Mayday

What do closed shops and protesters have in common? Must be a public holiday in France.

Je détesté protesters. They are just a general pain in the ass. I find the entire thought process that the more people you have walking down the street shouting, blocking traffic, causing the police to have to sit there and babysit you is going to make people pay attention to your cause flawed.

The thing is, if people don't care about what you are protesting when you talk to them one on one, they aren't going to care if there is a thousand of you in the street. If it was a stupid idea for one person, it doesn't magically become smart when there is more of you, it just looks like a bigger group of idiots.

I don't know what this protest was about was indeed stupid or not, there were a lot of people, but not a lot of signs. (Which from a PR perspective is a piss poor job.) I caught one a man with his toddler in a backpack was carrying with four pictures of Sarkosy in bright colored make up, and another proclaiming that a group was from the Universite Sobonne. So really, these people could have had a legitimate cause to be out crowding the streets of my newly adopted home city. But after last summer's OWS fiasco's that multiplied all over the world, I am a bit dubious as to the legitimacy of most protests, particularly ones where most of the people look like they haven't bathed in a few days. Echo I guess would be most protests.

Of course I say this after having seen a very small protest in Saint Michel just when I arrived in Paris dog abuse in Romania. So really my hopes aren't very high.

I understand the desire to protest though. My parents were alive in the 60s, as we're most of my friends parents. American society glorifies those days, as they should given what Martin Luther King Jr. and others were fighting for. The people who joined these movements weren't just black people, what made this so special was that even people who already had these rights were standing with the black community saying they deserved them too. It was beautiful that people stood together, but what made it beautiful was not that they were merely standing together, but that half of them were there actually risking their lives for the cause of civil rights for the black community even though they already had those rights. (read: white people)

But speaking for myself, and my feeling of my generation, I think we are a bunch of attention seeking, adrenaline junkies who haven't actually experienced a real hardship in our lives. The only risk to these people's lives is created by the ones they are protesting with, mainly the under reported murders, rapes, and theft in the OWS encampments.

The proof is written all over the OWS movement. Exactly what do they stand for? Obama is a Fascist, Communism, Tax the Rich, The Banks are Bad, the 99%, Forgive student loans...? The first question I always want to ask someone who boasts about being "active" in OWS is, "What is Communism?" not that I don't know, I'm just curious as to what they think it is. Hell, I almost want to ask them if they can spell it.

I'm not saying there are not real issues that should be protested. Anyone want to talk about women's rights in Middle East? How about homosexual rights in Iran? What about the near civil war in the Sudan? Or human rights in China? Should I keep going?

But these pseudo hippy kids with there iPhones and lap tops and Toms want to whine about their student debt.... The loans they took out to pay for school, rent, and those iPhones and Toms they are sporting. Give me a break. Call me when what you are protesting isn't completely self serving. They want to call Pres. Obama a fascist, never mind the fact that they are the same kids who voted for him the first time around, and they will probably vote for him again, unless we end up with the left version of Ross Perrot to split the crazy ticket.

So, maybe I am burned out by faux intellectual protesters who think and act like they have all the answers. Or maybe I just wanted an open bookstore to buy a copy of Ensemble C'est Tout.

Daydream

In the past few years I have amassed an extensive list of what I don't want in a relationship, but what I do want isn't as easily defined.

My definition of a perfect relationship revolves around on day dream I have about a lazy Sunday with my beloved.

The early afternoon sunlight ilmunates the living room. Windows are open letting a breeze flow through our place. I am curled up in the corner of the couch, engulfed in a book, my beloved is on the other end of the couch, reading, doing the NYT crossword puzzle, watching a game or perhaps getting an early jump on work for the week.

He asked me something, "how do you spell conclusion?" or "What is a five letter word for...?" or "Wow, did you see that goal?"

I look up from my book, and catch his eyes. I breathe in deeply and take in the day, how beautiful and perfect it is. Maybe I notice my coffee or tea is empty, so I go to the kitchen, taking mine and my beloveded cup along for a refill. I run my hands along the counter, take in the smells, sounds sensations of this world. The taste of the coffee, the smell of him as I steal a quick kiss before returning to my spot on the sofa.

It's a moment where I relish in the comfort of being so close to someone that I need not say anything. Maybe it's an unattainable daydream, like becoming a famous Actress, or singer (given my inability to carry a tune or really lie) but it is my dream none the less. I curl up with it on my bad days. Holding out hope for the sun to shine.

My daydream beloved is not as easily defined. He's neither tall nor short. Blonde or brunette. He is simply a man who I can laugh with, talk to, sleep next to, cook with and for... The list is endless.

Damian Hirst

Imagine standing in a all white room. A table in the middle, with bowls full of various fruit halves. White canvas squares on the walls. Flowers in pots and butterflies.

They were not shy, when I walked in one though I looked like an excellent perch. Some of them stayed stationary on the fruit, walls, floor and flowers. One looked like it was having a losing battle with the light switch.

It reminded me of the Monarch forest around Pacific Grove. I distinctly thought, "Wow, I need to get out into nature more often. I feel happy." sometimes my thoughts are just that simple.

These little brightly colored insects were part of a larger instilation by Damian Hirst at the Tate. Other parts, like his paintings of dots, which if you looked at them, colors in the peripteral would dance in and out as your eyes struggled to take in the enormance amount of color. There were kaliadscope butterfly pictures that combined butterfly wings and paint, a statue of an angel with pieces of her flesh missing, exposing the muscle, organs and bones underneath, behind her were three paintings and butterfly wings, arranged to conjure a feeling of church windows.

There was also a side that I had a hard time reconciling with the beauty of the above mentioned pieces. Animals in formaldehyde. Some split in half in separate cases so you can see what is inside of them. I felt sick. I couldn't help but react to their dead eyes and bloated tongues. (in hindsight I am very glad I never did go see the Bodies exhibit in Las Vegas, I don't think I would be able to stomach it.)

The reactions to these pieces spread throughout the brightly colored beauty of his other lighter pieces was an emotional one. It's confusing to have both sets of images and feelings flung at you.

But it is also something I won't forget.

Tate Mod

Gallery day deux. And I am in the Tate Modern, wandering the halls and taking in the beauty around.

Some of the installations I don't understand. But it doesn't bother me that I don't understand them. The ones that make an impact are felt.

A particular piece sent chills up and down me as I contemplated what the artist was saying.

The piece was a mirror on canvas. The effect it had of reflecting back the viewer as art in a gallery felt narcissistic at first. But instead of turning away, I stood there. I saw myself. Dark brown hair, my eyes, relaxed, my lips slightly parted as if I was going to ask a question. I saw the instilation in the background, books with pages painted different colors. A girl passed and we locked eyes. I saw her curiosity on her face, mixed with, not judgement but disapproval. I smiled at her and she smiled back.

Maybe we were seeing two different scenes? She was seeing a women staring at hereof in a mirror. There is some disapproval in that in society. A distaste for blatant narcissism. But what about what I was seeing? Of course I was eyeing myself, but it was almost like slow motion. Like the gallery and the day was not speeding by. I saw myself in relation to those around me. I was a living piece of art, moving along in the same space as those other pieces of art.

I started to contemplate myself in relation to others. The complexity of my family and relationships in the states. How I yearned to have the relationship with my mom, the one I know she wants too, but how we are coming to it from such different frame of minds that the ocean between us seems as much metaphorical as it is real.

These are the things I relish about floating through an art gallery. The ideas and emotions that the art ignites in me bridges gaps in me. It connects what seems to be un connectable hopeless.

Arnolfini Portrait

After my arrival in London I set off to the National Gallery to see a painting I have admired most of my adult. The Arnolfini Portrait is by a 15th century artist named Jan van Eyck, and it is truly an amazing piece.

Oil paint on an oak panel the painting was larger than I expected, given that the Mona Lisa is way smaller than I expected I might not be a great judge of the size of paintings. However with its size I don't understand why all of the photos I have seen of it have complete shit.

There are about a million things that make this painting remarkable in my eyes, the built in layers of meanings to the different aspects of the painting, like the clothing worn by the two promonate figures signifies there upper class standing in the community, the mirror in the far back that is encircled by scenes from the Passion, the reflection of the room in the mirror that shows two other people in the room, one being suspected as the painter. The elaborate script above the mirror stating "Jan van Eyck was here" and the date. even the dog in the foreground.

But for me, the depiction of light and shadows, folds in her dress and the bed linens, the wood floor with no sign of brush strokes. These are the things that strike me in the painting. The wooden shoes discarded in the corner, single candle burning in the chandler and oranges that look as though they could roll of the chest under the window suck me into the painting. How someone could convey that much realism in a painting is beyond me.

One thing I did notice as I stared at the original work was wrinkles in the wife's skin on her outward facing wrist. It looked like a scar or burn. This imperfection of her makes me think that the theory of her being dead before this was painted (suspected by multiple art historians, and fueled by the fact that all of the death scenes of Christ around the mirror are on her side,) is not accurate. Because I think that if they were going to paint her after death they would make her perfect, showing no flaws. But that is just my theory.

As I traced the picture with my eyes, from one side to the other I couldn't believe it is more beautiful then I had pictured it in my mind. The lights reflected off of the class that blocked me from reaching out and touching it, but still allowed me to see the fine cracks in the paint, the detail and layers of paint that made aspects, like the chandler, the husbands hat and the wife's veil have a three dimensional effect.

I really can't believe I missed seeing this when I was in London in 2006. As I walked through Trafalga Square I was reminded of that summer. The water fountain where Diana took the picture of me that I used to show of my new noes piercing. The steps of the National Gallery where Brian and I dug through a bag of skittles discarding the awful tasting purple ones. And laughing at just how awful they tasted. It feels like that was a lifetime ago. A different person.