Art patrons

Tim and I share few interests—we have an embarrassing passion for The Amazing Race; inhale chip and dip whenever we have the opportunity, therefore must ration ourselves, or suffer malnutrition; love reading and writing (though not the same stuff); and derive tremendous enjoyment from teasing each other. And that’s about it. So when we stumbled on a painting—a grown-up, put-it-on-the-wall and admire-it-for-the rest-of-your-life painting—we both absolutely loved while poking around Bodega village, where Hitchcock’s The Birds was filmed dontcha know, we bought it. Even though our budget didn’t really support it at the time. (It should be noted here that we did get a beautiful painting from Tim’s sisters and their families when we got married, but it’s in New Zealand, with our house and barbecue and the rest of our adult lives.)
In our California painting, two cows stand on Baker’s Beach, with a spectacular view of the Golden Gate and Marin headlands. One is a fresian, and the other is that reddy brown and white sort of cow, the one that looks like wet clay. Both cows are beautifully rendered, would look completely at home on the walls of a great ranching home, but the killer part as far as we’re concerned is the striped beach ball that hangs in the air between them, as if one of the ladies has just nosed it towards the other, and both are trying to look nonchalant for fear of losing their cool. Once you’ve spent a few minutes looking at this scene, drinking in the loopiness, you notice a black cow (Angus?) in the background, thundering up the beach to join the game. The whole thing is surreal and lovely. We swallowed our anxieties and whipped out the credit card, feeling confident we had bought the best thing in the gallery.
That was four months ago and today we returned to Bodega to attend a reception for the painter. We were a bit nervous to meet her, given how much we love the painting and how cool we’d imagined she must be. I was expecting, lord knows why, a woman with a husky voice, lavender hair and shiny black boots with the laces undone. I didn’t realize this is who I expected until we met the artist and she turned out to be quite ordinary, with an embroidered waistcoat (I have a weird hang-up about these), and little interest in talking to us, her patrons. We were miffed, I tell you. She even, at one point, took a huge step back towards the wall, positioning herself in front of another of her paintings, a well-endowed mermaid hugging two sea otters, but that didn’t stop us from sidling back into her space and talking at her some more. We so wanted to make a connection with her. Sad, huh? To heap disappointment upon disappointment, the gallery owner served Chablis in the smallest disposable cups I have ever seen—literally not much bigger than a cough syrup measure. So when “our” artist turned away from us again—crying out and practically jumping into the lap of a man she knew to escape us—there was nothing left for us but to get back in the car and drive back to San Francisco, an hour south.

Practically still flapping

I love sushi—the salty-sweet firmness of the fish and the bite of the ginger—but I have a bit of an issue with raw food, so I’m conflicted. I tend to go for the cheater’s sushi made from cooked chicken and loads of avocado, or the cooked eel thing that tastes a bit caramel-y and looks like a wrapped gift. So today’s lunch counts as an accomplishment. One of the interns had to deliver some magazines to a restaurant on Shattuck Ave, Berkeley’s “gourmet ghetto”, and offered to pick up some bargain sushi on her way back. It was superb, the fanciest sushi I think I’ve ever eaten, despite being composed of many jewel-like slabs of raw tuna, albacore and salmon. Oh, and eel, coiled like a centipede, wrapped in a rice blanket and sprinkled with brilliant orange fish eggs that burst when bitten. I had to close off the part of my brain screaming, ooh yucky, this hasn’t been cooked, and concentrate on the subtle flavor of the super-fresh, practically still flapping, fish, which was deeelishus. Dunking it in lots of soy sauce helped too. I gotta say, I think having interns at my disposal is going to spoil me for other jobs. I try not to abuse my position, but ,hey, who doesn’t like having someone fetch lunch for them? I guess this is why executives get off on having personal assistants.

Feeling hot, hot, hot

I’m a summer baby—was born in California, in summer, during a heat wave for pity’s sake, and have always been one for warm weather hobbies: give me a choice and I’ll always plump for a BBQ, a swim, and an ice block over an afternoon on the ski slopes and an evening sipping cocoa by a fireplace. But this is ridiculous.
This morning I woke up hot, an amazing occurrence given that our apartment has until now acted exactly like an icebox with polished wooden floors and cheap plastic blinds. I was warm on the bus, I was warm on the train, and I was warm walking to my office. The moment I stepped across the threshold and flicked on the lights, I was pitched right over the I’m-coping-with-this-just-fine line into tropical territory. Opening the windows and fanning myself with a copy of the new issue (which looks great, BTW) did not help much at all. Even sending an intern downtown to buy a fan hasn’t solved it, although the thing is gyrating madly just to my right. I am now so hot I am literally sticking to my seat, which is not pretty given the thin skirt I wore to work today.
So this is the start of summer. I can state with some confidence that we have probably seen the last rain of the season and I will not need my coat again until November. I am thrilled about this, and would do a little celebratory cha-cha, but I’m too danged hot.

Kicking butt

It really is a year for unexpected experiences. I saw my first karate belt exam yesterday, and loved it! I didn't have high hopes, cos it seemed like it would be a long, drawn-out affair (which it was) and the only person I really wanted to see was my 17-year-old American niece, who was going for her black belt. But it was fascinating, watching people who had worked literally years for their five minutes in front of the big judge and either blew it from an overdose of nerves, or triumphed in spite of themselves. The students ranged from adora-tots in too-big suits to reeeally intense guys who, I sensed, might not have had much else going on in their lives--pure speculation, but I had three hours in which to entertain myself until our girl came out. Anyway, she was great: precise, clean movements, and when she got kicked in the stomach in the sparring section of the test, it made her mad enough to get aggressive in a black belt-appropriate way. So she got her belt. It's worth noting that earlier she had sat her SAT exams (for entrance to university) and later was going to her junior prom. She'd gone in for a pedi which she scratched doing kicks etc.
What's the deal with overachieving teens? I admire them--my other nieces, the NZ ones, are similarly confident wee powerhouses--but it sure makes you feel like a potato. I was a supremely unmotivated, lazy, miserable teen. I didn't want to do homework, or play sports, or develop any kind of useful/diverting hobbies. My favorite thing was to sit around with a book--well, that hasn't changed--and my second favorite thing was to make fun of striving girls who had better things to do with their time. I was militantly anti resume-shoring activities like volunteering at old folks' homes, or doing Duke of Edinburgh stages, or getting good at languages or musical instruments. Mostly, I thought the kids who were really into that stuff weren't exactly genuine--that they were ticking boxes that would prove useful later when they were job-hunting, and that their clubbiness was all about networking, which given that I went to boarding school is not actually far from the truth, I'd wager.
Anyway, I'm glad adolescence doesn't last more than seven years cos it's a bitch.
Today has been hot. We packed books, sunscreen, the New York Times, etc and headed for Chrissy Field, where there is a lovely beach, and sat in the sun reading, drinking lots of water, and meeting new dogs. A teeny poodle came up to say hello and her fur felt like cornsilk. I could have popped her in my pocket and run away with her.

Bad baaa-stards

It had to be done. On Friday night, we went to see Black Sheep, the kiwi film about eugenically altered sheep who turn on the humans who run their farm--and any other unfortunates who stumble upon them. It's part of the lineup at the San Francisco Film Festival and conveniently was shown at a theatre in Japantown, not even 10 minutes from the apartment. I'm not a horror film fan, so I'm probably not much of a judge when it comes to the schlock variety. There was no time when I felt scared, which is a positive for me, and there were many moments of great humor--I almost weed myself when a tiny genetic mutant from a broken sample jar bit off Oliver Driver's ear. But there were some rather obvious gags--there just had to be a sheep-shagging joke, for example--and the one and only Maori character was the cliched cheeky chappie, which I found a bit disappointing. Still, you gotta love a film in which a bloodthirsty sheep gets behind the wheel of a ute and drives it off a cliff.

Too mean

I'm working on a story about New Zealand identity, which has been a very interesting exercise. I am feeling more Kiwi than I do when I'm in NZ, no surprise I guess, because I feel most American when I am not here. My editors found the introductory paragraphs a bit mean, and I take their point. They have been removed from the story. But I still like them. So here they are.

***

"That's an interesting accent, darlin'. Where ya from?" asks a heavily made-up woman selling Navajo jewelry and pottery at a Santa Fe boutique. She is a riot of color, a bespectacled parrot wearing a squash blossom necklace.
"New Zealand," I answer with a tight mouth, knowing--hating--what comes next.
"Oh," she says, lazily polishing the counter on which she leans, her eyes narrowing as she mentally refers to a globe. "Where's that? Is it near Nova Scotia? No? Part of Greenland?"
"Try the Southern Hemisphere," I say, less gracious than I would like. "You know where Australia is?"
"Oh! You're that island at the bottom of Australia! The little triangle."
"No," I say, defeated, "that's Tasmania."
As my husband and I drove across the United States last autumn--from New York to San Francisco via Lisbon Falls, Maine and Tucumcari, New Mexico--we had dozens of conversations like this. They were funny at first. Then annoying. Then humiliating. Who wants to originate from a place so insubstantial as to be left off some world maps?

***

I guess I do.

Back from the rabbit hole

Here I am. I disappeared down the rabbit hole for a while there. Just finished my first production cycle with the magazine. It doesn’t seem to matter where you are, getting a publication through the birthing process is tough—it takes longer and is much harder than it bloody needs to be. But there you are: it would be silly to complain, wouldn’t it, cos I know just how much worse it could be. We drove past the bookstore last night after a night out—dinner at a Nepalese restaurant and a function at the UC, listening to a four-star general talk about his Cold War tour of duty in Germany. (Are we geek chic, or what?) He was funny—much funnier than I thought four-star generals were allowed to be. Anyway, on our back to San Fran, we passed the bookstore, all lit up like a nuclear power plant, and realized that people would still be in there, ringing up purchases and shoving books in bags, smiling away like third runner-up in Miss Idaho Potatoes, and I just felt sick for them. Probably an over-reaction, but I was tired and had polished off a bottle of Indian beer, then been trapped in a hot auditorium with no air circulation.
We’ve spent the past couple weekends exploring our city. I really liked the Mission, after having discounted it after a tense, rainy day spent there looking for cheap furniture. (We went into a shop with secondhand household stuff and found a homeless man sleeping on one of the sofas, poor sod.) After we’d toured Mission Dolores itself, one of the 30-odd missions that form a spiritual spine up the state, we hit the pavement. Of course, I found jewelry I wanted—rings with vintage buttons as the centerpieces. Adorable. I bought one with a brass bird alighting on a branch. Then we stumbled on a bizarre gothic store selling “artful” taxidermied items. I was enchanted with a standing white mouse to which the artist had added two extra paws, so it looked like that Indian goddess. Bird skeletons were dressed in petticoats and hats and such. A wooden cabinet with many tiny drawers was stocked with oddities such as raccoon penis bones. I hate to think what one does with a raccoon penis bone but I bet it’s interesting. I felt a little ill when we walked out, but if Tim hadn’t been there I would have stayed much longer.
BTW. This morning on my way to the train I saw the guitar-strummin’ country boy with the red mohawk again. I think he’s Australian.