1. 23 Sep


    bowlsofcolors: I’ve developed a bit of a love affair with Exquisite Banana. Can you blame me? Will visited this weekend, and I was determined to make him love Manhattan (which, until now, he’d determinedly hated). We managed to prove that spending copious amounts of money isn’t paramount to having a fun time. And in fact, I think he spent about or less than $50 the entire weekend, and only $10 on a metro card. Places we went on Friday: Pizza Pub for slices o’ pie & some beer after he got in (two hours late). His bus ride was not so fun, so we took it pretty easy after that. Saturday: Astor Place and Washington Square (where we saw a multitude of things and people, which included a fantastic a capella group workin’ it under the arch, a guy sand-painting (or sand-arting?), and a sadly tiny Occupy Wall Street march). C.O. Bigelow Chemists, a puppy store that we spent entirely too much time inside, and Three Lives & Co booksellers (where we saw, to my excitement and surprise, Cures for Hunger by Deni Y Béchard, a book that I’ve heard much about and a man who I met while working at Grub Street up in Boston this spring, prominently displayed near the register). Another puppy store, Jack’s Stir Brew, Sheridan Square, Stonewall, and the 1 uptown to home. Baked by Melissa, dinner food shopping, wine shopping (where we were rewarded with free Bacardi samples), and happy hour apps and beers at Taproom No. 307. Chicken, zucchini, brussels sprouts, and couscous for dinner with some extremely dry Pinot Grigio and movies in bed. Today: Lyric Diner for the biggest and best breakfast ever and braving the swelteringly drippy subway to take him uptown to the bus station. I’ve been lax on the etymologies lately, and for that I apologize. Summer fills me with love for seeing, not like the other seasons for reading and learning, so all I’ve wanted to do is take pictures and share my world with everyone. Between that and NYU, interviews, apartment searches, and trying to see the friends I’ve made before they all leave (which many of them did, on Friday and Saturday), I haven’t had much time to blog. But soon life will become ordinary again, and even though I’ve always dreaded it, a little piece of me can’t wait. Originally posted 15 july 2012.

    bowlsofcolors:

    I’ve developed a bit of a love affair with Exquisite Banana. Can you blame me?

    Will visited this weekend, and I was determined to make him love Manhattan (which, until now, he’d determinedly hated). We managed to prove that spending copious amounts of money isn’t paramount to having a fun time. And in fact, I think he spent about or less than $50 the entire weekend, and only $10 on a metro card.

    Places we went on Friday: Pizza Pub for slices o’ pie & some beer after he got in (two hours late). His bus ride was not so fun, so we took it pretty easy after that.

    Saturday: Astor Place and Washington Square (where we saw a multitude of things and people, which included a fantastic a capella group workin’ it under the arch, a guy sand-painting (or sand-arting?), and a sadly tiny Occupy Wall Street march). C.O. Bigelow Chemists, a puppy store that we spent entirely too much time inside, and Three Lives & Co booksellers (where we saw, to my excitement and surprise, Cures for Hunger by Deni Y Béchard, a book that I’ve heard much about and a man who I met while working at Grub Street up in Boston this spring, prominently displayed near the register). Another puppy store, Jack’s Stir Brew, Sheridan Square, Stonewall, and the 1 uptown to home. Baked by Melissa, dinner food shopping, wine shopping (where we were rewarded with free Bacardi samples), and happy hour apps and beers at Taproom No. 307. Chicken, zucchini, brussels sprouts, and couscous for dinner with some extremely dry Pinot Grigio and movies in bed.

    Today: Lyric Diner for the biggest and best breakfast ever and braving the swelteringly drippy subway to take him uptown to the bus station.

    I’ve been lax on the etymologies lately, and for that I apologize. Summer fills me with love for seeing, not like the other seasons for reading and learning, so all I’ve wanted to do is take pictures and share my world with everyone. Between that and NYU, interviews, apartment searches, and trying to see the friends I’ve made before they all leave (which many of them did, on Friday and Saturday), I haven’t had much time to blog. But soon life will become ordinary again, and even though I’ve always dreaded it, a little piece of me can’t wait.

    Originally posted 15 july 2012.

    (Source: arielclaireg)

     

  2. 23 Sep


    bowlsofcolors: There are many things I feel like writing, but it is late and I am tired and I spent my day writing analyses of a magazine so instead you get a picture. But it’s pretty, no? Last night my roommates and I went to the MOMA, because we are students and admission is free on Friday nights. Museums always get me thinking about art (go figure), but moreso than that how we got to here from there. I took this class in my senior year called The Artist and the Making of Meaning by a brilliant man named Stephen Shipps, who was later honored at my graduation ceremony and spent his three minute-long speech noting the ridiculousness of the hat he was wearing. What a man. Anyway, I took this class, in which Steve upturned all I’d ever thought I’d known about the meaning of art. Mainly what he did was get us to think about its purpose, and how its purpose today differs from the utilitarianness of the archaic things we consider art and have displayed in museums (like cave paintings and pots and such, or are they just artifacts(?) - either way the word “art” is in there somewhere). So there is no etymology this evening, because instead I’m just going to ramble about what I think art is. Art is everything and nothing. My roommate said, upon looking at a Barnett Newman (who I always confuse with Bruce Nauman because of their names) painting last night (it might not’ve been Newman, but I’m sure people have said it about him regardless and really I just wanted an excuse to use the word zip) “see, I just feel like I could’ve done that, so why is it art?” To which I said, “yes, but you didn’t!” with a big hand flourish as I do. So art started out of necessity, but slowly transformed into diversion (and we can (and we will) argue about this for years). But the beautiful thing, at least to me, is that in some small way I can’t stop believing that we still associate its existence with necessity so much so that we make it necessary. The idea creates the product creates the idea. Beautiful circle. Anyway, that probably made no sense, so goodnight New York City. Originally posted 8 july 2012.

    bowlsofcolors:

    There are many things I feel like writing, but it is late and I am tired and I spent my day writing analyses of a magazine so instead you get a picture. But it’s pretty, no?

    Last night my roommates and I went to the MOMA, because we are students and admission is free on Friday nights. Museums always get me thinking about art (go figure), but moreso than that how we got to here from there. I took this class in my senior year called The Artist and the Making of Meaning by a brilliant man named Stephen Shipps, who was later honored at my graduation ceremony and spent his three minute-long speech noting the ridiculousness of the hat he was wearing. What a man.

    Anyway, I took this class, in which Steve upturned all I’d ever thought I’d known about the meaning of art. Mainly what he did was get us to think about its purpose, and how its purpose today differs from the utilitarianness of the archaic things we consider art and have displayed in museums (like cave paintings and pots and such, or are they just artifacts(?) - either way the word “art” is in there somewhere).

    So there is no etymology this evening, because instead I’m just going to ramble about what I think art is.

    Art is everything and nothing. My roommate said, upon looking at a Barnett Newman (who I always confuse with Bruce Nauman because of their names) painting last night (it might not’ve been Newman, but I’m sure people have said it about him regardless and really I just wanted an excuse to use the word zip) “see, I just feel like I could’ve done that, so why is it art?” To which I said, “yes, but you didn’t!” with a big hand flourish as I do.

    So art started out of necessity, but slowly transformed into diversion (and we can (and we will) argue about this for years). But the beautiful thing, at least to me, is that in some small way I can’t stop believing that we still associate its existence with necessity so much so that we make it necessary. The idea creates the product creates the idea. Beautiful circle.

    Anyway, that probably made no sense, so goodnight New York City.

    Originally posted 8 july 2012.

    (Source: arielclaireg)

     

  3. 23 Sep



    Alive

    bowlsofcolors:

    “Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
    — Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

    I am aching to read something beautiful. I’ve switched already today from Kerouac to Ginsberg, Rowling (just for fun) to Foer - but nothing is right.

    Two months into my freshman year of college I went with my roommate to watch her get a tattoo, Hebrew words: “אני חי” (“anee chai” - the phlegmy “ch,” not the chai tea “ch”). On her wrist. A constant reminder.

    Alive - c.1200, from O.E. on life “in living.” The fuller form on live was still current 17c. Alive and kicking “alert, vigorous,” attested from 1859; “The allusion is to a child in the womb after quickening.” Used emphatically, especially with man. (source)

    “We are unusual and tragic and alive,” says Dave Eggers (the author for whom I have my own body art) in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. We are young and virile and we can do anything. Though I may feel a mirage, a sell-out of the person I hoped I’d be, I am here, able, will do more. It’s a hazard of learning the business of magazine branding and consumer interest when my whole life I’d dreamed of writing writing writing and entrancing eyes and minds through words, not carefully cultivated content.

    The translation of her tattoo: “I’m alive.”

    Originally posted 30 june 2012.

    (Source: arielclaireg)

     

  4. 23 Sep


    bowlsofcolors: In the past four years I have lived in seven different places. That’s seven bedrooms, six cities, five mattresses, three roommates, three apartments, three dorm rooms, three houses, and a bunch of other numbers I’m too lazy to count out. Plus I’ll be adding one more to most of those in a month anyway. Allston, MA isn’t known for being the most high-class neighborhood in Boston, though it does have historically creative roots (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow apparently lived here at some point, and while I’m sure it’s not actually, I’m totally convinced that the street I live on is named for him). Other inhabitants have included Aerosmith, Mike Bloomberg, and Jared Leto. I should’ve saved my nostalgia post for now, because the past few have been increasingly so, but instead today I bring you apartment, for Allston is nothing if not a student ghetto. Apartment - 1640s. Not surprisingly, from the Latin ad + pars (also known as apart). ‘Tis a place apart from others, so named because of the tendency to shove as many as close together as possible. Actually not true, but close. A separated place, like the Italian appartimento or French appartement. Separated places within another place. Voilà! (source, source) Originally posted 21 may 2012.

    bowlsofcolors:

    In the past four years I have lived in seven different places. That’s seven bedrooms, six cities, five mattresses, three roommates, three apartments, three dorm rooms, three houses, and a bunch of other numbers I’m too lazy to count out. Plus I’ll be adding one more to most of those in a month anyway.

    Allston, MA isn’t known for being the most high-class neighborhood in Boston, though it does have historically creative roots (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow apparently lived here at some point, and while I’m sure it’s not actually, I’m totally convinced that the street I live on is named for him). Other inhabitants have included Aerosmith, Mike Bloomberg, and Jared Leto.

    I should’ve saved my nostalgia post for now, because the past few have been increasingly so, but instead today I bring you apartment, for Allston is nothing if not a student ghetto.

    Apartment - 1640s. Not surprisingly, from the Latin ad + pars (also known as apart). ‘Tis a place apart from others, so named because of the tendency to shove as many as close together as possible. Actually not true, but close. A separated place, like the Italian appartimento or French appartement. Separated places within another place. Voilà!

    (source, source)

    Originally posted 21 may 2012.

    (Source: arielclaireg)

     

  5. 23 Sep



    Picnic

    bowlsofcolors:

    And now, a poem:

    Roses are red,
    violets are blue,
    picnics are awesome,
    and so is food.

    It is now officially my last full week in Boston. I’ve been here on and off (mostly on) since August 31st, 2008, and completely on since September 1st, 2010. Here is where I made best friends, went on adventures, explored, turned 21, fell in love, found my passions, and applied for and was accepted to grad school. That grad school is what is taking me from here - southward, to New York City.

    Going to Emerson meant that for a while I got to live in one of the most gorgeous (and expensive) parts of Boston: on the common. The Boston Common and Public Garden are to Boston what Central Park is to NYC. The Common was founded in 1634, and the Garden in 1837. In them I’ve participated in scavenger hunts, taken walks in the day and night, had snowball fights, played with puppies, sunbathed, gone on dates, and, most recently, taken pictures with my parents and friends after my commencement ceremony.

    So, naturally, a final picnic seemed in order.

    Picnic is one of those words that doesn’t seem weird until you really think about it. Picnic. Pick. Nick. Where on earth did it come from?

    From Snopes.com: “Picnic began life as a 17th-century French word…A 1692 edition of Origines de la Langue Francoise de Menage mentions ‘piquenique’ as being of recent origin marks the first appearance of the word in print…The first documented appearance of the term outside the French language occurred in 1748, but it was 1800 or thereabouts before anyone can prove it made it into the English language…Originally, the term described the element of individual contribution each guest was supposed to make towards the repast, as everyone who had been invited to social events styled as ‘picnics’ was expected to turn up bearing a dish to add to the common feast. This element was picked up in other ‘picnic’ terms, such as ‘picnic society,’ which described gatherings of the intelligentsia where everyone was expected to perform or in some other way contribute to the success of the evening. Over time, the meaning of the word shifted to emphasize an alfresco element that had crept into the evolving concept of what such gatherings were supposed to be.”

    Yet another word we can thank the French for.

    Originally posted 19 may 2012.

    (Source: arielclaireg)