strophes

in the semi-darkness, i wait.

"con ella"
pablo neruda
from extravagaria

Como es duro este tiempo, espérame:
vamos a vivirlo con ganas.
Dame tu pequeñita mano:
vamos a subir y sufrir,
vamos a sentir y saltar.

Somos de nuevo la pareja
que vivió en lugares hirsutos,
en nidos ásperos de roca.
Como es largo este tiempo, espérame
con una cesta, con tu pala,
con tus zapatos y tu ropa.

Ahora nos necisitamos
no sólo para los claveles,
no sólo para buscar miel:
necesitamos nuestras manos
para lavar y hacer el fuego,
y que se atreva el tiempo duro
a desafiar el infinito
de cuatro manos y cuatro ojos.

ce n'est pas certain, ce que je serai, ni où je resterai. il faut que j'apprenne espagnole, si seulement pour mieux comprendre les mots de naruda. sa poèsie me touche, je ne sais rien que ça.

rebecca (une étudiante à purchase) et moi, pour quelques semaines nous discutons la philosophie des surréalistes, l'état du monde Artistique (c'est à dire visuel, auditif, littéraire) dans l'époque.

félicit, iván: http://www.ivansolano.com - still "sous construction" mais - le site éxiste!

max ernst
(grazie fewfur.blogspot.com)

here am i

back blogging in new york, amidst the heat and wasps and clever mice. things start anew tomorrow, i should hear about kobe by the end of the month. i spose it's about as likely as winning the lottery, but i will start to look at chant de linos and perhaps memorize cpe bach anyway.

tai sophia was reposeful, even through the last few weeks of revamping and shelving. the store looks beautiful - props to the crew (david, bien sur, john boland and sharon) and the newbies (christina and kimbra). hopefully they'll live through the rush without me.

the house is quiet, for the moment, and i have a ball of yarn just itching to be started into a scarf. clio felt sicky, so i did a little yoga and am in for a little tv on my computer over dinner before practicing.

cosmic karma

i don't believe in all the "woowoo" or "wuwu" stuff, howeveryouspellit (rushdie-ism, you've caught me cherry-red handed), but i do hold some confidence in karma. i don't read my charts every day, but i feel like something greater is puppeteering my life. ever get that?

i read a lot, sometimes i get lost in it, submerged, mindfully less than capacity. my eyes hurt from staring at the screen. my finger has stopped bleeding, stopped feeling so numb, but i'm still reluctant to leave the bandage behind. it's a symbol. why don't oboe players constantly cut themselves with reed knives?

people i know are traversing the globe, playing with good people. ô when?

art happens when you're convinced you're doing it. tadeu coelho wasn't far off the mark.

words for thought:

pablo neruda
"ode to ironing"

Poetry is white
it comes dripping out of the water
it gets wrinkled and piles up
We have to stretch out the skin of this planet
We have to iron the sea in its whiteness
The hands go on and on
and so things are made
the hands make the world every day
fire unites with steel
linen, canvas and calico come back
from combat in the laundry
and from the light a dove is born
purity comes back from the soap suds.

[trans. Jodey Bateman]

richard will find something on long island. sean is in love. clio is in germany.

i am here, now, and it is enough.

humming

i've raided the public library and wake from sleep as from a deep stupor. once my dream had a soundtrack, which was weird because that never happens. you'd think, of course! she musicks all the time, but. it was in florida, reinecke's ondine, romantic and turbulent.

i've been remiss, needlessly. sometimes i have the attention of a fruit fly. the headache from 10 hours in the tampa airport remains. james paced in circles, my dad slipped in and out, groaning at my requests for help with puzzles, i stretched yogically, practically still for a few hours at a time, thinking, trying to stay awake.

i remember once i was walking home from school, 14 maybe, spring-ish, i was lost in my own as usual, singing something to myself, and someone passed me and said "nice voice" and i snapped out of it, quickly. people are listening even when they're not.

another time, i slipped and fell backwards on the ice. my backpack weighed maybe 50 pounds.

i need to go back to paris.


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Now playing: Nellie McKay - Manhattan Avenue
via FoxyTunes

edge

it's a process- clearing out the clutter, holding onto what sticks, not going blind in the process. on the docket: tolstoy's karenina, pinsky's the figured wheel (am i in a place than can again fathom prose poetry?), and perhaps a dose or two of faulkner.

i crave the quad-ruled, bound pages of the french, the rambling ways of atwood's narratives and foer's plots, the gentle arpeggios of segovia in concert, a clear path in the carpet for a yoga mat.

i want sara bareilles's album little voice for days that are unbearably, unforgivably hot (and it's only early june...), lavender-mint candles for my soul, and a cool breeze on warm skin. no simultaneity necessary.

soon to be: road trip (ish) out to see micah and some nyc-ish kids, in no uncertain order alex conway, tito, justin wolf, nora krohn, and dave vasold, if he can ever come up for air from rebecca's.

here's to friends: alison melville; alex conway; and the incandescent scribbles of sean.

letters

i speak of cold purpose because the words don't flow like water from my pen anymore.

home is a familiar fog, blurry and bittersweet. people are growing up all over the place, nathan to penn for law school, jane to med school in baltimore, hannah deferring to both of her top choice colleges and trying for a job at tomato palace. i somehow thought (in vain) when i went away that everything would crystallize.

seeing kevin was brilliant; reminded me of my roots and who i was once. he's grown his hair without abandon...and i've chopped mine and now it stands untethered.

i heart a few things these days -- simply orange juice, pomegranate dark chocolate chip haagen dazs ice cream, avocados and fuji apples in salads.

tonight: indian food chez moi followed by the new indiana jones movie in the theaters. attended by my parents and richard the blankman.

Pablo Picasso
Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass
1912
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio

audrey's gone

and michelle's basically moved out of our casa.

this week:

• today...café mozart with the lovely lisa cohen, clio's viola recital at juilliard, afterparty in the bronx
• tuesday...dinner for derin and cesare (ratatouille! among other things.)
• wednesday...guggenheim with kevin lubrano (!) then dinosaur bbq in harlem with some purchase kids
• thursday...packin'
• friday...lunch at jean-louis, possible shift at rebecca's
• saturday...cookin for some waitstaff (black beans and rice, homemade guac, sangria?)
• sunday....skippin town.

and that, my friends, is how we go out in style.

Cai Guo-Qiang, "Inopportune: Stage One" (2004)

soon to be

back home in the not-quite-paradise of columbia, md.

today:

• ride to nyc on the big yellow buses (tyler wore my hat to keep warm)
• concert with pso at symphony space under maestra tania león
• quick trip to the store where i not quite raided the produce section for bananas, blackberries, blueberries, yellow and green bell peppers, italian eggplant, onion, and salad greens
• dinner of pasta with eggplant, tomatoes, green/yellow pepper, onion and copious amounts of garlic plus some grilled chicken i had in the fridge, plenty of fresh ground pepper and dried rosemary + a salad of mixed greens, blueberries, scallions and dry toasted pine nuts with a white balsamic/dijon mustard vinaigrette (could have been better with warm goat cheese à la bar harbor, maine) while watching a rerun of "reaper"

tomorrow, last shift at the library...*sniff* and lunch parties with fellow circs and tutors. last meeting with carol bankerd (it's been an intriguing semester) and an evening of bassoon music.

i am reluctant to box my stuff up because that would mean that i have to start looking for places to live again. can't i just keep the kitchen and my bed forever? the set up is pretty sweet.

thoughts on projects to come: working for cirque du soleil seems amazing...but what do they look for, exactly? who is ideal? i feel conventional.

i need something to work towards.

when i was in paris, at first, when i felt like a fish out of water (different pond to be sure), i would read tintin comics every day. they had all the old ones in the bedroom. just picture me, in my little lofted bed, reading aloud old french slang.

taken at the hergé centennial exhibition in paris last year. meredith, dina, bevin and i were there!

crossin'

we are all but curious children. it is interesting to consider what compels us to greet the new day, smile into the mirror, join the pulse.

i dream of toy boats in the jardin de luxembourg - lazy afternoons on kathmandu out of art's dock on the magothy, sun on my neck - baguette sandwiches by the fountain in front of the sorbonne - paris bridges in steady rain - hands in my hair - slaps of sensual "juli-o" - knowing other people's happiness.

upcoming:

• flute/tuba/dancers project inside/outside performance clothes/street with susan wheatley, cara heerdt and friend.
• orchestra concert with maestra tania león at symphony space, nyc, may 11
  
• flute trio in crystal zagarello's recital, may 16
  

Paul Signac, Plane Trees, Place des Lices, Saint-Tropez, Opus 242, 1893

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Now playing: Damien Rice - Volcano
via FoxyTunes

what

what i want is affirmation (or is it confirmation?). i need to know that it's not all for naught, that huge bangles aren't just for show, and that somehow, someday he will love me.

cooper-hewitt's rococo exhibit was sumptuously decadent; the only thing missing was music. why not a stately soundtrack of pieces written under louis XV to give an aural sense of the court? the met was, well, met-ish, grand, wide and open. le grand vestibule qui fonctionne comme un dégagement entre l'entrée et la nouvelle annexe grecque-romande me rappelle du louvre, quand j'étais là avec mes amis pour voir des choses cet après-midi en janvier (ou février?). le plafond est assez haut pour permettre l'entrée du soleil - dans l'évolution du jour, l'angle et la force du soleil changent et éclairent des sculptures différentes. au new museum dans le bowery, c'était assez surprenant que il n'y avait pas de plan ou progression spécifique, comme le moma (c'est pas le même idée, mais quand même...) ou autres musées modernes à washington que je fréquente quand je suis chez moi. ça, c'est pas bien pour le succès du musée pour leur publique parce que il n'y a pas une cohérence claire et alors il y a une tendance pour les gens de se balader partout sans but.

collaborating on projects involves constant discovery, about what things can happen simultaneously (or un-), effects that are extramusically gorgeous and interesting............. very, very cool. this inside/outside thing with cara and susan is bound to be thought-provoking. it's just a matter of buckling down and writing.

do we really feel our ages, or do we just keep living, surviving as before?

enfin

j'ai décidé d'écrire en français cette fois-ci. j'avais un "night off" hier et j'ai fait du shopping. j'ai trouvé quelques robes (!) et aussi des pantalons khaki. ma colocataire jamie et moi nous sommes allées au film "smart people" (avec le génial ellen page) - c'était bien fait, le dialogue était simple et parfaitement fait. il fait beau (ENFIN!!) ici alors il faut "m'en profiter." il y avait de glace gratuit à purchase "culture shock"...c'était presque un TGIF à oberlin, mais pas vraiment. c'est un truc qui passe seulement une fois chaque printemps; à oberlin TGIF c'était chaque vendredi quand il y avait du soleil. après travailler dans le labo c'était parfait de boire qqch et m'en profiter.

ben ouais, c'est vrai que ça fait longtemps que j'écris en français, et de temps en temps je parle avec raphaël ou emilie à la bibliothèque. c'est assez interessant de m'écouter - mon accent de paris a presque completement disparu! c'est possible que j'avais un accent là simplement parce que tout le monde avait parlé comme ça....................mais ma langue sens lourde, sans capacité de dire des choses. aussi ça prend trop de temps dans ma tête de formuler des idées.

est-ce qu'il y a un remède, mes amis? je ne peux pas payer pour l'avion dans cet instant...... dites-moi.

Monica Fernandex, Gaudi Barcelona, from Organic Cities show at BBC Leicester's Open Centre as part of Architecture Week from 16-25 June.

hahvahd

art used to call me martha ellen when i was younger. he also had the strongest boston accent i'd ever heard............except he was from maine.

today, early (which explains the hour of this post) crossover is going to cambridge - more specifically to harvard to meet david edwards, dashing author of artscience. i'm skeptical of the spectacularity (spectacularness?) of it; perhaps i've too long lived in the presence of artscience, growing up around my dad's musician-, sculptor- and painter-mathematician friends.

don't fractals resemble human life? i love them. this one recalls angie wood and her octopi.

and so...

sushi take-out in harrison is amazingly fast. eel-avocado rolls on the train, swigging hyper-sweet japanese drinks, dribbling soy sauce, trying not to choke on the big mouthfuls of rice.

a lovely evening of too-loud music at the bowery, although they made me confiscate my big bottle of water at the door. jerks.

these last few days, every one, has felt like a sunday. this break has a certain timeless stasis that i have grown to love and will be reluctant to let go of.

i think it would be cool to be in a band. it takes balls, though.

tomorrow is easter sunday. i'm not sure how i feel about god. maybe "into the wild" will give me perspective...i like incense and candles more and more now. this kenyan book petals of blood is giving me pause; roddy doyle's the woman who walked into doors is charming and sad.

Georgia O'Keefe, Red Canna

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Now playing: Edgar Meyer, Bela Fleck, Mike Marshall - Old Tyme
via FoxyTunes

buzz

am i cut out for the restaurant business? these next few months will be intense; this job is demanding in ways i did not expect. arnie has years of experience. janice knows to wear high-waisted pants. james (6'7") is incredibly patient. i can't pocket the coatcheck money anymore.

today the flute trio (alice-crystal-myself) had a coaching on the devienne at tara's house in the city. i had a mug of kona coffee (caf, roasted in-house) with milk and 2 sugars and alternated it with glaceau water (tara called me the liquid lady). afterwards we 4 took a cab to carnegie hall to see roberta michel give her debut. her vibrato is a little high-strung for my taste, but her control of all the special flute effects is stunning. i especially liked a flute and percussion piece called "ritornelo" by brazilian composer silvio ferraz. i think maybe alexa still made her a little whistletone-happy.

the zack browning piece on cadillac moon's myspace (see livelink above) kinda reminds me of an electrified reich with a little bang on a can all stars thrown in.

cure for two dinner shifts (4pm-midnight) = light movie, ce soir: "the holiday."

[i haven't rented half the bergman films i promised myself i would. david edwards' book on artscience in the post-google generation is enough intellectuality for a few weeks, thank you very much.]

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Now playing: Ingrid Michaelson - Overboard
via FoxyTunes

singularly beautiful

occasionally, somehow, moments - slices of time - will strike me as singularly beautiful: repose between phrases of sweeping bach, the dark penetrating gaze of a small girl with an etch-a-sketch, the whisper of mink against departing shoulders, the glow of a candle amidst broken glass, the clasped hands of a broken soul, the play of light through my blinds in late morning, the sweep of someone's hair across their unwitting back-

they keep me in pursuit.

handel trio sonatas (magnatune classical internet radio)-miles davis "so what" (my copy)

the pace of my days has to change. i need hope.

alive

with the help of trader joe's fruit leather, frothy apple cider, wnyc 2, richard savino's lute playing, and the john dowland project.

the snow seems to be melting
and the sky is finally blue
not some shade of grey

crossover projects are difficult to consider. my ideas are blurry and still fairly abstract. it frustrates me, this ambiguity. but maybe that's the point.

cristal's garden project is a good one. will it find the necessary campus and community support? a greenhouse is one way to circumvent the problem of winter. i was thinking, though, winter vegetables? i think it would be cool to prep a presentation for the community on the viable plants (veggies, flowers, fruits, etc) in conjunction with a botanist/biologist/environmental someone who would know such things (westchester county park guy amanda knows?).

comments, please leave them...maybe a website collaboration with robin and others?...

buzz

upcoming this week:

• tuesday late morning -- audition for tanglewood music center in new york city;
• wednesday evening -- flute lesson with the lovely tara helen o'connor;
• thursday early afternoon (feb 14) -- audition for pacific music festival
• thursday evening (yes, v-day) -- shift at rebecca's;
• friday evening -- fin's solo vocal show at a supper club in the city, staying over at kat's in the east village;
• saturday early morning -- audition for schleswig-holstein musik festival

ostensibly, the week from hell. on top of that, long orchestra rehearsals tuesday and friday and two early shifts at the library. tutoring also starts this week, hopefully no one will have hard questions. i'm still trying to recover from not enough sleep and a rotten cold. the house has been quiet with michelle out of town; almost back to the weeks before school when i had just moved in and hardly left the house for fear of spending money.

today: cooking asparagus pasta for the lovely alice jones, afterwards purse shopping.

Paul Klee - Burg und Sonne - 1928

tania the tiger

friday we had our first rehearsal with tania león, the 5-foot-tall cuban female tiger. i think the entire symphony orchestra should've had a few sit-in sessions with the latin jazz orchestra before rehearsing with her. we're too upright, too classically trained to play ellington, ginastera and revueltas...to be a complete musician, she said, we had to be involved in everything, including jazz. that's true at some places like calarts, where improvisation is expected and experienced all the time, but at oberlin and at purchase, not so much. we have a very limited view of what music actually is.

i've been working saturday nights checking coats at rebecca's. sometime in april i hopefully will go back to side waiting. my biggest tendencies are to get chapped lips and to get dehydrated. i brought one smart water (1 liter), but it wasn't enough, and i kept my burt's bees lifeguard chapstick (red cap) in my pocket at all times. i met the guy who owns the ginsberg pictures. they're amazing - quirky and funny.

today: imani winds at the PAC, 3pm.

i started at the circ desk at the campus library on thursday; i think it will be a fun job. at $10 per hour, handling books all morning two days a week, i'm happy. tutoring starts the week of feb 11.

i've been playing excerpts and mozart expositions for weeks. hopefully some day the fever will break. 6 auditions in the next few weeks, and should i send a tape to banff as security? hiking the mountains of canada sounds good to me.

swollen

the kat-ful weekend was good. we hit balthazar for saturday brunch - where i randomly saw ami vice - and wandered a bit in soho before heading to midtown for some scrounging of contemporary art. we saw christie's first - kat's famous workplace - they were having an open house. i put on some gloves to look at some koons posters. everyone was looking. we forged on to the frick, which is lovely. kat gets 6 free tickets per month - another perk of her job. it's similar to the isabella gardner museum in that the entire collection is attributed to a single woman. here, portraiture dominates (vermeer, rembrandt, singer sargent, goya, el greco, among many others). notably, hans holbein the younger had an amazing capacity for capturing character with extremely precise drawing. kat described his exhaustive process of sketching (i believe it was him...) before even beginning to paint.

sam met us at kat's apartment in the east village after his day of rehearsals and we headed to dinner at milon, an indian restaurant a few blocks away, while kat took a taxi with tootsie to a friend's art opening in brooklyn. we caught up while being almost blinded by the strings of lights inside the tiny restaurant. kat met us back at her place and we girls changed before hitting gonzalez y gonzalez for a night of salsa!

sunday morning i met clio and andrew for a late-ish brunch at niko's (72nd&broadway). clio has been playing in this chamber music intensive for the last week or so and her classes just started back this week. her concert is the same night i'm working coat check at rebecca's, unfortunately. i met kat at union square and we took a cab to chelsea, hoping some more small galleries would be open. unfortunately, many of the smaller places are closed sundays and mondays (like many chic restaurants), so we regrouped and went to the MOMA (not a shabby substitution).

we wanted to see "27 dresses" but it wasn't completely out yet in theaters, so we rented a movie and got chinese takeout from the place around the corner from kat's house. we chilled with finn, kat's effervescent chic roommate who hails from london over szechuan string beans, general tso's chicken, and bbq ribs chinese-style. i thought the snow was going to come, so i stayed an extra night. it was nice not to have to take a late-night train, anyway. in the morning we ate oatmeal in our pjs and read a few chapters of the prisoner of zerba (purchased at the strand) aloud to eachother.

my dad is right. i need some good walking shoes. i'm going to kill my feet.

will i get into any of these 5 festivals this summer? i wonder.

fresh

sitting crouched on my twin-sized bed amidst the sounds of across the street construction i wonder: will being here at 17 university place port chester, away from the toxic environment, promise me happiness?

it has almost been a year since i crossed the pond for france. last weekend i met claire and rodolphe in the city for lunch, and she said it was strange-it was as if we had seen eachother yesterday, not 8 months ago. i wish i had disposable income so i could jetset and see them at their respective corners of the universe...but unfortunately, these days my finances are drearily tight.

this weekend, prospective...

• friday: "new york idol" - kat's roommate finn is singing; sleep over at kat's.
  
• saturday: galleries with miss-know-at-all katherine cohn, photography at the moma, etc; dinner with the elusive cellist sam van loon, who i haven't seen in a lightyear; salsa dancing downtown at gonzalez y gonzalez perhaps with sam in tow, otherwise with kat and possibly clio/andrew.
• sunday: dinner with alice at my new place, perhaps?
  

a possible 3rd roommate is coming to view the house today. i hope she likes it!

once

once upon a time, my words were weapons. i rarely had anyone to spar with. now, i make things up less often. i don't have to manufacture reality. too often it disappointed, anyway.

10/24/2004
memory traces of sand escaping
drop by drop until an eventual zero
why are there holes
and not solid ground
gaps yawned blurred edges
banging pans trying to recover faces
voices anything but the void
waking with the dawn
refusing to laugh with the rest
knowing everything that wouldn't be
living cliché hard-boild eggs and salami
gulped down with a malt and a morphine
tricking time at its own game snake eyes
the flip of an imprisoning switch and it's
back again to the unabating infernal waltz
morbidly beautiful tango scepter cast aside
maybe the guru had lain atop his mountain
suspended in his lotus pose cracking lips
wisdom rolling off his tongue no longer savory
sad twisted corrupted and solitary
rusted in sore misuse collecting dust
aubergine tears seized by slow frost