Hecho/visto

Chocolate Bars from Chocolate Bar

2012-02-09T21:39:00.006-05:00

My coworker surprised me with a pretty bag of chocolates today. Look at all these fun flavors- a crunchy peanut one (the texture is amazing!), a PBJ one, a marshmallow flourless cake one, a salty pretzel one and a mint cookies and cream one! I only tried the first three, and so far, so amazing!

And All Is Always Now

2012-01-18T20:21:00.000-05:00

.... and also isn't.

Electronic Wedding

2012-01-01T11:45:00.007-05:00

I may have to get married in this Gildes Deacon creation (Spring/Summer 2009).
Perhaps in a dimly lit arcade, surrounded by robo-flower girls?
Anyone who would support a long-winded walk down a yellow daisy trailed maze for an aisle to this song, can have my hand in marriage.

Little Georgia Cafe

2012-01-01T11:26:00.004-05:00

Another hit was had for breakfast yesterday morning at Little Georgia in Haggerston (87 Goldsmith's Row, London E2 8QR). I had the Aladzi, Georgian pancakes with yogurt, fruit and cinnamon, and Motek had the Pelmeni, which were meat filled dumplings with yogurt, mint and a side of ajika, a spicy paste. Motek also got a spicy carrot salad which I gladly finished off. It reminded me a lot of one I make with raisins and pine nuts. Their fresh juices are also out of this world.

Now and Rodin

2012-01-01T10:50:00.003-05:00

Rodin. St. John the Baptist, 1879-80; Victoria & Albert Museum.

Ambika

2011-12-31T07:07:00.001-05:00

Take It!

2011-12-31T06:24:00.007-05:00

... Take Another Little Pizza, My Heart, Now Baybeh! If you happen to stop by Story Deli in Shoreditch, beware- you're in for a really special treat. We had the pumpkin goat cheese pizza with olives and peppers, and the roasted aubergine one as well. Warm, beautiful ambiance, sweet people and mouthwatering food- the kind you want to keep tasting well after your belly is full.

Better Tate Than Never

2011-12-27T17:54:00.006-05:00

Even after a late wake up, I got to stroll around the River Thames and into the Tate Modern. Funny enough, I only know like 6 people that are in London right now, and I happened to run into one very lovely one at the Gerhard Richter exhibit (which was amazing). I left the museum, where I pretty much spent the day, in one of those hazes where your reality becomes an array of fancy illusions, and everything, including nearby construction sites begins to feel like a heavy wonder. Being surrounded by unfamiliar setting certainly aids the sensation. Such a euphoria had to be followed up with a satisfying dinner, which was definitely had at Amalfi with my dear hostess where we ate yummy goat brie crostinis, a spicy sausage pizza and a pumpkin-pancetta risotto. For dessert, a decadent cheesecake with cardamom crust, pistachios and a strawberry glaze drizzled for some fruity flavor. Yam-yammm....

Shoreditch

2011-12-26T13:51:00.002-05:00

Happy Boxing Day!
Lucky for us, Albion was the only place open today- not a bad option...

Broadway Market

2011-12-25T18:33:00.002-05:00

Let's get ingredients for dinnertime... Across London Fields and into Broadway Market we go.

Dinner with Motek

2011-12-25T18:21:00.005-05:00

-Sweet potato latkes with chive-lemon sour cream
-Spinach salad with avocado-parmesan-chive and lemon dressing
-Fennel and eggplant torte
-Sauteed shrimp in garlic-tomato-butter sauce
-Garlic string beans
-Chocolate soufflés
-The best pesto and hummus you've ever had from the market above

Let's Go Away For A While

2011-12-25T09:20:00.009-05:00

Just off to London for a bit with my dear Motek. Upon arrival we roamed around Hackney where I had a great welcome coffee and toast snack with goat curd and honey. We went to the Hackney Fields farms where we hung out with some donkeys and some hogs. The kiddies enjoying the animals were a little too adorable. I'll be that ignorant chick and say that British accents on kids makes them immediately irresistible (i.e. "Look what I did to my dad!!!!" *look over at little kid's father and see some sort of pink princess accessory hanging from his bum). I guess accents in general do that, really... We walked all the way to Leila's Shop in Shoreditch where Motek picked up some cute glasses for Christmas. There's a great store nearby with a great collection of coats, check it out if you're in the area- it's called RG and it's at 40 Kingsland Road. We stopped by the Geoffrye Museum to scope out some old British interior decor...

So long for now!

Happy B-day, JC!

2011-12-25T09:16:00.002-05:00

Not that JC... JoyceSu! I love that her initials are JC AND she was born on Christmas Day.
Thanks, JoyceSu, for the charming, thoughtful holiday love.
<3 AQ

The Ghost Ship

2011-12-21T12:34:00.006-05:00

errance/errantry

Though each love is experienced as unique and though the subject rejects the notion of repeating it elsewhere later on, he sometimes discovers in himself a kind of diffusion of amorous desire; he then realizes he is doomed to wander until he dies, from love to love.

Happy Wednesday to you too, RB!

Check, mate!

2011-12-19T19:42:00.003-05:00

Last night, Natasha taught me how to play chess and now... I love it!!!

From A Letter to Book Club, December 13, 2011

2011-12-13T00:07:00.003-05:00

Recipients: Private
Date: December 13, 2011, Sent 12:08 AM

According to the calendar- This meeting would take place January 28 or 29, 2012 or February 4 or 5, 2012.

In my order of preference: Bolaño or Sebald and then the Murakami! If Sebald is the winner that will make for opportune reading if I book the London - Ireland trip tomorrow *crossing fingers*!

In other literary noose, pun very much intended, Lover's Discourse is the most genius thing I've ever read in my life. Two quotes from the section titled "Why?":

Even as he obsessively asks himself why he is not loved, the amorous subject lives in the belief that the loved object does love him but does not tell him so.

The truth of the matter is that - by an exorbitant paradox - I never stop believing that I am loved. I hallucinate what I desire. Each wound proceeds less from a doubt than from a betrayal: for only the one who loves can betray, only the one who believes himself loved can be jealous: that the other, episodically, should fail in his being, which is to love me-that is the origin of all my woes. A delirium, however, does not exist unless one wakens from it (there are only retrospective deliriums): one day, I realize what has happened to me: I thought I was suffering from not being loved, and yet it is because I thought I was loved that I was suffering; I lived in the complication of supposing myself simultaneously loved and abandoned...

- Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse (aptly paged 187)

Big Hugs and Good Night,
Annabelle

Two-Good To Be True

2011-12-05T13:39:00.003-05:00

It's no surprise that one two of my favorites people come together, magic will ensue. That's just Alchemy 101.

Warby Parker

2011-12-04T16:21:00.006-05:00

Last night I went to my girl Bluebie's holiday party for the magazine she works for, The Believer. I found it brilliant that the magazine decided to collaborate with an eyeglasses company for this event. NYC's four eyed literati were having a field day!

I, myself, had my contacts in, but discovered, inside a well-lit yurt, an amazing eyeglasses enterprise: Warby Parker! I'll let you go on the website and learn more about them for yourself, but in short- $95.00 prescription glasses and when you buy a pair, they donate a pair to someone who's also in need of spectacles.

I decided on the Preston pair for myself, and am even considering a pair of their sunglasses:

You can try the pairs on virtually, via the website, or at home, for free! They send you the glasses in a lovely box and the shipping fees are on them. Out of sight!

I've Got A Whole Lotta Love for This Video!

2011-12-03T01:51:00.013-05:00

In my book, it cannot get any better than this- children, Italians and Led Zeppelin!
Well, there could be an orange-chocolate macaron, but I'll cut them some slack since this child is so charming.

e'Rooleh!

Update 12/5/2011: While on the topic of Italians and babies:

The End of Satyagraha Ushers A New Satyagraha

2011-12-02T22:26:00.011-05:00

jatasya hi dhruvo mrtyur dhruvam janma mrtasya ca
tasmad apariharye'rthe na tvam socitum arhasi

Translation: For one who has taken birth, death is certain and for one who has died, birth is certain.
Therefore in an inevitable situation understanding should prevail.

By far one of the most memorable experiences I've had in the magical and inspiring city of New York. As I left the Metropolitan Opera last showing of Satyagraha, I walked right back into the opera in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement's assembly at Lincoln Center. I'd never really witnessed or heard the effects of the human microphone, known as "mic-check", but that too echoed the production to me, as the voices reminded me of group prayer, a moving combination of chanting and call-and-response.

I felt immensely fortunate not only to be able to witness the production before it left town, but more importantly to see so many different people reacting and interacting in and with the general assembly. It's moments like this that recenter you, and make you aware of your history in your present. The uncanny timing of the opera still amazes me for some reason. I love what Seth Colter Walls had to say about it, so I will refer you to his piece found here, at The Awl.

Below is the what the opera's composer, Philip Glass, had to say:

He basically read Ghandi's part from Act III of Satyagraha (the entire opera is adapted from the Bhagavad Gita) which states: "The Lord said, I have passed through many a birth and many have you. I know them all but you do not. Yet by my creative energy, I consort with Nature and come to be in time. Whenever the law of righteousness withers away and lawlessness arises then do I regenerate myself on earth. I come into being age after age and take a visible shape and move a man with men for the protection of good, thrusting the evil back and setting virtue on her seat again."

Here are some glimpses of the opera:

A Miracle

2011-11-24T19:10:00.005-05:00

The gyrations, the good vibrations, the music!
This song really captures the majesty that was Queen:

Update: I unknowingly posted this video prior to discovering today marks the 20 year anniversary of Freddie Mercury's death! I'm happy to learn, however, that one of my most favorite screenwriters, Peter Morgan, will be penning the forthcoming Freddie Mercury film. He's quite the man for the tribute! I'm curious to see what route Morgan, a master of zooming into historical figures' lives to tell larger, inspiring stories, decides to take.

Rest in peace, dearest Freddie Mercury

"Promised Land"

2011-11-23T14:40:00.005-05:00

Fabulous cover gracing the current New Yorker by Germany-born illustrator Christoph Niemann:

Niemann tells the LatinoVoices arm of the Huffington Post: "I'm an immigrant myself and what I always found staggering is that there are tons of Europeans who get green cards and I know some of them are not legal from the get-go and that never comes up," he said. "Having a racial undertone in this debate is extremely hurtful. It shouldn't have anything to do with where the immigrant comes from." "Too often in politics, very complex subjects are being turned into sound bites, so it's easy to take them apart," he also reminds the magazine, "I draw a parallel between current immigrants and early settlers -- the hope is that it will provide context, to help keep things in perspective."

Thanks for the reminder, Chris!

The Man With the Midas Touch

2011-11-23T03:03:00.012-05:00

As I dive into researching the life and musical genius of the legendary John Barry, I felt compelled to share the musical evolution of the James Bond franchise by way of blog. While reading about Mr. Barry's life, I continuously ask myself why I connect so deeply with this older British dude who is associated with a franchise that ostensibly had little respect for women! I only have inklings at the moment, recalling that before I even knew what John Barry's style was I loved John Barry's style; before I even knew there was a song called Goldfinger I imitated Shirley Bassey's voice for fun. As I start picking up on similar perspectives and preferences, even if they're as simple as mutual predilections for Kier Royals or finding permanent homes (miles away from actual home) in New York City, I am discovering a man who's more mysterious and fascinating to me than the selfsame initialed character he helped breathe life into.

Dr. No, 1962

To Russia With Love, 1963

Goldfinger, 1964

Thunderball, 1965

You Only Live Twice (1967) is unfortunately not available for embedding, but you can view it here.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service, 1969

Diamonds Are Forever, 1971

Live and Let Die, 1973

The Man with the Golden Gun is available here.

The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977

Moonraker, 1979

For Your Eyes Only, 1981 - Check out the unused (BETTER ONE!) by Blondie here.

Octopussy, 1983

A View to a Kill, 1985

The Living Daylights, 1987

Licence to Kill, 1989

GoldenEye , 1995

Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997

The World Is Not Enough, 1999

Die Another Day, 2002

Casino Royale, 2006

Quantum of Solace, 2008 - I can see the influence of On Her Majesty's Secret Service in this version.

I'm anxious to see what Sam Mendes comes up with next year.
I'm particularly fond of the Shirley Bassey, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the a-Ha ones.
The Garbage one is pretty cool, too. Least favorite is definitely the Madonna one- what were they thinking?

What Inspires You?

2011-11-14T21:32:00.003-05:00

The sound isn't properly synced, but every couple of days I (genuinely) watch this video for inspiration.
I can't really tell you what it is about it that fuels me, but it's something really messed up and very carefully hidden somewhere in my subconscious.

The End Will Smell Really Really Bad

2011-11-12T13:43:00.009-05:00

I am finishing Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man concurrently with Zone One, a dedication heightened by the newfound realization that leaving books unfinished is a pet peeve of mine. I was happy to encounter a parallel passage where good ol' Jimmy Joyce describes a biblical hell on Earth scenario, I guess touching upon and elaborating on Judgement Day as he finishes talking about moral courage. It was a great complement to the imagery of Zone One, best described as "The gray layer of dust covering things has become their best part" by Whitehead himself.

They lie in exterior darkness. For, remember, the fire of hell gives forth no light. As, the command of God, the fire of the Babylonian furnace lost its heat but not its light so, at the command of God, the fire of hell, while retaining the intensity of its heat, burns eternally in darkness. It is a neverending storm of darkness, dark flames and dark smoke of burning brimstone, amid which the bodies are heaped one upon another without even a glimpse of air. Of all the plagues with which the land of the Pharaohs was smitten one plague alone, that of darkness, was called horrible. What name, then, shall we give to the darkness of hell which is to last not for three days alone but for all eternity?

The horror of this strait and dark prison is increased by its awful stench. All the filth of the world, all the offal and scum of the world, we are told, shall run there as to a vast reeking sewer when the terrible conflagration of the last day has purged the world. The brimstone, too, which burns there in such prodigious quantity fills all hell with its intolerable stench; and the bodies of the damned themselves exhale such a pestilential odor that as Saint Bonaventure says, one of them alone would suffice to infect the whole world. The very air of this world, that pure element, becomes foul and unbreathable when it has been long enclosed. Consider then what must be the foulness of the air of hell. Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jellylike mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions upon millions of fetid carcasses massed together in the reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell.

- James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
pp 85-86 from Dover Thrift Editions. unabridged.

This Weekend In Books (... Like Actually In Them... Living Right Inside of Them)

2011-11-06T22:13:00.020-05:00

I'm only 15 pages into Colson Whitehead's Zone One, the first selection for my newly established Brooklyn-based Book and Garden Club! I, along with four other fabulous literary ladies, will be delving into Mr. Whitehead's novel which, from my superficial knowledge before starting the book, was written as an allegory of post-9/11 American life. Incidentally, my dear Netita sent me this video via Facebook which (also superficially) echoes the vibe of this post-apocolyptic horror novel.

After finishing Euginedes' Marriage Plot last week, I was in the mood for something broader, something that offered a more macroscopic view of life, of more certain, observable things. It's bad enough to be trapped with my own concerns about the future, and wondering about my personal destiny, so after Marriage Plot I needed a new taste in my mouth- quick! This is not to say I didn't enjoy the book, on the contrary, I found it to be very engaging (pun intended). I could very much relate to the three, quite extreme, characters, going so far as to label myself as 25% Madeline Hanna (for only biological and naivety/optimistic reasons), 40% Leonard Bankhead and 35% Mitchell Grammaticus. I felt that the book had very little to do with the actual marriage plot described in the beginning and touched upon by Mitchell at the end of the book (er the actual "marriage" part in the book even seemed irrelevant to me, at the end of it all) and way more to do with the anxiety inducing mystery surrounding our individual fates, how romance is intertwined with the struggle to make sense of it, and how very different people who have the same questions and each approach and deal with it all.

I trailed off in search of the Madeline Hanna referenced A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes along with apparently every other New Yorker who read the novel (deduced from the unfortunate reality that the book was out of stock in every local bookstore). I resorted to picking up another Barthes selection (only because the synopsis said the book cited 'both Beethoven and Goldfinger'- which I took as a sign -yes, a sign from a man who wrote about signs (!), albeit different types of signs- since I have just completed a film about Beethoven and am setting off to research a story about the life of composer John Barry). Last-minutely ditching the discounted copy of Madness and Civilization, out of 50% fear that I'd appear like an amateur-existentialist- NYU student to the cashier and 50% not wanting to become even more distraught than I already am on the world's slow and steady disintegration, I left the Strand Bookstore on a lonely Saturday evening with a sufficiently eclectic combination of Zone One, Image Music Text and Cocteau, Frances Steemguller's biography on the legendary French visionary. Pas mal for a "lazy" weekend.

It's now 11:45 pm and I have about 3 hours of work ahead of me, so I better get to it. I just can't resist turning back to Whitehead's story every now and then... I will leave you with my favorite line so far from the book:

"Even angels are animals."

Saddle Is the New Black

2011-11-02T21:14:00.006-04:00

All saddle everything...

That was the color of my new computer case- "saddle". It's otherwise known as caramel, camel or brown. I don't mind saddle except it rouses suppressed anti-Western pseudo-Electra complex I had with my father as a teen who, as a true Central Mexican, was obsessed with ranch life, horses and all things cattle related.

As you can see below, I won my last Robinson Golluber scarf Ebay auction.... Okay, so maybe I just begged the owner if I could buy it for $5- nonetheless, I absolutely love this scarf. I even threw some sea salt caramels in there to chew on during crunch time. Giddy up!

Update: New saddle colored shoes for the new winter frontier! Yee-haw.

Marriage Plot

2011-10-30T00:06:00.008-04:00

Bluebs handed me a tangible "Friday Read" last night after she came to a screening of the film. I have just started it, The Marriage Plot, one day or 18 hours of sleep later. The week has been brutal, with 4 hours of sleep here and an interrupted 7 there. Is that not good? I don't care really, I'm exhausted and I need my sleep if I'm going to be of any use this next week. I've got to say, as I grow older everything feels like it's shrinking. The days feel shorter, the world feels smaller, the importance of stuff becomes littler along with it, I have no patience for anything, for anyone; it reminds me of the Wanda Sykes "I don't give a fuck" bit in Sick and Tired (See 1:50 below). Anyway, off I go to read this book.

Face/Off : The Animal Edition

2011-10-26T15:05:00.007-04:00

I like that Lauryn Gerstle happens to carry animal masks on a trip to the Thai restaurant.
We were like a match lit in a firework factory, us two, on Sunday...
Irish pubs, Thai restos, animal masks and photos galore.

Ah, the joy in matching with the doggy bag and the bill.... Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck.

Shitty Food Made Edible Through Good Memories

2011-10-22T16:29:00.024-04:00

As the victim of frequent jibe towards my predilection for junkier foods, I think it's due time I to pause and tap into the part of me that longs for the Flamin' Hot Lays or barf-resembling diner dressing. While I would never actually buy a bottle of Thousand Island Dressing from the grocery store or even purchase a bag of any other Frito-Lay brand potato chip labeled as "flaming hot", I am so OK with ordering a house salad with Thousand Island dressing from Pann's or Norm's solely based on the power of nostalgia. In fact, I will only consider a house salad if it's at one of these two establishments. I am aware that this "salad" is really just shaved carrot, fuchsia confetti (cabbage perhaps?), a cherry tomato or if I am particularly lucky- maybe two, iceberg lettuce and a curiously coral dressing completing a just barely justifiable salad dish.

This list can be extended to Pixy Stix straws, BBQ ribs of the cheapest quality (depending on the sauce, if the sauce is good I'm game; it's that specific smokey BBQ sauce I can't resist- unless the meat is rubberlike and dangerously inedible I just can't pass on this option; on that note, I also welcome Tony Roma's or similar caliber shoestring onion rings) and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, a pleasure I reserve for long road trips where my options are limited and memories of Happy Meal lunches on the indoor carousel of an Inglewood McDonald's sparkle silently within my subconscious.

While my palette has refined itself, over the years, with a collection of tastes carefully acquired by way of recovering from mild-trauma and just plain growing up as an avidly healthy and normal diner-outer have overtaken my tendency towards a more processed diet. Much like geological forces slowly shape the world around us, my taste has become a complex Grand Canyon and I am constantly finding seashells made out of frozen Gansitos, buñuelo and walnut Brownie Bites (the ones in the red and white bag that got discontinued!) on the floor of my metaphorical gastronomical gorge! This does not mean my parents fed me shit, by the way. My mother hand-made us breakfast, lunch and dinner- fresh food made with love, but hey- you eat out once or twice and fast food is had on Fridays and the children stay happy, the world keeps turning and my associations with such experiences are apparently fond and deep.

The things we do because of such memories! You make excuses (unknowingly). You let things slide. You forget your current, present-time standards and act from the heart and from the gut. In the mysterious place where this happens also hide the lyrics to the cool song you heard maybe four times on the radio when you were 14 which you are able to recall at any given time or place even though you can't remember the chorus to the new Lady Gaga song you hear everywhere you go. Here also lives my mysterious ability to recall the phone number to the beloved Jino's Pizza (310-674-7400), to maintain decade-long friendships despite the Other's disparate traits- and to eat the vomitous dressing as well.

With that said, Frito-Lays (perhaps this a great thing) altered their recipe for the "flamin' hot". It's spicier in a much drier way now, whereas in the 90s it was almost sweet; because of this and their hideously red rebranding, I don't pick these up as often as I used to when they were recontinued a couple of years ago. An abomination of similar proportions was the newer McDonald's Apple Pie. I immediately stopped ordering them after they ditched the bubbly crust with filling that tasted oddly like Chinese Fried Wonton dough.

Braun vs. Muji

2011-10-19T15:40:00.006-04:00

I am having dire wake up issues. Which clock do I order? Let's hope I don't forget to set it, eh?

Insomniac by Sylvia Plath
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

Mine

2011-10-18T00:22:00.002-04:00

It seems as though we're going back to the future, everybody!

*sings* My Dolooooooreeean...

Dinnertime for the Visiting Smeer and Squirrel

2011-10-17T00:32:00.004-04:00

In celebration of my Smeer and Squireel's NY premiere of Zergut, we cooked up a feast consisting of amazing tuna sashimi with chili and lemon pepper garnish, potato gratin with fennel and herbed creme fraiche, chicken, sausage, skirt steak, grilled raddichio, and lots of yummy appetizers like speck wrapped figs with cheese shavings paired with a Lambrusco and candied oranges with cheese.

Here's some pickles with hummus....

Nothing beats amazing food with good friends... except maybe social justice, music, love and world peace.

The Shit

2011-10-12T01:48:00.001-04:00

To be continued...

Paintings in Proust

2011-10-05T11:52:00.009-04:00

This will be the last Proust related post until I finish Guermantes Way, I assure you....

Check out this book by Eric Karpeles! Paintings in Proust is such an amazing resource even if you're not reading In Search of Lost Time. It's beyond a visual companion to the book, it's a treasure trove of fine art. It's also pretty much essential for anyone who's tagged along for the ride that is Marcel's journey. I happened upon the book at the Frick Collection and basically melted into it at once. The cover is a bit underwhelming, but you know what they say.... No, not that. I was going to say that the job of a book illustrator is to make the inside look like shit. And if the cover couldn't be amazing that means what was inside was too much for the designer to handle :)

Species: Ravenous Genus: chocolatinus

2011-09-30T15:49:00.004-04:00

I am not even tasting this chocolate right now. I am merely chomping and swallowing. I am scarfing down the way a person who was on a deserted island with nothing but berries would a full meal upon return to the mainland. It's one of those days...

Photos of Other People's Photos

2011-09-28T19:08:00.006-04:00

The following photos are from Terrence Malick's 1973 Badlands, a joy of a gem...
Because sometimes it's nice to take black and white phone pics of someone else's much nicer, better, and more beautifully colored ones:

Missing You

2011-09-14T18:52:00.002-04:00

... my beloved Godmother sandwich.

Portrait of A Castle While Searching for A Cover

2011-09-09T18:24:00.007-04:00

Stumbled upon this image while looking for the cover of Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man. I decided to post it as well since the greens complement each other nicely. I needed some whimsy on my page before all of the tedious text below.

I know I've been absent the past couple of days, but I've been busy honing out my goals (very slowly), whittling away at trajectories I can only make out glimpses of! If you've been coming to my page for a while, you know it has been that kind of year. I have had access to a camera which has enlivened my life, but also distracted me from my obligations. While I shouldn't regard the blog as an obligation, it somehow became that, versus the form of escapism it served as before. It's funny how that happens... Anyway, I'm hoping that by rediscovering the things I enjoy escaping to, I can start filling this thing up with substantial findings.

Un bacio!

The Crack-Up

2011-09-01T13:50:00.001-04:00

Originally published as a three-part series in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Esquire. Thanks, Bluebs, for the lead.

The Crack-Up
One of the greats confronts the pressures of fame in a most public forum

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work -- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside -- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within -- that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick -- the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.

Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation -- the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the “impossible,” come true. Life was something you dominated if you were any good. Life yielded easily to intelligence and effort, or to what proportion could be mustered of both. It seemed a romantic business to be a successful literary man -- you were not ever going to be as famous as a movie star but what note you had was probably longer-lived; you were never going to have the power of a man of strong political or religious convictions but you were certainly more independent. Of course within the practice of your trade you were forever unsatisfied -- but I, for one, would not have chosen any other.

As the Twenties passed, with my own twenties marching a little ahead of them, my two juvenile regrets -- at not being big enough (or good enough) to play football in college, and at not getting overseas during the war -- resolved themselves into childish waking dreams of imaginary heroism that were good enough to go to sleep on in restless nights. The big problems of life seemed to solve themselves, and if the business of fixing them was difficult, it made one too tired to think of more general problems.

Life, ten years ago, was largely a personal matter. I must hold in balance the sense of futility of effort and the sense of the necessity to struggle; the conviction of the inevitability of failure and still the determination to “succeed” -- and, more than these, the contradiction between the dead hand of the past and the high intentions of the future. If I could do this through the common ills -- domestic, professional, and personal -- then the ego would continue as an arrow shot from nothingness to nothingness with such force that only gravity would bring it to earth at last.

For seventeen years, with a year of deliberate loafing and resting out in the center -- things went on like that, with a new chore only a nice prospect for he next day. I was living hard, too, but: “Up to forty-nine it’ll be all right,” I said. “I can count on that. For a man who’s lived as I have, that’s all you could ask.”

-- And then, ten years this side of forty-nine, I suddenly realized I had prematurely cracked.

Now a man can crack in many ways -- can crack in the head, in which case the power of decision is taken from you by others; or in the body, when one can but submit to the white hospital world; or in the nerves. William Seabrook in an unsympathetic book tells, with some pride and a movie ending, of how he became a public charge. What led to his alcoholism, or was bound up with it, was a collapse of his nervous system. Though the present writer was not so entangled -- having at the time not tasted so much as a glass of beer for six months -- it was his nervous reflexes that were giving way -- too much anger and too many tears.

Moreover, to go back to my thesis that life has a varying offensive, the realization of having cracked was not simultaneous with a blow, but with a reprieve.

Not long before, I had sat in the office of a great doctor and listened to a grave sentence. With what, in retrospect, seems some equanimity, I had gone on about my affairs in the city where I was then living, not caring much, not thinking how much had been left undone, or what would become of this and that responsibility, like people do in books; I was well insured and anyhow I had been only a mediocre caretaker of most of the things left in my hands, even of my talent.

But I had a strong sudden instinct that I must be alone. I didn’t want to see any people at all. I had seen so many people all my life -- I was an average mixer, but more than average in a tendency to identify myself, my ideas, my destiny, with those of all classes that came in contact with. I was always saving or being saved -- in a single morning I would go through the emotions ascribable to Wellington at Waterloo. I lived in a world of inscrutable hostiles and inalienable friends and supporters.

But now I wanted to be absolutely alone and so arranged a certain insulation from ordinary cares.

It was not an unhappy time. I went away and there were fewer people. I found I was good-and-tired. I could lie around and was glad to, sleeping or dozing sometimes twenty hours a day and in the intervals trying resolutely not to think -- instead I made lists -- made lists and tore them up, hundreds of lists: of cavalry leaders and football players and cities, and popular tunes and pitchers, and happy times, and hobbies and houses lived in and how many suits since I left the army and how many pairs of shoes (I didn’t count the suit I bought in Sorrento that shrank, nor the pumps and dress shirt and collar that I carried around for years and never wore, because the pumps got damp and grainy and the shirt and collar got yellow and starch-rotted). And lists of women I’d liked, and of the times I had let myself be snubbed by people who had not been my betters in character or ability.

-- And then suddenly, surprisingly, I got better.

-- And cracked like an old plate as soon as I heard the news.

That is the real end of this story. What was to be done about it will have to rest in what used to be called the “womb of time.” Suffice to say that after about an hour of solitary pillow-hugging, I began to realize that for two years my life had been a drawing on resources that I did not possess, that I had been mortgaging myself physically and spiritually up to the hilt. What was the small gift of life given back in comparison to that? -- when there had once been a pride of direction and a confidence in enduring independence.

I realized that in those two years, in order to preserve something -- an inner hush maybe, maybe not -- I had weaned myself from all the things I used to love -- that every act of life from the morning toothbrush to the friend at dinner had become an effort. I saw that for a long time I had not liked people and things, but only followed the rickety old pretense of liking. I saw that even my love for those closest to me had become only an attempt to love, that my casual relations -- with an editor, a tobacco seller, the child of a friend, were only what I remembered I should do, from other days. All in the same month I became bitter about such things as the sound of the radio, the advertisements in the magazines, the screech of tracks, the dead silence of the country -- contemptuous at human softness, immediately (if secretively) quarrelsome toward hardness -- hating the night when I couldn’t sleep and hating the day because it went toward night. I slept on the heart side now because I knew that the sooner I could tire that out, even a little, the sooner would come that blessed hour of nightmare which, like a catharsis, would enable me to better meet the new day.

There were certain spots, certain faces I could look at. Like most midwesterners, I have never had any but the vaguest race prejudices -- I always had a secret yen for the lovely Scandinavian blondes who sat on porches in St. Paul but hadn’t emerged enough economically to be part of what was then society. They were too nice to be “chickens” and too quickly off the farmlands to seize a place in the sun, but I remember going round blocks to catch a single glimpse of shining hair -- the bright shock of a girl I’d never know. This is urban, unpopular talk. It strays afield from the fact that in these latter days I couldn’t stand the sight of Celts, English, Politicians, Strangers, Virginians, Negroes (light or dark), Hunting People, or retail clerks, and middlemen in general, all writers (I avoided writers carefully because they can perpetuate trouble as no one else can) -- and all the classes as classes and most of them as members of their class…

Trying to cling to something, I liked doctors and girl children up to the age of about thirteen and well-brought-up boy children from about eight years old on. I could have peace and happiness with these few categories of people. I forgot to add that I liked old men -- men over seventy, sometimes over sixty if their faces looked seasoned. I liked Katherine Hepburn’s face on the screen, no matter what was said about her pretentiousness, and Miriam Hopkins’s face, and old friends if I only saw them once a year and could remember their ghosts.

All rather inhuman and undernourished, isn’t it? Well, that, children, is the true sign of cracking up.

It is not a pretty picture. Inevitably it was carted here and there within its frame and exposed to various critics. One of them can only be described as a person whose life makes other people’s lives seem like death -- even this time when she was cast in the unusually unappealing role of Job’s comforter. In spite of the fact that this story is over, let me append our conversation as a sort of postscript:

“Instead of being so sorry for yourself, listen -- “she said. (She always says “Listen,” because she thinks while she talks -- really thinks.) So she said: “Listen. Suppose this wasn’t a crack in you -- suppose it was a crack in the Grand Canyon.”

“The crack’s in me,” I said heroically.

“Listen! The world only exists in your eyes -- your conception of it. You can make it as big or as small as you want to. And you’re trying to be a little puny individual. By God, if I ever cracked, I’d try to make the world crack with me. Listen! The world only exists through your apprehension of it, and so it’s much better to say that it’s not you that’s cracked -- it’s the Grand Canyon.”

“Baby, et up all her Spinoza?”

“I don’t know anything about Spinoza. I know -- “ She spoke, then, of old woes of her own, that seemed, in telling, to have been more dolorous than mine, and how she had met them, overridden them, beaten them.

I felt a certain reaction to what she said, but I am a slow-thinking man, and it occurred to me simultaneously that of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. In days when juice came into one as an article without duty, one tried to distribute it -- but always without success; to further mix metaphors, vitality never “takes.” You have it or you haven’t it, like health or brown eyes or honor or a baritone voice. I might have asked some of it from her, neatly wrapped and ready for home cooking and digestion, but I could never have got it -- not if I’d waited around for a thousand hours with the tin cup of self-pity. I could walk from her door, holding myself very carefully like cracked crockery, and go away into the world of bitterness, where I was making a home with such materials as are found there -- and quote to myself after I left her door:

“Ye are the salt of the earth. But if the salt hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?”

Matthew 5:13

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/the-crack-up#ixzz1WhkCMtII

Post-Irene Post

2011-08-28T18:18:00.006-04:00

More eating and, of course, I Love Lucy. We made homemade lebne with dried mint & tomatoes, shredded wheat with vanilla soymilk and blueberries and Dimpoe made us amazing coffee.

Hurricane Irene

2011-08-27T22:31:00.007-04:00

So far, we've made a homemade Scrabble board game...

I've written a Madonna musical for my roommate, and 2 opera singer guests to act and sing out...

Grocery shopped like a maniac...

Made oven roasted tomatoes stuffed with garlic, pesto and ricotta, mini toasts with grapes or dill (which I burned a little, but still tasted great!), avocado & shallot salad and borscht...

Played Loteria...

And it's only day one.

I have to say, I'm furious with every news outlet for their irrational, sensationalized coverage of this event. It made getting information way more arduous than the weather itself.

Be My Guestbook

2011-08-25T20:56:00.003-04:00

Thanks, Smeer, for sharing this with me... I want it.

What Do A Tennis Ball and a Beer Bottle Have In Common?

2011-08-23T15:33:00.004-04:00

They both have the ability to destress your back on a budget! My squirrel sister was complaining about back pains, and I remembered this great trick which I decided to practice just now on a short break. You just grab one of these items, or anything cylindrical that won't break upon resting your body on it, and let them roll around your upper back, kneading into those tense areas. I like rolling the beer bottle from about armpit level all the way up to my neck super duper slowly. Try it!

Essays

2011-08-23T10:36:00.008-04:00

I started Wallace Shawn's Essays today, and already in the midst of his first treatise on superiority I can tell this will shape itself into an enjoyable read. It's hard for me to decipher where the honesty and humility ends and the self-deprecation begins, but that makes it all the more humorous and interesting. I had the privilege of working with Mr. Shawn earlier this year and found him to embody this same recipe of tones as an interlocutor, an engaging and stimulating one I am happy to relive through the experience of reading this collection! I'll keep you posted as I read along... There's so much covered in here, I'm sure I'll have a lot to say about it all at one point or another.

Update: I mean, it was okay. My primary peeve was that he feels the need to spell every idea, every concept, everything... out for the reader, dissecting stuff to the point where you're just like, Okay on with it! Other than that- fun!

It Pains Me To Say...

2011-08-20T02:33:00.007-04:00

... That NY beat LA... in my Spotify playlists that is (at least as far as my memory could serve)! There are way better songs about the Big Apple than of the place my heart belongs to! I suppose it works the same way with people, eh?

NY vs. LA

Watch the Throne

2011-08-15T20:10:00.010-04:00

I just realized Drake has Scar's eyebrows.

"Hate these f*cking allegations, I’m just feeling like the throne is for the taking/Watch me take it!”
Hmmm, sounds a lot like somebody's hit song Be Prepared ahem, just saying...

My Ears Are Buzzing, Eff A Comma

2011-08-11T11:30:00.008-04:00

Upon hearing from Mme Swann that he's been called a "hysterical little flatterer" by M. de Norpois, our beloved narrator spews off this splendid musing:

I have recorded a long way back my stupefaction at the discovery that a friend of my father such as M. de Norpois was could have expressed himself thus in speaking of me. I was even more astonished to learn that my emotion on that evening long ago when I had spoken about Mme Swann and Gilberte was known to the Princesse de Guermantes, whom I imagined never to have heard of my existence. Each of our actions, our words, our attitudes is cut off from the "world," from the people who have not directly perceived it, by a medium the permeability of which is infinitely variable and remains unknown to ourselves; having learned from experience that some important utterance which we eagerly hoped would be disseminated (such as those so enthusiastic speeches which I used at one time to make to everyone at every opportunity on the subject of Mme Swann, thinking that among so many scattered seeds one at least would germinate) has at once, often because of our very anxiety, been hidden under a bushel, how immeasurably less do we suppose that some tiny word which we ourselves have forgotten, which may not even have been uttered by us but formed along its way by the imperfect refraction of a different word, could be transported, without ever being halted in its progress, infinite distances - in the present instance to the Princess de Guermantes- and succeed in diverting at our expense the banquet of the gods! What we remember of our conduct remains unknown to our neighbour; what we have forgotten that we ever said, or indeed what we never did say, flies to provoke hilarity in another planet, and the image that other people form of our actions and demeanour no more resembles our own than an inaccurate tracing, on which for the black line we find an empty space and for a blank area an inexplicable contour, resembles he original drawing. It may happen however that what has not been transcribed is a non-existent feature which only our purblind self-esteem reveals to us, and what seems to us to have been added does indeed belong to us, but so essentially that it escapes us.

-Proust, Marcel, The Guermantes Way pp. 367-368

Gossip, gossip, nigga just stop it, everybody knows I'm a mothafuckin' monster...
Best living or dead hands down, huh? Less talk and more head right now, huh?

Are We There Yet?: Alexander McQueen at the Met

2011-08-08T22:23:00.031-04:00

From a very Night at the Museumesque film shoot there for the movie I've been working on to finding myself doing yoga between the Chinese and Near East Art galleries on the museum's second floor, I guess you can say the Metropolitan Museum of Art has yielded some unique experiences for me this year. The yoga wasn't part of some "be one with the Buddha sculptures" museum sponsored group activity so much as alleviating sore muscles endured from a 4 hour wait for the Costume Institute's Alexander McQueen exhibit. It was the last day and I knew I'd regret not checking it out.

While the show itself was very evocative and illuminated on the visionary's artistic outpourings for the masses, I am actually compelled to write more about the journey itself, because something very interesting happens to people who partake in this type of shared experience- especially one that involves mild physical sacrifice.

At the center of enormous local attention, the museum took on a slightly imperious role. I noticed that in an effort to control, the staff became convinced they had the right to touch their guests, moving them around accordingly to shape the line in a fire hazard-safe way (we're talking inches here)... In no other circumstance, except maybe a security check would somebody feel so allowed to handle me. I let it slide, mostly because I was too tired to complain, but also because I couldn't resist feeling I was part of this "we're all in this together-let's make it easy for one another" sort of exchange. By the 2.5 hour point I literally felt like I was a contestant on Survivor, craving food and water since I didn't have the smarts some of my bemoaning neighbors did with their books, worn New Yorker copies and smelly candy bars.

I read all of the literature I could get my hands on since I didn't have much in my purse besides makeup, a Netflix I have to remember to return, a dying cell phone and a wallet. Too tired to be witty on Twitter and cautious of remaining battery life, I opted for every brochure or map the museum could offer. Didja know they have a new Arabic art wing this year? And by the way, the Met has a fantastic season lined up for us, New York! The Pacifica Quartet will be opening the season with Beethoven's string quartets, ahem... Opus 131 on opening night. Coincidence? ;) Ahem, just sayin' (aforementioned movie being worked on is inspired by / structured around the piece).

As we entered actual galleries around hour 3, I have never seen eyes drawn more intensely on old plates, vases, warfare artifacts and worn statues. The eye craves anything and everything becomes stimulating after so much stagnation. By hour 3.5, making our way into European painting and sculpture gallery, people were having visual orgasms over Jules-Bastien Lepage and (my personal favorite) Henri Regnault. The latter's rendition of Salome (pictured below) has became a sort of source of personal empowerment-meets-memory-talisman.

People also began to feel quite at home past the halfway point, as evidenced by my downward dog on the museum's marble ground and my hind neighbor's disrespectfully leaning against a Rodin pedestal table! This is the same guy that answered his phone to comment, "Yea, I've been waiting in line to see some dresses for over 3 hours... Some famous guy who died recently." This was very weird to hear.

Why would a devout Yankee fan like himself wait for so long, so patiently, missing Sunday's game just to "see some dresses"? To appease his wife? I decided it was for this masochistic, shared experience that made us all the same kind of loopy-headed. It was about 7:30 pm and I looked down onto the foyer to see a line equally as long as the one I eagerly joined, and after exiting one hour later from that instant, I would see that the line outside of the museum was just as windy also, and it had been snaking into the park since the museum opened that morning! As ridiculous as it may seem, the diversity of people itself- old, young, tourists, locals, families, conservative, snobby, quiet, loud- in this mecca-like turnout for Alexander McQueen was profound to me! I found it to be a bonding and hopeful moment for humanity! Mere hoopla and sensationalism doesn't keep people around for that long, but being part of a historical event, even though you know nothing about what you're engaging in, is a magnificent, inspiring thing itself. Even though it was witnessing Mr. McQueen's sharp vision and craftsmanship firsthand that served as my private and ultimate emotional release for the entire experience, I think that, much like with sex and pilgrimages, it was my 4 hour journey that ended up revealing more about my visit than witnessing the work on display.

Everyone was so focused on time. How much longer? Where's the halfway point? Where exactly is the exhibit? Since the endless line just kept going through gallery after wing after floor... I felt like the Qing Dynasty ceramics and Syrian spectres of 3000 BC Hittite jewelers were laughing at us the entire time, What do you know about time?! I know that everywhere I look lately I see people going through great sacrifices to express themselves, to be seen in a way that can rival this ephemerality. I see people going looney because they can't express themselves the way they wish, or have to suppress certain desires to more successfully provide for their families, and for the first time, at 27 years old I am starting to view almost everybody as an aspiring artist! There's no better place to ruminate on this than amongst high security halls guarding the end results of similar and different yet primally connected ways of thinking and active urges to explain through creation... And on this particular Sunday, time warping from a muggy, humid American present reality to and through the remains of the birthplaces of civilization- from Chinese statues to ancient Japanese ceramics, to Syrian and Mesopotamian bronze wares and an array of the Masters' finest paintings- all very appropriately adorning a special and fussy path to one of Our era's masters' personal contribution to Our awe-inspiring creative history.

Mona Lisa Vito

2011-08-04T14:14:00.017-04:00

Today, I feel like and resemble Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, with my weirdo red jumpsuit, filled in black eyebrows, lack of a tan and proclivity for Brooklyn culture:

"My biological clock is tickin like this (stomp stomp stomp),
and the way this case is goin', I ain't never gettin married!"

Caffe Capri

2011-08-04T13:23:00.009-04:00

Although the locals of East Williamsburg's Graham Avenue are privy to Caffe Capri, it's still somewhat of a hidden wonder in the grand scheme of things. I mean this city really runs on good coffee, however it's beyond a caffeine addiction that keeps me coming back. There's something genuinely comforting and special about walking into this space. For me, it's a feeling best described as the combination of walking into a family run business where the relatives tend to hang out religiously and the excitement of straying into an ostensibly unknown gem upon traveling, the kind that eventually constitutes one of the highlights of your trip.

According to Free Williamsburg:

This long-standing barista boasts the neighborhood’s finest iced coffee (even at $4 a pop it’s a steal) as well as a cannoli that would make an Italian mama blush. The interior, dripping with seasonal Easter bunny cut-outs or fruit-striped candy canes, is warm and inviting and the counter is always loaded with fresh baked sweets wrapped in cellophane. You might catch the occasional shag hanging about, but there are only four tables to lounge around in and the extended family takes up two of them. Plus, owner’s Joe and Sarah nixed their smoking section last year, cutting its hipster lingering down by almost 50%. Don’t worry about losing out on all the fun by asking for it to go-Joe weaves a great two-minute story chock full of neighborhood lore.

Brownstoner says:

This homey neighborhood favorite at 427 Graham Ave. in Williamsburg is the place to go for inimitable iced coffee. Shortly after Sarah Devita and her brother-in-law Joseph Rinaldi opened in 1974, they had the idea of feeding coffee through their gelato machine. The result is a perfectly crystallized coffee. Because no ice is added, the drink stays as strong as when it was first served. Thirty-two years later they’re still serving the same drink made with the same device (served at just a few tables). “We’ll probably stay as long as the machine stays,” warns Devita.

Such a special place, and yes, the cannoli is the real deal! Today they were playin Peppino DeCapri's Roberta, beyond apropos on so many levels! I am attaching it below for your enjoyment, as well as this brilliant cover of How Deep Is Your Love. That's my jam right there, a smoothness that greatly complements their traditional, yet luxurious goods:

Calor!

2011-08-02T14:17:00.001-04:00

Stinky Cheese and Peanuts in a Box

2011-08-02T13:10:00.001-04:00

Nice to see that things are continuing on as normal back at home. This interaction on Facebook brought me joy last night-

Spokoyni Noches

2011-07-29T19:57:00.007-04:00

The post title, a hybrid of good night in Russian and Spanish, is in celebration of my new dinnertime invention which I call Mexican borscht. Even though the summer nights are hot and humid, which is why I'm much in need of a chilled, refreshing soup, I like spicy borschts. I added a little bit of red habanero chili, some ginger to keep things rooty, cumin and onion. I was going for a Cacique type of crema fresca for garnishing, but much to my dismay the supermarket nearby didn't carry it, so I opted for regular ol' sour cream. Topped off with cilantro (even though I soaked the beets in dill, minced ginger and ice cold water before blending) and onion, in addition to the very necessary sol i pieret.

Spayseeba to Kristian who gets rescue camera credit

Ricky Ricardo

2011-07-29T16:34:00.003-04:00

I initially came across Spanish illustrator Ricardo Cavolo's website because he's the artist behind Bluebsie's book cover from a few posts below, but while I came for the bluebs, I stayed for his artwork. His stuff reminds me of this Mexican agenda I used to own in like 2008 or something, back when I was considering a Quetzacoatl tattoo (shake my head), oy vay... Anyway, I'm having fun admiring his work, perhaps you will, too: RicardoCavolo.com

Clair Huxtable: Mom Style Icon

2011-07-27T16:30:00.005-04:00

My friend Chloe started a brilliant blog whose sole purpose is exploiting the stylistic spearheadings of Clair Huxtable. Take a look: Clair Huxtable: Mom Style Icon

This was my favorite look:

Music Health

2011-07-25T16:59:00.002-04:00

Rather, he recognized that music was an expression of harmonia, the divine principle that brings order to chaos and discord, and holds all things in their proper relationships. As such, music has a dual value. Like mathematics, it enables men and women to see into the fundamental structures of nature. But further, if utilized correctly, it can bring the faculties of the soul into harmony with these structures, composing and purifying the mind and body, and thus restoring and maintaining perfect health.

— John Strohmeier, The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras

This Week In Books...

2011-07-18T20:22:00.014-04:00

This one's a heartstopper:

"What the little park needed, even more than he did, was a drink. Neither alcohol nor rain would do. Tomorrow, in his column, he would ask Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest of his correspondents to come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up, flowers that smelled of feet.

'Ah humanity...' but he was heavy with shadow and the joke went into a dying fall. He tried to break its fall by laughing at himself."

OOF... Mr. West is in the building, swagger on a hundred, thousand, trillion.

The Addiction Heightens

2011-07-18T19:29:00.009-04:00

My Robinson Golluber scarf addiction has only worsened. Even though it's hot as Hades, I couldn't resist these two beauts when I spotted them online; both happened to arrive today. I was so excited by the perriwinkle zig zag one, I had to attach it to my belt immediately. I think it spiced up this dress, which I like to call Athena prison garb, quite nicely. It matched today's sky, as did the twinkle in my eye upon receipt.

View from new office, of Jersey... Me likey!

Tabloid

2011-07-18T14:17:00.009-04:00

In true Annabelle fashion, I ended up seeing Tabloid Friday night after being lured by the bright IFC marquee, steps away from descending into subway Hades. Errol Morris once again employs his masterful ability to keep the viewer on their toes while in search for unresolvable underlying truths. The headstrong Ms. McKinney's life kept me on the verge of tears, from both sympathy and laughter, with all due respect. She's quite a character, and her thrilling escapades, which were very ambiguously motivated, only enhance the entertainment. It's perhaps her combination of an unidentifiable honesty and fearlessness- marked with ostensible shamelessness- that I was most affected by. I think these qualities are also responsible for her topsy-turvy life, which has been confirmed as such by the abundance of headlines she's made!

NYC:

Lincoln Plaza Cinemas - 323 Avenue of the Americas at West 3rd

IFC Center - 1886 Broadway, New York, NY b/w 62nd & 63rd

LA:

All the Laemmle's and the Landmark Theatres at 10850 W. Pico Blvd. L.A., CA 90064

My Secret Garden

2011-07-15T19:59:00.013-04:00

For those of you dearies in the NY area, I highly recommend Victory Garden's goat milk frozen yogurt. They're on Carmine St. between Bleecker and Bedford next to Grey Dog. Today I had the honey lavender and last week I had their salty caramel. The texture is perfect, not all melty and artificially, rather- subtly icy! Do try some... I was curious about their Orange Blossom Vanilla, but it vanished before I had a change to sample it, which means act fast.

Update: Just tried the Victory Garden Herbal Blend - Holy moly! One of the best things I've ever tasted. A blissful blend of a wide range of herbs that go together so harmoniously. Some of the ones they said were included are peppermint, lavender, sage, thyme, jasmine and oregano. While this may sound like you're in for licking frozen dried leaves, I assure you it is a refreshing combination worth trying.

I happened to snap salty caramel with chocolate crunchies.
And look, they have all sorts of toppings, from halvah and maple marshmallow to dried mulberries and popped corn.

Dark Habits

2011-07-12T12:07:00.022-04:00

For about four consecutive days last week, my body was on what I too generously deemed a natural high. This, thankfully, was nothing a good 15 hour schluff couldn't counteract on Sunday because I seem to be much better...

My condition, as I famously called it, was like being on some sort of lab-made drug, a codeinesque meltiness overcame my limbs and mouth. It was like the time I did shrooms, but with no shameful admission to mother in the fearful horizon. I felt like Edvard Munch's Scream figure, but not as horrific- just confused. I googled "i feel like im on acid but im not" on Friday afternoon. At this point it was Day 4 of the "trip". I learned it could either be due to anxiety, lack of sleep, ADHD, being over-caffeinated or alcohol. I didn't know where to start. Working on any one of those areas is challenging, combating all four simultaneously is more paralyzing than my condition itself, so I couldn't bring myself to undo the damage at first, which created more anxiety and restlessness! This is where I stopped. Relaxed. Thought: "One thing at a time."

First things first, more rest and no booze whatsoever. I don't drink too much these days, but even when I do it feels like too much in comparison to the scant sleep and long workdays. We all forget to weigh things against each other sometimes. Like I said, I ended up just sleeping all Sunday in an effort to reset my body. A random on MacDougal told me "it happens to him all the time," since he works night shifts at a restaurant, and continued on to warn that "Two things can happen- a) you can slip into a sort of insanity and lose a grip on your faculties and nervous system, or b) Start perceiving reality with hyperawareness and become addicted to the state." I'm almost certain there's an option C , overcome the condition by rehabilitating your body, and I'm also almost certain I remember dreadlocks on this guy, so...

My questions remain: Why am I so out of control with this stuff? Why am I (what some might call) abusing my body?

Simply- there's too much fun stuff to do! After a long, long work day, I need a buffer before going to bed. I need to transition into resting mode and sometimes I feel I'm missing out. I mean, had I gone straight home after a stressful work day yesterday I wouldn't have experienced these musical wonders.

Or I wouldn't be able to watch fun movies...

Or read wonderful books, or prepare new patterns...

Then again at other times, as equally as I become overactive, I get completely bored. Why such extremes? Perhaps too tired to put major effort into stuff from the overactive chunks? What's holding me back? I don't want to suffer for it in the long run though so I am going to make steps now to kill some of the destructive tendencies. Like Yolanda in Dark Habits, sometimes you discover no matter where you turn everybody has their sins, their vices, their little secrets... More importantly, you cannot ignore the root of those problems. You have to look inward and change difficult things in order to regain control. Well we're back at square one, because usually that looking inward part is the most demanding bit of it all! Oy vay voy...

Martinique

2011-07-06T14:56:00.042-04:00

Sitting here in this overly air conditioned conference room has caused me to daydream about Martinique. Why there, particularly? Not so sure. I remember it as the setting of Rue Cases-Negres, a film that's stayed with me for years after initially watching it while at UCLA as part of a Film & Social Change course. In the film-

José is a young boy who wins a partial scholarship to attend high school in Fort-de-France, the capital. His grandmother accompanies him there, working as a laundrywoman for the rich white ruling class to pay for costs. José deals with pressure around him, especially with his professor. When he writes an essay on the lives of poor blacks, he is accused of plagiarism. José runs away from school, back to his small shack in the city. His professor goes to his house and tells José that he was wrongly accused, offering an apology. Later, he returns to Black Shack Alley after his grandmother has a heart attack. This happened while she was returning home from a trip to a local clothesmaker to repair José's suit. Even as his grandmother dies, José is launched into a future he can not control.

This midday reverie, which has got me plugging in all sorts of combinations into Vayama's flight search feature for cheap airfares to the Islands, could be the effect of recently reading "House of Flowers" in Truman Capote's short story collection. I have fond memories of reading his namesake play in high school and falling in love with the setting. I even entered the Drama Festival that year in the Production Design category with a presentation on the play (we won first place!). I became briefly obsessed with the West Indies, a region I hadn't had much introduction to. Today, I began to reexamine my connection to this story.

Revisiting the tale as a 27 year old proved to be a powerful literary journey, and relating to it having gone through newer, more profound, experiences with men, various reflections on freedom, a strong core of female friendship and, for better or worse, a wide distance from a healthy and consistent nuclear family life, I've found myself married to the material, to its essence- not just to an idealized aesthetic and literary techniques. It all started when I decided "House of Flowers" could be a myth in Clarissa Pinkola-Estes's collection Women Who Run with the Wolves. Or maybe it's the antithesis of Pinkola-Estes's examples. I can't decide. I warn you, with a kind spoiler alert- major spoilers ahead!.

Ottilie's freedom initiates our story, most notably in terms of youth and sexuality. One can argue that her promiscuous profession would imply otherwise. It can be naive, and disrespectful too, to regard prostitution as a liberating condition, but contrasted with her eventual marriage, she is not confined or controlled (We can revisit this state as captivity later in my analysis). After meeting her knight in shining armor, Royal, at a cock fight, Ottilie is swept away not just off her feet, but away from the hustle and bustle of Port-au Prince, reatreating to Royal's rural haven, the House of Flowers. At this crux is where we find lots of meat to chew on! With her quasi-evil "mother-in-law" living under the same roof, embittering her relationship with Royal and testing her patience, Ottilie unknowingly loses herself. She becomes nostalgic for the bordello days, but is ultimately silent and tolerant until Royal's Grandmother becomes too hot to handle- not in a Billy Wilder - Marilyn Monroe way so much as a Lucifer sort of way. Ottilie ditches the passiveness, challenges the heat by beating her vicious fire with a more cunning fire. Haunted by the Grandmother, but perhaps ultimately reacting to her finding herself captive, Ottilie becomes a bit looney and Royal is not very loyal in response. He puts her in her place, as the 50s would say (yes, the entire decade), and she ends up teary eyed and tied to a tree. That isn't a euphemism or a deliberate use of alliteration I decided to implement, she is literally tied to a tree in the middle of the night! Her past resurfaces and confronts her in the form of her two best friends Baby and Rosita. Even after they've both spiritually, emotionally and physically saved her and beg her to return, Ottilie still opts for her new life. When hearing her husband return, concerned and treating us with a glimmer of that sweet Royal we and Ottilie fell in love with at the cock fight, Ottilie also sheds light upon the reader about how she plans to proceed - choosing love and shrewdness. But is choosing love over liberty shrewd?

I guess my interpretation is not necessarily something the modern feminist would cosign on. Then again, what is the modern feminist? Should we take the side of Baby and Rosita who try to knock sense into her, convincing her she is being mistreated by Royal and doing damage to her more sacred element, or defend our protagonist's decision? I'll be your Johnnie Cochran, Ottilie...

Royal becomes lazy at the onset of their relationship because Ottilie is not in her natural element. She is adapting to her new environ and the inability to be comfortable, having now become the housewife, the cook, the gardener, handicaps her and makes her the subject of abuse from all angles, not to mention neglect from the man she loves. She's too preoccupied to be the (dare I use the word fierce? OK, I will) fierce woman she should be to keep Royal in check. However, returning to the good life at the bordello, for me, symbolizes a denial to grow up, rejecting the route to take life's tough lessons and confront them in a wiley way. Capote, our god for this world, does announce and introduce everything with "she should have been the happiest girl in Port-au-Prince", so we know that this ostensibly free life is really one where she is spiritually imprisoned and discontent. Her love is suffering because life is inevitably suffering, and I believe Ottilie is now more able than ever to get in touch with her sacred element since she has defeated Grandmother. I find her lunacy to actually be a form of healing. You know what it is?! It's actually a dual exorcism- of Grandmother's spirit and of her innermost fears. Her tortured feelings, so long suppressed finally surface. Why does Royal freak out and tie his lady love to a tree after Grandmother's dies and Ottilie experiences delusions of her haunting presence? For the same reason that a man can't successfully love a woman if he's got mommy issues - a good old fashioned Oedipal complex. Royal ultimately loves Ottilie. You hear the pace of his step quicken as he comes to her rescue, and you see her sassy inner fire sparked at the thought of This will give him a good scare. Sounds about right to me.

Their house of flowers is the ideal dwelling for their rudimentary union, for growth and regeneration.

Above synopsis for Rue Cases-Negres snagged from Wikipedia.

Red White and Bluebs

2011-07-05T02:29:00.008-04:00

For the Fourth, I made champagne with strawberry puree and blueberries. Imagine that coupled with white foam and I'm sure you'll understand my patriotic intention... Salud! Que demos gracias para la libertad! Fizzy drinking with Lauren amongst painterly clouds followed by a Williamsburg pig roast with Bluebs, I must revise my previous toast- to freedom, fizz and friends!

That tiny thing next to the building dead center on the bottom right photograph is the Statue of Liberty, it was much bigger, but that was all my poor cameraphone could render. Just felt you should know it was part of my backdrop... The light was particularly majestic today. Maybe because of my tipping point? Or maybe because everything seems more grand from a rooftop. Oh, look... Freedom birds!

Extra! Extra! LA Woman Wallowing In The Mire

2011-07-05T01:55:00.013-04:00

Whenever I read interviews with my favorite authors, or even ones I don't like so much, I notice a pattern. They all wake up mad early, embracing the day head first with a cup of joe, ready to type away. Always! I'm shaking my head because I know that this June, I.. well, I slacked, but in coming to terms with my June gloom, I have resolved to get my act together. It's like Jim Morrison said, No time to wallow in the mire. I don't normally follow stoners' advice, not even respectable ones (respectfully... RIP Mr Morrison *sign of the cross* - I am very superstitious) but that's because I'm usually too stubborn to take most people's advice. I blame my father for this gene, but before I start giving you my family tree, I just want to say that I reached the mire wallowing tipping point today. It's been one day too many where I sleep in an embarrassingly long time, waking up in a panic to 15 work e-mails and their opposition, the SMS messages and Twitter notifications, tempting my thumbs with a longing to be answered first, with their brief response- time commitment and jovial subject matter. In honor of this evening's abandoned, yet serene Park Slope stroll (abandoned because of all of the businesses were closed in observance of Independence Day), I'd like to submit the following poem. It'll serve as my own prayer as I enter the last days of laziness and usher in an era of the discipline I know I owe to myself and deserve.

Walking Around by Pablo Neruda

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

BRB

2011-07-03T18:03:00.018-04:00

Just figuring things out. I really need to get a new camera. Until I do, I'll -

Work stuff has really usurped all of my time. With the film I've been working on for the past two years speeding along towards completion (which is mildly causing a healthy dose of personal anxiety), I'm a little bewildered as to how to proceed... in life. Yes, one of those times. Actually, a great time to go see Tree of Life. I saw it with Blueberry last weekend and haven't stopped thinking about it since. Speaking of which- Bluebs' book How to Get Into the Twin Palms is being published next summer! Ao! What joy! Do check out!

I'm still on the Truman Capote kick. Starting In Cold Blood after wrapping up the short stories; also, as far as reading goes, I will say that this month's interview with William Gibson in the Paris Review served as a surprising whirl of inspiration.

Pictured below are some of my favorite goodies from the past week to hold you over until I pop back in full effect in about.. one week:

Oh, Joy(ce)!

2011-06-14T14:32:00.015-04:00

Thanks to the talented, JoyceSu for the very necessary documentation. This salmon salad with citrus anchovy dressing was divinity on a dish. The grilled strawberries with fresh oregano on nettled goat cheese slathered sesame crostini was the perfect encore at teatime.

Capote

2011-06-13T15:23:00.005-04:00

"The Duke In His Domain" is a great article which I implore you to read, by Truman Capote on Marlon Brando for The New Yorker, November 9, 1957.

As I speed through The Complete Stories of Truman Capote, engaged and enthralled, and prepare for my second, serious and rigorous read-through of In Cold Blood, I welcome the above article sent over by Bluebs. I've always had an affinity to Truman Capote, although I never knew why exactly... As I explore his worlds more comprehensively in the coming days, I hope to find that out.

Letter of Explanation

2011-06-13T13:37:00.023-04:00

June 13, 2011

Hi dudes and dudettes,

So two too many people (out of two) have been asking me why I've been so inactive on this thing. Let's get into it...

First off, everything that requires a battery in my life has managed to fall apart. This is great news though because it means that relatively soon I will get brand new, better things to replace them. I hope, for my sake, relatively soon means ASAP. Susan Miller said I should be benefiting financially this month, so let's hope she's right because I need a new computer, camera and cell phone. The lack of a camera has really been the main culprit for the lack of blogging. Recently, I made some yummy little dishes like this shrimp, avocado, watercress salad below. I did attempt to capture it, see below, but the thing is that my camera phone just does these things no justice, so I simply would rather not blog it. I also made this homage to Neapolitan ice cream for breakfast on Sunday: vanilla and rum in my latte, strawberry rhubarb toast, nutella toast and a gouda on fig jelly toast (I lied to Tashi, the one person I shared this info with, and said the fig-gouda one represented the preserves aspect of a Neapolitan sundae, but really I just wanted cheese in there somewhere).

See how unappealing this looks? But, man, was it appetizing!

While things have been frustrating on the technology tip, work has also been growing more intense as we're wrapping up the last of post production. As duh as it may seem, it really has been- at least for me- the inverse of pre-production in that it's the same scramble and rush to meet this one deadline... Only difference is we're working to complete something rather than begin it, so in a way it's even more challenging because producing high quality stuff under pressure is always a challenge. This subject can spawn a plethora of posts I can easy file under "therapy", but this is neither the time or the arena for that can of worms.

Rest assured, I haven't been a complete bum. I decided to start two different collections of short stories. As I started jotting down certain episodes from throughout my life, I realized they fell neatly into two categories, which is interesting to me because I actually thought my inspiration for them was all over the place - as is pretty much everything I do. I don't know if I'm ready to say more about this yet because I'm more than kind of bashful about my writing. I guess I will have to say something if I brought it up, so I will say that one set pertains to the last 2 years of my life in NY and the other is about, I suppose, sex and innocence.

There you have it. This is why most of the posts you've seen around here lately deal with books, films or other people's photography. Oh, one more thing- Gila, Leemsie's French teacher/family friend from back in the day, apparently shares my love for 80s fob pop so I will be posting a comprehensive, and hopefully downloadable, mix on here pretty soon to share with you since I'm compiling it for her already.

Ciao for now,
Annabelle

Strawberry Wu-Barb Pancakes

2011-06-11T15:40:00.005-04:00

Diner strikes again... Other dishes to come later. Hip pic and cleverness all due to the lovely JoyceSu.

Crystal Method

2011-06-06T23:42:00.006-04:00

Question: What Are the Crunchy White Crystals in Some Aged Cheeses?

Answer: Some aged cheeses like Gouda, Cheddar and Gruyere have tiny white crystals that are slightly crunchy when you eat the cheese. These crystals are simply lactic acid that has converted into a crystallized form. The crystals are a natural part of the aging process.

Definition: Lactic acid is created when the lactase enzyme found in milk is exposed to good bacteria during the cheesemaking process. This good bacteria is called starter, as it starts the process of souring, or acidifying, the milk so it can be turned into cheese.

I could eat these babies allllllll night long.
Read more here.
Above Q & A taken from about.com.

Sigh

2011-06-04T18:38:00.007-04:00

Splendour in the Grass

What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight ...

In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

- William Wordsworth

Marvin Day

2011-06-04T14:24:00.004-04:00

It's Saturgaye. A day for Marvin. He'll help me sort out my thoughts...
As I do my laundry and decide whether I'm moving into a new place or not.

Homemade Peanut Sauce Leads To...

2011-06-03T22:58:00.009-04:00

... an entire meal that kept growing and growing and growing. First I followed a bequeathed homemade peanut sauce recipe (garlic, green onion, ginger, Sriracha, sesame oil - thanks Joycesu) to which I added a coconut juice that still had the coconut fat in it, which I bought at the bodega today by accident. What can I say? I was in a let's-make-lemonade-out-of-lemons kind of mood.

After my peanut sauce was done, I decided to eat it with the shrimp I just bought. I tossed them in lime, soy sauce, oil and then more of that disgusting coconut water I couldn't really bring myself to drink, but didn't mind using as a substitute for water in the peanut sauce recipe. I had leftover vermicelli noodles from 2 weeks ago's spring rolls extravaganza, so I ended up making a stir fry with the shrimp and some red pepper. I topped it off with cashews, orange slices and some sweet chili sauce drizzled around for the shrimp, a sweet-tangy treat.

Bootsy Collins helped me out along the way...

Update: I made a variation of this tonight (6/4/2011) with coconut shrimp instead. Toasted coconut flakes + flour + coconut juice + oil = heaven when combined with that leftover sweet chili glaze and the peanut sauce.

Like A Cow Without Her Bell

2011-05-25T23:03:00.009-04:00

From Pedro Almodovar's The Flower of Her Secret:

Mother: What's wrong, Leo?

Leo: I'm going insane, mom.

M: You aren't. Your sister is, not you.

L: I am instead, like aunt, like granny. Insane.

M: It's because of Paco, isn't it? I knew it.. How bad, my child. So young and already like a cow without her bell.

L: A cow without her bell?

M: Yes, lost, bewildered, messed up, like me.

L: Like you?

M: I'm a cow without her bell too, but at my age it's pretty normal. That's why I want to live [in my village]. When a woman loses her husband, because he dies or he goes with another woman, she must return to her hometown. Go to the church, enjoy the fine weather with her neighbours, pray with them, even if she's an atheist. Otherwise she'll get lost, like a cow without her bell. My child..It wasn't easy for me to bring you up.

I wanted to post this dialogue mostly because it reminded me of all the post-heartache healing I did last year, and more particularly of some of the reading I did that helped me "recover". It's only until now that I am able to realize the gratitude I have for such trauma, in the sense that only events that shake you up to your most central core can crack you open, and make you more sensitive, and more able to fully perceive, wide ranges of experiences that the world provides you with. Thanks to PutiLupi Tasha, Women Who Run with the Wolves was instrumental in training me to realize this for myself, and I'm not ashamed to say it has a permanent resisdence on my bedside table. Leo's mother echoes Pinkola Estes's lessons, from her myths about homing or returning to oneself (elucidated by the "Sealskin, Soulskin" myth) to belonging as a blessing ("The Ugly Duckling: Finding What We Belong To") and types of prayer. Respectfully, I leave you with the author's general wolf rules for life on which she remarks, "But, over my lifetime as I've met wolves, I have tried to puzzle out how they live, for the most part, in such harmony. So, for peaceable purposes, I would suggest you begin right now with anything on this list. For those who are struggling, it may help greatly to begin with number ten" (Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves 460-461).

General Wolf Rules for Life
1. Eat
2. Rest
3. Rove in between
4. Render loyalty
5. Love the children
6. Cavil in moonlight
7. Tune your ears
8. Attend to the bones
9. Make love
10. Howl often

Post-Camus, Pre-Antidepressants

2011-05-24T14:43:00.010-04:00

Quite appropriately, I've decided to read Edouard Levé's Suicide as a follow up to Myth of Sisyphus. I was turned on to Levé's work a little late in the game after reading "When I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue" in this season's issue of The Paris Review. However, I caught on just in time to enjoy the recent English translation of Suicide. I found this passage could serve as a good example of the deep meditations his somewhat discursive style of writing is capable of evoking. Albeit fiction, it's in second person, addressed to his deceased friend who has taken his own life:

You used to read dictionaries like other people read novels. Each entry is a character, you'd say, who might be encountered on some other page. Plots, many of them, would form during any random reading. The story changes according to the order in which the entries are read. A dictionary resembles the world more than a novel does, because the world is not a coherent sequence of actions but a constellation of things perceived. It is looked at, unrelated things congregate, and geographic proximity gives them meaning. If events follow each other, they are believed to be a story. But in a dictionary, time doesn't exist: ABC is neither more nor less chronological than BCA. To portray your life in order would be absurd: I remember you at random. My brain resurrects you through stochastic details, like picking marbles out of a bag.

- Levé, Suicide 34

Feeling That Trenchcoat

2011-05-20T11:51:00.007-04:00

The rain is evoking 9 1/2 Weeks nostalgia. Not so much for the soft-core porn aspect, so much as Kim Basinger's outfits, amazing soundtrack and... the romance!

Nice One, Steve!

2011-05-18T14:17:00.005-04:00

Let me tell you something. That Steve Martin... He sure knows how to describe stuff!

"He had been knocked backward, but a previously untouched part of his heart kept driving him forward, fueled by fresh emotions emerging from the wound, unknown and uncontrollable. Lacey gave him a ravishing kiss good night, then he walked east to Central Park, where he flagged down a cab. On the way back to the Carlyle, his mental reenactment of their last kiss told him, yes, she loves me, and he once again saw Lacey as an illuminating white light, forgetting that white is composed of disparate streaks of color, each as powerful as the whole."

-Martin, An Object of Beauty, 186

While on the topic of Art and light in New York, check out the new Frank Gehry building downtown... What a beaut!

Polatunes

2011-05-18T12:33:00.012-04:00

Raining under the Trevi Fountain with gelato

Moi en route a Sperlonga dans le train

Two girls, too fun

The boy that serenaded us with Oasis in his hoopty

Neta doing what Neta does best, wear leather jackets and act a tough cookie sans cigarillo

Accidents happen. Let's relax now and have a dance!

One more, just because this is my soul in YouTube form below:

You've Heard of Funnel Cake

2011-05-17T23:11:00.004-04:00

... Well, mine is a fennel cake! This is my variation to a recipe I was introduced to in Rome as a torta de finnochi, but I was having this for dinner so I added eggplant to the mix, which was helpful as a base so that all the slippery fennel in the beginning- when you build the shape- has something flat and edible to bake onto. Secondly, I simmered the fennel in milk thoroughly before baking. The result couldn't have been more pleasing- the fennel was creamy and melted in my mouth like butter. And with the crispy cheesiness- it was heaven! I was very excited to eat this.

I ♥ LA&NY

2011-05-17T13:56:00.012-04:00

Let's get one thing straight, I never hate on LA even though it's not the primary place I want reside for the next couple of years. When I point out certain East Coast details I deem preferable for where I'm at right now in my life, it doesn't mean I'm remarking on Los Angeles as a whole because I know that LA, having been born and raised there, has a myriad of unique qualities that make it special- and really, a luxury. One point I've made when having this tiresome LA vs. NY debate at parties and dinners, is how personally it really is a challenge to stimulate myself culturally, artistically, intellectualstuffistically, since everything is so spread out. This obviously does not mean Los Angeles is devoid of culture, art, intellectual stuff... It just means that accessibility wise, it doesn't work out easily for many people. I feel you have to do a little bit of digging to find the gold, which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering you're in a place that I am pretty certain invented the adjective form of the word "chill" and single-handedly spearheaded the concept of formal casual attire. Now, if you have a freelance job, or no job, or unlimited gas in your tank- yes it's not as challenging, but I didn't have any of those, so my opinion is pretty strongly felt. I guess this was more a preamble on transportation systems than on artistic presence... Anyway, I came across this passage in Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty and smiled to myself because I know he gets it.

"There is art in Los Angeles that rivals New York's, but to see all of it you would need General Eisenhower to plan the attack. The Los Angeles County Museum is miles from the Getty, which is miles from the Hammer [actually, Steve, not really- these two are the closest in proximity], which is miles from the Norton Simon, which is miles from the Museum of Contemporary Art, and if the dots were connected on a map, you would see a giant circle running around the periphery of Los Angeles with no convenient route connecting them. The viewer of this map would realize that the best way of commuting among these five significant art museums would be by Swiss gondola or light aircraft."

- Martin, An Object of Beauty, 161

Office Style Still Life

2011-05-16T21:34:00.006-04:00

A haphazard collection of goodies turned lunchtime, this is how I lived today. I bought freshly made rye bread from Whole Foods, some tarragon and some parsley, an extremely savory watermelon jelly with orange and for dessert I had that yummy lavender walnut honey truffle ball pictured front and center below.

I'm fancy, huh? I'm fancy, huh? I'm a fancy, huh? I'm fancy, huh?

Best's Back!

2011-05-16T21:19:00.009-04:00

Best Friend was in town again. I've known this one since 1993 and on June 23, 2012 I will be her maid of honor when she marries Robert Stewart Young, can you believe? (Rob's middle name is not Stewart, but he looks as though he'd be named something like that)... I know I'm spewing out numbers like a leaf blower. We are nonstop laughs as a duo, unleashing a sense of humor that dates back to the fourth grade, and has truly endured the test of time. She is one of maybe three people I can yell criticism to and she won't bat an eyelash and three minutes later all will be hunky dory, much the same way that in fifth grade we would get into screaming matches, part ways and 10 minutes later I'd interrupt her Beverly Hills 90210 trance with, "So... you wanna go outside and play volleyball" And she'd be like, "Okay!"

Here, we are sharing a passionfruit tart and flourless chocolate cake for dessert at Falai

Un par de greñudas

2011-05-14T02:08:00.004-04:00

You may or may not (most probably not) have noticed the lack of Rome photos on Hecho/visto. I couldn't quite find a theme or sets to post besides the obvious, namely "I went to Rome". Since there were so many, this iMovie format seems to do the job a little more effectively. My present to Neta Mor:

Neta and Annabelle: Roma 2011 from Annabelle Quezada on Vimeo.

More Myth (No Sisyphus Though)

2011-05-11T11:57:00.013-04:00

Read in bed last night, but as luck would have it, blogged from the office:

"We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink...

[Then he muses on things Mediterranean, classical & philosophical]

... Nature is still there, however. She contrasts her calm skies and her reasons with the madness of men. Until the atom too catches fire and history ends in the triumph of reason and the agony of the species. But the Greeks never said that the limit could not be overstepped. They said it existed and that whoever dared to exceed it was mercilessly struck down. Nothing in present history can contradict them."

-Albert Camus from the essay "Helen's Exile"

When This Whole World Starts Getting You Down...

2011-05-09T01:32:00.006-04:00

... there's room for two right up on the roof (up on the roooooof). Farrah is busy and doesn't have time to make a meal... no time, there's never any time. She insisted she had no food, so I helped her out by cooking up a filling dinner with what she did have. The result: a creamy pea and sausage farfalle dish to which I added dill, wasabi, shallots and tiny bit of garlic. Thinly shaved parmesan cheese served as a garnish, and we ate this with a nice, milky colored sake. Miss Sabado will think twice before she says she has no food at home next time (wide grin).

Dirty South (of Spain)... Can Ya'll Really Feel Me?

2011-05-08T12:35:00.007-04:00

As you probably already know, I was in Andalucia for Semana Santa, which means a lot of beautiful music, a lot of blocked off streets, and a lot of excitement. I realized I've been slacking on the food photos, so I will try to insert some relevant ones here. There was a lot of bacalao frito in our diet, as well as tinto de verano. Upon arriving to one eatery in Sevilla, I noticed this woman had what seemed like a really refreshing, iced red drink before her. I assumed it was cranberry juice until I saw two other ladies with the same beverage. I figured that unless UTI's are rampant in the South of Spain, this must be the hot drink to order so I asked the waitor what it was and he informed me it was tinto de verano, basically a poor man's sangria (but the preferred drink to sangria by the locals) made with red wine and carbonated lemonade or 7-up. That's basically all I drank from that moment onwards.

Per Motek's recommendation, we had breakfast at La Campana:

A true highlight from Sevilla, the three cheese salad! This is what I call a Holy Trinity:

We spent many a night at La Carboneria, my favorite and most nearby bar with the best live music and flamenco. They had one large beer garden type space with a more intimate, IMHO quite magical, room next door. I genuinely miss this place:

I'll try to upload my favorite song ever, what they played during the procession in Sevilla, later... It sounded like a potential Kanye song to me, really. Ha! Anxious to hear what you think about it.

What a Great Idea...

2011-05-08T11:35:00.005-04:00

... it was to go to The Festival of Ideas! So many wonderful, inspiring works of art. My personal favorite experience was the massive projection onto the church on Mulberry St. The photos below only offer a modicum of a glimpse into this presentation, which I think lasted about 4-5 minutes. Nonetheless I have to provide you with some type of reference to this mesmerizing display where different themes and guises were projected onto the church's facade. Utilizing the church's exterior and its architectural elements, the front was transformed from some type of celestial body to an apocolyptic, disintegrating disaster to a robotlike machine to a zodiac clock to what I think was a giant stained glass window! All the while, a ginormous fire, text and other things were projected onto the wall directly across from it.

Look at them Potatoes

2011-05-07T16:14:00.005-04:00

They don't look like much... But these guys were heaven, like butter in your mouth. Don't they look like magic little eggs? At last night's dinner party my colleague and I went crazy cooking up a storm. In less than 1.5 hours we made a flavorful shrimp dish, a caprese salad with the most amazing buffalo mozzarella straight from Italy, thyme and salt mix potatoes (below), herb crusted halibut, garlic and chili string beans, and a heavily marinated honey mustard, slightly teriyakished chicken I must have turned over about 18 times. In an effort to not be rude throughout dinner, again- my photography was limited. Agh, I'm working on this! It's been a while since I've had my own camera, so I've been forgetting to take photos until the last minute, too.

Let Me Eat Cake!

2011-05-07T16:09:00.003-04:00

Yes, this is what I eat for breakfast. Pastries and coffee. On this particular day, cake and coffee... Raspberry torte to be exact. Whenever people make fun of my ostensibly junky breakfasts, I just respond: If sugary goods and coffee are okay with Abuelita Carmen*, then they're okay with me.

*Paternal grandmother

Ingredients of the Week

2011-05-07T15:59:00.004-04:00

Some sesame oil, a chili pepper, a blood orange, garlic and basil can go a long way. Now that spring has arrived, what better use to put them to than little spring rolls, which I of course forgot to photograph. Whatever, I'm making them again next week, ha. Anyway, they were shrimp and red pepper ones with the ingredients I listed above. I made two types, one using a peanut sauce to cook the shrimp and another with with lemon & garlic shrimp. I also used the magic ingredients to make a yummy pan fried scallop linguini and a vermicelli noodle stir fry with some leftover orange chicken I had from lunch. It's nice to make so much of this because then I can take the leftovers to work the next day!

OverCastaway

2011-05-04T00:40:00.011-04:00

When the weather doesn't allow for a a sunny seaside experience in Malaga, just settle for watching dopey teenagers bounce off a ball and land on their back.

The warm, yet breezy night made up for it with rose scented sidewalks and seafood fests galore... Futbol matches with old Spanish men and beers with lemon didn't hurt either.

The White City

2011-05-04T00:15:00.003-04:00

Lisbon, Portugal, on the way up to the miradouro at Graca

View from the miradouro, about 30 minutes before sunset

I'm Going Going, Back Back, To Sintra Sintra

2011-05-03T15:04:00.008-04:00

What happens when you need a getaway from your getaway? In our case, we left our Baixa-Chiado hood for a day trip to Sintra. The summer residence of Portuguese royalty, Sintra is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. In 1809 Lord Byron wrote to his friend Francis Hodgson: "I must just observe that the village of Cintra in Estremadura is the most beautiful in the world."

For Annabelle, it is a place where flat surfaces need to be checked for puddles constantly, so as to not wet my pants for a 3rd, 4th, 5th time upon taking a much needed seat. My sister and I walked from the train station all the way up to the Castelo dos Mouros and the Pena Palace. The reward upon reaching the first peak was one of the most breathtaking views I have ever witnessed.

Taking the Words Straight Outta My Mouth

2011-05-02T17:54:00.004-04:00

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

- Dr. Martin Luther King

In Transition

2011-04-30T13:31:00.016-04:00

Dear All 6 Of You,

I am really forcing myself to sit and type something on here. As some of you already know, I am experiencing major withdrawals from roaming around aimlessly and doing as I please, day in and day out, for three weeks. I'm almost certain this was the most spontaneous vacation I have taken, on many levels, and I'm finding the transition back into an organized reality a tad difficult. That being said, today I decided on a solution whereby I will marry the vacation mentality into daily life, an attempt at incorporating the freedom of being guided by the moment with some semblance of structure and checking off on my inevitable to do's.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this post-vacay syndrome was a smidgen of a lack of motivation. I haven't been able to research, write, doodle or even blog anything because of such a paralysis... Today I managed to make myself a strong, strong coffee and some yummy toasts (Lavazza with soy milk, butter with cinnamon and olive pate, hummus and onion jam, respectively), began to unpack my suitcase and put everything back in its place. Baby steps... A good beginning towards reifying my return, hopefully my state of mind will follow suit.

Some inspiring things aiding my jolt back into productive mode:

-Spring is here! After I unpack my suitcase non-halfassedly, I'll replace the old soil in my pots and scatter new seeds. Thanks, Bluebs for planting the idea in my head to plant seeds in pots, and for our long, Negroni supported chats on goals and perseverance.

-Smeerk and Shrimpie's culinary escapades on the digital frontier are keeping me on my toes, with ideas sure to tickle all of the senses. Find them on Twitter, they're new and follow-worthy!

-Glimpsing the National Theatre Wales channel on You Tube. Here you can watch snippits of the large scale community effort in reviving Port Talbot's Passion plays, a massage for the right side of your brain.

-Starting Joys and Sorrows: Reflections by Pablo Casals.

-Leonard Cohen's "Ten New Songs" album.

Ciao, un bacio,
AQ

Don't Stop Thinking About Sperlonga...

2011-04-29T14:25:00.007-04:00

Yesterday's gone, yesterdaaay's gone...

Here's Lookin' At You, Kid

2011-04-24T12:59:00.009-04:00

After a night of mass pizza and fried (insert any vegetable or seafood here) consumption, culminating with a stop at Crossover and a 2 am - 4 am dance party session at Club Rockabilly? Neta and I boarded a train to Sperlonga, and here we are now at a fabulous ghosttown of a hotel where we seem to be the only inhabitants in the entire city. More later, and much more blogging to come. Ciao!

Ma, ma, Malagaaa, Next up Ro-ma, maaaaa

2011-04-19T16:43:00.003-04:00

... España, Oooh la la!
Malaga smells like roses and jasmine. Could it be more perfect?

A Quick Hola From Sevilla

2011-04-18T14:20:00.006-04:00