth!), a little bit The Giver, a little Bradbury, all in sickening Twilight prose with every single chapter heaving you into the next one. Basically, its a here's-how-we-will-end-up-America story where children are put into a reality show to fight to the death much to the glee of rabid-consuming telespectateurs.

Yesterday, dad and I made a hike up Table Rock Mountain, a whopping 3 miles up, up, up. I think we realized about three-fourths of the way that for different reasons we were both too strong and weary to summit. I would really like to post photos (i.e. the magnificence of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the charm of embarrassing local honkey-tonk), but at the moment it is not possible.

I regret to inform that my 2005 Compaq wonder machine has finally bit the dust, the pavement actually. After schlepping the dying bunny all the way across the ocean, it crashed out of the trunk onto the driveway when I arrived home at 4:30 a.m. Now it offers me only a white screen and a sort of humming noise. That means no pictures until I either get a new one or find a way to download them on this primal beast in my living room. I'm working on it...on a whole bunch of things actually-- a new zine, a bachelor's thesis proposal, a few freelance jobs, painting the music room and this idea of a possible garage sale. My how the pace has changed.

More to come, and oh how I hope to get photos (and maybe a Macbook...)

Not so Much to Say

2010-06-29T10:08:00.001-04:00

I will go back to South Carolina tomorrow. My thoughts and feelings about the whole "experience" (blah blah!) are a bit too complicated and trivial to articulate here. So I think I will just throw them in the Sarine and let them go.

Tonight I will be thoroughly fêted chez Guido and PierreYves in the company of my many wonderful lovers. I can think of nothing more wonderful or à propos. I promise to keep my upcoming posts as banal and interesting as always, only now they will steam with the heat of the deep American south. Photos will be hotter, words will be slower, all will be ripe and ready for pickin'. After two weeks with my parents in Greenville, and then a week in Charleston, it will be the road again--this time to Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. The music will be loud, the windows will be open, and Anna and Clio, my two German lovelies looking for Americana, will surely keep me silly and sustained.

All that to say... I need you to keep reading.

becs.

Gruyeres: We Come for Blood not for Cheese

2010-06-27T08:58:00.000-04:00

As promised, Sophie took me to the Musee HR Giger in Gruyeres yesterday. Who is HR Giger? You would probably first know him as the visual effecter of the Alien movies (but now that I think of it, I am not sure I ever actually saw the Alien movies.) Though, I would say that Hollywood has had very little to do with Giger's morbid, twisted, gouge-out-your-eyes, science fiction imagination. Doesn't sound like my thing? I know! But, his death-metal comic book tableaux are so dark and deviant that you can't look away. The best part: The museum is in Gruyeres, the kitchiest of kitch of all Swiss mountain villages. Home of the famous cheese, snowy mountain peaks and a gazillion sun-grazing cows. Sophie told me that Giger chose the village for his museum after testing the land for magical properties. Add that to the sadistic shock value of the 1 million tourists that shepherd through Gruyeres every year in search of Heidi, and you can stop asking yourself why the museum is there.

The more you look at his stuff, the more twisted it seems. Get philosophical with it and it will blow your pure, puny mind. We exploded after an hour or so and headed back to Fribourg to BBQ on the Sarine. The fantasy seemed so electrically real in the womb of the museum, but I have to say that it was easily baked out of my mind by the sun. The water was too glacial for swimming, but bathing suits were in order. After nightfall we took our bronzed bodies to the Festival Belluard and danced like crazy people. Voila! the multiple dimensions.

Better than travel

2010-06-25T04:22:00.002-04:00

I have stayed in Fribourg for two weeks straight with virtually nothing to do, sans responsibilité. Except for a short sojourn at ArtBasel on Sunday and a few translations I am working on, I have whiled away the hours on lawn chairs with lofty books, big white paper and colored pens. There is sun sun sun all through my body and everywhere people who make me feel like they are happy to have me around. The splendid freedom to just drop in, meet up for lunch, lounge in bookstores, read blogs, climb up to the convent just to climb back down, à ce moment, it's so much better than training across the continent. I've taken a liking to finding things I like. I write about them a bit, then crumble up the paper and go do something else, like go to the stinky used bookstore on Rue des Alpes where all books are 3 chf. It's me and Baudelaire today, de Beauvoir yesterday, and Ralph, Sophie's personnage extraordinaire from the first draft of her novel keeps popping in. Add all this fancy to my ongoing investigation with feral children, my elimination of 250 facebook friends, the anticipation of a rowdy BBQ at Benefikt's tonight and a trip to the alien Musee Giger on Saturday... et what can I say, j'ai la pêche.

Un portrait de ma tête pour l'instant:

haircut comme ça, please

Tavi's nebula shorts

"Sometimes I feel like I'm 50, sometimes like I'm 32, sometimes 17. I never actually feel 23."

-Andela Persic, while talking wine on Tuesday night

Rococo oil painting, Fragonard, The Swing, **la nature sauvage**

"To speak robin to a robin is like speaking french to a Frenchman."

-- Burnett, The Secret Garden

"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years."

-- Burnett, The Secret Garden

The airy perfection of Ildiko's white white kitchen. I am invited to house sit here from January to July while her and her husband are on sabbatical.

Rauchen ist tödlich or Rauchen kann tödlich sein ? --Parisienne Jeune box

"There was a piece of art over there that was just a pair of shoes-- a plain, black pair of shoes... just sitting there! I've got shoes lying all over my flat and I don't call that art." --Christian Ludt, aka David Versteeg, ArtBasel

Michelle, flower crowns, Latvia

"On n'est jamais excusable d'être mechant, mais il y a quelque mérite de savoir qu l'on est; est la plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bêtise." --Baudelaire, Petits Poemes en Prose

"Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum? Less than 3% of the artists in the modern art sections are women, but 83% of the nudes are female."
--Guerilla Girlz, Centre Pompidou, PARIS

Muse: Children Raised by Wolves

2010-06-24T17:59:00.001-04:00

Today was by far the most beautiful day we've had in Switzerland all Spring. And how did I spend it? Researching stories about feral children. I was editing a paper written by a classmate about linguistic development in young children when I got to the words "evidence from studies on feral children". What? I know feral cats, but feral children? They are children who are raised without any human contact. This can mean that they were extremely, extremely neglected or in some cases, that they were raised by animals. Like Mowgli, but without the dancing and smiling.

So I googled "feral children" and low and behold there is an entire website dedicated to the subject: www.feralchildren.com. Each reported case is cataloged and the research is carefully documented. There is Genie, a thirteen year old girl who spent, literally, her entire life strapped to a potty chair, and never learned to speak or walk on two feet. Then there are Kamala and Amala, two eight year old girls found in rural India that were indeed raised by wolves:

Here is an account from the diary of the scientist who found them:

"The girls seemed to have no trace of humanness in the way they acted and thought. It was as if they had the minds of wolves. They tore off any clothes put on them and would only eat raw meat. They slept curled up together in a tight ball and growled and twitched in their sleep. They only came awake after the moon rose and howled to be let free again. They had spent so long on all fours that their tendons and joints had shortened to the point where it was impossible for them to straighten their legs and even attempt to walk upright. They never smiled or showed any interest in human company. The only emotion that crossed their faces was fear. Even their senses had become wolf-like. Their eyes were supernaturally sharp at night and would glow in the dark like a cat's. They could smell a lump of meat right across the orphanage's three acre yard. Their hearing was also sharp - except the voice of humans seemed strangely inaudible to their ears."

The stories are wildly interesting. Sad, shocking, unfathomable-- but so very interesting to me. Seeing how a person loses their humanness without human contact makes me feel so...well, human. This idea that we give each other life, we sustain each other, we teach each other how to act, how to speak, how to stand-- it gives me this dark, but fuzzy feeling about our interconnectedness. Then you throw animals into that kingdom too, and I can't help but wonder if we are men or beasts.

Anyway, don't take it from me, skip the Times this morning and read something interesting for a change. Let me know if you think.

Je vais te trouver au Café Belvedère, d'accord?

2010-06-23T07:51:00.000-04:00

Le Cafe Belvedere is kind of the it cafe. Sure there are others, closer to the university, with cheaper cappucinos and not at the bottom of a hill from hell. But I like Belvedere. It's retro minus kitchy, the waitresses are only a little snobby, the chat noir will sit on your lap, and there's a belle terrasse to boot. When people come to visit me, I like to show it off. I would say that 60% of the patrons would qualify as à la cool, and the other 40% are busy playing fussball. Okay, so it's not exactly the best kept secret in town, but it's easy place to meet and greet people. So anyway, I met my friend Manu there one day last week for a drink turned interview turned thunderstorm on the terrasse over the Sarine. We met in DALF class last semester back when his french was lightyears ahead of mine. He put me in contact with his brother who lives in Berlin back in November when I went. Since then our friendship has developed over essai argumentés and fear of delivering exposés for Morand. I will post our interview in French because my translation skills are very shoddy (as are my writing skills, bear with me).

Qu'est-ce ton nom entier? Manuel Tino Heller
Qu'elle âge as tu? 20
Tu viens d'ou? Je viens du Sud-Ouest d'Allemagne, d'une petite ville s'appelle Pirmasens. Mon père est allemand, mais ma mère est suisse-- de Berne. Alors, j'ai décidé de faire un stage ici il y a quelques années et après je m'ai inscrit à l'Université de Fribourg pour faire mes études de la littérature italienne et de la langue française.

Et pourquoi l'italien? En fait, mon rêve est de faire un master des études européens afin de travailler avec une organisation diplomatique dans l'UE, mais il faut que j'aie un bachelor pour faire ça. Donc, j'ai choisi l'italien parce que je l'ai déjà parlé. Combien de langues parles-tu? Moi, je parle allemand comme une langue maternelle, et aussi français, italien, et anglais. J'ai envie d'apprendre un peu de polonais mais j'attends l'opportunité de voyager là bas et de parler avec les gens. Il est vraiment difficile d'apprendre une langue toute seul, je manque toujours la motivation. Je me dis, okay tu étudies chaque matin de cette heure à cette heure avec discipline, mais il y a toujours la télé, l'ordi, les divertissements.

Qu'est-ce tu penses de la Suisse? C'est-à-dire... Je veux dire par là qu'est-ce tu penses de la Suisse comme un pays, comme une nationalité? Je crois que la Suisse est un pays complètement parfait pour habiter. Mais, les allemands ont l'habitude de la critiquer à cause de la politique conservative, l'inutilité de la militaire, la façon que le gouvernement marche avec "le démocratie direct," etc. Le fait que le peuple décide à chaque initiative me semble d'être un peu stupide. Comment est-il possible que les gens comprennent chaque loi, toutes les complexités des relations internationales, c'est un système lourd.

Dans un registre plus léger, qu'est-ce tu aimes faire pendant ton temps libres? Surtout, j'aime lire, mais aussi les sports, l'escrime, par exemple. J'aime la musique--à ce moment, je suis obsédé avec la musique de Portland, Oregon. Nick Jaina, Laura Gibson, etc. Je joue un peu la guitare, j'aime aussi de sortir avec mes amis, boire quelque chose, comme toute le monde.

Est-ce tu as les croyances religieuses ou spirituelles? Ma famille est Protestant, et je disais que je me sens aussi chrétien. De vais de temps en temps à la messe catholique. Normalement, je ne participe pas, je vais juste pour observer. Je trouve que c'est intéressant, mais je n'identifie pas avec les personnes très religieuses.

Qu'est-ce tu as besoin de faire dans ta vie? Sauter d'un avion, comment tu dis en français-- faire la parachute? Skydiving? Je veux aussi de monter les super grandes montagnes et faire un marathon. Oh et aller aux Etats-Unis, en fait, je veux voyager partout.

Je me demande qu'est-ce tu penses à les Américains quant au fait que tu es jamais allé aux EUs? C'est vrai que je ne suis jamais allé et mes impressions viennent surtout de la télévision, mais... j'ai l'impression que la vie est plus facile en Amérique. Je pense que les gens sont plus ouverts, moins réservés. Chaque nationalité a un stéréotype, par exemple, les italiens sont connus pour être bruyants, les espagnols font les fêtes, et les américains sont sympas. Il me semble que vous êtes honnêtes, vous parlez facilement avec les personnes que vous ne connaissez pas.

Alors, quel type des personnes te plaît, en général? Pour moi, un ami doit être quelqu'un qui n'est pas trop bruyant, mais calme, tranquille, et surtout, naturelle. J'ai les problèmes avec les personnes des extrêmes et déséquilibres. J'ai l'impression que je peux bien partager quelque chose avec une personne qui est un peu timide, pas trop sûr de soi-même, quelqu'un qui ne me juge pas.

Dites-moi deux points tournants dans ta vie. Hmm.. C’est difficile à dire. En février 2008, je me suis rendu compte que je n'aime pas tout le monde après un conflit avec une amie. Je ne peux pas être ami avec tout le monde. La deuxième était quand j'ai fait la décision de quitter l'Allemagne. Mon rapport avec ma famille a changé beaucoup, mes amis ont changé. Je me suis rendu compte l'importance de la communication, la puissance des émails et des lettres-- qu'il est ta responsabilité de garder ton contacte avec les amis.

Robin, Show me the Door

2010-06-19T11:30:00.000-04:00

I met Benedikt completely par hasard, if there even is such a thing. Ross's parents were in town last week and "the neighbors" (i.e. Guido and PierreYves, a couple of guys that Ross met on a Swiss dating site in January) were already planning to serve Raclette to the Gulkos in their home. Guido was nice enough to invite me too. This is beside the point, but Raclette is like a religion here. Basically you take half a wheel of cheese and melt the exposed edge over an open flame serve it bit by bit over potatoes and pickles. Anyway, after dinner the party moved to the living room turned Karaoke hall. While Ross's mom was rocking out the Black Eyed Peas, Benedikt and I struck up a conversation in the kitchen about, I don't remember, books and music and n'importe quoi.

The next day, he invited Ross and I for breakfast in his rose garden, which I might add, is lovely beyond measure. If you know Fribourg, it's one of those houses built into the wall along the College St. Michel, just before the old wooden stairs. The front of the appartment faces the stone wall of the church, but the back.. mon Dieu! The most beautiful panorama the city you could find. The top floor of an elevatorless building, the pipes are all exposed and the black furnace from 1900 is still the main source of heat (which, I might add is STILL in use here... in June!) I was charmed by the endless charm... his old coffee pot, the complete disarray of his jam-packed book shelves, the antique wall paper peeling off the walls.

His rose garden, which, he would want me to add, is maintained mostly by his mum, is a spot for conversation and sustaining moments of peace. The three of us recounted the recent events of our lives as if we had known each other for years.

Last night, for no reason at all, he invited me over for dinner. I got to his place and he met me at the door saying he had no energy to cook. He asked me if I would help him buy a suit for an upcoming wedding and then let him take me out on the town. And take me out he did, and I don't mean for pizza. We took three courses each at the Restaurant Cigogne, the swankiest place in the Baisse Ville. If anything, I am overwhelmed and amazed by the generousity of someone who didn't know me last week. Conversation flowed like sweet sweet honey. I told him how hard it has become for me to find interested people, people who ask good questions, who need to know things-- but he disagreed. Interested people are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. People always want to know about people, we all have things we need to share.

I think he's right. Really, truly. He is right. It's been a week of rejuvenation. A week of deep breaths. It has everything to do with the wonderful people who have cared for me-- my body and soul-- sans hesitation. I can only hope to so selflessly return the favor to another person.

Dinner with Mohammed

2010-06-17T05:24:00.004-04:00

I moved out of my apartment at the Cité St. Justin this week and moved in with Sophie. To commemorate my departure, my across the hall neighbor invited me to help him cook a special Iranian dish called Mirza Ghasemi. He taught me to bake the eggplants properly and how to slow cook everything on low heat. In fact the whole proccess was, for me, an exercise in slowing down. The end result was well worth the wait. You could taste every flavor, appreciate the simplicity of the food, the warmth in your stomach. Mmmm...

Anyway, while we were waiting for our feast to simmer thoroughly, I took out my notebook in true Kristen form for an interview that led (as always) to an interesting conversation.

What is your full name and how old are you? Mohammed Abbasi, I am 29.

Where are you from? I come from Yazd, Iran, but I am working on my PhD at Shiraz University in Shiraz.

What about your family? My family is all in Iran. I have five sisters, I am my parents only son. So you are the special one then? Yes, I am, haha, "Mohammed" of course.

What do you like to do in your spare time? I like to play football, sometimes swimming, mostly I like to study. For me this is my pleasure. I am studying the sociology of religion and new communication technology. I am mainly interested in webblogs and Islam in Iran, this is why I came to Switzerland, there is a professor here who is a famous specialist. I also like to study Shia prayer books, for me personal religion is very important. Do you go to the mosque in Fribourg? No, I went one time, but I didn't like it very much. Most of the Muslims here are Sunni people and it was clear that I was not welcome because I am Shia. It's okay though, in Islam it is not necessary to go to the mosque, you can make prayers alone in your room.

How long have you been in Switzerland and how do you like it? I have been here since February. Switzerland is beautiful, clean, peaceful, you can experience democracy in everyday life here, on the street. What do you mean? It's different from my country-- for example, when you buy something it is possible to give it back to the store two weeks later. Traffic culture is very different. The pedestrians have rights and the drivers show them respect. Also, I see that the behavior toward black people and people of different ethnicity is very good. In Iran there are not much black people.

What is better in Iran than in Switzerland? In Iran, you can have more intimate relationships with people, also the strength of the family. Family is very important in our culture. For every people-- women, men, children. Activities are always around family and relatives, you leave your family only by marriage. What is a normal age for marriage in Iran? Well, it is changing. It used to be younger. Now I think the normal age is 24 for women and 28 for men. Our population is very young and very well-educated. I read that approximately 70% of young Iranians have a university education. It is also interesting that now the rate of women entrance into the university is now higher than men. 67% of university students are women, especially in the departments of human sciences. I think there has been a change in attitude about education because of the bad economy. Women do not stay at home, often it is the men. That's interesting. I think Americans think that Muslim countries do not offer equal opportunities to women. Well, Iran is very different from other Arab countries. We are very educated. There are also many jobs for women not for men.

What do Iranians think of Americans? I think that Iranian people have no problem with Americans. We are very hospitable to all people and we will treat anyone like our guest. I think if you went to Iran you would meet very friendly people. In America, you receive a lot of propaganda in your news that is very negative about Iran.

Americans have the impression that Iran is not safe for travel. What do you think? I think it is safe. We have trains and a very modern system. Of course there are problems between our governments, but I don't think this would effect travelers. You are always welcome in my family's home, anytime.

Well, that's the gist of the interview, we kept talking long afterwards over excellent food and tea. The beauty of real conversation... What else can I say?

On the progress of the fish pond

2010-06-13T10:44:00.001-04:00

One day I will sit down and write the things that are actually swimming around in my head. My blog will push the limits, artistically, creatively--it will put into writing the things that I think, the ideas I convey in passing. It will be as good as Michelle's, Ross's, Zac's... but for now I write about the fish swimming in the pond outside. I have been saying for months that I would blog about the progress of the fish pond being installed outside my window. Stupid? Yes, I know. But strangely so important to someone.

I often wake up in the morning to the sound of Carlos, the caretaker, scraping wet cement onto the sides of the pond. The slap of water hoses, the deafening jack hammers, the occasional Merde!--- the sounds of struggle. It seems a little pointless to me, day in and day out working on a fish pond, but there is something to be said for his commitment. Sometimes he just sits by it, smoking his cigarette, watching the fish.

The project began last fall. The groundbreaking. On the morning of the first freeze-over, I looked out my window to find four orange smears trapped under a layer of ice. The fish stayed there, completely frozen, for the entire winter. They thawed in the spring and are now swimming as if nothing happened. I find this phenomenon a little troublesome and strangely thought provoking, kind of like my interest in the sheep with the noisy bells locked around their necks.

Every week it seems, the pond gets better and better. An additional spray fountain and two water lilies were added this week. A couple of fishing garden gnomes and ceramic froggies have been arranged on the rocks. Flowers have been planted in containers around the edges. Why? I don't know. But I hang my whole body out my window and watch a little bit everyday. I take pictures and wonder what in the world he is thinking as he works.

I don't know why we do the things we do. Where we get our obsessions from. But we get an idea in our head, the cité needs a fish pond, and it just sticks. I think it's better to go with it.

Trapped in Milano

2010-06-11T14:49:00.000-04:00

I got back from my exam last night, more tired than I have been in a really long time. It was hard to sleep Tuesday night because I had to catch the train at 6 am, then it was impossible Wednesday night in the noisy, dirty city, even in the comfortable apartment of friends of friends.

Oh how I hate Milan! I hate hate hate it. The first time I went in November, my camera was stolen and I was alone, and tired, and uninterested in the sights. I thought about taking my parents there when they came, but I rerouted the trip. This time, I had a purpose there: to get in, take the exam, get out.

Despite the chic connotations of "Mi-LAN," you know, the fashion week, the Sartorialists--the city is an absolute armpit. True, the shopping is excellent, I will give it that one-- Zara rises four stories and there are entire blocks of in-house designs--but everything else is oh-so industrale. There are no benches anywhere and almost no trees. Everywhere, people are bothering you to buy things, to tie bracelets on your arms, to take your money. Instead of the typical old sewing machine engines, the vespas seem to run on tar fuel that lingers all the way down the streets. The drivers will gladly kill if you cross them. Any would be "cappucho" charm or architectural extravagance is lost in the smog and insanity of street map.

So, about the DALF exam. It's hard to say how it went. It went, well-- exactly how I thought. I had my oral presentation at 10 am. My randomly selected topic? Les jeux videos. Alors, I spoke for thirty minutes about the idiocy or Mortal Combat and Xbox and my jurists followed with a friendly interrogation.The written part was extremely long. Like the SAT but longer. I wrote and wrote and wrote and can only hope I said enough.

I actually started this post with the intention of writing about my Milanese hosts: AnaMaria and Bobo, two displaced Romanians living at the end of the red line. Two things about them left an impression: their relationship to their Guinea Pig and their unhappiness with their lives. The Guinea Pig-- more affectionally, Jojo, was your typical house rodent--scrawny, furry, timid, and prone to peeing in laps (ahem!). However, both husband and wife held him up and coochee-cooed as if he was a precious Gerber baby. First AnaMaria cuddled it, then Bobo, then AnaMaria, then Bobo, until it turned into a fight... Does baby want mommy or daddy?

After dinner, Bobo (this is a term of endearment, I think) went off to his computer game, and AnaMaria refilled her wine glass. She started to talk to me. I don't know why. She told me about how unhappy she is, about how she hates Italy, hates Italians, and desperately wants to go home. Her husband brought her to Milan four years ago because he had a job there, but now he is out of work and she is stuck working 7am to 7pm everyday as a bank teller. I asked her why she can't go back. She says because he won't go. But why can't YOU go back? Why can't he follow you? She told me that the world doesn't work this way. Why doesn't it work this way? Why why why?

AnaMaria and breakfast

I could feel her pain behind her words, the entrapment, the stress. Real stress, not the fake stress we talk ourselves into. She commutes one hour every morning into the most unforgiving city-- bus, then bus, then metro, then dirty sidewalks. She comes home to a guinea pig and neighbors who won't say ciao to her because she is Romanian. She cooks, she cuddles with the man on the couch. And does it all again the next day. She moves moves moves, yet she can't really move. Is this what love does to people? Is this the real filth of urban life? I think Americans think that Milan and Paris and Rome and London are all so chic. But there are people that have to actually live there.

Je vais aller à Milan demain pour faire l'examen DALF

2010-06-08T17:49:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is the day I go to Milan to take an exam that I am not sure why I want to take. Security to return, perhaps? Validation? I am nervous and afraid. Speaking in front of a jury for quite a long time on a topic I will not know until minutes before. Two essays, listening, reading, four hours. And if I'm not good enough, does that make it all a waste?

But then, I spent the afternoon recounting the complexities flip-flopping around in my tête with Ildiko. The french language is mine si je crois que je suis franchement la maitrise.

The art of conversation

2010-06-08T04:35:00.000-04:00

"Latest read is To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. Finding it really enjoyable, it's dense and reading at night is a lullaby, so have been rereading parts for a double-the-fun. Can't remember rereading a book my first time through it, retracing the story just as I'm finding it, but it kinda feels like rowing boats in the Recife Park when I was with Katie, the quality of language, the pleasure of the time is so incredible we could be paddling in any direction, hardly moving, rereading just finished passages. Never read in such a non-linear path and it's good only if I'm committed to retracing because otherwise there'd be no continuity, I'd mummy my way through, reading and not reading, faking myself...

I picked up a glam cult magazine (or 2) in Utrecht hoping to schlep one back for you. Hope so. There's still one virgin one, but couldn't bring myself to ask Ryan to carry it to you--maybe should have?! OH and the seashell is from Scheueningen off the beach of the Hague. Was so impressed by the green blue stripes, collected a few... Anyways then, many best wishes "sustaining moments of peace" (your own glorious words remember? Oh so great. How ever do you say goodbye to someone like Ross? Over lots of wine and fondue. Oh there's no way to complete something like that."

All my love,

Michelle

Bust a Busto

2010-06-07T11:18:00.000-04:00

Brian Bustos is a Charleston artist that I liked before I saw his work. Actually I've only ever talked to him on the phone for a magazine interview (which, I have been informed by a certain editor, I cannot actually talk about on my blog). But, I liked his voice and the quiet way he spoke and I exige all of you Charlestonians to seek him out in my steed. If you can't actually find him, at least go to his show at Eye Level Art. His paintings are little and big and bright and comprehensible. The point is right there in front of your face, but it's also kind of behind your back, in the room with you. It's stark and spiritual art for all people. I like that.

"Heaven is a colorful place for me. Earth could be a colorful place if chains could be broken. Hell is a colorless place." --ripped from the artist statement

full. circle.

2010-06-07T05:12:00.000-04:00

Tinguely Fountain, Basel
October

Tinguely Fountain, Basel
June

What is surrealism?

2010-05-29T07:10:00.001-04:00

In preparing my notes for my Cours d'histoire littéraire exam, I found that Gérard de Nerval, 19th Century french romantic poet, had a pet lobster named Thibault that he used to take for walks on a blue satin leash through Palais Royal gardens in Paris. Theophile Gaultier, his perhaps equally bizarre contemporary, quoted him in a magazine profile:

"Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? ...or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gnaw upon one's monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad."

Chez Sophie

2010-05-25T03:32:00.001-04:00

Introduction. Sophie is my tandem partner. Well, she started out as my tandem partner. The idea was that we would meet once a week to speak French and then English. But now, she is just my friend. Aside from the fact that she is preparing for her Cambridge certificate and I for my DALF exam, we always speak French these days and are prone to doing anything EXCEPT studying. It's been going like this: I go over to Sophie's with all of my exam books. I arrrive and she spreads all of her exam books across the table. We talk about her cat. We talk about n'importe quoi. She has a cigarette. I ask her to correct my essay. She has another cigarette. She makes pasta and opens a bottle of wine. We have coffee. Her friend calls and asks if we want to go to the lake. We abandon our books and go to the lake. We rent a pedalos and pedal around in the glacial water for an hour. Come home and have pasta.

Another day, when again, my nominalisation practice was not going so well and she was complaining that we do not speak enough English, I told her I would interview her for my blog so she could practice:

What is your order in your family? I am the oldest of three children.

What is your job? I am teacher of a special development class at elementary school in Fribourg. My students are in 6 grade and they have mental head problems.

Do you consider yourself to be Swiss? My heart is in Switzerland, so are my racine? roots. Yes, my roots, but I think my mind is everywhere. Everyday in different situations my mind is in another part of the world. If I am cold, I think about Eskimo, if I am hungry, I think about orphans in Brazil

What do you think of Switzerland? I think it's a beautiful country, comfortable, clean-- but sometimes I think it is like a piège? trap. Yes... Life is so good, how can I move? It is my golden cage.

What were two big turning points in your life?
The first was when I left my parents home at 18. I didn't finish my study and I was in conflict with my father. I was, how do you say? a rebel girl? You say this in English? Everything he told me not to do, I did-- and more. I moved out and found a little coloc. I paid and worked in a dirty bar. You were a bad ass, Sophie! What is bad ass? The second point tournant was in February when my younger sister had her babies. I am the oldest and she is my younger sister so it was a big thing for me. She chose a married conventional life. Sometimes I think that I have a destroyed life-- it is my ego talking.

Do you have a religion? My religion is pasta! Sex, drugs, and pasta! ... no, actually, not drugs. Okay, not sex. Just pasta. Pasta in the sun.... sunshine pasta?

Do you have any spiritual beliefs? I am superstituous--- but inversely, I think. I think there is another reality, other realities and passages to get to them. If you say you see a ghost, you are really seeing a channel into another reality. I suppose I believe this to give my life a sweeter taste. It's peaceful to think that my reality is not the only reality.

Do you have any hidden talents? I can speak with people and be with all different kinds of people-- people with different mentalities. I also write a novel. What?! You never told me this!! No? Yes, I write it for many years. You can read it... c'est la merde but well.. it's very absurde you know. And also vulgaire? Maybe you don't like.

Oh Mann!

2010-05-17T11:35:00.001-04:00

Sally Mann, Sally Mann, how is it that we have only just found eachother? You are an artist and seer like I had never seen until I saw your exhibition at the Musee Elysee in Lausanne yesterday. I have to confess, and I know, it's bad-- I always kind of thought that photographers were only sort-of artists. You know, they snap around their fancy cameras and talk about light and shutter speed and stuff, but really they are just trying to get a nice picture like everyone else, right? Not so with Sally, no no. She is a visionary, really truly. Her photographs from her "Immediate Family" collection are so striking, so je ne sais pas.. you think about them after, you see them in your mind, you start thinking about running and swimming and dressing up and what exactly it all means.

Mann used her children as subjects from 1989 to 1992, until the pedophilia controversy started to get to her. Yes, her children are nude, can we not talk about that anymore please? Their bodies, their faces, their eyes, these photos grab exactly what it means to be a child and then take it a step further. It's as if they trap the present, past and future in a click. As Sally said, "The collection, is about moments of truth that characterize childhood, the autonomy, the vulnerability, the self-discovery..." She captures uncapturable beauty-- the little bits of childishness that are lost every day as the baby gets a little older, a little smarter, a little bit more adult.

The Wet Bed

Jessie at 5

Emmett, Jesse and Virginia

Sunday Funnies

Candy Cigarette

The New Mothers

When Mom and Dad Come to Town

2010-05-15T13:25:00.001-04:00

Last week was parent's week, the week when moms and dads come to the Alps to find their roaming children, to try to see what they see. Really, it was me who found them on the train platform in Bern where they got off in shorts and sandals with all of their luggage. "Wow, it's cold!" dad said. It was (and still is) so cold.

Mom and Dad were charmed and enchanted with this country, how old it is, how lovely it is, how picture-perfect it is... I think it was everything for them-- the cathedrals, the coffee, the cafes, the breweries, the brats, the trains, the towers, the lack of cars-- like a dream, my mom said. After you have been in a place for a while, the things that you marveled at when you arrived don't glow in the same way. I loved having them here, re-seeing everything as I showed it to them, taking them to my favorite cities, my favorite spots. It was kind of like a dream for me to, touring Switzerland like a tourist.

I had forgotten what a climb it is to get out of Fribourg. We hiked up this hill to see the convent and the medieval gate to the city. Dad laughed when I told him about the "Scheissebahn," or the "Shit Train," that was built in the Middle Ages to carry beer in and out of the valley. It is still running today and is powered entirely by well, shit--using human waste to power the pulley system that brings the train up and down. We marveled at the little old nuns that climb the hill several times a day without even breaking a sweat and sat listening to the symphony of cow bells coming from the fields.

I had also forgotten just how fantastic it is that all running water in Switzerland is potable, purified naturally by the Alpes. The plumbing system here is one of the oldest in the world, implemented by the Romans. The fountains like this one were installed in the Middle Ages for the bourgeoisie. The water is always cold and fresh... why would you ever buy an Evian?

What Dad is trying to tell you here is that he summited this tower in Bern. Now I have always known that he was a tad afraid of heights, mais mon Dieu! Before we went, we had a beer in the park. He clapped his hands and said "All right, let's do it!" However, half way up he asked me (in all seriousness), "What do you think the chances are of this thing toppling?" At the top, he stood with his back pressed against the wall and told me that I needed to do the same... Regardless, he did it, he faced his fears and got an incredible view in return.

On Mother's Day, we went to the little village of Gruyeres, home of course to La Gruyere cheese. And what is a trip to Switzerland without a tour of a cheese factory? It had this super cheesy audio tour that was led by the voice of a cow. We also walked through the chateau on the hill, which surprisingly, was a comprehensive Swiss history lesson complete with a multi-media movie. Authentic? maybe not entirely, but the whole thing was so fun and well put together that we didn't mind a bit.

Truly, it felt so good to have my parents here. I realized that once they saw everything, the bed I sleep in, the cafe I hang out it in, the way I walk to school, the easiness of the train, the kindness of my friends... they understood. They understand. I didn't see how important this was to me, until I tasted their excitement.

2010-05-14T04:00:00.002-04:00

At the University of Fribourg, it is really common for professors to relinquish their teaching duties to their students in the form of "presentations." They will divide and conquer their syllabus by simply assigning each topic to a group. Then, they sit back with their Stabilo Boss and take notes with the rest of us. I find it funny that students spend so much time preparing such terrible presentations... really. I was in a group with two Swiss girls and we met five or six times just to discuss our topic. However, when I proposed that we ask a few questions to the class, you know, in order to diversify the presentations a bit, they looked at me like I was crazy.

Group after group had the exact same habit: sitting in a row of chairs in front of a class and reading off a sheet of paper more as if they are rehearsing lines in a quiet cafe than presenting information to a lecture hall. After a few Swiss-style presentations under his belt, my friend Ross came back from a music festival late one night this week and remembered that mais non! he had a (solo) presentation in the morning. Given his experiences with boring presentations and disengaged teachers, he decided just to totally deliver it off the seat of his pants. Hardly having studied his topic, he showed up, took his place at the front of the class and delivered sans hesitation. The teacher found him so confident and dynamic that he gave him a 6 (or an A). And that was the way it went.

As he was telling me the story afterward, he mentioned this study he found in an article (I will have to bug him to get the source):

"Studies have proven that American university students are actually of the dumbest in the world, yet they have the highest level of self-confidence."

--Ross Gulko

Do you believe it? Will people believe anything if you sound convincing enough? I'm starting to think it's the new American way...

No One Like Mom

2010-05-10T06:12:00.001-04:00

Well, Mother's Day was yesterday and I had the pleasure of having my mommy here in Switzerland to celebrate. More on that to come, but I just have to add these videos. It is totally likely that everyone in America has already seen them months ago, but I am slow on the YouTube train.

There is something fabulous of all of our moms in these skits..

All in the (Pencil) Bag

2010-05-01T06:33:00.005-04:00

School supplies. I love them. Always have, always will. I remember going to Bernie Schulman's with my mom to buy all the things on my second grade school supply list then going home and spreading everything out on the living room floor. Oh the beauty of a 64 pack of Crayolas (with the sharpener.. thanks mom!), pink blunt-tip scissors, fat holographic pencils, grape-scented sparkle erasers, Lisa Frank penguin and pony folders, Elmers glue sticks, and.... the Lion King pencil bag. Come on, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Now I must say, I still like me a few glue sticks and a fresh pack of colored pencils, but Lisa Frank and I have gone our separate ways. Funny thing though, from what I've seen, the Swissies never abandon their love of frivolous school supplies.

Swiss students are prone to arriving fifteen minutes before a lecture begins just to arrange their smorgasbord of note-taking tools. Standard supplies include a thin graph paper notebook (they would never dream of using Wide-Ruled!) with a stapled binding and.... dun dun dah!....the pencil bag.

The pencil bag is absolutely crucial to the Swiss education system. The french even have a designated word for it: le plumier. My teacher friend, Sophie, tells me that for every year a student advances in school, he or she receives a new tool for their bag. They start with fat pencils and quickly move to regular thin ones. Fifth grade is always a big year-- the year of the fountain pen. Students are presented with a refillable plume and taught to write like Thomas Jefferson in perfect inky strokes.

By university, students have acquired all of the tools necessary to take notes with ritual precision. They open their bulging plumiers and place them on the desk at attention. The contents are always the same:

1. The fountain pen. Used for taking perfectly paragraphed notes at a glacial pace. Ink cartridge packs must sell as well as cigarettes because these guys have to be reloaded after every lecture.

2. The family of Stabilos. Colored markers with a variety of tips for writing, underlining, diagraming, obsessing. I would say that they fall somewhere between Sharpie Fineliners and a grown up version of GellyRoll Pens.

3. Stabilo BOSS. Brand name for a highlighter. Except there is no French word for highlighter, it is always called "Stabilo Boss." These chunky, stubby, neon babies are never used in isolation. They are always used together... Green for names, Yellow for dates, Pink for quotes, Orange for everything else.

4. Type-Ex. White-out tape roller used to correct fountain pen mistakes with frustration and despair. I don't think I have ever seen an American college student use white-out in class. EVER. It is about as obsolete as the typewriter. But the Swiss are addicted to the pretense of perfection they offer.

5. Baby Ruler. Six inch metal ruler used for underlining single words. As if fountain-penning does not take long enough, all vocabulary words and terms must be underlined WITH a ruler. Arrows and diagrams are always straight-lined and even.

6. Wooden pencil, sharpener and Gummy eraser. Why not just use a mechanical pencil with a built-in eraser? I don't know. This cumbersome trinity creates a kind of annoying rhythm in the lecture all. Scratch, scratch, twist, twist, erase. Ah!

Okay okay so I admit, mocking the banality of the pencil bag is one of the ways that my American friend, Ross and I pass the time in our Histoire litteraire du XIX-XXs lecture. This makes us two of the biggest hypocrites in the room--shh!....I too use Stabilo Bosses now and Ross has a crisp, black pencil bag.

It's like I said from the get-go. I love school supplies. Though I like to tease the Swissies for their obsession with perfection, I can't walk through their department stores without checking out the pen racks and the season's binder colors. This country has given me the wonderful chance to revisit my childhood love. I don't know if I am ready to start using the baby ruler, but I will harbor no shame in bringing my box of Stabilos to class in the fall.

2010-04-21T02:18:00.000-04:00

Ms. Marant has undeniably good taste. Ultimately, however, she confirms my thesis that fashion consciousness isn’t about fashion as much as it is about consciousness.

Fashion is permission. You may give it to yourself; or if you’re rich, you may entrust your choices to the care of top designers. A respectable label may inspire you to believe that your old Army jacket is more cutting-edge than other Army jackets — and any dry cleaner who reads your inside tag will surely be impressed.

BUT even in a potentially meaningless universe where civilizations crumble, institutions collapse and creatures fade into extinction, there are still a few mathematical certainties: things of genuine quality tend to eternally recur, especially if they’re made of heavy cotton duck or decent leather.

--Cintra Wilson, New York Times, April 20, 2010

Paris was Yesterday

2010-04-20T13:10:00.000-04:00

Janet Flanner---here is a fast-talking, all-American journalist who was surely better than Cat Fancy and definately up on the times. Her beat? The Lost Generation--Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Baldwin, Joyce, Stein, Baker, Pound, Wright... except they weren't called the "Lost Generation" then, they were just not-so-fabulous Americans living in the not-so-chic West Bank. Nobody was really lost anyway, everybody was writing and creating and "living outside of themselves." Paris was were it was at.

I bought a book of Flanner's columns for The New Yorker from 1925-1929 at Shakespeare & Co., the incredible independent bookshop in Paris that was the first to publish many of those old lost americans.

. " A Paris-writted book of extreme interest to both sides of the Atlantic will shortly be published in New York under the sly inscription of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. As some young foreign painters like Picasso, Juan Gris, and Matisse, and later some struggling expatriate writers, like Joyce and Hemingway, discovered years ago, Miss Alice B. Toklas is the friend who lives on Rue de Fleurus with Gertrude Stein.... (1933)"

Clifton and I make an excellent promenade through the West Bank with a list of famous addresses in hand. En route we saw the last apartment of Zelda and Scott, the skinny townhouse of Ezra Pound, the hotel in which Oscar Wilde died, the home of Ernest Heminway and Hadley, the hotels freguented by Richard Wright and Thomas Wolfe. By the time we got to the Rue de Fleurus the sun had almost set. We walked up the street as if we were friends of Picasso's going to a party of Gertrude and Leo's.

A Commonplace Thing

PostAcademia

Achtung! AchtUNG!! Die Bewegung 490

Lauren Moore, Iron Maiden

Clips and Cake

Florida Florida Land of Euphoria

Check out the Premier Issue of Native Magazine!

I Know I'm SuPOST to, but....

Christmas Eve

An Interview with Jonathan Green

UnionnnHope: tooloudtolivein

Outgoing: Cutup Catalog Christmas Cards

Incoming Post: Cold December

Boogie Woogie Butterflies

Tart Juice

Corrinne May Botz: When the Stuff Takes OVERRRRR..

The Best of Times, pt. 4

On sale at Boekie Woekie, Amsterdamn!

Late October, Maya Angelou

Sweet Sweet Sunday Mornin'

Incoming: Crisp October

America in Color: 1939-1943

Outgoing

Smashing, Crashing, Kulture Klashing

Symphony slays hyperreal

Keyword: Racial Breakdown

Dried Squid and Mochi Balls

Here's warum Deutsch ist IMPOSSIBLE!

Lost highway

Head Portrait

Zine Season

Speaking of Waves...

Thank God for the Second Wave

Fresh baked Kibbles n' Bits

The Women

My Other Place: Rutledge Cafe

Head Portrait

How do fish sleep?

I go to school now

Drugs and Addiction paging Dr. Kraus

Pittsburgh Pittstop

Head Portrait, The Road Edition

Saugatuck by Sea

road Talk pt. 2

Appalachian Trail Terminus

There's a Zelda in the Attic

We are here to play

Head Portrait

roadTalk pt.1

Caffeine Fingers, Sunsoaked Skin

SummerFruit

Weekly Head Portrait

"Yo.Were are for reals tryna live together.Call me ASAP" - ZacMallard, ok uh what?!

It's Greener on the Other Side of them Hills

I had to make SOMETHING

When the rain comes

Weekly Head Portrait

How to Listen

Major Jackson

What wild animal is Cameron Gehrman eating today?

The Heat Slows Down Everything except my Macbook :)

Even though the peaches are sweeter here...

Not so Much to Say

Gruyeres: We Come for Blood not for Cheese

Better than travel

Muse: Children Raised by Wolves

Je vais te trouver au Café Belvedère, d'accord?

Robin, Show me the Door

Dinner with Mohammed

On the progress of the fish pond

Trapped in Milano

Je vais aller à Milan demain pour faire l'examen DALF

The art of conversation

Bust a Busto

full. circle.

What is surrealism?

Chez Sophie

Oh Mann!

When Mom and Dad Come to Town

No One Like Mom

"Yo.
Were are for reals tryna live together.
Call me ASAP" - ZacMallard, ok uh what?!