Cranberries and pumpkin and goats cheese. Fresh green melon. Prosciutto and grapes. Asparagus. Sea salt. Olives and their oil. Saffron. Apricots, plums, peaches.

I’ve been reading alot about food lately. Last week I read Isabel Allende’s Aphrodite, a book about the cultural history of aprodesiacs. Isabel Allende writes, “The most intense carnal pleasure, enjoyed at leisure in a clandestine, rumpled bed, a perfect combination of caresses, laughter, and intellectual games, has the taste of a baguette, prosciutto, French cheese, and Rhine wine.”

This week I’m reading Animal, Vegetable, Miricle by Barbra Kingsolver. I don’t think this book actually comes out until this summer, but Shaun got a proof of it at the London Book Fair for me. Its the amazing non-fiction story of Kingsolver’s family moving from Arizona to Apalacia in order to run an experiment: the family ate only locally grown foods for a year. Living on a farm made much of that possible, but Kingsolver presents many applicable ideas for city dwellers like myself. Anyhow, its a great book and very informative. Today I ate an omlette made from cheese from the Isle of Arran and wild mushrooms from the farmers market. It was absolute heaven.

Speaking of the Isle of Arran, I had myself a nice lil hike yesterday. Full story and pictures at:

www.lochnessblog.shaunmanning.com.

In other news, I got my hair did last week. Behold my glamor shot!!!!

Now go read my good blog at loch ness, will ya? It took forever to load the pictures today!

Yesterday, I took a break from the rabid frenzy that is my job to listen to something amazing: at 3.30 Friday, one of Shaun’s (he’s my partner) short stories, Yuki and Cyrus Take on the World, was read aloud in a special mini-series on BBC4 dedicated to emerging writers. Want to take a listen? Of course you do. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll be surprised. Go to:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/afternoon_reading_fri

This link is good for a week only, so LISTEN NOW. It’s 15 well-spent minutes of your life. I promise.

Zeus fluffed up his feathers, smitten in the snuggle of his down. Pond water brushed smooth against his webbed feet. He sighed and lifted his beak to the sky to drink in the sun when, from his beady black eyes, he saw a screeching eagle tearing through the sky, leading with vicious claws as he descended towards Zeus.

“Damn, that is one ferocious eagle,” said Zeus, reconsidering his decision to turn into a swan for the afternoon and also mildly perplexed—what kind of freakish eagle eats swans?

Before he could get his shit together, Zeus found himself in the arms of a pleasantly naked woman who had been bathing at the other end of the pond.

“Get out of here!” She shouted at the eagle, flapping her arms wildly, causing all sorts of cute jiggles.

Score, Zeus thought.

Annoyed at the loss of one mammoth snack, the eagle let out an ugly “cawwww” and swooped past in search of other animals to munch.

The naked woman sighed and put the swan down on the bank. She stood up and the swan-level view of her heaving, pond-wetted chest was powerfull. A small white feather clung to her lower belly.

“What kind of freakish eagle eats swans?” She said, twisting her damp hair into a bun.

Zeus was in love. Or lust. It was all the same to him really. As was yes and no; neither gods nor swans are known for their attentive listening. Rape and seduction, beast and man; Zeus had little patience for making such trivial distinctions.

After, she sat silently crying on the mossy banks of the pond, head in hands, reeking of rutting and covered in slithery green goose poop and steamy feathers.

“What’s your name, anyhow?” Zeus quacked as he re-fluffed his down with his beak.
“Leda.”
“Queen of Sparta?”
She stood, feeling cold animal slime glop down her thighs. A sardonic and singular laugh spat from her lips.
“Yeah. That’s me.”

My muse for this story was this drawing, Leda, by an emerging Scottish artist named Lindsay McKay. I first saw it setting up our Festival booth at the Glasgow Art Fair this Thursday; I was completely and totally arrested by it. Greek mythology aside, the drawing articulated something that I have always felt about mothers and motherhood; that mothering is a brave and tumultuous act of will and love, all too often done in brutally difficult circumstances. In the myth, Leda cleans up and goes home to the bed of her husband. A few months later, she gives birth to two eggs, each egg containing a set of twins. One of the children born of the eggs was Helen of Troy. Leda never knew which children were a product of her afternoon with Zeus and which were mortal children spawned by her husband. But I like to think that regardless, she loved them all the same and carried on with her life with dignity and grace.

Anyhow, I couldn’t stop thinking about the drawing and the drawing made me think about a million different other things; it made me dream frightening, beautiful and vivid dreams. On Saturday, when I worked an event at the Art Fair, I was shocked to see that the drawing had not sold. I couldn’t leave it for a second time. I bought it and for once in my life, I did not feel that biting pinch of guilt that materialistic acquisitions usually cause in me. I bought it smiling, thinking of it in our home for a lifetime and longer.
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What’s your new muse?

While Glasgow is swathed in its usual gray today, yesterday we had an absolutely gorgeous day. All week we’ve had the pleasure of a brilliant sun and calm skies, but yesterday the temperature matched the scenery. It was warm enough to go out in my birthday “Loch Ness Imposter” t-shirt with only a light jumper over it. Yay!

After taking my happy morning run, I packed a bag with my favorite things–camera, journal, and book–and headed off to the park. I took lots of springtime pictures along the way, on view now at The Loch Ness Blog.

Once his shift at work was over and my legs were sore from walking all afternoon long, Shaun and I went to see the movie, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. Since Arbus is one of my favorite artists (her obsessions arrest me, as they are also mine) and I am a fan of the fake bio-pic (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), I knew I would like this movie. But I didn’t like this movie. I loved it.

I felt such an affinity with Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Arbus, a woman whose exterior is the epitome of normality but whose inner self is fascinated with the idiosyncrasies of this world, many of which society has turned their backs on, shielded their eyes from. Arbus knew that beauty is quirk and adaptation and bravery. In the movie, Arbus feels like a freak, sensing that her peers do not share her obsessions, especially in the 1950s. She is passionate, alive, and I love her. It is a really great movie. Robert Downey Jr is haunting and exquisite, playing opposite of Kidman, matching her move for move. Oh I can’t wait to see it again! Apparently this movie came out in the states before it did in the UK; the DVD is for sale May 8. I will own it. I will show it to everyone I love in this world.

In other news, last week I had a really striking dream. I don’t remember the particulars, but I remember waking with the knowledge that wolves and owls are the same thing; that they have the same spiritual thing inside them that makes them different from oh, say, a bear. I am reading a great book that takes place in the bush of 1867 Canada, but so far wolves have only made a breif apperence. So where this dream came from, I can’t say. But it sort of makes sense, in a way….
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Have you ever woken from a dream with what felt like a new knowledge?

::Random Tangent::
Psst! Remember to go to The Loch Ness Blog to read my good post for the week.

Friday, Shaun and I transformed our tiny apartment into party central. We hauled the bed into the storage room, converted the dressers into semi-comfortable seats with pillows, spruced up the place with candles, Christmas lights, and bowls of snacks (Thai-spiced rice cakes are my new favorite food). The fridge was stocked with libations and a back-up frozen pizza, lest our guests become ravenous. Our grooviest music floated through the two rooms we call home. And most importantly, guests bearing board games were on their way.

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with board games. Games like Life, Monopoly, Sorry, Risk, Uno, and most card games (with the exception of Go Fish, which is fun because you get to shout “GO FISH!” like a crazy old Southern man), are enough to make me weep with boredom. As far as I can tell, these games are just about following rules and nothing remotely fun happens during them. They are like a particularly dull day at work: formulaic, predictable, lasting forever.

I do have fond memories of one dull game: Battle Ship. My dad and I used to play it occasionally at his massive dining room table, with a bag of Twizzler Cherry Bites and fizzy cups of Doctor Pepper between us. I liked screaming “YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP!” I also liked chewing on the boats and pegs. For some reason, I preferred them to the Twizlers; both taste like plastic, but Battle Ship bits score points for authenticity.

The chewy goodness of Battle Ship aside, I much prefer games with fun and spontaneity as key elements to winning. Taboo, Jenga, Cherades, Exquisite Corpse, Balderdash, The Name Game, Mad Libs, MASH, Pictionary, Scrabble, Boggle, and Cranium all promise a good time.

There are also the trivia games, which I generally suck at. You’d think that for how much I read, I’d be pretty up on Trivia, but unfortunately, my memory is pretty crap. When I read things, I automatically get sucked into stories and then my imagination takes over and creates mini-fictions and soon facts are mere threads in a story I find much more fascinating. Weirdly enough, I don’t do this with actual fiction that I read. I can recal the tiny details from fiction with stunning accuracy. So I’m pretty rubbish at Trivial Pursuit type stuff. But I like to play anyway. Because I like the cute little pie pieces and because I like to learn new things and sometimes I actually contribute an answer or two and you get to feel like a smarty-pants for those fleeting moments.

During my Freshmen and Sophomore year of college, while other the other chikas in my dorm were heading out into the cold Michigan nights to attend frat parties in halter tops and open-toed masochistic strappy things that they thought were shoes, I could be found sharing a sack of animal crackers with friends as we played yet another round of Cranium in Libby’s dorm room. This was before I left Michigan for Chicago, before everyone ditched Cranium Night and started smoking monster bongs and eating entire animal cracker sacks by themselves like hapless little undergraduate stereotypes. Luckily, I missed that bit, moving to Chicago before the fun stopped being had. Sometimes people ask me if I feel I missed out on the “true college experience” because I got married mid-way through my studies. Whenever people ask me this, I think back on the disintegration of my beloved Cranium parties. I don’t think I missed out at anything at all.

Anyhow, Friday at party central, Cranium Night was resurrected at last with a new cast of friends: Dan and Bryony came with the game in tow, followed by Susie, Laura, and a new (to me–she and Shaun go to school together) Icelandic friend named Saulka. We had a blast, sculpting and humming and drawing things with our eyes closed. Luckily, I didn’t draw any cards that required me to do spelling tricks; when it comes to spelling I got no game. I want to make game night a monthly party affair. We had such a great time and everyone devoured the cookies I baked for the party, which is always a good feeling. I like making nice people fattening treats.

We have acquired a really nice group of friends here. Although oddly enough, the women from the International Club that I shared such a strong bond with in September have scattered to the wind. In the fall, we enjoyed weekly lunches and took solace in our shared experience of being new to the country together. But then, we stared to loose touch. I’d invite them out, but 9 times out of 10, they would decline; two of them that I was particularly close to are Muslim and I don’t know enough about that culture/religion to say that is the reason why they refused to hang out in public without their husbands, but it seems like a possibility.

Not only were my invitations declined and never reciprocated, but also this week, they suddenly employed a new level of rudeness via technology that shocked me.

When I sent out an invite to the party, one friend from the International Club responded with an email to tell me that she’d left the country and moved back to Pakistan! This wasn’t just a person I ran into at International Club gatherings; we lunched together, worked out together, she came to our parties, and we just talked the other week–you’d think she’d at least call to tell me that she was leaving the country, never to be seen again. Or at very least, let me know in the email if everything is okay–in her correspondence there was absolutely no indication to as why she left. Very weird.

Later, another friend from the International Club responded to my Cranium Night invitation via text message. “Sorry I can’t come to the party–I’m pregnant now and my nausea is not just in the morning.” WHAT?!? Pregnant! Who tells a friend she is pregnant via text message? WTF? Manners people. Manners.

The obvious craziness of texted pregnancy announcements aside, I am not a fan of the text message. I think it is creating a curt society, so impatient for information that they cannot be bothered with the pleasantries of actual conversation when asking someone something. I know that I am the only person my age who hates texting, and perhaps it has something to do with my texting being so slow that it is faster for me to get information by actually calling someone and bothering them with pleasantries, but I like to think its because I like the humans that I want answers from. I like to hear their voices, inflections, sub-texts. I need to know their mood before I ask something. What if I’m about to ask someone to go dancing and unbeknownst to me their cat just died? Now, if I texted the invite, the message would seem trivial and stupid and probably get lost in the grieving. And no one wants to text back: “Sorry. Can’t. Cat died.” But if I called to ask, I could hear their tears before inviting them to something lame and instead of boogying together, I’d head over to their apartment with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s and Kleenex. Potentially dead cats are abound in this world and texting isn’t helping any. Sheesh!

The rest of this weekend has been blissfully chill. The weather is grisly, which is fine by me since my loving mother-in-law sent my Buffy, Season 3 on DVD for my birthday. Rainy days are the perfect excuse for way too much quality entertainment viewing. I’ve also been laying in bed for hours on end, reading Zorro. Lots of action-packed adventure in my imagination must be buring off some calories while I loaf around hiding from the rain this weekend, right? It better be. We still have to finish off that party pizza at dinner tonight.

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How’s your weekend going? What are your thoughts on text messaging? What’s your favorite game?

::Random Tangent::
I like being 25 so far. It’s like being 21 with a tiny bit more money and no additional charges when renting a car.

I have not been blogging lately, for the sole reason that the things I’m experiencing this year, while amazing, make crappy blog entries. I like reading the type of blogs that offer small, interesting insights into the realities of day-to-day life. I like bloggers who write about fascinating bits of human nature, the vibrancy of life beneath the dull surface of the everyday.

And lets face it: I’m just not in the position where I can write that sort of thing. For me to write that sort of thing well, I have to be comfortable, content, and in an emotional place where I can slow down enough to notice the universe within the minutia. This year abroad has me feeling many things, but comfort and contentment are not amongst them.

I’ve found an inherent duality to living abroad, meaning that I rarely feel one predominant emotion. I feel things simultaneously, on many different levels. Things are funny and sad. Life is easy and hard. Glasgow is foreign and familiar. I am beautiful and ugly. I am lonesome and loved. I feel homesick and wanderlust. I am selfish. I am selfless. I am out of my element. I am my element.

I think this dual reaction to life abroad is just a byproduct of feeling extra alive. I shook my life up; I am shook up. I love it. I hate it. I want it forever. I want it to stop. Can we go home now? Lets move to Japan.

See what I mean? Impossible. Furthermore, I hate to annoy my readership with either of these two possible scenarios:

1.) I don’t want people to think, “Oh, there goes that Chicagoartgirl, wingin’ again. What’s she got to complain about? ‘Oh waaa: I husband who loves and respects me and who I love and respect back. Oh waaaa: I have a job that pays my bills and does not involve grease or manual labor. Waa-waa: I live in Scotland.’

I feel you: boo fucking hoo, right? Besides, as many times as I write about being sad, I am probably simultaneously overjoyed. My writing/self reflection is not advanced enough to mirror that in a bloody blog.

2.) I also would hate for people to think, “oh there goes Chicagoartgirl again, talking about how great her adventures abroad are, blabbing about how much fun she’s having at the Glasgow Film Festival, at the Glasgow Writing festival, with her new pack of girlfriends, hiking in the highlands with her fantastically loving husband. Will that spoiled bitch ever shut up?!?”

So I’ve stopped blogging and stared journaling. In my journal, I rant about my difficult office politics (aka: the dream job gone sour), my financial fears, my freakish craving for a child, my homesickness, the joys of this country, the loneliness of this world, my cat (I miss him!), my running times, my freakish zits and my love of the “healing tool” on Photoshop, my thoughts on globalization, on polarization, on the finer and weaker points of a socialist government model, on the books I’m reading, on the foods I’m eating, of the ever-present fact that here is different from there.

It feels good to journal again. My journal was my ever-present companion all through childhood and adolescence. It lets me be me; there is no readership.

I did, however, update the Loch Ness Blog today. I wrote about my upcoming birthday and my celebratory hike through the Killiecrankie Pass.

Aside from journaling, I’ve also been making a lot of funny faces lately. My favorite game is to get out the digital camera and do photoshoots. Before the picture is taken, the photographer yells out something for the model to be. For example, in this one, Shaun yelled, “Be your boss!”

Be Buffy!

Emo My Space Pic

Say: “Duh”

I have no idea what this one is, but it is by far the funniest thing I have ever seen and I laugh until I can’t breathe every time I look at it. I’ve never seen Shaun make this face before the photoshoot and so far, he’s been unsucessful in his attempts to recreate it.

Pretend your a vegetable and I’m your burdened wife. (I know: what is wrong with us?)

Be our cat.

Laugh really hard because you are taking random, insane pictures and for some ungodly reason, posting them on the internet.

Try it. It’s fun. I even dare you to post the results.

XOX,

Chicagoartgirl23

ps: I may not be writing blogs, but when my ten-hour work-a-holic days (plus weekends–crikey!) allow it, I am reading them. You xanga authors make me smile. Keep it up.

When I go running in the morning, I pass two women at the corner of Dumbarton and Crow. They are dressed in snazzy spandex-ey things and talk to each other with wild enthusiasm, like they’ve already swilled ten cups of coffee at 6.30 am. I am rumpled in sweats and gloves. One waves at me and nods. The other looks straight through me.

When I am on time for work, I see the same woman on the subway platform. Her look: trendy librarian. She is the only person I’ve ever seen who looks good in a bowl-cut.

If I am a lucky duck and get out of work at 5 pm sharp, I cross paths with a woman on my walk home from the subway. She is roughly my age (twenty-something) and wears a black hat with cat ears on it. She walks a small Jack Russell Terrier on a leash. When she passes, we nod to each other in a way that says, “I don’t know why we’re alike, stranger. But we are.”
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Who do you see daily as you go about your business?

::Random Tangent::
The other day, I was commiserating with a guy about the low salaries of most first out-of-college jobs. I mentioned that when I had my first out-of-college job, I only had one pair of pants that I ironed and re-wore daily. He looked at me curiously before he burst out laughing. “Be careful with the word pants here,” he chuckled. To people in the UK, “pants” means underware. Ha!

Despite a bumpy beginning, this week turned out productive and fine. There is a Cure song that goes: “All you want to do is nothing/on a day like today/but if you do that, then your missing the world/because it doesn’t stop turning whenever you hurt.” I like that song. And I sing it in the shower mornings that I’d rather not be awake for.

I started running regularly again this week. I’ve gone out everyday but Monday. It’s been great. The weather has been really accommodating lately. I also devoured a book by Alasdair Gray, a renowned Glaswegian writer. It’s amazing what a spot of exercise and a good book can do for a person.

Anyhow, this weekend I had a chance to write a wee blog about our Paris adventure. Click here to read all about it. Tonight Shaun and I are off to a Decemberists concert and I am really excited about it, despite having a nasty cold I seem to have picked up. And I got paid this week, so I have poundage to buy a concert t-shirt. Yay!

See? What have I got to be gloomy about in this world? Nothing. Life is beautiful. Even if we all feel like that cat sometimes.

Monday morning, Shaun walked me to the subway on my way to work. He needed ink for the printer. He is usually still in bed when I leave, catching up on sleep lost in late night writing.

About half way down the block, I heard a pathetic meow. Shaun continued talking, undaunted, but I shushed him, urgently seeking the cat source. Was kitty hurt? The meow sounded again and I spotted a fluffy Tom perched on a neighboring balcony. He’d jumped up there and was now unable to get back from whence he came. The Tom meowed and meowed and my heart pinched: all I wanted to do was climb up to rescue him. I wanted to cuddle him and feel his fluffiness on my cheek. I wanted it even though I knew I’d end up scratched and my clothes dirtied and my intentions questioned by whosever house it was that I’d have to scale to get to the little fur ball.

I was probably just exhausted from our weekend of travel, but listening to the cat wail and walking away from him made tears leap to my eyes.

“What’s wrong, babe?” Shaun asked.
“I feel like I’m that cat,” I said.
I was crying, trying my hardest not to sob.

Later, I wondered if I was the cat or if my family back home was the cat.

Back home, something horrific happened to a young family member. The kind of thing that makes you want to wrap someone in a warm blanket, snuggle them, and tell them that everything is going to be all right. Words can’t console everything. Sometimes only simple warmth will do: a big mug of hot cocoa with a big glob of that Fluff marshmallow stuff, a sappy movie, a nightlight. And I can’t be sure this family member is getting that, and I am too far away to provide it. So we are both the cat.

I just hope that thing about having nine lives is true.
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Have you ever felt like the cat?

In the two days I was there, I found Paris to be by far the most civilized city I’ve ever been to.

The litter was nearly non-existent. No one shoves on the subway or escalators. There is no gum stuck to the sidewalk and the benches. The statues are clean from graffiti. When dogs shit on the sidewalk and in the park, their owners clean it up; I never once had to skirt around poop logs. People are not stumbling around, drunk and vomiting in public. Nothing smells bad.

The people of Paris seem to have such pride in their city. You know when you get a new couch or a new throw and you are super protective of it, weary of potential stains and filth? Parisians seem to have the same attitude towards their city. It’s really beautiful. I absolutely loved it.

I’ll write a proper blog, complete with pictures, as soon as I get a moment. But I just had to say: my heart is still in Paris.

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Have you ever been to Paris? What was the thing that struck you the most about it?