much ado

at the globe

(thanks miss lisa, for the picture)

cambridge and king's college

Today I'm thinking about:

-Elli Gonzales (who I MISS) and her lectures about why Cambridge is the only plausible place to go to school, and how every menial duty in life, if performed with due diligence, will earn her the greenest and most crisply mowed lawn on the block (this was an average night in eighth grade, guys. That's why I love her)

-how nice it'd be to go to school where old buildings blend into long green lawns and trees that are going golden

-the beginning of school years from growing up - new notebooks and pencils, wearing socks and sweaters and jackets to school, smelling the age of the leaves on the ground
-how interesting Brueghel is, and how much fun Dad would have seeing these paintings
 -the nice mixture of autumn air and the ghosties of people like C.S. Lewis and William Wordsworth and Samuel Pepys and Charles Darwin and John Milton (and stuff)

-how much I like ice cream and sun 

                             - and Cambridge punter hotties

                                                             -and colors

so very dutch

(panels with homemade rabbit skin glue (rip, bunny) and chalk gesso)

we are a happy family

 Two years ago today, I was really far away from home and my Grandpa passed away after a two month long battle with cancer, and now I'm feeling reverent.

   We visited St Paul's cathedral this morning, and were prompted to write about how it made us feel as a source of memory. To the English, it is a symbol of endurance and hope, a firm reminder of withstanding age and war. A woman named Fiona (who had ridiculously funny toes) took us around with headsets and taught us about the five buildings that had been demolished and reconstructed on the site, all the renovations to the current structure ensued by the bombings of WWII, the art that decorated the nave and columns and vaults and apses,  and the plethora of monuments and tribute statues. When I sat down to think about it all, I found myself thinking about things that stay vs things that go, like statues vs humans; stone, a seemingly eternal element on this here earth, vs Grandpa, who is gone.A poem that Rilke wrote about Rodin's sculptures is coming to mind, I can't remember the name of it. 

As an artist, I believe it is in my nature to appreciate things that have been carved or molded, woven or written, painted or constructed for the preservation of memory. I wonder how often we try to preserve the right things, though. I am thinking about all this effort put into preserving St Paul's threatened history with big stone monuments and paint and embroidery.  It almost felt like it was built to commemorate it's own history and society's "greats" more than God, for whom its purpose originated. 

   Maybe I'm just thinking this way because I'm thinking about this Grandpa of mine. I love the ephemeral nature our bodies have, that we come to earth and have this short time to make our impression, leave our footprint in the soil. In the end, when someone we love passes on, he or she has left us with the bare artifacts of what determines a beautiful life.
   Grandpa Harry's monuments are in things like his books, his journals, his glasses, his piano (and all three songs he used to play on it), his flannel shirts, and his family, all the things that he gave himself to.  

 I wanted to have some Grandpa to remember today, the quiet Grandpa who has deep thoughts and an outstanding vocabularic library. So, I emailed Michelle(my trusty soul mate cousin who loves literature, music, and all things English) for some of his journal. Grandpa was  a dedicated diarist, and Shell has been transcribing his mountains of journals to publish and give to our family (when I have my official and bound copies, I've already resolved that they will be the first things I think to save if my house ever starts on fire). 

He wrote some pretty thoughts about living on the day after my Mama was born:

I have often lost myself in meditation of birth and death and what lies in between - how long it  appears from this end, and how short from the other - the wheres, whens and whys of the beginning and the end, the problems of one life, the achievements, the kinds of world in which it shall be enclosed.  But today there was no time for philosophy. 

It makes me want to love and experience and breathe (and write) with all the eloquence of a full liver (in this instance, "liver" refers to a person who lives. not body part, ok). 

To wrap up this small tribute to the Papa, here are some favorite memories:



- deep and vibratoesque humming (oh what a beautiful morning)


            - socks (for some reason I'm loving remembering his socks on the den carpet)

- slightly forceful head pats that synced with "broo-kie johnson" (a pat for each syllable) 

(baby me and the G-unit)

-his glasses/hearing aids that were perpetually getting lost or chewed up by my dog

(I love this picture, I was defending myself for wanting duck boots -the ones on my feet- for Christmas. They had ducks on them and my Mom reluctantly purchased them for thinking they were so so ugly and bad, and it made Grandpa laugh - look at him, he's SO CUTE! (and for the record, I don't think I've had more compliments on any other article of clothing that I've owned in my life, thank you.)

-his head tilted back at the piano, peering through his glasses to decipher the beginning of Claire de L'une (just the beginning)

i love these buttons. credit for this patriotic portrait of eternal love goes to michelle 

- and his song: I love Brookie Johnson, Brookie Johnson loves me, we are a happy family

Happy Twenty-Eighth of September

(here's some smiling from the top of St Paul's, this view was splendid, people)

aw

it's ok that my family never emails me (lie, dad emails me), because then i find things like this on my photo booth.

(i love that i've now been called b money, and kyra, i will try not to forget to buy you presents)

kew gardens

Grandma Marian would've had a fit, huh. 

something from wordsworth

There's not a nook within this solemn 

                                                                Pass

                                           But were an apt confessional for One

 

Taught by his summer spent, his autumn

    gone, 

That life is but a tale of morning grass

Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase

That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes

Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities,

Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes

                                      more clear than glass

         
 Untouched, unbreathed upon.

Thrice 

   happy quest,

If from a golden perch of aspen spray

(October's workmanship to rival May)

The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast

That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay,

Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest

(my copy of English Romantic verse and I)

Visited Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount in Grasmere, where Wordsworth lived and wrote some poems, or lots of poems. I'm obviously pleased.

ambling with the sheep

Hiked Jenkin's Crag with some misses today.
 
First: I love the word crag, it sounds like a haunted fisherman's wharf with spooky ghost pirates, all swampy and foggy and stuff. That's just what it sounds like.

Second: LAUGHING IS THE BEST!!! even if it puts me in a dire spot now and then.i'm about to pee my pants in this picture.

Third: I love finding a quiet place to think about things and feel them, especially when it has a green velvet carpet crawling all over everything and twisting trees and a twinge of freshness for breathing. 

Maybe it just felt nice to be part of an open landscape. It gets exhausting being in the city, passing all sorts of people on the street who don't care about and who you don't care about (that isn't very pious of me, huh) and having little else to look at in your immediate vision besides store windows and pavement and pigeons. Oh, I hate pigeons.

and lastly: I like sheep, 

even if they don't like me. whatever

j.k. and me

It turns out that the best sandwiches in the world are made with baguettes (duh) and melted brie (duh) and apple slices and cranberry sauce - I had one today, at the elephant house.

This is where the illustrious Ms. Rowling began the epic of Harry Potter (on a napkin), if the contents of my sandwich didn't excite you enough

(there's Hogwarts, formerly known as Edinburgh Castle, right outside the window).

So, i sat down for said sandwich and a spot of vanilla tea,

and thought about starting my own potentially crazy-famous novel. Since nothing particularly special came to mind, I ended up just writing some notes to loved ones, and documenting the experience on a napkin for the little journal thing

(the writing on this isn't supposed to be so whited out, it's my J.K. Rowling experience napkin).

 I'm going to finish the books now, I promise
well
maybe

the scottish national gallery of modern art

 

saw some Nathan Coley

saw TWO more Vuillards
           and fell in love with a few new artists, mainly this guy, really cool stuff

i stretched my legs today

We've now ended up in Edinburgh, a place where everything is windy, like a Bronte novel - I'm beginning to understand why Cathy Earnshaw was crazy, you can't hear yourself think in wind like this (not that she even lived in Scotland, but I'd imagine the weather is similar to the wutheringness of Wuthering Heights). Aside from that, this tiny town is all smushed together and cobblestoned and charming.
We hiked Arthur's seat today, it felt nice to walk on grass and dirt and rocks (so nice, my gosh), even with a fairly steep incline and a treacherous wind. This treacherous wind tried so hard to sweep us off of the cliff, I swear I could feel it tearing out my hair and pulling the skin off of my face (and I'd like to take a special moment to apologize to my feet for hiking them in a pair of wellies. Sorry feet, for forgetting chacos). 

There were a few particular words (if you'll even call them words, I don't think they are all real) that kept running through my head the whole way up -  
'twas brillig (this particular phrase repeated itself a lot),                
     and the slithy toves 
                  did gyre and gimble in the wabe; 
              All mimsy were the bergeroves
                and the mome raths outgrabe.
Random, but I guess that weather made me think of the Jabberwocky. 
Jabberwocky wind bully.

Anyway, we all made it and had lots of good laughing at the top. 

 

hehe