artmaking... and consumer addictions

This book is amazing:



Art & Fear: Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland.

If you make art, or want to make art, or think about making art, you should read it immediately. It perfectly describes my biggest pet peeve--people that don't make art because they think they're not geniuses:

"...the prevailing view of artmaking today--namely, that art rests fundamentally upon talent, and that talent is a gift randomly built into some people and not into others. In common parlance, either you have it or you don't....This view is inherently fatalistic--even if it's true, it's fatalistic--and offers no useful encouragement to those who would make art. Personally, we'll side with Conrad's view of fatalism: namely, that it is a species of fear--the fear that your fate is in your own hands, but that your hands are weak." (2)

I love that. The effort, the courage, the act of making art for yourself will change you, even if it's never noticed by anyone else. It's so worth doing.

In other news, I bought a beautiful wool Banana Republic peacoat with bell sleeves today. It's black, of course, and makes me feel mysterious, like I should be walking around San Francisco in a fog and staring at a painting for hours in an empty museum.

Things have been going really well lately. You know you're going to have a good week when someone gives you an orchid and twenty bags of Haribo gummy bears. La la la, my life is rad.

Totally Unsolicited Cooking Overshare

So today I came home all droopy and woozy from not eating enough, so I ran over to the Safeway to purchase some food. And what did I purchase but all of the ingredients for an amateur stirfry!

ARIEL'S FIRST ATTEMPT SPICY TOFU STIRFY (Ariel's F.A.S.T. Stirfry... ho ho ho, pun pun, yeah I just want to be Mark Bittman nom)

First off, start making some rice so it'll be done when your stirfry is. I'm very bad at timing.

Ingredients: My approach is, use however much you want. It's your food.
garlic
ginger
dried red árbol chiles
salt n' peppa
soy sauce
rice vinegar
tofu ( I use firm)
snow peas in their pods
red cabbage
brussel sprouts
chard



1. Splash some soy sauce and rice vinegar in a big pot. Crumble up your tofu with your hands (ooh kinesthetic learning!) and toss it in the pot. Dice up (or grate, whatever, I don't own a grater) your garlic and your ginger, toss that in.
2. Okay. I bought árbol chiles at Safeway because I'm ignorant and don't know my chile taxonomy. It turns out they're really really fucking spicy. So, dice them up very fine... or use less spicy chiles if you're that kind of girl.


3. Let that all simmer/saute on medium-ish heat while you chop up some red cabbage (I used about half a head) and some brussel sprouts (or sprout, rather, I didn't use very much because I discovered exactly how spicy they are raw). Throw those in. Throw in your snow peas.



4. Cover and let that simmer for awhile, adding more spices (like pepper) as you see fit. I splashed on more soy sauce pretty much continuously, but that's because I'm addicted to sodium.
5. Now chop up the red chard. Not very small pieces, because it wilts in the pot. When you put it in, stir the whole mess up so the chard is kind of at the bottom. Then cover and let simmer for a few minutes until the chard has wilted.
6. Serve!


Turned out pretty good, but next time I'd use more tofu in proportion to the veggies, and I'd use waaay more garlic than I did. And I'd magically become better at making rice that isn't a total soggy failure. But you know, it's a start.

Fashion n' Feminism hollerback

So.

My ideas/responses to the debate about femme vs. feminist vs. fashionista go something like this:

1. Circling around in my brain is the thought that to truly move beyond oppression, I have to move beyond defining myself in opposition to the oppression.
a. That doesn't mean I shouldn't be perceptive about the intersections of the oppressor's desires and my desires. That just means I shouldn't automatically orient my own values and aesthetics and desires in opposition to the oppressor's.
b. I have been scared of walking into my Women's Studies class or into the Women's Resource Center in high heels, and have been consciously making my daily outfits with that in mind. BUT, my Women's Studies professor brought up how all of the infighting within the movement about what Real Feminism entails only serves to steal focus from more concrete actions for change. FeminismS, right? Self-defined. I already think critically about almost every single fucking action I take (hahaha self-diagnosis lolz) and I don't need a consensus to back up my decision to wear "feminine" clothes.

2..... I forgot what 2 was going to be. I'm pretty sure I covered it in the rambling-ness of 1. Maybe 2 was just going to be, all of that said, it's really fucking hard to trace where "my" values/aesthetics came from. And I can't deny that part of my aesthetics are rooted in wanting males to desire me. And maybe that's sick, or maybe that's part of my sexuality.... I can't accept feeling guilty all the time about it, though. I'm pretty anti-guilt. Not anti-accountability. But anti-guilt, definitely.

Alexander McQueen & the 12-inch Heel

So, y'all know how much a looooove a fashion blog. And nearly EVERY fashion blog I read regularly has had a post up about McQueen S/S 2010 and the crazy-cray shoes he sent down the runway. Everybody in the fashion-blogosphere is awash in enthusiasm about the collection, it seems, whereas everyone NOT obsessed with fashion is mystified. Feministing posted a link to this commentary on the New York Times website with the following commentary of their own: "Various writers consider the question of why many women wear high-heels. No one goes with the shortest answer: Patriarchy."

(image totally ganked from White Lightning, with apologies)

What are we, as fashion-loving feminists, to do? Are they right, that our high heels are tools of oppression? I know they were designed to make women more attractive to men by forcing us to stick our hips out in weird ways and look baby-making ready or something, and I know they're debilitating in terms of walking/running, and that in a variety of ways, they're really obviously tools of oppression. But that hasn't stopped either us from buying them-- are they just one of the many feminist issues we give up on as being too difficult to be feminist about, like not saying the word "guys" (which I've felt guilty about ever since I read an article on it in Bitchfest, but which I have not stopped saying)? And if they are, what makes high heels, or the colloquial use of the word guys, or letting boys open doors for us, such hard symptoms of oppression to ditch? Should we ditch them, or reclaim them, or support them while feeling guilty or what?

I don't really wear high heels, cuz I'm a baby about how much they hurt my feet, but I know you do, and maybe your response is just, fuck it, which I'd understand, cuz thinking about this stuff is exhausting and guilt-making. But I'm curious about your feelings on the subject, and whether or not you feel like the shortest answer really is patriarchy. Well, maybe the shortest answer to everything is usually patriarchy. Ha ha ha.

(Ooh, in an ironic twist, I am wearing this shirt right now, purchased at Buffalo Exchange yesterday. And when I bought it, I totally thought about how it was kind of glorifying that like, sexy femme fatale male-fantasy-of-female-empowerment kind of thing, with the high heel and all. But I decided I could probably work with that, and that wearing it with my short hair and hairy armpits was kind of a fuck you to that idea, so I bought it. And I'm totally digging it. Even more layers to this debate!)

books books books

So, today I went to work with Sam, so that I could have access to internet. And this morning, on the way, Sam had to go get cups and lids at a "sister cafe" because his cafe had run out of them. The "sister cafe" happened to be in a bookstore, and while I was bumming around, I discovered something wonderous! AUDREY NIFFENEGGER'S NEW BOOK IS OUT. And Sam bought it for me!!

I am reminding myself that half the reason The Time Traveler's Wife is my favorite book is that it was the perfect love story, and because I don't imagine this one is a love story as well (I think it's supposed to be a ghost story set in London?), I will probably not love it AS MUCH, but I will hopefully still love it a lot. The first line of the summary, which I read before I realized that the summary would give things away that I didn't want to know, said something about a pair of twentysomethings, so that bodes well for me. I'm stoked.

I am also stoked about read-ins! Can we build a fort?! And bring our stuffed animals (Sam managed to get me a fuckin' awesome stuffed ELEPHANT from the claw machine at our local diner which I now sleep with every night)? And make delicious food to go with our books? It can be a potluck read-in! Perfect!

Croon, croon, spit, fall.

What do I have to say, anymore?

And why do I feel shame for not being edited enough, lyrical enough, relevant enough?



I'd like to write stories, short ones, maybe true. I'd like to invoke longing and clink the ice in my narrative glass with great finesse and subtlety. And to great applause, of course. But I don't have longing right now, and if I do (which I do) I hate myself for having it. And I'm no Don Draper; I've never had that metaphorical glass. I've always held on too tightly. And I've always chewed on my ice.

Hey, reader! If this was published, they'd tell you not to trust my narration, because the narrative character is unreliable. She mixes autobiography and memoir, kids. Sometimes even fiction. Occasionally tampers with poetry. She's not very fucking objective, in any case.

The Dream of Pausing Time

You know how the hipsters these days have read-ins? Where they imitate their childhood and cuddle up in blankets and read Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Anne of Windy Poplars? Oh man. I was just going to make fun of the hipsters but then I listed those amazing books, and that combined with the fact that I'm getting sick makes me want to curl up under a table with Katie Fantastic and pretend we don't have cell phones and boys and lipgloss and that the utopian dream of the childhood really did exist for us, at one point, maybe.

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