My boss’ blackberry just crashed, and when I took out the battery to reboot, I found myself blowing on it before returning it to its hatch. I realize now that I do this every time this happens.
Nintendo circa 1998 — old habits die hard.
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follow me
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See you in the blogosphere…
My doppleganger. I mean the llama, not Heather.
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an elderly sexton
I could use a day like this:
“I was sick as a dog. No, that’s wrong; there were several dogs in the street below my window, and all of them were healthier than I. My head was huge and tight; my throat was small and red. I took Fuogrip, a charming French antihistamine that made my ears float. I plumped up the pillows in the rose room and gazed mournfully at the far wall. There was a framed tinted photograph of a young girl in Edwardian dress. On the wall to the right, a watercolor of a vase of scarlet flowers. In between, a window overlooking the valley.
Much of the Dordogne looks like the cover of a book of fairy tales; castles above precipices, turrets and ramparts, neat squares of farmland yellow and brown in autumn, curling rivers through narrow valleys, picturesque cottages surmounted by wispy pillars of smoke. That was the view out my window. I had to stand up and go over to the window to see it, however; that struck me as unfair. Having given me a vile continental disease, France could at least provide me with bedside entertainment.
I drifted.
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jean jacques cale
I realized recently that I have the ability to give the gift of download-able music here. What better gift to give than JJ Cale? Better known as a songwriter for Eric Clapton and Lynard Skynard, but his own voice feels like home to me.
These songs are off of “Naturally“. It’s one of those albums that was the soundtrack to my childhood, played as vinyl on my parents’ record player or in the car when we would go on family drives to the coast for a day at Limantour beach and BBQ oysters at Nick’s Cove (pre-Kuletos when it was still a sawdust-on-the-floor-and-crab-nets-on-the-wall kind of place). There are a handful of albums like this that I rarely if ever put on in my day-to-day life, but that I find myself gravitating toward the second I touch hometown soil. Some of the others:
I was very nearly named "Rickie" after her
Growing up it was pretty much all Van Morrison, all the time. This and every other album.
This is where the cringe factor part comes in. I'm not gonna lie, I still really love "If You Don't Know Me By Now". The video is a classic. This is a rather fortunate album cover because this dude is really, really ugly.
There was also a lot of Steve Miller Band, BB King, Annie Lennox, that one Blind Melon song “No Rain” on repeat (I’ve never actually heard the rest of the album), and my dad’s weird jazz guitar stuff that I now realize was not so weird but really amazing. My mother also went through a brief period in my childhood where she played Black Sabbath constantly, perhaps reliving her college days. I remain strangely influenced by “Master of Reality.”
But mostly J.J. Cale.
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searching for fialta
“Spring in Fialta is cloudy and dull. Everything is damp: the piebald trunks of the plane trees, the juniper shrubs, the railings, the gravel. Far away, in a watery vista between the jagged edges of pale bluish houses, which have tottered up from their knees to climb the slope (a cypress indicating the way), the blurred Mount St. George is more than ever remote from its likeness on the picture postcards which have since 1910, say (those straw hats, those youthful cabmen), been courting the tourist from the sorry-go-round of their prop, among amethyst-toothed lumps of rock and the mantelpiece dreams of seashells.”
I wish I owned this copy.
In Spring in Fialta, which is perhaps my most favorite twenty-some pages of writing, Nabokov vividly fictionalizes a Mediterranean town on the Riviera.
For the story I am writing now (yes, the one that has been keeping me to blogging only once a week!), I’m trying to do something similar by turning my hometown into a fictionalized version of itself, a made-up town that exists outside of time and space. It’s been quite fun gathering the places and images that make my town home to me. Some scribblings from my notebook:
“An old bank now full of antiques, jewelry displayed in the old safe deposit boxes; another old bank building where rugs were once sold that has now become a literal “seed bank”; the longest row of iron-front buildings in the world, having survived the 1906 earthquake; a shoe store that hosts punk shows after-hours; a downtown plaza with a bust of the old lady for whom it is named, with eyes that follow you wherever you walk; a storied concert venue, supposedly haunted from its previous incarnations as an opera house and movie theater; an Italian restaurant owned by an elderly couple who sing and play accordion that was once a speakeasy and is said to have a tunnel running underground across the street; an old mill that local kids climb up to sunbathe; dark country roads that have for years harbored parked cars of lovers and trouble-makers; a statue commemorating the town’s famed wrist-wrestling championship; a bright pink house belonging to the town’s beloved newspaper columnist; an old train depot with a junkyard backyard full of beautiful found art; docks along a dusty river that holds no life except for the occasional seal or whale that – as lore has it – loses its way from the Bay and ends up there; a wetlands bird sanctuary perfect for a light stroll, right off the highway; a grand parade in honor of butter and eggs and kids dressed as baby chicks that brings the whole town out; a roadhouse with a dollar-bill-collaged ceiling and a mean corned-beef-and-cabbage lunch on Paddy’s Day; a downtown stuck in the 1950s and often used as such in movies set in that period; a hidden-away coffee shop that packs up on Sunday mornings for live blues sets and family board games; a seedy dive bar where locals still smoke inside with makeshift tinfoil ashtrays, quickly crumpled up when anyone unexpected pokes his head in; countless neighborhood parks that are host to farmers markets and first kisses; a once-archaic Moose Club that now has the quickest-expanding membership in the country due to the local 40- and 50-something singles taking over; an antiques store with a big banner for a “going-out-of-business liquidation sale” that has been “going out of business” for twenty years (until, with the recession, it finally did this year); an eccentric old hardware store that was known for its stuffed polar bear in the display window, until said stuffed polar bear caught fire and burned the place down; a now –shuttered costume store whose owner kept a monkey as an in-store pet; the 100-year-old farmhouse across from a feed store that I grew up in; and pastures so green they are almost neon.”
Photo by Scott Hess
So many points to anyone who knows this town from the description (without knowing where I’m from). Here’s a big hint:
[Okay, I know, I gave it away. I couldn't help it. It's such a sweet song!]
If anyone has favorite eccentricities of their hometown, please, please share. There is really nothing I love more than discovering the particular personalities of cities and towns, different I’m sure to each person who passes through.
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la maison de mon rêve
I read a lot of design blogs, specifically DIY home design, and it is very tempting to simply re-post here beautiful images I come across every day. But then, surely, this would turn into just another home design blog, and considering I don’t really know anything special about the field, I’m going to resist the urge.
But there are a few homes that have stayed with me over the years that I feel inclined to share. I have very conflicting ideas about the house I want to live in one day. On the one hand, I dream of building by hand a small, beautiful domicile from salvaged wood and found materials, placing it on a hill in a forest overlooking the ocean (those questionnaires you take as a kid — “would you rather live in the forest or by the ocean?” — these people have clearly never been to Northern California, where you can have both!), with a well-tended vegetable garden in the back. But on the other hand, I worry that this kind of intense personal investment in a house ties you to one spot; four walls restricts the notion of home, when ideally I’d love to be able to pick up and move at the drop of a hat, free to be home outside, inside, abroad, in my childhood house, all over the place…
But these houses are such beautiful inspiration:
The Doo Nanny Ranch, Arkansas. This house is old-time homey but has a modern flair. I love the use of all white in the bedrooms, and all the glass in the living room (also those twig and cow bone chandeliers!):
A home in an old canning facility in Maine. These images are from a New York Times article a couple years back that I can’t locate anymore. I love the rusted ironwork in the front yard and all the found wood:
Phoenix Commotion homes, Huntsville, Texas. Dan Phillips helps low-income families build gorgeous craftsman houses out of recycled materials:
***Edit: Also this.
The other alternative is, of course, a tiny house that travels on wheels! So I can take my blood-and-sweat-and-tears-hand-built-home with me wherever I go. The vegetable garden will have to be a container garden I suppose…
This is right near the onramp I take to get home!
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mood ring
Yesterday I hiked into Griffith Park with a friend. We found an unmarked side trail down a steep ridge and set up a picnic blanket on a bluff overlooking the city where no one could see us. Not a soul passed by the two or three hours we were there. I experienced the earthquake that some in Los Angeles felt from this picturesque spot. It felt like the narrow, high bluff was just blowing along in the wind. What a moody afternoon!
Late Winter Rains
by Amber Coverdale Sumrall
When the rains finally start they do not stop.
The mockingbirds sing all day as if someone
were feeding quarters into slots on their bodies.
Hyacinths bloom in violet glass along the window ledge,
the long white strands of their roots suspended in water.
One by one they open, filling the room with sweetness.
The silent crow who has perched on your shoulder
flies off like a spell in reverse.
Last winter, wrapped in red velvet curtains,
we leaned out the window
of your ninth-story Manhattan apartment
to catch the swirling snowflakes on our tongues.
It seemed so effortless, the falling.
Snow turned to sleet and then to rain.
We moved from window to bed to tub
leaving wet trails across the hardwood floor.
When you touched me, always it was the first time.
The kitchen window fogs with steam,
damp heat of kisses. Outside, a crow calls once
in the grey light then is gone. I remember our beginning,
a time before dark wings began beating in your blood.
How I believed there was nothing our love couldn’t heal.
How after the sky cleared we walked through Riverside Park
startled to see lavender and mauve iris
flowering in the wake of so much cold,
their swollen centers like hearts turned inside out.
(Thanks Allie.)
I feel like nobody reads poetry anymore (let alone reads at all). Poetry interests me less for the words and narrative and more for its ability to transport and create mood, on the same level as some of my favorite albums. I have an affinity for art that is all about mood, which gives me a much stronger tolerance than most for beautiful movies in which not a lot happens. Some of my favorite visual tone-poems:
[Clips from Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette and David Gordon Greene's George Washington]
I remember a film production professor I once had instructing class to remember that “MOOD equals DOOM backwards.” I’m sure he was onto something in terms of the correlation between moody pieces and box office dollars (as evidenced by the financial success or lack thereof of the movies above). Still, in my writing (or at least my aspirations for my writing) I tend toward stories that are spare in dialogue with emphasis on images and moments that would have to be treated by the full panoply of production effects to fulfill their meaning. Makes for a difficult write and, I imagine, an equally difficult read. But I think, if done well, this is the type of writing that best lends itself to collaboration, which in my opinion is what filmmaking is all about.
Speaking of writing, moving along quite well on my screenplay via the ScriptFrenzy April writers’ challenge. My posts will likely continue to be infrequent on here ’til the end of April when I’ll emerge with a first draft…
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painting the dreamscape
My dreams lately have been looking like Odilon Redon paintings. Redon is a French symbolist painter who worked in the mid to late 1800s. I first came across a portrait of his some years ago at the Getty Museum and was fascinated by how modern his work appears considering the time period.
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Redon has a whole series of portraits much like the one I first encountered at the Getty. In the series, a woman sits in profile and is painted in a rather formal style, but she is surrounded by a dream-like array of colorful flora. I’m intrigued by this juxtaposition of styles, and also by his fixation on this one particular pose. (I don’t know much about art analysis, but I do know the word “juxtaposition” makes you sound like you know what you’re talking about. Thanks, College).
My first acquaintance with Redon
.
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Redon also has a series of charcoal lithographs that resemble what my nightmares often look like. This man is in my head! Some of the lithographs are said to have been inspired by Edgar Allan Poe stories and remind me of Goya’s black paintings, a favorite series of mine. I’ve left images of these darker works out of this post so as not to induce nightmares. But they’re worth a good google…
I’m off to prepare for a 30-day writers’ challenge that begins tomorrow. 100 pages in the month of April. Wish me luck!
Sweet dreams to all…Do your dreams look like Redon? Or Dali? Or something else?
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culinary weekend part two
Mouths, get ready to water. It is my pleasure to present to you Ben and Aaron’s fancy five-course tasting menu. All credit, creative and otherwise, goes to the guys on this one. They whipped up this meal while Hathanh and I were responsible for photographing, blogging, and tasting. Such tough jobs! I’m liking this boys-in-the-kitchen-while-the-women-handle-the-technology set-up…
Roasted asparagus with fennel puree and porcini soil (it's not actually soil, but a powder of dried porcini mushrooms, flour, sugar, and...some other ingredients)
Tomato risotto...
...With roasted bone marrow (we forgot the toast to serve it with, so it went with the risotto)
Scallop ceviche with blood orange vinaigrette
Pan-roasted pheasant with apple bacon relish and pickled red onions
Braised pork belly with parsnip panna cotta and rhubarb vinaigrette
All food photos by Hathanh…and one more hurrah for her photoblog!
It’s hard to pick a favorite of these dishes, but I am a sucker for well-prepared scallops. The ceviche-style heatless “cooking” left the scallops tender and juicy throughout, rather than searing which can leave the outside a bit too chewy. Everyone else gravitated toward the bone marrow, a real delicacy, but its butter-like consistency was just a little off-putting to me, infrequent meat consumer as I am. Perhaps it just needed the crunch of the toasted bread, which we forgot, to offset the gooey-ooey-ness of it all. The pheasant was also a mouth-watering dish — I think it was my first time tasting this bird — and I’m convinced that pickled red onions make anything taste better. I found myself pairing them with bites of every dish.
Chefs Aaron and Ben
These guys really know what they’re doing. Our friendship was solidified back in college when the three of us plus a few other friends would get together every Wednesday night to watch Lost and participate in themed cooking nights, from Thai and French to Midwestern, in honor of Ben’s Minnesota roots (and don’t underestimate the world-class tastiness of a good Minnesota Walleye Soup). Aaron and Ben have always been very able in the kitchen, but their culinary abilities have improved tenfold since those Wednesday night get-togethers, simply by keeping at it in their home kitchens (plus reading a TON of cool cookbooks — I’m putting it out there now that I would love a copy of The Flavor Bible for my birthday). I’m not sure I’ll ever be up to making parsnip panna cottas and porcini soil, but this weekend inspired me to keep up the cooking kick I have been on since moving into my studio.
And, with great thanks for filling my tummy this weekend, a very happy birthday to Ben! Or, “Ben?” — as the pastry lady decided to mark on his cake.
An existential birthday cake
P.S. All of the dishes this weekend came out of the boys’ heads, but if anyone is interested in a recipe, just ask and I’m sure I could get them to write down how the dishes might be recreated…
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culinary weekend part one
Aaron arrived to town Friday night bearing gifts for everyone: chestnut flour, mace (a type of nutmeg, not tear gas), juniper berries, and homemade olive oils for fellow chef Ben; cinnamon, star anise, piment d’esplette, and champagne vinegar for me and Hathanh, acting sous chefs. Some of us hadn’t seen each other in over three years since college, making the reunion feel a bit like The Big Chill (minus the dead friend and stellar Motown soundtrack — we had the Food Network as background sound instead).
While Ben and Aaron prepared for our big five-course tasting menu the next day, Hathanh and I rolled out the dough Ben had created for chestnut flour pasta. I was amazed to learn how easy it is to make fresh pasta, and how such a simple thing can make such an impressive meal with negligible seasoning or sauce.
Aaron and Ben describe how to make pasta dough:
Rolling out the dough while Ben and Aaron prep in the kitchen. Photo credit Hathanh Nguyen.
The final rolled out and cut pasta. Photo credit Hathanh.
Homemade chestnut flour pasta with fennel, red pepper flakes, brown butter, Arabian Family olive oil, and shaved pecorino. Photo credit Hathanh.
The weekend was documented with images by the lovely and talented Hathanh. You can see more of her photos at her shiny new wordpress blog. Photos and the menu for our big Saturday meal to come soon…
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