Going Back

Via Dissent Magazine

It seems as though I might finally make it back to New Orleans…

My last attempt was thwarted by events truly biblical: a massive hurricane stormed through, big enough to send the entire city fleeing in memory of Katrina. Post that storm, once electricity and running water began popping like kernels of corn back onto the grid, another one followed along in its wake. I was tangled up in a mess of rerouted flights, seeking refuge with my parents while a lovely Italian couple subleased my apartment.

The entire process comes full-circle a year later, finding me in a similar place, restless and exhausted. I spend my entire day stringing words together, filling blank white spaces with just the right combination of letters to convey precise meanings. I pore over the thesaurus, know 100 different ways to say the same thing…I am a curator, rearranging and re-hanging properly until your exhibit looks just as you’d envisioned.

But in my own life, I am at a loss for words. My own tools fail me. I don’t have an answer for the hard questions you ask, can’t seem to engineer the proper formula of comforting and inspiring. My answers are clumsy and honest, second guessing and wishing I was equipped to offer some explanation, most especially to myself. I do not have the words to bring someone back when they leave, to assuage the ache of death, or to restore your faith.

I want to hide in a corner silently, watching. I want to shut my mouth for a week, stop the nervous, fast-talking that comes from trying to smooth over the silence. I want to not speak, just do. To pick up a hammer and drive some nails. I want to document obsessively in silence. I want to grow things, to build things, to make art for art’s sake. Not to keyword optimize or to meet a deadline or to submit for someone else’s approval, just for the sake of reminding the world that not everything has to have a blueprint. Sometimes you just rummage through the chaos and piece together something beautiful.

The Artists of Golden Belt

In case you've been just a little bit out of the loop, the Golden Belt complex is teeming with artists. The exposed brick walls of Building 3 are practically convex from trying to contain all of its creativity. And it's spilled out into Building 6, where a multitude of new media creative artsy types screenprint and spin vinyl.

It's fun to be up in the mix, despite the fact that creativity comes at a cost. Namely, being kept awake these last few nights by the finishing touches that are being put onto Building 5. MindWorks will soon make its new home there, and since I'm up anyway, I thought I'd put it all into a blog post.

A few Third Friday's ago, labourlove gallery was showing off its brand new windowpanes with a showcase of some local work. My friend and I slipped inside, seduced by the colors filtering through the door frame, and a painting immediately caught my eye: it was Obama, eating an ice cream cone. I loved it. The crown jewel of the entire show.


We stumbled across the artist, one charmingly self-deprecating Kevin McGoff, who was much too invested in his Only Burger to give us all of his attention. He was, however, willing to discuss everything but his art (except obliquely) while simultaneously finishing dinner. His works were part candy postcards next to the haunting House of Leaves style mixed media photo pieces by Luke Miller Buchanan. They suggested that something was off, a world slightly askew, but it wasn't until we'd studied the pieces for dozens of minutes that we finally noticed it.

I drifted through J'Nai Willingham's Studio 925 later, immediately smitten with a red necklace and its matching earring counterparts. I think she must have seen it in my eye, because she didn't seem that surprised when I came back a few days later, insisting that I had to have it.


"Red is a powerful color. It commands attention," she said sagely, gently packaging her handmade work. I have a policy that if I find a piece that I can't stop thinking about, then it's probably a sign that I should own it.


This Friday night, sladesign will be presenting a fashion show of the most recent collection. I love these fabric confections because they are eccentric and bohemian, exactly the sort of thing I want to be caught in while walking barefoot through a backyard garden on an old New Hampshire estate. Those skirts give me daydreams of writing a novel on a sunny porch, my hair long and unruly as a Bumble & Bumble ad.

And what is art about beyond the daydreams it gives you?

Please Go See This...

My Milk Toof

I think it's brilliant...

eye.candy

I am aware that this blog is called "linguistically smitten" and not "eye candy addict," but to be honest, where would words be without design? And vice versa? I've always believed that the auspicious marriage of the two mediums would be a mighty reckoning force. That's what I wished for, anyway...

And when I'm cranking out sentences on the assembly line of my keyboard, I need two things: music and pictures. So I continue to amass an ever-growing list of sites where I can feed my eyes and rest my fingers in the moments when the word feast runs famine.

I Love You More Than ________

Sweeter than conversational hearts at Valentine’s Day, this was created by Paperwhite Studio as a user-driven art project that turned into the most tender declarations of love. The real kind, not the Hallmark kind. Getting one of these would be so so much better than a card.

The Dieline

Packaging design blog. Because sometimes, the only thing that makes you want to buy something is the packaging. In my next life I’m coming back as a chocolate bar wrapper.

My Love For You Is a Stampede of Horses

I find this blog extremely appealing, which surprises me. It’s quite a bit more whimsical than my typical taste, but sometimes you need to opt in for the strawberry shortcake.

Elysium burns

Big, chunky letters, and delicate little scripts. Yum, time for lunch.

Hydro74

They designed deco My Little Ponies. Enough said.

Now you'll be distracted at work and unproductive. You're welcome!

Hamburger Nation

I'm not much of a burger girl, frankly. I've never been much for red meat, a hold-over from my years of vegetarianism and being poor growing up. Red meat really isn’t on the menu when you’re on food stamps. I pretty much stuck with white meat and soy protein sources, that is, until I found DuMont Burger.

DuMont Burger was a little teeny tiny burger joint in my Brooklyn neighborhood that I watched grow from a hole-in-the-wall to an entity that took up two storefronts, no small feat on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. That’s some pricey real estate. I can’t exactly remember how I stumbled upon DuMont Burger, but I do remember many a winter night spent dialing them up for delivery, waiting anxiously for the underfed musician delivery guy to show up on his bike. I always tipped a little extra.

DuMont Burgers were miraculous. If you were really, truly a friend of mine, then I showed my devotion by taking you to DuMont. Every single person I dated was introduced to DuMont, me tugging on their hands anxiously, like “WAIT until you taste these burgers...” Unless they were vegans. Because that would have been awkward.

DuMont didn’t do anything but burgers and the normal habiliments therin, and I’m convinced the specialization is what made them so good. That and the fact that they stayed open until 2am, and after a cold night out drinking and trekking around, nothin’ says lovin’ like a juicy burger in your stomach.

When I left Brooklyn, I mourned the loss of my DuMont burgers as much as I lamented the end of endive salads at Fiore. Those people knew me by name, and used to jokingly call themselves my dealers. Which would be funny, except that I ate one every day for about 3 months. That makes it a little closer to true.

I never thought I’d find another burger to love as much as my DuMont burgers, but lo and behold, just when I was convinced I’d be back to white meat for good, I found Char-Grill in Raleigh.

Something I noticed right away is that they start making your burger after you order it, instead of pulling it from one of those mini tanning beds where it’s been sunning itself all afternoon. Then they actually flame broil it, cooking in those old school diner caps and sort of hopping around to the retro tunes playing in the background. I typically spend ten minutes humming along to Buddy Holly and staring at the photos on the wall of my dream car: a ’66 Mustang, you know, before they changed the body style.

The burgers are juicy and traditional, tasting just like I’m sure they did back in 1958. There are no fancy condiments or spicy pickled garnishes. Just a burger with lettuce and tomato, which I always get with a chocolate shake after my archery lesson across the street. The Char-Grill tagline is “Simpler Times, Simpler Choices,” and I think, thanks for making it so easy on me, Char-Grill...

Girl Scout Cookiness

I used to be a Girl Scout.

Stop laughing, it’s true. Troop 407, to be exact. I was a Brownie, and I joined because a lot of my friends were a part of the Girl Scouts. You can still see evidence of my Girl Scout upbringing in the fact that I remain “always prepared.” In my bag are enough random supplies to get me and another person off a deserted island, or survive a day in New York City. Whichever.

Naturally, my favorite part of being a Girl Scout was selling cookies. Mainly because, when cookie season rolled around, people’s eyes lit up when they saw you coming. They knew that inside your little canvass bag was an order sheet, and that order sheet held the key to bliss.

Girl Scout cookies come one time of year only, which I think is probably the most genius business and marketing move the GS of A’s ever made: it prevents market saturation. There will always be a demand for your product because a) you are the only ones who sell them, and b) you restrict the supply. Brilliant. You thought those girls just sold cookies? Oh no, they are shrewd businesswomen.

Nowadays, I am the person that waits eagerly to cross paths with a Girl Scout and get her cookie fix. Last year I bought so many boxes that my tiny Brooklyn freezer was stuffed with Thin Mints and Samoas; no room for anything else. For months. This year, the Girl Scouts of Nassau County must have sensed this passionate love that I have for their cookies, because those little angels sent me a box of their brand new cookies, Dulce de Leches, to try.

The press release (yes, that’s right, the Girl Scouts are PR savvy, too) says that the Dulces are “inspired by the classic confections of Latin America.” If by Latin America, they mean deliciousness, then yes, I’ll agree. The main cookie is crunchy, but not as much so as a fully-baked chocolate chip cookie. They’re similar to a shortbread cookie, kind of crunchy/crumbly all at once. My favorite part of each cookie were the little caramel chips that were nestled inside, breaking up the crunchy-crumbliness with chewy, so as far as texture goes, the Dulce de Leche’s have it all.

On the top of the cookie is a latticework of sweet, creamy stripes which really give the cookie its flavor. If you like your cookies sweet (*raises hand*), then this is the penultimate Girl Scout confection for you. If you prefer mild, biscuit-like cookies, then I recommend sticking with the time-tested Shortbread cookies to lay next to your cup of coffee.

While I was busy housing the entire box of yummy Dulce de Leche’s, I had a chance to click over to the Girl Scouts of Nassau County’s website. Now, this would have truly been helpful for me while I was living in NYC, so I didn’t have to go trolling around sketchy Craig’s List looking for Girl Scout cookies: you can type in your zip code and the website will show you the cookie booth closest to you. If there isn’t one, the GSNC can hook you up with the council nearest to you, so that you can call them up pathetically and pick up your cookie fix from Union Square or whatever. Not that I’ve personally done that…

For the rest of the country, visit GirlScoutCookies.org, where you can also find help locating your Girl Scout cookie fix, not to mention hit the Girls up on social networking sites, where you can express your cult following love for the Dulces, Thin Mints, or Samoas.

Now, I’m curious. Got any Girl Scout cookie stories?

Resolved.

A week or so ago, I was doing research for a blog post on keeping resolutions for the new year, when I stumbled across this gorgeous Tumblr blog:

New Resolution

It struck me. Such a simple concept, just words and colors, but somehow so profound. I am an avid lover of words, and after such a long time spent dating a graphic designer, I have a healthy appreciation for a sans-serif font paired with careful color combinations. A few of my favorites...





I can't say that I've ever really been one for resolutions. When I was younger I used to make them, but gradually they were sort of replaced by my habit of surrounding myself with people whose characteristics I admired and wanted to emulate: my BFF's chronic positive outlook, my sister's ability to ask for what she needs, my co-worker's gift for getting the squeaky wheel oiled.

These days, I end my year with a round-up in my journal: what I loved, what broke my heart, places I visited, my favorite accomplishments...It's a way to see how far I've come and where, if the year takes me, I'd like to wind up.

This year, I'm resolving to have more fun. I've got the "work hard" part down, so now I'm concentrating on perfecting the "play hard." I want to read some, travel more, write copiously, and maybe chase a little paper.

Who knows? Maybe 2009 will be the year of the Bull.