Most beautiful woman in the world celebrates Bloomsday

My wife, Jami, the most beautiful woman in the world, had a birthday yesterday. I had a day off so I cooked. I fried chicken, made gravy, bought one of those pre-fab salads, and baked a couple of potatoes. I had never cut up a chicken before. I had seen chefs on TV make short work of the bird with a few cleaver whacks. I don't have the cleaver control they do. I used my cleaver to saw and pry. I used a small knife to rip and peel. But when it was done, my primitive efforts were not too messy and accomplished the job. I remembered the time I was little and my nanny and pa convinced me to eat turtle. They told me that a salesman had come by the store with a chicken cut up in a new way. I did do some creative cutting along the back especially.
The kittens circled my feet: offal a thousand tongues to mew.
I may not be able to do much in the kitchen, but I can fry chicken. I am particular about soaking the pieces in buttermilk. Buttermilk keeps the flour on the bird and adds a sizzle when the oil is at its hottest. Buttermilk is the most Southern of drinks - non-alcoholic drinks. But there is a trick I learned from a Missourian, add some crushed pepper to it. It brings out the tone and undercuts the sweetness. If possible find some corn bread (not sweet) and crumble it in a glass before pouring the buttermilk on top. It is a fine dinner substitute.
I only wish that I had learned my grandmother's method of cornbread production (I only remember her advice to put a pinch of flour in the center of the pan). But that's the way cooking is: like things in art, it is being forgotten and rediscovered.
The chicken, unconventionally cut up as it was, turned out good. Jami loved it, as well as the gravy and potatoes.
Jami looks younger every day. Her smile lights up my heart.
I forgot to quote large passages from Joyce on her birthday, since her birthday is Bloomsday. Three years or so ago I was at a bar called James Joyce in Avondale Estates. I happened to be there on Bloomsday and I asked the waiter if he what day it was. He did not. I explained all about Joyce and the events of June 16th, 1904. About Eccles St and Blazes Boylen and Stephen Dadelus. But no flicker of recognition. "I guess we should know about that." "It might prove a good idea," I responded.
I may open a bar one day called the Flann O'Brien - every third policeman gets a pancake. People'll keep coming back and won't know why.

Last Friday

Amanda, our waitress, took the photo at bottom, which sums up at least partially, the camaraderie we enjoyed at Twain's. The top photo is Davis, who was impeded by a previous obligation, and the middle photo has George, who came late, but provided, along with his wife, Carrie [not pictured, why?], much appreciated banter. Davis is replaced in the bottom photo by Brennan, his emissary and fellow student, who remained with us and more than held his own.
So the bottom photo is Jami, my wife - Ph.D in literature and authority on the grotesque and fund raising; myself, artist, minister, librarian, gadfly; Bob, shuffleboard nemesis, librarian, and long time friend; Brennan, scholar and Ph.D in waiting on biblical arcana; and Joe, preacher extraordinaire, and friend.
Joe, Bob, and I routinely met here where we expatiated on theological matters as they relate to beer, wings and nachos. Twain's provided the right ambiance for our forays into that liminal space where faith meets hops and hot sauce uniting to form pious ejaculations (that's what they call glossolalia when the pope does it in the mass).
Today I showed them perhaps the weirdest thing I have ever written. I wrote it while in Birmingham during my internship. It is a drawing with vignette so bizarre, so over the top, so grotesque - it caught even Brennan off guard; Bob was speechless; Joe ordered another beer. I would include it here on the blog sometime, but I have to be careful, as it might rock the very foundations of society and spell the end of the capitalist system - oh, wait.
It is a blessed and holy company that drinks and thinks together, and it is rare, needing the most careful cultivation. But I don't think we cultivated it consciously: it happened and we reveled in the grace of it.
I wish I could take that bottom photo and hang it over my desk.
Look

Our anniversary is in fifteen days

Rain, here in Decatur where we've gone so long without, reminds me of our honeymoon in London. It rained in London but the temperature was the same as back home in Georgia. In this photograph you can barely make out Jami. She's standing next to a puddle that is near in size to the present holdings of the reservoir for Durham. We're on the south bank, walking past the Millennium Wheel, having discovered that the Saatchi gallery was closed, and making our way to the British Film Theatre. We watched two Bogart movies: Sahara and The Big Sleep. [spoiler alert] No one wakes up from the big sleep. Bogart had earlier made a movie called The Good Sized Nap in the Middle of the Day that was Interrupted by Routine Water Line Maintenance Outside on the Street. GSNMDIRWLMOS, as it was known, much as Gone With the Wind is known as GWTW, or Fellini's Eight and One Half is known as 8 1/2, or Costa-Gavras's Z is known as Z, detailed the story of a small time hood turned detective turned sous chef turned detective as he makes a journey through the Parisian underworld in post-Vichy France searching for a room with a private bath and a view of the street that he has found hinted at in telling clues left on the body of an ex-associate who was taking a nap in the back of a bootlegger's van that contained lost art works destined for a nobleman's lost artwork collection (a collection of artworks that is either unknown as to location, or if located, of unknown contents). GSNMDIRWLMOS is a gem and at the same time difficult to find. It was last screened in the US in the early 60s. I saw a bootleg version on video that had been partially taped over with an ELO concert. The odd thing was I think I was at that concert. I'd gone with some friends of mine in high school to hear them at the Omni in Atlanta: the cellist breaks a string in the same place while performing "Can't get it out of my head." I remember that it rained that night and traveling that night back on I20 we told many outrageous stories. At the time I drove a Ford Futura, a Falcon with chrome. I drove that car another ten years. At times I miss it. But not when it rains - towards the end of my ownership, it had become nearly impossible to start in the rain and I had to dry the points off many times to get it running. Now I drive a Prizm, which is a Corolla made for GM, and it's very reliable. I bought this car six years ago this month, after my previous car, a Celebrity I'd driven around New Mexico, was stolen from a parking lot at the FBI building here in Atlanta. My car was the only car stolen from the lot in the year I worked for the web company that operated on the 8th floor. It was stolen on a rainy day. I remember that it was rainy because I went down to the lot to get my umbrella out of the car. I wandered around for half an hour before I realized that I wasn't going to find it. That is: neither the umbrella or the car were likely to be recovered. I lost a good set of jumper cables too, as well as a wool over coat and some cds. I also lost a copy of Barth's CD IV.3.2, which I regretfully left on the back seat. The replacement copy I purchased was later water damaged when my cousin put a lunch box filled with ice on it. I was a little disheartened but I put my library training into practice and rehabilitated the book as best I could. I still have it. The damage is less annoying now and improves with use. You can see me reading this copy in this blog: at a ball game and at the beach. Jami took each photo, and I'm reminded on such a rainy night as this, thinking about walking in the rain with her in London, or considering that we'd be trading witticisms by the fire, how much I miss her and wish that I were up in Durham. Our chimney up there has no chimney swallows like the one down here does. Sometimes a swallow comes down the chimney and flies about our house, like the Holy Spirit in a pin ball machine. Jami, tender soul that she is, retrieves the errant bird and returns it to nature. I've seen her do this twice. The cats have seen her do it many times and express an eagerness to help. I remember Thelma one afternoon springing up from a nap, launching herself onto the sill of the dining room window, from where she espied a tiny peeping fledgling that had wandered onto our screened porch through an aperture in the mesh. The motherly concern in that cat's eyes was unspeakable. I went outside and opened the door for the plaintive piping chirping bird to go out on the patio. When I returned Thelma was back in her sunny spot, napping. You'd never know that she'd moved. What a time we had in London. I can't wait to return. As Johnson said, "when you're tired of London you're tired of life." That was easy for him, he lived there. Finish this phrase: When you're tired of Atlanta you're tired of --------.
We returned to Atlanta from London and thus began our first year of marriage, excited about life together.

Happy anniversary

Friday November 30th is our eleventh month anniversary. I am in wonder at this beautiful woman.

Hey Beautiful

We went hobnobing this weekend

The last time I wore a tux (or a dinner jacket for those who've read Paul Fussel's book on class and are keeping score at home) was 20 years ago and I weighed 60 lbs less than I do today. Look at Jami - she's gorgeous in that little red dress. The occasion was the Founder's Dinner at Duke (where they surprisingly didn't serve flounder: I thought "come for the founder stay for the flounder" but Jami didn't feel that was a good slogan for the evening) where, since Jami raises money, she was invited and I got to tag along. We spent a fun evening talking about baseball and living in Atlanta with the rich and powerful.
The weekend together was glorious and we both talked about how living apart is not the most fun thing in the world. In fact it stinks. I miss her terribly. I hope that I can find a call in Durham or the Triangle area soon.
Anyway, I don't look bad in a tux. I thought: wouldn't it be great to get one of these things to paint in. I could be the next PBS painting icon - me in my tux and holding a Grey Goose martini in my left hand as I deftly paint virgins and the flight into Egypt with my right: a one-two punch. I would market myself as a straight talking artist for those who want to learn to paint, painting with paint, and loving paint; who don't want formulas and tricks and patterns and tricks and little things that are "neat" - I will not use the word neat on my show, except to describe how I like my scotch. I will invite people to join me on my quest for the American Sublime. I will encourage people to paint with the top of their heads in a rainstorm while bad 60s rock plays on the stereo. I will engage people into the carnivalesque. I will introduce them to Dada and MoMa. We will exegete parables into paint and translate painting into gospel. And every show will feature a beer tasting. Or perhaps a steak.

kitten vs human

Who will win? Which will is stronger? Which is more determined? My wife, Jami, a Ph.D. trained academician in English literature, who brings in the big bucks for major educational institutions, rubbing elbows with movers and shakers, or this 7 lb kitten, (named Cleocatra by a woman who mocks my puns) who thinks only of escaping into the yard to chew on the grass underneath the rose bush and incessantly demands Ocean Fish. Who will win indeed.

Observe

Tomorrow Jami is back in town. Three whole days together here.
For right now, I have to get some sleep. I'm working at the hospital from 7 am to 4pm, and even now I know that I'm not going to get as much sleep as I'll need.
Still. We've been apart for 16 days now and it feels like a month or more.
When we would walk around the track at Agnes Scott I'd spend time looking up at this observatory. What kind of school affords such a building? What would it be like if Columbia Seminary had an observatory like this? In the 19th century the seminary had a chair of life sciences or something like that. Life Sciences! I think Woodrow, the professor who liked evolution, who the powers that be tried to get rid of (did they? I can't remember) was one of the holders of that chair. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the chair disappeared with him. Any one can endow a chair for any reason. I suppose that the seminary could have a chair of animal husbandry and ethics - or environmental ethics. Speaking of endowments, how is the painting of the endowment going. I continue working on it, applying layers of paint, changing the composition, adding and subtracting elements. My goal is a gray pulpy mass resonant with meaning. Both parts of that sentence are vital: not just a gray pulpy mass; not just resonant with meaning. I've got to arrive at the right tone and texture of gray: the world is full of grays. In the new wing of the High Museum there is a large Anselm Kiefer. Kiefer was the hot artist of the mid-90s, but his cachet is still pretty high. He paints big and complex. The first of his paintings I'd seen in person was at the Guggenheim: a wonderful, encrusted, combination of straw, paint, lead, and God knows what else that was as big as a house. The High now has one of his works, a large gray painting with great impasto swirls of paint depicting waves breaking on the shore at night with the constellations over head. I'm going for more gray, more pulpy, more meaningfully resonant - but not that big. I need to be able to fit it in my car.
Did mention Jami is flying in tomorrow? Her arms are bound to be tired.
I love her.

No writing , just images

most beautiful woman

In a couple of days I'm traveling across country to the beach with the most beautiful woman. Every day we're together is a sweet day. I ask my self , "How did I get here?"In a couple of days we'll erupt in ululations of "thalassa!thalassa!" and scrape sand windblown waving come crashing brinkward and tide our time baked books under slant shade.

Jami's sister made me this warm, cool looking hat, that kept my head dry

Here's Jami, on our honeymoon, looking smoldering and lovely, standing on the river walk on the Thames' south bank, near the British Film Institute, a wonderful place to watch a movie. We saw two Bogart films: Sahara and the Big Sleep. They also have a wonderful restaurant there where they serve top notch fish and chips.
I've been offering food recipes and exempla on my blog while Jami's attending to other matters. In that spirit I've uncovered a superb bachelor recipe. I hope that it inspires as well as instructs.
Here goes:
Drink - chilled martini glass, Grey Goose vodka, three olives (w/ blue cheese stuffed in them)
Food - corn chips and Pace hot picante sauce followed by hot dogs, broiled or fried till blackened, covered with onions and chili, each in a bun.
Bon Appetite. Good night and good luck.

We went to see the Liebowitz exhibit at the High on Saturday and coming back I took some photos

And my camera loves blur. Jami's beautiful, even when a bit blurry. She wanted me to be sure and get shots of the shoes. Last night she walloped me twice in scrabble. After a weekend where I won twice, she's come on like gangbusters.
Since her food blog's on hiatus, I thought I'd talk about food from my bachelor days. [I'm doing this for people who like food as a conversational matrix in which to project ideas of self and augur development of identity in gastronomic dialectic. ] I begin by going to the store and buying a can of spam. When I get home I open the can of spam and slice the block of pork-material into slices, which I place on a sheet of tinfoil on the top rack of the stove, near the broiler. I pour worcestershire sauce on the slices of spam and I turn on the broiler. After five minutes I flip them and broil another minute or until flames leap out of the door. When done, I remove and put a slice on white bread with mayonnaise. Sometimes I add dill.
Jami loves it when I mention dill, because apparently I don't know how to use dill. It's a pickle for sure.

All I've ever wanted in this life

Jami beams at me, smiling on her birthday. And my heart is buoyant with delight. Even though she's protested most of the photos I've taken and posted, I think that she'll like these. To me, she is beautiful in every photo I've posted. Here she is early in the morning, reading my previous post on Bloomsday on Bloomsday.
Today was the Oakhurst Picnic. Our church here, a wonderful church where there really is diversity, where we're not part of the most segregated hour in America, is precious to us. When I first came to Columbia Theological Seminary I went to Central in downtown Atlanta. Central is a wonderful church. Ted Wardlaw, the pastor back then [he's since gone on to be head of Austin Seminary], preached good sermons. I also knew a few of the elders there. One of my favorite services at Central involved a blue grass choir. The service used blue grass extensively. I'll have to write about the power of blue grass in another post. If you want to feel like you're in a progressive congregation with all the acoutrements of ancient power and wealth, that's the place to go. They do many good things in the inner city: run a night shelter, provide services for the homeless and poor, medical care, literacy programs.
Central, however, is a long way for a seminarian to drive. Oakhurst, less than two miles from CTS, became my default church. I found myself looking forward to being there: singing with the gospel choir and the chancel choir; passing the peace for 15 minutes; and being in church with african-americans and people of different sexual orientations. I felt liberated here. The fact that Jami has gone there for over five years makes it that much more special. It is also the church we were married in.
All I want is to paint, to love this woman, and to be a minister.
Anyway I like these two photos: Jami's smiling and laughing - perhaps at the thought of beating me in scrabble. Perhaps at one of my great jokes.

Happy Birthday Jami, Beautiful Wife

I was born on the Fourth of July, a very historical date for the US, but not so much for the rest of the world. Celebrations of the Fourth are low key in Italy, for instance, and delayed till the 14th in France. Jami was however born on an even bigger holiday, Bloomsday, the day of the month of June where all the action occurs in Joyce's Ulysses. This is a great literary holiday. People all over the world are hoisting a Guinness, ghosting a highness, and goosing a hostess. Wikipedia has a grand entry on Bloomsday. Suffice it that Joyce picked this day for the action in his book because its the day of his first date he had with his wife, Nora Barnacle. So Three Quarks for Muster Mark, as Joyce says in Finnegan's Wake, as well as The Proteiform graph itself is a polyhedron of Scripture.
And I sat [sic] about reading the Wake this morning to be sure of my quotes above, and I came upon this gem: amid all the punning and portmentauing, Joyce writes, "What has gone? How it ends?/Begin to forget it. It will remember itself from every sides, with all gestures, in each our word. Today's truth, tomorrow's trend./Forget, remember!" Something so elegiac startles after 615 pages of Burlesque. Undoubtedly a clue to the circularity of the narrative: the last sentence "a way a lone a last a loved a long the" leads right back to "Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's" and we find ourselves, with Sir Tristram, "passencore rearrived from North Amorica." This is related to what Eliot will later write in the last Quartet "to make an end is to make a beginning./ The end is where we start from." Every day an end and a beginning. The past pokes through in every new moment and tempts us with possibilities, while the future threatens us with its predeterminations and inescapable mystery. And when we arrive, in each new day, we are as we started, and know ourselves for the first time. And then we forget. Remember? St. James describes the casual hearer as one who "looking n a mirror walks away and forgets what manner of person they are." [my paraphrase] That's what Stephen Daedalus's and Leopold Bloom's and Molly Bloom's journeys are in Ulysses: odysseys, two along the streets and one in the heart, weaving and looming, discovering where to end a beginning, begin an ending. In them Joyce is trying to walk away from the mirror and remember who he is.
Marriage is an odyssey. Two people rediscover themselves and each other every day. It is a journey without timetable. Yet time and language are in the warp and woof. Delight and joy and laughter are the sound that cloaks our presence with each other. Tears, anxieties: like storms they thunder and light striking, but they spend their energies and what remains of them is a clear blue sky.
I cannot say how grateful I am for Jami. I love her bunches.

I've just told a very bad pun

Jami is trying to ignore what was a very bad pun, but as you can see her smile is about to erupt in breathless guffaws. Here we are at the auction for the Solarium last evening and my birdhouse is coming up for auction [photo forthcoming]. I can't remember what I said, but instead I'll use an old stand by: we have birds in our chimney, Chimney Swallows, and they're the most amazing birds. They're very tiny and sometimes they fly into the house and Jami gently apprehends them and releases them back into nature. She'll say, " a chimney swallow just got in." and I'll crow, "How a bird that small can swallow a whole chimney I'll never know." It's Gold! and the best part it never gets old. Each telling is just as fresh as the first time.
The woman holding back gales of laughter in the photos above is the most beautiful woman around.

blurry photo of love

My digital camera takes some very blurry pictures. As autofocus becomes more automatic in the future, I will retain this camera for its ability to snap the shutter just after coming out of focus. Actually painting out of focus requires some work. Gerhard Richter, the most well known practitioner of this technique, achieves it, at least in the one case I've observed, by making horizontal striations through the still wet pigment. Out of focus representation is a 20th century phenomenon: until camera use became widespread there was no convention about seeing out of focuse. Unfocused seeing was wrong seeing and, even though 19th century photographers might have been conscious of it, they avoided it in their work for presentation. It could be that earlier users of the camera obscura also knew of this phenomenon, but they also avoided it: with perhaps the exception of Vermeer who used some out of focus effects such as sharp highlights and gauzy outlines. Steichen and Steigliez used soft focus in their early 20th century periodical, Camera Work: perhaps drawing on influence from Julia Cameron. Cameron is the earliest practitioner I can think of who left central aspects of her finished work unfocused. Medardo Rosso seems to use out of focus effects in his sculpture and he would be late 19th and early 20th century.
The first person to leave things flagrantly out of focus I can think of would be Man Ray and after him the surrealists. I should clarify that when I say out of focus I'm not referring to the phenomenon of blur. Blur is related and is common in photojournalism; I'm thinking of the blur we see in photos of the d-day invasion and in sporting events. Advances in technology have almost lost that effect for us. Advances in technology are almost returning us to the pre-modern visual convention where everything, even things far away, are in sharp focus with defined edges and recognizable details.
That said, I love the blurry woman pictured above very much.

I interrupt my apocalyptic ramblings

I have to interrupt this rambling of mine to put up a picture of the most beautiful woman on the planet. I took this photo last summer when we were walking along the Art Loeb trail above the parkway. We were with Tom and Suzanne and their daughters Jane Margret and Elizabeth. We're still having fun and she's still the one.

How beautiful you are

Almost a year ago, the morning I was graduating from Columbia, I took this photo of Jami, and I'm almost certain she didn't like it, what with the chin being cut off and the slight distortion of the camera angle; but for me, every time I see her smile and hear her voice, my heart is strangely warmed.

Jami with mit

When we went to the ball game, Jami came prepared to snare a foul smash behind the visitor's dugout. Only a couple of balls were hit near us. Sure the Braves lost. Redman pitched miserably and those who followed him weren't much better. But the seats were great. I could practically reach out and yank Miguel Cabrara's hat over his face - not that I would do such a thing. In the stands, to our right, some fan threw a ball out on the field during one of Willis's pitches. It was not taken as an act of subversion or games-man-ship and he was escorted out.
As I said, Dontrelle Willis pitched and he was masterful. I tried again and again to capture that leg kick of his with my camera, but the downside of digital cameras is that the shutter is so delayed.
Again, the woman in this post with the ball glove: I love her.

London Chicago

Jami, at Trafalger Square. Raining in London - who'd of thought. She's beautiful.

From our trip to Chicago last Fall, a Braque (I think): you'd think that I could distinguish a Braque from a Picasso, but I can't always. Something about Braque's composition is formal and stiff -whereas Picasso's compositions move and have more a lower key of color. Braque's more likely to use black to outline forms. So it seems to me. So Braque.