New Pilgrimage Site: Rabbit in the Italian Alps!

From the Gelitin (cooperative of 4 artists) website: (I've highlighted my favorite parts.)
Hase / Rabbit / Coniglio
Artesina, Piemont, Italy
2005 - 2025 

The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent; and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy. 


The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbit's body, a country dropped from the sky; ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines. 


Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel.


Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside.
 Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.


I love the rabbit the rabbit loves me.


After almost 5 years of knitting the rabbit found its final place in the Italian Alps (close to Cuneo). It waits there to be visited by you. You might even take your time or check back every now and then as the rabbit will wait for you 20 years from now on.

 You can see him on Google maps!

How awesome would it be to lay on the rabbit? And then to walk "down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowels?!?"

Sundays with Cecil (and RuPaul's Drag Race)

I've already watched my favorite sick time movie Gosford Park, so the Hubs and I are on to Upstairs, Downstairs, which features some fabulous clothes and, wait for it, a diplomat and his family! There's a Cecil Beaton episode, which reminded me of my favorite Beaton photograph (above, 1948, Charles James gowns) of [what I like to imagine] a bunch of girls gossiping about the last episode of RHONJ. For reals. More Cecil:

Greta Garbo

 Marilyn

Tallulah Bankhead

Oh, hi. How'd you get in here? Carl introduced us to RuPaul's Drag Race. Favorite quote so far: "There's no 'i' in 'team.' But there's a 'me,' bitch."

What is it with girls and horses?

I'm home sick again this weekend. This cold is turning into a bronchial nightmare. Boo. Anyhow, I wanted to post some work from other artists I've been looking at online (especially since I got a note from Kristin saying that Shishkin's work was on the scary side!). There's a photographer from Latvia who lives in Sweden named Ulrika Kestere, and her work is quite dreamy. And she likes horses like the rest of us!

 

Ulrika Kestere's blog Ulicam features more of her work and thoughts about her process. I find her blog really inspiring and refreshing after a day at work. Reminds me of all my creative friends out there. :)

We have lemons!

The lemons in the picture look a little emo, but more importantly: We have lemons! Our lemon tree is making lemons. They're kind of green. I hope that's okay. Speaking of food, I forgot to blog about our dinner at Vermilion in Alexandria with Brian and Sherry. I actually photographed the dishes which I haven't done in...years?  Behold the foam!

  Lobster Tortelloni. With chilies. Yummm.

 Rockfish, orecchiette, clams, chorizo, baked basil, olive tapenade-y thing on the bottom.

  Strip loin but really, I just want to post dessert oh my goodness look at the figgy toffee pudding with caramel and sour cream ice cream:

It looks like a brown blob, but then...it was so much more? Seriously haven't felt this great about a dessert since St. John's in London (if you skip all the gelato from Italy). Brian made up a story to the waitress about how rats jumped on our table and ate our figgy toffee puddings so we were all going to require more helpings. Didn't work. By the way, the Prez took his lady Michelle here on Valentines Day. Yup. Classy like the Prez. Except he probably doesn't make up lies to get free stuff.

Speaking of the Obamas, when the Hubs and I went to the Alvin Ailey performance a few weeks ago (so amazing!), they invited me onstage so I could do my special "move:"

Anyways, before the performance started, I scanned the crowd with my binoculars when I saw a girl who looked like Sasha. And then Malia. I saw Michelle's ARMS! And then a million Secret Service agents. All this happened the same week I saw Madeleine Albright working out on the elliptical machine. They really ARE just like us! Though I'm not sure Madeleine Albright is studying the same kind of literature:

 This is my future.

I embrace it.

You like art? I like art!

I don't know if it's because I'm inside a windowless office all day going blind over spreadsheets and MS Outlook, but recently (and that's after work) I've been looking at photography and pictures of art on the interwebs, as opposed to, uh, *cough cough* blogging. Oh, internet, how I love the way you make it easy for me to experience a little creative outlet during the day as my soul is being sucked dry by crazies. Anyhow, I came across the artwork of Dasha Shishkin, and it could be because I've been sick for five days, but I really like her paintings and drawings of figures which look like they're either tearing someone apart with their mouths or tearing someone apart by coming through someone's birth canal:

The bouffant is a nice touch, too, I think. The painting above is called Afraid of Certainty, 2009.

I love her titles, too. This one is I don't want any problems, none what so ever, 2007. Heh.

 

Do you get a Van Gogh vibe from this one (If less is more, nothing is everything, 2001)? Hands and feet often go missing in her work. So...that's what I've been looking at *shifts eyes to the side.* And I like to insert stage direction into my writing now. I wish I could do this at work, like: "...would like to request clearance on this *rolls eyes.*" I told you this blogging thing was getting awkward. More to come!

February, by the way, has been quite the jackpot for seeing friends -- shared macarons with Fraulein Kristin who flew in from Seoul, did some yoga with Laura-of-Sicily fame, and tomorrow, our friend Carl arrives from Beijing. Also I found out our friends Alex and Sarah are coming back to DC in May! Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Like FNL-level warm and fuzzy.

Have to go before this post veers off into a "did you see the season finale of Downton Abbey?!" deal.

Now it's getting awkward.

I post so little about so little that this blog is beginning to feel like a formerly close friend who you run into in the street, and she's kind of cold towards you because you've neglected your girlfriend duties and haven't checked up on her in a while, so you're like, but look at all my photos of cute animals ha ha ha ha ha aren't we comfortable again?!

But I've decided actually, that this blog is cool with it. She's Bulgarian, after all, and so she's got her own thing going, where she can talk or not talk for hours (weeks!) on end, and she's absolutely cool with no outward trajectory whatsoever. A very chill friend, indeed. She might bore you guys with obits (RIP, Whitney -- my favorite song) and furry animals (reminds me I have to show you this photo of a stoat) and Nicki Minaj videos (she's amazing and you know it), but she would like to make it up to you with a trip to Georgia (the STATE, y'all!) and France (oui, c'est vrai) and maybe other creative endeavors, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. I still want this relationship to work.

Falling in love with the Internet again...

Did everyone else know about Pinterest except for me?! How else was I supposed to find photos of incredibly tiny polar bears? Is this even real? Also, look at this retouched photo of Joan Crawford:

I feel like writing a letter to daddy, I'm so excited! (That's a WHTBJ reference, btw, so you know, I don't literally want to write a letter to my father about this. But STILL.) Marlena Dietrich kissing Edith Piaf: 

A lemon bear:

I said: A LEMON. BEAR.

"I am too grown for this."

This is the kind of thing I'm doing in DC.

My completely dorky obsession

Color by COLOURlovers
The Colour Schemer app is so much fun! I'm totally obsessed with making color palettes, posting them, and "loving" people's palettes. It helps me unwind, okay?! (Painting by Schiele, btw.)

Night after full moon...

Back On (or British, American, British)

Yay, Season 2 of "Downton Abbey" premiered last night on PBS! I think they're playing it all week. Let's hear it for juicy period drama! (By the way, I hope all of you are following the casting of the Les Miz movie musical -- how do we feel about Taylor Swift as Eponine? Anyone else a little "Meh?") And in numismatic news:

A 1793 penny from the first year that America started minting coins sold for a million dollars this weekend! Everyone check your change NOW. (The Hubs is super excited because he collects coins.) And finally we have the only thing that could have made "Downton Abbey" better:

No, it's not a Gosling. It's a Cumberbatch, who is also in the Sherlock Holmes series with Martin Freeman (of Tim Canterbury "Office" fame) and who was in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," which I saw this weekend. The movie was fun and suspenseful, even up until the last 30 seconds when I was like, "Huh?" But still, I liked Cumberbatch's three piece suits.

Happy Friday!

Is it 60 degrees where you are?

Can we consider the pajama jean?

They come in skinny and flare.

Portrait, room, portrait

Computer spring cleaning! I have several of these random photos on my desktop which I presumably save to use as inspiration for whenever I finally become that stylish and aloof Dutch librarian whose love for Alain Delon films has led to unhealthy relationships with men and salty licorice. Are those chinchilla throw pillows?

But then, I also save photos like this:

I love it when I do spring cleaning, and nothing gets thrown out.

Happy 2012! (Did anyone else poop out at 2 AM?)

Hope everyone has a great year! Hopefully, I'll be more productive blogging-wise in 2012, though things are already worrisome given that I started yawning at 10 last night. That's sad, right? I can't decide if I started off 2012 right: woke up to eat Thai food, took a three hour nap, about to eat a brownie. Is that decadent or gross? Don't answer that.

I'll just read a book instead...

Mm, Toasty

Hope everyone had a happy holiday! I just loved this photo, "Vova and Nose," by Olya Ivanova, which I found at the Verve Photo website:
“This picture was shot in Gorelovka, a village in Siberia 800 km from Novosibirsk. It was for a story about hermits living in a village that historically was a place to escape and hide. Many years ago Christian old believers came here to avoid church reform. Then ‘kulaks’ (wealthy peasants) chose this place to escape from Stalin’s repressions. Now many ‘new world antagonists’ settle here to live without passports, personal tax numbers, church and government. Vova is not a hermit, he is just a local, who works as a stove-man in winter and as a saw mill worker in summertime. Each day we visited and started with beer and finished with vodka, the usual life here. We listened to his old gramophone or rode on his Soviet bike across the fields to drink from a natural source of water. It was pure happiness. Vova was sitting behind the stove, it was the end of September and quite cold. His cat Nose all of a sudden jumped on his shoulder and stared at me."

Hi...hi.

(Watch on mute.)

YES.

The twins are all growed up.

RIP, Pusuke

I know, I know, enough with the obits, but today the world's oldest dog passed away. Pusuke was 26. And, of course, Japanese!

The Apple Sauce

I have to re-post this (thank you, Mr. Finer Things). There's a website called Damn You Auto Correct. I'm sorry, but I've been laughing all night about the Motts apple sauce. It's not that funny. But I can't stop laughing. There are so many...

PS. This is a way better post than what I had planned which was an even-the-Hubs-couldn't-approve-of-this: NFL Oakland Raiders Womens Mystic Memory III Thong. I have a question about every single word here, except for thong.

Failed NaNoWriMo attempt leads to reliving of yesterday's parties

So. Did you know November was National Novel Writing Month? Oh, yes. And while it wasn't a complete failure on my part (at least I started something?), I did manage to confuse myself while writing a murder mystery. That is: I still don't know how to solve my own mystery, so it's unfinished. Because I confused myself. With my own story.

But, while I was doing "research" -- rifling through old art history notes in order to sound convincing that the victim was a diligent art history major (and so, a total bitch who totally deserved it) -- I found some things.

This clipping is from around the year 2000: Post-grad, pre-Hubs, getting bullied by trannies in Baltimore. I had met Future Hubs, but he still sometimes called me "dude" and participated in that horrible 20-something man-child rite of passage: Mustache November. I was unemployed. Living in the HoHo after having gotten a degree in...I'd rather not say. (Doing SO much better now, btw, having found a job which, when you tell people what you do, they physically back away because they don't want to get stuck talking to you. It's a worse reaction than when I told people I worked in IT. In a vault. With mail. In a basement.)

Anyhow. Here's a little nugget for you: If you're cutting out your horoscope and saving it to confirm that you're feeling down, you might be 23. I believe the last line spoke to me: "The scene reminds me of you, my dear: blooming, as you are, in the midst of an environment that outwardly seems inhospitable." A former MFA grad in poetry must have written this.

There's more:

It says: "christmas 2000 honey bear, dried daisies, turkey dinner, can of corn, phone calls, smoking out in the cold, and Hope the whippit dog"

Was someone feeling a little sorry for herself? WTF happened Christmas 2000?! I typed this on someone's typewriter and saved it. Is someone missing their dog Hope? Geez.

I must have finally started understanding New Yorker cartoons, because I cut this one out and saved it:

My favorite find, though, as I was searching for novel-y substance, is this flier (and others) I made for Cecily's parties:

This one has Catherine Deneuve, and it says "hey guy, it's the witching hour" in that e.e. cummings, choppy, meaningful way. Fun! It was a Halloween party. (Get it? Witch-ing hour? Eh?)

But wait! My most favorite party was the "I Nida Bloody Mary Party." Ces hosted it for my 23rd birthday, and Maggie (where are you, Maggie?!) brought jugs of bloody mary mix from some tavern in Annapolis:

Aw...Again with the broken meaningful lines.

But then...things get a little complicated:

How am I not a gay man? I conceived this flier for Future Hubs' and his roommates' New Year's party. By this point, I think Ces had already fled to New York. And my "work" is starting to feel a bit forced. It says, "Ma'am, what's my motivation here?" And then she says, "Well, It's Midnight At the Oasis, baby." 

I can tell you exactly how many of these fliers were distributed by Future Hubs: Zero. And truly, I was confused as to why he never passed them out.