I don’t know if you remember, but I started going to art school. Yeah, like a year ago. I haven’t talked much about it, partly because I took a semester off in order to stay on at the Fools. Now I’m back for my second residency in Vermont. Residency is sort of a week-long, intensive, participatory, interdisciplinary art festival -slash- collaborative curriculum planning workshop. It’s wonderful in all kinds of ways, for all kinds of reasons: including the absurdly beautiful setting.
I say “absurdly beautiful,” and I guess there really is this in-credible dimension, for me, being on campus — almost like being in a lucid dream. Running late for a secret book-making meeting earlier today, I decided to leave the plowed path and take a shortcut over a hill, to the front entrance of one of the little dorm buildings. Somehow I assumed that I would simply walk over the snow. Like it would mostly compress under my boots or something.
Instead, of course, I end up thigh high in powder (not saying much since my legs are short — but still). Do I stop and go back? No. Just kept sloshing through, like, Oh well, guess this is just part of walking in snowy places: stumble-hop-crashing around and getting all soaked in the legs.
My “snow-pas” (oh god, i know) happened to occur just outside the picture-window of the room where my friends were making books. I loved the jolly way they laughed.
Boston. (Roughly.) Glued to the radio for both weather and Egypt. Watching movies; bundling up. Making food; eating food. Lovin’ on a kitt’en. Drinking tea. Sleeping a LOT. And catching up with this one.
I recently bought a new camera lens off of someone on craigslist. When I met up with the seller in a sunny Burger King parking lot, turns out she was a mom with a little one in tow.
As I fiddled around with the fixed lens, she graciously allowed me to snap some shots of what was obviously the flyest subject within five miles: her son Elon.
I know, friends, I know. Almost every recipe I post basically amounts to: me quoting Heidi Swanson quoting someone else.
But, you know, most of the time in the kitchen I’m not shooting for originality. I’m shooting for total deliciousness.
This bulgur pilaf with spicy harissa shrunken tomatoes, lemon-cinnamon caramelized onions, wilted spinach and minted yogurt fits the bill. Try it. You’ll see.
Ryan and I both happened to be in Sacramento again for this month’s Full Moon Walk, which turned into a full moon bike ride (hence his stylin’ reflector vest, and my hard-to-detect helmet) along the short stretch of levee that isn’t privatized.
The camera even began to see in the dark, thanks to a cloudless sky and a tripod on loan from my dear sweet mama.
Next month we’ll be in the Bay for sure. I hope you’ll join us if you’re around!
Yesterday on my way home from the Jarvis Masters hearings, I was driving down San Pablo when an object appeared in the road. Only when I drove over the object did I realize what it was: a sharp rock the size of a bowling ball.
The crunch of the undercarriage sounded real ugly. I pulled into an empty corner lot, stepped out to have a look, and sure enough, velvety black liquid was pouring from my mom’s Volvo.
I’d never seen a pool of oil that big. Part of me wanted to smear it on my arms, just to feel.
Out comes the Triple-A card. (Maybe my first time using it?) Before I’d even connected with the California office, a friendly man from the car transmissions store across the street had come over to lend a hand, and an eye.
Looks like the oil pan, he said.
Awkwardly, I patched back and forth between him — meeting his eyes, answering his questions — and the AAA person on the phone. Pretty soon he got shy or bored from my half attention, and retreated to his store. “One second,” I said into the phone, and hollered a clear thanks to him. He waved and disappeared.
The tow truck would be there in an hour. In search of a bathroom, I began to walk the stretch of San Pablo. On foot I got to see more clearly the things I’d sped past just minutes ago in the car. A tiny taquería adjacent to a car wash. A strange eco- toy store. Salvage yards sourced largely from UC Berkeley frats and sororities, brimming with windows, chairs, stone buddhas, a pink sink and matching tub.
When I finally found a place to pee, it was inside one of the most beautiful restaurants I’ve ever seen. A barbecue joint overflowing with antique radios and stoves, Black family portraits and Southern paraphernalia. Where crown molding would go, there were rows of roof shingles.
Eddie, the AAA driver who picked me up, brought the car to a shop, waited for me, and then drove me home. We joked in the massive cab.
Now, there are a lot of important factors that reduced my stress around this incident. No one was hurt. My family can afford the car repairs. I wasn’t late for some important appointment. I was in a safe, well-lit area.
Still, I have to credit some of my calm (even enjoyment) to the dhamma study. This is a practice that teaches us to stay in the moment, rather than wasting time grasping at the future (I should be home by now; It’s been over an hour, where is that tow guy?) or harping on the past (Why didn’t I swerve or something? What was that damn rock doing in the middle of the road, anyway?). Rather than wishing it hadn’t happened to us, we accept responsibility for the continual flow of our life. There’s no escaping it.
And why would we want to? Without being Pollyanna-ish (meaning, I think, refusing to acknowledge unpleasantness), we can still open up our vision enough to include the beauty of inconvenient or ouchy circumstances.
Will I take pains to avoid unknown objects in the road next time? Yes. But I certainly don’t regret my tow day.
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PS: It’s another Full Moon Walk night tonight! Think about taking a stroll, wherever you are.
PPS: I’ve been messing around with new themes for the blog, but I think I like this one better than yesterday’s experimental one. Agreements? Disagreements? Hope this guy works alright for you, for now.
radishes from tonight's Faithful Fools catering gig (Feast Of Fools! Dope!)
Hey friends. Sorry I missed posting yesterday: still don’t have Internet in the new place, though that’s not really a good reason since there’s free WiFi aplenty in the local coffeeshops and library. Really, it’s just been a very very full week: family visit, getting our feet on the ground in the new place (Ryan and I cooked our very first non-cereal-and-soymilk breakfast this morning, using our one pot — a huge soup beast — to boil water for tea). And blessing the apartment, Thursday, with its very first meeting: the Marxist feminist group (now weekly), preparing for a gathering the following night with two other Marxist feminist groups: one other from the Bay Area, one from New York. Pretty powerful.
Anyway, my point is I’ve been feeling pretty un-grounded (oh, did I mention I went on hormonal birth control again? motivation all plummeting; emotionality all skyrocketing), and thus blogging has suffered. Apologies! Please accept these colors (you know how I am with the colors) as a token of my love.
painting our bedroom intimations of a living room -slash- dining room. (kitchen's too small for a table.) if you click to enlarge you can see some cute details, like a shadowy bike in the left background, and the corner of my billie holiday poster in the left front
Happy New Year!* Sorry I wasn’t able to put up a post yesterday, but I have a good excuse: no Internet, because I was moving into a new apartment!
2011 is bringing new beginnings for me on many major levels. After over a year of living and learning with the Faithful Fools in San Francisco, I’m crossing the Bay from the City to the Town, setting up shop in a cozy apartment in North Oakland. The “shop” itself will be the final four semesters of the Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts (through Goddard College) that I started in spring of last year, with the unbelievably generous support of the Buck Foundation scholarship. And my shopmates (fellow housemates) will be Ryan (whom you know) and Mai, a friend I got to know through the Marxist-Feminist study group.
Those are the basic facts; the meanings behind them feel a little complex.
Bittersweetness at leaving the Tenderloin, just as I was beginning to form some strong relationships, build trust, and get a solid feel for the place. Excitement to be living in Oakland, which was my original destination upon arriving in the Bay Area. (The Faithful Fools thing, in the city, kind of popped up as a surprise.)
Enthusiasm and optimism for my first time living with a partner.
And a complicated mixture of gratitude and grief about this amazing opportunity to pursue my dream education, fully funded, while so many other students worldwide suffer under tremendous debt from student loans — a collective yet tremendously isolating form of suffering owing to neoliberal attacks on public, accessible, common-good resources. But that matter deserves a whole post to itself: stay tuned.
As I transition into this new phase step by step, preparing to put lovely kitchen things into these lovely kitchen drawers (above), I just want to thank you, again, for reading, for commenting, for your kind encouragement, for your critiques, for your friendship, for your inspiration, collaboration, solidarity, and love in 2010. It was a year of great growth and change on Kloncke. To know that what I’m offering here continues to be of benefit to some people means more than I can express.
Thanks friends, take care, and be well in the new *Gregorian year!
Kloncke 