Sargent Paints Disney Princesses

Saw a really wonderful exhibition on John Singer Sargent today. One sketch was of a very tall woman, in urban dress energeitcally holding a cigarette. The dress she was wearing made the subject look exotic to me, but when I think about depictions of other women from that time period I've see depictions of others in similar exotic, mod clothing. (Sigh - It looks like you could only wear those dresses if you were tall!) Her eyes were squinty as if she were peering into the future. Maybe she saw Smoky Hill High School prom 1990: she was wearing a prom dress. The woman had a stiff huffy posture and maybe had a stiff huffy voice which she could possibly use to yell at anyone who mae a comment that she didn't like or took the wrong pastry from the dessert tray. Next to her was another painting. This painting was full of movement: for example the grass at the feet of the model waving, mixing with the ocean waving, and a fishing net that the model held out floated over the water. Unlike the woman in the prom dress, you couldn't see her face. Maybe she had a sunburn or glasses, or freckles, but it looked like when the artist painted her he snuck up on her from behind and BAM: woman caught in paint! Both of the woman were very Disney Princessish in the way that they looked soooooooooooooooo devilish and sooooooooooooooo sugary. When they were all sitting around in their sewing circles did they choose what dress they would sew? Did the smoking and energetic posture of one woman and the naturalization of the other tell you about anything important, or just give a glimpse?

A hum like my grandma's

Winding my way through the little corrals at Barnes and Nobels, I finally found what I was looking for. A cookbook for kids, that I will send to my nephew for Christmas, that didn't have too many sweet things. (This was because the gift is meant for my sis as well as for my nephew.) Because it's the Christmas season, B&N was offering free gift wrap, or if you wanted you could give a donation. An elderly man in a cap and an elderly woman sat at a table. There were some brown skinned space creaters who were splashed across the paper I chose. As the man adjusted the cookbook between the edges of the paper and measured and creased with great precision, he began to hum. It was a hum like my grandma hummed when she was around me. My grandma would sometimes preface her humming this way by saying she didn't know the words to the songs. This made me curious and as I listened to her, I wondered what the songs were. It was a busy hum that she made while she did things, and it wasn't a ho hum hum. It was a hum that moved high and low and would seemed to say that she knew enough about music to want to teach me. I never would have remembered her hum, because I had never heard anyone else make that kind of music. What a wonderful gift to find for myself in Barnes and Nobels. What are the words? Where is the music?

Simon Birch

I recently watched the movie "Simon Birch", a movie based on the book "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving. I became frustrated over the cutesiness of the movie, the quaintness of the setting, what seemed to be the innocence of the characters. It was all the more meaingful then when one character in particular did show a sudden outburst of emotion over something that really did matter. I guess the theme of the film is the time we spend waiting for our innocence to be over and what toll that this waiting period and can take on us. Even though some parts of this movie are slow and frustrating, I acknowledge and laud the effect of Jim Carrey as the narrator with his steady, melodic voice which both creates an effect of shedding an "even" light on the journey of the young boy.

Gray, Black and Brown

I jog in the park, around me rise colors and smells and movement which are not only associated with the park but my whole background schema of spending time in the mountians, of painting and of having had many opportunites to watch water. Today the water in the pond in City Park was a dark gray and lifting up in little sails. As I circled the pond there was a family of Canada geese. Canada geese are dark brown, black and white. In order to keep my mind busy, I looked for other places in the park where the geese's sombre colors showed up. One time I found a gray sidewalk curving along the pond, black edging along the side of a chainlink fence and a little kid's brown pants. Put all three of these colors togehter and geese colors are found. I found themn in another way too: two women in their sixties were walking down the path. One of them had a white hat. With the brown of the water receding under a small bridge next to their path and the black of zipper of one of the walkers I found the geese colors again. It was a good meditation to try and try to find combinations of the geese colors in where I was going. To practice.

How Long Does a BOOK Last

EVERY time I meander through the grocery store produce section, I think about Barbara Kingslover's book about gardening. Always, I feel incredibly blessed to live somewhere where there are so many types of produce available all the time. All the vegetables and fruits any time I want them is a blessing but it is also a curse. I have learned how to escape the curse a little with Barbara Kingslover's book: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. Through her book I learned not just that eating in season is ok and good - I knew that - but how to celebrate each season. I can recite to myself the string of vegetables that blooms during each time of the year, and I buy what is in season. I've completed two years of Spring to Fall purchasing. It feels so good to be in the know.

My Favorite Whole Foods

Today I am going to review my favorite Whole Foods grocery store. There is a Whole Foods in the Denver Cherry Creek neighborhood in which produce stands miles high in a geometric maze of promises to fit any style of shopper: bargain hunters, tropical fruit hunters, the truly serious about combining vegetables to make yet unnamed yet inventive dishes for themselves and friends. Next to the produce floor, is the seafood counter which is just as effusive. There are not only shellfish, but shellfish of different sizes arranged 1, 2, 3 in ascending order of size. The colors of the seafood are enough to weep to, or have fantasies about. The seafood deptartment at the Cherry Creek Whole Foods was probably created by the devil, it is so tempting.

My favorite Whole Foods is further South. The produce department is a lot smaller. They have most of the same stuff, but it's easier to navigate because the piles of veggies and fruits are less tall, so I don't feel like I'm at the gap among many styles. The best part about my favorite whole foods is the service. Once I asked someone for a good dessert idea. I talked about my dietary needs. She came up with a certain cheese (I forget but I have it), jabenero raspberry jelly and a thin wafer. Divine. Also, I've shared recipes with people who are working there. I like to make a rice dish with dried fruit, parsley, rice and orange rind. Through a conversation I shared that recipe. Another recipe I shared for was for potatoes, tomotatoes, thai basil and butter. Thinking about pride in our culture, and respective shared cultures, I find that I value this Whole Foods because of the opportunity I get that I really hadn't noticed before to connect with people even if it is just someone I am shopping with.

Confused Artichoke

The title of my blog comes from a Pablo Neruda poem called Ode to the Artichoke. It is about an artichoke, who is growing in the garden with his little scales, and is very serious compared to the other vegetables. He keeps with his scales, and has a very serious dome configuration, while on the other hand the carrots are growing moustaches, the cauliflower is trying out skirts, and the oregano wants to perfume the entire world.

Then the artichoke gets taken to market, and in the wicker baskets, he realizes his dream is to be in the army, to go to war. Men take the baskets off the trucks with a crash and dust jumping up when they drop them down on the dirt road, and he realizes his dream is being realized.

Then a woman comes to the market, holds him up and buys him. She puts him in her bag with some flip flops she has just bought, a bottle of vinegar and a cabbage. So it isn't so much that he is confused about himself; but that others, or at least this lady, confuse who he is.
The woman and her husband who eat him call him the peaceful pasta with a green heart.

I chose this poem to be the beginning of my blog, because the way Pablo Neruda describes the vegetables, and the road to the market, and the woman at the market are all images that surpass any in poems I knew before I read this one.