quelque chose charmant

Black Orpheus.

not only does this movie make me want to visit Brazil, but it also makes me want to learn Portugese AND join in a samba school...

musical interlude

one of my favorite songs of my life.
clever youtube interpretation.

Philadelphia cont.

It was a whirlwind day and we squeezed in as much as humanly possible in an 11 hour period before our bus took us back to 42nd St.

Philadelphia Museum of Art had some great pieces in its collection. A quick run whizzing past the Impressionists
galleries complemented all the stuff I've seen over and over back home at the Art Institute and glided through in Paris. Lots of wacky Marcel Duchamp pieces. And my favorite silly painting...that Joan Miro 'Dog Barking at the Moon.' I don't know why I love that one so much.



Of course it is common tourist tradition to run up the steps on the museum à la Rocky. Behold the bronze statue in the upper right photo. I bet that little girl posing never even saw the movie. Funny what statues make people do.

I would definitely go back to Philadelphia. It was a strange city to classify, as we had discussed with some student friends of my brothers over dinner that night. It has its history, but then it felt like Detroit in some parts. It had that fantastic food market (what was that called??), where you could order Amish-prepared apple dumplings or BBQ or, of course, cheesesteaks. But then it had as many homeless beggars as Chicago does, yet in a more concentrated area. I could only imagine Philadelphia's homeless population carries an overt disgust for its anthem of 'Brotherly Love' day in and day out. When traveling, there's always a lot to be told from the eyes of the city's homeless...

note to self: must watch that tv show people are always telling me to watch 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.'

Philadelphia

I had never been to Philadelphia before this trip. It awoke an urge to go visit our nation's historical towns again, most definitely. I was 4 when I did Washington, DC, but I sadly remember a Burt Reynolds film being shot in my grandparents' condo complex more than I remember being inside the White House...

Here I am in the wind (again) in front of Independence Hall, where the Constitution of the United States was signed in case you don't remember.

It's also two days before my hair was chopped by a student at bumble & bumble hair school in Manhattan. He did a good job, but I can't get it to look as cool as he did that day so I guess you'll have to wait for a shot of the new 'do...

Anyway, back to our nation's history.

Over there is the Liberty Bell. They had a strange modern museum building built around it, not at all like in Back to the Future. You have to go through intense security to get inside. Ryan (my brother) and I stood around it for a few minutes and had the giggles because we were the only blatant Americans standing there in the item of purest essence of our nation's history. There were a group of Indian families posing for group portraits in front of the Bell, some Greeks (I believe that was their language) doing some posed gestures for the camera, and a Chinese bus tour group making their way in as we squeezed our way out. It was interesting to experience. Here stood my brother and I, each 1/4 French, 1/8 Osage Native American, 1/8 Irish and 50% American Mutt, next to all of these other global identities. That truly is America in a nutshell.

More Philadelphia to come...

New York City, NYC, pretty mean when it wants to be...

it was a cold and blurry trip.

squeezed a lot in. but MAN was it windy. i felt like the animated Addams Family in an episode of the Flintstones, where the weather just seemed to follow them everywhere they went.

here I am posing near little brother's place on the upper upper west side, George Washington Bridge behind me.

some highlights? art museums, touring our nations history in Philadelphia, FOOOOD, the Strand bookstore, and the girl on the subway.

Ryan and I were headed home for the night on the A train, stuffed full of assorted cakes and ethnic meals and windblown beyond recognition. I glanced over to my brother sitting on my left and caught wind of a knitting project a few seats over, across the way. Knitting always catches my eye because I don't know how some knitters and crocheters can detail such intricacies on mass transit.

I looked up from the piece she was knitting and looked at the woman. I had to try and restrain myself with giggles. At least in the beginning. She was wearing a hat, that she obviously knit. It was complete with cat ears on the top. She was a tall and lanky figure, sitting with her legs twisted and intertwined with each other yet stretching into two seats. She had a pointy chin, thick glasses, and was holding her knitting needles about two inches from her eyes with a strange smirk on her face. Her handbag also had a cat's face crocheted on its front flap, resting on her sprawling pose.

I kept peeking back over to her to catch a better glimpse of her project, until my little brother caught me mid-turning-of-the-head and did a knowing gesture with his eyebrows and I just LOST IT!

It was at that moment I realised she was knitting a sweater for her CAT! I bursted out in laughter so hard and bellyaching and it wouldn't stop!

I quieted down after about a minute straight and breathed deeply.

Then I glanced back over and it started up again, this time lasting about 5 subway stops.

I just laughed and laughed and laughed until I was lightheaded and dizzy and I'd have to catch my breath.

Colombus Circle, expressing past the Central Park stops, 168th...the laughter just kept coming and coming and coming and I couldn't stop myself!

I thought the paramedics were gonna have to come and rescue me from asphyxiation!

I couldn't look at her.

So many character developments were racing through my mind.

She was like a character Kristen Wiig would have created on SNL.

She was the epitome of what happens when you live alone in a big city for much too long.

I was envisioning her having tea parties with her cats in a one-room Washington Heights studio apartment.

All I wish is that I would have been able to control my laughter long enough to snap a shot of her. I hadn't laughed like that in I-can't-even-remember-how-long-ago.

i love this song

when i first heard it, i asked Mr. T (my new reference to the Husband, I've decided) if it was an old Patti Smith song. Then perhaps I thought of the Violent Femmes next time I heard it. No, someone new. Old sound. Love it.

That is all for today.

Somedays, all ya need is a song.

a few days until New York City...

My younger brother has settled into NYC life over the past few years an has seemed to adapt well to it.

I, on the other hand, did not find any sort of peace and harmony to the land when I set off for its landscape over the years. At one point in my very early twenties I even walked around with a stack of resumes, applying for jobs in Manhattan, just to see if something would 'click' for me there.

I found minor frustrations around every other corner, and while they were minor, I ended each day feeling agitated. The turnstile not being calibrated properly so I lost a subway ride on my pass and had to either wait fifteen minutes or go buy another fare. My hotel reservation being overbooked and having to find a friend in Brooklyn for a last-minute place to sleep. Holding on for dear life with a stack of suitcases on a bus to LaGuardia. Ordering a lunch in a busy restaurant and not having any place to sit and eat it properly except out in the cold, walking aimlessly. A jerky shuttle driver dropping me off five blocks from where I needed to meet a friend and then giving me wrong directions as I lugged my suitcase.

But just as minor frustrations occur here and there in any sort of life in any kinda landscape, I still enjoy going back for a visit. I have experienced some equally amazing moments and observed some wonderful sights each visit.

1. Three African gentlemen were carrying their belongings in large cloth sacks and just walking around with wide eyes and dropped jaws inhaling the atmosphere as they stared up to the skyscrapers as they witnessed something never before seen in their new journey in a new land.

2. Being on a 'guest list' for Joey Ramone's 50th birthday party days after his passing and a Little Debbie food fight at the finale, cream-filling splattered all over my hair.

3. A cab driver getting lost in Brooklyn and turning off the meter to find the best route for his weary passenger. Also waiting for me to be let in the building to make sure I'd be alright.

4. Lengthy conversations with strangers in a bar about the drive from the East Coast to the smokestack filled industrial wastelands of Indiana before you see the Chicago skyline.

5. The kindness of the food service employee at the Statue of Liberty cafeteria.

6. Walking around Immigration Hall at Ellis Island.

7. Trying on a crazy dress with cowgirls imprinted all over I could never afford at a cute boutique run by two Japanese girls...

Anyhoo, I am headed to NYC again for an extended weekend later in the week and I look forward to future discoveries.

hibrrrrrrnating some more

Oh the cold weather.

It gets the best of me. I never have two consecutive days off so I try to make the best time of my free days. But that dang Chicago cold!

Attempted to write some more. Fueled by coffee and warm fuzzy slippers and itchy brain cells, I 'vomited' on paper some more. Kind of like I'm doing now. Fruitless. Perhaps I need to re-read Stephen King's On Writing. Whatever happened to my copy?

There is a tale in me that I want to tell. Or as some say, perhaps everyone's got a book in 'em. What carries the stories that we hear in our lifetimes? The relatedness of our journeys? The fantasy? The hook? The character development? The dilemma? The unique voice?

I draw from a unique set of experiences. I have this itch to explain them and paint them and share them, but they will not hold any meaning to me unless they are understood. Well, not even understood, but I do ask that they have the ability to connect to the reader. I try out some of these stories/experiences in spoken stories with my husband and a few select friends, and the reaction I get is not one of connection. "Do you understand? Does this make sense?" And the answer is always various stages of 'No.' If I can't allow them to make sense for those close to me, how do I know what connection lies beyond?

I once tried my hand participating in an art show. I don't think it's fair to label myself an artist because I do not possess the God-given gift that others do. But as a creative person, I wanted to challenge myself in a new way. It was a staff show that took place at a gallery in Pilsen, joined together by my coworkers at the time of Museum of Contemporary Art. The pieces included installations, paintings, drawings, videos, you name it - coming from all levels of talent. It was a nerve-wracking experience for me. But I did it.

My piece was something I came up with as a means of connecting a conversation with other artistic mediums. Being a fan of music and such a lover of words, I often wonder what stories lie behind the reality of a song. I scoured thrift shops for the perfect worn-out stereo speaker surrounded with the perfect type of wood to which I could burn the words. I skipped an Easter Sunday with the family and sat in my old apartment by the lake listening to music on the radio as my woodburning wand spent 15 plus hours engraving a message across the broken-down sound system. The message was as ephemeral as a three-minute song and doesn't even bear repeating at this point, but it was clear to at least one person.

Someone sitting at the gallery relayed the message to me that a man came over to her to comment specifically on how much he enjoyed my piece. All of those works in that space and he chose to comment on mine and mine alone.

That's all that mattered to me, especially in remembrance of everything that had happened a few weeks later in my life.

Maybe one day I'll muster up the courage to try it all again.

hibernating

slow news day. again. tried to sit down to work on Great American Novel and nothing but blah blah blah flowed from within today. bitter cold is back. leftovers for lunch today. coffee in hand. kitty sleeping under bed. hubby working all day, open to close.

could talk about billy corgan, my new customer. or slumping music sales. but blah blah blah.

when it's a slow news day, i whisk myself back to France.

Journal entry from Fall 2005, my last Parisian excursion. new commentary following.

aie aie aie
such a strange time to be here in paris. globalisation slammed right up in your face. fires burning. social unrest. capitalist hierarchies. wealthy nations not comprehending why third-world natives want to grow in lands of opportunity. i guess this is it. the future. no more hope, just a lot of war blowing up all over the planet. this can't be it. this can't be our reality. somewhere there's gotta be a light.

when i get back stateside i think we need to band together and spread some love, kids. where are all the hippies? where's all the action? did we get lazy and just decide to spew our opinions on the internet? there is a big friggin world out there and, babies, i'm right in the middle of it, and i don't really think it's time to laugh and fantasize and play in imagination-land anymore. America is no longer disneyland, Wile E. Coyote has finally caught Roadrunner, and Starbucks has invaded Paris. The world is morphing back to a Pangean state, but it's people are not. I like to laugh and roll around in the balls at Chuck E. Cheese and ride bumper cars at the fair just like everyone else, but it ain't funny anymore...

I've been sitting on the steps of the Parisian opera house each nite before I catch my train back to the fiery suburbs, just watching the world pass before my eyes, and after a million Americans stop by to ask me directions to the Eiffel Tower, I'm tired. Really friggin tired.

By the way, I need a job. Anybody hiring? I'll go anywhere.

---

I found your journal (from Amanda's) and was just catching up on your great adventures! You are having the wonderful time you knew you would and learning more about your soul - that is a good thing! I am sure you will find just the right time to start writing. You can be the female (hah!) David Sedaris of Paris. Maybe you should find him to see if he needs an assistant? That would be a great job for you. Good luck with the adventure and I will keep looking every day for more fun. Take care - Love Teresa

Several years later, and with a new president in tow, I feel rejuvenated. Running off to France for five months is not an option at this time, but participating in Obamarama global overhaul is.

Inspiring.

connective tissues

In the spirit of subconscious signs that I am to follow without speaking of (my secret new year's resolution which I just broke), I am finding lots of resonance in simply enjoying moments. Any film I watch, any new piece of music I discover, I am allowing it to resonate, sans critique, sans comparison. Just enjoying for the sake of enjoying. Certainly there will be things that don't jive, people who don't float my boat, anger that I will find repulsive, unneccessary angst, but I will quickly move on and seek the next moment in my path.

Am I on a path? Certainly I must be. We all must be.

A year and a half ago, I spent a few days in the hospital delivering an almost five-month old fetus. The extremes of emotion were relentlessly brutal. What was John Lennon saying...life is what happens when you're busy making other plans? I was preparing to take that journey toward parenthood, to step away from Self, to devote my world to this new creation and I was neck-deep making those plans.

Then death stops you in your tracks.

And you return to the Self to deal with it.

We never found a scientific explanation for the loss, so I turn to the Spirit to duke things out. When you turn to the Spirit, see, you no longer have to deal with the Self.

I was in the hospital two other times prior to the miscarriage. And the focus at that time was a psychiatric focus where I was forced to turn away from the Spirit and deal with the Self. Because I was told the Self was not well. I often wonder what those 'friends' who veered me down that road are up to.

These were all very strange times in my life. And they seem like a distant dream I once had. They don't even feel like they happened.

But the point of all this is that we are all searching. Or rather, those of us who are truly ALIVE are still searching. This is only further demonstrated to me when a big rock star comes in and buys Paulo Coelho and self-help spiritual guides from me.

I often wonder where my focus should lie in my Great American Novel I need to chisel away at. Maybe the topic of miscarriage is a journey I was guided to write about?