Friday, July 27, 2007

cozy

I've been looking around a lot lately. This new job affords me such luxuries. A work break is going some place else besides Microsoft Outlook, and there's so much to see! Tonight I have a new favorite. She's this Midwestern woman who now lives in Portland with her husband. I read that she had an accident, a serious one where she might have lost her foot, but she didn't, thank goodness. She spent a year or so in recovery at home, all the while in loads of pain. During this year at home, she took up needlework. She wrote that she did this needlework for something like twelve hours a day, and when she would stop in the evening, she noticed the pain much more acutely. It was through these experiences that she came to the conclusion that she would leave her career, her corporate job, her ball and chain, whatever you want to call it. Since then she's been tapped into one thing, her creative inklings.

I am taken by her blog, something I like to think of as a little magazine if I had one. I like to think of me as this school kid who says, if I had a magazine it would be dynomite! I'd have Kung Fu, momma's kick-butt bok choy recipe, and some slasher stories mixed in, something like that. You can make whatever you wanna make. Web master, writer, photographer. Whatever. Be it baby, be it. So this woman's blog, Posie gets cozy, is just simple, really. She writes about her days and her peeps. She is an amazing photographer. She mostly photographs food. She loves cooking, and that makes me love her. It's funny to me how she happens to have her camera with her through every meal-making experience, like it's her intimate photo shoot. You see her camera pop up at cafes too, taking the most elegant and delectable picture of a cappuccino with raw sugar crystals on top that you've ever seen. The most recent pic of sprouting garlic made me want to dive right into it. How does she do that?

Anyway, I like her. Something there you may like too. It's girly, crafty and crochety, but there's something more there I tell you. Here's an excerpt from one of her entries:

Nevertheless, I started thinking about creative blogs in general last night, and what I like about them. What I like about them most of all is how you can ultimately, eventually, "hear" people in them, maybe even hear them in a way you wouldn't necessarily hear them in real life, somehow, and watch their travels near and far. Don't we read novels for the same reason -- to find out how it was for them? To see how it was, might have been, maybe will be for us? I want to know. And my favorite blogs are not the ones that are most pretty, or informative, or most prolific -- they're the ones that have a voice. The ones where the people behind them sort of shine past the photos or the punctuation and grammar (so what about that anyway -- never let that stop you) or the crafts or any of that stuff -- I like voices. I like thinking, "Oh, she's gentle, " or "Bah! She's hilarious!" or "Wow -- how thoughtful," or "Mmm -- I see now," when I hear people -- and then I like it when those impressions grow and layer, like puff pastry, into something thrilling and full. I like watching people discover things, I like how the blog changes and develops by sheer virtue of its happening at all, those magic moments when someone discovers something, understands something.









All photographs by Alicia Paulson.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Feng ZhengJie







These paintings make me feel longing. It's the color, how they're lit up, and their vacant eyes. They pose and say look at me.

The MFAH in Houston is currently running an exhibit that they're calling: "Red Hot--Asian Art Today." Well, okay, if you want to go with that title. Here is a little about the artist. His name is Feng ZhengJie, and he is about my age. I'll call him my contemporary, but he's much more interesting. See for yourself.

from the Goedhuis Contemporary--
Feng Zhengjie was born in the countryside of Sichuan Province in 1968. In response to the explosive development of China's entertainment industry, Feng creates works that serve as a commentary on the new glamour and fashion of today's society. His works also reflect a personal ambivalent fascination with and an aversion to Chinese pop culture.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

sumptuous

Please spend your next lazy Sunday with Maryam at My Marrakesh. You won't be sorry. She creates a portal of sumptuous visual bites and stories from faraway lands. See:










Read: a sample of Maryam's writings


I peer out from the balcony, and the view of the Eiffel Tower makes me catch my breath.

Not a single locust in sight.

I sit in a cafe with Tara of the blog Paris Parfait. The waiter says "avec plaisir" and takes our picture. Tara's eyes are enormous and a color so remarkable that I can't help but stare. She relates tales of Middle Eastern intrigue. The tales, all true, involve her in complex and astonishing ways. She then tells me of her novel in progress. I feel a kind of longing that is hard to describe; a longing for a book of my own - not fiction, but truth. I wonder - shyly - if I can add that book to my list of dreams that I dream by day.

I then realize that my problems, though big - though quite big - are really only small. As I walk back to my hotel I smile at the passersby. They smile back at me.


Image acknowledgements: (1,2) Steve McCurry, (3) persisting stars, (4) Maryam Montague, (5)BabaSteve, (6) morgueprincess, (7) Aline Thomassen

Monday, July 16, 2007

movie sunday

I am hoping to inspire [the American public] in some way, to become active, and to do something.
Michael Moore on Sicko

I was dreading going to see Sicko. I didn't want to be brought down, man. I don't want someone shaking his fist in my face in a rant that's supposed to make me care. I've got other things going on.

As a recent LA Times article relays, the movie doesn't follow the same trail leading to a suit being protected from handheld cameras by security guards. It takes a circuitous route, back and forth between people's stories, happy and sad. There's lots of laughter and good feeling about your fellow man or woman. There's a certain function and flow about town in the places Moore visits, in the people he meets. Of course, these places are in other countries. The people he visits in our country share their dysfunctions and heartbreak so that we can see that things aren't working as they should, and that every time we don't want someone in our faces with their rants to try to make us care when everything in our worlds is just peachy, somehow things aren't peachy when you become indifferent.

In one segment, a video recording shows a cab dropping off an elderly, disoriented woman wearing a hospital gown and nothing else. The cab does a quick u-turn to reach the curb. The door opens, and she gets out. She shuffles up the street, not bothering to find the sidewalk for awhile. And then she does her own u-turn thank goodness, up onto safer ground. By this time a shelter worker goes out and greets her, then brings her inside. In this country, hospitals have taken to acquiring cab services to take indigent patients to shelters. That is the most humane thing they can think to do. We can't treat you, so we'll drop you at the next Salvation Army doorstep.

I try not to think about my health too much. I am an irregular visitor to doctors' offices. All in all, I've got good health. I have also been without health care coverage for about 5 or 6 years of my adult life. That's my little Aetna bio. Although it's one of those things intensely personal that we relate to me rather than we, our own physical health, I do believe that we are supposed to care for the sick and the poor. Why is it that a doctor would ever have to refuse to make someone well and order them a cab instead? We create these moral dilemmas for ourselves as Americans because of greed; ultimately greed separates you from your neighbor--there's no sharing in greed. So we live in indifference I think, because our collective moral health isn't good. Look at the south side of Chicago vs. the north, New Orleans and so on. It's not that we don't care as individuals, or maybe some don't; it's the characteristic of societal systems who don't care that we shouldn't be accepting. No one wants to change a system, though, and why should we? It's working just fine, and if it's not for some people, well they need to go and fix it themselves. I'm too tired for all that.

Monday, July 09, 2007

ny children

Project description
(from the organizatation's website)

Photograph one child from every country on earth. Each child must live in New York City.

Children from 148 countries have already been photographed. The search for the remaining 46 continues as the project moves toward completion.

* * * * *

Check out the cute pics!

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Monday, July 02, 2007

internet radio



pastemagazine.com

savenetradio.org

summer




Katherine O'Brien


I love the light in these photos, shooting up in a diagnal like they're a pair. I happened upon this woman's site when I was searching for photos of Chapel Dulcinea, designed by the architect Marley Porter who built One World Theatre in Austin. If you love church architectue like I do, you'll be charmed. And back to Katherine O'Brien, her images are fun to sift through, and full of life.