this is wining and dining on easter

*In these past few years, I've come to enjoy dining as a formal ceremony. I'd argue that that's one thing the east coast does better than the west, though America, generally speaking, is rather pitiful in the ceremonial aspects of dining when compared to say, the British (posh afternoon tea; extravagant breakfasts), the Italians (five hour long pranzos), the French, or even the Chinese (huge family dinners, and the mantra is always "go big or go home"). My idea of dining as a formal ceremony is not necessarily fancy or posh but does include multiple courses – or at least multiple servings – with drinks and sweets interspersed, finished with coffee and tea, and most importantly furnished with conversation that feels substantial in the moment but is actually the kind of smorgasbord of illogical and ridiculous topics that one might spew when inebriated. Little to no small talk involved.

*Easter Sunday: my roommate invited me to a family friend's house in Wayland, Massachusetts - about a thirty minute drive out of Harvard Square. It was grey and chilly, but it was nice to get out - out into the woods in fact - and spend a day in someone's home, a feeling I miss when I spend 75% of my time in a dorm with ugly, institutional furniture.

*Upon arrival, we played with the dogs and ate crudites with hummus. There were also Pillsbury pinwheels with ham and cheese. I forgot how delicious Pillsbury crescent rolls are. I'm a picky bread eater, but I certainly do not discriminate against foods-in-cans if they taste good. Pillsbury crescent rolls are one of the few foods that fall into that delicious-food-in-cans categories. After more guests arrived (all new faces to me), we had an Easter Egg hunt for everyone under the age of 28. I was not very ambitious in my hunting and ended up with 2 peanut butter Reese's eggs and four plastic eggs. More talking and loafing around, then brunch was served in the middle of the afternoon. Caesar salad, grits with cheese, ham of course, buttery bread rolls, and fruit salad. We picked at the jelly beans on the table in between, which I ate out of nostalgia more than anything else. Sometimes foods taste better that way. I remember being fifteen and lying in the sun on the shores of Lake Tahoe with a huge ten-pound bag of jelly beans that we had picked up at the Jelly Belly Factory on the way to the lake. We had scored a deal on that bag because they were the "belly flops" - the jelly beans with defects that had been rejected as a result. We picked our way through the bag and at the end only white, flavorless ones were left. Even those aren't as bad as the buttered popcorn and bubblegum flavors though.

*My roommate and I swapped jelly beans. Our flavor preferences don't overlap at all, so sharing works out perfectly. After jelly beans, we were served angel food cakes in the shape of rabbits and tea and coffee in porcelain china, which was delightful because the taste of tea can only be enhanced by the aesthetics of the vessel (I firmly believe this is how tea must be taken with a serious investment in ceremony). Late into the afternoon, we quizzed each other with riddles and logic plays. We overlooked the insignificance of our conversation because the insignificance was so enjoyable, and we lingered around the table picking at jelly beans and chocolates until we knew it was close to dinner time and we would have to return to our respective homes so we could start eating all over again. 

this is the authenticity of absurdity

*Cindy Sherman's work did not resonate with me when I first encountered it four years ago. By "resonate" I mean I did not care for her work the way I care for Mark Steinmetz's photographs or Lieko Shiga's images, images that have been usurped by my consciousness because I believe they are as a part of my life as they are of the photographers who created them. I thought I understood the basic gist of Sherman's work: the theatricality, the drama, the self-consciousness, and the alienation, but looking back, I realize I had merely taken a glance and then looked away.

*On a recent visit to a retrospective on her work at the MOMA, I spent an entire afternoon with four decades of her work. Spending this amount of time just observing and pondering is like taking a swim in an artist's consciousness. It takes this kind of investment for me to actively engage in a mental wrestle with an artist's work, rather than let it be a fleeting sensation or afterthought.

*The MOMA retrospective traces her work from the 1970s to the present and includes 170 photographs, with focus on her key series, including "Untitled Film Stills" (1977-1980), her history portraits (1989-90), and her society portraits (2008). Though her "Untitled Film Stills" are smaller in size, her more recent work is larger-than-life, whose highly saturated and contrasting palette magnifies the grotesque nature of the ideals and types she portrays.

*I want to talk about Sherman's later work, the less famous work that followed "Untitled Film Stills," because upon seeing these works I was able to understand her previous works better. Some of these works are at first glance disgusting and unnatural. There is a historical portrait in which Sherman is dressed up as a busty medieval woman. She wears fake rubbery breasts that hang limply off her chest, a barely visible stream of milk spraying from her nipple. There are portraits of society women dressed in flashy, metallic colors; these are images you wish were caricatures but aren't. Some photographs are sans Sherman in them, messy images of vomit and debris that are suggestive of dark but familiar narratives that elude our day-to-day conversation. We are disgusted at first because these images invade our consciousness even though we often ignore these kinds realities to preserve our own identities. It's easier to evade the absurd tragedies that surround us than to be okay with the dissonance that the absurdities cause. The subversiveness of these images becomes palpable when we realize that this absurdity is a tangible reality.

*The hyperbolic self-costuming and makeup are intentional. That grotesque artifice in plain view is magnetizing and alluring; it turns viewers into voyeurs, with the same affectations of reality TV. On one hand, we sense a difference in the image, an aura that rebels against our sense of cultural propriety. On the other, we recognize this grotesque artifice within ourselves and identify with what we see. This recognition is polarizing: it can be the realization that leads to embrace or the rejection that leads to repression.

*In some ways, the entire exhibit felt like one big hallucination, which is an irony unto itself because the very definition of a hallucination eludes self-awareness. But if the definition of a hallucination is the perception of an absent stimulus, then it very well makes sense that there was part of me that wanted to believe it was a hallucination, even as it was one of the most surprisingly real photography exhibits I've seen in a long time.

this is why far niente

Late lunch at Le Water Bar in Colette, Paris

*As far as vacations go, the trip to London and Paris that my mother and I took a couple weeks ago was definitely not the most leisurely or relaxing. Because it was her first time in either city, I felt a nearly crazed urgency to cram in as much as possible into the few days that we had. I was an overachiever in constructing our itinerary, and it took my mom's gentle reminder that we were on vacation, not a rat race, to convince me that it wouldn't be the end of the world if she didn't visit the exact location where Anne Boleyn was beheaded or see the entirety of Monet's oeuvre. She herself was convinced that she has seen the Mona Lisa, never having been to the Louvre, and although I first argued with her that she hadn't, I soon realized it was better to let her believe that she had so we could skip the anti-climactic and horribly claustrophobic viewing of Da Vinci's alleged magnum opus.

*My mom is my counterpoint when it comes to ideas of productivity and pace of life. The intensity of the academic environments I've grown up in has conditioned me to thrive on productivity, efficiency, and efficacy. To thrive on such ideas seems innocuous but when taken to an extreme, the thriving is not so much living as it is a series of suffocating motions and compulsions. And yet the American culture was built on this Protestant ethic. Productivity, efficiency, and efficacy, in the academic culture I live in, are the holiest of virtues - the cause, the result, and the proof of both intelligence and character. Over the past few years, I've become increasingly bothered and repulsed by this ideology, but when it permeates the environment in which you're rewarded for external, measurable achievements, it's difficult not to live under the same regime.

*All this productivity - you have to ask yourself, on an individual level, to what end? You just need to know how to answer that question for yourself personally.



*Against the backdrop of a go-go-go culture at home, the ceremonies of tea, the long drawn-out meals that went late into the night seemed that much stranger. Most European cultures have a built-in time of rest in both their days and their years. The Spanish have a daily siesta. The English have afternoon tea, if not multiple teatimes throughout the day. In Italy, there is no concept of a coffee "to-go" - you drink your espresso at the bar. You finish, then you leave. The shop hours are shorter in Europe. That stores close for weeks at a time during the year because of sanctioned vacation time seems absurd to most Americans. Because we prize convenience, stores and shops are not people's homes but factory destinations. Still, I'll be the first to admit that in times of emergency and catastrophe American efficiency, on a small scale, is wonderful. When a snowstorm hit as I was leaving Florence, I was stuck in the airport for nearly five days as a result of no one showing up to work at the airports, and the disorganization was both appalling and frustrating. But when I think about what I like about European culture - in this case, the formal treatment of rest and relaxation, the prescription of rest and relaxation into both daily and annual schedules, I'm reminded how enjoyable and luxurious everyday meals should be. How going to a coffee shop to do nothing rather than "to work" is perfectly acceptable and well worth my time. How sitting on the grass in the sun is the most beautiful way to spend a day.

*The Italians have coined a beautiful phrase: dolce far niente. The sweetness of doing nothing, the "pleasant relaxation of carefree idleness" (Merriam Webster). I love this phrase and it has stuck with me since I first heard it in high school. But at the end of the day, there really is no concept of "doing something" or "doing nothing" - there is only living, so live well.
 

this is an English breakfast

*The Providores: traditional English fry-up with 2 poached eggs, black pudding (first time eating this and I loved it), roasted tomatoes, baked apples; miso + apple + brown rice porridge with tamarillo compote. Also, goat cheese curd with honey-roasted parsnips, candied walnuts, chestnuts, & Jerusalem artichoke (not pictured)


*Last week was spring break. I met my mom in London and we spent half a week there. Then we took the train to Paris, where we stayed for 2 days. She had never been to either city before. I'd visited both when I studied abroad in Florence in 2010, but the experience this time was so different - going with someone and not alone; it felt more like a real vacation. In 2010, I felt so much like a nomad. I loved wandering, but wandering for too long can be lonely, and solitude, which is initially freeing, turns into loneliness, and loneliness can unleash horrible paroxysms of the mind... I can tell you that from personal experience.

*This time around, London actually felt more foreign than it did last time. Which is a good thing, actually. Because last time, London was the closest thing to home that I could find in Europe. Hearing people speak English was so comforting (now I am thrilled when I hear people speaking Italian). The first time I was in London, I don't think I actually ate in a single restaurant. I filled up as much as I could during breakfast at the B&B I was staying at and ate my way through the various markets I passed through. This time, with my mom, I made sure to partake in the ceremony that is the English breakfast, taken with tea, eaten properly with a fork and knife, and consumed leisurely over lighthearted conversation and the quiet sounds of an awakening day. Some days we woke up too late for breakfast and resorted to brunch, but no matter what the time, we made sure the first meal of the day was hearty and filling and rich, which I believe breakfast should be. I am a firm believer in breakfast, in slow and beautiful and light-filled mornings. Every day I awake and hope that the morning never ends.


*La Fromagerie in Marylebone: rich french yogurt, homemade muesli (with dried apples, banana chips, hazelnuts, poppy seeds, all kinds of seeds), grapefruit, buttery oatmeal, soft-boiled eggs with sourdough toast soldiers, sea salt, pepper, butter.


(**Actually the best and most luxurious breakfast I had was at The Wolseley but unfortunately pictures were not allowed. Will scan a picture of my breakfast sketch later - duck eggs, haggis, and all.)

this is a rainbow birthday

*It was my dear roommate's 22nd birthday this weekend. I made her a 6-color, double-layer rainbow cake, which was fittingly psychedelic. I also attempted to make glow-in-the-dark gin and tonic jello shots... which ended up not glowing in the dark (they required a black-light, which we did not have). But the night was fun... a midnight celebration, a small gathering of friends and loves. There was plenty of food, songs, laughter, jokes - this is how sleepless nights should be. And the next morning we all rolled out of bed, bundled ourselves up, walked in the cold to East Coast Grill where we devoured a huge Caribbean brunch of cornbread, eggs, tacos, avocados, fried plaintains, thick brioche toast, enchiladas, and mimosas.