Must-see movie. Netflix streaming. A 99 on the Tomatometer!
putting the f in flyaways
One of my friends sent this pic of me yesterday. It’s almost 30 years old and he snapped it with his ipad out of a photo album. I don’t know where it was taken; it could be Stockholm, or Göteborg, or Brighton on the south coast of England. Maybe it’s Göteborg, in the fall of 1985. We shared an apartment for six months and spent a lot of time together. Plus it’s windy, and Göteborg is always windy.
I don’t remember those shades, but I can see I’m wearing something black, with shoulder pads. (It’s the 1980s, after all.) Whatever I’m wearing it’s likely I made it myself out of army surplus linen, dyed black. I remember the earrings. Geometrical, plastic, black.
Apart from the shoulder pads I see my own students. Big shades, long hair, fresh face.
huge, huh?
When I was a kid, and saw American college campuses on TV, I thought it was the coolest thing. Sunshine-y, casual, and political. I badly wanted to be there. Now I’m not sure how much of that image remains. It is sunny in California, tho, and there sure are flashes of burning political questions in and outside of class.
not even joking
A friend of mine in Sweden said that at the end of the school year, if she saw a person in their early 20s anywhere (in the supermarket, in the street) she’d turn around and walk in the other direction. Not every 20-year-old was a student of hers, of course, but she felt as if every 20-year-old wanted something from her. And she had had enough.
I feel the same way right now. I’m not so sensitive to age, tho. And I can deal with people in short spells. But beyond that, 20 years old or 60, I will have had enough of you pretty fast.
(You know I’m joking, I love people!)
the vanishing race, circa 1904
Click here to see my favorite piece, so far, in the Oakland Museum of California. The technique is gold orotone, a print onto glass using gold pigment to create a gold-glowy tone. Those horses, and people. Isn’t that something.
skirt is long, to my ankles
Every time I walk down the long and winding staircase at work I’m afraid I’ll fall and break my neck. I wasn’t really close to having that happen today, but as I descended the stairs the hem of my skirt got caught on my clog and a seam split open. The downstairs lobby was full of what looked like prospective students and their parents, but I didn’t see that until I had already let out a fully audible F***! So I went upstairs again, stapled my skirt together, and took the little back staircase down to class.