^V^

2011-03-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

the comfort lies in what we get used to,
and we are resilient beings

thank you cerre for showing these

2011-03-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

i promise

via julia

2011-02-06T13:23:00.000-08:00

happenstance and eric hurtgen

2011-02-06T13:11:00.000-08:00

la jeunesse doree and the selby

2011-02-06T12:52:00.000-08:00

images from the selby

2011-01-04T10:23:00.000-08:00

everything about electric feathers and cosmic wonder.

culled and curated

here

V.

2010-06-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

Another one, pure inspiration. Little else.

Clever Nettle

2010-05-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

Adding a new blog to the fascinations brigade: Clever Nettle. As I delve into the fantastical world of what I like to call the visual literary realm--the bringing to life of story and the falling in love with idea--of styling, a tip-toeing into the cool waters of design is called for. And I couldn't be happier to immerse myself once again, this time with more purpose, plus a host of other influences waiting at the gates. Enjoy her images and Etsy! Photo via Clever Nettle.

Beach Immortal

2010-05-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

She felt as if riding a wave, made up of the chords her mind struck when finding avenues of expression. And she exhaled at the thought of understanding something so golden. Golden.

The lost loves make it hard to get home safe.

The wind had picked up when they finally made it back to the sand. Balloons whipped together, tangling the candy-colored strings and sounding like drums beating wildly from a hundred rhythmic hands.

Five centimeters of thought in the right direction, but the wind blew it five miles too far.

2010-04-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a weird life lately.

Nighttime dreams of setting sail on ships doomed to perish.

Dark skies and fiery ovals hanging from cliff side tree houses,

letting go of the children who fall to their demise.

Standing by the wayside with a group of students,

with a former journalistic mentor,

on the sandy beach at night while the black waves tipped their white caps at us

and the village burned with small fires to our left,

then to our right.

Climbing up into the vessel that would surely go under water,

we were in Thailand or Korea

and I just knew taking another puddle jumper back home

would crash just as this boat would sink.

Damned if I do, Damned if I don't.

With a yet-to-be-built inspiration wall to save me from sinking I will be devoting this space for just that:

a collection of intent.

...

Inspired Livin':

Kitties, tepees, joy in life.

Fanny and Bill on The Selby and their City Hall Wedding.

Avenir

2010-02-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

-- Lewis Carrol

But keep on believing those far after the breakfasting hour ends.

And...

Fast only to break it.

//...//

Just collecting jewels over here

Readying for another leap

And if the cliff turns out to be a valley wall

I'll take solace that the window or door

Which deceived me in the first place

Still counts as an awakening.

For it is the spirit I'm after

More so than the sedentary.

So possibility dons

with its necklace.

//...//

Of the metaphysical chain

connecting tangible or semi-tangible

events

sentiments

wonderments

engagements

distilled into one jewel,

the moment your path crosses with some others

like you've been on a crash course

or just blithely fell together

upon life's whim.

//...//

All being collected

what will eventually be strung together

or is being strung together

along the way.

.. ///..

Tie the kite strings round your fingers.

Let's Go Play

2010-02-19T09:32:00.000-08:00

non plus one final from Tracy ANTONOPOULOS on Vimeo.

Looking

2010-02-05T08:26:00.000-08:00

Just for Fun

And for Sanity

VB and Keri Smith

Type

2010-01-11T20:26:00.000-08:00

Are we a people who want

nothing more

than to be moved?

Or is it just me

who wants to be moved

and to do the moving?

for the books

2009-12-09T19:36:00.000-08:00

"It is “simultaneously stable and unstable,” “loud and soft,” “a single tension that carries countless tensions within it.” *

circles

spheres

rounded lines

unending

spiraling

mine

French Confetti

*Kandinsky

take a seat

2009-11-30T08:19:00.000-08:00

at our table

songs for...

2009-11-23T20:07:00.000-08:00

Satellite.

right about

now.

one

2009-11-22T21:00:00.001-08:00

color and tissue paper and I would add cellophane.

flowers on strings.

created by Scout Holiday.

What?

2009-11-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

The answer is hyper-collecting. It is time to compile and sift and re-sift until something emerges that is "entirely" my own.

Sure. Why not.

The following will be moments of transition, from some log following a myriad of things and sudden insight, to, for a while at least, my inspiration board.

A prayer of sorts, a touchstone to remind myself what I'm looking to see explode in a calculated manner from my fingertips.

Alors.

On vera.

advice

2009-11-01T09:46:00.000-08:00

Don't Forget.

Even though this advice was prompted by the familiar battle this time of year,

I would categorize it as advice for life,

every day in the cold months,

with only slightly modified vocabulary

for the warm{er} ones.

Hope everyone had a lovely Halloween.

Favorite costumes?

How about this one:

A polluted river

AKA

what our rivers will look like if we don't stop polluting them.

for the frustrated mind

2009-10-23T16:27:00.000-07:00

"When I say beauty, I mean just the reality and openness to everything."

~Jeff Koons

"... like walking through the forest in the evening, and then the sun finally sets completely, and your relying on the light that was there to navigate through it. It's the moment when your aware of the absence of light."

~Mark Bradford

"It starts with a postcard. I put two of them together and try to connect them. It's fun to imagine what might lie just beyond the edge, but them you work yourself into a no-exit situation where you have to make up something. You might say I make settings for these found objects."

~William Wegman

"We're so used to finding anything in abstraction. If your mind wants to find something, you can find it in almost anything. It's like people finding Jesus in a slice of toast."

~Julian Lethbridge

Can you guess what all these words are speaking to? Now, as the sun finally steals through the thin, crimson leaves during the last few moments of an afternoon like any other? But it saves, somehow, the sun. It saves and it draws a person out of a multi-walled house, out of a multi-dimensional mind rife with frustration and words coming from every which way.

They all apply to a theme present in the everyday, the mundane and the extraordinary. They

apply to something that might or might not necessitate the human consciousness.

The answer might be found in November's Vogue, as well as the accompanying tableaus.

But perhaps it is more fun not to look, not to go looking.

Rather to just feel it for yourself and make it be what it needs to be

for you

in this moment

before the sun draws you back out

or in

This is October, After Twelve Steps

2009-10-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

Legs feel like walking sticks with those exposed, knobby joints. Nights fall swiftly without much warning. Lists grow longer and more obtuse as I grow languid in the listing process of writing one line down, then another, and another... Nine is the morning's desired hour to stir me from darkened, cavernous dreams. I read somewhere that people don't look forward to dreaming anymore. Dreaming is all I look forward to. Well, not really. There are others, too.

Like.

Letter writing.

I was struck last night as I lay in bed, gazing absentmindedly across the open room which lies past the foot of my bed {a queendom, kingdom without a king, as I also recently read}, my eyes lighted upon the letter, folded into three rectangular portions, two kinds of stationary, one plastered atop the other, pale pink under the other's eggy watercolor. Pen just dry, papers yet to be stuffed into envelope, address yet to be scrawled, I realized I had forgotten these words had not reached the eyes meant to read them. I sat there, doggedly, assuming she who would had already... read and received. Ha! So much for unconscious conditioning at the gaping, grasping, invisible tendrils of technology. And the finite action of handwriting, delivering a psychological push to those words, stronger yet less definite than the mail carrier's easy abandonment when releasing said letter from the grasp of red-cold fingertips in a few fine October days.

Like.

Filling Burners.

Stirring the contents of multiple frying pans and brews, letting one sizzle and another simmer, going for a walk and coming home to the smell of each single endeavor, noticing their points of intersection, letting the steam cloud together... In short, many new ideas on the horizon, soon to be making the shift to physical form.

Like.

Peering into Corners and Retrieving

ways to fill the front of an envelope, so that the letters fall across the page in a sweeping fashion, like ribbons fall accidentally out of the hair or slip noiselessly off the waist, settling in greeting on the ground used by the lively and the adventurous for day-long endeavors unhurried by the grinning approach of night.

neither snow... via oh joy.

oh my.

2009-10-05T14:27:00.000-07:00

heartbreak

Well, career aspirations suddenly modified, I suppose I'll just have to create something as exemplary in terms of photography, food and the presence of Ruth Reichl myself. Help greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, nothing will replace the historical significance.

popopopop

2009-10-01T13:59:00.001-07:00

Oh the merits of being awake to that realm called reality, and that little subcatagory called...

oh yes.

Culture.

Pop culture, to be exact, for pop is precisley what I must exude in produced material, personality and presence in my new office environment. Cracking jokes, casting puns, wryly observing our surrounding environment... All great fun. I sat at lunch today, observing and listening. I felt like nothing short of a sponge. Adapting to new energies and perspectives is no easy task, yet a healthy one.

Image via Nerd Boyfriend.

a few thoughts from closed eyes and open ears

2009-09-29T17:19:00.000-07:00

Listening

Always

Knowing it's time again to watch this

Looking out to a dramatic sky

Thinking about New York

And sentiments of I wish I were there

Pondering this documentary

And rediscovering my love for design

Experiencing the cryptic messages of the universe

Telling me exactly what I need to hear

When I question yet again why I search through words

Or what for

And feeling a buzz from this

Because I always get some kinetic energy

From future prospects

Of the possible sort... and the idea of the art

Of acting.

._____.

2009-09-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

Twitter!

And I am seriously unabashed.

Even when it comes to the name.

Which came from a cocktail.

Again, unabashed.

{Although for this sentiment to be valid I should probably stop insisting}

thoughts from footsteps retraced

2009-09-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

Choose.

Find something to live for.

Abandon yourself to it.

I hope a part of that something, is yourself.

Learn how to abandon. Learn how to live with abandon. Learn the boundaries of abandon. Test your own boundaries of abandon.

Walk. Run. Cycle. Do this until you reach a spot you once occupied on a geographical map. Then take out the psychological one. Remember. Feel it, the space, the moods. See it, from the height you were then, from the curtain of thoughts through which you peered at that point in time. Get closer. Look inside through the windows that haven't been replaced. Note the paint, always the same color.

Recognize the similarities and examine the differences. There are so many kinds of trees, houses, books, humans, animals... Yet we are all doing the same thing, by different methods. We are being. We are being for others. We are being for what we are, for the Self.

Don't try too hard. Have nothing to do with the overwrought. Yet there is no room for complacency, either. Integrate yourself into the space around you. The place you occupy is the one deserving of your attention. Look ahead, but hold the moment's hand.

_____.

Naomi knows how to live with abandon. Precise abandon. Her art--books, watercolors, installations--is an ongoing shrine to the larger aspect, contained and extracted from her mind and body.

____.

I want to ask this question to everyone:

What do you do when you need to look up? That is, what is your go-to, sure fire, way to combat the despondency and doldrums?

morning. 13.

2009-09-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

Drop down, crossleggedly arranged on the floor. The blue of the oriental rug a sea of flowers and vines supporting my mass like a web or a net or a song. On this morning I keep breathing in the wind of an overcast day and wondering about covering my feet in soil from the flowerbed or by the cornstalks so I can grow taller and see above it all.

Let me elaborate.

Above the cloudy din of mechanically moving limbs and wheels and cogs and minds, above the expected, the understood and the explored.

So they say, she won't have grown among those explorers and adventurers, but she will have wished to -- and so her consciousness of a lack, of a space to fill, gives her a boost and perhaps will help her personally realize her positionary, reactionary dreams of a heaving alleluia outlined in that blue found in light and in deep breaths and slow afternoons and elegance.

___.

Up, down, to the side. Seamless lines of polished wood. Strong, not yet weathered, or perhaps just beautified for the weekend. Sparkling waters deeper blue than skies. Victorian lives perched on windblown cliffs and main street store-fronted by idea translated to form. And that ivy remembered from the co-op as if from a dream. With each bend opening to a valley half moon of grassy farmland, red barn and sheep or cow or horse.

Breath continually caught between memories slipped and held fast. A lot of fog, a bit of rain then not as now. Silly projections of my own life and blurred vision of my golden hair and tanned complexion in the side view mirror. Turn to the green forest to combat those watery blues. Rise up, they encircle the depths, lead the way and protect from land but never from skies. No, never from skies which might turn blue to grey and soon, fast and expectedly yet unstoppably, to black.

Can it be things passed me by then as if I were a child? Everything was circular with an origin of fear and love -- a circumference of protective cloud barrier and starry interior liable to evaporate upon departure. Once that barrier is broken the wailing outlives the song, but eventually, if you think strongly enough and in the right vein, the song comes back, this time for permanence, as in "I-won't-let-go-of -your -hand" line of thought. It might even become something of legend. Treat it well, then, and with the light heart of comic verse and a capella.

change your escape

2009-09-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

"I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they plan their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change."-- Jim Rohn

Change can be thought of as escape, yet why do we feel the need to escape in the first place? What are we really escaping from if only a self-imposed and believed perception of things? Although reality can't be denied and escaped from by evasive dreaming--confronting a problem and living in the moment demands such clarity of perception, if such a thing exists--any present state is still a living state (unless besought by a fatal and debilitating illness of a certain kind) and thus escaping becomes something layered upon living. To escape from a current state of being, semi-permanent and sometimes referred to as real life, is to escape from a chosen situation which is not obligatory. Where an escape is needed, is happiness present?

On the other hand, when change is needed, perhaps it would be easier to execute if thought of as escape. I believe we have at hand many different coping mechanisms, including the ability to romanticise and alter perception and create spin in any given state or situation. We all live in our own sort of dreamworld, we all perceive the same "realities," assuming they are real and have a static form outside our perception, differently. And thank goodness. Sophie wrote a bit about perception and writers recently in a biting response to part of New York life. Writer or not, we all do the same thing. And so what if instead of looking upon change as a terrifying leap or an event sure to result in deterioration of the self, it was thought of as another great adventure, an escape if you will. What then?

And with that I'm off to Crescent Lake.

Where to go from here.

2009-08-30T17:13:00.001-07:00

So I am supposed to write about that which is the object of my passion(s). I am supposed to write about that which is the recipient of my desires, which is the butter to my bread, the blood to my heart, the frosting to my cake, the Simone de Beauvoir to my Jean Paul Sartre...

In short, I am supposed to write.

When Ernest Hemingway was 22, Paris provided him ample acreage for roaming and plenty of empty chairs to occupy next to the likes of literary luminaries on the verge of lighting up the city with their ex-pat glow polished in the hours spent practicing their verbiage and intellectual mind games that seem to make life more important, if only for the moment.

I've been to Paris. I've been to Mumbai. I've been to Italy and lived in the alps. Although each place held the possibility of a life fulfilled, sustained the hope that is lost suddenly only a few days after returning to a place well known and well lived in called home; although each prospect and realization of being-in-that-place, no matter how romantic or how foreign to a Westerner, never was there a moment to define the rest of existence, to set the next million steps on a clear, flower-lined, mirror-paved path of glory or enlightenment or fulfillment. No, only in the few fleeting moments arising in sudden twinges of joy, by dwelling in the possibility of future prospects where the unknown is romantic and not grotesque, cold or groggy, did that contentment arise. It was before departure, just after the decision was made to leave and usually accompanied by an equally intense fear or loneliness beginning somewhere below the soles of my feet. The hope comes in handy to slice the vines holding the ankles in place and to infuse the mind with some buoyancy so as to lighten the load of loneliness.

What if it's as simple as always holding out hope?

As simple, I should say, as making croissant dough from scratch, as achieving the perfect lightness of hand when mixing biscuits. For if I could awaken to something as angelic as, say, Macrina's buttermilk biscuits with homemade peach jam each morning, well, perhaps I could fall asleep with at least one part of my body wherein hope rests undenied: the tastebud.

These two aforementioned abilities would produce the likes of cinnamon rolls and morning buns and, of course, the biscuits. And with Macrina's cookbook at my side the power seems to be in my range of accomplishment. However, using whole wheat pastry flour produced a lackluster scone and right now the thought of making croissant dough melts me. But there is one saving grace to this mess of not-living-in-Seattle-and-thus-missing-biscuit-by-way-of-Macrina, and it comes from the bible: ginger scones with lemon blueberry filling.

I made these last August and have been thinking about them since. Sporadically, the memory of the scone's thin sugary "crust" which shatters upon first bite and subsequently becomes a crackly reminder throughout the remaining scone to be eaten surfaced, yet the lure of new recipes, new flavors and lack of fresh berries overruled. The cool interior of lemon curd, the chewy bits of crystallized ginger and the burst of berry nestled between layers of cream colored scone add to the multiplicity of texture--cool smooth soft firm--which melts together in the oven but somehow retains original form when the final sitting is reached, at the breakfast table... or hour of tea.

Ginger Scones with Lemon-Blueberry Filling

Adapted from The Berry Bible, written by Janie Hibler

This recipe yielded 11 scones sandwiching the filling. For 22 smaller, non-sandwiched scones and equally delicious results open to condiment variation, omit the filling and bake each disk of scone separately.

Oven: 400 degrees.

Baking Equipment: lightly buttered baking sheet.

Baking Time: about 16 minutes.

Whisk together in a large bowl

3¼ cups flour

½ cup sugar

2½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda and

½ teaspoon sea salt.

With a pastry blender, cut in

12 tablespoon unsalted butter

until you have a crumb-like dough. Add

½ cup diced, crystallized ginger

1 teaspoon lemon zest and

1 cup buttermilk.

Stir until dough is just wet, then kneed by hand until dough just comes together.

Roll the dough onto a floured surface and flatten to a ¼-inch thickness. Using a round cookie cutter or the top of a glass (should be about 3 inches wide), cut the dough into about 22 circles. Lay half of the circles on the baking sheets and place

1 teaspoon of the lemon curd (1/4 cup total)

in the middle of each circle. Spread the curd and place

5 fresh blueberries (1/2 cup total)

on top of the curd. Top each curd-filled circle with another round of dough and press the edges together to seal. Sprinkle with fine sugar.

Bake scones for about 16 minutes or until the top half of the scone is cooked through. Enjoy warm or let cool to room temperature.

gelato.

2009-08-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

This is about pine nuts and whole milk and honey. It is about machinery and method. It is taste and consistency and scent and temperature all tied up with bonds too small for the eye to see but strong enough for the body to feel.

This is also about something just as visceral but more ethereal. The bringing back and the leaning forward, coinciding in some odd modernistic dance of the girl who travels far away, lovingly returns home and finds herself propelled and pulled and projected into some other realm where her emptiness might be satiated. She would even settle for another drop in the cavern that has occupied the place just above her stomach and below her chest since she can remember feeling anything; since she could imagine alternate worlds, so far removed from her own yet coinciding with what she knew, what she knows, what she wants to know.

Simultaneously wanting to leave and wanting to stay leaves only limbo to occupy. Bent back at an odd angle with a self-made and socially-perpetuated deadline to make oneself on the chest is the position that lasts too long and exhausts inspiration and beats freedom away with a howl, source unknown. There are day dreams and night dreams and wished-for scenarios yet no simple or obvious path for collecting experiences to create the concoction of last night’s reverie, yesterday’s fervor. Yet there is at any given time an arsenal made of spices, dairy and grain available to the patient, the creative or simply the willing. There is cooking. There is baking. There is ice cream making on a summer afternoon.

My suitcase is unruly. Unfailingly, each time I return from Europe it refuses to accommodate spatial needs. The hand woven, thick yarned, cream woolen sweater from San Gimignano? Rejected. The red wine from Verona? Drink it in Rome. The white leather vintage style Capri car shoes from Siena? Carry them on. My palate, however, is different. Instead of growing smaller by the excursion, it makes room for new tastes, new textures, new memories. Daily habits are flawlessly formed, recorded and deftly executed with a rigidity that only great self-control can sustain. Oh, there are many examples. But for now… gelato. Every night. Rotating gelaterias, varied combination of flavors, sometimes cone sometimes cup. But always, always, the pine nut.

I left Oregon despising peanut butter and I returned with a sudden craving for the nutty spread in a form sweeter and slightly modified. {I also left freshly graduated from college, and suddenly finished with technology, the speed and ease by which people can reach and be reached by a person, turning my nose up at those with iPhone or Blackberry in palm, and returned ravenous for the aforementioned device}. I wish to thank this gelato.

Solid, foundational and warm are perhaps unlikely adjectives used to describe gelato, yet pine nuts have a way of transforming something delightfully cold and refreshing into something akin to that sweater carefully smashed into the corner of my suitcase. Gelato seems to be among the favorite recommendations when it comes to what to eat in Italy and although virtually nothing edible can be recreated 3,000 miles away from the region in which it was first tasted and thus produced, there is always the wild possibility of creating something synonymous and dazzling, something of your region, translated.

It is sometimes enough for the moment to sit down with a dish of sweetness at once provoking a memory and casting a line to potential friends as yet unknown. When the physical can be a symbol of the intangible, when it can calm the highs and lows with a nod to the future and wink to the past and smile in the present.

Pine Nut Gelato
I combined a few different recipes and scoured cookbooks for the following method, roughly based upon this recipe from Epicurious.

Spread roughly 1 cup pine nuts on a baking sheet and toast for 5 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

While pine nuts toast, combine ½ cup honey and ¼ cup sugar in a food processor fitted with the blade attachment. Add the just-toasted nuts and process until a consistency of peanut butter is reached. Add 2 whole {fresh} eggs and process until combined.

Boil 2 ½ cups whole milk in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. With the food processor running, slowly pour the hot milk into the egg and nut mixture. The processor will be very full. Keep processing until the milk is incorporated into the nut mixture, about 20 seconds. The liquid should be smooth with a few small pieces of pine nut.

Pour the mixture back into the heavy saucepan and slowly reheat on low for about 10 minutes. Whisk constantly and do not boil. The mixture should thicken slightly. Pour the mixture into a large, clean bowl and cool slightly, about 15 minutes. Add ¼ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon vanilla extract, whisking until combined. {Alternatively, add 1 vanilla bean [optional] sliced lengthwise to the pan when bringing the milk to a boil. Before pouring milk into nut mixture, scrape seeds from vanilla bean into milk and discard bean. Omit vanilla extract}. Cover bowl and refrigerate until cold, about 3 hours.

Transfer mixture to ice cream maker and freeze after churning.

new guidelines.

2009-08-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

Guidelines for determining design

--both personal and otherwise--
other than the sometimes elusive gut feeling that moves you one way

or the other:

Would it fit as a curatorial asset in the town that made its impact on me,

Lucca, Italy

PRISM

Each day I find a new item to add to my mind's list regarding the benefits of travel,

As each day another is revealed.

Today, this would be it.

Increased self-awareness, facility and

knowing just what it is

that you want.

In short,

decision making

decisiveness.

photo snapped quickly before dinner when the town turned lamp-lit as opposed to setting-sun illuminated... in Lucca.

variations on a theme.

2009-08-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

This photo was made by Kari Masterson, a fellow maker of books, in Siena, Italy.

Silhouettes might well become a new theme.

This photo was made by Megan Newell, also fellow maker of books, in San Gimignano, Italy.

2009-08-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

I'm Home!

Still look like Jack Nicholson if I contort my face in the right directions, only now I'm a bit more tan. Six weeks in Italy will do that, I suppose. According to one market employee here in Portland, I also look more mature.

Perhaps. Although I give credit to the tan. Oh illusions.

Or perhaps this is my new look post-graduation.

Give it a few months.

These warm days in Seattle, this waking of a city

2009-06-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

These warm days in Seattle, they always roll in slowly by the morning hours in a heavy haze. There are always sounds of grounds maintenance. There are always sounds of car wheels gripping warm pavement, punctuated by an accelerating motorcycle. The hum of the waking city like the drone of a heater, readying the vast room for a peoples bright-eyed presence, directed undirected wandering and lax lounging on needled grass, studded with last night’s spirited dalliances in drink.

Move the can and see who notices. See if they forget, those who moved it to begin with.

Another dip into worded wells. Another magazine to “catch up” with. Another way to feel in the world without being of it. Though as I read one G.C.’s letter of welcome, I began to think about personality, about business, about lives on the stage and behind the scenes. Most of the articles attempting to make sense of the economic plight—in and out of the U.S.—explore this backstage world that so many people seem to think is unrelated or completely divided from the scripted, spotlighted performance. The choices we make behind the curtain are the foundation for the ensuing performance. They are critically connected, indistinguishable. If not at first, than during times of perceived eminent rise and downfall. Because she is like this, because he is like that—with friends, lover, mother, children, home, loisir, partner.

Even where you choose to sit on a warm day, in the city.

Which leads me to a genius of a man who made a genius of a film about this very subject: sitting.

He pulled me from my tired lethargy with nothing more than the honesty of his voice and the images of people sitting alone and together, standing at corners, moving to a beat viewers can’t hear. Image quality circa 1980 New York City, the year it was released and the place—with style and manner and social behavior to follow.

“People sit where there are places to sit” –William H Whyte

As a sociologist, Whyte studied New York’s public plazas and so produced a book and a short film about his findings. I’ve tried in vain to find a screen shot of his aforequoted finding. Applied to public places, the sentence might seem obvious—one of those simple statements met with no more than a nod or a shrug. Yet the moment the white letters appeared upon the scratchy black pull-down screen of that heavy-aired classroom, staring so many pairs of eyes head on with a subdued and unchallenging force, I thought not of the physical space represented by benches, chairs, trees and stairs. I thought of people. Of the spaces we leave in our selves and in our lives for others to occupy; of the spaces between our ideas; of the spaces in which lovers, friends, family and strangers might feel on levels both conscious and subconscious; on the times we allow for our own chairs to be moved, for our trees to provide the sought after shade on a stifling day, or the longed for protection from a windy concrete passage.

People sit where there are places to sit. Someday, little by little, I’ll amass a cacophony of voices—silent and strong— at home in the space I have to offer, refined over years of the prevailing sociological study, that is, life.

another quote, ok

2009-06-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

"All over the world Joyce fans will gather to celebrate the extraordinary tale of an ordinary day. There will be Bloomsday breakfasts, and Bloomsday love affairs, and Bloomsday arguments and, indeed, Bloomsday grandfathers hoisting their sons, and their sons of sons, onto the shoulders of never-ending stories." -here

How about Bloomsday + One?

but a preview.

2009-06-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

"This is the function of books — we learn how to live even if we weren’t there. Fiction gives us access to a very real history. Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.”

- Colum McCann

Because today is Bloomsday.

And because of Saturday--Bloomsday minus two--the day upon which I graduated from college.

Also, because I haven't had the time to refine my thoughts from said day, to record with hoped for eloquence the ensuing experiences taking me all the way through a late and lively and lucid dinner.

Because this, the story, is the mechanism by which people will see.

Because this is what I hope for, to create such moving thought experiments shrouded in the well placed word.

Likely Classroom, Future Classroom

2009-06-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

My final class as an undergraduate has passed. It was a wonderful way to leave academia, for now at least. We spoke French and I drank fresh orange juice, tasted some brioche and reminisced about Grenoble, the mafia, Paris, Corsica, Nice... Seated in a different sort of classroom this time, one with brick walls and exposed metal beams, one where we were on display, participating in a sort of staged performance that characterizes most experiences where one is perched at a table before food and drink and the premise of conversation, we did indeed converse. Two girls whom I know only as acquaintances and a professor I know however well one is able after having traveled together and lived in a place foreign to body but not to mind. I’ve only known this city as a student, which shrouds all experiences with a sense both temporary and fleeting, which has inhibited me from planting roots, from establishing lasting tactile connections along with the many intellectual ones I’ve cultivated.

And now all that remains are some words on philosophy and the ethics of emerging technology which promises to blur the lines between human and machine, some ideas about communication rights and law as per the First Amendment and, finalement, the closing revision of my ideas, thought and printed in French, about the possibility of a second revolution. With the essays finished, the attempts attempted, will come the definitive ritual of receiving a piece of paper four years in the writing, yet virtually untouched and completely unseen by its architect. The intellectual compressed into the tactile, the reason for its accompanying ceremony forgotten save for its importance as a spectator sport.

I think I’ll wear a bright dress found in India that looks like the sky.

I wonder if I’m leaving some sort of paradise where the only obligation—if you can so call it—is to expand my mind, to learn. I answer to myself, decide upon my schedule, reside among friends in a close community, have access to food and drink and stroll through parks on most every whim.

There must be something even better post-graduation. I’m holding out hope. I know there is. You can feel it pulling at the skirt hem or coat tails with each projection of the mind into the future, with each moment the fact of life post-academia slowly and suddenly sits next to you.

Like going to live in Paris, doing nothing more for a means of survival than working for a flea market, or a bookseller, or a flower stand. Or, closer to home, finding a small but charming apartment in which to dwell, working to live and not living to work, just balancing on the head of a pin for a while.

sexy

2009-06-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

I might want to rethink not participating is senior streak

Suddenly the idea seems oddly empowering

Let me steep. I want to steep.

2009-06-01T20:11:00.000-07:00

After reading a certain article in Vanity Fair, one of my indispensable and surefire sites of inspiration and energy, I’ve a few thoughts. They flow from visions of my imminent college graduation and into another oft-imagined realm of life, the one where you throw all energy into personal endeavors of the sort that moves society: at large and in small underground movements, the ones where voices are repeated outside the boundaries of peer academia and ridiculed school papers. Yes, and on this cusp of shifting life pattern comes also the penetration of technology—a ripe theme in all my courses this final quarter. Technology that sterilizes and de-authenticates human grittiness and experience and ensuing inspiration.

“You didn’t just watch a double feature but steeped like a tea bag in the contemplative dungeon atmosphere,” writes James Wolcott about the physicality of cinema houses in 1970's New York.

I’m talking about the technology which takes the place and the “steeping” out of being in the world. Less cinema house and more dvd; less hole in the wall rental store and more netflix. This is as true for film as it is true for face-to-face sociality in general. For instead, people arein their extended lives--their computers, their internet personas, their narrow vision through which they hope to overcome isolation. The dialogue comes flowing from these virtual spaces only to connect in this non-place with other such hopeful beings. More on spaces soon.

In reading a small scrap about the New Yorker, I remembered a book I have gathering dust on the shelf at my childhood home {and always home} in Portland. It was given to me—along with two other books—upon my high school graduation. This is the sort of gift I laud, the sort of offering I hope to give throughout life—the gift of inspiration, what would take lifetimes to say and experience, verbally translated onto leafs of paper. The great woman who gave these to me has since passed, and now I wish more than ever to see and thank her, Carol Anne. She was my great-aunt, my grandmother’s sister, and a vapid vixen—a one-time great beauty with red lips and slender, shapely legs. She was also an intellectual, outspoken and opinionated, yet graceful. She made up her mind and stuck to her guns. Admirable. We need more women as such.

The only book I have yet to read from her thoughtful offering is a history of the New Yorker, and so this is the first book I will begin upon exiting academia. The first book to begin the rest of my personally designed curriculum, now tailored and fashioned in the way I think all higher—and indeed, lower—education should be. Travel, questions, meditation, inspiration, pain, joy... life, in short, conscious and mindful, challenging and met by a good meal with wine and sometimes friends, sometimes family, sometimes solitude, at the end of the day.

And then to write. For whom? For those who believe in me, for Carol who encouraged me with fellow inspirators and intellectuals, for my mother, for my grandfather who was so proud of me for being no one more than I am, and who I miss so dearly, for my grandmother who has a way with words but will never remember now, for my distant father, for my two cousins so I might guide and inspire them, for my friends so I might fill and arouse in my role. For myself. For future lovers. For humans. Writing for the very sake of writing, because it heals and opens, souls and wounds.

And just to be.

gpoyw. {blue}

2009-05-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

I wish I had time to tell a tale.

Something about la Méditerranée.

I would share a short story

Translated last year in a course taught by a good man

An inspiring man

A fellow wanderer

And poet and writer

Who someday wishes to sail away

And live on his boat

And settle for a moment

Corse.

The story is called

La Vague et Le Rocher

Hélé Béji

The Wave and The Rock.

I think it is about friendship

wish it were sold here

2009-05-14T23:02:00.000-07:00

Everyday life

Interiors

Characters and personalities manifested

Fascinate me.

The worlds I perceive as charming enough to wish I were in them.

Always that certain photographic quality that attracts.

That gaze, that font, that layout.

Merci Montmartre.

Apartamento.

gpoyw. of sorts.

2009-05-14T00:00:00.001-07:00

Poetry for Breakfast or A Breakfast of Champions

2009-05-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

Something to keep in mind as graduation looms and dreams get lofty.

Something

To remember

Upon graduation.

If I were to speak at commencement, perhaps I would say these words written by Dallas Clayton:

REVISED YOUR “TO DO” LIST

Be a famous musician.

Be a famous actor.

Be a famous writer.

Be a famous basketball player.

Be famous.

There is nothing more nourishing than waking up with words running through the mind, your first gesture toward the carved wood cylinder filled with the lead that will draw the first symbols of the day onto smooth, cream paper between pale blue unsubstantial covers bound by a black fragile spine.

The fragility kills and enlivens me. The narrow escape from boredom, which is nothing more than mindlessness, a lack of inspiration, a loss of play. The constant wavering on fine line of choice leading to experience, leading to possible moments of catharsis. Not only are our bodies ready to break apart at any given moment—not to mention our psyche—ruptured by loss or love or physical object. The euphoric moments, whether clam silent loud deafening subdued, are perhaps even more delicate than ourselves. They seem to be more easily missed than grasped, breakable as they are and so dependent on context within and without. Like a collage, they are sealed into our souls, sewn into the very fabric of our being. And so, in those moments when we are in need of a quilt to wrap tightly our tired bodies, our precarious minds, we’ve this patchwork mosaic of wool linen cotton hemp {I hope few polyester patches, some leftover from a less sophisticated perspicacity} to reach for.

Tuesday night was one of those serendipitous encounters, a chance of choice, and organic unfolding of and ascending toward happiness—always hoped for but elusive and thus unexpected. One of those evening-turning-toward-nights wherein I think nothing of the approaching early hour of obligatory waking, and if I do can only crack a teeth-bearing smile because I’ve found what makes such a dread obsolete, deaden: Life, simply. When the present moment outweighs and contributes to what follows. The heartening, sustaining, nourishing ways to begin and end a day. Uninhibited play grounded in brilliant talent—plus a dash of wisdom and understanding of course.

And the three who made the sound and the antics contributing to such a state. And now I am literally using the word swoon to describe not only the piano playing... but the piano player.

Jukebox the Ghost

Plus Jenny Owen Youngs who came before, lovely in her own right and folkloricly comforting. This is not an afterthought.

gpoyw.

2009-05-06T23:43:00.001-07:00

gpoyw lust

2009-05-06T11:24:00.001-07:00

If I could

I would.

Via.

not necessarily the light...

2009-05-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Feeling very calm today. I want to keep it for awhile, add up all the small things that moved me here, to rest if only for a moment. Perhaps it was this torte. Or this cake that indeed wins hearts and minds... and settled mine, and revealed a remembered sweet tooth. Perhaps it was an unexpected visit that took us to lunch here. And a mild, bright day where wandering produced contentment, simply. Or reconnecting with a friend and professor, who recently finished a book and never fails to bolster the present Self with her certainty in future possibility.

Life gets better, the older you get. It really does.

All of this, perhaps, but not for sure and not necessary to reach such a state-of-mind. Only a shift in consciousness, only a widened vision, only some perspective.

It has been days, now, since I was so moved as to fill this space with spirited effusions not satiated by telling those present around me.

First two photos my own; third photo via here; fourth photo via here.

a case for creating, regardless

2009-04-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

"Scenario work shows that the future is usually a combination off all the stories you can construct to anticipate it."

... Joel Garreau

Just a little something gleaned from studying on an otherwise dreary and bright Monday morning while trudging through ideas I wish I had more time and space to explore.

Someday.

Soon.

Even though I should be doing so now.

Or maybe we are

always

without realizing it.

Yes, I think so.

"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon--instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside of our windows today."

... Dale Carnegie

"Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings."

... Victor Hugo

my kind of weather service.

2009-04-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

Today

Tomorrow

For wherever you are

And wherever you want to be

That is not off the predetermined

List

Of desired cities

theory

2009-04-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

Thinking again about the optimism of existentialism. Of the Saphir-Whorf hypothesis, of systems theory.

And about transitions, the distinctly muddy spaces of the in-between, filled with change and pain and death of once cultural figures and re-framing of the self in a certain context.

Like the salon culture of the Enlightenment, moving people to cultivate their individuality.

Away from hierarchy of the royal few.

Coinciding with the death of Madame de Pompadour.

And welcoming the day-to-day--the artistic possibility of apple placed by human hand on simple platter on thick, worn, wood table.

I wonder what she would think now, of this life.

...

In my communication theory course this spring I have a particularly vibrant professor who would rather the cognizant beings before her be called 'scholars in residence' than 'students.'

Exiting this primary foray into academia, I'm simultaneously pushed away by such forces and pulled by those on the other side of sidewalk fissures operating as boundary between theory and practice. Though perhaps it shouldn't be so, this boundary.

The lithograph, Escher's Bond of Union, was dramatically and proudly unveiled as encapsulating this professor's--or rather, scholar's-- theory of communication.

Very, very apt.

gpoyw.

2009-04-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

In a fit of nostalgia for backs against sunny floors next to sprawled records, one finding its home on a turntable, eyes lazily gaze on ceiling or wall, nothing in particular but wandering mind.

This would be a lovely wednesday, indeed.

reaction.

2009-03-30T15:05:00.001-07:00

To Read:

2009-03-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

finish, begin

to finish and to begin

But it doesn't always happen that way

Does it?

In fact, it rarely does

if ever

at all

Though we may not know it

If ever

At all.

It wasn't so very late, that night at home. Somehow it always seems later when away from the life that fills in moments of silence found alone. Alone at home, even though another moved through unoccupied rooms. So I began to think about closing books.

What if reading the book is like the process of birth--like being born--and closing the book like taking the first breaths of air? Those few seconds from the moment you eye and grasp the book with a view to open it to the moment you do--reading, eyeing, mouthing, whispering, speaking that first word--is like the act of consummation. Deciding whether to open the book at all, to consider it even, is like the dance of choosing a partner. And depending on pre-meditation, how long you've waited for this book, could even be naive falling in love.

Huh, well. Nary a page of this sort read over the break. And now, once again but for the final time, come the textbooks.

again.

2009-03-20T22:10:00.001-07:00

I can’t take the credit for coming across this song by Megan Washington, which contained the first harmonic notes to greet my ears upon settling down on my bedroom floor. They had grown used to the steady tread of tires flying 75 MPH down dampened highways, Seattle to Portland.

And I walked through the door of my childhood home... don’t know if I can say home without a qualifier right now.

I felt as if melting into the shadowy 7 pm wooden floors, yes, right on the Oriental rug. Smelling by breathing so deep as to full my whole self with the place that is care and comfort and the sort of love, elusive, mother and daughter. So I began to listen to this song and watch this story. I listened some more and then turned around, looking up for some air and some sky. It had, in fact, ruptured. The sun was leaving for some tomorrow elsewhere and night was rolling along. But in between was a sky left layered violet and fuchsia. And now it is so coal black that my city tamed eyes widen at the shock of suburban night.

So back to this song. It’s buoyant, so that through one’s eyes shapes melt into one another and so do people, because suddenly you’re smiling so. The stripped down singing to you quality is such a catalyst for this.

Plus, there is tilt-shift, which I first came across here. An unlikely combination of trippy and charming, which I've never seen in motion... until now.

yes, please.

2009-03-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

“Make the most of every molecule you’ve got, as long as you’ve got a second to go. That’s your charge.”

- David Brower

hier, it was a whole year of seasons in a day

photo I, via Lolita

photo II, we came home

anthem.

2009-03-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

And then I was thinking

It's not so much a running away from as a running toward, or perhaps just

running.

That was before stumbling across this song by the Kahn Brothers,

by way of a certain gash of creativity and consciousness,

and also had nothing to do with the message in the video

yet, like many a time, these guys ended up falling into running leap

and muddy brawl along with my thoughts. Or the other way around.

what do you believe? it is our choice.

2009-03-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

I Believe in Bedtime Stories

I Believe in placing a small piece of dark chocolate on the tongue just before falling asleep, if only to wake the next morning with it's ruddy, bitter taste still on the buds -- I know someone does this, I read about him once, I think he was an architect

I Believe in this boy and his poetics and his words

I Believe in Play

I Believe in these people and this question

I Believe that I don't know

But

Most of All

I Believe in Love.

monday morning.

2009-03-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

Lately I’m finding inspiration in the simple words of other human beings, unguarded, off guard and generally observational. But the words are revelatory of the writer’s depth of thought and consciousness and ability to see a moment for more than just the physical actions being played out before them, while the figures of study unaware of their identity as actor in the everyday scene. For this everyday scene is suddenly a rupture from the mundane routine. And all that it takes is an Other, an observer, to feel the rupture. It becomes something else; or at least the false bottom drops away like one’s heart upon the decent of a rollercoaster, the future opens up and this gaping past-of-choices propels it. Like an hourglass where the sand slides through the narrow passage for but an instant, where above and below open wide like arms readying for an embrace, the moment slows for a point, just long enough to glimpse and maybe even to feel, before things change and the sands slide on.

A long way to reach something I look forward to every Monday: The Metropolitan Diary in the New York Times. I can’t get last Monday’s mention of stifled poetic possibility out of my head. And today, a whole bouquet of scenes to bloom all the week’s rest.

On tuning out {"On the L.I.R.R."}

On saving the world and On the sweetness of New York, when all would seem bitter {The first and the final letters}

Have You Ever

2009-02-26T16:30:00.000-08:00

Been inspired by a textbook?

Awoken Early One Dark Morning

To words flowing in seamless sentences through the mind,

Stream of between consciousness

Turned poetic gush when pencil

Is finally placed sleepily upon paper?

Dreamt of a shiny, lacquered Wooden Bench

Blinding in its bright design of peppercorn-sized colorful shapes in patterns

like Polish Pottery

only more wildly colorful and supposedly from Egypt

but reminiscent of Russia?

How about this.

Heard your name {in its nick form} drift from another room

by adored friends, responded grudgingly from a desk

softly lit in mid-night shadow,

to their call:

Look at the snow.

Shrouding Seattle.

This Morning's Night.

a sense of place.

2009-02-21T11:22:00.001-08:00

I only want to.

I see no problem with loosing

oneself

often.

It builds humbleness

and a stronger sense

of the power

of the personal narrative.

Freedom.

to meander down dusty roads

in thought and in body

turning eyes to the sun

and back to the dust.

to feel the beginnings of spring

forcing its wobbly, kinetic energy

through layers of silent winter sun

in spindly tendrils of molecules upon bare skinned faces.

to let the place consume the Self

then realize it, murky thick air

through which the body moves

in the rush to orient the Self whilst separated into the Other.

{first photo via ffound.

second and third photos via Joanna Goddard, by Linn Photography.}

chills.

2009-02-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

Loving The Gardner by The Tallest Man on Earth.

When I’m feeling under the weather. And the weather is all about a thin layer of entirely unexpected snow under bright blue skies.

Pull on an old thick sweater, brown and knobby, wrap up physically then mentally with plucky notes from a guitar somewhere is Sweden.

And feel the chills.

a letter.

2009-01-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

Sophie--of this aforementioned collection of musings--recognized me on her blog. And so I have this to say:

Your words made my heart leap to my throat. Such recognition is akin to being spied by another while looking through the keyhole oneself—thrilling, in a word. I can’t express the evocation of charm in my pleadingly optimistic being that our mutual understanding elicits.

In my final year at a small university in Seattle I am embedded in the heart of the city yet balancing on the precipice that separates comfortable academia from the thrill of boundless and unprotected Life. And in the middle of the extremely tactile and the extremely cognitive is this fissure we can fill any way we choose.

Andreas Huyssen wrote this:

“The past is not simply there in memory, but it must be articulated to become memory. The fissure that opens up between experiencing an event and remembering it in representation is unavoidable. Rather than remembering or ignoring it, this split should be understood as a powerful stimulant for cultural and artistic creativity.”

It is odd to be surrounded by friends who have those tactile goals, easily definable in society’s structure. Most of the time it’s grounding to be surrounded by people possessing such certainty of profession. But what about the kind of goal that doesn’t slide so easily into an already carved out cavern?

My ideal is to be in a collaborative and creative relationship with similarly oriented people, where we produce work that is at once meaningful to ourselves and the larger collective community. Thus, our personal fulfillment—this powerful force of life and love and questioning but foundational curiosity—can be transferred to a larger audience, to humanity, enriching other’s lives as well. Inspiration by ideal, by living a life of creative and dynamic exploration.

And so, this is why your press and your words buoy my own soul with renewed concentration... and hope of creative fulfillment.

Thanks!

Love.

2009-01-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

It has been a few Tuesdays now, that there ran, in the Science Times section of the NY Times, an article about love. More specifically, an article about avoiding love--at least that's what the writer suggested.

What ensued in my mind were absurd and tragic comedies of a Sleeper-esque machine in which love {well, in the literal case of Sleeper, physical love} is relegated to the flip of a switch. Where cognitive significance has disappeared, been forgotten and if remembered, thought of as silly.

Why would you bother to go through all of that time and effort when you can neatly take care of a craving in less than 30 seconds, then peacefully return to "regular life?" Why would you want to experience all of that distracting emotion when you have a particularly demanding week at work? Or, to use the writer's example, if you are in the midst of a mid-life crisis and become attracted to someone other than your significant other, why not just medicate oneself against desire? Instead of recognizing the situation, identifying the underlying issues and attempting to reach a common ground of understanding, why not just take the quick and smooth route in the form of a pill or elixir to stifle any unwanted {or wanted} urge?

Yes, perhaps it could stop someone from doing something they may later regret. But it could also stop them from recognizing and addressing any deeper problems. Oh, and then there is very minor obstruction, just that human propensity to fall into something all-consuming and earth-moving... right, love.

Here is the article, Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss written by John Tierney.

Photo by the always lovely Danske.

resounding.

2009-01-11T16:26:00.000-08:00

It is a unique occurrence {as of late, at least} when I find myself unable to surface from an eloquent and elegant spill of words. More unique--and if my memory serves me correctly, never before come upon--is when that voice is of today and blinding me from the digital glow of the computer screen.

Sophie Ward is the 23-year-old woman behind such incredible initiative. Paper Castle Press is the publishing company she has created to push new ideas forth in whatever form best fits its dialogue.

Ward touches many realms of thought in her wanderings, yet what strikes me {so far} as particularly exact are her ideas on identity:

"Identities are spend-thrift in today’s culture. We devour and denounce identity, and our sense of self as rapid as the food we consume, the videos we watch, the paths we go down. With internet and digital media so prolific and easy to use, expression is everywhere, and possible everywhere. So, where is our voice? Where have all the deep, hearing and speaking voices gone?"

It took me a long time to begin blogging and even longer to join online social networks like Facebook. Still, I continue to question the legitimacy of so many isolated voices in a digital landscape not populated by any breathing, blood-filled being; so many people forcing their ideas and their bodies into a seemingly limitless realm, an odd boundless cloud, invisible and difficult to define. The possibility to reveal oneself in this space--the internet--has been around for such a length of time that it seems people have become comfortable entering into this bleak terrain. Many have their own blogs {recently, a majority show of students' hands in a communications course measuring those who have blogs left me floored}, yet I'm ever curious about whether or not the urgency of what they have to say deserves a special place in the current conversation. I readily apply the same censorship to myself, oftentimes wondering if what I have to say is worth the space, however obscure internet space may seem. What cathartic purpose do explicit and oftentimes fiercely personal confessions and narratives have for the blogger? And where was this outlet before the internet provided unedited and uncensored immediate publication?

"In the 21st century, identity seems to overthrow what we as people think, feel and experience. Why, one might ask, should I divulge that part of my human existence? Why speak louder from an internal place than act in defense of my external self? Because space is becoming available for what works for humans, as intelligent beings living on a great and now connected planet of continents and cultures, to shine through the lattices of those externally crumbling structures."

Elevated and dreamy, her writing is rooted in a deep philosophy which supports a painterly and poetic landscape with validity and meaning. I strive to create similar worlds, escapist and luminous, but founded upon strong ideals and infused with a passion for truthful dialogue about difficult questions, oftentimes unanswerable with one definitive statement.

Sophie Ward's Blog is here.

Paper Castle Press is here.

2009-01-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

constant, i hope

and inescapably inspiring

what ever the recipient

or whom ever

and only defined

by the lover.

Photo from The Selby.

2009-01-07T15:49:00.000-08:00

Poets Kiss from AV Photography.

Her shoe is charmed

And expressive

Like a smile.

post.holiday.silly.wreath

2009-01-07T10:16:00.001-08:00

{for emily}

brussel sprouts are beautiful.

and surprisingly festive

in wreath form.

but even more so when

hung against a rough wooden wall

calling to mind country rusticity.

Via Mustard and Sage.

sheer blouses and billowing skirts.

2009-01-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

Too early to think of spring?

I think not.

Skirt.

Reminds me of Marilyn.

Real Live Characters

2009-01-02T20:38:00.000-08:00

{with good cameras}

Ones that actually breathe and create and move about and interact

Ones that help to get one off the floor of one’s apartment and out onto the city streets

When the mood in the air screams STAY STAY STAY

But your job undercuts the shrill shrieks with the baritone OUT OUT OUT

Alright, just a few more minutes...

Photos from Sandra Beijer's blog.

this is.

2008-12-31T15:55:00.001-08:00

longest night of the year. , originally uploaded by vofvendredi.

one evening, late
on the longest night of the year
while the white 'scape
turned whiter.

roasted pumpkin, whole
filled with cheese
and wine
and bread.

rustic in it's simplicity
and charred orange skin
atop a well-worn baking sheet
and less ancient textiles from Japan.

for today a song.

2008-12-30T11:20:00.000-08:00

Keri Smith is perpetually and unwaveringly inspiring. If ever lost in a stagnant state of inability--intellectually and otherwise--there is nothing more reassuring than her always comforting words and findings.

A song a day, a photo a day, a film a day, a quote a day, an illustration a day or something said. This doesn't seem like such an impossibility but in its simple demand is challenging. I hope we can't help but try.

For today, a song.

catching up

2008-12-28T15:48:00.001-08:00

A few mornings and one afternoon beginning on Christmas. Honoring the impending absence of one fellow photographer and one who perhaps shares my sentiment that this morning ritual is meditative--energizing and inspiring thoughts of the day ahead--where possibility opens endlessly past the early {usually} hour. Here are a few of my meditative beginnings.

More of my mornings here.

come in.

2008-12-19T20:21:00.001-08:00

, originally uploaded by vofvendredi.

welcome to a place neglected
even with hours of school-free time and overflowing
but as yet unmaterialized
ideas

2008-11-05T23:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday.

was election day.

so I wrote in blue to bolster my hopes for one Barack Obama.

the air felt like approaching holidays,

like Thanksgiving and warm foods and such.

it was a new day after a night of uncomfortable dreaming.

i drove to Macrina before breakfast and picked up whole wheat cider bread, rustic potato bread and a turkey-shaped brown sugar cookie decorated with orange and brown frosting from a girl in opaque yellow tights. the warm bakery was abuzz with excitement not only at the soon-to-be-eaten pastry but for the soon-to-be-decided election.

i only wanted to revel in the November chill and light.

i hoped our country would move in the right direction.

i hoped Americans would make the right decision.

i hoped.

and we did.

Yesterday.

First poster by Cody Hudson

Second poster by Scott Hansen

Photo via here.

Thursday Breakfast

2008-10-02T21:42:00.001-07:00

Squash harvest bread from Macrina Bakery via Stumptown. Pears of autumn. In the gray of early morning as the first October rains gently tease the misty morning air. And I peruse the Style section of a paper 2,412 miles away.

Back to School

2008-10-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

There is something about filling in the as yet blank pages of a red, Moleskine planner at the onset of autumn quarter, in the dark of the night...

Back

2008-09-22T18:12:00.000-07:00

Moving... back to Seattle, back to friends and away from family.

The drawings of Miroslav Sasek always provide the happy image for events that may be in need of some whimsy.

And whimsy is often needed.

last minute relaxation

2008-09-18T10:06:00.001-07:00

ahh... on the porch, originally uploaded by vofvendredi.

anticipating the return to Seattle and work and city, taking a few moments to revisit the times when taking out colored pencils during class was a certainty. The smell marked an immediate lightening of the soul. Warm and encompassing and refreshing, the feeling of them in a bouquet in my palm, fingers clutching tightly and barley able to reach around the whole bunch. And the sound of their smooth, curved shiny wood, gliding against the others...

...

2008-09-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

truly. madly. deeply. HONestly.

facebook really? well... yeah.

This is quite like a pop-up book.
All links are like pop-up books.
Electronic ones, linking to other pages
of a global storybook on humanity.

Upon Return...

2008-09-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

And now for some lightness; some autumn lust to add luster to the fading summer glow. I allow the thought to enter my mind, creeping as it will around the edges of my waking consciousness, nagging me, "what if? what if?" Dare I?

I've never owned any Valentino, yet a certain black dress by the same name first caught my eye at, oh, perhaps ten or twelve at the oldest. Perusing a Vogue, about this time of year, I still remember the moment of clairity when my fingers flipped the first few pages and my eyes zeroed in upon the shadowy girl swathed in black satin with a big bow near her neck. It was then that I realized the fantasy of film could be found in the physicality of fashion. My short list of idols at the time -- Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Hayley Mills -- all from another era far more glamorous than the 1990s, would have worn such a dress for their romantic escapades and windswept adventures, their figure admired by, say, a Cary Grant or perhaps some unknown actor, young and tan and glowing. But always at once accessible and untouchable. Untouchable because, if still living, they no longer touched the world with the same cinematic flourish; accessible because I was young and had yet to experience things as one of the world, not only in the world. They occupied my dreams and future projections of what the world most certainly must be like, of course, filled with opportunity fueled by fashion worthy of Hitchcock.

show some love.

2008-07-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

What were you doing at twelve? I was putting on shows out of my basement, writing stories, watching films, reading... But I definitely wasn’t doing this!

I stumbled across this blog yesterday via a post from NY Mag's blog. Before I say anything -- this love is TWELVE!!! -- check her out... then give her some love, for it seems a certain blog post from a certain magazine (that I certainly find entertaining... most of the time) discouraged her.

Too bad, because she has effectively acknowledged her age and gone with it, seemingly not trying to be an older or younger version of herself... she's having fun with her twelve-year-old identity! Plus, she is ridiculously hilarious. We should all have fun with our ___-year-old identities.

So I revisit past conversations about not giving intellectual and/or creative credit to the younger set... She already has an amazing voice.

All photos from the blog Style Rookie.

if.

2008-07-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, if I had a bakery, it would most definitely have its own jingle... just like Bakesale Betty does, in Oakland, California.

Only mine would include a mandolin. Why haven't more people jumped onto the jingle bandwagon??

Lives!

2008-07-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

Crafting a life, a world is a wonderful and exciting affair... Blogs are like looking through the keyhole into a persons inner brain, inner life, inner artist, inner manic... So when the chance arises to not only spy through the keyhole, but actually step through the door, I often feel like Alice in her Wonderland as opposed to Harriet the Spy (although each are equally adored).

This new blog cracks me entirely up--it's a home tour blog of various artists lairs (for the main course) followed by a charming and hilarious exchange between photographer Todd Selby and his chosen creative charmers.

First photo, me.
Logo and last two photos from Todd Selby.
Via Joanna Goddard.

It hurts me...

2008-07-11T12:38:00.001-07:00

This is the image that started it all.
Before I became fascinated and completely captured by the artistry and anguish of La Nouvelle Vague, I stumbled upon this picture of the lovely Jean Seberg. Such a sad life for such a beautiful and arresting visage... though it seems that is often the way of it.
And then came a long overdue viewing of "A Bout de Souffle," or "Breathless," whereupon Seberg -- safely stored and temporarily forgotten within the far reaches of my mind -- charmed me once again (American accented French aside).

There is a gritty charm indeed, buried beneath an exterior sweetness of color and smiles and structured innocence... An anomaly still jaunting around the world today.

Images via
style.com
trailerfan.com
garancedore.fr
thesatorialist.blogspot.com

Film of Summer, of Love, of Death...

2008-07-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

"In life, in order to understand, to really understand the world, you must die at least once. So it's better to die young, when there's still time left to recover and live again."

From "The Garden of the Finzi-Contini's," actor Romolo Valli as said to his son, speaking of Love, lost. The best summation of the most tragic state of being that I've come across in a long while.

Beautifully tragic film...

The filmy visual quality is mesmerizing, as is the "dream world" in which the Finzi-Contini's delicately dwell. It makes me want to move to a small Italian village, play tennis and ride (now) vintage bicycles through shaded lanes...

But the undertone of sorrow never ducks into hibernation. Death is worn on the edge of everyone's sleeve; the lover's death and the untimely death bred by human hatred.

I don't doubt that the book would disappoint...

Images thanks to:
wikipedia.org
70scinema.blogspot.com
polsci167.blogspot.com/

Impossible Reincarnation

2008-07-03T15:52:00.000-07:00

If only I could capture the smell of cinnamon rolls rising, the soft yellow brioche dough expanding and exuding that warmness that adds delicacy to this otherwise heavy, humid afternoon. Sight is the closest I can come... aside from providing the steps that will allow you to fill your own address with such aroma. Luckily, I can do both.

And these cinnamon rolls have done something for me, as well. They’ve provided a temporary bane for my distressed summer soul – lethargy, unstructured days and unimaginative future prospects will force dss upon many people. Lets revolt by way of the senses... sight, taste and smell, that is.

Inspiration often arises from heart wrenching loss, when one’s mind is violently forced to reorient itself around some new vacancy. There are degrees of such violence, of course: travel, moving, death of friend or family... Here, however, I refrain from comparing the loss of a bakery to the death of a loved one; I find such comparison slightly depressing for a number of reasons. However, concerning what they say about taste, sense memory and the like, the psychological implications could be comparable... though still enough to incite a worthy cringe at lamenting the disappearance of a baked good. (The loss of this particular bakery, however, incites another, loss-of-independent-business tinged dialogue altogether...)

So, I must insert here that this recipe is an attempt at recreating the perhaps un re- creatable. Unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately –- we can’t bring the dead back to life. Even when it comes to life given at the hand of a human – a baker more specifically. So when Bower’s Bakery closed for good last Spring (ah! Spring is now last spring!), and I took the final bite of the cinnamon rolls so coveted for reasons I will let your own mind put into words...

... I decided that my taste buds would not settle for any concept of finality a propos cinnamon roll. Behold, attempt number one.

The results? Well, I would call these more cinnamon sugar brioche rolls than the classics-by-a-shorter-name I had envisioned. But while even I don’t want to be caught with ten cinnamon rolls waiting impatiently in the refrigerator, suffocating in plastic wrap as the mornings slowly open -- one by one -- to breakfast, these lighter versions don’t seem as fatigue-inducing as the full bodied originals. In fact, I don’t even know why I am comparing them, for the brioche version has its own personality altogether.

Cinnamon Sugar Brioche Rolls
Adapted from "Baking With Julia” by Dorie Greenspan

I cut the butter way down in this version. The brioche is as found in the original recipe, though the original roll recipe was for pecan sticky buns. I practically omitted the extra butter and step of rolling the dough and refolding it to create more layers, as one would do for croissants. The result was, as I said before, much more light and airy than had I used the four sticks of butter called for. If done again, I would add way more filling, using Saigon cinnamon rather than the generic brand. Also, you could easily add any glaze or topping to your own craving... I was just in a minimalist mood.

For the Brioche:

To make the sponge you will need:

1/3 cup whole milk, warmed to about 100° F
2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 large egg
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

In the bowl of a mixer, combine the milk, yeast, egg and 1 cup of the flour. Mix with a spatula until blended. Dust the remaining cup of flour over the mixture. Set aside to rest for about 30 to 40 minutes. The flour coating the sponge should crack after this time.

To make the dough you will need:

1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon fine quality sea salt
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 ½ cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter at room temperature (6 oz) plus 3 to 4 tablespoons, melted

To the sponge, add the sugar, salt, eggs and one cup of the flour. Mix in a heavy-duty mixer on low speed with the dough hook attachment until just combined, about 1 or 2 minutes. Keep the mixer on low speed and slowly add ½ cup of flour. Once incorporated, increase the speed to medium and beat for about 15 minutes. Here, what you are looking for is a dough that comes together, globing around the dough hook and slapping the sides of the bowl. After about 10 minutes, if still no slapping has sounded and dough is not sticking to the hook, add 2 to 3 additional tablespoons of flour. It is important for the dough to stay in the mixer for the full 15 minutes... the final texture of the brioche depends upon it.

***The mixer becomes quite hot after this amount of beating, so it will need to cool after finishing the dough. I also had trouble detaching the bowl from the stand of the mixer after such heavy beating... be forewarned.

To incorporate the butter into the dough, it must be of the same consistency; that is, smooth, creamy and cool, not at all oily. With a medium sized piece of parchment or wax paper, smear the butter with your hands or a spatula until it reaches the desired consistency. Add the butter to the dough, bit by bit, with the mixer on medium-low. The dough may fall apart while adding the butter. This is normal. After all the butter has been added, reduce the speed to medium and continue mixing until the dough comes back together and slaps the sides of the bowl once again, about 5 minutes. If the dough refuses to come together after 2 or 3 minutes, add an additional tablespoon of flour. The dough should be soft, sticky and cool, clinging to the dough hook and sides of the bowl.

Butter a large bowl. Transfer the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until doubled, about 3 hours.

Collapse the dough by lifting its sides away from the bowl. Cover the bowl again and place in the refrigerator overnight or for 4 to 6 hours, letting the dough double in size once again.

Divide the dough in half, returning unused half to the refrigerator while working with the first half. On a lightly floured work surface, roll the dough into a long rectangle, roughly 11 inches wide, 13 inches long and ¼ inch thick.

Melt the 3 or 4 tablespoons butter and brush half of the butter over the dough. Sprinkle the filling (see recipe below) very generously over the butter, pressing it into the dough with the rolling pin. Roll the dough into a long log.

Wrap the log in plastic and chill until firm, about 45 minutes.

Repeat with the other half of dough.

When chilled, remove plastic wrap and using a serrated knife, cut each log into 7 equal parts. Butter two, 9-inch round cake pans and sprinkle with any leftover cinnamon sugar mixture. Place rolls into cake pans, one in the middle and a circle of six on the edge. Set aside to rise on last time, for about 1 ½ to 2 hours. They should touch each other after this final rise.

Preheat the oven to 350°F, placing the oven racks in the middle of the oven. Bake the rolls for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden. Remove from the oven and immediately invert them onto a serving dish. If not removed from the pans quickly, they may become difficult to take out. Drizzle glaze (see recipe below) over hot rolls. Enjoy at room temperature or just warmed.

For the Filling:

3 tablespoons brown sugar, firmly packed
9 tablespoons granulated sugar
7 tablespoons Saigon cinnamon

Combine all ingredients.

For the Glaze:

3 or more tablespoons whole milk
1 cup powdered sugar
3 or more tablespoons Saigon cinnamon
1 or more tablespoons vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients, stirring with a whisk until smooth.

Anticipation

2008-07-01T20:47:00.000-07:00

I’m leaving for India in four weeks, forcing my mind to re-orient itself in 30 days. Up until my departure, I will pepper my regular posts with India-related photos, writings, recipes or general inspiration. I call this an exercise in mind adjustment. (And probably a feeble one at that, as no amount of cooking or reading or photo perusing will do justice to the country itself).

The First:

Kat Heyes is an illustrator and photographer whose work is otherworldly and delicious. Among her many creative endeavors, she has in her portfolio a set of photographs of India.

(Along with Tess Carr, she has also created a guide for camping. I’m not one for camping, but wow... this version looks glorious. Happy camping indeed!)

Life on a Cake Stand

2008-06-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

I could be called fanatical, or obsessive, or fixated... But I prefer dedicated, passionate, devoted. Funny how the words mean roughly the same thing; it’s just that on one hand the glass is half empty, on the other it’s half full... but even that is disputable. I will say this: a cake stand half empty is more beautiful than when it is full.

Though the uncut cake may be pristine, untouched, a picture of elegance like children dressed in their white, lace finery, isn’t it much more provoking to see the layered and frosted and sometimes messy interior?

When the children, ashamed but mostly invigorated, race indoors, their lace now dappled with remnants of pirates, deep expeditions, fights to the death? Yes. I prefer the dirty newness of birth, of flowers emerging, struggling at first, into the cool spring air. Of vegetables pulled easily from dark soil dampened by humid July thunderstorms, of green and purple lettuce, speckled brown from freshly composted soil, of jazz riffs, scratchy and dirty, and of flour buttermilk sugar eggs strawberries vanilla and baking powder, split into four layers and daintily built up into a tall pristine tower, only to be sliced away in deftly executed movements, revealing craggy, melting tiers, taking their first breaths of air tinged with laughter and anticipation. So much more interesting.

Old-Fashioned Strawberry Layer Cake
Adapted from Sara Bir’s adaptation from “The Cake Bible” by Rose Levy Beranbaum; The Oregonian, 10 June 2008

I followed the cake recipe closely, and came out with a perfectly fluffy and flavorful base for the berries. Before committing to this particular recipe, I searched for others for comparison and further inspiration, but could find none that incorporated fresh berries into the cake batter itself. That said, and being overly zealous about the idea of pureed berried IN the batter, I added about twice as much berry purée than called for in the original. I’ve incorporated my adaptations in recipe below.

1 pound whole strawberries
8 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup buttermilk, divided
3 ¾ cups unsifted cake flour
2 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. After buttering the sides and bottom of two, round 9-inch cake pans, line the bottoms with parchment paper. Butter the bottoms and flour the sides and bottoms. Set aside.

Hull all strawberries. Thinly slice about 1 cup and set aside to use in the filling. Purée the remaining berries in a blender or food processor (or smash berries as you would for jam) until you have medium sized chunks. [Here, the original recipe says that you should have about 1 ¼ cups of purée, I had much more]. Take about half of the purée and set aside.

In a separate container, combine the egg yolks, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1/3 cup buttermilk. Set aside.

Combine cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Stir. Add the butter and beat on low speed for 1 minute. Add the remaining 1/3 cup buttermilk and beat mixture until moist, scraping down the sides and bottom of bowl. Add the egg yolk mixture in a slow stream with the mixer on low speed. Beat for 1 minute. Add half of the strawberry purée, beat for about 30 seconds. Pour the batter into the two pans, smoothing the tops with a spatula. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean, about 35 minutes [mine took at least this long and the center was still a bit gooey].

Cool pans for about 10 minutes, then invert and transfer to cool completely on a wire rack. Be sure to remove the parchment paper after inverting the pans, or the layers may split.

Make the frosting immediately before assembling the cake (recipe follows).

Make the filling: Place about 3 cups of the frosting into a medium bowl. Stir in the 1 cup sliced strawberries, remaining half strawberry purée, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Set aside.

Assemble the cake: Split cake layers so that you have four thin layers. Beginning with one layer cut side up on a cake stand, thickly spread about 1/3 of the filling. Repeat with the following 2 layers. Spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides of the cake with a spatula or knife, in long, swirling strokes.

Store leftover cake in the refrigerator for about 5 days.

Whipped Cream Frosting
From “Caprial’s Desserts” by Caprial Pence and Melissa Carey

For the frosting, I used Caprial Pence’s Whipped Cream Frosting. I highly recommend it. It makes the cake tastes like strawberry shortcake in a more decadent form. I had about 1 ½ cups leftover frosting, which you can store in the refrigerator for a few days, using it for a simple dessert (or breakfast) by stirring in any sort of sweetly ripe berry or granola or both... or just pile it on the cake and toy with gravity.

5 cups heavy whipping cream
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons cream of tarter

Pour the whipping cream into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whip attachment. Beat on high speed until the cream thickens. Add the sugar, vanilla and cream of tarter. Beat until the cream holds a stiff peak. Use immediately.

When Paths Cross...

2008-06-26T20:00:00.001-07:00

Where is she and how can fall into such a “right place at the right time” trajectory? Two great photographers, two great design-minded eyes, two lucky girls. It’s fun to see how these two photographers captured the same girl... and amazing that their paths crossed on the same day.

Taken by Garance Doré

Taken by The Sartorialist

Taken by Garance Doré

Taken by The Sartorialist

The Other Jones

2008-06-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

A famous line if there ever was one, taken from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:

“Not that Jones, the other Jones!”

Exactly. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is “not those films but this film” (thanks to a certain theatre attendant for pointing it out so simply).

After hearing so much negative word of mouth, it was becoming hard to keep my mind above the din of heavy critique. I hoped the new film wouldn’t be like the old ones; what a sad attempt of a sequel that would be. Instead, the film portrayed age, youth, death and the appropriate era (the 50’s in all of its paranoid and kitschy exuberance), without losing the ruddy quality that pervades the Indiana Jones image. It was thankfully appropriate. And just when I felt the “oh no, here they go” welling up, ready to explode in a silent theatre-appropriate sigh; as Indy’s hat came dangerously close to functioning as the proverbial passing-of-the-torch to his son, the opposite happened...

No, there will never be another Indiana Jones, just as there will never be another Harrison Ford.

Images from http://www.theraider.net/

Zucchini Bread in the Morning

2008-03-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

From one breakfast lover to another...

movement.

2008-02-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

the ease of beauty... the effortlessness of letting go... the simplicity of joy

all in one motion

via:aboutsomethings

Quotes to Spin a Life With

2008-02-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

“Eating with the fullest pleasure – pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance – is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world.” Michael Pollan (my emphasis)

Yes, another example of how eating and food can be tied to and used as a metaphor for life itself. Eating gives and perpetuates life, as a simple and base definition, as an operation. But one may also use this act as a way to understand and approach life. The first word in this quote may as well be conversing, singing, laughing, learning, whatever... The fact of the matter is, ignorance deteriorates every experience, weakens every thought, impairs every movement and dilutes every argument. To build a connection with the world on the basis of ignorance will at once rot that connection, just as food, forgotten, is soon consumed by mold.

“And that simply means you’ve got to have people who insist that their food comes from good farms, and that means they’ve got to recognize what a good farm is.” Wendell Berry, from Gourmet, February 2008 (my emphasis)

Again, if you apply this food-specific idea on a life-size scale, it holds true: (perhaps this is the mark of a good statement – if it checks out in more than one realm of specificity, then it can be held as widely true) To hold yourself and others to any sort of value, to even employ any sort of value system, to recognize good as good, fair as fair, one must first recognize what that good, fair, defining value, is. The form must be there. The experience must be there. The understanding must be there.

Upon Vogue, Janvier 2008

2008-01-28T12:03:00.000-08:00

I am searching for something called inspiration. Sometimes I get confused and think inspiration is the means to that which I am searching for. It is not so. There have been times when my inspiration’s catalyst has undergone great adjustment, veering its path this way or that. There have been times when it has fallen back and found solace in already-taken footsteps. Today, inspiration has chosen the latter.

Speaking of inspiration as its own entity is quite intentional. The search extends beyond ones own body, therefore making it separate from ourselves. It’s spirit dwells in a photograph, a sentence, an idea. It is sometimes embodied in another character, their habits or their home. A crack in the sidewalk, a strip of pale pink light above a tree-lined horizon: inspiration is not choosy when it comes to address. It’s windows and doors are constantly unlocked. One only needs to harness the exact force to apply on the point of access to enter the lavish simplicity of inspirations interior. Perhaps, once inside, one will find others who have penetrated its walls. Et voilà. Ça commence.

This morning, I find inspiration upon inspiration. I apply the force of a previous muse to go deeper into today’s inspirations’ chambers. And once inside, I recognize its interior. The shadows of my previous visits persist even though the dust has settled. But amid the ghosts and whips of memory that linger, small rays of light pierce through the gloom and illuminate the muted area. It’s this extra perspective that gives meaning and intent to something that before was so inaccessible. My fumbling hands find balance, my wandering mind, solidity. And I look with bright eyes, and I do with brilliant resolution.

*********************************

And so, fingers still glistening from the glorious sheen that buttermilk biscuits do impart, I begin again.

It was a simple decision to finally bake those buttermilk biscuits that I have been lusting over on the cover of January’s Gourmet. So while my roommate dashed off to class, I settled in to craft some goodness. Two hours ago I had no idea that this goodness would take two forms: the culinary kind and the inspirational kind. Culinary-wise, I couldn’t go wrong (have you seen the January cover??), and if my previous field-experience tells me anything, I wouldn’t be disappointed in the inspiration realm, either. For inspiration often arises out of the most peculiar circumstances: extreme depression, rapturous exultation, vile cruelty or blissful splendor... Sometimes, inspiration even arises out of an unused carton of buttermilk, waiting patiently on the refrigerator shelf.

In any case, as I sat down to a breakfast of biscuits right out of the oven and a fried egg in all its purity, I began to do some research for an interview I would be conducting with a particularly well-known food blogger. And then I found a similar soul. As I read her words, her thoughts and her experiences, I felt oddly consoled. Suddenly, all that had been restlessly swimming around in my mind for the past few months came together and I decided right then and there: I am going to keep this blog going.

Forever, I have wanted to carve out a small corner of the world in which to live and create and grow. In all my discrepancies with the journalistic method and practice, I have always held on to my own definition of the activity: find and create, then share. So here I am and here I go. Hello to you all and welcome to my petit coin du monde.

Definitions

2007-12-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

The holiday season is, whether we like it or not, concerned with food. Food is present at most festive events, publicized in every other advertisement and specialized to fit the holiday mood. Each culture has its own way of interpreting food into their holiday traditions.

Though food by itself is not enough in the context of the clichéd holiday cheer. Is it the crumb of a particularly delicate holiday cookie that imparts the unmistakable glow surrounding the moment of pleasure? Or is it the atmosphere in which it was enjoyed that we glean our sensory memories from? No matter what holiday or celebration one takes part in, there is a community gathering involved. Whether lively conversation rings through the hall or calm reflection hangs in the air, the images have at their origin something decidedly universal: family, unity, kinship.

There is a point to this statement that has to do with something not confined to the approaching winter months. It also has to do with food and sharing, with finding common ground and fostering dialogue. At its most elemental, it is concerned with communication. I am referring to the modern dilemma of where our food comes from and where our food should come from: where ones ‘good life’ may end another’s only way of life. I feel it is necessary to point out this difficulty given my previous discussion of local farms in the United States. Has the ‘localvore’ been pitted against the global marketplace do-gooder? With ethics and politics now extended into the realm of cuisine, sitting down to a meal can become a statement in and of itself. So, how would one define a ‘good meal?’

I previously wrote about one model of a ‘good life.’ In visiting Sea Breeze Farm, I was lucky enough to not only sample a product made in close proximity to where I live, but to experience the land and the process itself that go into making it. This (paradoxically luxurious) ability to eat locally has turned into a movement. In fact, the act has become such a desire in the United States that the New Oxford American Dictionary chose the word “locavore” as their 2007 word of the year. The Oxford University Press Blog explains: “The ‘locavore’ movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.” The blog names the creators of the movement, four women from San Francisco, who “proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius.” This, of course, means forgetting about cravings that call for out-of-season fare. Eating locally also means eating with the seasons.

Though, there is another side to this admired way-of-eating. Choosing to support local farmers means choosing not to support farmers in underdeveloped countries such as Africa. William G. Moseley, an associate professor of geology at a college in Minnesota, recently wrote an article discussing the consequences of the ‘locavore’ movement on farmers in these countries dependent on the agricultural export business. He explains that most farms in Africa use organic methods to grow “local food stuffs” sold in the United States, even though this fact isn’t employed as a promotional device. He proposes that the global marketplace itself is in need of alteration, mentioning African control of “nascent industries” and World Trade Organization “set and enforced rules about basic working conditions and environmental standards” as alternatives to agricultural export.

Here is where the real communication is called for. Here is where, perhaps through the optic of the current holiday season, the common grounds for discussion must be found. One of the most pressing issues of today’s world (and indeed, it has always been a pressing issue) is how to best relate to the other, and in doing so begin to bring about the social change that is needed in the fight against such things as poverty. Food and the environment are intrinsically linked. We are beginning to realize that the environment and how we eat is more connected to those abroad, globally, in third world countries and struggling farmers than first meets the eye. More generally, the environment will and does affect us all – one of the few truly universal problems for which the outcome is the same for all of us. No one has more control over what the weather will do than the other, no matter what level of ‘world’ they live in.

Below are links to the article by Moseley and the blog of Oxford University Press.

"Change Global Marketplace Rules"

Word of the Year

I have also provided a link for the locavore movement’s website. A simple google search will yield various local chapters, though they do not yet exist in every state. Also, Oxfam America, a non-governmental organization fighting poverty and injustice, is about to release their climate change campaign and has information regarding poverty and the environment.

Locavores
Oxfam America

Good Life

2007-11-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

There is nothing like a late spring afternoon, high in the hills just outside of Grenoble, to get a girl thinking. Amid cows mulling freely in the background and the Alps beckoning with a magisterial silence, I listened to a tale of a man who dedicated his life to things that are no longer done. My French professor, Victor, described his acquaintance, George, who has a farm on Vashon Island in Washington. His Mecca is based on some of the farming concepts still thriving in France. After having six months to explore every market inside Grenoble (and in some cases, beyond the city) I had become fascinated with the lifestyle of small family farms.

I wrote previously of the search for ‘good food.’ In visiting a farm, I sought to confirm my idea that ‘good food’ begins with the very process of its growing – the seed, the soil and the hands that sew. What I found was a substantiation of a philosophy and way-of-things that I have long thought to be true. In caring what we put in our mouths, and in understanding where it came from -- the process of cultivation – perhaps an appreciation will be developed. An appreciation, then, not just for that from which our bodies are nourished, but for the life that is necessary to sustain the planet, thus, us. Not only will ‘good food’ be present, ‘good life’ will be found.

‘Good life’ is perhaps even trickier to define than ‘good food,’ though upon visiting Sea Breeze Farm on Vashon Island, I may attempt to define one version of it.

Have you ever taken the ferry to Vashon Island? If you have been to Vashon, then chances are you have taken the ferry, as there are no bridges or roads connecting the island to the mainland. If each experience is only as important as the journey, then it would have been hard to have an awful occasion on Saturday, when I made the voyage from city to farmland. Accompanied by three faithful friends, we embarked upon an innocent adventure to a faraway mindset on a nearby island. One that is alive and laughing and calm. Where the green and the blue are holding hands still, where the soil nourishes and the hands sooth. Where we found ourselves planted on an afternoon after a foggy Seattle morning turned into a beautiful midday – in the midst of a world where there is human purpose (as in humanity, not profit).

The island is home to many lives and some are available for the roving eye of the visitor to gaze upon. We rested on the wooden bench outside of a local bakery, grazing on some goodies, watching cars and people ebb and flow in the tiny, picturesque intersection surrounded by old, wooden buildings. A gleaming wine shop to our left, where the bottles looked warm, glistening like vintage Christmas ornaments. A modestly grand antique shop with any number of treasures to be found in prints, drawings and obscure books in every language beckoned from up the street. Upon the white fence sat rows and rows of uniquely carved pumpkins – 50 or more – all grinning peacefully at the passerby.

The silence continued when we arrived at the farm. Following the long, unpaved drive to a teetering farmhouse, there were only some goats, pigs, a cow and two rambunctious dogs to greet us. Abiding by the cardboard sign posted upon the glass door of a small outer building where George sells his wares (all on the honor system – there is never anyone to take your cash), we continued through green pastures where chickens softly clucked amongst themselves. Following big, wooden wine barrels as the signs directed us, we began to hear music, laugher and animated voices coming from a tall barn nestled among the trees. The silence of the fading afternoon gave way to vivacity induced only by extreme happiness.

This sensory experience didn’t stop at the ears. In front of us were barrels upon barrels of wine, and behind them lay four large, open vats filled with grapes... and people. This is what one does on Saturday afternoons in October at Sea Breeze Farm: feel the grapes on the soles of your feet, oozing pure juice through the toes and up the ankles. The soft vines adding taste not obscured or eliminated by raw and brutal machinery. A ton of feet creating bottles of wine that will be enjoyed and savored by many tongues. Laughter as it should always be laughed permeated this space where the pressures of the city dropped away, crushed like the grapes under so many purposeful feet.

The cast of characters was diverse: a local politician, children, babies, and neighbors... we even met two women from Oregon on our way out. There were both amateurs (us) and seasoned grape stompers. One man originally from Spain explained his technique: find a spot and stick to it. I was even able to draw George away from his work of refilling the vats with grapes and the glasses with his wine to ask a few questions about his philosophy.

The first words I heard him speak that evening were these: “I specialize in things people don’t do anymore.” Already I knew I had come to the right place. When reminded of this comment George laughed quietly to himself. “That’s what intrigues me – traditional techniques that have been ignored or neglected or succumbed by modern technology.” He relented that, of course, there are often good arguments for using such technology, but at the same time, so much is lost when using it... especially when it comes to food. “The modern strain of food has been to industrialize everything and to take all the passion and flavor and quality out of food (in lieu of) economy, efficiency and consistency, what ever fits the cookie-cutter mold of industrial food production.”

Everything on the farm is done by hand (or foot), from making the cheese to bottling the milk to crushing the grapes. Owing to this little-practiced technique of grape stomping, George explained how he is able to keep the vine on the grapes as their juices are eased out of the skin. Feet are gentle enough not to snap the stems or bruise the grape, so the finished product retains some complexity.

There is quite a paradox of complexity and simplicity on the farm. The jobs never end; there are always new ideas for expansion, such as someday growing grapes on Sea Breeze itself (currently George purchases them from another grower). Though the mindset is decidedly simple. Whether one is crushing grapes, cultivating the land or simply sitting back and looking at what has been accomplished at the end of the day, “its good for the soul.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, George.

Here is the link to the Sea Breeze Farm website. I encourage all living in the Seattle radius (and even beyond) to make the trip to Vashon. I hope it won’t let you down.

Sea Breeze Farm
Sustainable Vashon

I have also included the links to a site on biodynamic farming – a concept quite different than that of mechanized U.S. farming.

Biodynamic Farming

Finally, epicurious, the web home of both Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines, have put together a list of films that explore the various food movements and current food landscapes. They are worth a look.

Gourmet Features Food Films

Good Food

2007-10-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

As you may learn from my profile, I am a student of journalism and of French, the former for which I am beginning this blog. Something, however, that you may not be able to glean from the concise bio is the question that has been plaguing me ever since I returned from France.

Why is it so hard to find good food? I suppose I must here define ‘good food.’

Back in Seattle after 6 months abroad in France is daunting in and of itself for many reasons. One of these is the isolation experienced as a result of living inner city. Even though green space is but few-minutes ride away, there is a palpable lack of the natural. I wasn’t expecting to find an equivalent to from-the-hill-over-there fresh yogurt as in Grenoble, but perhaps from-the-island-over-there eggs would suffice. Though these products do exist in the city, one feels somewhat spoiled to be able to partake in their freshness (and price). There in lies the absurdity. Where, in France, this kind of direct freshness is taken for granted, in the U.S. it is a luxury. Instead, imports from lands as far away as China are taken as quotidian (and standard), while those products from within a radius of fifty miles become luxurious.

One of the advantages of being a student is the opportunity to hear interesting people talk about what they believe in and stand for in an effort to pass on some knowledge to the forthcoming generation. One such woman Carrie Dann, a Shoshone Indian, spoke on campus last week. Now close to 80 years old, Carrie is still very active in her dedication to what she believes is right. These principles extend from treatment of the earth to treatment of the human population. Among Carrie’s many stories, there was one concept in particular that stood out: her culture’s relationship to food.

With voice unwavering, Carrie explained the relationship with food, extending from her deep connection with the earth in general, a concept ingrained in her consciousness since childhood. She remembered one instance in particular, where her mother stood over the stove, preparing the evening meal. Carrie knew that for their family, prayer didn’t come before the meal or after the meal, but remained a constant presence during the preparation of the meal. There existed no concept of “pure” cooking as it does for some people. Clean the vegetables, do not taste the sauce for fear of contaminating the rest of your family, etc. Their food was handled and tasted and appreciated for its effects on the body. She knew that this animal or vegetable had given its life to sustain hers. For Carrie, the greatest sin – the only sin – is to throw food away.

Public consciousness is slowly beginning to catch on to the weird, American, super-market notion of hunting and gathering. The word “organic” has become (for some of us) part of our everyday vocabulary. “Sustainable” and “beyond-organic” are not far behind. Though these words are now found on both large and small scale in most food-selling locales, are the concepts are as widely understood and applied? And if so, then why are more people not reacting to the truths that lie behind some of the products waiting patiently for consumers on the shelves of our grocery stores?

In an effort to better understand the process of farm to table, it is necessary to start from the source: the farm. So, within the next several weeks, I will try to visit at least one “beyond-organic” farm in order to better understand what it means to dedicate ones life to this concept of “the perfect meal,” as Michael Pollan so simply and elegantly states it in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Still, what is ‘good food’? I’m afraid the answer is rather idealistic in today’s terms. Vegetables that haven’t been doused with chemical to produce one type of crop en mass; soil that isn’t peppered with unidentified, chemical products to entice plants into air polluted by too many cars and too many starving bodies; and the farmers, who still take some joy in creating life for life at sunrise and sunset. This list could be much longer, but you get the idea. Now for finding a nearby farm that fits a few of these conditions…

Here are links to some websites that are particularly interesting, inspiring and pertinent. Take a look at what others are doing about our dilemma.

Foodie Farm Girl
Slow Food
Chez Panisse Foundation
Eat The Seasons

The upcoming farm bill is also an imperative debate. Any thoughts on how the outcome of this proposal will affect the current food landscape in regard to how America eats? Here is one idea.

Opinion