Live & Active Cultures

Degrees of Separation

Degrees of separation: Friday, November 19, 2009. 11:13 AM. El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA

Fleece Jacket

Four feet of air

A quarter inch of glass window pane

Six feet of air

Steel grid

Gingko Branch

Four hundred meters of air

Cleave in office building formed by two protruding columns of crème colored concrete.

The woman with cabernet colored hair steps into her SUV.

The fine line between time-wasting and team-building.

It is not raining, but it is overcast outside. Suspicious man clutches white magazine to head as he investigates dumpster behind Izzy’s Brooklyn Bagels. I sit up straighter. I realize that it is drizzling. The power goes out in the office. Sequestered in an unoccupied meeting room in the corner, my power outlet continues to function.

My kneecap nestles perfectly into my eye socket—the things I twittered.

Es Regnet.

Forty years ago, I may have wanted a fire place, a cup of tea, a bearskin rug, a Mexican blanket, a Mustachioed mountain man, and a copy of the Joy of Sex. However, the present prescribes new material accoutrements for such a rainy, cold day (in a cold office stocked with snack food that I feel weird about eating):  a snuggie, a bed with a down-alternative blanket, coffee w/ soymilk, biscotti, a lesbian intellectual, and a foreign film (from forty years ago)/book/Harper’s/The New Yorker.

I hate that it bothers me that Daul Kim is dead. That dead, skinny bitch with the apartment in Paris. I am twenty-three—three years older than the dead bitch. Twenty-three. I was nineteen once.

I AM ANGRY.

I WILL NOT MARRY A MAN.

I WILL NOT MARRY.

I AM NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN.

LILF list/women I am insanely jealous of

Ladies I’d like to know carnally. Unsurprisingly, I am simultaneously envious of the following women. As usual, apologies in advance.

Listed in order of recollection:

1) Anouk Aimee

2) Susan Sontag

3) Juliette Binoche

4) Charlotte Gainsbourg (her father too, come to think about it).

5) Anjelica Huston

6) Catherine Deneuve (jealousy only)

7) Helen Mirren

8) Gong Li

9) Natassja Kinski

10) Virginia Woolf

PILF list 2009

I have decided that it’s about time I stop trying to maintain this ever-growing list of people I’d like to sleep with in my mind and create an inventory of it on the tumblr. Apologies in advance.

numbered in order of recollection

1) Jeremy Irons

3) DFW (sorry. I know. It’s true though)

5) Nicholas Cage (yeah.)

6) Willem Dafoe

7) Viggo Mortenson

8) Marcello Mastroianni

9) Harry Dean Stanton

10) Klaus Kinski

*Honorable Mention: Richard Burton

Onna no ni ju ichi sutoriito: a study of cosmetic application

Marisa: minimal with occasional winged swipe of dark, stay-put liquid eyeliner across top lid.  Sometimes liner is left on top lid for days at time.  Wearer not perturbed by crusting, uneven vestigial line.  Sporadically applied lip gloss and dabbed red lipstick.

Orie: black eye-liner penciled applied to top and bottom lash line.  Top line slightly thicker than the bottom line.  Lip gloss.

Aiko: Reddish brown eye shadow applied on upper lid, following the contours of the eyelid save for the fold above the eye to dramatize the illusion of a double lid. Black eye pencil traces the upper lashline.  Lipstick.

soundtrack: Exit Music (for a film).  Radiohead. OK Computer.

Vegetative State

In Anthony Lane’s less than sterling review of Synecdoche, NY. Lane describes his longing for the Philip Seymour Hoffman character from Talented Mr. Ripley, succinctly describing his role by outward display: crew cut and “carroty.”  I was most intrigued by the word “carroty.”  At first I thought it was interesting to describe Hoffman’s puckish character as carroty or carrot like—ruddy, distinctive, overpowering—qualities, perhaps, that may describe a carrot.  I think, however, it was intended to describe Hoffman’s reddish-blonde hair.

What a bad job tastes like

convenient and bad starbucks pastry.

The Bucket List '09

1. Read at least 3 books a month.

2. Create at least once a month

3. Write movie reviews

4. Connect with someone.

5. try raw vegan food

6. eat less meat

7. Walk more.

8. Spend more time in the city.

9. Work on grammar.

10. Quit job.

Don't want to forget this

“It is doubtful if, in spite of her isolation, there was ever a less lonely woman. She who contained a universe did not need the world.” —the critic Louis Untermeyer on Emily Dickinson, after visiting her at home

from MagicMolly

Modus Operandi

I do everything in the most inefficient and most expensive way possible.