This Made Me Happier Than Average

Morocco + Christmas =



This is exactly what Marrakech is like. Really. Especially, the lighting yourself on fire part. Oh, but not the red hats; those are for Fes only.

It's too bad this is happening on my birthday or else I would be hopping around on those buses!

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=12&id=25020

However did they choose the colors for the different "loops", I wonder? And who really believes art is a good "investment" these days? No one is going to make the kind of financial returns David Rockefeller made on his Rothko a year and half ago. Buy because you love it and can't live without it!

Also, come to my birthday get-together. Details to be sent out soon via email. Don't be Brooklyn-resistant.

Contradictions

Last winter, as I sat in a home made of dirt bricks, with a bamboo roof, ill from whatever parasites had infected me, and lacking heat or running water, I was very nearly driven mad by the contradiction of being in such a harsh environment, but still able to connect with my family and friends via wireless internet. (I am now experiencing this in reverse, as I chat online with friends that still live in Morocco. More than once have I read "My fingers are too cold to type! TTYL!) It was nearly impossible to imagine that the environment in which I sat could exist simultaneously as the one which I had left. Was I even on the same planet?

Trust art to address this issue. I just learned about the artist Filippo Minelli. Now a conceptual artist who uses graffiti and documents it photographically is not that novel, but his ongoing project Contradictions, speaks to me in such a visceral way, I barely even have the vocabulary for it. By visiting slums in the developing world and scrawling incredibly popular websites, such as Facebook, Myspace and Flickr, on tin houses, scrap heaps and run-down trains, he frames the incredible chasm between how people live in these environments and how, we in the developed world, spend a great deal of time in an alternate reality. Here's a quote from him from the Daily Dish:

What I want to do by writing the names of anything connected with the 2.0 life... [on] the slums of the third world is to point out the gap between the reality we still live in and the ephemeral world of technologies. It's a kind of reminder, for people like me..., I'm an Apple user and also have social-network accounts, that the real world is deeply far from the idealization we have of it...

What speaks to me most about is the tightrope many developing nations walk as they build technological infrastructures, which are vital to their efforts to attract foreign investment, but often neglect what we consider very basic infrastructure, such as rural electrification and water treatment plants. There simply aren't enough resources for them to do both, and foreign investment wins out because it ostensibly generates immediate revenues. A rural farmer simply isn't going to produce a larger crop because the government connected him to the power grid, but her sons can travel to the nearest large town to work for outsourced jobs from larger economies.

I doubt that Minelli's art "helps" anyone in the communities in which he works, but that's not really the point. You and I are his target audience. How we process the contradictions he highlights is the truly interesting aspect.

Life as a Waking Dream

Whenever I'm having a major mini quarter life crisis my grandmother always asks me: If your life were a dream, how would you interpret it? I know, it sounds a little funny, and it is, but sometimes it's a really useful way to step outside of myself and think about how to overcome any obstacles in my path. Other times, when there is no crisis, and I'm a bit bored, I pick out random themes that seem to repeat themselves. This week has been especially rich with oddities.

One of my (really awesome, friendly, funny) co-workers ordered a fox from Ebay. Not a live one, though. It's a specimen of taxidermy, on which she's writing her master's thesis. Then I met a man with the surname, Fox. And I've been thinking about the cute little kid in the movie, "You've Got Mail", that spells out his name, F-O-X, in this really adorable way. Ummm, the problem with this? Foxes apparently represent trickery and fire. And that totally connects to the fact that I burned my thumb pretty badly on some coffee and my favorite brunch place was closed last week after suffering damage from a kitchen fire. I don't think there are any consequences to all these silly observations of mine, but I will not be building any fires in my house like I did last winter.

Life has been relatively uneventful in the past week. I've made little progress on my room, which is a total mess and looks not too dissimilar to a war zone or, more accurately, my room in the third grade. I did attend a great lecture by Maira Kalman, a graphic artist and painter, who does tons of work for The New Yorker. She was personable, self-deprecating and incredibly smart. She also pursues whatever she wants, and fully admits that luck aids her talent. I like that kind of honesty.

This is Fabulous News!

Congratulations to Jimmy Carter, the countless educators on the ground and the people who have made small adjustments to their behavior to nearly eradicate the affliction that is Guinea Worm!

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/jimmy-carter-and-george-w-bushs-future/

And to echo Kristof's thoughts: What will a former President Bush look like? Will he chop wood or help to save forests? The cynic in me says he'll probably spread the myth that zebras are vicious man-eating beasts that should never, ever be put on the endangered species list.

Experiments and Omens

In one last-ditch effort to blend into the neighborhood that is Williamsburg, I forewent washing my hair today. It was an inspired decision brought on by a combination of laziness and the odd looks I get at El Beit, a coffee shop on Bedford Avenue, for having obviously freshly washed, extremely wet hair. Where skinny black jeans had failed before, my slightly greasy hair succeeded. Though my super-smooth french press coffee didn't necessarily taste any better (it's pretty damn good to begin with), it was nice to not be stared at for maintaining basic hygiene.

Alas, this experiment will come to an end for two reasons. First, my head itches, and I have very little tolerance for discomfort of this nature. Second, I'm moving to greener pastures this Friday, where, yes, coffee shops still serve sustainably grown, organic, fair trade coffee in wasteful paper cups with plastic lids and cardboard sleeves, but where everyone appears to be freshly showered by 11:30 AM! They also appear to hold steady jobs, or at least feel obligated to appear friendly and ready for the day. In addition, these new neighbors of mine stay thin not by chain-smoking and shivering in the cold outside the eight hundred bars in the neighborhood, but by going to the gym, or, running outside. Perhaps the best thing about my new apartment in what is probably the second most yuppie part of Brooklyn, is that it's on the top floor, so I wont have to worry about crazy upstairs neighbors who throw combination stomp-karaoke-furniture moving parties at 2:00 AM each Wednesday. (I should mention here that my current sublet is actually quite nice, and my three roommates even nicer. It's just that the neighborhood is so not my speed - as you can see.)

There were, however, a couple odd omens this morning when I went to pick up my keys. First off, the G train arrived much too quickly, which made traveling to Bergen Street so easy as to catch me off guard. Then there was a crazy pigeon just hanging out on the exit sign above the platform. I assume he wanted the F train and was a bit irked by the abnormally efficient G. Then one of my favorite restaurants, Miriam's on Court Street, was on fire. OK, I didn't actually see any flames streaming from windows, reaching for the cold winter sky. But I did see three giant fire trucks, and many, many handsome firemen coming out of Miriam's, telling everyone everything was "OK now." Finally, when I went into a cute little bakery to have a pumpernickel bagel, there was an Andy Warhol look alike (face, clothes, hat, everything) sitting in the corner. He told me that he'd never seen me there before. And I said, "Well, I'm new to the neighborhood."

Congratulations to Karin & Ryu!

Amidst all of the craziness that has been my life over the past year, I've had a few really wonderful events to look forward to. Coming back to America, though unplanned, was nice. Eric and Katharine's wedding was a fabulously joyous event, and just this past weekend I celebrated the wedding of two more very wonderful, very dear people: Karin and Ryu. They had the kind of wedding I hope to have. It wasn't a crazy, aspirational wedding with doves and ice sculptures. Oscar de la Renta didn't design her gown (though I'm sure Karin might have liked that). And it wasn't held in some nineteenth-century mansion.

What made it so perfect was that everything was "them". It was held on a farm in Florida (where she's from); they chose every single song on the playlist at the reception; they did a cute little first dance; there was a bag pipe player during the ceremony (who doesn't remember the bag pipes at Convocation?), and they seemed genuinely happy. They even found ways to incorporate each of their faiths and backgrounds into the ceremony (their children will be Colombian/Japanese/Eastern-European/Jewish/Catholic). Also, they made the wedding party take pictures in front of the (very plush, very fancy) port-a-potty trailer. Personally, I enjoyed that part. Please don't knock the fancy port-a-potty trailer - there are mints inside. The cutest part was when Karin's parents took the stage and sang a little song they had written for the happy couple. I hope someone puts video of that on YouTube! And Ryu's dad already started putting on the pressure for grandkids during his toast!

Congratulations to Karin and Ryu!

A part of my vote on November 4th was for Michelle Obama, a woman I am quite proud to have in the White House for the next four years. (I imagine that this is how my grandmother felt about Jackie Kennedy.)

This is an interesting interview of an author of an unauthorized, but still quite glowing, biography, Michelle. (At least the last few chapters I read in a Barnes & Noble on Court Street were very positive.) She does an excellent job of making Mrs. Obama the illustration of the post-civil rights era (if that really exists in these Prop 8 days is another question) and culmination of many of its goals, if its primary goal was to have more Ivy League educated young women from the South Side of Chicago, that is.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/13/michelle_obamas_biographer_on_the_nations#

If anyone is wondering what Democracy Now! is, they should know that it's what people who listen to NPR say they actually listen to, so that they don't have to admit to being an "NPR listener," because that might make them sound "too, too," as Grandma likes to say.

The Yes Men

On my commute this morning I nearly knocked over a young woman handing out the New York Times. I briefly considered taking one, realized that I didn't have 35 cents readily available and figured I'd read it online. Underground, I saw the above the flap photograph of two helicopters flying over a mountainous region away from the setting (rising?) sun, with the headline "Iraq War Ends." Really?!?? Was Bush trying to steal Obama's thunder? Perhaps Michelle's amazing, power red dress made W. realize that he was no longer in charge and so he should try to be her new favorite person by ending the "dumb" war.





Oh, but how I was fooled! When I emerged on 1st Avenue I saw a pile of these fake papers. Too thin to be the real thing, too progressive even for the Salzbergers, too much fun for the morning edition, it had other hopeful headlines proclaiming a true cost plan to reflect how much environmentally unfriendly products damage society, a recall of all gas guzzling cars and, my favorite, that Harvard Business School would be closing its doors. (Sorry Matthew! You really belong in education, anyway!) It's turns out that it was produced by an organization called The Yes Men, which is a name I happen to love and find pleasingly ironic.

I don't usually like being tricked but this little hoax brightened my morning and made this very hectic, whirlwind day that much easier.

Flattering Criticisms, New Silly Neighborhoods

Something I had forgotten but rediscovered today is that New York breeds a certain kind of restlessness in me. I've been sick for three weeks straight and really should have spent this holiday in bed, surfing the internet and reading Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen. My favorite part so far is when the narrator, Leo, discusses an argument he has with his "authentic" wife, Rema:

But I did tell Rema that her response was ludicrously out of proportion. She must actually be worried about something else, I said. She had an endogenous mesallaiance, I concluded. She said she didn't know what a mesallaince as, or what endogenous was, and that I was arrogant, awful, a few other things as well. I liked those accusations and found them flattering and thought she was right.

What if all everyone liked the accusations you threw at them? What if they were grateful for the criticisms and harsh words? Maybe, just like Leo, we should find it flattering when people point out our flaws. It shows a kind of caring - an negative sign of affection. I don't think anyone outside of a book would really ever feel that way. And as an overly direct yet ridiculously sensitive person, I certainly don't, even though I'm always relieved to hear the absolute, complete truth. Well, I'm relieved after I cry a little.

That was sort of a tangent. What I really set out to talk about was my restlessness today, and how I worsened a slight cold by wandering in the freezing cold in one of the silliest neighborhoods known to man. I won't name it because I'll probably end up moving there (I'm awaiting landlord approval as I type), but you should know that it's in Brooklyn and it even has a really ridiculous name. It also happens to be the neighborhood my grandmother literally landed in when she migrated from Puerto Rico. She remembers the boat docking and then walking to a cousin's house near the water. They stayed for a little while and then moved to the neighborhood where I'm currently subletting, Williamsburg. Apparently, there were more (possibly better) cousins to hang out with over here. It's sort of a big decision to not live in Fort Greene, which I loved and still has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, the few times I've hung out there over the last three months I felt myself slipping into the same funk of last August, and, well, that's just not going to work this time around. Banish the funk!

Anyway, I wandered all over the new neighborhood and checked out the synagogue, perused the menus of a Japanese restaurant that makes a decent tuna avocado roll, purchased Dayquil and Nyquil at a gigantic RiteAid (one of three within like ten blocks; I told you the neighborhood is ridiculous), and bought a cup of coffee at a tiny cafe with a talkative proprietor with tons of opinions on art (thumbs up to Van Gogh and Basquiat; thumbs down to Jackson Pollock!) and who tipped me off to a Berber-speaking waitress at one of my favorite restaurants (which is run by his brother). I really hope she speaks the same dialect I do, and that I can actually remember some! And that she doesn't think I'm totally crazy for wanting to order falafel plates in Tashlheit. Maybe she'll be flattered, actually.