SIWINY: Supposing I Was In New York... The Lucid Truth

My greatest folly, when the children were much younger (kindergarten-ish) and I could go to bed at 1:30 and get up at 5:30, for months on end (and I wondered why I fell asleep at traffic lights, with the back of the van rocking and rolling behind me...books, toys, children, noise...and still, it was a moment of rest, being at that traffic light)...anyway, back to the folly: it was to have the New York Times delivered to my doorstep (actually, driveway) long, long before it was in every Starbucks and on every screen. It was folly because, in truth, we absolutely did not have the extra $24.95 a month (or whatever it was) to spend on something so frivolous. ($24.95 used to buy a lot of pasta & canned tomatoes.) Now, please understand, news is not frivolous, but--at the time--the San Jose Mercury News was a lovely little paper (and it would get even lovelier, before bubble burst and all changed) and it cost only pennies, because we live in a tiny little burg in San Jose (which is, sort of, just down the street from San Francisco, above photo). But the New York Times was where I wanted to be, every morning, at 5:30, with my Mr. Coffee coffee and my cute husband leaving for work and the kids not quite up yet, so that there would be an hour of peace....

{Disclaimer: my kids will find the part about getting up at 5:30 a.m. very hard to believe, and even more impossible to remember (they weren't up yet, right?), but I am still married--26 years on June 5th--to the cute husband, who can provide verification.}

Anyhow, the whole reason I got into this nonsense is to tell you that, for more years than I care to remember, I have had a "to do" list of what I would be to doing if, and certainly it would be a hard act to pull off if I actually were, but just if--supposing I was in New York--what would I be doing this week? Hey. A girl can dream, right?

So, this week, I would: breeze by the Noguchi Museum to see

"Design: Isamu Kenmochi and Isamu Noguchi," especially since the exhibit closes on Sunday.

And I would run quick, like Carrie Bradshaw carrying her Manolos' (my kids will find this even harder to believe) in one hand and catching a taxi with the other, to see "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale," at the Clurman Theater, because a.) Charles Isherwood says it is, indeed, "the rare staging of a Williams play that delivered his poetry and his emotional power intact;" b.) it closes next Saturday; and c.) this is something not to be missed: "Mary Bacon's performance as Alma Winemiller, the minister's daughter with a soul fit to burst, rivals anything I saw this season for complexity, delicacy, and lucid truth." (Charles Isherwood). That's what I'm after. Lucid Truth. (Please note: I shall slip my Manolos' back on before entering the theater.)

And then (because I had all the time in the world, this being only a dream) I would swing through the Jewish Museum to see "Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning and American Art, 1940-1976" (thru Sept. 21), run to the MOMA to see "Take Your Time, Olafur Elisson" (thru June 30), after which I would--channeling Mr. Elisson's karmic quietude--do a walking meditation straight to "The Genius of Japanese Lacquer: Masterworks by Shibata Zeshin," Japan Society, thru June 15.

Does that leave me time, in my dreams to catch Mapplethorpe's Polaroids at the Whitney? OMG. I hope so.

Thoughts on a Shinto Office Armoire, from Gump's, and Suze Orman

Okay, I'm sitting here thinking that the Shinto Office Armoire in the new Gump's catalog would probably solve all my once and future problems.  Right.  It is lovely, and it looks so very invitingly elegant and supremely organizational and awfully orderly.  Things you want to be, right?  Well, things I always wanted to be.  And then I sort of begin to remember that there never has been (nor, do I finally--truly--understand, will there ever be) something I can buy that will make all of those dreams come true. And then I sort of wonder why it is that we all keep buying these things, or wishing to, which leads me to ponder how many hours women (and men) like myself spend, in their entire lifetime, thinking about/looking at the things we can buy to make our lives better.  And not buying them.  (How many hours do we spend not buying, daydreaming, supposing we should all have perfect homes unmarred by stacks or snacks or sticky-fingered people who usually happen to be under four feet tall?).  Equally alarming, perhaps, is the other thought: how many hours (and dollars) have we spent buying, and not quite figuring out that it's still not going to make all those dreams come true?  It's enough to make me want to set up my own personal hotline to Suze Orman.

It's all rather exhausting, on the whole.  A bit bewildering, also, since it prods me into admitting how much of a consumer I think I am not but I really am. 

Thank God the Shinto Office Armoire is almost $4,000 (and you have to wait 2 to 4 weeks for delivery, which always seems so long, doesn't it?  Except for the fact that it will reside in your now amazingly perfect little home office for the whole rest of your life, probably...).  Wait.  4K?  The numbers alone jolt me back into reality, and lightning fast calculations remind me that four thousand dollars is around six months' rent (give or take a few dozen burritos) for a college student (we have three in our family), or a year's tuition to a decent preschool in this area, or enough to feed a small family for many, many weeks (or months, depending on the circumstances).

Goodbye, sweet Shinto Office Armoire, and thanks for all daydreams. It was fun while it lasted.  

Wherever You Go There You Are

"How you set out 

on an adventure will

 pretty much dictate

 how you continue."

Cate Blanchett 

Vogue/07

Neurogenetics: Your Red and My Red may Really be Different than Their Red.

A few weeks ago, there was a remarkable article in the Science Times (NYT, 29.04.08), in which Dr. Arno Motulsky was interviewed.  As a teenager in Germany, Dr. Motulsky spent years trying to emigrate to the United States, and--like Walter Gropius, see Bauhaus idolatry below--he was fortunate to be able to do so:  in his case, the window between staying and going boiled down to a mere 10 days.  "If my visa had taken any longer," he recalls, "I wouldn't be here...I would have ended up in Auschwitz, like most of the people I left behind."

It's a good thing, for all of us, that he got here.  

In 1957, Dr. Motulsky asked a question about the negative interaction of two drugs with a set of enzymes produced by certain human genes that "set off a revolution in research."  What does this have to do with design?  In the simplest terms: the good doctor goes on to discuss how one of his new projects relates to human color vision, and a recent finding that "the same exact red color is perceived as a different type of red, depending on a person's genetic makeup."  Amazing, yes?

"Q. What's the point of knowing this?"

"A.  It's exciting to learn that because of heredity, different people can see the same thing differently.  I think this may prove useful in studying more complex brain functions.  

If this were 20 years ago, I'd focus on neurogenetics. 

What's going on in the brain, that's the last frontier."

Doesn't get much cooler than that, as far as I can see.

What do Julie Andrews, Francis McDormand, Holly Hunter and Gene Tierney have in common?

That there's a dearth of (living) mothers in almost every Disney movie is somewhat clear (when last I looked, which was, admittedly, long, long ago). Which got me to thinking, after another delightful & quick talk with a brilliant friend (with whom I've recently had some fascinating conversations)...where (in my humble opinion) are there movie mothers that are worth watching, again and again and again? Not just sainted, non-wire-hanger-bashing mothers, but rich, thoughtful, mothers - the good, the not-so-great, and the perfectly heartwrenching?  

So, for what it's worth, here are a few good mothers to watch...and I'd love for someone else to put their two cents in, someday...please feel free: this is just a start (a decent start, I hope)...

1. Francis McDormand in "Almost Famous" (actually, Francis McDormand in almost anything)
2. Holly "These are our salad days" Hunter in "Raising Arizona"
3. Every single mother (and non-single mother) in "Gosford Park"
4. Gene Tierney in "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (just the thought of it makes me woozy with happiness and longing and that strange melancholy that the cinematography embodies)
5. Julie Andrews, pre-motherhood in "The Sound of Music," skip-waltzing away from the convent in her heavenly, wooly trachtenware jacket, equally fab skirt, and sturdy shoes
6. Ethel Merman in "There's No Business Like Show Business." (...am I remembering this right?  I had such a crush, at ten, on Donald O'Connor...can you imagine?)
7. Holly Golightly, a.k.a. Lulamae Barnes (teenage mother to the children of Doc Golightly), in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (whew...am so happy about this, as Audrey wasn't a mom in "Funny Face," all-time best Audrey--and with Fred, at that!--moment in my universe)
8. AH!  Mrs. Incredible....Holly Hunter, again!
9. God, I wish Judy Garland had been a mother in "Meet Me in St. Louis"...does it count that she sang "Under the Bamboo Tree" with her little sister?  That was sort of motherly, wasn't it?
10. Auntie Mame. Best mother a Patrick could ever have. Just ask Agnes Gooch...

photo, above, taken whilst blasting through 

Nuremberg in the 

summer of ott seven. baby and mother 

were guests at a glorious wedding...i was simply 

a passerby with a camera, in awe of color and moment...

Happy Birthday, Bauhaus

On this day, in 1883, Walter Gropius was born.  Without him, we wouldn't have had Bauhaus, those iconic modern door handles most of us take for granted (see photo of gray doors in the back corridor in Bauhaus Museum; most the photos inside this temple of Gropius are a little wonky, because I had a strong feeling--but I really wasn't sure--that maybe I was not allowed to take them...and there was a very stern, and definitely scary, Frau guarding the single door to the museum), and a bunch of other seriously good stuff.  

According to the current Wikipedia entry, Gropius really didn't draw much (great collaborative efforts with other brilliants ensued, surely, due to this factiod...which, for some reason, reminds me of Einstein's first wife, whom--I have read--helped a whole lot with his homework when they were married)...he barely escaped death in WWI... and he lost his only child when she was 18. 

And, to top it all off, he had to escape--under the false pretense of making a temporary visit to Britain--as the Weimar Republic collapsed under the weight of new horrors.  

If this guy could surmount all the obstacles thrown in his way, it should give the rest of us hope. 

Happy Birthday, Mr. Gropius.