October 14, 2017 at 5:53 am (Artists and Writers, Dearest Mum, destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Links, Pianos, Places, postaday, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: art, Bath, England, Fridays, memories, museums, New York, Paris, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Wordpress
Very interesting challenge from The Daily Post this week!
SCALE
Photography ” . . . is all about perspective, where and how you place other objects in the frame . . . ” — Erica V., The Daily Post
Here are some examples of SCALE: (1) at the Louvre, in front of the Mona Lisa (2) in Bath’s Royal Crescent, the entrance to Royal Crescent # 1 and (3) in New York’s Russian Tea Room, next to Carnegie Hall. Self’s first trip to New York City was with Dearest Mum, who once played at Carnegie Hall. This September, she took Dearest Mum, who’s now past 80, for lunch at the Russian Tea Room. We had the best time.
The Louvre, May 2017
Royal Crescent No. 1 (Royal Crescent Museum), Bath
The Russian Tea Room, 57th St., New York City (Next to Carnegie Hall): Dearest Mum took self here, her first time in New York City, decades ago. The place hasn’t changed a bit.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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September 29, 2017 at 3:59 pm (Books, destinations, Food and Drink, Places, Recommended)
Tags: fiction, Fridays, novel, Paris, restaurants, translation
Paris, 201x:
All of a sudden, as I stood in front of the Rapid ‘Jus (whose concoctions kept getting more and more complicated: they had coconut-passion fruit-guava, mango-lychee-guarana, and a dozen other flavors, all with bewildering vitamin ingredients), I thought of Bruno Deslandes.
Stay tuned.
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August 24, 2017 at 5:35 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Links, Personal Bookshelf, Places, postaday, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, breakfast, California, Ireland, poetry, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, summer, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Wordpress
Self decided to post again on this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge, CORNERS.
Books and waffles and furniture.
Jenny Lewis, poet, is a friend. The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig is self’s equivalent of Paradise.
Le Pain Quotidien, Claremont, California: July 2017
Pasadena Moderne: July 2017
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 12, 2017 at 2:13 am (Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: California, desserts, discoveries, indulgences, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Wordpress
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is ELEMENTAL. Erica V. on The Daily Post describes her response to experiencing the American Southwest for the first time: “I was both confused and in awe of this extreme landscape.”
Last month, self was in Pasadena. Her first visit south in three years. She Airbnb’ed in the Pasadena hills. The house was at the very top of a winding driveway. Behind it was nothing but steep, scrubby hillside.
Just inside the front door was a rock, a very heavy rock. Self should have asked her host about it, but she never did:
There was a chameleon that kept trying to get into self’s unit. It was a beautiful thing. Every time self left the apartment, the chameleon would be clinging to the screen door. One day, self decided to photograph it:
Finally, a slice of green matcha tiramisu from Urth Caffé, in downtown Pasadena, a block from legendary bookstore Vroman’s. It looks for all the world like moss!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 5, 2017 at 3:16 pm (Places, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: art, inspiration, London, museum, restaurants, short story, work-in-progress, writing process
Setting, The Wallace Collection, London:
Fragonard’s “The Swing” Originally, the lady was to have been pushed by a bishop. But this was evidently too much. So, instead, we have an elderly gent sitting on a stone balustrade, in the shadows behind.
- She walked past the Flemish Masters in the East Drawing Room, strode past Titian’s Madonna and David Teniers the Younger’s the Deliverance of Saint Peter.
Later, self took her notes and added this sentence (while having lunch at Chez Nous, 22 Hanway Street):
- She was more of a café person than her friend Maxine, who’d set the bar pretty high, whose idea of dinner was to go to the Ottolenghi in Islington, who had impressed her parents into gifting her a trip to London (she couldn’t be bothered to learn French, so London it was) by getting an A on a paper about the Thirty Years War (“1618 to 1648,” she told her mother, Cici, who blushed with maternal pride).
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 2, 2017 at 5:29 pm (Artists and Writers, Family, Food and Drink, Links, postaday, Surprises)
Tags: art, California, discoveries, exhibits, memories, museum, nostalgia, restaurants, San Francisco
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge (posted every Wednesday) is TEXTURE.
Photos have “a tactile element, too,” Ben Huberman says. As an example, he provides his shot of “tangles of seaweed . . . across the wet sand at low tide.”
Here are three of self’s own examples of texture:
- The lace on a ladies’ hat, circa 1900 – 1925, in the exhibit on Impressionism and the Milliner’s Trade at the CA Palace of the Legion of Honor:
Maker identified only as “French, Madame Georgette”
- Look at the wonderful texture in this salad arrangement!
Le Pain Quotidien, Claremont, CA: July 2017
- Discovered in the exploration of son’s room: a frog that squirts water. Self loves that the frog’s skin is so pebbled. It has a degree of realism you don’t often find in other toys.
Plastic Frog! Found in Son’s Room in Redwood City, CA: This used to be one of his favorite toys.
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July 31, 2017 at 3:22 pm (Artists and Writers, Food and Drink, Places, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: Chinese food, coffee, London, memories, Mondays, museum, restaurants, San Francisco
Self scoured her archives to find illustrations for this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge: SATISFACTION.
She’s feeling nostalgic.
Capuccino Break, British Imperial War Museum, May 2017
Chinatown Love, October 2016
Eating with Emily at Fabulous Chéz Nous, 22 Hanway Place, London. We waited for this meal: it was a promise we made to each other when self left London last July. Emily’s daughter directed the Wonder Woman movie.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 18, 2017 at 6:06 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Dearest Mum, Family, Food and Drink, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Pianos, Places, postaday, Relatives, Surprises)
Tags: birthday, California, Los Angeles, memories, Mondays, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, summer, Wordpress
Everything Summer 2017:
- Discovered an old stash of photographs of Dearest Mum in her younger days.
- Explored the inside of son’s closet in 2431 Hopkins Ave., Redwood City.
- Rediscovered one of self’s most treasured books.
- Had dinner with Jennie, son’s fiancée, at Himalayan Café in Old Town Pasadena.
- Found artwork by son (when he was in grade school).
- Got a Birthday present (for self) from son and Jennie: Nude Awakening (Self is so WOKE!).
- Amused by a giant stag at the end of a driveway in the Pasadena hills.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 13, 2017 at 9:57 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Flowers, Food and Drink, Links, Lists, Niece, Personal Bookshelf, Philippine History, postaday, Relatives)
Tags: art, California, exhibits, museums, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Sacramento, San Francisco, Wordpress
What is a collage? In the words of Michelle Weber over at The Daily Post, it is “an assortment, a collection, a hodgepodge.”
Here are a couple of shots that show a collage:
- The printed dress. So fabulous. The wearer was self’s niece, Rina. We were having lunch at Boiling Crab:
Rina Villanueva, July 2017
- An assortment of reading matter: Everything from a Playbill to a book written by someone she used to know in college, Rick Manapat. The book, History of Negros, is about an island in the Philippines called Negros (The Spanish gave it the name, in the 16th century):
What Self Found in Son’s Room: July 2017
- A collection of roses on a hat at the recent exhibit “Degas, Impressionism and the Paris Millinery Trade” at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor:
Woman’s Hat, circa 1910: The artist went by the name “Madame George”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 4, 2017 at 7:04 pm (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Links, Publishers, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, Events, fantasy, Literary Magazines, memories, Readings, restaurants, short story, Washington DC
Read it at Sixth Engine in Washington DC, at a group reading organized by Quarterly West in conjunction with AWP February 2017. The editors took a chance with this one, it’s all fractured syntax and stars a professor named Fire Lizard. Self is writing a sequel right now.
What a blast:
Quarterly West reading at Sixth Engine, Washington DC, February 2017
Discussion of the First Corollary: What is average is perfect. Thoughts dark as dark. Big arguing with her. But but but. Her winking at me behind his back. Me thinking: sunlight and glass.
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