These vineyards are lovely and hard.
Terraced rock.
The heat from below pours up
and drowns me.
Can I cliff dive from here?
The azure ocean calls.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Donna, bye.
Like DNA, we weave close, then apart, then close again.
Donna Spence died after a long struggle with cancer. The last time I saw her, before I saw her dead body in the casket, was a while ago at the old WalMart. We talked about K Mart and Ames and the new WalMart. We both preferred Ames, which had closed to accommodate K Mart which had closed to accommodate WalMart. We met over these animal print and very stretchy, tight pajama gowns. Donna told me she had bought one and wore it as a dress, she suggested I also do so. I grabbed the leopard spotted one and I still have it although it does not look the same on me anymore, or I do not look the same in it, one or the other. Now I just wear it as a nightgown.
We talked for quite a while, catching up, as one does with these chance encounters. She asked what what I was doing and I told her I was a nurse. She told me she just found out she had cancer (I think uterine) and we talked about treatments, etc. It killed her. The words we spoke are all gone in the wind. My intermittant memory, the only record of girls who became women but never changed, really.
When I saw her at WalMart she was round and happy and womanly and filling out her nightgown dress beautifully. When I saw her in the casket she was skeletal and dead.
I choose to remember the spirit and personality that Donna was, servant to humankind, lively and vital and strong and wearing cool animal prints tight against her sexy body that turned it's back on her, and killed her.
Donna Spence died after a long struggle with cancer. The last time I saw her, before I saw her dead body in the casket, was a while ago at the old WalMart. We talked about K Mart and Ames and the new WalMart. We both preferred Ames, which had closed to accommodate K Mart which had closed to accommodate WalMart. We met over these animal print and very stretchy, tight pajama gowns. Donna told me she had bought one and wore it as a dress, she suggested I also do so. I grabbed the leopard spotted one and I still have it although it does not look the same on me anymore, or I do not look the same in it, one or the other. Now I just wear it as a nightgown.
We talked for quite a while, catching up, as one does with these chance encounters. She asked what what I was doing and I told her I was a nurse. She told me she just found out she had cancer (I think uterine) and we talked about treatments, etc. It killed her. The words we spoke are all gone in the wind. My intermittant memory, the only record of girls who became women but never changed, really.
When I saw her at WalMart she was round and happy and womanly and filling out her nightgown dress beautifully. When I saw her in the casket she was skeletal and dead.
I choose to remember the spirit and personality that Donna was, servant to humankind, lively and vital and strong and wearing cool animal prints tight against her sexy body that turned it's back on her, and killed her.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Zaha Hadid-A Show for Academia, Not the World
My mother, two other family members, and I attended "Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion" at the Perlman Gallery, Philadelphia Museum of Art on Sunday. I was looking forward to the day but was severely disappointed by this star architects show. Walking into the gallery, one is instantly disoriented, kind of like a fun house in a carnival. Several of the people I was with had to sit down as their equilibrium was affected. Personally, I find Hadids work, visually incongruent, almost dizzying (as it literally was for my companions). So, while impressive for their reach, her buildings are not for general consumption. In fact, her objects and buildings are so confusing in their flow that they are essentially disturbing. All sense of beauty is swallowed up by the visual discordance. My brain became too occupied with trying to find the glitch rather than finding the beauty in the form.
I also wonder as to her clearly obvious and impractical choice of form over function. From the smallest, an oddly shaped spoon that made me want to scoop some broth to see if I could actually eat from it, to the videos showing her largest buildings, I could only see a desire to impress with none, not one little iota, of practicality. These buildings are a legend in her own mind and will not stand the test of time.
Please, beauty and form can go hand in hand with practical considerations. Ms. Hadid seems to think that they are exclusive of each other and it shows in her work.
I am not a fan.
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