um...no words only: amazing

i almost died watching this, it is so awesome:

He nice, the Jesus

So I tried explaining Halloween to a Thai friend and she looked very confused and all I could think of was this David Sedaris story when in his French in France a group of international students try to explain Easter. To read the full story I found it here.

"The Italian nanny was attempting to answer the teacher's latest question when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, "Excuse me, but what's an Easter?"

It would seem that despite having grown up in a Muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean it," she said. "I have no idea what you people are talking about."

The teacher called on the rest of us to explain.

The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. "It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus...oh shit." She faltered and her fellow country-man came to her aid.

"He call his self Jesus and then he be die one day on two...morsels of...lumber."

The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.

"He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father."

"He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples."

"He nice, the Jesus."

"He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today."

Part of the problem had to do with vocabulary. Simple nouns such as cross and resurrection were beyond our grasp, let alone such a complicated refexive phrases as "to give of yourself your only begotten son." Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food instead.

"Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb," the Italian nanny explained. "One too may eat of the chocolate."

"And who brings the chocolate?" the teacher asked.

I knew the word, so I raised my hand, saying, "The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate."

"A rabbit?" The teacher, assuming I'd used the wrong word, positioned her index fingers on top of her head, wriggling them as though they were ears. "You mean one of these? A rabbit rabbit?"

"Well, sure," I said. "He come in the night when one sleep on bed. Which a hand he have a basket and foods."

The teacher sighed and shook her head. As far as she was concerned, I had just explained everything wrong with my country. "No, no," she said. "Here in France the chocolate is brought by a a big bell that flies in from Rome."

I called for a time-out. "But how do the bell know where you live?"

"Well," she said, "how does a rabbit?"

It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes. That's a start...."

gene kelly + rollerskates = genius

this is one of the happiest things i have seen lately:

russian monkey & grocer

my friend dan just sent me the most amazing cartoon that i had to share with you all:

baby animals again

remember that series of posts with animals and how they made our lives a lot better? trish and i just spent the last ten minutes dying with cuteness overload because we saw things like:

Cinderella, a British piglet, won't walk through mud unless she is wearing her specially adapted Wellington boots. The little piggy lives with owners and pig farmers Debbie and Andrew Keeble.

(thanks megan!)

Thank You, Jon Ogden

for writing these poems and for letting Inscape publish them.

Creationism: Five Theories

Brain Damage

Sterile

Absurdity

You know those days where you reflect on the often overlooked absurd - and you say to yourself "Why is the Cuban embargo still in place?" then you say "What is the deal with Japanese street fashion?!" and then "why aren't we living in Berlin?". Then it culminates when you view the latest fashion collections coming down the runways in Madrid.

you must walk like a camel

i am reading thoreau and listening to "always be my baby" and for some reason nothing has seemed more perfect or more real. and as mariah sings "and we'll linger on" i'm reading thoreau, who says this about walking: "sauntering: which word is beautifully derived 'from idle people who roved about the country and asked charity, under pretence of going a la Sainte Terre,' to the Holy Land"--there goes a saunterer! and i am thinking about sauntering, what a swaggered, jaunty word, full of robust energy. thoreau goes on (mariah: "no way you're never gonna shake me"):

Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering.

and i think that we know and bear this secret. we have to, to spread ourselves so distantly from each other, from our families, our physical homes, our dear friends, our pasts. for me, this being "equally at home everywhere" is the beauty of living. and it is a scary, anxiety-filled thing (our nomadism) but how necessary!

"We are but faint-hearted crusaders," he continues.

so we "must walk like a camel," which is to say, "to be the only beast which ruminates when walking."

i think this blog is like our community camel. and i love that.

Friends and Clouds.

Dear fellow transpacificists,

 I tried desperately to upload a video of Lia and I on our adventures of the lovely state fair that Lia talked about. But I must have forgotten, in the excitement of posting, that I am technologically illiterate, and I couldn't get it to post on this blessed blog. It did, however, consent to being posted on another. Do not ask me why. So, if you want a little Lia and Patricia love, you can check it out here. 

XOXO (that's for you, Amy),

Patricia

n. why?

it's amazing how less than a week in new york city can produce so many moments of absolute artistic awakening. though i'm convinced i can have similar moments of enlightenment at home as well, there's something about holidays away which force more exploration: we have an expiry date on our time at a particular space and so purposefully seek out what treasures are around us, while at home we fall too easily into the traps of taking everything for granted. why is human nature so predictable in this way?

in any case, i have many things i want to say after visiting some glorious art spaces in the last few days, so may need to string them out into multiple posts... to start out, the Met had a large exhibition of giorgio morandi, an italian modernist painter whose personality couldn't be more opposite of marinetti, modigliani, or the other more renown and infamous fellow countrymen and artists of his generation... mordani didn't seek after an explosive reputation, but lived and painted quietly - teaching printmaking at the local art school in bologna for his whole life. his paintings are relatively "simple" and downright banal compared to the overly charged works of boccioni or carrà. he painted a great deal of still lifes, concentrating on blocks of shapes arranged in various ways and in various lights. he'd paint series of the same set-up of tall, thin vases and jars at different times of the day. this makes up the bulk of his work. about this "restriction" of subject matter and his quiet, understated life, he said the following:

"I have always concentrated on a far narrower field of subject matter than most other painters, so that the danger of repeating myself has been far greater. I think I have avoided this danger by devoting more time and thought to planning each one of my paintings as a variation on one or the other of these few themes. Besides, I have always led a very quiet and retiring life and never felt much urge to compete with other contemporary painters. My only ambition is to enjoy the peace and quiet that I require in order to work."

oh that last bit is so beautiful! isn't it wonderful to think of an artist actually creating art for the sake and enjoyment of its creation, of the process and delivery... not to draw undue attention or lavishly self-aggrandize, but instead to work peacefully and quietly. gorgeous and moving and powerful and wondrous....

Contemporary Burmese Artists

It seems that most of my friends here in Thailand in their life have been torn between political actions and the arts. And a discussion on arts and politics can be for another day here on the blog, but I started researching contemporary Burmese art to see if I could find some calls of revolution in them, and soon I realized that it didn't need to have scenes of protest in order for it to be revolutionary, just the act of creating something beautiful out of a national space governed by fear and tyranny - that quest for beauty is revolution in and of itself.

Artist: Myat Kyawt

Spring Trees

Lovers Under Trees

Monk At Platform

Artist: Mg Aw
(I love this painting of a woman adjusting her sarong, I saw it at a gallery in DC once, and it was so stunning then)

Camera Scavenger Hunt!

I am in the middle of putting together a camera scavenger hunt and I thought it would be fun to do one with all of us. Just so we get the feeling of everyone's various places. So, dear Transpacificists, get your cameras ready and post your findings when you get them (or as you go--you don't have to put all five up at once)!

1. Your space (where you've been spending most of your time lately)
2. Favorite color found where you are
3. Favorite person/place/or thing found where you are
4. Self portrait
5. Most beautiful part of your daily routine

for laughs

un dernier verre (pour la route)

perhaps the most magical of all moments is the possibility of flying across the nation to spend a saturday floating in the atlantic (and tasting the saltiest of waves and rubbing gritty sand across your skin and face and frolicking about the state fairgrounds) with a dear, dear friend. here's to a transpacificist reunion, at long last! - and if only we could all be together for a moment again.

Hall of Images

At Wat Umong on the edge of Chiang Mai there is a series of tunnels built into the side of the hills that the king of the area built 700 years ago in order to keep the crazy head monk away from the city. There are also little signs tacked onto trees with different sayings of the Buddha on it.
But one of my favorite things about this unique temple is the hall of images, with its assortment of beautiful paintings depicting scenes from different religion's mythologies.

vitreous fragility

when amy talked about the ability of loss to create space, she mentioned nicole krauss's the history of love, a book which has saved my life multiple times. tonight, for better or for worse, i decided to read it again. and i came to a part called the age of glass in which people imagine that parts of them are made of glass. and though the world moved on, sometimes there are some that find that they, too, are made of glass. 

one man, caught between the battle of this frailty and the desire to hold a woman he loves, walks delicately this tightrope string between chasms: "he ran his fingers down her spine over her thin blouse, and for a moment he forgot the danger he was in, grateful for the world which purposefully puts divisions in place so that we can overcome them, feeling the joys of getting closer, even if deep down we can never forget the sadness of our insurmountable differences."

i think we are strong. and we can find beauty and share it with each other to overcome things that seem ugly and unfair and unholy. we are resilient. we are brave. we are fearless. but often, i think, there are parts of us that are made of glass. and tenderly reaching to another being requires so much risk of hurt and sadness. but those moments of touch come so close to being holy. 

thelma and i were talking tonight about how i think people are both lonely and irreplaceable, and how she always asks people how their parents met, and how it makes her both happy and sad. mine met in a high school drama production. my mom played my dad's pregnant wife. 

and i am still not quite sure how any of these things go together or why i feel such desperation to communicate my fragility right now, but this i know: loneliness is a crime. because though we are made of glass, or i think more because we are made of glass, we owe each other a deep-rooted sense of compassion. and understanding. so that when one of us pulls away too quickly. or when someone disappears from a room suddenly. or when there is someone sitting on a bench with splintering limbs. we can know, and love, anyway.