Art Lately

Been seeing lots of fun art lately. The other day I went over to the Berkley Art Museum to check out the Barry McGee show there, which was phenomenal. 

I don't think I'd set foot in that big cool oddly-shaped museum space since childhood, and the way they'd filled it with all sorts of amazing McGee installations was very very cool.

I also discovered they've published a pretty amazing show catalog which I now rather covet.

My favorite Barry McGee pieces remain the bulging assemblages of hundreds of little framed works like the one above. Super cool.

Then last night I went with some pals to the opening for "I Don't Believe In You Either," a Bigfoot-themed art show at the Bold Italic featuring delightful images by Office, adorned tree stumps by Jessica Hische (below), Lisa Congdon, Dave Eggers and many others, and benefiting 826 Valencia and 826 Boston. Highly entertaining and a good time was had by all.

The Continuing Poem Series About the Winter of 2005 Continues

January 3, 2006
Saw several people carrying green plants on the street today

Is that new year’s resolution thing?
They come wrapped loosely in paper apparently
One man had several
each in a crinkly brown wrapper that itself was lovely
Another man had one in swathed in a shiny striped paper
presumably meant to be more attractive than the plain brown paper
but actually less so
if still nicely crisp and somehow
efficient

And there was a huge
huge
half-dead Christmas tree on the curb
outside one of the office towers
looking sad and oddly lumpy the way they always do
but on a much larger scale
of sadness and lumpiness
yet at the same time making the whole street
smell faintly and pleasantly of pine


image source is here

The Giant Book Weeding Project

Over the past month or so, in small increments of time--weeknight evenings after the child has been put to bed and the dishes washed but before we crash out for forty minutes with an episode of something mindless; or Saturday afternoons during Mabel's nap--we've been working, chez nous, on a truly massive project. I should probably back up and explain that we have a lot of books. Like, a lot. I don't really think of it as being so many, but I just counted and there are sixteen bookcases up in this joint, and that's not to mention all the books stacked on top of dressers and under tables and who knows where all. So, a lot. Which is how we like it. But lately it's started to feel like just a few too many, and more and more we've been getting that sinking feeling of finishing a book and seriously not having any room on the shelf to put it away. And there is literally not room in this apartment for one more bookshelf. So. A book weeding project became a necessity. Which is why we've been going inch by inch and volume by volume through every shelf of every bookcase and getting rid of anything that that met a couple of simple criteria--either we read it but didn't like it, or we admit to ourselves that we are never actually going to read it. Lots of difficult home truths in this process, for sure. But at the same time it's been hugely liberating. We've been maybe getting rid of one book in ten. And for the first time maybe ever in my adult life I have that most astonishing thing pictured above--an empty shelf! And I'm not sure if you can even really tell what the picture below depicts, but I am here to tell you that it's a mountain constructed of every single tote bag we own (and like most twenty-first century people of our demographic, we own a heck of a lot of tote bags--perhaps two dozen?) each one filled to the top with books and stacked up in our linen closet. We've heard a rumor that the fine people who do the used book buying for Green Apple Books just might make house calls. Fingers crossed.

Be A Voter

We all know what this is going to come down to, right? Voter turn out. No one's undecided anymore. It's just a question of who can get the most people worked up enough to get off their butts and go vote. And one thing about the Republicans is that they are scary good at getting people worked up. Four years ago liberals were worked up about a young, inspiring, non-white candidate and the line at my polling place was half a block long at seven in the morning. This morning? Half a dozen people in line and, frankly, I am freaking out.

Apathy is a luxury we can't afford. I don't care about your reason. I don't care if you're a true progressive who's never really loved Obama's moderate politics; a pacifist angered by his accepting the Nobel Peace Prize while conducting two active wars; or a young person disillusioned by the day-to-day political grind of the past four years. I get all those things, I do. My generation had our share of disillusionment during Clinton's first term in the 90s. But frankly, none of that matters now. You want that warm fuzzy feeling of inspiration and Hope and Change back? Too bad. That was the infatuation stage and it's over now. This is the long haul. It may not be glamorous but it is of the the utmost importance.

If you believe in matters of basic liberal justice like social services and gender equality then there is no excuse--none--for letting an elitist misogynistic bastard like Romney win this election. As a woman and a mother of a daughter I am here to tell anyone who might be tempted to say "oh, they're all politicians, they're all the same, there's nothing to choose between them" that they are full of it. One candidate is anti-choice, anti-equal pay, and in favor of dismantling government programs from the NEA to FIMA. The other is not. The damage Romney could do with Supreme Court nominations alone is staggering. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here, and that very few people read this blog anyway, but if anyone who does read this today is contemplating sitting this one out in a pouty little snit I beg, seriously beg, you to reconsider. Get out there and vote for Obama people. The country you save could be your own.

At Brady's Birthday Party

Here is Mabel with her big boy friend Brady and another pal at Brady's third birthday party. This should really be considered the companion image to this photo, epitomizing together as they do our Bay Area seasons of cold summer and warm autumn. I must also just mention how very much the child looks to me, in this picture, like both her maternal grandmother and great grandmother.

Halloween, The Apotheosis

Mabel had been getting increasingly excited throughout the month of October to don her Halloween costume of a Cool Cool Robot and go trick or treating. So inspired, in fact, was she by the whole robot concept that it drove her to create her first representational drawing, above. Which is, clearly and obviously, a drawing fo a robot. So Wednesday night she donned the outfit at our friends' house (I must say I was utterly delighted with how it turned out!) and away we went.

This Is The Next Installment In The Ongoing Poem Series About the Winter of 2005

December 29, 2005
I was talking with Bill last night

about my constant preoccupation these days
Seeing and noticing

And he was saying that
when he goes for a walk
and tunes in to that mode of looking
what he tends to see is grit

And I wanted to say that I see a lot of grit too nothing wrong with that
I especially notice it on windowsills and in the gutter
but I don’t tend to focus on it
It doesn’t go by completely unseen like say the telephone wires
but it’s low on my list
because it’s grit
Yet I think it’s just as valid and interesting really
to see the unattractive and unappealing as the attractive and appealing
The patterns the dirt makes on the windowsill after it’s rained
or the strange assortment of flotsam in the gutter
rhinestones, buttons, and small gold stars
in amongst the leaves and cigarette butts and unidentifiable glop
Or the horror of finding four or five small fruit flies
trapped under the cling wrap on top of the leftover cherry pie
That was a sight vastly viscerally unpleasant to see
and of course prompted the pie’s swift trip right into the trash
but still better to have seen than not to have seen
on any number of levels

But for once in my life
I bit my tongue
And it turned out he was talking
about something else entirely
Not grit as in dirt
But grit as in gritty
Grit as in reality
Grit as in seeing what’s actually there
In all its imperfection
Rather than what you think would be there

Smart him
And smart me for shutting up



image source is here