perpetual huddle: 03

yum yum

lunch at pizza orgasmica.
dinner at foreign cinema.
thank god for rich relatives
and the food they treat us to.

mixed media brain freeze

my step-grandma (i call her nana)
is in town. nana's an artist.
she's the one who taught me
how to walk through galleries,
how to look at and talk about art
as you see it. the new de young
was at the top of her to-do list.
i felt like a ten year old girl again,
all dressed up in her sunday best,
nervously trying to mimic the pacing
and gestures of the truly sophisticated.
that said, the charles sheeler exhibit
was so fun, i couldn't help but shed
a little of my self-consciousness.
as you move through the space,
as you turn from piece to piece,
the images repeat in different forms,
film, photograph, painting, drawing.
its like a three-dimensional grown-up
version of those spot-the-difference
puzzles. along with this oddly
satisfying kind of visual deja vu
you get a real sense of his process.
the images grow more and more rigorous
without quite crossing over into abstraction.
when we had finished with the museum,
nana and went to see a movie.
after sheerer's clean planes
the painted veil was too lush,
all tense closeups of eyelashes
in dappled sunlight or misty vistas
at twilight. my brain ached
like a tooth might if i'd followed
piping-hot black coffee
with a scoop of raspberry gelato.

block quote: judge a book

I splashed water on my face, put on my robe, and headed downstairs. Already my headache was receding. After I started the coffee, I went to the living room window to look out at the day. The temperature had risen again--what could have been snow became a downpour during the night, and now the sky was a redemptive blue, the pale pastel that often follows a rain. Birds sat in a convivial row on the nearby utility wire. Elongated drops of water hung beneath them, shimmying in the breeze. I watched the birds for a while, waiting for the invisible signal that would have them all lift off together, but it did not come. They sat content, enjoying their version of a coffee klatch.

--elizabeth berg, the year of pleasures

covivial row? coffee klatch? must we?
you can just hear her reminding
herself to be "precise" and "vivid,"
congratulating herself on her
alliterative personification,
her use of rhythm, almost prose-poetic.
to be fair, though, as you can see,
i knew what i was getting into.
i'm much more of a man-writer fan
(steinbeck & graham greene,
warren ellis & wallace stevens,)
but every once in awhile i pick up
a book like this. of course,
i'm so merciless with them
only because i am terrified
that this over-articulate, cliched,
and womanish "creative-writing"
would be all that came out,
if i ever really tried.
what scares me even more,
is that i know it's what's coming out now,
and i only wish i could accomplish
what these talented and hardworking
authors have, whole novels,
when i can barely manage
a contemptuous and precious
little blog, much less a short story.

check out this "comment," a very funny post
from a parallel universe: sunday, april 08, 2007 2:05 pm

everything wobbled

4.2 earthquake
as soon as i thought it was safe to crawl
out of my closet i got back online,
because they aren't real
unless the internet says so.

perpetual huddle

Saturday, March 17, 2007

yum yum

Sunday, March 11, 2007

mixed media brain freeze

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

block quote: judge a book

Thursday, March 1, 2007

everything wobbled