There's a phrase in pilates called "short box" that demonstrates the way you put a wooden box padded in foam and covered in naugahyde gets placed on the pilates reformer. Lately, I've been feeling like my spine is going through life as a short box.
Recently, I was teaching pilates in San Luis Obispo and crashing at a friend's place. Here's the weird room she had me staying in. My first thought was, did I wander into a hotel?
To make things feel more homey, I started working on projects I'd brought. Foolish me. She's VERY allergic to animal hair and what did I leave ALL OVER the room but my red mohair afghan I was finishing.
Here it is crumpled up on the part of the bed I was using.
And last, but not in the least, the view from my window there.
I lost so much weight while I was there. Then I got home at 2 in the morning, started work the next day early, and have been busy, busy, busy since then. So go figure, I've gained the weight back and then some. Sucks. Still, a dancer I know suffered last year from herniated discs in her back and she couldn't dance for about 7 months. Now she's back, thinner than ever, her silhouette the perfect triangle (inverted) that I always wished I could be. There but for the grace of the gods of the genetics go I.... Nevertheless, she's dancing better than before and inspires me to keep trying.
There's a genre of chick that buys loads of stationery -- cards, beautifully decorated sheets of paper with matching envelopes, handmade paper from Nepal -- and writes to her friends at least twice a year (birthdays and the winter holidays). They favor a slightly confessional style, tend to speak in metaphor, spend a lot of time reading books and wandering around cities looking at museums, shops, magazines and catalogues of culture and commerce, probably took a belly dancing class or African dance or flamenco if not years and years of the requisite ballet and piano.
I am that kind of girl. And I've noticed that I write to my friends less because I, like the rest of those chicks, are blogging instead of sending little missives of scented paper to one particular friend who gets to hear these particular outpourings that are like a poeticization of experience. A distillation of the Best Of moments for the month. It's cold to email with blind carbon copies of the addresses my closest friends and say, "I've just updated my blog. Check it out if you want to know what's happening in my life." And then they see my own email address, the dead giveaway that they aren't special enough to merit an individualized email, let alone a handpicked card or stationery to receive with a beautiful handpicked stamp (there're weird Jean Cocteau-like ones right now that are actually the King & Queen from a deck of cards and also The Simpsons [!] cartoon characters) by snail mail.
On Mother's Day, my main mum being on tour, I went to a performance held in an unusual house, the kind of house that falls under the category of "ecological architecture" or more au courant "green architecture." This is the kind of house that doesn't destroy the environment as much as other building structures do. In fact, it's the kind of structure that conserves resources by adapting resources we have in excess and using them to achieve common construction objectives. Here, the exposed insulation is made of shredded blue jeans and held in place by a wire grill that looks similar to a window screen but isn't.
An entire wall had this construction similar to the Piet Mondrian "Broadway" painting series where various rectangles of different colors, opacities, and hues fit into a gridlike structure. If you'll look closely, you'll see that there's very little glass. Most of the rectangles are composed of that synthesized, corrugated material that often gets used for a greenhouse or garden shed. Our landlord has left to rot in our backyard a small tool shed that has the same opaque, corrugated materials forming the walls and roof of the shed.
Since I can't picture music without stealing an image of a serious work of art or struggling over my graphite and drawing paper for hours to create something visually equivalent to what I heard at this concert of Filippino classical and folk music, I'm just showing photos of the informal venue. Here's a spiral staircase. Much of the house was not open to the casual visitor. I respect this. I have strong boundaries and I wouldn't want the host to show areas that are really quite private and not for the public consumption of someone that just walked in off the street, after receiving an invitation to what amounted to a private performance of lesser known music.
Much about plants this month. I'd planted lots and lots of seeds in the two front yards and the back yard of our rental home. One I hadn't planned on sprouting did. This is a larkspur with its characteristically intense blue-purple flowers. On the left is the first sprig of blooms and on the right is the second set of blooms that sprouted. You'll notice on closer inspection that after about 10 days, the original sprig is going to seed. The green pod formations that look like snap peas contain the seeds for more larkspur. I hesitate to invest too much money in a house we are renting. It has to be livable and have a degree of beauty, yet there are so many plants that self-propagate effortlessly and require little water that I tend to cultivate those plants. These are plants like coleus canina, geraniums, and epidendrum orchids.
These are Fuyu persimmons in my grandmother's yard with my hand showing a size comparison. By December, they'll be full grown and ready to sit on my fruit plate until they ripen to a mushy sweetness like room temperature custard. Fuyus can of course be eaten crispy like apples and that's their ideal consistency for salads, but, as I like the fruit by itself or at times with a decadent dollop of creme anglaise, then I wait for it to become thin skinned with a runniness within.
Also in my grandma's garden, which by the way is an excellent kitchen garden, is a lime kaffir or kefir tree. She uses the leaves when she cooks fish to remove some of the "fishiness" of the dish. These leaves are used A LOT in Thai and Southeast Asian cooking. As you can see on the photo to the right, it's just a regular tree in appearance. My grandma refuses to eat the fruit for some reason so after reading up on it in Wikipedia, I guess she was having trouble explaining to me in my toddler's understanding of Chinese that the fruit is simply to astringent to be eaten, but it can have plenty of other household uses.
T.S. Emporium is one of our favorite places to shop for Granny & I. There're weird bargains that show up and generally I'm able to buy a lot of things cheaper here than in 99 Ranch Market. Here's a particularly weird bargain that showed up when we were there over Memorial Day weekend: whole chickens with the claws, the head, and the innards.
Most of my produce shopping has come from the Asian and Mexican markets lately. The produce is usually fresher and less expensive than the fancy places like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods Market. Farmer's Market carries interesting varieties, but not good staples where I can justify spending a few bucks on several pounds worth of eggplant for the week's dishes. I can't spend all my time cooking. I want time to dance, to knit, to sew, to write, and above all to read, workout, and just plain work. So I cook large quantities of food that we eat throughout the week until we can't stand the dish anymore or until all the portions are gone. Instead of tossing uneaten portions, we freeze the food, give it away, or repackage it with new seasonings and sauces, for instance. A mostly vegetable stew can have the stock drained away, then wrapped up in a tortilla with a variety of condiments and some pan fried meat added for a fun burrito. Today, I'm trying to make a batch of mousaka -- meatless and with meat. If it turns out as well as our favorite local Greek deli's, we'll be unlikely to freeze it or give it away. Picture above are our German Green tomatoes. The fruit ripens to a yellow-green hue. This year's crop has a less complicated, more straightforward flavor than last year's. But last year was a crop of three tomatoes. All the depth of the flavor was concentrated on just those three. Because they have been appearing on the vine randomly and not particularly prolifically, we have simply been eating them raw with a simple homemade salsa, a drizzled vinaigrette, or in toasted avocado and red onion honey wheat bread sandwiches.
Recently, I displayed and sold some handknit items at Aida's Boutique. Here's Lilah Rae, modeling a child-sized sock monkey hat off the knittydotcom free pattern service. She doesn't look too happy, but she was sooooo cute & cuddly!
I had flown up to San Francisco for a friend's performance. One of the members of his ensemble is shown here dancing "Robam Tiyae" in the classical Cambodian dance idiom. Dancer and instructor Sothavy Khot holds up her hand and the lighting of the Red Poppy Art House kept catching the light of the dancers palms. That particular lightness of their palms looked like it was holding light. I haven't seen hands highlighted so well before and even though the lighting was not professional stage quality, I found it lovely -- the venue, its location, the volunteer staff, even the audience.
Back at home again, it was time to do work. Lots and lots of work. Some work is for money. Some work I take on because I am following a question, a curiosity, a dream, an open-ended situation, a feeling.
Here I split up a photo of a dancer from Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taipei Taiwan into two frames. In some ways the photos is an inspiration, in other ways, it shows how far I've traveled. I never had one original love, but I did so love dancing and choreographing. I still do, but the instrument has grown testy with age. Last week, for instance, I strained a buttock muscle and am unable to really workout and definitely cannot take dance class until it heals.
Some people think I'm into EVERYTHING -- the domestic arts, the performing arts, thinking & reading too much, and the plastic arts as a hobby. Here's something I saw at the Asian Art Museum that inspired me to go home and do ALL my old and wannabe-created projects at the same time. It's from late 19th century China and it's a detail from a woman's skirt.
And take a breath. Just look at something beautiful for a moment:
These are tulips from Judes on Easter. Sure they're not fresh and they're growing older. So am I. I try to find beauty in each phase of my life, frustrating as that can be. I am not aging gracefully. I am fighting too much by holding onto old ideas about How Things Should Be.
One reason why I am not an adult in a thirteen-year-old dancer's body is because I love the domestic arts of cooking, eating, and hosting meals. Recently, this season's loquats came to ripeness and fell on people's sidewalks and uneaten on their backyard grass. I thought many, many times about begging people for the opportunity to pick their loquats -- so good for coating the throat when SoCal allergy season kicks up and I cough as if I was wracked with tuberculosis. Last year I asked. This year, I just wanted to take the fruit. Instead, I took this picture:
For a while, I had successfully grown a loquat tree sprouted from a loquat seed. Out of 10 seeds I planted, only one grew. And then it died. This local garden inspires me to keep plugging away when I have the time and energy on our landlord's property, on the 2 front, the back, and the side gardens surrounding this rental property. Someday, I hope it looks like this:
On May 1st, it was pouring rain in San Francisco. I had a few hours to kill between an appointment in SOMA and an appointment in the Mission.
At the Asian Art Museum nearby SOMA, I saw my figurative May Flowers:
A beautiful mandala (or tankha?) being made with painted sand grains by a Bhutanese Buddhist monk....
This amazing shrug-coat a statuesque blonde wore in the bookstore.... It reminds me of a recent ribbed cardi with a gorgeous ribbing radiating in a pattern on the back in Vogue Knitting International.
And this 18th century sculpture of Doumou, Taoist goddess who is probably aka Kuan-yin, too.
I love, love, love the Ralph Lauren-esque knitted fabric created by knitting with 3 strands of yarn for my Saoirse Shawl: a boucle thread yarn someone gave me (no labels), Colinette Parisienne in "Tapis" colorway, and Lana Borgesa Bollicina cashmere in a dark taupe.
This was my favorite piece in the Fashionistas! show at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, California. This Brazilian Carnivale-like costume is constructed from yogurt lids and 6-pack rings by Shaun Musculo, "Single Serving Gown."
Me and Julian posing behind my piece in the show, the "Boho Coat" from LotusMonkey Boho Fall Fashion 2008. I got to see four of my ballet dancer buddies that night. Yay! And Connie DK Lane, the sculptor, helped me install the Boho Coat better than the curator had. I mean, even though all my data was submitted on a disc per OCCCA's request, they couldn't spell my name right, they couldn't spell my piece right, they couldn't keep the dress form at the proper height.... The Boho Coat looked like the kid from the first marriage that no one wants to deal with.... Hahahaha.
Here's a piece in the show that cracked us all up: Absolut B%$tch (the title is uncensored on the tag).
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Playing with my ESB at a Thai restaurant last February. We were talking about a mutual friend last night who was temperamental on this night of the spring full moon. ESB said, "you know, the only problem with D is that he doesn't give women the space to be magical. To just let things happen. He probably has women in his life but they're all problematic in the same ways he is." Wowwww.... No wonder he's my ESB.... He gives me space.
Things have been so challenging for me personally that I have not wanted to spread the grayness by blogging about it. So I say, "Thank you, Diane von Furstenberg for your whimsical Fall 2009 Ready-To-Wear collection." I saw pompom hats act as metaphors -- tiny sprigs of hope and lightness atop each one of her models' heads. And thank the gods and the muses that she used color and texture instead of the dour all black, white, and gray of so many collections in New York and London these last two weeks....
Lately, I've been into knitting wrap sweaters for myself so that I can actually wear what I knit to work. For Croisette, I've knit two lace panels already for the two lace sleeves and I'm about to cast on and begin knitting the bottom hem lace panel -- all in Noro yarn leftover from Rosedale United. I have some lovely Colinette mohair and some remnant Noro Silk Garden from previous projects for the body of the sweater, too. I like the lace hem because I'll be sending the tie through one of the yarn overs so that the sweater hangs well instead of strange and flippy like my Grace Wrap Sweater does....
So here's BBT's Portable Throw Xmas 2008 present, slowly inching along on my circular needles. I'm so tempted to turn the afghan into a coat for me to wear. I've noticed a lot of celebrities wearing cozy knit cable sweater-coats in gossip mags lately and thought: well hey, I can make that for myself. But no, I'm making do with my old, old, oversized sweater-coat from the late 80's that I knit up.
I've decided that the throw is too narrow for my taste. I'm going to take leftover yarn (hopefully there will be some!) or contrasting steel blue and knit cables sideways on the width. Hopefully I can avoid using the blue, as BBT's house is all muted colors in neutral taupes, grays, beiges, and brown with a lot of wood -- wood floors, wooden furniture, wooden frames and moldings. He's terribly tasteful and not as Boho as myself, so I hesitate to do unconventional color schemes in anything I give him.
Chinese (Lunar) New Year fell on Monday, January 26th this year. We celebrated the day before, inviting over friends and family for a fun food fest.
As things go nowadays, there were several people with dietary restrictions: vegans, vegetarians, and gluten-free eaters. People that didn't eat garlic or onions (a principal part of Southern Chinese cuisine). People that would meat, but not from animals with four legs (lamb, pigs, cattle, rabbit).
So we made several vegetarian, vegan, and chicken-only dishes.
Clockwise from top left: Spicy Tofu Sticks, Steamed Rice, Pork-n-Leek Potstickers, Fried Vegetarian Wontons, (bowl of chopped scallions), (bowl of chopped cilantro), Egg-tomato-scallion-garlic sauteed (a Southern Chinese "peasant" dish), Silken tofu (with scallions, sesame seed oil, and soy sauce), and Garlic-Chives with Silken Tofu.
Clockwise from purple bowl: Fried Chicken Wontons, Chocolate Chip Bars (not Chinese, but a concession to the many little kids that came), traditional sesame and peanut flour based candies (brought in by a guest, and replaced the red bean pancakes I didn't get around to making), meyer Lemon Bars (meyer lemons actually originate from China and although the bars aren't Chinese, the pastry crust makes the eggy-bars taste like dim sum Egg Tarts, except with a lot of lemon and no milk), Chicken Wonton Noodle Soup.
We were making it a Reverse Birthday Party, too. I like to celebrate my birthday, but I don't want more stuff. This is why I use my library card and sell a lot of what I make with my fabric and yarn stashes. These candle lanterns (burgundy globes on top shelf) were originally from a modern dance I had in repertory when I had my own avant garde music and dance company. We had 7 on hand and gave away 3, keeping one to use for ambient light.
Origami is a Japanese paper craft, however, this piece of tumbleweed we found looked like interesting coral. We spray painted it black and then filled it with origami birds from a previous holiday decoration scheme.
I'm not big on Christmas trees in my home since I have yet to rent a home big enough to house a tree ... plus, I have an issue with cutting down a tree for decoration only. I think there needs to be more living plants, since I'm not the best at contributing to the living plant population! (I've discovered that I LOATHE watering when it's cold outside.) So although we were giving the origami tree away and no one would take it, we still enjoyed its graceful lines.
A fun party and an excuse to be creative. There're a couple other items we gave away during the party that didn't come up well on the photos. We had a great time cleaning up our stagnant corners of the house in preparation for the party and being with friends.
Lately, I've been reading books where people prepare an amazing dish (or even meal). I've wanted to do a Literature Dinner Party for a while -- one where I assign what people bring (I hate bad food combination, but I'm open to very good cooks bringing whatever) and we eat a meal, referring to the books that each dish came from. My very first Vox entry ever referred to what French Colonel Mercier craves from Polish cafes when he meets with Polish Colonel Vyborg in 1933 and in Alan Furst's novel, : ponczki.
(This being a visual culture, I insert random photos that illustrate, sometimes with just the barest of tangents, my point.)
Now, I'm reading Walter Mosley's The Right Mistake and there's a blue crab gumbo that one of the characters makes:
Billy Psalms was in the kitchen making gumbo from a recipe his grandmother, Rita Psalms, had passed down to him. He fried the slime out of his okra and make a dark brown roux from white flour sprinkled into blistering hot Crisco oil. It was real gumbo made with blue crabs, Andouille sausages, dried shrimp, and even a few oysters thrown in. The base was a chicken stock, made from a whole fryer, and it was finished off with powdered thyme and sassafras leaves for extra thickness and spice.
Socrates had worked an entire month doing pickup work down on Exposition to raise the money for the meal....
"You want Darryl to come out here an' make the rice, Billy?" Socrates asked. "He cain't do much in the kitchen but I taught him how to make a pot'a rice."
"Naw, baby. My mama told me that if I want to be proud'a what I cook then I got to do the whole thang. An' you know I learnt almost everything from my mama"....
Antonio and Mustafa rushed over to grab hold of the big pot. As soon as they had taken the weight the gambler announced, "Louisiana blue crab gumbo is in the house"....
Next to the gumbo pot stood stacked a pile of a dozen porcelain bowls, also borrowed from Miss Northford. Billy used a teacup to put a dome of rice in the bottom of a bowl and then ladled the dark green stew on top of that -- making sure that each serving received at least one of the small crabs.
Leanne carved the cornbread. People took the large squares as the platter was passed down the center of the table toward the front....
"I thought you called these blue crabs," Wan Tai sad across the broad plank to Billy. "But these are red."
"They turn red when you cook 'em," Billy said. "But you know them li'l suckers got the best tastin' crab meat anywhere."
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Recent Comments
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Chemical Billy said:
The Red Poppy did make for great visuals for the dancers, if little space.And I see all grace when I... read more
on Age & Beauties -
LotusMonkey said:
It's a mixture of colors. If you look at my Rosedale United post, (sorry ... search by keywords), then you'll... read more
on Ravelry wip: Croisette Wrap-Around Cardigan -
Chemical Billy said:
Ooh, that's a pretty one. What color are you using? read more
on Ravelry wip: Croisette Wrap-Around Cardigan -
You are amazing. If a writer has an ideal reader, it's to you that I write. read more
on Age & Beauties