Bellydancing

I took a bellydancing class.

Polyrhythms

Our Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis was doing a series of check-in meetings with JALC directors.  After ours, I asked him to teach me the most complicated rhythm he's learned recently.  He taught me a simple one instead.

Out

I made my way outside, after the hurricane.

Inevitability

What is inevitable mustn't pause
mustn't confer with others
mustn't refrain
mustn't reflect on protecting itself
mustn't try not to call
mustn't maintain forced distance
mustn't measure its reach
mustn't think before doing.
What is inevitable goes in, on, through, or just passes by, because it must.

What is inevitable does not look both ways
does not mind the gap
does not shhh when baby is sleeping
...
(to be continued)

Irene

I made the last of my hurricane preparations; the raspberry-chocolate in the foreground didn't survive.

Idyll

I made a utopian daily schedule that includes nap time and 2.5 hours to read newspapers.

Bavarder

I made conversation in French, with a Parisian friend of my friend.

Borders

Borders bookstore is closing and wants us to buy everything from its fixtures to its more questionable book titles.  I made a photo essay of what remains.

Setlist

I made a setlist for someone I haven't met yet.

Basisk

I made a floor lamp from assorted parts as the Ikea instructions told me to do.

Mardy Bum

I made a music video treatment for the Arctic Monkeys' Mardy Bum.

5 identically played out scenes of varying couples - splice between each:

- Alex Lastnameforgotten and Alexa Chung
- Napoleon and Josephine
- Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
- Henry XIII and Anne Boleyn (but Anne is the evicted despite male vocals)
- Hitler and Eva Braun

A. Kitchen discussion - subtitled in appropriate language (French, German, regional UK accent phonetically spelled) - with black title cards.  Setting/dialogue differs in each scene -- written for each couple, but gestures are identical in each case.

B. Cresendoes into argument (and subtitles vary with each couple) during lyric "I'm sorry I was late...", e.g. "I'm sorry I was late, I was at war and traffic was a state..."

C. Each evictee settles in with bedding onto a living room couch or equivalent

10 Questions for an Interview

I've always wanted to interview people in some forum.  This is what I might ask:

1. Who are you?

2. Describe a single moment (or recurring situation) when you have understood exactly who you are.

3.  How many true friends do you have?

4.  Describe your parents and how you are or are not like them.

5.  Are you doing what you would like to be doing on this planet?  If not, what is that?

6.  Name 6 seminal books/works of art that have been essential to your humanity.  For each, explain why.

7.  Do you believe in monogomy?

8.  What have you known of love?

9.  Describe the afterlife.

10.  Einstein once said the single most important decision any of us will have to make is whether or not the universe is friendly.  Describe your position. 

Flying Kiwi Juice

Made to the specifications of Stanzi Allan Pouthier.

Pina Colada

I made it.  Once again, a Stanzi Pouthier recipe.

Seven Settings

I made a list of seven settings for future immersion:
- India, the mother country of my mothers
- Cuba
- New Orleans
- the gray and green highlands of Scotland or Ireland
- the utopian civility of Australia /New Zealand
- somewhere where the ocean is part of my life
- Morocco or another Francophone country

Illumination

I transcribed a Paramhansa Yogananda poem and tried to make it look like an illuminated manuscript when all I really wanted to do was make my way to bed.

BCT

I made an open-faced sandwich of basil, cheese, and tomato and ate it before it could be documented.

Schedule

With sage counsel, I made a schedule for a week in Charleston, SC.

Crossword

I made a crossword puzzle for Marina Thomas.

Fork Sculptures

Seth Johnson taught me how to make fork sculptures.  His is on the right and might be nicer.

Ode to a Dead Bumblebee

Did your heart stop or feet plop,
did you just have enough
of flowers and hours of
sameness, was it tough?

Did your shoulders stoop, wings droop,
was it all just too much
of lawn tours, then screen doors
locked in my Brooklyn hutch?

If only I knew you, kept honey or a tree,
A flower, grass tower, or something you would see
and realize that outside could be inside too
and fly by the window and out would go you.

[There was a dead bumblebee on my living room floor this morning, so I quickly wrote a children's song about it before going to work. Still feels corny on the re-read and I do cringe and I don't like children's songs, but I needed a day where I wasn't racing the clock to create before midnight.  So there it is.  I wanted to write a children's book about a little cocooned caterpillar who couldn't handle it anymore and commits suicide, and the next day all of its friends become butterflies.  If properly written, it'll be more positive than macabre, I swear.]

Welcome Home Vanessa

Vanessa Raymond came back to us briefly from Bulgaria, and we made her sit and answer these questions in our office:

1. What have you craved?
2.  What will you bring back in your suitcase?
3.  Do you still like Nat?
4a. How is the food?
4b. How is the bread?
5.  How was it studying Bulgarian?
6.  How does Nat know Turkish?

Mobius Strip

I took a ribbon and some tape and made a mobius strip and thought about it and infinity until I couldn't think anymore.

Exit

I inadvertently made someone leave my house.  I'm still unclear about this.

Bloodlines

With my mother, in my New Jersey hometown, I made inquiries about our people and learned more in one evening about my ancestors than I could have dreamed.

Gazpacho

That's what I made.  Stanzi Pouthier recipe.

Reviewed

I stood in the very long line at the Metropolitan Museum and then took exuberant notes on the Alexander McQueen exhibit.  Later, I wrote a movie review of Miranda July's The Future, with a goal of 250 words or less.

One was in my notebook, and one was not. 

What I found:

AMcQ:
Ah, the seams and the exquisite hand + the materials (red tinted medical slides) + the [exhibit] names (Nihilism, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, Highland Rape [alluding to England's rape of Scotland], Banshee, The Girl Who Lived in a Tree) + the revolution --

"I want to empower women.  I want people to be afraid of the women I dress." --

all emanating like flames from a masterful base of line + seam + quality, quality, quality craftsmanship where the tailor becomes visionary becomes icon becomes iconoclast. 

"I think everyone has a deep sexuality and sometimes it's good to use a little of it -- and sometimes a lot of it -- as a masquerade." 

Wood fan as skirt. 
The staging of shows: rain, holograms, underwater.

Hats: butterflies; wooden Japanese houses; peacock in branches; vertabrae back, shoulderpiece in metal.  He does not neglect the head and shoulders.  Most everyone has face-masks in leather or durian-like bronze + always the cut + draping + shaping + filigree of it all makes you ache. 

Surfing

I took my first surfing lesson, thanks to Van Monak Chhun.

This is what I remember:
- the orange-red of the surfboard
- that the leash goes on the right foot
- that I fell often but with the technique they showed us
- that my first successful ride to the shore happened while I was on my knees
- that my second was upright and I followed the coast on a wave that seemed endless and that I remained standing all the way to the shore.

This is how I felt:
- exhilirated
- clear about the ratio of hard sweet work to pay-off to sweet digestion

Boats

Van Monak Chhun taught me how to make paper boats in our office.

Salad

I made apple, fennel, and kale salad, and then went to see Sleep No More (described as an immersive theater experience).  I made Marina Thomas and Melissa Lorenz go with me.  Patrons, all masked, wander around a 5-story hotel, their 3-dimensional set, while Macbeth-inspired scenes unfold before your eyes, between spectators.  You can either follow the actors as they move from place to place or wander through rooms crafted with an absurd attention to detail, rummage through drawers, read letters, peer into bottles in an apothecary, and so on.  I made up an improvisational dance in its graveyard to the strains of the Vertigo soundtrack.

Balsamic and Banana

I made balsamic vinaigrette and banana ice cream (the latter was unsuccessful and unphotogenic), courtesy of Stanzi Pouthier's raw recipe book.