Picture of Student art at Solana Pacific School, 2014
Dear Starving Artist,
Yes, we know you are talented, creative, and you work obsessively on your craft. If you had a trust fund all-of-the-above would be more than enough. Yet, you do not. Thus, you are “starving.” Or perhaps, thanks to the charity of your friends and the occasional meger sale you are merely, “hungry.”
Hungry for what? Food? Recognition? A generous grant? A deep pocket Patron? Public adoration?
Before I serve up some viable solutions to your situation allow me to tell you something urgent. It is unlikely that anyone is going to buy art from (yet another) starving artist. Most people feel they have no extra money. “The cost of living,” is at an “all-time-high,” they say. Humans are plagued by egoistic and actual needs which make it so that most people don’t have feel worthy of owning “Original ART,” by a real living artist. In other words, they rather buy a poster. They might, “love,” your work but when it comes down to forking over the actual cash for a painting… few have the means or will to do so. I speak from experience, from watching the art world and from having studied who buys art, when, and how.
That said, the majority of Art Collectors, are driven by established brand names of known dealers and very few (predominantly white male) artists who are more business and public relations minded than your average painter/sculptors. These slick individuals, and we ALL know who they are, wear suits, eat caviar, and pay for whatever they want with the big money they make selling their brands, their image, which is of wealth, effortless living, and causal opulence (the giant art lofts, private jets, and sexy public scandals with peppered matching lawsuits) not of poverty and “starvation,” neediness and eternal WANT.
That said, we (your fellow talented and creative beings) are sympathetic to your needs because we all have needs. Yet, how you go about addressing those needs will either make your situation more dire, less comic, and even deadly or you could change your course and arrive at a place beyond urgent NEED, odious WANT, and potential “starvation.” Are you interested?
Can you image a life in which you had ALL the materials to make whatever kind of art you crave to make? Can you see yourself RICH? If not… can you imagine yourself (even better) satisfied, healthily fed, and professionally fulfilled?
Well, allow yourself to visualize what it would be like to have your needs met. What would it take for you to feel satisfied?
Some people fail to realize that as soon as they have one need met another (larger) one is sure to crop up.
How do you deal with the fact that you will be hungry again tomorrow, after you digest the food you secure and scarf down today? Will you just let tomorrow be a replay of today and thus go through your life eating and defecating and forgetting about tomorrow because you are too busy worrying today away to think about what will be of you in advance?
Yes… that is the key. You must somehow step out of worry about today and allow yourself to picture and plan a life that is not based on worry and fear.
Who would you be IF you had no needs?
Would you even be an artist? Or are you an artist because you think it is “cool.”
If you had all the money in the world how/where/why would you live?
Allow yourself to make a plan based on who you really are beyond need/want/fear. Plan your life and if money is an issue, face it. Deal with it!
If you have, “money problems,” you must make peace with money. You must. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your future self to be financially secure. Yet, if you do not make peace with money there is no way you will arrive at the harbor of financial freedom.
Most people claim that they need money. They feel that IF only they made ten percent more than what they do now they could relax. Yet the target is always slightly out of reach because humans tend to not be satisfied with what they have. The moment they have this, then they want that, and that! So they continue striving, wishing, pushing, crushing, fighting, forcing, and so on — until they die.
Yet, is that really living? I don’t think so. I’m not alone. I’ve learned what I know from spiritual teachers such as Dr. Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Dale Carnegie, Louise Haye, and they in turn quote others like Carlos Castaneda as masters teachers in the art of making life work for you so that you can enjoy being rather than waste away in never ceasing hunger.
Furthermore, if you have never taken a moment to study money, appreciate it, and thank goodness for all you already have; well it isn’t surprising that you do not have enough. Money has its own rhythm, music, and melody. You can learn to sign along. Yet, if money is not your bag than don’t complain when you don’t have enough. Enjoy your status as free of it and learn to live on the fridge or jungles or wherever it is that money grows on trees and people can just throw dollars at you to provide for your existence, but please don’t expect others who have and do focus on saving, investing, and honoring the spirit of abundance to enable your stance as ONE that need not face the realities of how money works. Please don’t complain when the customary bills rain in and you have no way to pay, accept it that you haven’t made a plan, that you haven’t made the right friends, that you have chosen to isolate yourself from sources of income and that you live in the outcome of those choices. Also don’t think that because others have bank accounts, mortgages, credit cards, and automobiles that they are not without their own financial concerns, remember the more you have the more you are likely to want/need so that those that seem “well off,” to you are often immersed in a cycle of desire very similar and, from their perspective just as urgent, as your own.
The BREAD you crave demands that you bake or make it yourself.
Lastly, we live in an incredibly rich society and there are public libraries in every city. YOU can become an expert on dollars and cents, budgeting, and money management. Please don’t tell me that you don’t have time. I don’t believe you. I am sure that if you take a break from Facebook or from fiddling around with the worthless, wasteful, company which you have cultivated, you would discover that you have plenty of time to improve your personal panorama and tweak the image of yourself you project into the world based on your warped understanding of what matters and how reality works. Also be aware that the BEST way to stay hungry is to make public announcements about how needy you are, even private statements of this kind are toxic to your financial health. IF you are going to live on charity you might conceive of a system by which you benefit others in the process, start a campaign to help “the needy,” manage it well and you might find yourself rolling in dough.
Sideshow Nation III: Circle the Wagons – a short review by Ron Schira
A Diversity of Art, image by Ron Schira, 2015
Sideshow Nation III: Circle the Wagons, now viewing through March 5 at Sideshow Gallery (319 Bedford Avenue) in Williamsburg has nearly tipped the scale for this yearly extravaganza with a whopping 600 plus artworks snugly fit into the space’s two large rooms. Master of ceremonies Rich Timperio refers to this impressive number as “reaching critical mass,” and for a personally run gallery is one of the largest shows of the of its kind to have such a widespread unadvertised appeal and continual growth factor.
Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, more than 100 pieces were added than last year. Of course, not much can be said of the show that the artwork does not say for itself as the sheer amount of diversity and puzzle-like salon installation becomes an incredible act of space organization, and as an exhibit is an artwork all its own.
Walking into the show is near overwhelming as artworks both large and small tower above you on the 20 foot high walls. The reception is highly attended, and even in freezing January temperature had people waiting outside for an hour to enter the packed exhibit of primarily Brooklyn artists with a few exceptions (yours truly, for one) from outside the city.
The Cold Could Not Stop the Crowds, image by Ron Schira, 2015
Every manner of art can be seen here, and with quite a few big name players. The variety is simply staggering, and without unjustly name dropping only a portion of the participants, every work is equal to the next as Timperio and crew endeavor to pack everything into an inevitably limited space, critical mass, as he said.
Mixed Media on Canvas, Painting by Frau Kolb, 2010
For the Romantics, out there, celebrating Valentine’s day comes as naturally as a bodily function. The Romantic simply oozes LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! They have buckets of red paint at the ready. They are intent on hitting the streets, this Saturday, 14th of February, year 2015, their pubes freshly waxed, to PAINT THE TOWN bright crimson, vibrating vermillion, luscious labia incarnadine, throbbing rose, and scintillating sienna.
You know the type: they got up early, last week to ensure that all their Lovers got long well-worded, heart moving, gut wrenching, LOVE letters written on top quality stationary. They own and are not afraid to use a fountain pen. Their hand writing proves they went to art school and the content of their letters shimmers with allusions to the voluptuous works of English poet, John Donne. Nothing is too grand for this type of being. Helicopter rides, no problem. Couple’s massage, with cinnamon oil and brisk strokes, assured. Red velvet cake and capes, required.
For those that LOVE, love the day is infused with a glow of giving and receiving, not so much cheap chocolates and factory made cards, but attention, affection, and erotic thumbs up from other sexy souls that seek any opportunity to connect and express emotions not often celebrated by the general population.
For Others, Valentine’s day is just another day. Perhaps the last time that they sent out a Valentine’s greeting was when they were in Kindergarten and the little kid they especially liked failed to get the message and just threw their little paper card away… Since then, they harbor a distrust for the holiday and don’t hesitate to express their lack of enthusiasm for Valentine’s Day. “It’s a Hallmark Holiday,” said one women, meaning that it was a bit of capitalist fluff, commercial hodgepodge holiday meaning nothing to Nobody.
How sad!
Stuffed Cloth Heart A Valentine By Annabella Kolb
It is for these downtrodden Lovers that Frau Kolb writes the following:
Talkinggrid List of 13 Reasons to Celebrate Valentine’s Day
1.) LOVE ROCKS!
Sorry, if you haven’t experienced this for yourself, yet, but if you have ever felt the sting of baby Cupid’s arrow, you know the poison propels paupers to the realms of princes, lifting one UP to new heights. It is wonderful to feel energized, charged, and ready to reach for the moon, fearless of falling into a pit of cliches, trusting.
2.) Celebrating Secures Sweet Memories
By investing time and thought into planning and producing a special sensation in another one creates a lasting impression, a memory of goodness shared. These memories hold couples together through difficult times in hospitals and under duress. Making dinner, setting the table, a single rose… candle light, it all adds up and get stored in that reserve of goodwill from which we draw when work, obligations, and personal difference threaten to erase our bonds with Loved Ones.
3.) Art you my LOVE?
Drawing on your infantile art skills or masterly verve with pen and ink; you can touch another’s heart and create that scrap of sunshine to warm up winter’s coldest days. YOU CAN! Allow yourself to find a good piece of acid-free paper, a scissor, some glue, glitter and BABY you can make your LOVE swoon.
4.) Pump UP the HEART Valve!
We are here now. We may not be here tomorrow. We owe it to ourselves to create a feeling of fulfillment in ourselves by expressing our fuzzy FEELINGS! Nothing will give you more JOLT or excitement than running up the temperature of your heart with warm words and woozy feelings! Expressing LOVE is a workout for the soul. Stay fit! Keep your soul from becoming a floppy blob: find yourself a LOVE worthy of words, wine, and worlds of wonderful exchanges, priceless endearments.
5.) It is good for the economy!
Think of all those chocolate makers, rose farmers, and vendors of paper products (cards, stickers, and trinkets) where would they be without Valentine’s Day to make February, an otherwise dull month, something snazzy. Valentine’s Day is indeed a commercialized holiday and you have a choice if you want to buy into it or not. You can celebrate with homegrown flowers, stinky little buds, preferred. You can make your own cards (see number 3) and write your own sonnets.
Some decide to splurge on jewelry, jets, and fireworks… Over-the-top? Yes and great for the providers of diamonds (always a rip off), charter plane flights to Maui, and explosives. HURRAY!
6.) Distinguish Yourself
You could be one of those cranky, irritable, sad, and sometimes lonely people that resist and resent LOVE in its throbbing pulsating glory. Or you could rent a white stretch limo and ride around town listening to “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” by Richard Wagner. The choice is, again, yours.
7.) BEHOLD THE WHITE ELEPHANT!
Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity for secret loves to throw caution to the wind and FLAUNT their LOVE! Go ahead invite your Other Man/Woman over for dinner with you and your official partner. Who knows you may find that polyamory or pure honesty are not as foreign to you and yours as previously envisioned. YOU can use this day to reveal your real feelings and thus release yourself from artifice and arrive at a more authentic being. (Or, you may become part of an scandalous triple murder suicide and thus earn your fifteen minutes of infamy.)
8.) Quality and Content Matter
This is your chance to state, affirm, and expose your true feelings for the ones that are either in your life or you would like to attract and attach to. The gift(s) you choose (or don’t) say a lot about the type of love you feel and what you have to offer and what you wish for in exchange. For all the women getting boxes of silky nothings… you know what is desired in return. For all the men that discover lovingly deforested females… on this magical day… well, you know you are LOVED.
Valentine’s Day 2015
9.) Keeping UP with The Kolbs
Observing tradition and flowing with the yearly calendar of opportunities to celebrate our bond is of the greatest importance to us. This year we celebrate our sixteenth year together. My husband has never failed to surprise me with roses red and sweets of various types. I’m pleased to say that I think we are just at the start of discovering the texture, color, and many shapes our love can take.
10.) Keeping up with The Kardashians
Just kidding.
11.) Friendship is worthy of Celebrating too.
Do not underestimate how much it will mean to your grandmotherly pal to get a card from you today. The other mothers in your mothers group will also feel appreciated if you send of an electronic or paper missive listing sweet qualities and good times had.
12.) The Jehova’s Witnesses Disapprove!
This may be my absolute favorite and strongest reason for celebrating Valentine’s Day with gusto; the Jehova’s Witnesses (an international door-to-door christian spirituality cult promising eternal life to the select and destruction to the rest) insist that Valentine’s Day is a Pagan holiday and that celebrating it is … blah, blah, blah… whatever. I grew up going to meetings three times per week. Thanks to them, I’ve read the King James Bible (in Spanish, no less) from cover to cover more than twice, yet I don’t understand why they think themselves better, more worthy of salvation, than anybody else. So… please pass the red heart staple gun. Thank you.
13.) Why Not?
Seriously, what are you afraid of? Eternal damnation? Revealing LOVE and being rejected? Spending too much on overpriced roses?
Get over it and get ON with the Party that is LIFE!
The years have punched us, around a bit, but we learned to duck.
Together, “we fly like mandarin geese.” We dip. We dive. We fly past obstacles to Paris, France… Miami! Rome. New York. No problem. Hong Kong. Here we GO! Effortlessly, we transform from cocooned, invisible beings, into GRAND winged creatures. Image: WE wear ankle length, bat capes and fuzzy ears. Cute, huh?
Now, BACK OFF!!! WE are serious, deadly. Dangerous, ARTISTS! Visionaries… Seers.
Social critics?
WE STING! We spear chuck. We have outbursts. We are… INVISIBLE!!! Or not… we deflate, rapidly, like rubber sex dolls to be used as needed, and then put away for another day… no hard feelings.
Tears, drip down my face, from laughing at you, laughing at me in this ridiculous outfit, onstage. The audience, eats up our raw chemistry. We soar, creating jacked up rock-jazz-poetry, fresh with your hard chops and silver AXE and me, long legs akimbo, exploring the range of experimental accordion tactics, in a micro-mini. How refreshing! Talent springs forth. Together, we rock out. Your friendship empowers me. You get me out of the house, out of my books, and into the world. I appreciate that. Thank you. When we JAM, the sound is so good not only because you know music but because I didn’t until I bumped into my sixth grade music award… oh yeah, I’m a player, too… and I’m willing to make some righteous noise, just listen.
ROAR!
Now imagine: a zipping hornet of international black and pink polkadot WASPS! Unlike bees, WE stay ALIVE, after we sting. Honey, we don’t fight CANCER. Instead, we DANCE! Tango? Anyone? Buzzing. Social Butterflies. Diving into the pleasure of being here in ernest. Double dipping. Tax paying. Party Animals!
(Imagine it. Mix all the metaphors, in your head. Make a cocktail of images. Bees. Flowers. Birds. Painted rock stars in platform shoes performing before an eager and excited audience. Throw some gold in there, why don’t you? Diamonds, check! Feathers. Add, graceful dancers in tuxedos, sequins, (fake) furs. LIGHTS!!! Glamour. check. Frau Kolb. Check!)
Everyday, irrespective of what goes, “wrong,” or isn’t perfect in our lives, we have the option of seeing the GOOD that IS and digesting the FACT of our good fortune. We each have gifts. Perhaps you are a writer or seriously good looking. Perhaps you are a spirited salsa dancer. It doesn’t matter if you are short. IF you can salsa Hotties wearing elastic band dresses will follow you out on the dance floor. YOU know it… You have seen it. Remember Salsa Johnny? Shortest guy in Salsa-Land. The ladies don’t care. They just shimmy up and wiggle to his smooth moves. He leaves with the girl that twirls and looks BOMB in glittering spandex.
If you are the biggest NERD, well… everybody knows that the Nerds of the Eighties are the Tech Wizards of Today. Rich as Gates… We all have a purpose. Yet, it is easy to forget that everyone is special and worthy of love; so much is annoyingly WRONG, according to NEWS and Media. We are ALL OVERWEIGHT! People KILL people for no good reason. We are all VIOLENT, angry. History proves that humans are completely capable of hating themselves, and their brothers and sisters. The news confirms our worst fears and collective memories of HORROR. The flexing of power, which renders some into killers, soldiers, and officers… others into robots that follow orders to torture and maim or worse, design methods of “extracting information,” which are inhumane. Lest we forget, the fact that killing is central to the diets of billions, including myself, who cannot conceive a life in which not a single pig is grown for Sunday Bacon. Yet, do I want pigs to die senseless cruel deaths? No.
Do I wish for humans to hurt each other? Do I wish to harm? No. No. No. My mission is to remind you: BE GOOD. Write. Start your own blog. Above all, enjoy your life and respect the lives of others, no matter how tempting it is to think of some people as “Pigs.” It is wrong to demote humans into species traditionally farmed or hunted, hated… “rats,” the Nazi called the people they decided were not their brothers, sisters, and friends. Suddenly, the Jewish people, so civilized and entrenched in their German lives, were worse than enemies, they were pests. How we can transform into predators and others into prey is a mystery, if one forgets that not too long ago…
Die Entwicklung der Menschheit
Einst haben die Kerls auf den Bäumen gehockt, behaart und mit böser Visage. Dann hat man sie aus dem Urwald gelockt und die Welt asphaltiert und aufgestockt, bis zur dreißigsten Etage. Da saßen sie nun, den Flöhen entflohn, in zentralgeheizten Räumen. Da sitzen sie nun am Telefon. Und es herrscht noch genau derselbe Ton wie seinerzeit auf den Bäumen.
Sie hören weit. Sie sehen fern. Sie sind mit dem Weltall in Fühlung. Sie putzen die Zähne. Sie atmen modern. Die Erde ist ein gebildeter Stern mit sehr viel Wasserspülung.
Sie schießen die Briefschaften durch ein Rohr. Sie jagen und züchten Mikroben. Sie versehn die Natur mit allem Komfort. Sie fliegen steil in den Himmel empor und bleiben zwei Wochen oben.
Was ihre Verdauung übrigläßt, das verarbeiten sie zu Watte. Sie spalten Atome. Sie heilen Inzest. Und sie stellen durch Stiluntersuchungen fest, daß Cäsar Plattfüße hatte.
So haben sie mit dem Kopf und dem Mund Den Fortschritt der Menschheit geschaffen. Doch davon mal abgesehen und bei Lichte betrachtet sind sie im Grund noch immer die alten Affen.
Erich Kästner
In other words, no matter how SPIRITUAL and LOFTY we like to think we are… we are merely, the same old apes that slipped down from the trees a second ago. We are working on becoming BETTER.
I work to remind myself that It is mostly on television, in movies, or in novels, that people shot people. I’ve never really had much attraction to guns and can’t image why one would ever want to shot anything, except of course for target practice or in the case of, “a brace of pheasant,” being secured for Christmas
dinner. Yet, some decide to go into “Law Enforcement,” which means they are paid by taxes “protect and serve.” We appreciate their valor. I couldn’t do it. Imagine going out and responding to the calls of the insane and abandoned, hurt and abused. You’d have to be very brave. It must be very scary!
The thought of serving the public as a police officer is overwhelming to me, but I appreciate that IF there is an emergency, we have the option of dailing 911. We are glad to have specially trained support, a social recourse, on call. That police officers work for our benefit is part of the story. That some have loss sight of the value of each human life or see some citizens as instant targets for investigation, intimidation, and worse is NO NEWS. (Yet, we can not come to accept evil. We must continue to demand reforms, amends, and justice for all those caught in the net of evil that is prejudiced or violent Law Enforcement. We must or we are part of the problem.)
In books, noir detective novels, sexy smoky films with women in clingy gowns and men in linen suits, that show up, armed, dangerous KILLING is COOL. Imagine the moment when the fedora wearing man felt, “a calling to work with guns,” on the streets, sorting out the cigarettes and the fabricated misery from the true distress call of the frail, the battered, helping heiresses sort out their complicated family history and teaching these wayward girls how to slip in and out of a martini before the gangsters arrive and…. It would take almost superhuman power to face the world with a gun, badge, and number. Image, your first murder case… I mean in novels, murder is the novelty, the spark which propels the action of the narrative forward. Undoubtedly, there is a THRILL of reading of the dark passages where assassins lurk, waiting until apprehended by cleverer detectives… Yet, in real Life, murder is no laughing matter, no passing fancy, no story backdrop.
Fortunately, I did not become a police officer. I am not sure I would have ever qualified. I am fit but in a funky spirited art waif, way. As it is, I live a much safer life, than I image is that of either criminals or law enforcement. Really, I spend most of my time and energy, hiding out, in study, and cultivating peace. I invest my time in observing and encouraging goodness, prosperity, and harmony. People call to ask for advice because they know I’m pretty good at navigating through this sea of possibility we call, “LIFE.” Yet, I’m not one to shy away from discord in music or my private life…. In other words, HERE hiding in the comfort of my womblike abode, I am brave, I am willing. I protest by forwarding some news stories and commenting, however obliquely, on current events. I feel outrage mingled with great joy at being here in this world, now. Sure, I’ve had moments of intense confusion, RAGE beyond control, induced by… you don’t care to know… yet, I’m mostly about peace and cultivating global acceptance and mutual understanding. REMEMBER: FRAU KOLB is not Perfect. I know… I know… you don’t believe me. Unless, of course, you have read this blog for long enough to know that I am indeed, far from perfect… perhaps… I am like YOU, divinely flawed!
One thing I know: we are but shades of each other, each a little more, a little less and identical, the same. We try as we might to differentiate but we must all eat, shit, and die. Therefore, we are left with this instant in which to decide for what we stand. Or are we with the BIG BAD WOLF howling and gorging himself on fear? Do we binge on BAD NEWS? Do we cultivate DRAMA in our lives? How, precisely, are we investing our days, spending our lives? Are we designing with our actions a Romantic Comedy or a Horror Flick? Let’s forget about pointing fingers. Let’s LOOK at our own actions in the mirror and forget about a perfect people, perfect race, perfect blog. FUCK perfection. Let’s LOVE what is. Let’s love each other, flawed, ugly. Fat. Poor. White. Trash. Priceless princess. Devoted servant. Teacher. Scholar. Voluntary Sex Slave. Let’s collectively forgive our employers, parents, neighbors, therapists, siblings, and friends for all the harm they have caused us and let’s LET GO of the anger, pain, entitlement that allows us to make victims of ourselves and others on a global scale and let’s KEEP DANCING!
(You can tell that I just finished reading a fabulous work of fiction by Los Angeles resident, author, Lisa See, “China Dolls.” This book was a light, fun, sexy romp into the dark crevices of HORROR which history, World War II era, Asian American DRAMA, a classic love story following the tried and true boy meets girls… has sex with both, marries the nice respectable lovable predictable SHOW girl…YET enchanting pattern… I loved it, because sometimes we all need a little stability in a story line to keep us turning pages.)
Lately, I’ve been tortured that my writing is not to par. How dare I keep writing this awful blog? I mean, my best friends tell me how horrible the BAD grammar in the earlier stages (remember when I went through that ass for as, phase, when I couldn’t resist playing with my butt and my buts in public…) listen, forgive me… I was just getting words OUT. OUT. OUT. Some people may be able to wait, I can’t or couldn’t. I had to get the words OUT. I’ve been writing in diaries, journals, most of my life. I read and read and read some more… I’ve so many books, ideas, and art images in my head. I’m bursting.
The BLOG, this blog, is an extension of three strong urges. One: have FUN! Two: Get WORDS OUT! Three: connect with my kind, my friends, my people.
YOU that read my words, regularly, observe that I’ve distinguished myself as someone that has a message. Moreover, let’s not forget that I am a Columbia University graduate… I know grammar rules… let’s not forget that it is easy to criticize and much more of a challenge to build an audience, a rapport with the public. For those of you that know me well, it will come as no surprise, that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve approached it in a myriad of ways. Yet it is here, on-line that I’ve found my voice, my outlet. (I’ve started novels and nearly three hundred pages of drivel to prove it. I painted, participate in art events, and I draw daily… yet, there is a part of me that knows I don’t have the stamina to become a full time fine art painter. It seems, to me that a person would have to be made of nails to want to do that. You have to be very tough, maybe as tough as a cop… maybe not.) Anyway, I’m an artist, for sure… I write. I dance. My dance is impromptu, a jazz I fashion from the shock others experience when they witness me shake it. Now, the fact remains. I write. I write right here. Now. I publish. Miraculously, you read my words. Thank you.
More amazing: you are not alone in reading ALL THESE WORDS. You have waded through this long text. You have clicked and dug around and spent… hours of your life here, reading. Lots of readers frequent this site. Maybe they LIKE BAD GRAMMAR. I mean… there is so much good grammar out there… so many people writing scholarly reviews on Yelp…. yet SOME of YOU are even generous and supportive enough to DONATE to the Talkinggrid, which really means the world to me, to us. Now:
Let’s be grateful IF we have fingers, with which to type of LIFE as a JOY, a pleasure to be shared! Let’s remember that not everybody is so lucky as to be able to see, touch, smell, type, read, write, and/or tell the difference between right and wrong. Nope. You can, sometimes. So can I, until I can’t, but I don’t let myself forget my good fortune in being able to address these issues and share with you my perspective, my joy, my gratitude.
At the end of the day, it is my experience that goodness rules. Most people want to be and are mostly good. Sure we cheat, lie, and fail to live up to our ideals, but we have ideals and we will continue to improve. We may lose sight of this fact that most humans simply want to live, love, and grow old, when we watch children arm themselves and attack with weapons meant for military combat on our multiple screens and many NEWS (Horror) sources. We may eat meat, but we aren’t here to steal the life of another over political cartoons and we aren’t planning on wearing a cartoon hero suit and gunning down movie goers or drawing ourselves up to be warriors in video games, avenging High School Slights, paternal permissiveness, by gunning down our neighbor children. Daily, all over the world, humans exchange so many little supportive gestures, courtesies, which are the food that nourishes our collective spirit and allows us to continue despite the exceptional misery and astounding crimes that we know to be part of this endless narrative of sorrow and suffering, celebration and birth, called, “Life.”
Here we are! Dip. Rumba! Soft shoe. Flip! Dancing? Finding romance in the eyes of the partner we picked long ago, in our reproductive prime… finding the strength in ourselves to leave the abusive parent, the over taxing best friend (like the protagonist, Grace, in Lisa See’s stunning little novel of Asian American Show Girls shaking their cans into the retirement home lounge show circuit). On must learn to let GO, swing it, shake it UP, roll around like a clown and find BALANCE in the midst of the madness by being honest about one’s true and unique position as a STAR in the introverted and meandering, luxurious, and unpredictable, fun and carefree world of Frau Kolb & Talkinggrid.
Yet the FACT remains… either you had FUN in 2014 or it was a difficult year for you. Either way, I’m happy you are here and I thank you for the returning visits. In 2014 Talkinggrid GREW! Thanks to Anne Hutchins and DONATIONS from our friends, family, and well funded and generous, FRAU FANS! YEAH!
How did you celebrate? Who were you with? Alone? Did your pals come by and did you have a good time, howling wolf songs in the chilly moonlight, past midnight?
All good. Whatever you did, it is behind you. Now you have this fresh NEW year, which is a chance to further prove how capable and wonderful you really are. WE made it, Baby! Welcome 2015!
Yippee.
Me? I embraced the New Year, as I would another day. Yet, on the actual day of the new year I was feeling less than stellar. Today, I few days later, I have my strength back.
Now I give you a glimpse of my favorite moments in 2014:
Massive CHILL OUT at Joe REZ, Nirvana Tea & Herb, Feb. 2014OUT in Venice! Nana Ghana & Frau Kolb Hit it.
The New Year smiles and coos, brand new and cuddly. I’m an experienced and loving caretaker. The fruits of my success are in my family life and home which I opened to friends and visitors in 2014, like never before. I will do with this year, what I have done with all my other years. I will LOVE IT!!! I will. I will kiss it and hug it, and nurse it with my metaphysical milk. I will carry it and cater to its demands. I will grow it and and nurture it so that NEXT YEAR when it dies, I will let it go, gracefully.
We met up with the elusive and mysterious beauty, Ms. Crane. We finished the year with a visit from artist contemporary artist Kathy Goodell. We noted the passing of Fashion Designer, Oscar de la Renta, and comedian/actress/show host Joan Rivers & wrote about Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer. WE traveled to New York for the holidays with our friends, on-line. We, did so much! WE laughed, we shared. Mostly, we kept each other company, HERE at the edge.
In 2015 we look forward to more intimate encounters with brilliant humans in sparkling settings, a NEW Talkinggrid ART adventures!
The year is wrapping itself up into a tight wad. You call to confess to me, that you are you “TOTALLY FREAKING OUT???” Are you running around, trying to cater a party for 30 when you have enough chairs for 3? Is your budget stretched to the limit? Are you contemplating bankruptcy or, at least, a reduction in the size of your Barney’s Binge Shopping Budget in 2015?
NOW, before I begin to dish, my special brand of savory information, a delicate stew of warm MUSE NEWS, to which you have become increasingly accustomed, being that it provides a nourishing substance… you require. I readily advise you on how to shake those often ugly, hardened, stormy feelings that threaten spring upon you, to choke you, violently clouding out every ray of positivity, which might blossom, IF carefully tended and coaxed into fruition, during the HOLIDAYS, but instead FESTERS, like an open sore… oozing. I find myself instantly getting depressed when there is so much pressure to be HAPPY! Enforced Christmas Cheer pushes my buttons.
Not everyone LIKES Holiday music… Not even every ELF is a Sinatra Classics FAN! Yet, it is impossible to avoid, between October and January!
Perhaps… like many people… you HATE CHRISTMAS MUSIC and come around October, they start to BLAIR THAT CRAP… in every space that has the mojo to command a cash register. Don’t they understand that by giving US so very much of Christmas, many of us GET SICK of IT? Holiday music is like rap, country, or heavy metal music… not everybody’s cup o’ Joe… and maybe if it was just for ONE month, say December, then it would be almost bearable, but the shopping centers are relentless in their stream of sonic sales stimulating musical brain invasion!
The Annoyed Consumer, is forced to SUCK UP the “steamy,” sound of “Santa Baby…” for months, imagining tarty girls flirting with their fat Santa, Banker or Hedge-Fund SUGAR DADDIES… Worse, the sensitive soul is ground down by the schmaltzy mix of materialism muddled with a diluted, polluted, Christian message which is pumped into our veins in the toxic form of mainstream HOLIDAY Culture. YUCK!
Sometimes, just lighting a candle and taking a moment out to be silent is ALL the Holiday Celebration you need.
The pure elixir of belief is being mixed into the cheap sweet carbonation of hyped up SALES and shopping frenzies; what might be an authentic spiritual opportunity is turned into a SALES Event! The materialism revolts you…You wanna scream like the Edward Munch painting. YOU CAN’T TAKE IT! Yet… the holiday MUSIC follows you into Starbucks, another place I want to avoid. “Jiggle BELLS!” “Jiggle Bells!” Cry monstrous children, that chase you in your thin and flimsy dreams. YOU WAKE UP!
Stressed… the bills are mounting, the kids (you don’t even have any but IF YOU did it might be dangerous, this year!) are griping, screaming, and shouting! Their horrific excitement about ALL THE TRASH they are about to spew out into the universe. Wrappers. Packing. TAPE! The HORROR of Holiday Cocktails with people whom you do not trust and you must keep your guard and be very polite, ever so NICE!
(Chill OUT! It is clear that YOU have a BAD CASE of The HOLIDAY HORRORS! YOU have come down with a highly infectious disease. Yes. IT IS TRUE! You must contain yourself. You must find a means of protecting others from the bad vibe you are emanating. Yes, you.)
Thank goodness, you have come to the right place for instant on-line healing.
Please, allow me, Frau Kolb ARTIST comic relief and aspiring adolescent, laughing here, HEAD and IN CHARGE of ALL THIS FABULOUS CONTENT, on www.talkinggrid.com, to diagnose poor depressed and spiritually depleted,YOU, with the following flowing one-size-fit-all blanket of “ISSUE,” which you may or may not cling to in a desperate attempt to DISCOVER some greater truth, than the basics we ALL KNOW. The Holidays, are best invested in self reflection, go easy on the booze and pass on the sticky buns. You don’t need those easy escapes and quick fixes now. Concentrate on loving yourself, better than that.
Sure, like everyone else on the planet, YOU have problems. Now, forget about it… The truth is: It isn’t easy being human. We all struggle. Just getting in and out of pajamas… buying pajamas and washing pajamas is an epic undertaking. Add traffic. Sex. Finances. Children. War. Race conflict. Loud Americans (or whoever you feel is invading your space simply by being audible…) and… well… We are ALL ready to SCREAM! SCREAM! SCREAM!
Yet, here’s the rub: we all have to find the strength to move gracefully from one day to the next. It is our responsibility to seek out happiness, good spirit, Cheer. Not just during the holidays but year round for our health and for the health of others. We might benefit for some of the prescribed Merriment. Yet, How? Come on, my friend… step over here. Sit down. Here, on this silken pillow. I know you are tired. Exhausted. You feel used and abused. No one loves you (except Talkinggrid, of course). Well… I will tell you a secret…
Sit down. Take a seat. Breath. So… Here it is:
“YOU want to shake this terrible Holiday Helplessness that hits you with the force of a Caribbean storm. Yet, what to do?”
Here are SEVEN SECRET, Foolproof, steps to maintaining a modicum of MENTAL HEALTH & Happiness during the sometimes nauseating attacks of Holiday Panic, Holiday Horror! Okay, I LOOK at you and I tell you what ALWAYS works for me. I have SEVEN SECRET ways out of any little steaming HOLIDAY HELL which you may have wandered into this muddy pit, by accident but… NOW YOU are stuck in the muddy molten lava nightmare, yet HAVE NO FEAR! Frau KOLB is HERE to SAVE YOU!
1. NOW! Move IT! Nothing will make you feel better about yourself or your situation than doing some sit ups, jumping jacks, yoga, whatever primitive mode of self tuning you practice… get to it. At least half an hour per day. NOW! Go UP THE STAIRS! Walk to work. Avoid the elevator. Try skipping, as children do.
2. Start your New Year’s RESOLUTIONS EARLY! Hit it. NOW! Consider quitting drinking NOW! Do a juice fast. Wheatgrass. Everyday. You will feel better and you will thank yourself when instead of gaining weight this year you enter the NEW YEAR looking fit and fabulous.
3. Write everybody Holiday LOVE LETTERS! Screw the materialism. You don’t have to buy anything for anybody. Write them letters of praise, LOVE. What we all really want for Christmas is good old fashioned praise and love. Write your loved ones a few pages of script, extolling their virtues and enumerating their strong points. Better, mail it to them, even IF you live in the same house. Send actual cards, with handwritten words and perhaps a printed photograph, to, at least, ONE person. Yes. One is more than enough. (You can even send your letter to yourself in order to ensure you get HOLIDAY MAIL from someone special.)
4. Sleep. Turn off the phone. Say, “Goodbye Computer.” Turn INWARD. Contemplate. Peace.
Nothing hurts you more than forgetting to nourish your body with rest.
5. Ritual Bathing. Listen, don’t knock it, till you’ve tried it. I put a marvelous mixture of sea salts and oils, oatmeal (skin soothing) and green tea powders in warm water and soak away much of what ails me. Hey… costs very little and most of us can access a little hot water and epson salt. No?
6. Create. You know, seeing ALL THOSE flashing lights and shows… it leaves you feeling a little EMPTY. Try painting it out. Paper. Canvas. Board. You decide. Or… use words, music… write a SAD SAD Christmas BLUES SONG and blow everybody away at the company Christmas Par-Tay with an impromptu performance!
7. Apply the SEVEN BOOK RULE! Here is the KEY to the verdant private garden of Frau Kolb’s imaginary and real experience of total life success: READ, READ, READ! The deeper your interests, your knowledge, your connection to the fabric of humanity, through its thought which may be directly accessed in BOOKS, will sustain the fragile sensitive you in times of duress. Yes, books, are my best and most stable friends. I retreat into them and in them find constant comfort and guidance. You can read, whatever you like, whatever uplifts YOU! But give yourself permission to avoid topics that prove toxic or debilitating to you. In other words, censor yourself, if it means avoid the turgid sea of Ugly Holiday Horror.
Try reading about the Early Christians, Alternate forms of Jewish Faith, The Fluctuations of Stock Market Wave patterns… whatever floats your boat. IF it elevates your mood and is not a gun manual, read it.
Personally, I enjoy books on history. What kind of history varies. Lately, I find myself reading more and more books set in or about China. It seems that Chinese and Asian Studies are emerging as a major focus. This makes for yet another hobby which while absorbing much of my time, delivers timeless knowledge and thus inspires me to take my personal issues in stride, aware that I am but a drop in the bucket. Reading is constantly shaping my perspective on LIFE. I am after many years of interest into Chinese Art and painting but a novice at investigating the language, the characters, the gorgeous pictographic/calligraphic writing system. This multi layered interest, has brought new SPARK (PASSION!) into my, already full and delightful, life. By investing my time in learning what I find remarkable, I enrich my life and protect myself from succumbing to the HOLIDAY MELTDOWN which so plagues the Armies of Shoppers, mobbing Walmart for “last minute,” gifts.
What do you want to learn? What do you want to master? Tell me. Tell yourself and treat yourself to time dreaming, thinking, writing, and planning a better now by being more at ease and grateful simply for the gift of being, which in no way means, that we aren’t aware that not everyone is as lucky as we are to be breathing, NOW… and that is my point. Don’t allow the creepy mood of militant outward displays of canned Christian sentiment crush you! YOU are more ZEN than that!
Now finally, perhaps this year, I will write you again, a word or two… nothing major… but it is time I hear from you. Please comment. Mark LOVE at the top corner. Share this or another, your favorite of my stories, and PLEASE IF YOU are a regular reader and wish to contribute to the YEAR END Frau KOLB Christmas Par-TAY FUND, CLICK donate DONATE donate at the bottom of the Talkinggrid’s front page. By DONATING to Talkinggrid you ensure that I will continue making time to writing and thereby AMUSE and UPLIFT you with Frau Kolb’s Muse News and Talkinggrid FUN!
EXPRESS YOUR LOVE and APPROVAL for independent Artist/Blogger Absurdist World Traveling Imaginary Friend and Intricate Fuzz Ball, Frau Kolb, via the DONATE button, on the bottom of the cover page.
Deck the halls! What to do in New York, this holiday season? Well, you could #protest…
which is, of course, essential to the New Yorkers. As a young Manhattanite I hit the streets each time war or other injustice took place. Protest is a part of urban culture we can applaud. That said…
Baby, you know, it is cold outside. Yet, even the thought of New York warms me up, a bit. New York is always exciting. To creatives, luxury hounds, tourists, and fashionable sorts from all over, New York is home to all sorts of warm and cozy fantasies come true. Warm in the way of wet dreams and stolen kisses, especially welcoming to those looking for KUNST and other sensual thrills during the holidays. Inside New York’s many museums, galleries, restaurants, and trendy shops the cheer is in full gear and there is much to be bubbly about. This year is no exception. I have dear friends that have traveled from Europe, Switzerland, to be exact, visiting New York, right now! Being that they know I know the city and its cultural treasures they asked WHERE to GO during their short trip into, snowy, decadent, sensual Manhattan.
Of course, I have super friends that help me make plans and with my recommendations. So, I asked the New Yorkers I know know which way the wind blows where to go this season:
Frau Kolb: What do you think, Daniel Maidman? (Maidman is a figurative painter I most admire. His work is in the language of the old masters and yet promises a contemporary punch… somehow… mysterious and intriguing. Daniel Maidman is an artist I follow, sneaking about the internet, googling him. You should try it. Here is the link to his site. To the collectors of figurative art, Maidman’s THE MAN! Actually, it is weird because… this is NOT the type of painting I usually dig or endorse, but there is much to Maidman’s intensity and focus I admire and wish, perhaps, to channel into my own artwork.)
James Kaston: Having lunch at Fred’s at Barney’s with me. At least one of those days. (Kaston, is a fashion plate and selfie aficionado. He gives better on-line love than any one I know and indeed I’m LOOKING FORWARD to not just lunch but a real pow-wow and shopping explosion, when this man and I meet in person, in Los Angeles, New York, or Paris… Why not?)
Frau Kolb: I’d love to, but I’m planning a trip for the public… yes I will suggest that every meet with you for lunch at Fred’s at Barney. This should be a rite of passage for every stylish American.
Frau Kolb Thanks Daniel, I’m glad to know I’m almost making it into your social calendar, excellent tips. Do you mind if I print them all and give you credit, of course?
Frau Kolb Come on Joaquin Carter What is the VERY GAY thing to do for the holidays in New York City. (Joaquin is an artist and on-line personality whose posts and provocative questions, I dig.)
Frau Kolb Daniel Maidman These are great suggestions. I’d love to see Clemente, Shiele, Cezanne, and Matise. Modern Art’s Greatest Hits! Clemente being Neo-Modern, no?
Joaquin Carter gay..I have no idea. lets go to a museum together. (I’d LOVE to! Thanks!)
Blossom VerlinskyBalthazar is fun to go to – make a res. they’re very busy (Blossom Verlinsky is a terrifically talented painter and visual artist! Boy! Am I pleased to have a bevy of distinguished art world contacts as Facebook friends!)
Joaquin Carter this looks like fun..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsoZHoozX-k
GREAT LINK!!! Great youtube video! I would LOVE to see this show and really thank you Joaquin, I’m so glad I asked! (Wish I could flit off to the East Coast for a culture infusion!)
Thank YOU Katrina Revenaugh, (art pal and artist working out of the middle west… I think.)
Katrina Revenaugh http://bkbazaar.com
Brooklyn Night Bazaar | Brooklyn Night Bazaar
A night market that brings together independent vendors,…
BKBAZAAR.COM
(My personal favorite way to spend a day in Manhattan. A visit to the The Frick Museum and Lunch at The Mark HotelRestaurant. Read more about my most recent visit to New York City, here.
But, I haven’t had the pleasure of a trip to New York City since, last year!)
Katrina Revenaugh Frau Kolb my friend Ken Petti highly recommends Queen of Night NYC (he’s bi-coastal right now- (East Coas/Midcoast-NY/KC). Superb eye for art, design and all things super-fantastic.
Frau Kolb Blossom Balthazar’s is my favorite restaurant!!! (My husband and I went on our first date there.)
Frau Kolb This is a great start, thank you James Kaston, Daniel Maidman, Blossom Verlinsky, Katrina Revenaugh, and Joaquin Carter! You have in some case confirmed in others expanded my list of what ONE MUST DO in NYC this Holiday, 2014. Much appreciated!
Katrina Revenaugh Have a blast! New York is such a fun place to be over the holidays!
Frau Kolb I’m not going. I’m writing a travel guide for friends flying in from Switzerland.
Gently, a day is taking shape. This visit is chiseled from the veined marble of long understanding. Kathy Goodell and Frau Kolb are friends with a connection that spans decades in this life and the infinite in some other plain of existence, past lives playing a prominent role. Yet, this is our first time spending an entire week under one roof. Will we get along?
Hartmuth Kolb is pleased to visit Point Loma in San Diego, California
Frau experiences refreshed awareness that life is phenomenological blooming of energy, fleeting blooms on the edge of time, the wind of ideas stirs reflection, when in the company of this refined Contemporary Art Muse. Thus, OPEN to talks on closing acts and end game strategy, we embrace a day of deep talks, woven into the breezy fabric of classic San Diego sight seeing.
We wake up early, as usual. The morning zips past. At noon we were at San Diego International Airport, picking up our friend, a soul sister and personal Art Muse of Talkinggrid, Kathy Goodell, a human flowering of loveliness and edgy intelligence has arrived! She is easy to spot, looking fashionable, in her HUGE sunglasses and “Op Art,” silk blouse. She is a powerful Muse. We rush to greet her. She embraces us with the warmth. BIG HUGS! Flowing kisses. “Hello! Hello!” All around, our day is off to a rip roaring good start!
Kathy Goodell looking lovely with BIG SUN GLASSES in San Diego with Frau Kolb and The Family
On the way to lunch in Little Italy, in San Diego, The Art Muse of Talkinggrid, Kathy Goodell’s winning personality is like a shawl, comforting. In my world, Goodell is famous not just for her expansive and intellectually daring sculptures and art installations, but also for being a person whose personality is at crossroads of glass and metal, transparent grace, fragile, yet of enduring strength and lasting fortitude. Her artistic oeuvre touches on the accidental, dreamy and quasi scientific in scope. Her art work moves me. She is a venerated teacher of art, mentor to many, with a following that spans generations, continents. She graciously speaks to my little children about the recent Henri Matisse, exhibition, up now in New York City, now, connecting with them immediately, tending to that sacred spark, an interest in art, which we hold dear.
Muse Goodell is loving the organic food market, Jimbo’s in San Diego!Always creating, Kathy Goodell, takes in San DiegoI painted this portrait of our amusing guest in a burst of inspiration, joy.Snapping a Selfie!Goodell’s good looks inspire artists, young and old.Annabella, age 8, makes a nice drawing of Kathy Goodell.My Kid finds Goodell a worthy subject for a portrait.
The Muse Departs
Goodell, simply, oozes neon talent. She is one of those beings that lives and breaths the mystical condition of being a “True Artist,” a multi-faceted creature, adventure ready. She thrills me with her floating free generosity of spirit, her cool fashion sense, and her quick mind. She is a favorite of the lively Contemporary ART MUSES, a female goddess of great creativity and wit, a source of artistic inspiration to many a young and an old artist, both inspiring to art legends and generations of students. Goodell is friend who has earned the extra attention not just from Frau Kolb but from all her army of adoring students, all grateful for her indefatigable encouragement and support.
Imagine being a real Contemporary Artist, an art professor, paid for your expertise in art, a Guggenheim Grant recipient, Best Friend to Frau Kolb, Star of Talkinggrid, and international MUSE! A respected person known for knowing about ART! Think of that… Imagine being known as an Contemporary Artist and being a woman respected for her solid creativity and staggering productivity? Now, go Google yourself. What does Google say about you? Google Kathy Goodell, you will discover a woman at the crossroads of American History, a person of singular interest, and tremendous charisma. Be impressed. I am.
We drive to the Historical and Natural Preserve of Point Loma, gladly paying $5.00 per vehicle entrance fee. We look about and then decide to visit the Light House. “I Love LENS!!!” Goodell purrs. Up into the little hill we go, which like so many such relics from a time past, seems tiny, a little precious jewel of a home, which once housed the keeper of the lonely lighthouse and his family. The rooms, spick and span, chamber pots under the beds, pitcher and bowl for washing one’s face, a little guitar in the corner, hand made quilts… the usual American frontier artifacts of a time just recently past, idealized as formerly simpler.
Point Loma is a lovely vista point from which you can see all of downtown San Diego, Bay and Harbor.
The Point Loma lens are so beautiful. Old glass, it captures the room around it, the light, the rainbows, upside down and inside out, the play of here and there is OTHERWORLDLY. One could image that these objects might somehow be portals to different dimensions. Doorways into space. The infinite.
Excellent iphone image of the LENS at Point Loma in San Diego by Talkinggrid Muse, Contemporary Artist, Kathy Goodell.
In Goodell’s company I find myself thinking about the perpetual. What is FOREVER? Our friendship is a lasting one, the seed of which was a casual comment Goodell made as the young Frau Kolb… I wasn’t Frau Kolb then… I was a very young woman working in an Italian Restaurant in Soho, when Kathy came in to dine. I waited on her. She saw something in me. That we became like family is a testament to her OPEN heart and generosity of spirit. Her friendship is an unwavering source of good in my life and I hope to be forever that in hers. All this LOVING makes me think of DEATH. Death.
The finality of it… really, each of us only has a few close friends in this world. Goodell is one of mine. Thus, with her I discuss the grand plan, my vision(s). We share the minutia of our days and compare notes about people that admire us, her, and/or me. We know a number of the same people, being that we are both California/New Yorkers: girls who wear the robes of Muses, forming a Muse Team, inspiriting each other to new heights.
Actually, when I die, I’d like for my tombstone to say: “Artist, Mother, Friend!” I’ve always enjoyed imagining my own funeral. I like the idea that ALL MY X Boyfriends might come together to mourn me. A handful of handsome men in tuxedos, of course. They would drink whiskey, or ambrosia, make toasts, boasts, and talk about what a pain in the ass I was. Hartmuth, my husband, would defend my memory! I would attend the event, as a sexily clad ghost, wearing a gigantic black hat bedecked in veils. The men, steadily drinking might glimpse me here, there. However, I vow, not to linger… wouldn’t want to get stuck as a wandering spirit, on this side of the river Styx.
What three words would you chose for your tombstone?
“OH MY GAWD!” She answers.
Who do you imagine might most weep when that moment of dropping a handful of dirt on the casket arrives?
“Besides YOU, Frau?” She asks, hazel eyes twinkling. (Of course, Goodell, did not really say that… but I can dream. If I really asked her this question, I think she would say her niece would be there, eyes a flood.)
What achievement(s), as a public person, artist are you most proud of?
“As a public person… I have to think about it for a minute… That my art might infect some with a sense of the eternal.” She answered, really.
How do you expect to be remembered?
“All depends on who is doing the remembering.” She says reminding me that every memory is but a flickering candle in the unceasing wind. Who cares how we are remembered when so much of what is remembered is tarnished in the self serving act of remembering? We live but for a flashing instance, to be forgotten is inevitable. Yet, by making great art Goodell is among those that will leave an enduring legacy.
I ask Goodell a handful of earthy questions (above) on her second day in San Diego. Each day here Goodell tells me of at least one beautiful story of her life and her development. She is a San Francisco native, successful transplant to New York, with an international exhibition record and a following that spans generations. As a child she was curious about religions, not finding the perfect spiritual fit she designed her own rituals, methods of observance. Her family, long established in the United States, has historically interesting characters galore. She is a person whose personal history is fascinating and instructive to the extreme. I would like to learn more about her and a week in her gracious company, leaves me longing for more of her causal bounty/beauty.
I’d like to share with you, more of Goodell’s Goodies, stories, images and a creative perspective unlike any other. I am inspired by Goodell’s tenacity, wit, and inner glow. She represents the mature woman we’d all like to become, a person that owns herself and holds her own in any situation, a woman I admire. As Goodell prepares to depart we sit next to each other and I relinquish a little control over the image I want to project of her glory. Her unwavering modesty, overrides, my desire to BANG a DRUM, toot HER HORN, and CELEBRATE like a champion gladiator her enduring brilliance, her remarkable SHINE.
The multi-colored days, the crisp season, of din celebration(s) have caught up with us, again. We hurtle toward the close of another successful year.
Successful? You ask.
Yes. Successful. You made it to this point and boy o’ boy am I thankful that YOU made it here. It is truly amazing that YOU and I are here, together, now. YOU breath. I BREATH!!! We can’t ever stop being thankful for every breath we are able to take. They don’t go on forever. Each breath is a gift for which we can be very grateful. Add to that gift the many skills, possessions, abilities, and desires that bring you here to me, to this particular page.
Why are you here? I wonder. Yet, I know that for some, Talkinggrid, is an alternate Muse Source, a spot of inspiration, an on-line destination to go for the private brand of elegant “Muse News,” Frau Kolb churns out. You don’t know exactly what it is that brings you here again and again but here you are again. Smiling at Frau Kolb’s quirky interests in things others have no time for, like peace. Talkinggrid isn’t like any other blog because it comes from Frau Kolb and reflects a way of being that may be perversely traditional or radical in its optimism. Regardless, Frau Kolb always makes you feel comfortable. Hospitality is my forte. I intend to constantly remind you that, well, we are privileged to be able to be us, to share and have ideas, to witness and shape our culture, to learn and expand on language(s), to swim in the underlying stability of being in a perpetual state of faultless grace. If you are reading this site it is because you relate to me, Frau Kolb, as part of a larger whole of artists, creatives, expansive souls. WE are part of a constellation, a universe, a little world of thinkers wired for abundance, joy.
You relate to the idea of Frau Kolb. We are either friends, family, colleagues, or otherwise connected. We are ONE in our ability to appreciate, to THANK each other, to love. Thus, you return to this page and I keep writing. We have made a pact of mutual support. I will continue to collect words, ideas, images to share with you. You will continue to click LOVE! Thank you for the many shares, the bounty of being that makes writing for you, a pleasure, a vessel full of joy. You will continue to read, to comment. Of course, I don’t know for sure what you will or won’t do, but I am THANKFUL that you have made donations and encouraged me with praise. I thank you for thinking of me as interesting for even one nano-second. You bless me with your attention, time, critique. Most significantly, I am thankful to those that read my errors and point them out, so that the Muse News I produce is comprehensible, enough. I’m glad for The English Grammar Police in my life that stood up to me when I want to replace the word “but,” with “butt,” gratifying the perpetual sophomore in me. I’m grateful that my dearest friend’s attempt to stop me from failing to communicate, appropriately.
Now don’t forget:
Thanksgiving is an opportunity to THANK YOURSELF. Yes. You. YOU ROCK!!! You, Dear Muse(s), are so inspiring! I could write poetry about the shimmer that is your hair, cascading. Curling. Rising in waves like the ones painted by Turner. I might decide to focus my mind on describing the KINK that is your bush. Who knows? I could sing SING sing your praises with paint, creating a portrait of you worthy for a Presidential HOME. Please, make Frau Kolb happy and thank yourself for all the breaths you take and steps to make life bearable for you and those that depend on glorious, sane, and reliable YOU for stability, love. Make sure that you focus on all the very good things you have done for others this year. Make a list. Then make a more important list, how have you show thanks to yourself in 2014? How have you demonstrated your devotion to your dreams, your values, your talents?
Thank the ones around you. How have your children, siblings, lovers, friends, and enemies contributed to honing your skills, making you stronger, and filling you with energy to move forward in every aspect of your life? Thank the trouble makers the ugly policy makers, the bad drivers, the incompetent mothers, Thank them ALL because without The Racists, The Cops, The Fuzz, The Blacks, The feckless Poor, The dirty Rich, The Drunk Drivers, and The Incompetent Mothers, You would be ALL ALONE. YOU would have no one to play with, no one to love. Thank the lady that cuts you off mid sentence to tell you you have no clue who you are, to advise you on your destiny, to sell you a slice of paradise for an internet donation. Thank her!
Thank Frau Kolb for all her unsolicited advice, which comes from her experience of managing life, love, friendships simply by being thankful and allowing all to flow as it will, while nodding in wonder at the splendor of possibility that constantly is. Thank me for my friendship, for the words of support I’ve lavished upon you. Thank me for the attention I pay to your art work. Thank me for eating your home cooking, and willfully supporting you. Thank me for cooking for you, setting the table, pouring the wine, and writing this juicy blog.
Udon! Mituswa, a Japanese Grocery and Plaza offers comfort in a bowl, a favorite for Frau Kolb when she visits the used book store, nearby.
I’ve developed a ravenous appetite for Asian Studies. I hunger for understanding. Reading is my way of coming to grips with reality. Yet, I recently found that books may not be the magic bullet for every problem. Yet… Books beckon. Today, I went again to my absolute favorite business location in San Diego. There is an Asian area of town, I gravitate toward the Asian quarters, of any town that offers the cosmopolitan luxury of Asian markets, spas, and bookstores. I enjoy trying to make sense of the Japanese writing, Korean Letters, and Chinese Massage Parlor offerings. The bookstore I go to more often than any other, a passionate love of books and reading is my OPEN secret, I will not name because, then EVERYBODY might become obsessed with collecting used books on Asian Studies, as I am. Then, where would I be? Locked out of a spiking market for intellectually rewarding reading. Hah! The bookstore is where I sneak off to replenish myself and my stash of life enhancing reading material. After a delicious trip to Mitsuwa Market, where I always pick up two rice balls with salmon for my offspring and a big bowl of UDON for Frau Kolb, I hit the books!
This is a great book. It offers beautiful translations of central Chinese literary works.
There is one creepy element, at the used book store… the place I dig, so ardently! My favorite used bookstore in San Diego, is haunted by a homeless woman. She looks to me to be a North African woman, perhaps Ethiopian or Egyptian, she looks like she was once very pretty. She wears a handwoven dirty plastic gown of garbage bags, twisted with shopping bags, and ingeniously fastened together with rubber bands. Day after day, she hide, lurks in the safety of the bookstore with its timid staff of international bookworms, mostly Japanese.
She is to be seen snatching at books and muttering to herself, wedged in the long skinny isles, there is no way to get around her and her filthy baggage. I try to avoid her. She looks feral. She might bite. Poverty is no stranger to most of us. Yet, what is really scary is raving mental illness which distinguishes this specific homeless woman, it is thick like a nimbus around a medieval saint. To see a person engaged in a violent argument, snapping and hissing, against THIN AIR… is rattling. We may have homes but seeing people that are clearly in desperate need of psychiatric assistance, wandering urban areas, muttering ancient curses and twisted mantras, protestations to alien courts, accounts of villainous murders committed in outer space, in the isle of benign bookstores, makes me THINK about how flimsy the social safety net of our great nation is.
Yet, all over the world, an untold number of people are without shelter, without homes. (Or, labor under unacceptable conditions, it is only recently that workers had rights to defend.) In Europe, where the social net is stronger, homeless humans crowd train stations and sleep on urban streets. Every book, I’ve ever read on Asia features human suffering on a colossal scale. What is it that makes it so that so many humans are without homes, alone?
I was recently accused of being, “out of touch,” with the plight, the struggle for survival, of a particular individual— perpetually—struggling to make ends meet. I am keenly aware of the cost of privation, poverty is the ultimate luxury lifestyle, because if TIME is MONEY, those without money often lavish inordinate amounts of time on agonizing over it. Yet the homeless seem to be a class above or outside this equation of money and time. The homeless seem to have ETERNITY on their hands… day after day of nearly dying… until, their end is like all others, final. Most “working stiffs,” one encounters are not too far from being destitute, yet as long as health holds out, most of the people can continue their struggle with money for a lifetime. What is interesting to me is that the poor, with access to public libraries, never become interested in the nature of compound interest or the fluctuations of the stock market, topics everyone should study. Money is for the financially struggling an utter mystery. Yet, via books, anyone can learn to GO WITH THE FLOW, invest wisely, and live within a budget. Therefore, it seems to me that in a lack of desire to confront a topic they find thorny, CASH FLOW, every accuser is pushing away viable opportunities, actively seeking, to live outside the flow of currency. Yet, I know my perspective is that of a hot house flower, sheltered and unreal to those that do not share it.
The relationship between indoor and outdoor aesthetics is the glorious topic of this work!A book about how to really get clean, inside and out.
We ALL experience suffering in our lives. Pain is the absolute confirmation that one is ALIVE! In recent memory, health concerns, and financial struggles, squeeze the life out of some. Yet, The Glorious Present, when anxiety is at bay and memory is not strangling it, is always blissful. However, the wall between having and not having is thin…feeling safe and being in danger is separated by a flimsy membrane, don’t look at the potential danger, stay here with me… in the NOW, which is where the decision to keep looking for obscure printed words on Asian Cultural Studies, while deftly ignoring the mental illness of others, may be the way of keeping one’s own equilibrium.
The perspective of a superior artist, world renown, Geisha and last of a dying world of traditional Japanese traditional arts.
What do I know? The homeless African woman, creeping about my favorite bookstore, may be perfectly happy. She may live under the most sheltering bridge. Her days may be better than those of the frustrated office workers or Walmart employees. Yes, she looks feral. She looks like she might bite. Yet, she is in a book store, a center of civility, learning! What a paradox! So, I don’t leave. I studiously avoid her. Yet, I’ve made up my mind to find that book, “Cheerful Money,” a memoir by Tad Friend on the passing of the WASP age of cultural dominance in America. At the check out, I tactfully mention her presence to the employees up front and they looked frightened. “She’s still here?” asked the sweet woman with the loose orange curls. I nod and keep moving.
A Book I intend to read, soon.Propoganda writing is a lot like celebrity magazine writing, totally insubstantial and dull.
Public Libraries… in California… in Santa Monica and in New York can be like train stations and other, “points of mass transit,” where mentally ill people are “allowed,” to perch with their filthy packed baggage and without being charged with loitering. Bookstores often serve as refuges for me and other readers, spending time in them is one of my favorite means of relaxation, education, and of preparing myself to live in grace and gratitude, but how can one relax with a living zombie muttering to themselves in the corner isle? She serves as a reminder, that no matter how much I want to avoid DEATH, I too am just a person seeking the shelter of the bookstore’s apparent security. Moreover, I ask myself, “how does that woman, wearing a garbage bag gown FEEL about being without home, alone, abandoned inside a portable hell? How different is her day than the day of a Wall Street broker after a series of monumental declines and crashing after snorting a mountain of lines, lies, chopped on a hand held mirror? What does it say about our society that this woman would seek shelter in a public place, day after day, and that somehow no one stops or aids her? Is this good? Bad? Beyond judgment?
In the face of the ugly truth that some people live with close to nothing and they find a different kind of refuge indoors in public spaces where staff are not quick to shoo them away… away to where? That is a question we don’t want to ask. Yet, that stale question lingers in the air around my favorite hobby, book hunting, amassing, collecting information!
Totally moving book by Adeline Yen Mah, an award winning book for young adult.Learning Chinese is Frau Kolb’s Idea of a GOOD TIME!
Now, before you start thinking I’m some kind of spoiled brat… I might be, actually but not really, my parents were not rich, by an means, except perhaps in their cultural heritage. I left home at seventeen and I was HOMELESS, for the first three (summer) months. I squatted with the PUNK KIDS and other street people at 3BC’s (A legendary Punk Squat House) on the Alphabet Streets of The Lower Eastside in Manhattan. Later, I had a Drunk boyfriend, twenty years my senior, and desperately handsome, that with his suave sound and big green eyes led me into the thick of poverty, no money I earned was enough to keep up with his drinking habits. After that break-up, I decided to AVOID such company, no matter how fetching and started making conscious choices to align myself with the abundance that is New York. Since my early twenties, based on reading all kinds of books on finance and experience of moving into different circles, where FLOW called, I have managed my reality via deliberate measures aimed at creating well being, establishing a status quo, I care to maintain.
My father, a direct descendant of literate house slaves from the isle of St. Croix, always encouraged me to carry a book with me, everywhere, every day. In his understanding, books were salvation. Literacy was the key to gaining power, acceptance, and recognition. Thus, I am forever reading. I had a wealth of books in my room, to chose from as a child. I read them all before entering Kindergarten. So… spacey as I always looked, I always had a lot to think about.
This book is a great introduction to Chinese Characters.
Dad would visit famous used bookstores in New York, like The Strand. Having trained as an attorney, with his eye on political power, dreaming of prestige, in the government of our island nation, my father, in actuality, worked successfully as a furniture salesman in New York City for decades. Yet, father aspired to BIG WEALTH, so by his standards, we were, “poor.” (It took years for me to understand that my father just had distorted ambitions, which prevented him from savoring his achievements.) Therefore, we always felt rather pinched by his big dreams, and dissatisfaction with his level of attainment, sort of like the characters in a D.H. Lawrence’s novel, about The Rich. Father married Mother in a vain attempt to secure for himself a bride from a prominent Dominican family. How shallow! Yet, don’t we all make such cosmic miscalculations when we put materialistic considerations is the seat of primacy? My parents immigrated to the United States via Dominican Republic, which is the verdant half of the isle of Hispaniola… blah, blah, blah… I don’t want to bore you. I’m sure I’ve already lost the less determined visitors to this… yes, very personal… intimate meandering artist’s blog.
This sweeping history carries Frau Kolb away.Bloody Murderess or Cunning Leader? History can not decide how to judge this singular female on the Chinese throne.
Now let us return to the cave, with the products of our book hunt. What do you have? What did you find? You plop down with aplomb and begin to sink into a thick paperback on China, a New History. You wake up in Japan, Land of the Rising Sun! The martial aspects of culture are not so interesting to me. I love the stories of Geishas, an artistic elite, trained to listen, to serve, and entertain. Reading, I lose all constrains and wander from nation to nation, crossing oceans of time. Fired up, Frau Kolb settles into a pattern of voracious learning. The questions propelling Frau Kolb, deeper into the green tea, are “Who is Asian? Am I Asian?” an appreciation of calligraphic letters as pictographic conduits of layered meaning, the personal knowledge of pure silk’s transcendent quality, a historical interest in everlasting jade, and its healing properties, with a momentary flickering thought on the power of embroidery, the monumental tombs, ancient bronzes, the overriding centrality of the Emperor(s) and the, at first, hidden power of Empress Wu, who ruled during the late Tang (my favorite) dynasty. And the concubines, sheltered possession of rich men by Mandate of Heaven. Divinity in the person of an all powerful ruler. How does one become Asian? The founders of the Wei Dynasty were actually Turkish, they adopted Han, Chinese ways. Studying Asian Cultures one can legitimately ask, “Who are the quintessential Asians?” I could ask similar questions about “Blacks…” Who are they? I’ve heard that I am, “A Black Girl.” Does this render me the same as every other, “Black Girl?” Perhaps. I am happy to agree, but what does that mean, exactly…when Spanish is my first language, your are reading my English, and German is my third language conquered, mastering it, via daily self motivated study, the same personally effective method I am now applying to the learning of French. What if I told you I feel most at ease in Europe? It appears to be like there is a push to lump people into these big racial categories, which often obscure the individual’s personal identity. I understand what Euro-Asian means. Do you understand what “Waspy Afro-Latin,” means?
Books by Chinese American Authors, Gish Jen and Gus Lee
Fraud! Fortune! Famine! Oh! What romance… Lost in the history of China, Japan, Korea… I find myself reading up on India, you can understand Asian without having a grasp, however slippery, on Buddhism… I get lost, trying to figure out how these locations, cultures, and peoples relate to each other. Monks. Monasteries. Rebellions. I see that this is a lot like European history, a complex story of nuanced WAR in which brothers fight for crumbing empires, and frail wives, while the universe wails, singing, its eternal and infinite abundance of budding universes.
Thank goodness I’ve secured a source of good reading material.Great stories!
I have departed, entranced by my readings, my sacred books. I am FAR OUT! I LOOK toward the East and what do I see? I see me. I see myself, my values… the appreciation of rice as a source of life. My need for incense and meditation. Yoga. In order to flesh out the dry bones of history, I read novels, and recently I read, “The Good Earth,” by Pearl S. Buck, a book that puts poverty, firmly in the cycle of Fortuna’s cruel whims. I went through an intensive phase of reading “Judge Dee, ” highly stylized novels by Robert Van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat and “Authority on Chinese Culture,” and have recently invested many an hour into the contemplation of bound feet in the historically appealing novels of Lisa See.
The homeless woman, finding temporary shelter in the bookstore is no different than me. We both know where to go to find shelter. We are both free to roam! Imagine having your feet broken by your mother as a child, in order to make you into a virtually crippled sex object, unable to run, unable to flee? Or the fact that until recently in China and elsewhere, literacy was a luxury few enjoyed. We can be certain that LIFE has never been easier, that it is here and NOW.
By Jung Chang (and John Halliday, on “Mao,”)A fascinating person, Empress Cixi brought China into the modern age.This is just a small part of the collection of Asian books I have at the ready and waiting!Great Book by Yu Hua. You get the feeling of what it was like to grow up in Revolutionary China. The dry, terse, style of the author is reminiscent of Hemingway.I have a enough reading to last me a few weeks! Hah!
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