You all might have noticed that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has popped up here now and again.


It's a little besides the point that this is a phenomenal movie. My love affair with the film has grown over the years, and at this point, is built on nostalgia as much as anything else. This image was part of an installation I did in 2001: it involved short segments of several films, all from the early 50's (many involving Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman) and an accompanying set of visual instructions for various "matching" scents and flavors. They "matched" in the sense that the flavors were supposed to reflect the emotional tone of the scene. Each of the flavors and scents were given a code so as to avoid bias - it might have an adverse effect on the experience if you already know that this particular scene in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof tastes like salt and smells like mustard.

This is also the project that nauseated Yvonne Rainer during a critique, a fact that aside from being slightly humiliating, I am a shade proud of. Nausea is a reaction, perhaps not optimal, but a reaction none the less.

It took me awhile to realize that there were problems with this piece. It wasn't so much that it made the guest lecturer want to hurl - as far as I know she was the only one who felt this way. But then again, she was the only one who actually sat and tried to participate. With this in mind, I realize that I probably would have puked all over the gallery if I was forced to sit down and participate in this thing. I had made something conceptually pretty interesting, but physically impossible to do. Tricky problem considering the whole piece was very much dependent on the action of the audience.

Which gets me thinking about my previous post and the issue of balance. Concept can go to hell if the thing just doesn't function in the way its supposed to.

But I still love Paul and Liz, and they'll never make me want to puke.

aesthetic of normal

This morning I feel more "normal" than I have since the beginning of my running hiatus. I did my allowed 4 miles this morning except I nudged up the incline just a tad. I was tempted to go all out: to throw caution to the wind and run my heart out, but my stiff leg reminded me to go easy. But still, I feel like some progress is being made.

While running, I started to realize that I have missed painting. I noticed that I had been visualizing a new painting in the back of my mind, behind closed-captioned ESPN that I had been watching; behind my mental sing-a-longs to Patti Smith. This hasn't happened in awhile. In the past few years any painting that has happened has been eeked out of a sense of obligation. Not that that my recent painting have been forced, torturous efforts, but they haven't been made for the sake of being but rather to prove that my life isn't actually a waste. Part of it has to do with the fact that we are now more or less (leaning on the less side) settled into our new space. And there's a lot of it so far, considering we are short on bookshelves and haven’t moved most of the art material in yet. Regardless, that is what the space is for and it feels awkward (not to mention boring) to be in there and not work.

Last night I read an article by _____ (can't remember who.....someone British) in the most recent ArtForum about community based, interactive art projects that have been going on for the past few years. I was relieved that the author didn't buy the whole "movement" or perhaps I should say tendency towards communal art making. One of her main criticisms was that this type of work seemed exempt to critique - that as long as its' intentions were 'pure' and the process as representative and egalitarian as possible, the aesthetic considerations were rendered not only banal, but an insult to the original intent. Her argument was right on. If part of the impulse of socially minded community involved work is to make art be something more than a commodity, one can't argue with that. Yet, wrapped together in this idea should be the expectation that the work be engaging on aesthetic level (and when I use the word aesthetic, I use it in all its high falooting conceptual glory). After all that is how we engage with visual art: through a sensibility more acutely abstract than that we use interact in everyday life. Because art is not, nor should it be, a normalized part of daily life. Its in this sense that the art snob in me takes the mic: the artists are the experts and no matter how much we want to believe that art is for the masses, it's not. It is for those that have been exposed to it and that see some kind of tenuous relevance in it to their own world. To render it a socialist exercise in community involvement is to shortchange the power and effectiveness of art.

The other thing that this article did for me is reminded me that I care about this. As much as I have complained about the superfluousness and affect of the art world, the truth is I feel compelled to protect her from the defrocking it suffers at the hands of bad artists and righteous agenda seekers.

We'll see what happens during tommorow's four miles.

Slow Return to My Lost Love

While scanning microarrays this afternoon, I have been browsing around running blogs in search of comfort regarding my now 2 month old soleus injury. I am past the point of going crazy - I have mentally resigned myself to the blasted elliptical trainer in the name of healing. While it is far more satisfying than anything else in the gym (I am thoroughly soaked by the end of minute 20), the thing is as near to torture as one can get. The foot numbing is intolerable. Last year when I was recovering from the same injury (only in both legs) I managed to put in an hour and a half on the stupid thing, but this year I can barely deal with an hour. It was tough, to say the least, going from 96+ mile weeks to doing nothing other than bopping up and down on numb feet.

But this week I have allowed myself to run for 30 minutes after the elliptical - about 4 miles, and have have almost no pain (knock on wood). I have been diligently limiting myself to that amount of time, at least for this week, out of deathly fear that my leg will only get worse. I don't even really know what the problem is. Based on the reading I have done, it seems like a mustle strain due to over use. It just seems like a long time to recover from an overuse injury, so I can only hope that it isn't something worse.

The other issue I have been contending with while in recovery is the fact that my periods have resumed in all their normal glory. It's a good thing: I had been getting worried about bone deterioration and low estrogen levels. The drawback is that I now have PMS once again, bloating, cramps - the whole package - which I had had the pleasure of not experiencing at all since about June. So now that I have resumed my position in feminine society, I am intensely cranky and "yucky" feeling today, and unfortunately, r has been bearing the brunt of it since this morning.

I have been resistant to write about my running life here, but after running the Philadelphia Marathon, I have been more ready to talk to other runners and compare notes. And, I have finally realized that no one else gives a damn about how terrible it is not being able to run. Even r, who has copius reserves of love and understanding, has been maxed out on sympathy for my running complaints. I did way better than I thought I was capable of in that race, especially since it was my very first (chip time: 3h 04min-yeah!), and since then have really started to take myself more seriously as a runner. I don't want my body to crumble before I can race again, so I have had some motivation to not push my aching leg too far.

I have to go visit my mice this afternoon, something I have been postponing since yesterday. I also noticed that we're a little dry on pictures here so I thought I'd leave you with one of my favorite little specimens, Julie.

Carmenville

We have made it through our third night in "Carmenville" and it seems to be getting easier. Last night she was pretty relaxed and only marginally adamant about having to get home. We made dinner which made her feel that there were lots of people coming to eat - it was a ton of food so I don't exactly blame her. She made it to bed, exhausted, but pretty lucid.
Last night was the first night this week that I didn't wake up every 5 minutes to check on her, so I actually got to sleep a good 6 hours.

All the billboards and ads running about the new Curious George movie have got me thinking about little George and his yellow-suited man. I haven't re-visited the story since I was a kid - I don't rember anything about it really except that the guy always wore a yellow suit and yellow hat, that the monkey was cute and I loved it. Carmen used to check them out from the library because they were the only childrens books they had in Spanish. They were those big kid size books with the thick pages and flat color illustrations. While we were eating the other night to break the silence I asked her if she remembered reading those books with me. I told her about the movie that was coming out, how it didn't look nearly as good as the books were; I described the monkey and the man in yellow. Of course she didn't remember. I knew that. And she wasn't really interested either - her mind is in another place, not here, but somewhere in the past trying to remake it, or ammend it. It made me feel better to tell her about it. It was a reminder that I am not missing something in my relationship with her but that we are in two different places, two different continents. I understand now that my mom saw this a long, long time ago. I am getting that the way she deals with the stress of taking care of a stubborn 85 year old mother (with an at time belligerent temper, mind you) is by taking it one day at a time, as the 12-steppers say. Its a good strategy, and the only one that works for most of us, in most situations.

un-vacation from our new place

I won't waste the last 22 minutes of my working day recapping how long its been since the last time I posted or ironing out my guilt for not writing so much lately. Rubbish. R and I have moved and as I suspected, it has served as a transitory marker: the excuses are coming to a brake-pumping halt, and the productive work that has seemed to out of reach for the past few months is now there in front of us waiting to be unpacked and begun.

This week however we do not get to enjoy our new sanctuary as we have to stay with my grandmother while my parents are away. I have been dreading this, not because I don't enjoy spending time with her - we have a good time together cooking and watching Telemundo - but because it is extremly painful for me to see her get so agitated about going home. She is home, but there is no convincing her of that. There is no convincing her that her mother is dead and not waiting fo her to come back. There is no reasoning, just an enormous well of patience to take it all in strie as my mother so amazingly manages to do. And I find myself trying to be her in these days that she is away to see how the skin fits; to see if it makes dealing with the siutaion of her deterioration any easier. It does make it easier, but then again, I will never be able to pull off anything involving human relationships as sweatlessly as she does.

Last night Carmen was fine - she was calm, relaxed and in a little bit of a giddy mood. (The other night she stuck a paper towel up her nose trying to maike us laugh. It worked.) I am worried about this evening though. She seems to become more stressed with Rose than with Maricel, and I think this has to do with the fact that Maricel is perceived as family and Rose as a guest. I'll have to wait and see.

The next few months we will be living there a lot, and I suppose I'll get used to it. Lets hope I make to Sunday without too much sleeplessness.