Moving!

Friends and loyal readers,

We're moving! It's an exciting chance to repaint the walls, pick out new furniture, and sift through our possessions. I hope you'll come along to the new location, which isn't far away...

Drop me a line at bombaybelle (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll pass along the new address.

In the meanwhile,

Take care,

BB

Banskied again (Warning! Disturbing content)

I've been Banskied again. This time it was knowingly though. Bansky came to town, but unlike London he probably deduced that local authorities wouldn't take too kindly to his art on the walls of the city (unlike gang graffiti which they don't seem to mind at all). So instead he took over a store front on Seventh Avenue near Houston, the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill.

I would like to offer my usual speculations on whether this was art, ahhhrt, fun, or just bizzare, but don't feel quite up to. But take a look and decide for yourself.

There were bales of Hay out front that you can't see here:


Bansky loves his CCTV's so much that he brought a flock of them with him to NY:


Never did like gumballs myself. This probably wasn't my concern though:

I've been Banskied

Just before leaving London I borrowed my friend Clementine's camera to take a few pics. One of my favorite pictures was this one:

(Hola! This image belongs to me! The art, I suppose, belongs to Bansky?)

I thought I was very clever to capture this street scene, the ominous graffiti and the public going about their business below, oblivious, inured.

Then today I saw this on the BBC:

An artwork by street artist Banksy in central London will be removed to send a message to graffiti artists in the city, a council has decided.

Westminster City Council has ordered a 23ft-high (7m) mural, entitled One Nation Under CCTV, to be removed from a building on Newman Street.

The artist's sketches have sold for thousands of pounds at auctions.

But deputy leader of the council Robert Davis said keeping the mural would mean "condoning" graffiti.

The mural has the words "One Nation Under CCTV" stencilled above two painted people.

One appears to be a child in a red hooded top apparently painting the words, while a police officer holding a camera and a brown dog look on.

The mural is painted on the wall of a building shared by Royal Mail and another business.

Of course he is not going to fill in a form and apply for permission. Notoriety is what makes Banksy exist Rupert Maas, art critic

The council said the artist did not gain the necessary permission and, once it has established who owns the painted wall, the artwork will be removed by the owner.

Mr Davis, who is also chairman of the council's planning sub committee, said: "I take the view that this is graffiti and if you condone this then what is the difference between this and all the other graffiti you see scrawled across the city?

"If you condone this then you condone graffiti all over London."

Mr Davis said the building's owner had "every right" to sell or exhibit the Banksy graffiti - as long as it was removed from the wall.

"What we are against is people coming around without proper permission or consent and exhibiting their work without permission."

'Vibrant and interesting'

Art critic Rupert Maas defended Banksy's graffiti, saying it made the city "vibrant and interesting".

"He is doing something that is quite valid," Mr Maas said.

"Here he is making a point that we are increasingly governed by CCTV cameras. I think it's great - good for him."

Mr Maas added: "Of course he is not going to fill in a form and apply for permission. Notoriety is what makes Banksy exist."

Banksy has created at least one other artwork in the borough, in an underpass in Marble Arch.

But that mural has not been removed as the whole area is being redeveloped, the council said.

The mural will be removed once the owner of the wall is established

More on the Bansky installation in New York soon...

BB

Trouble in the morning

Perhaps that wasn't the best title for a post... But it's the morning, and I've been having trouble in the morning.

By temperament I'm a morning person. I wake up early, usually before my alarm goes off, and quickly, the old cogs and wheels humming away in no time. I'm a tea person in the morning, but if I miss the morning cup of the steaming, I can usually start my day just fine.

Until recently, when everything has changed.

The alarm rings. And I find myself immediately renegotiating with this beast of a thing. Five minutes of the news before I get up. Just five. Ten minutes later, I stir again since the news is still going and decide I need five more... And on it goes. Usually for about 25 minutes. I know that's not a lot (right?) but it's a new problem for me and I have been wondering why.

The easiest explanation is working later into the night than usual, so more tired in the morning.

But I also worry that perhaps part of the answer is not wanting to face the day ahead. Don't want to make it seem personally grim, because it's not. But there doesn't seem to be too much good news around. When I'm at the airport, I see people huddled around the television as though they are watching an update from the war front, but instead they are getting a market update. And the presidential debates. Don't get me started.

I've recently taken to not listening to the news in the evening. I just listen to Ella or Ethiopique (thanks Mia!) or (though exercise extreme caution) Mahler.

Wouldn't it be so appealing just to postpone all the dirty business just a little? Come to think of it, I suppose that's what I'm doing with this post.

BB

Now here's an idea....

I thought my neighborhood was stroller central, but apparently in the few years I've been on the road I've missed a few developments...
from The New York Times...

October 5, 2008, 2:59 pm

Stroller Central, Now With a Valet

By Tina Kelley

Joe Caraballo, the stroller valet at the Prospect Park YMCA, parks up to 75 strollers a day for the overburdened parents and toddlers of Park Slope. (Photo: Christian Hansen for the New York Times)

The mothers rushed into the Prospect Park Y.M.C.A. in Park Slope, heading into prenatal yoga, art classes, or gym time. “You want long term or one hour?” Joseph Caraballo asked, as they left their strollers — some with temperature sensors and pedometers — under his watch.

He takes care to flip the canopies down so the seats won’t be too hot for the chubby thighs returning from yoga class. Except, of course, if it hides the wallet, cellphone, keys and cereal bar wrapper of an absent-minded parent.

“Is this a second-hand sale?” passersby asked, seeing 39 strollers lined up, handle-by-wheel, along 9th Street. “Are they having a race?”

But no, it’s stroller valet parking, a perfect fit notoriously spawnocentric neighborhood.

Mr. Caraballo, 52, who has a 9-year-old son, works in the Y’s maintenance department, and does not accept tips.

Erica Schohn was trying to fit her daughter, Silvia, into a Maclaren, which appeared to be the brand of choice. But Silvia would not bend, throwing back her whale-spout pony tail and arching her body. Ms. Schohn said leaving her stroller out was nice, “because then they don’t have to be folded.” (The kids, alas, do.)

Then there was the lady who left one child in a stroller and took the older one in to the gym: “She said, ‘Oh, the lady inside said I could,’ ” which was not true, Mr. Caraballo said. “I said, ‘Don’t do that.’ ”

Will he, or won't he? Will he or won't he? Willheorwonthe?

I'm sure we've all spent some of our days repeating this question, over and over, over and over: sometimes a prayer (as between the pause your thoughts silently cry out "He will!"); sometimes a dirge ("He won't, he won't..."); sometimes a palliative ("I know he won't, so it's ok, so I won't feel too bad when he doesn't"); and sometimes a mantra, a sequence of words whose power derives not so much as from their meaning as their inherent power and repetition.

You know where I was last Friday. Now take a guess where I am today. Now take a guess what I'm doing. And repeat after me: he will, he will, he will; he had better, HE HAD BETTER, AHHHHHHHH!

BB

P.S. -- See comments.

Brain teaser

Time flies (there's that theme again...) when you're working hard. In addition to keeping the flugelbindery running, I've been setting up my New York apartment. I'm not trying anything fancy, just looking for something to sit on, somewhere to sleep, something to make coffee with, and of course somewhere for my clothes. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

Every time I move I'm amazed by how you very quickly get yourself tied into some kind of catch-22, Gordian, Escheresque knot. So here's a brain teaser for your perfect Saturday morning.

I was working on the flugel frontier the whole week, but flew back Thursday evening because the cable company was going to come by to set up my internet and phone connection, which I need if I want to work remotely from New York. I took an appointment between 6 and 9 pm on Friday, certain that I could be there (and safe in the knowledge that you can still head out for dinner at 9.30 in New York). I was (and am) going to fly back to work on Saturday.

My friends Montse and Jerry came by. We opened a bottle of wine. Ate some wheat thins. The clock ticked, and tension mounted... Soon enough it was 9 pm and there was no cable man. No. cable man. No. Cable. Man. I called the company on my cell phone.

The automated system asked for my accout number. I entered my cell phone number, but the automated message said, "You have enterred a cellular number. Please enter a valid phone number." Now by way of background, for those of you who don't live in the US, the cable companies here have heavily pushed their telephone service, along with cable television and internet. In other words, many people, like me, are trying to set up a phone number but are being asked for a phone number to do so. Recalling this paradox, I realized that I had given my Boston land line. After getting through the menu, I reach an operator and was told...

"I do apologize for the inconvenience. Our technician came by at 7 but you didn't answer." And I: "BUT I WAS HERE!" "Our records show that he called you at 7 pm, but there is no reply. We've rescheduled you for Wednesday next week between 2 and 6 pm." So here it is.

The cable company wants to set up my phone service, indeed boasts this as a great service, but in order for me to do this, I need to have a phone they can call to confirm I'm at home. Does not compute.

* * *

But I've got a plan. My friend Vinny lives three doors down. I am going to run a long phone line along the street. Or perhaps she can just stick her head out the window and shout to me. Or perhaps I can give a home phone number in London, Venice, or Australia and one of you can e-mail me when the cable guy knocks at your door.

BB

Polaroid SX-70

My parents had one of these. I wish I still had it.

I remember exactly where it was kept. Middle drawer of the long desk... If I recall correctly it had its own carrying case -- I seem to remember red with a shoulder strap, though I'm not certain of the color. What beautiful camera and object.

If you can watch the entire thing, you'll get a fun little surprise in the closing credits.




Thanks to The Midcentury Modernist for this great link.

BB

lista de espera*

* Sometimes translations and the false friends of re-translation create something even better than the original. I know that espera and esperanza are not the same, but they sound similar to me, whose language is not Spanish. And so the wait list becomes a list of the hopeful or hopeless. (Though you can't tell it from this picture, there was actually someone hiding behind this counter.)

Where am I?

Recipe for happiness

Now follow this exactly, or it won't work:

(1) Wake up.
(2) Eat no solids -- liquids allowed -- coffee, tea, water, milk, whatever you need.
(3) Eat no lunch.
(4) Get in a taxi (water taxi for you Venetians) and direct it to the airport (with the words, "Driver, aiport please" if possible).
(5) When you're asked which airline you're flying, respond. "Oh, I don't know, xx sounds nice", where for "xx" you fill in some spot you really want to go to.
(6) Reach airport, get ticket, get through security.
(7) Shop -- I know the selection isn't great, but be more process oriented.
(8) Drink (note, it's pretty much on an empty stomach) -- two glasses of champagne or if good champagne isn't available (i.e., French) then go for a solid shot of your favourite spirit.
(9) Post blog entry about your feelings of elation while waiting for your flight.

BB

Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus

Even with the help of Wikipedia this all the cleverness I can manage for the morning...

So I'm back in New York and in Boston. How can one return to two places? Many people ask me this, and a few understand, but nonetheless it is difficult to explain. It's not like you mirror your life, with two of everything. Because each side of the mirror is different. For a long while the Boston side had a work life and spartan living, and New York had my apartment and life. I've recently moved the flat to Boston, so what's left here in New York? A camp-like sublet, while I'm waiting on a more stable place in New York. And of course life!

New York in summer is a bit like a hyperactive child on Ritalin -- it is quieter than usual, though only a loving parent would notice. But it's true. You can actually get into a restaurant of your choice on 5 minutes' notice, and at a decent time (8,9,10 are prime time depending on your age and nationality) rather than phoning 10 days ahead to be told gleefully that "we can offer you 5.30 or 11.30". It's true none of the usual celebrities are hanging out, and the famous chefs are probably away too. But that's fine with me -- I don't care for the former and I'm sure the latter are pretty handy with a whisk as well.

Of course, some things you do have two of -- toothbrush, for example. But for everything else you end up either wishing you had the things from one city in the other, or worse forgetting where everything is, or even worse losing things in the back and forth.

But what I feel most strongly is indeed that time flees. The promised summer came and went (note the past tense, sadly). And yes, work was done, meals cooked and enjoyed, friends well met, concerts attended, all washed down with whine.

Perhaps a little more grit, earth, sand, friction, texture would slow things down, and if they went slower then I could savor every moment a little more (extensively, if not intensively, because if nothing else, life is intense).

Perhaps a little more idling would allow dust to gather, seeds to sprout, and the joys of life to settle around me, like a flock of birds coming to rest, rather than me like a hound in pursuit.

Tempus fugit. (And indeed why not that other over-used but profound phrase?) Carpe diem.*

BB

P.S. I usually blog about my musical follies, but here's my soundtrack for the morning and a solid start if you're feeling autumnal in late summer.

** Horace, Odes, 1.11

Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi	Leuconoe, don't ask — it's a sin to know —
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios	what end the gods will give me or you. Don't play with Babylonian
temptaris numeros. ut melius, quidquid erit, pati.	fortune-telling either. It is better to endure whatever will be.
seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,	Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare	which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks placed opposite
Tyrrhenum: sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi	— be smart, drink your wine. Scale back your long hopes
spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida	to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have {already} fled
aetas: carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.	Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.

(Thank you Wikiedia for this bit of cleverness. Absurdly I "read" the Odes when I was 17. Sometimes it might be better to leave some pleasures to later in life when one can appreciate them.)

Fill 'er up (2)

I'm always a little surprised when the American media make such a fuss about General Motor's plans to build an all-electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, and amused when such a fuss is made about Tata Nano, an Indian designed micro-car that will sell for something like two thousand dollars.

I'm surprised because an Indian-made, electric, micro-car can be seen plying the streets of London daily, the Reva, which is called the GWiz in the UK. Sometimes living in the US I feel so far behind the times. In London you find free parking spots for electric cars. Anyway with these little beauties, parking space is not a problem.




Apparently the driving range is 40 km. But in London this isn't too much of a problem because you can always fill 'er up here:



BB

P.S. Not to say that I don't miss the Texaco Station altogether.

The look

One of the first things I rediscovered after getting back to New York from London is the look. By this I don't mean what I'm wearing (or choose not to wear), or the style, or the attitude.

I mean simply that people look at each other. In London I thought I had it figured out. At a distance of 10m or more you were free to appraise people, but then any closer you would turn your eyes away, only turning them back at the subject as you passed. Interesting, but really quite limiting.

Here in New York instead people simply look at you. No, not stare, but give you an honest moment's appraisal. And unlike some other places (Paris? I am inventing this? Those who know more, please correct me) in which any such inspection requires a neutral to bored expression, in New York you are allow to appreciate what you see. People will smile, or more often simply let you know that they like what they see. You can sit at a sidewalk cafe, and those at tables and on the those on the streets are always playing the look game. And if that's all you're going to do, then you have pretty much a free pass. If you want to proceed to the next level - a word exchanged, perhaps more - then it's another game, more on which later when I myself learn the rules of this game.

But the look game is simple and fun, because once you get into it there is more than one look. There's inquisitive, appreciative, disapproving, flirtatious, bewildered, scolding, critical, and of course the harried-get-out-of-my-way look.

* * *

Last night my friend Till and I were sitting at an sidewalk table; unusual for NY and more typical of Paris we were both seated to look out at the street. It was a street and not an avenue so the traffic was not overwhelming. But what a scene! First there were the 4 motorcycles, each parked to occupy a car spot (not laterally). Curious. And then after a while a man in a big SUV rolled along, his four children jumped out to go the Mr. Softie ice cream truck, and he got onto the one of the bikes, but just lounging not driving. Initially, I wondered whether he was just sitting on someone else's bike. The man had a perfectly hemispherical belly and wore shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt. After a while, an older man who I had assumed was just loitering came up to him, approached him really. They spoke, and the younger man gave the older man the keys, and went in. The man rearranged the pylons that were cordoning off the area, and began to shift the cars around. After he was done, he was beaming. As though his position conferred great importance on him, and perhaps it did. I noticed that were 2 older guys just hanging out, looking after the different cars.(*)

A while longer and I noticed that there were many people loitering near the entrance to the building were the man had gone in. From time to time, people would stop by and speak to someone in the second-floor window above us (the same man?). Others would go in. The people going in were a wide cross-section of New Yorkers. I couldn't really pin down the type. Many seemed to live there, many did not.

After a while, the man above threw down some keys to one of the younger guys and he drove off with one of the motorcycles. But not before the boss's 8 year old son got to turn the ignition key and rev up the motorcycle. He was thrilled, and skipped off seeming very important.

And I suppose the highlight of the evening was when the woman made her appearance. She was fake blond, with reasonably good legs, but pretty (I believe the New York word is...) curvy from there up. She wore a black and white knit dress with horizontal stripes that was shall we say very fitted. Right out of a cartoon, Till commented.(**) Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Don't be too sure, because she hung out for a quite while, just chatting to people she seemed to know, and Till and I had to move along before we found out how this story ended.

* * *

Another night in the East Village.

xoxo

BB


(*) I was trying to pin it down, and finally I concluded they reminded me of the old men that populate the edges of town in a Sergio Leone or Kurosawa movie.

(**) Till went a bit further. He said, Europeans can't really pull off this look. They're too self-conscious. Americans (both North and South) can really inhabit the character without any inhibition, with a why not me? feeling.

There's no place like home -- get me out of here

I've been working out of my summer sublet here in New York the last three days. It's hot, though not oppressively so, but my good German-Italian landlord doesn't believe in air conditioning. So I keep the windows open and get a pretty decent cross-breeze as the landlord promised. So far so good.

(A quick digression here -- It takes me back to the mid-1980s when I was traveling in Italy with my parents. We stopped for the night in Viareggio. Our little hotel was on the main beach drag. But when we asked where the air condition controls were we were told that there were none. Not needed! Here we have the fresh sea air! It was one of those becalmed nights with no breeze, and we roasted. Looking back of course all of this does seem naive of us. Even now, but even more so then, air conditioning is a luxury in most European countries and many of those who can afford it just don't believe in it. I've become a little hardier since then, and unless it is past the low-30s can survive without complaint. After that, I still survive, but might complain a little.)

(Another quick digression -- Americans love air conditioning! Every building has central air conditioning or you see window units, hanging precariously and symmetrically from the window. It's true that NY is a hot city in summer, but it is still remarkable. My windows open out into the central court hard of the building, and for most of the day and night the din of air conditioners is so loud that sounds like I'm next to a runway. On the plus side, it drowns out other city noises.)

So back to my sublet. For the last three days there's a builder (love this word - such a concrete image - better than construction worker) doing something in the courtyard below. I know when he arrives because he starts whistling. Every day it's a different tune, with a fine clear tone and heavy vibrato. But it's the same tune the whole day. I repeat the whole day.

The first day it was fine, because I didn't know the tune. But it was infectious. As the day went on, I began whistling it too. Then it was New York, New York! Still good. Then yesterday, it was Mellow Yellow. I began to get nervous. And then after an hour of whistling it, he began to sing it too! "They call me melllllow yelllow...." And finally this morning, he's on to that tune from the Wizard of Oz.

Can I call 311 to complain? (This is the city complaints hotline.) 911? (Police, fire, medical emergency.) Buy ear plugs? Yesterday I went over to the window and began whistling along. We had some fine counterpoint going for a minute.

xoxo

BB

**Update: Today he switched tunes -- he's on to "If I were a rich man..." He had better not start singing the "Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum..."

Back to the word

Things have been so hectic that I have had little chance to put together any visual distractions for my posts. Goodness, minus the keyboard and computer this is what it must have been like in the 19th C -- only words!

Several of you have kindly asked where I'm holed up in New York. If I could, I would post a picture of the cute sublet I've managed to snag in the Columbia University area (on the west side of Manhattan near 116th Street), but that would require transporting my camera and the cable I use to transfer pictures off the camera from Boston to New York. Two city living has its charms -- by the time I'm getting bored in Boston, it's pretty much time to head off to New York.

Eventually I have a master plan in which I will have two of everything: two computers, two toothbrushes, two wardrobes, and all I will have to do is to transport myself between A and B. But as I'm already discovering there's a danger here -- pretty soon there will also be two of me and one won't be talking too much to the other!

xoxo

BB

Missing (not only) my computer

As I sit down at my computer, I feel immediately at home in this sublet I've taken in New York. It's both surprising and rather obvious. Pictures, music, e-mails, even work -- they're all here.

And I realize why I 've felt stretched so thin lately. The first week away from the computer was great, but by week two, though I was checking e-mails, there was just the comfort of doing all of that in my home computing environment that I missed.

So good to be home at last, at least in computerland.

But still missing everything else...

xoxo

BB

Proof of life

Greetings friends,

Just wanted to drop a little line to confirm that I still exist. Soon there will be pictures, perhaps the odd poem or two, and more than a few complaints.

But right now it's back to the fray...

xoxo

BB

As I'm sure you already knew...

I find these among the more annoying words out there, because they usually precede some remarkable fact that you had absolutely no possible way of knowing. So...

As I'm sure you already knew, I'm moving. In fact, I've moved.

* * *

Well, it's not a huge shock, I hope, because I've been dropping hints, and I've let a few of you know in person. But it has happened. I'm no longer in London. It's something of an identity crisis for the blog, because it started as a New Yorker moves to London adventure. But we've migrated away from that for a while now, so I think we can survive, can't we?

* * *

I wanted to make a better announcement, with some very clever insights about London versus New York, tie it all up with a bow, but in some ways I'm pleased I did not or could not. I would rather like this blog to meander along in whatever direction it will go.

* * *

And to the new (temporary?) name: bbNY. Several interpretations here: Bombay Beauty (back in) New York. Partly true. But I will also have another foot in Boston. And so my own thinking was: bombay boston new york or bbNY.

You've come with me this far. I hope you'll take the next steps with me as well.

xoxo

BB

A year!

Gentle reader,

It passed quietly, without a cake or champagne, but it's been a year and counting now for this little blog. I feel that I should provide some grand overview, some vision of life, and actually I have some long overdue, big (big!) announcements. I'll postpone the last, and don't really have the others, but then I'll mark a year this way.

These are the films I watched at home this year, an unedited list. You'll notice the list starts in August, that's when I started my Love Film subscription (like Netflix for you Americans). Yes, I'm willing to confess that I rented The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Yes, I'm a little embarrassed. Does this list prove that I've wasted my evenings when I could have been doing something more productive, e.g., saving the world, stopping global warming? Yes, perhaps. But the list embodies growth and expansion for me: growth of my aesthetic horizons, each film is like a tree ring, in itself meaningless but important to mark the passage of time.

I hope we, you and I, blogger and reader, have more journeys and growth together over the next year.

xoxo

BB

A year in film
The Decalogue, Volume 1, June 12 2008.
All that Jazz, 11th June 2008
The Seventh Seal 29th May 2008
The Wind That Shakes The Barley 29th May 2008
Ivan's Childhood 21st May 2008
Dirty Pretty Things 3rd May 2008
Last Year At Marienbad 30th Apr 2008
Autumn Sonata 18th Apr 2008
Little Dieter Needs to Fly 15th Apr 2008
Ikiru 26th Mar 2008
The Silence 12th Mar 2008
Wild Strawberries 27th Feb 2008
That Obscure Object of Desire 2nd Feb 2008
Secret Ceremony 2.5 19th Jan 2008
Yojimbo 17th Jan 2008
Dirk Bogarde - Accident 15th Jan 2008
Dirk Bogarde - The Sleeping Tiger 1st Apr 2008
Dirk Bogarde - The Servant 14th Feb 2008
Fanny And Alexander 10th Dec 2007
The Final Days Documentary - Marilyn Monroe 21st Nov 2007
Days Of Heaven 17th Nov 2007
Scenes From A Marriage 16th Nov 2007
Easy Rider 7th Nov 2007
Sanjuro 6th Nov 2007
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 26th Oct 2007
L'Eclisse 23rd Oct 2007
Raging Bull 23rd Oct 2007
Persona 17th Oct 2007
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets 16th Oct 2007
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban 21st Sept 2007
Jules Et Jim 20th Sept 2007
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire 18th Sept 2007
Some Like It Hot 12th Sept 2007
Seven Samurai 10th Sept 2007
Blow Up 28th Aug 2007
Children Of Men 21st Aug 2007
La Dolce Vita 21st Aug 2007
40 Year-Old Virgin 16th Aug 2007

Another Swedish singer

Is it me or is it the Swedes?



And one more...




And if you think this is a waste of time. I refer you to the complaint department.

xoxo

BB

YSL

I was sitting in Le café de Flore on Monday, sipping a chablis on a surprisingly warm, wet, and indecisive day, trying not to stare at a woman who looked remarkably like Kristin Scott Thomas and probably was (though I haven't given her much thought before she looked effortlessly elegant in a very YSLish safari suit). Next to me were two older women, old friends and regulars. The waiter greeted them warmly, evidently not having seen them for some time; I've moved to St. Tropez one of them informed him as they continued with their teatime snack.

Where else in Paris can tourists and natives blend so easily, one ignoring but charming, the other oblivious? Perhaps assuming I could not follow their conversation the old friends chatted on and on, grabbing things from my table as though I weren't there, overflowing with cups and plates from their table to the bench. I wasn't bothered, and did my best to maintain the disinterested but observant expression that the natives seem to adopt.

I was in a reverie, enjoying half understanding the conversations around me (so much better than catching all or nothing), when a newspaper seller burst in announcing the special edition for the passing of Yves St. Laurent. It was a moment, a passing, but perhaps then approrpriately received in this city where such events merit special editions and a collective introspection (the end of an era - what was that era? what is this era?)

It was an era in which it was French fashion, French food, French passion that inspired the world. Perhaps that era was itself a coda, the long and tumultuous end after the end of another truly great era. Perhaps. But she is still elegant, beautiful in this periphery of vision.

BB

The Bird

I can all ready hear the groans. Why and from whom? Because for the last several months I have been complaining to anyone who would listen that I am being persecuted by a bird. I thought initially it was several birds, Hitchcock style, but have now concluded it is one solitary irresponsible bird. This early bird, for that's what he is, starts to sing between 4.15 and 4.45 every morning, though usually much closer to the latter time. After doing his think for a few minutes he goes back to sleep, leaving me wide awake and unable to sleep. The first few times it was charming and I didn't mention it to anyone. The I did a small blog entry. But after six weeks of missing the tail end of my sleep I couldn't take it anymore. I began wearing earplugs to sleep. By and large this works, but sometimes this bird wakes me up through the earplugs.

You see? You don't believe me do you? I've tried to record it, but you've got to imagine it 10 times louder - or more precisely piercing.


Aren't birds adorable little fluffy creatures? By and large they do appear to be. But recall that the genetically closest living descents of dinosaurs have been show to be birds.

Blogus in extremis

I have been reading a lengthy cover article in the New York Times Magazine by Emily Gould, who at one time wrote for the gossipy-snarky New York media blog called Gawker. It's worth a look for any of us who write blogs, not because I agree with most of her thoughts or share her experiences or because we'll end up where she did (don't worry, not jail!), but because of how the early steps of this de/ascent to purgatory were so normal and gradual, the kind of thing each of us has probably experienced a little bit as well.





A few choice extracts:

Back in 2006, I had just been promoted to associate editor at the publishing house where I’d been working since I graduated from college, and ... almost every day I updated my year-old blog, Emily Magazine, to let a few hundred people know what I was reading and watching and thinking about.

Some of my blog’s readers were my friends in real life, and even the ones who weren’t acted like friends when they posted comments or sent me e-mail. They criticized me sometimes, but kindly, the way you chide someone you know well. Some of them had blogs, too, and I read those and left my own comments. As... one-dimensional as my relationships with these people were, they were important to me. They made me feel like a part of some kind of community, and that made the giant city I lived in seem smaller and more manageable.

... But is that really what’s making people blog? After all, online, you’re not even competing for 10 grand and a Kia. I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you.

After the first night [after my breakup] ... I woke up as the sun rose and sat down at my desk to write a post that was nominally about a recent New York Times article about the shelf-life of romantic love. My boyfriend and I had just broken up, I revealed, and so I had been wondering whether love really exists. I wrote that I had concluded that it does. We can’t expect other people to make us happy, I informed my readers with total sincerity and earnestness, and we should live in the moment and stop obsessing about the future...I shudder involuntarily when I read this post now. It’s like stumbling across a diary I kept as a teenager. It’s probably one of the worst things that I’ve ever written. The commenters loved it.

Gawker had recently added a counter beside each post that displayed how many views it received. Now it was easy to see exactly how many people cared about my feelings. The site’s owner didn’t like my “I believe in love” post, he told me, but he said he was O.K. with it because, as everyone could see, more than 10,000 people disagreed with him. Readers e-mailed me their own breakup horror stories and posted hundreds of comments, advising me about flavors of ice cream to eat, and I reveled in the attention. I had managed to turn my job into a group therapy session. “Emily, I don’t really know you any more than I know the people I see every morning walking the dogs,” one of them wrote. “It’s more of an imagined familiarity born out of reading your words for a year. But that took guts, all the way around. And I’m in your corner, inasmuch as a somewhat anonymous, faceless, nameless commenter can be.”

All of this does make me think how grateful I am for the few but loyal readers of this blog. Group hug!

Love you all,

xoxo

BB

Portrait of a lady

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it … you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you—
Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!”

T.S. Eliot, Portrait of a Lady, inspired by this wonderful portrait -- and in this case I do urge you to take this quotation out of the context of the original poem!

BB

I did as instructed

Jealosy?

Jealousy is defined as defined as being afraid that someone else will take away what you already have. That's not it. Envy? That's defined as wanting what someone else has. Getting warmer. Envy seems to me to suggest wanting the very thing someone else has: I want it rather than you, kind of thing. No, that's not it, but what about my wanting it as well? That wish I was there too kind of feeling. That's it. Have a great time darlings!

xoxo

BB

Transformation*

Clementine and I decided to try another Peter Gordon recipe.... We started here:

And ended up here:


(This is what happens when you put too good a camera in the hands of an amateur...)

But the curries were a great success. One reddish (tomato, sweet potato, red onion, and harissa) and the other green (butternut squash, peas, onion, and some green curry paste)...

BB

* Another theme cheerfully and gratefully stolen borrowed from my friend Lola...

Fill 'er up

I like the British term for one of these, filling station. It leaves open what exactly you will be filling up on, rather than gas station which leaves nothing to the imagination. It seems natural to me: you take a train, then walk along the coast, till you reach the filling station. Walk to the gas station? Why not? I would like to imagine what flows from the pumps of this station designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1937, imagine that it is not gasoline, but inspiration, inspiration for living with functionality, elegance, and style.

Why not walk to the gas station when you can breathe the clean sea air along the way and watch the wind turbines spinning lazily in the distance?


Why not even take a dip in the ocean?


You may live longer and have better circulation, but you will certainly be more alive.

BB

Thighs and calves

Apologies for this rather anatomical title, but I've been thinking about thighs and calves. No not in general, but with this theory in mind -- in walking cities, people have good calves, and in bicycling cities people have good thighs. Note to self: must both bicycle and walk!!! BB

(~)

Trouble sleeping

I've been having trouble sleeping lately, which is just the nearest excuse at hand for my lack of posts over the last week. Normally I'm a good sleeper: 6 hours needed and usually achieved with 6-7 hours in bed. Solidly through the night, into a light sleep early in the morning so I wake up without an alarm most of the time. Isn't life wonderful?

I've already mentioned the birds. Well that singing bird is back, big time. He (she?) is Sinatra (Celine Deon) in Vegas. Really, such sweet song, but at 4.45 am every morning? The other day 4.30!

But what happens these days is that I wake up and look at the clock with those is-it-morning-yet eyes and find it is only 2.00 am! But it seems very bright outside. And when that bird sings, it again seems pretty sunny outside. Does the sun not set in London? Am I being transported to the Arctic Circle while I sleep? Woody Allen couldn't film any late night strolls through London, as he has in New York, at least in this season.

Of course the irony is that in New York, even if it's dark, there are so many things to do at all times of the night. You can sleep, but you don't have to. Here instead, it seems I can't sleep, but wish I could because there's nothing to do after 11 pm. OK, I could go clubbing - but when it's so bright out?

One of these nights I'm just going to get up at 2, dress, and head out for a stroll, and see what it's like. Await future posts.

ZZzzzzzzz

BB



Manhattan, 59th Street Bridge, 6 am. In Allen's forthcoming Central London this scene will be filmed at 2 am.

Young folks

Had to listen to/ watch this a few dozen times to recover from Autumn Sonata...



BB

Autumn Sonata, or Kodak carousel slide projector (discontinued October 2004), or Do you remember?

Sitting in the dark, the sequence of images flicker and flit across the screen, some holding there a beat too long, others never enough. Dusty darkness, dusty past, never past enough, never near enough, gone, extinguished, when lights come up and the lamp is off.

Winter nights, the fan rumbles on, cooling the machine, after the images are gone, but the air it blows on me is hot, hot in the cool, lonely air, wishing for more, more time to stay awake before it's time for bed, more joys, more sadness worth living.

bb

Jet lag and 3 firsts

I don't usually complain about jet lag, because I don't really suffer from it. I was on flugelbinding trip to the Americas (just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in -- is that quote from The Godfather or Seinfeld?) and got back Saturday morning. I had a busy-ish day cleansing the accumulated pockets of excess papers around the house (my father would be proud!)

In the evening my friend Clementine introduced me to her new bicycle and tried to persuade me to take her old one. I declined (I prefer to walk -- better exercise for point A to point B travel and I'm nervous about bicycling on the streets of London), but I did agree to take it for a spin to join C at a tapas place in Clerkenwell. I was following C through the streets of London as she zigged, zagged, went around a bus, cut through one-way streets, and occasionally through pedestrian sections. I was concerned, alarmed, panicked, thrilled, drained, and pleased to be alive.

This morning I couldn't get up. Must have been the jet lag -- really. I am morning person, without any trouble getting up in the morning. I recall at about 8.30 my apartment was so bright. Then I dozed a bit, and then a bit more. It was not the delicious extra 30 minutes you sometimes steal if you wake up earlier than needed or after your partner has vacated the bed. It was an exhausted, heavy-head sleep. It was like trying to escape quicksand. Finally I did. At 9.30. My father would not be proud.

I went to the market, but more on this later.

After some restorative coffees I went to join my friend Ginny in Islington. I decided to walk. It's a nice walk, but at some point I found myself next to Pentonville Prison. There is a prison in central London? you ask. Yes there is, I reply.

We had a nice cuppa, and now I'm home about to engage in my three firsts for today: the first time I've seen and cooked rhubarb, the first time I've cooked artichoke (the Jerusalem variety), and the first time I've cooked swede (no, not a Swede...)

xoxo

BB

!

"Gmmm, Gmmm, Gmmm" quoth he

1
I am in a delicate state at 5 am, after a late evening yesterday. I was dreaming. I think it was pleasant. Then somewhere far away I hear a gentle "gmmm, gmmm, gmmm". Well, it's gentle at first till it grows louder, more insistent, more rhythmically precise. I am wide awake. It's not a dream. It goes on: "Gmmm, gmmm, gmmm". A pigeon. I spot him later in the day sitting on my terrace. He's a plump one too, strutting around as though he owns the place.

2
This time half awake. I hear the "gmmm, gmmm, gmmm". A pair of flapping wings. Some scraping feet. More wings. More feet. Wings, feet, wings, feet, wings, feet. Then thud, as something (a head?") hits my window. Wings. Pigeons wrestling.

3
Screaming, screeching, cawing, thrilled high-voiced, shrill. So excited to hear the sea even if I can't see it or smell it. Seagulls. You hear them often in London.

4
I am half awake. I hear a song, birdsong. A wonderful modulation, some kind of music I haven't heard before. A traveler from a foreign land speaking and singing in unknown tongues. He goes on for one cycle and then goes silent. I am awake and thrilled. The next day, the same, the same strange song. Again awake, pleased. The next day the same. Awake. The next day the same. Awake, annoyed? No, it doesn't feel right. How can I be annoyed? It's so beautiful. Day 5, ughh. Day 6, ahhh! Day 7, silence. The bird is gone. Day 8, silence. I miss him. Day 9, I hear him, in the distance, sitting on some other windowsill, as though saying, "I know where I'm wanted" or is he saying "I'm a traveller. I fly with the wind and seasons' whim."

Covering the clichés

Landed.

Through the airport in minutes, like clockwork.

Bought chocolates.

Took the train from the airport to where I was heading.

Train left exactly on time and arrived exactly on time.

Had my first appointment, with a colleague, opposite the train station. I had promised to be there at 9 pm and was there exactly on time. She didn't notice, took it for granted.

Breakfast: ate some (a lot) of cheese.

Some guilt at the large breakfast. Saw some steps leading up the side of the hill:

Climbed them (because they were there, naturally). Not a spectacular view, but did enjoy the clean air on top.



(And my calves still pinch when I walk after going down these stairs...)


Spend the day flugelbinding. Caught the train to my next destination.



Goodbye Switzerland.

BB

P.S. I do love the Swiss railway clocks, which is what this is though it's hard to see...

Beautiful place, indifferent pictures

I really need to stop using my cellphone camera. But I was visiting a friend in Oxford when I wandered into St. Catherine's college, and I couldn't help myself. Well, wandered in isn't being quite honest. I knew it was there and I was going to go, even if meant sneaking into a conference.

Arne Jacobsen designed the college in the mid-1960s, and when I say designed the college I mean he designed it all: the buildings, the gardens, the door fixtures, the chairs, and the cutlery I believe he reused from designs for the SAS Palace Hotel in Copenhagen (lazy or what?)

(The above from an anonymous wiki picture -- it was not sunny when I was there.)


I am having some trouble adding more external images, so first go here and here and here to see the exterior of the college (thank you wiki friends...) Initially of course you just pick up the boxiness of the place. But then as you look closer you feel the beautiful sense of proportion. We all know it is easy to build a boxy building, but to build a well proportioned box is much harder. Then as you pass through the buildings you notice the basic shapes repeat. Lack of imagination? No. The repetition is like a theme and variations. Each reincarnation of the same theme makes you appreciate it more and admire how versatile the design is. Wish I had photographed the columns and (architects help me here!) horizontal supports. Like a concrete box. But then sometimes the box has a double-height lecture theatre or dining hall. Other times it has two levels of classrooms. In some of the buildings the first level is cantilevered over the footpath. In others he outlines the cantilever but it is empty space. There is a sense of harmony.

The building below is one of the dorms. Seems a bit like a modernistic canvas doesn't it? With reach room outlined in its box but the windows varied:



Then to go in, you put your hand on the best door handle ever designed:



I mean it. Think how often your hand fumbles to grasp a door handle. And if you haven't then after today you will always notice this. It's one of my pet peeves, and you will soon agree that most door handles in the world are badly designed. Not this one! It fits perfectly in the palm of your hand, and of course its shape beautifully expresses and underlines its purpose, looking a bit like a propeller.

Inside the dining hall:


I even sat in on a session of hydro-flugel-whatevery to get this picture:


I love how he screens the outside so that you can look out, light gets in, but you don't get distracted by stray movements outside. And of course you are sitting in ant chairs modified for a lecture theatre, with tear-drop tablet arms:


Finally, I slipped into the Senior Common Room unnoticed. And here is what it feels like to be there:



Magnificent! Even the place settings were designed by him:


The only disappointment was the salt and pepper mills - not Jacobsen's fault I know because he designed a set for the SAS in Copenhagen*:




Here are the swan chairs designed for St. Catz, that's right for St. Catz.




Or if you prefer you can always lounge in one of these:



Next trip... Copenhagen where I must stay in the SAS Palace...

BB

* The original looks something like this.



So much nicer, no?

Shocking Stroll on Wardour Street, March 15

It was probably my own fault. No it was definitely my own fault. I should have known better than to head home through Soho on the Saturday night before St. Patrick's Day and after some rugby match involving Ireland and England. The streets of Soho crowded and lively and boisterous and rowdy.

I've never wondered where the expression piss drunk comes from, and after Saturday I never will. Set up along the street were - how to describe them? - stand-up stalls. Not the portable loos you see near construction sites or at big events in the park. Imagine a corner, a ninety degree angle. Now imagine that four of these are arranged together around a central post, to form a single unit. Now imagine four men pissing into these corners, naturally with no door and you'll laugh at my even mentioning it but no way to wash your hands. Now imagine several of these horror machines set up in a row on the street.

I thought of taking a picture, but I'm glad I didn't. This is one memory that I'm hoping will fade.

In recovery,

BB

New words, same guilt. Or The new carbs

Just read this phrase in the newspaper, "carbon indulgence".

referring to someone who was trying to design an environmentally
friendly home but allowed himself the indulgence
of importing the wind turbines from Finland
- saving electricity but using so much to transport them
to Chicago - are you following this?

What is next? Carbon guilt? Carbon envy?

I had just caught up with the idea of "carb indulgence" and "carb guilt", where carb refers to carbohydrates. When did the staples of my childhood, pasta and bread, become a guilty indulgence, to be savored like cake? I don't know, but it happened.

Of course I grew up on chapatis and vegetables ,
so for example the idea of eating chapatis
with chapatis does seem rather odd.
Italian readers' opinions?
Would you call pasta and bread a staple,
or was this part of the Internationalization/ vulgarization
of Italian food where the concept of pasta as the primo
was lost and it became the main?

Perhaps it is our age. We are well intentioned, well informed, but utterly incapable of doing anything other than feeling guilty about our incapacity.

OK, I'm talking about myself.

BB

Synecdoche

Synecdoche: A form of metaphor in which the part stands for the whole, the whole for a part, the genus for the species, the species for the genus, the material for the thing made, or in short, any portion, section, or main quality for the whole thing itself (or vice versa).


BB

P.S. In praise of Google. I remember I had learned the name of this literary device when I was 13 or so (even remembered the example given "All hands on deck"), but of course forgotten the name. Google be priased.

P.P.S. Do I need a better camera? These aren't great pictures as such, but the cell phone allows me to take them without anyone noticing.

P.P.P.S. I loved how these strollers stood silent, whereas with their occupants the room would be filled with all kinds voices, crying, laughing... I also liked how each stroller is personal - a toy in the undercarriage, a drinking bottle on top, a pair of gloves... By the way, this night the stroller parking was only half full!

Final P.S. I may have committed a horrible blunder... I believe this is metonymy, the use of a word for a concept with which the original concept behind this word is associated. I hope my high school English teacher is not reading this blog.

And what was he reading so intently?

Tropic of Cancer...

BB

BBNY

Gentle readers,

While you are bored witless and looking for any escape from tedium
kind enough to drop by hoping for a little top up of the BB wit, I am gallivanting on a flugeldumplingbinding trip to NY.

I do miss you all, but I'll be back soonish!

xoxo

BB

Ultimate Road Trip Film: Wild Strawberries

This weekend I was watching the ultimate road trip film, Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman. It was Saturday, and the morning sky looked like the sun was about to set. It was cold in my garret, the computer comfortingly warm sitting on my lap.

Watching the film made me think of many things. Although nowhere near the 78 years of the main character, Professor Isak Borg, and the actor as well (the wonderful Victor Sjöström), it made my reflect on my own life, of opportunities missed, loves lost. The wonderful thing about entering one of these nostalgic, indulgent reveries after a Bergman film is that his exemplar - nostalgic, but cleared-eyed and unsentimental - doesn't let you slip into self-indulgent slush. It's the nature of life: if you live, and if you remember, then you will regret. I suppose when you are 78 you can't do much more - no time left to change things - but at my 30-something age, time still to make changes for whatever things I think I have missed (or so I told myself, the magic mantra I repeated to myself again and again -- don't worry I was at home, not on the street!)

The film also made me think about great art and feeling , indeed great feeling. Though I love many cerebral masters of many art forms, there is something about great art that rouses great feeling that is powerful, that makes you alive, that indeed adds a reason to life. And then I thought of - with pleasure and longing - the great films, music, poetry, novels, paintings, theatre that I had seen. And all their ideas and feelings were somehow concentrated into a powerful melancholia. I didn't want to cry, nor sleep, nor escape, but to create. Have you ever seen a beautiful color when you're out walking and wanted somehow to rub it on a piece of paper and capture it's essence? That's want I wanted to do with this feeling. I was restless, and no song I could put on would calm me.

I thought about all the art that I had created in the past in such moods - not great art perhaps, but art nonetheless - like leaves pressed between the pages of books on my shelf. They are beautiful, my babies (still on the art -- don't get any wrong ideas), beautiful in their humanity, if not great in their imperfection.

* * *

"Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?" ~ John Keats.

* * *

"Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther." ~ John Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

In Lindsay-Lohanesque Rehab or Jack Bauer Rescue Me or Have You Ever Eaten a Hazelnut?

Do you know how every celeb worth their salt has done a stint in rehab? A spokesman announces that he or she has retreated to a rehab center in the Arizona dessert to deal with his or her issues. Well, here I am in Cyprus, doing just that. Well granted that LL is both truly talented and truly messed up, and I am neither. (Don't give me a hard time on this -- have you seen -- truly seen -- Freaky Friday?) And also let me grant that this is a hotel and not a rehab center. And also let it be said that I'm not any kind of addict because I don't want my parents to start thinking that about me...

Well, Mom, Dad, I am an Internet addict. I picked this hotel because it had (was supposed to have) wifi. When I arrived last night I found out it did not. I threw a fit. A bottled fit. This morning I did my best impression of a very busy, very important person who just has to work (I'm "working" now), and they upgraded me to a suite with a hardline. It is offseason after all. Other than me, one romanticish couple, and one couple with a baby, there is no one else here. In this hotel. In this town. On this island. (Other than the natives, who seem to hide.)

When facing the bleak prospect of an Internets free weekend, I took some consolation that I had remembered to pack the remaining 3 DVDs of 24 Season 3 that I have not yet seen.* So I figured worst case, it would be a veg out weekend. Fortunately, things have turned for the better. I trundled down the road to some very beautiful mosaics. On the way back stopped in at the market and bought two bottles screw-top wine and two bottles of water (notice how mature I am - wine and water in equal proportions, even at lunch).

After a burst of sun, it is cloudy, but (I live in London and laugh in the face of clouds and) am looking at the sea. I think I'll actually do some work now (for 15 or 20 minutes).

Then I'll lie in my bed, and wait for Jack to rescue me.

Cheers,

BB

P.S. Have you ever eaten a hazelnut? I feel a little bit silly, like one of those people who doesn't understand that tomato sauce comes from tomatoes rather than a tube, but today for the first time I ate a hazelnut. Now I have had hazelnut ice cream (fave), hazelnut chocolate, and even (hate to confess this) hazelnut coffee (in my defense, it was the late 80s, and back then we thought these things were sophisticated). But never had I had a hazelnut until this morning. And you know, it tastes like a hazelnut!

* I see you shaking your head, saying to yourself, "Poor BB..." Then this vision bifurcates. In one, version you say, "Nutters, truly off the rails". In the other, you say, "Used to have better taste." Then to both I reply meekly that I also brought Hana-Bi and Wild Strawberries. In the first, you reinterate, "Nutters, truly nutters." In the second, you just shake your head sadly as though watching someone spread a layer of caviar on wonderbread.