t e t r a p t y c h

Documenting my new "scarf". It's cold out.

The EskiMoe Wife, a rugged character, as taken from an illustrated Edward Gorey story.

See?

Illustration from Edward Gorey - The Hapless Child.

i n . m y . a b s e n c e

Lying faint in bed with your beloved watching American 80's college movies 24/7, well, 6 - 8 hours per day - boobs! food fight! fast cars! - doesn't add to your creativity, I'm afraid.

I haven't told you we DJ:d Saturday at Babajan or that Sthlm looks like a true winter wonderland, beautiful and white.

Advent Sunday was the lovliest of lovlies, a perfect secular Advent Sunday. Late breakfast, Mike Ink, hanging up the Christmas star in the window, buying stjärtlappar, going to Vita Bergsparken (The White Mountain Park, as seen above) sliding down the white slopes, glögg, gingerbread cookies, lussekatter, chanterell risotto, glögg and gingerbread cookies again, Monga (not so good) and finally sitting in the red tinted dusk of our flat, together, talking, going to bed, falling asleep...

I'm back.

f e a t h e r s

Yesterday.

Today.

This egg came with an address, and I think of the downy mother. I hope she's treated well. It was an ecological egg, but.

I hear that outside it's icy and cold, but I live inside my bubble of dimmed lights and belly wrath. Now the Glenn has come to join me, but I hope he will, though I've infected him, be much better off than me. Spare my Glenn, will you please.

m y . p h o n e . c a m e . w i t h . m e . t h r o u g h . t h e . d a r k n e s s . o f . m y . w e e k e n d

Red vinyl.

Strangers of mine.

Powder snow!

Vietnamese restaurant table.

Big city puddles.

Winter is indeed fussy for the bespectacled.

The one armed girl.

I'm tired, cozy:ing up in a corner with my friends through our second tinkering date (pysseljunta) (what is the right word in English?). I've been ill, and at the emergency, but am feeling better now. Eating is difficult, I'm nauseous and only want to sleep, but happy and slowly happening.

Life is sweet.

e a r l y . g l i t t e r

Wikipedia says: Louisiana Five jazz band on a small bandstand. Probably 1919. Alcide Nunez, clarinet & saxophone; Joe Cawley, piano; Charlie Panelli, trombone; Karl Berger, banjo; and Anton Lada, drums. Scanned by permission from Euguene Nunez collection.

The Wisconsin Historical Society informs: Colorized postcard image of a sun parlor at the pavilion for tuberculosis cases at the Milwaukee Hospital for Insane. Ca 1912.

Are there any earlier pics of disco balls than these on the interwebs, I wonder? There must be, but I haven't found them.

At MetaFilter I read: "The 1897, article of the "Electrical Worker" discusses the Third Annual Ball held on on January 6, 1897, at Roughaus Hall, Charlestown, and of the spectacular lighting display, which could be seen for miles around Boston. The letters N.B.E.W. were done with incandescent lamps of various colors on wire mesh over the ballroom, highlighted by a carbon arc lamp flashing on a mirrored ball. The affair was hosted by Brothers Flynn, Melville, Colvin, Smith, Ellsworth and Dacey. About 800 people enjoyed the spiked punch and melodies of Dunbars famous orchestra."

Whoever invented the mirrored ball was indeed a clever little beast. In a documentary about Alhambra I watched many years ago, they told of a giant bowl full of mercury that hung from a ceiling in one of the rooms. When pushed into motion the ceiling was covered with flashes and glitter from the mercury. The earliest mirrored ball effect, we'll probably never know of.

Have a happy Saturday y'all! I have a headache and outside it's raining, but I feel just fine.

c i t y a p e

Berlin

Berlin

Berlin

Berlin

and a monkey.

I'm just passing by here, on my way from dream to dream, it seems, and with me I brought a city and an ape. 
 (If you've in your dreary youth read as much Sandman as I have, that sentence nearly does make sense.)

The application I work on drives me crazy, nay, it is I that drive me crazed. What I make seems dreary, done, trivial and postcard Christmas:y in the bad way. It is taking far too long and is turning into an indulgement for the sake of indulging, which is... stale. Alright. Complainwise I'm done. And a lovely weekend unto y'all.

(The photos are of this pocket of time.)

s p o r t i n g m y n e w c h i n a

I got that first thing in the morning phone call you know, that no one wants to hear and that serves no good purpose, the bad energy phone call questioning your every choice and decision, but that's in reality about the frustrations of the caller and not you, the callee. It's hard to shake afterward, you're left insecure and unjustified, eager to get on with your day. You halt and falter, there's a bad taste in your mouth, and your resolutions seem petty and useless. I offer no profound solution to this, no self help or mantra, but the little things help, the little everyday high quality options. Have a really good breakfast (and take pictures of it). Play that song your best friend sent you that cheers you up (thanks Karol!). Brush your teeth really well and floss. Make the bed. Put on a stupid TV show that you secretly - or not so secretly - enjoy watching (I offer no links here). Make a face mask. Stretch. And get on with your life.

They will never get to you.

(Does my breakie look funny to you? Rosehip soup with cottage cheese, crisp bread with egg and veggie caviar, tomatoes. Delicious.)

s h o w m e n o g r a t i t u d e

This is what you get for not eating your thank you (= tack) candy in time. Rude, is what it is, what I am, what we are.

g r a n g r a n g r a n

Meticulously I'm drawing spruces (graaan), not only for the fun of it (wild uncontrolled meticulousness mon amour) but for (yet another) application for funding. Gran gran gran, a tree that's big in my imagination, big and morose, wild and sinister.

I was flicking through Rob Sheffield's Love is a mix-tape yesterday and decided to share a snippet (two child snippets of one mother snippet) that's stayed with me. It's a book that seems to divide its readers into those that take to it and those who find it shallow and ironic. Don't guess where I stand, just know.

I love the idea of time being - temporarily, of course temporarily - embodied into flesh:

"Renée got seriously into sewing that year. She basically stopped wearing any clothes she didn't make for herself, except for her Clarins work uniform. None of her store-bought clothes looked good on her. She was getting bigger and wider - broader hips, fleshier thighs - and she couldn't find any clothes in stores that would come close to fitting her. She used to cry when she had to buy ugly clothes from stores like Fashion Beetle or Aunt Pretty Poodle's, which were her only choices in Charlottesville. So she just started making her own. Her sewing machine corner of the living room filled up with piles and piles of fabric and patterns. She made a dress form of her body so she could design patterns that would fit her. She would go to the fabric store, sort through the boxes of patterns, and buy them so she could copy them into something that would fit her. She basically had one mod minidress that she made over and over. She couldn't do zippers yet, but that summer she finally learned to do buttons and buttonholes, so she started making all her own foxy shirts. She sewed bike shorts to wear under her dresses so her thighs wouldn't chafe when they rubbed together. And she would come home with the strangest, sorriest fabric: pea pods, seashells, Queen Elizabeth smiling, anything. The more pathetic and helpless the fabric looked on the rack, the more it would sucker her into trying to make it into a mod minidress."

And here we get to it:

"Renée's sewing was a way for her to follow the changes in her body. She felt her hips growing more and more Appalachian, marking her as one of her people. She was starting to look like pictures of her late, beloved Mamaw back in West Virginia; sometimes this would make her uncles misty-eyed. Uncle Troy once gave her a hug and almost cried because the hug reminded him of Mamaw's body. Goldie Hughart Crist died when Renée was sixteen, but Renée felt like she was getting to know her grandmother better than ever now. There was a lot of history in the hips, and Renée was learning her history. With that sewing machine, she was making history of her own."

c o m e . m o n d a y . m o r n i n g

The assailant

The victim

My new handbag

I'm trying ugly out. These horrendous pictures I've been working a ridiculous lot on, to make them semi-presentable, but in the end, reducing yellowness and saturation and centering the object, only made them worse. My determination when it comes to futility is borderline stupid.

This post of course refers to my last, that is, me carrying coffee cups brimful with red wine in plastic bags in my bag, and how that, no matter how good the intent, doesn't always work out for me in the end. The number of objects (not this bag, I've given up on it) soaking in lemon overnight is threefold (a phone sock, my favourite cardigan and ehm our hallway floor).

I will now continue my self chosen teenage life by sleeping until 12 in the afternoon (check!) and eating pizza leftovers for breakfast. I lead a blessed life.

t h i s . c o u l d . h a v e . b e e n . a . s a t u r d a y

Please take notice of my white coffee cup in front of the laptop, brimful with red wine, which came to retaliate later. My 70's German white bag (no gem, but still) is now nicely batiqued in a rainbowy red. I'm happy all technique (cameras) came to stay alive.

The church tower is Cathedral by Anaïde Chirinian at Bastard. I want to take it home with me. The wall of food is at a secret location. DJs are Cynthia Stern and DJ Overdose.

My computer is about to explode now. Or by the sound of it turn into a drill.
I must go. There is coffee to make, teeth to brush and lips to kiss.