William Hazlitt’s “On the Pleasure of Painting,” part of Table-Talk.
Soil switches on antibiotic genes in bacteria.
Sungsoo Kim’s works in glass (via Craft Magazine).
Christien Meindertsma. Pigs and wooly things.
Hella Jongerius chicle latex objects. The shape research thingamajings!
“Daddy warned me about men and alcohol but he never warned me about women and cocaine.” Really I just think Tallulah Bankhead had great hair. I recently discovered Photo Detective, and have been poring over the portraits and the minutiae of their hairstyles and accessories. It got me started looking at other old portraits, and instead of reading lately when I wake up in the middle of the night, I study these faces the way I do people on the train. I wonder about the choices they made in their appearance and what they might have meant. Fashion is a language and anyone who wears clothing is speaking it. There is no such thing as neutral or meaningless choices in appearance. When I was on vacation, I read a book V had on his phone. It was by William Gibson, but I don’t recall the title. It was a few years old and not very good. For one thing, the author kept describing people, clothing, fashion, art, etc, as neutral or intentionally devoid of meaning. No. There is no such thing. It was really distracting. (Also the protagonist constantly referred to herself by name in her internal monologues. Who does that?) And the more fluent the speaker is in the language of fashion, the more meaning there is in every choice she makes. Even disdain for fashion has to be expressed through fashion, right? I mean, if you speak the language poorly, people won’t understand what you’re trying to communicate, even if it’s disdain. If you speak it well, people will understand, even if they disagree or want to punch you. For people who are interested in fashion as language, the challenge is, of course, to say something interesting in an intelligible way.
For C: And speaking of fashion, I still think Etsy’s great, but there’s no real way of knowing how reliable a seller is. The review system is binary and, in dealing with an individual, most buyers are reluctant to hurt the sellers feelings or to be the first person to leave negative feedback. As a result, I have gotten a lot of overpriced, poorly made, but flatteringly photographed crap, for which I have declined to give feedback. I actually tried to return a sweater once, but the seller was so horrified that I backed down and kept it. I satisfied myself by taking it apart and using it as a pattern to make a much higher quality version of the same thing, with soft organic wool, fussily finished French seams, and more elegant proportions (read: sleeves that didn’t stop an inch above my wrist.) I would say my experiences are about 50-50 at this point. I’ve gotten some lovely and unique stuff, but just as much knit fabric sewn inside out; ungenerously proportioned clothing (everyone can tell when you’re skimping on fabric); wavy, unfinished seams with clots of wrong colored thread; custom dresses a good six inches shorter than ordered; and “woodwork” that includes toothpastey globs of putty. A good photograph is the absolute minimum for anything I’d consider buying, but a knowledgeable description of the craft and finishes, along with clear detail pictures, is a lot better.
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In which I move back down in the world: First, I freudfully forgot to mention that I got jacked by two twelve year olds on a beach in paradise. They sprinted up and stole my bag under my very outraged gaze. I roared out of the ocean and sprinted off in pursuit cursing them at the top of my lungs for a good ways before I remembered things like pit vipers and my bare feet and that the back of my bikini was really slipping down. The only real outrage in the situation was that the bag had the keys to the borrowed Mercedes. Much tedium and nighttime mosquitoes ensued in getting the car towed back to the cabin from the lonely parking place at the end of the world, where presumably the fiendish twelve year olds were waiting to drive it away under cover of night. In the hullaballoo I left my fancy twist-tied vaseline filter sunglasses in the car of a good Samaritan. Bam! Mercedesless and sunglass bereft in a single afternoon. I felt like Job, cursed by God. I’m trying to stay humbled because I don’t want anything to happen to my Metrocard and cheap replacement glasses.
By way of a further tropical punishment, a Caribeño-ish Salsa, which turned out rather well after a couple of tries. The ingredients are: jalapenos (although proper recipes call for orange habaneros, jalapenos are all we’ve got in the ‘hood this time of year), onion, garlic, turmeric root, mustard, banana vinegar (apple cider vinegar will do), curry leaves, cumin, paprika, and black pepper. Food process away! Titrate the ingredients to taste, but go easy on the cumin and mustard, which will otherwise overwhelm everything else by the next day. I accidentally-on-purpose smuggled an armload of live turmeric into the country. I knew I’d packed it and knew you aren’t supposed to bring in produce, but somehow all that knowing didn’t add up to any sort of awareness and so I cheerily waltzed through customs feeling innocent as a babe in arms. Rather different than last year on the way back from Peru, when I hardly dared meet the eye of the customs official. Every boot, sock, and t-shirt was stuffed with esoteric varieties of beans and corn and dried huacatay.
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Finally, a new Aure stage involving lots of grotesque stories and histrionic disapproval, usually of V and me. He’s as gentle and wildly affectionate as always, but when we disagree, instead of full blown tantrums, I get meandering stories of revenge told with furious emphasis. For example, during an admittedly coercive diaper change: Gonna pop Mami’s head off and throw it out a window! Gonna dash this diaper down and splash it to a shark! I’m gonna do it! A pause as he appears to visualize this with some satisfaction, then, pensively: This diaper is a balaclava for my sweet butt.
At the parents’ house outside of San Jose, the wind blows furiously, sometimes for days on end; it’s a loud and constant whine, too irregular to tune out. We drove through the rain, past the mudslides and waterfalls and bloated brown rivers to the beach, where the rain continued to pound the corrugated metal roof of our cottage for another two days. Everything was wet, everything was green and glossy and grown over; even the plants here are covered in layers of green and growing things, bromeliads, orchids, and mosses. The towels stayed wet, the clothing inside our bags mildewed and the sheets were damp when we got into bed. The indoors and outdoors are not separate here. Even if the windows are screened, they aren’t glassed. It takes some getting used to each time, in the way the proximity of so many other human beings on the subway does. Nature is leaning up against me, breathing heavily down my neck, and reading over my shoulder, indifferent to sighs or dirty looks.
Another thing that takes getting used to is driving a Mercedes. We have been lent a fancy car while we’re here. It’s a dream to drive through the mountains and on wet roads, especially compared to the tinny rental cars we’re used to, but it’s a little like being in disguise. I’ve never really known anything about cars and after living in NYC for a decade I know even less, so I don’t know the model or anything, but I can tell you that this one looks like it should be driven by an elderly diplomat and his hairsprayed wife. It makes me think of pantsuits and designer sunglasses. I wear the Bottega Veneta sunglasses passed along to me as a freebie by a magazine editor friend years ago, the lenses now rubbed to a fine mist, and the arms held on by a naked twist tie and a mismatched screw, but I don’t think we’re fooling anyone.01 Or maybe we are. On the way into town, a cop stopped us and checked the trunk. What brand is this car, he asked. Mercedes, V told him. Exactly, he responded in mysterious satisfaction.
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I am reading Fuschia Dunlop’s book, Shark Fin and Sichuan Pepper at the same time as I am reading Julia Child’s My Life in France. The latter is awkwardly written, but is exciting and gossipy enough that I can’t put it down. The former is as good as I expected it to be. The author is remarkably self aware, really thoughtful. I will undoubtedly reread. It is getting me all excited to continue to work on my interview project back home in the Bronx. When I have a reasonable bulk of information I will put that whole project online.
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And a list:
Pan Toasted Watermelon Seeds (Just toast them in a pan.)
Taoist pills of immortality, among other things
We are in the land of happiness and spousal ancestors now, at the beach in the southern Caribbean coast. I have been looking forward to being here for months, but as usual I spent the first three or four days trying to stop feeling inexplicably late. I would sit on the beach for a while, remark on the waves, sunset, trees, you-name-it, and bound up to demand what’s next. Yesterday I finally unsnapped and took a two hour sprawling snoring sticky nap with the baby in the afternoon while V worked. (He’s staying on top of things, though I’m not getting much done. Next time we will arrange for a babysitter in advance.) Afterward we went to a little place near the beach to drink Campari and snack happily on french fries and a “carpaccio” of raw fish. On Saturday we went to the little farmer’s market where we bought, among other things, some of the most complex and delicious honey I have ever had. It tastes first of pure honeyness, then flowers, then like a fruit reduction of cas and lime and passionfruit and some other tropical fruit I can’t identify. (I have eaten up half the bottle already in an effort to understand the flavor.) The farmer and his wife from whom we bought it have a workshop up the hill north of town, which we visited two years ago. I will go back and buy banana vinegar, cacao butter, coconut oil, and lots of chocolate in a variety of forms before we leave. We tasted a snake fruit and spoke with Ancel Mitchell. I bought her booklet on local plants and food and lots of her dried fruit for Aure. The booklet describes local produce and edible wild plants. For someone from a temperate climate, the riotous fecundity is dizzying, the vivid colors and mad shapes all look suspiciously fleshy and potentially poisonous. (I’m pretty sure I wrote once about tasting some fruit at the beach that numbed my whole head, throat and hands. Tasty! Lethal! Yesterday a Canadian woman was telling me how to know when you’ve eaten a piece of fruit recently sat on by a poison dart frog. She claims it feels about like that.) It’s impossible to know where to start. (Ancel describes people who come to the farmer’s market, look around and end up sheepishly buying an apple from Washington state.) In fact, maybe it’s that way for the Costa Ricans too. I’ve always wondered at the simple and mostly quiet food here. The common dishes rely on a few consistent ingredients. Made indifferently, they taste, well—indifferent. Though there are exceptions: the grilled pork belly on a corn and flour tortilla with a heap of pickley vegetables and carroty hot pepper sauce on the street, spit roasted tepesquintle downstairs at Le Monastaire, a sticky-tender-crispy pork chop in chocolate sauce in an anonymous Caribbean soda, a simple fish tartar and a tropical fruit flambé at La Parcela, some astonishing fish tacos and cold avocado soup at a tiny hotel south of Dominical, brothy corn and pork tamales wrapped in banana leaves, cheeses and raw creams from Turrialba, a very spicy patty from a covered basket on the arm of a fat old lady who waddled out of the forest like an arthritic good fairy in the park at Manzanillo, Torta Chilena (not Chilena at all, but very Costa Rican and dreamy and easy to find), lots and lots of chicharron and gin with gingerale. Oops– now I am just listing good food I have eaten here and I will stop because it is easily findable in the same ways it is elsewhere.
