June 25, 2017 at 4:16 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Food and Drink, Links, postaday, Sundays)
Tags: San Francisco, summer, art, exhibits, Wordpress, postaday, postaweek, museum
Went for the Edvard Munch exhibit. Stayed to view the permanent collection. Forgot about Gay Pride and got stuck in the hugest traffic jam. At least, got to see the mayhem starting.
While taking a coffee break at SFMOMA, she shared her little table with a young woman from Japan named Yoshie Yam. It turned out we both love traveling. Love, love, love traveling. So, self chooses to begin her second post on The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge, TRANSIENT, with this, our little table at the SFMOMA Coffeeshop:
Coffee break at SFMOMA, after seeing the Edvard Munch exhibit
On the second floor of the SFMOMA is this huge black-and-white photo. Not quite sure about the decade. 1960s? Which reminds self, it is the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s Summer of Love! There’s an exhibit commemorating the anniversary at the de Young. Self wanted to go today, but was put off by the traffic that always surrounds Gay Pride Day:
Finally, the Munch exhibit, the one that self drove all the way to San Francisco to see. The paintings are striking, powerful, disorienting. The one below is one of the largest. It’s called “The Dance of Life.” The men are already turning into ghouls:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 24, 2017 at 1:25 am (Artists and Writers, Food and Drink)
Tags: desserts, Fridays, indulgences, poetry, summer, The New Yorker
Here’s an excerpt from a poem she encountered today in The New Yorker, one in a huge pile that gathered dust while she was on her latest trip:
we turned to Chinese poetry and Kenneth Rexroth’s
“Hundred Poems” and ended up
talking about the Bollingen and Pound’s
stupid admiration of Mussolini
and how our main poets were on the right
politically — most of them — unlike the European
and South American, and we climbed some steps
into a restaurant I knew to buy gelato
and since we were poets we went by the names,
instead of the tastes and colors — and I stopped talking
and froze beside a small tree since I was
older than Pound was when he went silent
and kissed Ginsberg, a cousin to the Rothschilds,
who had the key to the ghetto in his pocket,
one box over and two rows up, he told me.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 15, 2017 at 12:40 pm (Books, Conversations, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, plans, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: humor, novel, reading lists
Nearing the end of Jonathan Evison’s novel, This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!. Self began reading it in, of all places, Paris. It’s been very entertaining. Only wish there had been more of Rudy, the Filipino cabin steward.
The Alaskan cruise which is the “frame” for this novel about Harriet Chance’s entire life, isn’t such a good idea. The views are breathtaking, but the people are anything but. Self is so glad, because now the novel has cured her of the desire to go on an Alaskan cruise. All you do is gain five pounds and spend dinner talking to strangers.
p. 266:
“Y’all mind if I join you?” says a morbidly obese fellow, who has materialized suddenly at the end of the table. He’s clutching a Caesar salad and wearing a black T-shirt that says I SEE DUMB PEOPLE.
What is Harriet’s obsession with other people’s weight? As if to oblige her, most of the people she meets on the cruise are overweight.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 9, 2017 at 2:33 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Links, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, breakfast, California, coffee, desserts, Fridays, Ireland, memories, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, websites, writing process
Self originally posted a different photo for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, but that was because she hadn’t read the prompt, only looked at the title, boo.
The prompt is supposed to be about finding Photo Ops In Your Own House.
Since self hasn’t been in her own house in years, here are the closest things to it:
- Her writing table at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, with her cup of coffee next to her MacBook Air. She always starts the day with a pot of coffee.
- A friend’s house in San Gabriel, CA
Crushing the Writing: Thursday, 2 July
Having breakfast outside with Connie Ignacio Genato, friends since grade school in Manila
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 22, 2017 at 1:46 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Food and Drink, Places, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: art, happiness, Mondays, museums, Paris, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
It was a gorgeous day!
Self strolled down the Champs-Elysees. She saw a shrine on the sidewalk, draped with French flags and flowers. Oh. So that’s where the policeman was shot.
She bought a salad from a brasserie and decided to eat in the Tuileries, right in front of the Musee L’Orangerie (where the Monets are) but she did not bother lining up for a ticket. She hates lines.
Instead, she sat outside, watching people:
The Tuileries, Monday Afternoon: Is that a Brancusi? Or a Picasso? Or a Henry Moore?
The wide avenues were alive with strollers, and the trees were so green:
And guess what she saw, over on the other side of the Place de la Concorde:
Iconic: 22 May 2017
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 14, 2017 at 3:01 pm (Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: art, dance, discoveries, England, London, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Saturday, Wordpress
The Daily Post Photo Challenge this week is REFLECTING.
Can self just say she arrived sick and barely able to keep upright. But damn — the Royal Opera House!
Seeing it for the first time was — awesome.
Plus, the adjoining bar/restaurant: All that glass! All that light!
Perfect for this week’s Photo Challenge!
Before the start of the ballet, self dashed to the bar to order some hot tea. She wound up sharing a table with an American woman, a ballet aficionado who has season tickets to the New York City Ballet and watches “thirty ballets a year. At least.” Self confided that she wasn’t feeling well and might leave during one of the intermissions.
And the womans said: The pas de deaux in Act III are spectacular. Don’t leave.
The Bar at the Royal Opera House, 8 p.m. Saturday, May 13
And then, the interior of the Royal Opera House itself:
Waiting for the beginning of Kenneth Macmillan’s beautiful, stunning ballet, “Mayerling”: Saturday, May 13
More of the Royal Opera House Bar. At intermission, self went up an escalator to the “Bridge” over the bar, from which she got a jaw-dropping view of Covent Garden, at 8 p.m.:
Center Top, the “Bridge”: A side escalator takes you to it, and from there you can see all of Covent Garden. SPECTACULAR. Especially at sunset.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 13, 2017 at 10:28 am (anthologies, Books, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended)
Tags: fairy tales
from Philip Pullman’s re-telling of Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm:
The sleep was so deep that it spread through all the castle. The king and queen had just returned, and as soon as they walked into the hall they fell down where they stood. Their servants and attendants fell down too, like dominoes in a line, and so did the horses in the stable and the grooms looking after them, and the pigeons on the roof and the dogs in the courtyard. One dog was scratching himself: he fell asleep just like that, with his back paw behind his ear. The flies on the wall fell asleep. Down in the kitchen the very flames under the roasting ox fell asleep. A drop of fat that was about to fall from the sizzling carcass stayed where it was and didn’t move.
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April 6, 2017 at 11:47 am (anthologies, Books, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections)
Tags: fairy tales, humor
- When the bird saw the vegetable stew coming to the boil with a dead mouse in it, he panicked.
— from The Mouse, the Bird and the Sausage, a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm, re-told by Philip Pullman
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March 30, 2017 at 4:18 pm (Artists and Writers, Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, fantasy, Ireland, photography, short story, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, writing process
Texture. Texture. Texture.
That’s what she thinks about, when she thinks of this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge: DENSE.
Self loves stone, and exposed brick, and rough surface, like the inner walls of her cottage:
Interior Wall of Self’s Unit at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig
In attempting a picture of a painting, she ended up “layering” the image with the reflection of the room behind her: her writing studio.
Self does all her writing in this room on the 2nd floor. She was trying to take a picture of a painting in her room and ended up experimenting with the reflections on the glass.
#amwritingfantasy
Excerpt of the story she’s been writing (TRIGGER WARNING: Language):
Drinker says, low: “Big passed.”
I answer: “Fucker. Big’s not big. He’s Big XXX. Mark it. I slash three quick XXXs across my screen.”
Finally, what real bread looks like: a loaf from Cootehill SuperValu (studded with cranberries) Self has been slicing off thick chunks, toasting, and then slathering with rich Irish butter)
Handmade, Cranberry Loaf
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 22, 2017 at 9:06 am (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: California, England, Golden Gate Park, London, memories, museums, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, San Francisco, Wordpress
If you’re physically on top of a thing or place — a mountain, a skyscraper — what type of scene do you want to share in your frame?
— Cheri Lucas Rowlands, The Daily Post
For this week’s photo challenge, ATOP, self pulled from her Archive:
Fall 2016: Main Lobby of the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: View from the 2nd Floor
Summer 2016: The Tate Modern is housed in what used to be the Battersea Power Station. In keeping with its industrial spirit, everything in the Tate Modern has that utilitarian feel. Even the restaurant, on the 6th floor. It’s called The Kitchen. The Harry Potter Bridge (Formal Name: the Millenium Bridge) is to the right.
Spring 2015: The Portrait Café, British National Portrait Gallery
Note to dear blog readers: The Portrait Cafe hosts an afternoon tea, which is booked weeks in advance. The day self showed up, early March, she could not get a seat. So if you would like to see this fabulous view while having tea, book in advance.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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