In Light Of Absence

Berkeley Bowl West

Allen Ginsberg, circa 1955

I've been long absent, readers, as summer, court, and the dramas of their shadows have kept me hidden, perhaps even to myself. Because when the air hits pinks in warmness and finally, we can venture into dusky streets in slippers and gauzy fare, adventures are to be had; in perfect readiness. One of the things I love about this City is that it is timeless in many ways, dated even, in the residential life it presents. The soggy grey cement buildings, adorned in gargoyle or emerald green rust, paved in years before our birth- and nothing attests to the outdated manner than the small supermarkets along the East side. They come with the boldness of being born in an era when the supermarket was novel; replaced everywhere else in America by Jumbo supermarkets, they exist solely because of the curious lifestyle in this city- complete impracticality charging frenetically high prices. They only exist because we still frequent their little aisles, pitter-patter over the peeling linoleum floors, eyeing eachother in our gym gear as we wait in line under neon lighting from the '80s. Caught daydreaming as Carole King sings "So Far Away," I love that the cashiers wear little uniforms; I love that old ladies robotically maneuver through the aisles as though they could do so blindfolded, still buying spam, 6-egg cartons, and ritz crackers as though they were still twenty and freshly graduated from Barnard or Wesleyan. We don't have to age in this City; we can live as if we were students into perpetuity, because everyone is forced into modesty here, if at the very least, modesty of space.
And then, I was home the other week, and visited the all0new "Berkeley Bowl-west," coined appropriately by my father as "truly a 21st-century supermarket." The outside looks more lik REI than a Jumbo market where you can buy anything from shoe wax to imported Japanese ginger candy. About the size of a Costco, Berkeley Bowl carries most of Whole Foods' natural and organic foods, combined with conventional and all-American mass market such as Folgiers, jiffy, and of course, Ritz crackers. Adjoining the new market is a restaurant that makes fresh French onion soup and bison burgers, with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Berkeley hills. The bulk produce section alone is the size of a Manhattan "Food Emporium" or "Gristedes." Best of all, its cheap, and the tireless parade of hippies, yuppies, and everything-in-between attests to its "universal" approach. the Whole Foods on Ashby seems more barren since its' arrival. and still, walking through the magnanimousness of it, i'm still thinking of that Ginsberg Poem: A Supermarket in California. "Oh the peaches and the penumbras..."

Island of a Dream

There are very few places in this great country of ours, that elicit feelings of coastal Europe; that breathe exoticism while still being refreshingly familiar; that are naturally resplendent. As I wonder, where to next? I am always circling back to Sausalito/Tiburon, where as a child I would teeter cliffside and puppy-chase along its pristine shores. It is a place I still recall as magical; dusky; perpetually sunlit.

And yes, there are minor annoyances; the seaside

burger joints serve $200 wine in paper cups; the

seagulls are very aggressive and walk around like they own the place; and there are endless "art" galleries and clothing boutiques that all seem to sell the same thing: Glass sculptures of naked people making out, and flowy hemp outfits. One and all. But...outside of Capri, Italy, you will never find a place like it. There is an understated luxury and beauty that is so modest, perhaps emanating from the 60's when it truly was an esoteric Artist's colony. Sam's Restaurant makes the best burger ever, and the homemade Ice Cream stand turns breezy sundays into heavenly vacations. The best part, I think, is that every time I visit I feel I am somewhere new, and somewhere entirely unfamiliar to strip malls, chain establishments, and homogeneity. But there is a Starbucks on Main Street- and its a lovely place to sit and read a book.

The Elements of Style

There is a rashness in self development; an upheaval of beliefs entered and processed; passions exhausted; particularities refined. Growing our tendons past the limits even initially conceived by ourselves is, in short, pure pain. Cruel and grueling, as the image in the photo album appears smaller and smaller, like a still violet shrinking in the dusty window of a racing car. But it's also beautiful, isn't it? Don't risk and uncertainty reap the greatest reward? And what of all our unkempt and unrequited desires, talents, dreams? I know all of us (including you, omnipresent reader!) dreamed, at younger stages, of life in a different seat (ballet shoes? Fire engine?)

So, to bring this little vignette to a close, my point is that now that I have a career, I think I am finally ready to start a career. Doing utterly impractical, lofty, silly, and wholly fulfilling (and fun!) things. First stop: I'm going to be designing some clothes and painting a few pictures. My inspiration comes from my love of color, shine, and glamour. Of ancient, renaissance, revolution, antique, modern, vintage, candlelit. And of course I will keep you all posted and entertained on the progress of my little projects.

As always, I would love (LOVE!) to hear about what you all are doing that's crazy, fun, imaginative, and transcendent. This is our little bubble of possibility and it's a wonderful place to be!

The Love Parade

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things....

Lovely readers, its winter in New York ! I am embarking on new entrepreneurial visions, and I am reminded of the things that make me feel so nascent, wild, and eager. And as always, with new things, comes the pensive ruminations on the past, footprints, and the meaning of time spent.

The Hurricane Cafe, Seattle, Washington: Fantastically magical and inspiring hangout in the outskirts of downtown Seattle. Open 24 hours, of course!

What do they do to us with a salary, anyway? Isn't is that moment, with our first job, our first moment of servitude after being catered to by the service industry (academia), that enters the biggest shock to our post adolescent lives. That our Time, mine and yours, his and hers, are not equal, that my minutes are not your minutes, that each of us are measured and stamped and tagged with value. That no matter who we work for, we are only as good as the profit we generate for somebody else. Enter first big realization: It's better to be your own boss.

Since I went to Law School, this moment did not hit me until about a year and a half ago. The first instinct is for all youthful wonderment to sort of fade into an increasingly jaded apathy.

This is when you really get to know yourself. Perhaps it is after this that we fork; some of us wallow, while others catch hint of the game.

A poetry critic, who may perhaps be forgotten, nailed an axiom when he exclaimed "the anxiety of influence." The great desire for novelty; the dissapointment of limit. It is far greater to create than to fill a slot; yet what we create is colored and informed by those who created us.

The real point of this Post is to celebrate that moment when we are freed by power, power which was attained by experience, servitude, and mandatory destruction of a primordial self. A beautiful feeling.

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;	250
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'

The Original Tastemaker

Vintage Cowgirl Junkie

I'm an addict. Hopelessly, shamelessly, seamlessly in love with everything vintage, from the 60's danish media buffet that crowns my living room to my favorite crushed velvet tuxedo minidress circa 1972. And I'm always scouring for more. Recently, I've discovered flea markets. Although I, like most other New Yorkers, preferred browsing through kitschy "thrift" stores that were more upscale boutique ($300 for a used burberry trenchcoat, size 14? Huh???) but have since discarded with a need for "atmosphere" (and paying their high rents) and have opted to go even rougher. So this weekend I am planning to hit up the flea market in Hell's Kitchen, and perhaps one in Fort Greene as well (Brooklyn Flea) and I will tell all once I return, hopefully donning some fabulous finds and a new coffee table.
I don't know what it is with vintage. Its not the thrift aspect of it that I love. Perhaps it is the hunt- the challenge of searching and fighting for that one unique piece that nobody else will have. Or perhaps it is the sense of history and other-worldliness that emanates from an 80's dress, or 60's coat. Who wore it before me? What kind of life did they live? Questions that surely don't cross your mind as you pick something up from the Gap (which assembly line did this come from? I don't think so.) But before getting too Stuff White People Like, I think that vintage has become, gasp, something of a hobby for me. And I can honestly say that, well, they just don't make them like they used to. Amen.

Ennui

I remember squirming in Herbert Blau's Modernism seminar at UW while he tirelessly paraded through Eliot's Wasteland and lingered especially on the Jewish vignettes. Or at least, could be likened to a Jewish persuasion. And I, freshly placed out of post-modernism studios prodded by student teachers with dirty cufflinks and desperate needs for grooming, grasped the Blau-colored translations in true pomo epiphany; ontological discrepancy, contingent on the subjective; shared by linguistic noise. A gross over-simplification, I know, but I have Motion practice to get to.
I've contemplated post-pomo presence in literature and its' most visible imprint, fashion, for some time, only to have been met with what I dubbed "revivalism" (after seeing a sordidly familiar ditsy floral romper cira 1992 on the Q-train,complete with bangs and granny boots) that can arguably have begun in the early 90's as a sideshow to the still-developing body of "grunge" that has now become a slideshow in the Revivalist deck. But what was Pomo missing? Why was every discussion weary, every essay unended, and most students preferring an alcove in the ancient verse of James or Dickens? What solace do checkered-print slip on Vans give that Saussure and Derrida couldn't? Did deconstruction after Yeats' bellowing "the center cannot hold" uncover the most sinister picture of all, a sort of twisted, masturbatory image of self love that led us to celebrate what was always shunned as banal, and drag it to the forefront of artistic vision? Do Americans finally have history? Or has the Body become inseparable from the consumer? No matter what they say, I don't think anyone foresaw the megacult of the Wayfarer.
While it was easy to recognize once the icons peppered the populace, perhaps the future of Rev'ism is what pomo disdained, and what was hungered; a common identity. A fixed, confident Body resplendent with solipsistic Passion. We are not the same repressed, Freudian-closeted, Neitzche-nihilist churchgoers that reveled in the unwinding of conformity. For it is somehow less frightening when it is corporations that are pulling the strings, and not G-d. (After all, unlike G-D, commercialism truly is made in our image).

Dancing about Architecture

I like going on night runs; there is something to the shadows that hover, and the ephemeral glow of fireflies. New York is moist in the summer, and the days reign with the anxiety of minds chasing mirrors. Their faces are predictable, endless. When I run at night, lamplights are the moon and shadows are tides. There is a wild mystery to it, a primordial longing it attends to. I run by listless, greasy men, overweight and smoking on their stoops; a grin circling their cigarette, serenading into a cell phone. Women quietly push strollers, their dyed hair like a sleepy yellow storm. Tonight, I ran close to a tree and placed my foot inches away from a crouching cat. I wonder, why it didn't jump, or move. It was hidden in the shadow of a tree root; city trees, have roots unlike any other. What is usually hidden beneath us is forced to the surface in a manic wrestling match with concrete. Consequently, the roots boil over the prescribed little square and instead grow horizontally, pushing up and breaking open the sidewalk; allowing kittens shelter, I suppose. In the words of Philip Selznick, "Man has surrounded himself with his own Image."