- los simpson (with puerta de alcala reflected)
- palace laundry
lunedì 30 luglio 2007
List of Firsts, Last Night
(steve)
We wandered the Madrid neighborhoods near our hotel looking for the perfect meal, and I was hoping to add one more -- calamares en su tinta (squid in its own ink) -- to my list of firsts before our flight home tomorrow, . Miau looked good from the outside, but ultimately I had to settle for fried calamari on a bed of iceberg lettuce.
sigh...
Far be it from me however to belittle my more than considerable list of firsts, which follows:
Firsts: (not counting place)
beouf tartare
pigeon
pig lard (lardo collonata)
tripe
mediterranean sea
topless beach
duck
high-speed train
alps
boar sauce
absinthe
lavender fields
We wandered the Madrid neighborhoods near our hotel looking for the perfect meal, and I was hoping to add one more -- calamares en su tinta (squid in its own ink) -- to my list of firsts before our flight home tomorrow, . Miau looked good from the outside, but ultimately I had to settle for fried calamari on a bed of iceberg lettuce.
sigh...
Far be it from me however to belittle my more than considerable list of firsts, which follows:
Firsts: (not counting place)
beouf tartare
pigeon
pig lard (lardo collonata)
tripe
mediterranean sea
topless beach
duck
high-speed train
alps
boar sauce
absinthe
lavender fields
domenica 29 luglio 2007
madrid
- the madrid train station with a rain forest inside
- "los simpson" the movie, advertised in a reflective poster on the street
- i know it's hard to believe by now, i know it's shocking, but steve managed to find a tree bearing apples in a garden and pluck an apple out of the tree and begin eating it under some fountain statue thing in madrid, with all these couples kissing in the grass all around us.
- we worked really hard for this FULL MOON picture, okay?
- "los simpson" the movie, advertised in a reflective poster on the street
- i know it's hard to believe by now, i know it's shocking, but steve managed to find a tree bearing apples in a garden and pluck an apple out of the tree and begin eating it under some fountain statue thing in madrid, with all these couples kissing in the grass all around us.
- we worked really hard for this FULL MOON picture, okay?
sabato 28 luglio 2007
(Port Bou Spain Train Station &) Barcelona
- we would like to climb the mountains above the train station; everyone in the train station is young and wearing a big backpack
- barcelona lit from our hotel window
- a market in barcelona with baby pigs and other weird stuff
- the new way to hold hands in the city when it's really hot and one of us knows where he's going
- steve smelling a flowers (before he blew it onto the sidewalk)
- barcelona atenea mar, nearly full moon
- barcelona from the cable car: bodies and bodies of water
- husband
- barcelona lit from our hotel window
- a market in barcelona with baby pigs and other weird stuff
- the new way to hold hands in the city when it's really hot and one of us knows where he's going
- steve smelling a flowers (before he blew it onto the sidewalk)
- barcelona atenea mar, nearly full moon
- barcelona from the cable car: bodies and bodies of water
- husband
martedì 24 luglio 2007
Ol' Factory
(Steve)
My senses are keened here like toes on a diving board. My nose is a good nose, a generous nose, open and unjudgemental, ready to gulp up every new sensation I can get my hands on and many I cannot.
Every hint of new smell I inhale deeply, no matter even if it is the medicinal paired with the biological of the lavender drying in the back seat of our car and the horse farm we drive past, or the citrus and the sweat on the man's body in the sunscreen aisle in the Intermarche, or truffles and the salt of the sea. No matter how unfamiliar or how odd the combination I am am ready to accept with all of my brain that it may be the most grand experience ever bestowed upon us here in our short time on this earth. There may be a clinical term for this, but I'm calling it hedonism.
There are sights and flavors too, and I don't mean to sell them short or even on option, but scents are free and limitless and always around every next corner. G'bless the olfactory.
My senses are keened here like toes on a diving board. My nose is a good nose, a generous nose, open and unjudgemental, ready to gulp up every new sensation I can get my hands on and many I cannot.
Every hint of new smell I inhale deeply, no matter even if it is the medicinal paired with the biological of the lavender drying in the back seat of our car and the horse farm we drive past, or the citrus and the sweat on the man's body in the sunscreen aisle in the Intermarche, or truffles and the salt of the sea. No matter how unfamiliar or how odd the combination I am am ready to accept with all of my brain that it may be the most grand experience ever bestowed upon us here in our short time on this earth. There may be a clinical term for this, but I'm calling it hedonism.
There are sights and flavors too, and I don't mean to sell them short or even on option, but scents are free and limitless and always around every next corner. G'bless the olfactory.
provence
- steve smelling an apricot we bought at a roadside stand
- the waiter spontaneously offered to take this picture of us
- outside the window from our restaurant, 'la maison jaune.'
- the waiter spontaneously offered to take this picture of us
- outside the window from our restaurant, 'la maison jaune.'
aigue-morte
travels to the town south of st-remy: aigue-morte, and then on to the mediterranean sea.
- PINK dead waters
- girl with windy hair
- couple
- PINK dead waters
- girl with windy hair
- couple
lunedì 23 luglio 2007
lavender vs. lavendin
Fine lavender (below) grows only at 800 meters above sea level. Lavendin, is a clone, a knockoff, and way more prolific and productive, but also is neither edible nor medicinal.
provence
lavender, with head for scale #1
lavender, with head for scale #2
lavender fields we found on the side of the road (lavender unmarked by GPS system)
lavender, with head for scale #2
lavender fields we found on the side of the road (lavender unmarked by GPS system)
paris
pruned trees in le jardin des enfants
je voudrais une grosse meringue, s'il vous plait
some big tower
je voudrais une grosse meringue, s'il vous plait
some big tower
More notes
(steve)
Everything here GROWS. Lavender and figs and rosemary and wheat and iris and palms and cacti and passion fruit and...
Courtney and I found a passiflora vine on a gate behind a hospital on our post-dinner walk last night. I've never actually see one bear fruit, but there they were, the cutest little apricot-soft orange dumplings, dozens of 'em.
I bit into one, but that was clearly not the way to do business: skin was tasteless and the pith bitter. Then on I sucked out the clumps of seed so red they looked like brains soaked in blood and squished 'em around in my mouth like jello and swallowed 'em down one after another after another.
Everything here GROWS. Lavender and figs and rosemary and wheat and iris and palms and cacti and passion fruit and...
Courtney and I found a passiflora vine on a gate behind a hospital on our post-dinner walk last night. I've never actually see one bear fruit, but there they were, the cutest little apricot-soft orange dumplings, dozens of 'em.
I bit into one, but that was clearly not the way to do business: skin was tasteless and the pith bitter. Then on I sucked out the clumps of seed so red they looked like brains soaked in blood and squished 'em around in my mouth like jello and swallowed 'em down one after another after another.
notes
(courtney)
- Steve can figure out directions much, much better than i can--most of the time I am lost.
- I sometimes get in ungrateful moods.
- I clam up and get snooty.
- There is a pull-string in Italian showers in case you slip so that someone is alerted (we learned this because we used the string to hang our clothes to dry).
- Italian bathrooms have two toilets--one for peeing and one for washing your behind--the second one is more like a toilet-looking sink.
- I need my dog.
- European bottles of wine seem much smaller and go much faster
- It is easy to think that euros aren't money at all and you can just spend spend spend.
- You need to make a reservation for a rental-car--you can't just try to pick one up when you hop off the train (or else you pay ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS to rent a car for THREE DAYS).
- Italians are more likely to know English than French people.
- It's really dumb to have a really hot city on a lagoon where all day people look at water and can never ever ever ever go in it.
- I wish my hair were longer in the back.
- Italian restaurants start getting crowded at around 9pm.
- I can pick out with about 75% accuracy which people on the Italian sidewalk will spout English, but in France I can't tell at all.
- Americans give up wine, cheese, and bread in order to get thin, but the Italians and French are the thin ones and all they feed me is wine, cheese, and bread.
- Steve looks really cute in sunglasses. But he definitely stands out as not-Italian. His mouth is really good at faking French, but mine is not.
- Steve eats approximately 1.5 times faster than I. But I can fall asleep much faster than he can.
- When I didn't know any Italian, my brain enjoyed hearing the words, but knowing a little French, my brain is exhausted by always trying to pick out any word I might know. Having battles bilingual dialogues in my brain has been tiring.
- Right now Steve is photographing a fruit of a plant that he picked last night and started eating in the street.
- Steve can figure out directions much, much better than i can--most of the time I am lost.
- I sometimes get in ungrateful moods.
- I clam up and get snooty.
- There is a pull-string in Italian showers in case you slip so that someone is alerted (we learned this because we used the string to hang our clothes to dry).
- Italian bathrooms have two toilets--one for peeing and one for washing your behind--the second one is more like a toilet-looking sink.
- I need my dog.
- European bottles of wine seem much smaller and go much faster
- It is easy to think that euros aren't money at all and you can just spend spend spend.
- You need to make a reservation for a rental-car--you can't just try to pick one up when you hop off the train (or else you pay ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS to rent a car for THREE DAYS).
- Italians are more likely to know English than French people.
- It's really dumb to have a really hot city on a lagoon where all day people look at water and can never ever ever ever go in it.
- I wish my hair were longer in the back.
- Italian restaurants start getting crowded at around 9pm.
- I can pick out with about 75% accuracy which people on the Italian sidewalk will spout English, but in France I can't tell at all.
- Americans give up wine, cheese, and bread in order to get thin, but the Italians and French are the thin ones and all they feed me is wine, cheese, and bread.
- Steve looks really cute in sunglasses. But he definitely stands out as not-Italian. His mouth is really good at faking French, but mine is not.
- Steve eats approximately 1.5 times faster than I. But I can fall asleep much faster than he can.
- When I didn't know any Italian, my brain enjoyed hearing the words, but knowing a little French, my brain is exhausted by always trying to pick out any word I might know. Having battles bilingual dialogues in my brain has been tiring.
- Right now Steve is photographing a fruit of a plant that he picked last night and started eating in the street.
domenica 22 luglio 2007
sabato 21 luglio 2007
Paris in a day
We woke at 7:30 and walked from our hotel in Les Halles to breakfast somewhere in the neighborhoood, espresso and a croissant, then to the Louvre for 2 hours, capped by 300 sweaty stinky humans roiling in a mona lisa rumpus, then exhausted, lunch at CafeRuc, the foie gras for me and the omelette for lady courtenay, then up to the Palais Royale and right back down and out to the Ile de la Cite for Notre Dame and then out to the Ste. Chapelle and then from there along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower and then from there to the Arc de Triomphe and from there down champs elysees past the place du concorde and back along the seine to our hotel again by 6. 10 hours almost nonstop except for a quick breakfast, a quick lunch, and a pee and a coke zero at a bar along the way. According to our calculations it was 20 miles at least.
giovedì 19 luglio 2007
venezia tre
(courtney)
With the light we could be in a black and white photograph. Chiaroscuro. The Venetians love their glass not for the glass but because it is a vehicle—it is like the water everywhere, and it holds color pigment with primary exactitude, and because it is a way to carry light. Chandeliers like I’ve never seen, and everywhere. There are three chandeliers in our bedroom.
We leave Italy tomorrow at noon. Right when we don’t need to reach for our phrasebooks to help us learn how to say the basics. We have come so far since we first arrived in Rome eight days ago. We overcame the early basic confusion about how to flush Italian toilets and what the funny string is in the shower, and now if we wanted to we could subsist as we have been, knowing how to say our wants and our thank yous and knowing how to ask where something is. We learned Italian like babies, just by gathering meaning through circumstance.
LANGUAGE: Now we speak to each other in choppy English and form sentences with too many Italian-inspired adjectives. “This is a quite extraordinary piece of stone work,” I will say to Stefano. “No thank you, I would not like that glass of white wine,” he’ll say in another scenario. We emphasize all the consonants too much. Yesterday Steve helped someone on a bridge. “Gracie,” he said in Americanized Italian. “Prego,” Steve responded in Americanized Italian. Ciao. That's always CHOW in my brain, never an embedded lagoon of Italian.
With the light we could be in a black and white photograph. Chiaroscuro. The Venetians love their glass not for the glass but because it is a vehicle—it is like the water everywhere, and it holds color pigment with primary exactitude, and because it is a way to carry light. Chandeliers like I’ve never seen, and everywhere. There are three chandeliers in our bedroom.
We leave Italy tomorrow at noon. Right when we don’t need to reach for our phrasebooks to help us learn how to say the basics. We have come so far since we first arrived in Rome eight days ago. We overcame the early basic confusion about how to flush Italian toilets and what the funny string is in the shower, and now if we wanted to we could subsist as we have been, knowing how to say our wants and our thank yous and knowing how to ask where something is. We learned Italian like babies, just by gathering meaning through circumstance.
LANGUAGE: Now we speak to each other in choppy English and form sentences with too many Italian-inspired adjectives. “This is a quite extraordinary piece of stone work,” I will say to Stefano. “No thank you, I would not like that glass of white wine,” he’ll say in another scenario. We emphasize all the consonants too much. Yesterday Steve helped someone on a bridge. “Gracie,” he said in Americanized Italian. “Prego,” Steve responded in Americanized Italian. Ciao. That's always CHOW in my brain, never an embedded lagoon of Italian.
Sun Struck
(Steve)
"Oh, yeah. Bloody hell. I'm sweating in here. Roasting. Boiling. Baking. Sweltering. It's like a sauna. Furnace. You can fry an egg on my stomach. Ooh, who wouldn't lap this up? It's ridiculous. Tremendous. Fantastic. Fan-dabby-dozy-tastic."
-Sexy Beast
Surreal. The heat is mind-altering. 95 degree high today that weather.com said felt like 110.
We picked this day to make our way out of our own little San Marcos neighborhood, and first ventured far enough as the Dorsoduro to Peggy Guggenheim’s old palazzo crib of awesomeness-turned-museum. I’ve never been that close to a Picasso or a Pollock. Three inches, no more, a glass case the only thing protecting the howevermany million dollar canvases from my sun-swooned accidental sunscreen streaks. Then a Barney/Beuys exhibition, that only highlighted what an incredible jock Barney is.
We wandered a bit, but never saw much more than the sun and the Chiesa Della Salute (church of good health), the biggest dome you’ll see on this end of the canal. The only reason we went in was because the air coming out of the halfopen door felt “air-conditionated.” Back out into the heat a moment later (no offense good health, just that I don’t know how many more churches and pieces of ancient famous art I can take before that lobe in my brain hemorrhages culture all out onto the floor), walking by way of every shadow we could slink into, and back over the bridge over the canal to our side of again, the tourists really getting to me now, with their portraits against the scenic backdrop of the canal the shot stretching across all lanes of pedestrian traffic and we the rest of the hordes wait patiently while …………. 1……2…….3……. cheeeeese…….. gratzie! ….. and then a reunion of camera and subject-owner before everyone can commence. I charged down the other side of the bridge so fast I knocked someone who had edged into my own lane back and sideways, grabbing his arm and righting him, looking back only to make sure Courtney was there.
We trotted through piazza after piazza and then back out onto the most brutal shadeless tourist-clogged quay ever in the history of human civilization. Every other body moved glacially, every ounce of their energy focused on moderating body temperature, but we raged, weaving through and past all of them, leaping up bridge steps two at a time and hopping back down.
Then our turn and back into the neighborhood shade to our destination: the Irish exhibit collateral to the Biennale. We walked in the building, nodded to the only other redhead in all of Venice sitting at the desk, “It’s just about to begin” he said, and we walked through the blackout curtains. It was, but for a projected video on the wall shedding surprisingly little light on the rest of the room, completely dark.
Suddenly, out of that white-hot unbelievably bodied heavy hot slow sticky walk, we were still, and blind. I could not tell in that room how high we stood, if the theatre sloped down in front of us or dropped suddenly, how many sat or stood in the audience to our right. I stood there for a moment, dripping sweat in steady streams, and ought to have been content to just stand there at the fringe, but could not stop myself from trying to get my bearings. It looked empty, and it was possibly flat, but I could not be sure and had no visual or aural sense at all with which to tell. I shuffled forward an inch, fanning my right foot out in front of me, scanning for the edge, then stepped my left up to join it. I repeated this again and again and again, for minutes, until I looked back and made eye contact with Courtney who I could see in the dim light behind me and who, seeing me, the absurdity of it all having been growing in her all this quiet time, burst into laughter she just barely suppressed. I laughed then too, quietly so as not to disturb the audience, and then looked back to my feet, and resumed my slow shuffle.
I looked over to my right, still could not see anything after all this time to adjust but still could not be sure there wasn’t a group sunk in the darkness somewhere. Shuffle, step, shuffle step, until I saw my own head’s shadow on the projected wall, and realized that it wasn’t more than two or three feet in front of me. I looked back to my right again, Courtney continuing to erupt into barely suppressed intermittent laughter directly behind me, and with the screen at my back I could see that the space was empty but for us, and no more than 15 feet long by 15 wide. The theater was a small room.
I looked at her with my mouth open in disbelief and we both broke out in out-loud muffled-as-best-we-could laughter. She laughed louder and longer than I did and I really started to worry that she was suffering from heat-dementia, that she was going to faint, so I stood nearer to her in case she swooned. We sat on the floor in the corner. Two others came in, sat down next to me no problem. One other came in, turned, walked on them. "Sorry!" he yelled and backed out embarrassed.
"Oh, yeah. Bloody hell. I'm sweating in here. Roasting. Boiling. Baking. Sweltering. It's like a sauna. Furnace. You can fry an egg on my stomach. Ooh, who wouldn't lap this up? It's ridiculous. Tremendous. Fantastic. Fan-dabby-dozy-tastic."
-Sexy Beast
Surreal. The heat is mind-altering. 95 degree high today that weather.com said felt like 110.
We picked this day to make our way out of our own little San Marcos neighborhood, and first ventured far enough as the Dorsoduro to Peggy Guggenheim’s old palazzo crib of awesomeness-turned-museum. I’ve never been that close to a Picasso or a Pollock. Three inches, no more, a glass case the only thing protecting the howevermany million dollar canvases from my sun-swooned accidental sunscreen streaks. Then a Barney/Beuys exhibition, that only highlighted what an incredible jock Barney is.
We wandered a bit, but never saw much more than the sun and the Chiesa Della Salute (church of good health), the biggest dome you’ll see on this end of the canal. The only reason we went in was because the air coming out of the halfopen door felt “air-conditionated.” Back out into the heat a moment later (no offense good health, just that I don’t know how many more churches and pieces of ancient famous art I can take before that lobe in my brain hemorrhages culture all out onto the floor), walking by way of every shadow we could slink into, and back over the bridge over the canal to our side of again, the tourists really getting to me now, with their portraits against the scenic backdrop of the canal the shot stretching across all lanes of pedestrian traffic and we the rest of the hordes wait patiently while …………. 1……2…….3……. cheeeeese…….. gratzie! ….. and then a reunion of camera and subject-owner before everyone can commence. I charged down the other side of the bridge so fast I knocked someone who had edged into my own lane back and sideways, grabbing his arm and righting him, looking back only to make sure Courtney was there.
We trotted through piazza after piazza and then back out onto the most brutal shadeless tourist-clogged quay ever in the history of human civilization. Every other body moved glacially, every ounce of their energy focused on moderating body temperature, but we raged, weaving through and past all of them, leaping up bridge steps two at a time and hopping back down.
Then our turn and back into the neighborhood shade to our destination: the Irish exhibit collateral to the Biennale. We walked in the building, nodded to the only other redhead in all of Venice sitting at the desk, “It’s just about to begin” he said, and we walked through the blackout curtains. It was, but for a projected video on the wall shedding surprisingly little light on the rest of the room, completely dark.
Suddenly, out of that white-hot unbelievably bodied heavy hot slow sticky walk, we were still, and blind. I could not tell in that room how high we stood, if the theatre sloped down in front of us or dropped suddenly, how many sat or stood in the audience to our right. I stood there for a moment, dripping sweat in steady streams, and ought to have been content to just stand there at the fringe, but could not stop myself from trying to get my bearings. It looked empty, and it was possibly flat, but I could not be sure and had no visual or aural sense at all with which to tell. I shuffled forward an inch, fanning my right foot out in front of me, scanning for the edge, then stepped my left up to join it. I repeated this again and again and again, for minutes, until I looked back and made eye contact with Courtney who I could see in the dim light behind me and who, seeing me, the absurdity of it all having been growing in her all this quiet time, burst into laughter she just barely suppressed. I laughed then too, quietly so as not to disturb the audience, and then looked back to my feet, and resumed my slow shuffle.
I looked over to my right, still could not see anything after all this time to adjust but still could not be sure there wasn’t a group sunk in the darkness somewhere. Shuffle, step, shuffle step, until I saw my own head’s shadow on the projected wall, and realized that it wasn’t more than two or three feet in front of me. I looked back to my right again, Courtney continuing to erupt into barely suppressed intermittent laughter directly behind me, and with the screen at my back I could see that the space was empty but for us, and no more than 15 feet long by 15 wide. The theater was a small room.
I looked at her with my mouth open in disbelief and we both broke out in out-loud muffled-as-best-we-could laughter. She laughed louder and longer than I did and I really started to worry that she was suffering from heat-dementia, that she was going to faint, so I stood nearer to her in case she swooned. We sat on the floor in the corner. Two others came in, sat down next to me no problem. One other came in, turned, walked on them. "Sorry!" he yelled and backed out embarrassed.
mercoledì 18 luglio 2007
the tower is not straight (we skipped the leaning tower of pisa, but the not-quite-plumb tower of venice will do just fine)
the sculpture is doing what i want to do
where's waldo find courtney in the crowd (really, it's a game, click on the picture and try to find me)
the sword is pointing to the moon
gondolas sleeping
gondola driver bored and hot, text messaging
the sculpture is doing what i want to do
where's waldo find courtney in the crowd (really, it's a game, click on the picture and try to find me)
the sword is pointing to the moon
gondolas sleeping
gondola driver bored and hot, text messaging
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