It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness

“I knew those were the best times” my mother told me once, describing the moment where her four children were in and out of the kitchen, talking, whining, grabbing at the cheese and bread she was slicing and walking in and out of the back door to the sun-filled, overgrown backyard.

I am afraid that my {best of times} might be now. In graduate school, collecting data, in autumn in New York, working at the museum, walking across the park on these exquisite days, stressing about the future, lucky to have something to look forward to, not slogging away at the same old boring job, stressors, surprises, loneliness, i-love-what-i-am-doing days followed by what-am-i-doing days... under 35 not sick or elderly. this may actually be it. trying to enjoy it, difficult to do with my personality, hunting for trouble or ennui that i can relate to.

Elegance, Bounty, Bread and Dead Birds

We recently went to the exhibit at the National Gallery of Art Entitled Elegance and Refinement: The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst. Oh how I adore 16th-17th Century Dutch still lives. Especially the ones with deep, dark backgrounds and shimmering fruits, oysters, bread and flowers in the foreground. I like the disorderly ones the best of all, with peeled fruit, scattered crumbs, glasses of wine knocked over, and blood running down the mouths of birds and rabbits.

The Larder by Antonio Maria Vassallo, 1650

Still life with Figs and Bread by Luis Meléndez, Spanish, 1760

Breakfast Items by Pierer Claesz, 1646

and some lovely modern renditions, photographs by Justine Reyes:

Still Life with Banana, Purse and Change, 2009

Still Life with Pomegranate and Birds, 2009

the yahoo years

I have lived two lives. One, an occasionally joyus although sometimes inexplicably melancholy, living, breathing, face to face life. And the other, a life of silent expressions that confess, console, question, quit, explain, swear and repent. My other life is my yahoo email.

I have had my yahoo email address for 15 years. Its getting to the point that the address gives me an air of unprofessionalism, immaturity and overall un-tech-savvyness. None of which are ok for me to have. I am going to be 34 this year. I might be a professor one day. I live in New York. I just got an iPhone. I desperately need to move on. These days the '@yahoo.com' makes even the most dignified names, tacky:

jacquelinebouvierkennedyonassis@yahoo.com or gustaveflaubert@yahoo.com.

I have a gmail account and a school address. I never use them. Every day, several obsessive times a day, for 15 years I have signed in and signed out. I check. I check again. I write messages with tears streaming down my face. I write messages in love and in haste. I re-read. I feel powerful and honest. I pour over words and how they sound against one another. I press send. I regret. I wait. I regret. I check.

I don’t like to talk on the phone. So many of my professional contacts and dearest friends are only reached via this email address. If I had to call them, I would be absolutely nowhere. I explain myself far better when I don’t have to speak. I know this can be accomplished on any email server. And this glorious digital age is laden with opportunities to sit at a computer and spill your uncensored guts to an abstract someone (i.e. this blog).

But my whole life is there, on yahoo. Its a dense and unpoetic chronicle. I keep every message. I say too much.

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.