MANGER from Médoc

There is a new blog on my blogroll: MANGER by Mimi Thorisson who chronicles her magnificent life of food, kids, dogs and friends in Médoc, France.

Thomas Prior via all the mountains.

late blooms

a new painting. this one felt like memories and the night. more details here.

Oh Paris.

“Your father wants you to go, but I don’t”. She does not mince words, my dear mother. This was the “talk” we had before we went to Paris together. And as a result of her sentiment—coupled with my own residual teen angst at age 23—we had a remarkably terrible trip.

It was the spring of 2002. September 11th had happened. We lost dear friends. And we lost the arrogant, ignorant certainty that everything was going to be generally, ok. The feeling was that it now, wasnt. I was too old to be traveling with my parents and their cronies. But I went anyway. We were not of the jet-setting set, so this trip was big for us and I knew it.

I was working as an intern at Milton Glaser’s studio, growing increasingly smug and haughty for no good reason. Milton made you feel that way, that to be in his midst you were somehow superior to the average schlub. The truth was that I was a particularly pathetic schlub, getting paid peanuts, wearing Aerosoles and living at home with my parents, and now 50% of them didn’t want me in Paris.

I get terrible jet lag. I slept like a french rock in my hotel room. The room had white shutters inside the windows and a sage green comforter on the bed. In the morning, my Dad would pound on the door trying to wake me up to go sightseeing. I hated almost all of it. I dragged my feet at the Louvre. I remember feeling particularly lethargic and “over it” at the Musée d’Orsay. This polar bear sculpture was the only thing that moved me. I felt the food was heavy and like I was being choked by a butter monster until I could no longer breathe. Looking back, my degree of ennui was criminal. Although maybe its just a cliché that everyone should have a lovely time in Paris. I should have gone with friends and we should have stayed out all night at clubs and smoked cigarettes and flirted with some sleazy guys.

I was disgusted with my parents by the end of the trip, as they were with me, no doubt. It was too bad. They both speak French and my Dad even wrote my Mom little missives in French when they were first dating, which she still has in a private stash in the back of her closet. It should have been romantic for them. Instead I was there, the ultimate bratty buzzkill.

I brought back some cookies from Maxim’s to the studio in New York. I handed them to Milton and told him that I liked Paris but that it was particularly nice to go to Monet’s Giverny, you know, to get out the city for the day, I said. Even Milton laughed at me with a downward gaze. Who did I think I was wanting to get out of Paris for the day? I was young.

other moon

My latest painting called {other moon}.

When I paint I begin with no plan, it is glorious. I just see what emerges from layering the materials on one another. In the end, this one seemed otherworldly to me.

click here for more details.

Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

I have a terrible memory. I sometimes realize things that I already knew. Its getting worse with age, which is making for a bizarre and unpredictable intellectual and emotional narrative. I probably need help, but instead I just keep trying to make my own version of sense of things.

I am in my 5th year in a PhD program, yet I am still not convinced that this is indeed, it. for. me. I always, always do this. I wont fully subscribe to anything. To be wholly engulfed by a singular ethos is to be blind. I am on my way to becoming a scientist. But I still sometimes choose to see the world in a typeface-loving, Adobe Illustrator-knowing, color-theory touting graphic designer way. This vision is my safety net. Well, the net is made of air and tiny rainbow-colored bubbles and illusory polka-dot guinea feathers. And it sure as hell won’t catch me if I fall.

I recently tried to design a logo and I remembered how difficult it is. Not only is it difficult to dream up the concept and execute the design, but its difficult to convey to your client that your visual idea is good. Everyone who can see has an opinion on design. Its the most subjective thing in the world. Every color reminds someone of something; grandma’s blanket, the couch from goodwill, toothpaste. And even the very same color is very literally perceived differently by different people. My client kept saying the blues I chose looked grey. They were not at all grey in my eyes. Also, sometimes people who do not identify with being “creative” have a hard time understanding all the work that goes into designing a logo. They think you can whip it up in a few hours. They are wrong.

My old boss, who designed “I heart NY”, had some very wise words for keeping clients in check, “You can’t have it fast, cheap and good, you can have two of those things, but never all three. If its fast and cheap, it wont be good, if its good and fast it wont be cheap, and if its cheap and good it wont be fast”. He is, most of all, a superb businessman-as-designer. One has to be an advocate for the art. And you have to find a vernacular to describe those intangibles that the designer captures. You have to tell an aesthetic story that makes clients feel good. Through that, you can teach them to see what you see.

These recent difficulties made me relieved that I am not a full time designer anymore. I can’t tell you what to see. I don’t want to tell you what to see. In fact, I don’t even want to tell you what I see, because my vision is certifiably littered with personal artifacts, secret references and illusions of illusions.

sans café

Today is the fourth day. It began, by coincidence, on Holy Wednesday. I unceremoniously stopped and I already feel different. I have been tapering off as I age. Because although it was my lifesblood—and an integral part of my New Yorkey/overworked-ish identity—it is never good to overindulge. It dehydrates, it creates a buzz that ultimately gives way to a slump and to be addicted is to be weak.

I imagine that this is what it feels like to be on anti-anxiety medication. The mornings feel tranquil and promising. I am sure spring-time has something to do with it. I am sleeping better. I am drinking more water. I don’t know where this is going because I am not entirely clear why it began.

My body is rejecting coffee and I don’t even know who I am anymore. My brain no longer craves it. I am scared of what will happen to me. Will I be healthy and self-actualized and calm soon? Will I start putting up posters of kittens all over my bedroom? Will I start juicing kale? My life is virtually unrecognizable without some form of anxiety and darkness. Could it really be the coffee?

Maybe this is how most habits naturally conclude. Not with a hard lined vow, instead, they just fall away. I can already literally feel strange “happenings” slashing across my brain, maybe its portions of my brain recovering or maybe they are atrophying. I am craving sugar more, so I may have to put a stop to this, for the good of my dentition.

Although, on this lovely Saturday morning, I awoke before 7:00 and I drank a cup of earl grey instead. and I liked it.

To give you an idea of how addicted I was: read this and this #11.