Intentional Mishaps and Maladies.

Dear Friends,

A few words with you this evening. 

I am (for the next 11 months) living in a new city, with new people, doing new things.  It's all very bright and shiny.  And along with this entirely new life, I am beginning a new blog.  Not that I am abandoning Vox, but I am. (For the next 11 months.) 

This week marks my first as an "Artist-In-Residence" in Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA.  One of the requirements as an official AIR here, is of course, blogging.  SO.  I will continue to write, fairly regularly, as part of my salary now depends on it.  If you are interested in collard greens and peaches, I suggest you check out my new blog:

http://sarah.hub-bub.com
or
www.sarah.hub-bub.com

(It's the same link.)

If you're not interested in the above mentioned, maybe you will find something else to tickle your toes.

Hope you're all grand and dandy and fiesty and not sweating as much as I am. 

More highfives than normal,
Sarah

Springer 005

There breathes something so honest.  So pure, so raw.  The first time a concept is approached.........the first utterance of a concept.  Whether on paper in private, or en mass in cyberspace, or casually on the phone to one recipient.

But that first admittance, actualization and pulsating birth of a concept--its most potent stage--cannot be revisited.  With each discussion, each dissection, each outward expression, something is lost.  The core nutrition begins to dissolve as refining proceeds.

A concept wilts, tired of its own frequency.  It becomes dull and self-aware.  Ubiquitous and formulaic.  The spread has begun, and it further thins its transforming quality.  To witness itself too often is to birth the ordinary.

Walking in the park today, fueled by the chiming energy of the sun as it filtered through, electrifying new green buds, I wanted nothing but to commit my experience to paper.  To cement the purity before it began to dissipate, before I had the opportunity to dilute it through chatter.  I wished violently that no one cross my path with whom I'd desire to talk.  So valiantly, and vainly, I wanted to preserve the potency of the moment--a reconciliation and forgiveness I had endured by simply opening my eyes and facing my cheeks west.  Such a simple reverence, but broad and voluminous.

Fog 001

The winter intolerable; a fade into the fog of despair--unable to predict the inevitable appearance of spring--forgetful of nature's cycle.  Withdrawn, myself hibernating with the buds.  And now so obvious it is, that the light persists always.

The shades we wear obscure its presence.

3 solid springs had passed since I've taken notice of the resplendent few weeks in which blossoms surface.  3 springs I ignored the gradual emergence from drear solitude.  Wrapped in the concrete of Brooklyn, the only obvious method of discerning the season was by counting pedestrians. Or sniffing the air.  For 3 springs, I had missed its brilliant birth--the rejuvenating spirit and tender touch.  And now, when I least expected, but most desired, I have experienced contentment.

PINKBLUEGREENBLUEPURPLE.

Springer 002

I am captivated by its complexity, rendered so accessible.  Nibbled on chickweed, gnawed onion grass, plucked violets.  

(Sigh)  I jumped. I smiled. I ran. I sat.

Whispering willow, weeping.  Waving.  Creeping surreptitiously...a tentacle brushes my ankle, as if animated and intentional.  I paused at the trunk, caressing its tendrils.  One lonely wisp, wandering amidst the others.  A tug, it seemed to embed its soul in my hand.  I greedily pinched the whip from its source.  Immediately guilt devoured my action.  Too late.  With shame I dangled him around my neck, feeling remorse--his severance so final.  His fronds grazed the ground, battered, pulverized.  My eyes unable to confront their capitalist crime.

I wandered to a place of rumination, pondering upon similar notions of selfishness and greed, sprouting in a frequent letter by post exchange with a friend.  Intricate, thoughtful, raw honesty of intuition--all released and given up--to 1 friend, over miles and miles.  When the exchange first began, I was jealous of my friend, for receiving my mail.  I wanted to retain those fresh utterances.  To have (at least) duplicates of my instinctual outpourings...an egotistical grasp...

...and yet I haven't.  Because the relinquishing--the invitation to share selflessly--is so tremendous, accumulating with each word.  The impact beyond the content and decor of the letters.  Beyond satisfactory.  A form and process, to release those infantile notions, to offer them.  To be free from the bonds of the self.  To diminish and dissolve, indiscernible from the nature that spurns it..a most fertile harvest.

$5.15 an hour.  $21.98 to fill the tank.  21-year-old pet cat paddles my face violently. (She's declawed.)  13 resumes dispersed. $16 dollars in tips.  (For 27 skinny vanilla lattes with whip.)  2 glasses of wine at dinner.  With 2 parents.  3 doctor visits.  9 nights of insomnia. 5 monthly bills.  89 salty tears on a shoulder, (x6.)  3.8 miles around the park.  Somestimes fast.  Sometimes slow. 10 hours of dreams, that seem oddly real.  Just in time for a self-imposed 11 o'clock curfew.  49 surreptitious steps from the kitchen to my bedroom.  8 years ago, my bedroom.

Is this my life?  Am I really breathing this? A stale space somewhere between boredom and frustration and Groundhog Day the movie. And if I am certainly occupying this space and time, how?  Just how?  What birthed this subtle reality, a bland calculation and tabulation of the ordinary? 

An overdose on the ordinary.

Approximately four nights a week, I ask myself these questions.  Right about the time the first 6 sips of a bloody merlot penetrate the cerebellum, and a whisper of escape glints in my skull. 

Dad

I look to my left, and sitting in front of a crisp red and white woven checkered placemat, I see my father.  His face has character, the creases are evidence of an animated existence; a warm demeanor that softens with each wince of joy.  He chuckles with every bite, and his crows feet deepen.

Mom

I look to my right, and hovering over an identical placemat is my mother.  She is chipper and professional.  Her hair is newly clipped, always.  And her makeup a compliment to the powersuit of the day.  Her teeth radiate as she tells us precisely how parents of today have myriad difficulties.

I look directly in front of me, and I see a wall adorned in white paper, speckled with miniature red fruits; a hypnotizing flat space.  There is a visible seam between two panels of wallpaper, and it invisibly divides perfectly our table in two.  Half of me existing on either side, a reflection. 

ChristineandSarah

Where I see the wallpaper, that's where my sister should be.  But she's not.  And that was the first sign that maybe I don't belong here anymore.  

A story

I realize what a negligent little nerd I've been.  I didn't quite follow up on the riveting tale I so enthusiastically began that frigid, yet somehow toasty evening, many moons and half moons and slivers of moons ago.  November the 8th, until the 9th. 

How I tease you now!  You must be brimming with infantile anticipation! 

My friends, tonight I have not the integrity to continue this story, which never really stops. It never really started.  I'm reading it now.

Don't worry.  The skyscraper has been revealed.  The documentary, edited.  Picnics have been devoured.  Chinese fire drills, extinguished.  And soon my friends, you will be written into the tale.  An audience will be created.  A special nifty nook, all to you, an integrated element of the epic.

Expect, and I shall deliver. 

PS.  If you are curious as to how the event, the main even around which so much revolved and evolved...(skyscraper erection)...accurate depictions and intriguing evidence can be seen here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/origamikid/sets/72157594238673818/

They're spectacular.  Mario is a pro.  In real life.

(what is that?)

so its 6:26:37am.  and since 2:39:56am i have been sitting on george's spiffy laptop, or rather next to it, taking photographs every 20 seconds of ian building a skyscraper right in the middle of elsewhere. the structure is 13.4 feet tall, and architecturally sound.  equipped with a ladder, the skyscraper is habitable.  and since the opening for this functional sculpture looming in our 48 degree home is to happen promptly at 8pm on saturday night, and since he is still installing glass pane number 8, with 59 to go....he has a lot of work to do. and i am documenting the process, time lapse manner. it's kind of fun.

DSC04468

jerry garcia is strumming. george is waltzing with an obsolete screen window. stephanie is rearranging the studio and eating a peanut butter sandwich. multi-tasker she is.  and i have been snapping away. and typing away, fondling all over my new gmail account: thesarahwitt@gmail.com. ian is biting his nails on the second story of his tower and wearing a snart.

Ian

Outdoors Snart21web

Outdoors Snart16web

in 5.4 hours we have a canadian university group coming in for a weekend workshop. and in the evening a poetry reading with some UNCG kids. and then a big game of city on saturday and the official ribbon cutting ceremony to take place during.

here are some pics, because i know that's all anyone really wants to see.

Outdoors Snart13web

Good night! And good bye.

This is the wind. It is strong.  Last post from Iceland.

TRANSLATION: What? 

The common inquiry does not end in an up tone, as does the English "what?"  There is no inflection whatsoever, however the "ah" may be a little more stressed than the "hu."  Yes, indeed the end of end should be emphasized. "hA." Pretend there is not a question mark punctuating your inquiry, which is more of a statement. hA.

Because the weather is always an easy (though pathetic) way to start a conversation, and because it is generally what determines my daily schedule, which regulates the experiences I will undergo, which in a way, is what determines what I write to you, we will not start there.  Besides, this isn't really a conversation.  Even if I am addressing "you." 

But I concede that in this day and age, staring at our resplendent flat-faced friends, watching the ideas that we are conceiving in our heads visibley take form as we think them, not immune to instantaneous revision, a sort of response to ourselves, is operating in the spirit of a "conversation"...where was this sentence going?  Making a list with bigger and bolder fonts always seems to help catalogue a concept.

GENERAL TOPIC OF DISCUSSION: CONVERSATION

SPECIFIC SUBJECT OF DEBATE: COMPUTER(S) and dotCOM

A grand improvement already...I don't think I had clearly clarified that computers were the subject to be analyzed, in regards to the topic of conversation. 

HYPOTHESIS: COMPUTERS HAVE THE ABILITY TO TRANSFORM A PERSON SILENTLY BASKING IN THE LONELY GLOW OF THE SCREEN INTO A GARRULOUS DISILLUSIONED SOCIALITE.

Does this work so far?

(Pause for coffee and sunset break.)

Well, even if it is a functioning thesis, I am going to be really honest right now and admit that, after seeing the plain yet awe-inspiring evening sky, I don't have the integrity or the need to finish this thought. There are so many factors cutting the facets on this huge brilliant diamond of technology through which we stare out...caught inside like a prehistoric insect in amber. (And likewise a method of self-preservation...)  And being in this place (Iceland) of sparkling natural splendor, I can barely make a juxtaposition between the two, because they are so absurdly opposite.  While the sky is casually smattering a palette of panty pink and boxer blue, I hunch over a grid of letters, pretending to communicate, denouncing the weather, through a techonological mechanism I have been reported to also denounce.  It's all so self referential.

Oh I can see that on this screen, this is going nowhere.

It's almost impossible to approach...because as soon as the word "internet" enters my vocabulary, and I cognizantly realize that I am energetically participating in something I have vehemently proclaimed as extraneous and forged, whilst something I have exaulted as glorious and fundamental is just humbling happening behind a sheet of glass, I immediately go into electroshoke ADHD mode* and start acting as if I am a flea trying to get a piggyback ride from a hummingbird.  It's beyond my simple grasp...the speed, the lights, the exchange of information, the infinite availability of facts, of myths, the false identities, the proliferation of exhibition, the cultural communication crutch...and somehow, SOMEHOW I am still sitting here writing.  A deflected deplorable attraction! 

What hypocracy...and I think a very repetitive 2 paragraphs.  I guess I am really trying to drive the point.  But I still haven't really been able to pinpoint this point.  So I guess all this was just pointless.

Except I have learned 3 things from this:

1. I like to feel connected, even if that feeling is entirely fabricated by my own actions using a machine I regularly condemn and criticize and pretty much, abhor. 

2. Sunsets are cheesy and romantic to a lot of people.  To me, they are not only cheesy and romantic, they are the antithesis to technology.   

3. I miss "Saturday night."

Is it really Saturday night?  I certainly hope it's not when you (if you accept this monologue as one-sided conversation) read this.  Because that would mean that Saturday night is no longer "Saturday night."  And that computers really are.  They just really are. 

*Readers' note: Led Zeppelin's "Communication Breakdown" randomly entered the play list on radioblogclub.com right about here. I love radioblogclub.com. 

(ap-el-see-na-oop-huf)

TRANSLATION: (Orange Origin)

Efficiency

2 comments

A few days ago I compiled a list of questions that, at the time, were really urgent issues that required further discussion.  I lost approximately 3 minutes of sleep over the following:

Infection

1. What kind of cheese are cheese puffs and curls imitating?

2. Is carbonated water less hydrating than non-carbonated water?

3. What came first--orange as a color label, or orange as a fruit name?

I was not surprised to receive an overwhelming response to these inquiries.  They undertake prevelant universal themes, and having addressed them, we can now get closer to the truth. 

I would like to acknowledge one reader in particular who has done extensive research concerning topic #3.   We will be better informed of our position in the world as consumers and make knowledgable contributions when a conversation revolves around the O-word, whith which no other word in the English language can rhyme.

Here is his discovery:

[< Anglo-Norman and Middle French orenge (c1393 in Middle French; earlier in Anglo-Norman in phrase pume orenge (c1200), 1314 in Old French in phrase pomme d'orenge: see note below), Middle French, French orange (1515 as noun in a translation from Italian (itself translating a Portuguese source), 1553 as adjective), ult. (prob., in spite of the chronology, via Italian arancio (c1309), arancia (a1336; also as narancia (1598 in Florio); Italian regional (Venice) naranza, Italian regional (Reggio Emilia) naranz, Italian regional (Milan) narans) < Arabic nranj < Persian nrang < Sanskrit nraga < a Dravidian language: cf. Tamil nram, Tulu nregi. Cf. also Persian nr < anr pomegranate. Cf. Spanish naranja (late 14th cent.), Portuguese laranja (1377), Old Occitan arange (c1373), irange (1390), medieval Greek (characters did not transfer.)

In Anglo-Norman pume orenge and Old French pomme d'orenge, prob. after Italian melarancio (although this is first attested later: 14th cent.) < mela apple (see MELE n.1) + arancio orange tree, orange (see above); cf. post-classical Latin pomum arantiae (1297), Italian pomerancia, and German Pomeranze (15th cent.; < Italian), and cf. also Older Scots appil orange (see Dict. Older Sc. Tongue s.v.) and Dutch oranjeappel. Initial o- in the Anglo-Norman and Old French forms is prob. after the form of the place name Orange (see ORANGE n.2; cf. forms in d'), perh. also influenced by Anglo-Norman and Old French or gold (see OR n.1), with reference to the colour. Similarly, post-classical Latin has aurantia (1609, 1626 in British sources; cf. later AURANTIA n.), by association with classical Latin aurum gold (see AURO-), beside arangia (Sicily, 12th cent.), arancia (15th cent.), arantia (16th cent.).
  The loss of initial n- in French and Italian prob. results from absorption of the n- when preceded by the indefinite article, although in some cases such forms may reflect loss of n- already in Arabic. Conversely, the 19th-cent. Scots form nirrange shows attraction of the -n of the indefinite article by metanalysis (see N).
  The native home of the orange may have been south-east Asia, and the name may have originated there. In the Middle Ages the bitter (or Seville) orange was brought by the Arabs to Sicily, from where it spread to the rest of Europe. The sweet (or China) orange was brought from China by the Portuguese in the 16th cent.
  The designations for certain varieties of pear (see senses A. 1b, B. 2c) are attested earlier in French than in English: with winter orange (in quot. 1767 at sense A. 1b) cf. French orange d'hiver (1690); with orange musk and orange pear at sense B. 2c cf. French orange musquée (1690) and poire d'orange (1603) respectively.
  Cf. the following surnames, which may reflect the Anglo-Norman or the Middle English word (or perh. even the place name ORANGE n.2, in Old French Orenge): Sibel Orenge (1296), Ricardo Orenge (1296-7), Galfridus Orenge (1310).]

 

Orange (color)

4. A bright reddish-yellow colour like that of the skin of a ripe orange; any one of a number of shades occupying the region between red and yellow in the spectrum. Also: a pigment or dye of this colour.
  cadmium, chrome, Mars, methyl orange, etc.: see the first element.

1557 in Great Brit. Statutes at Large VI. 100 Coloured cloth of any other colour or colours..hereafter mentioned, that is to say, scarlet, red, crimson, morrey, violet, pewke, brown, blue, black, green, yellow, blue, orange, [etc.]. 1591 in R. Pitcairn Criminal Trials Scotl. (1833) I. II. 254 Fyve clewis of sindrie culloures of worsett as blak, reid, orange, yallow and blew. a1598 A. MONTGOMERIE Misc. Poems xxiv. 66, O wareit orange! willed me to weir. 1663 S. BUTLER Hudibras I. i. 18 His tawny Beard..The upper part thereof was Whey, The nether Orange mixt with Gray. 1739-40 D. HUME Treat. Human Nature I. i. 4 To give a child an idea of scarlet or orange, of sweet or bitter, I present the objects. 1796 W. WITHERING Arrangem. Brit. Plants (ed. 3) IV. 327 Pileus frequently tinged with orange. 1832 TENNYSON Mariana in South 26 Till all the crimson changed, and past Into deep orange o'er the sea. 1851 M. REID Scalp-hunters I. 10 Yonder the orange predominates in the showy flowers of the asclepia. 1896 W. F. KIRBY Handbk. Lepidoptera II. 209 Of a yellow colour, varying from light sulphur-yellow to deep orange. 1926 D. B. HEYWARD in B. C. Williams O. Henry Prize Stories of 1925 197 The proprietress,..looking rather like a water-front conflagration in a voluminous costume of scarlet and orange. 1950 J. BROOKE Goose Catherdral viii. 167 The hedges were hung with a multitude of spindleberrieslurid purple bursting into fiery orange. 2001 P. BALL Bright Earth v. 139 Titian used an unusually large range of pigments, including orpiment and the only ‘true’ orange of the Renaissance, realgar, available in Venice from around 1490.

Alex, having translated this verbose inflation of the origin of orange, concludes that orange the fruit first was first labeled as such.  He deduced from the text that it wasn't until 3 centuries later in the 1500s that the name orange was applied to the color.  My attention span was not wide enough to finish reading the excerpt, therefore I myself did not detect this pivotal point and cannot argue otherwise.

Work

1 comment

Thank you for this significant contribution, Alex. (Was that proper grammar?)

Having been motivated by Alex's dutiful deciphering, and because most of the "overwhelming response" from the readership was not informative, but more an encouraging fervent declaration that they too think these are important questions, I have resolved to put an end to the mystery.

Factory

1 comment

#1.  After going to the official "Cheeto's" website, I was surprised to learn that:

-you can play interactive video games through the website, like "Cow-Mu-Flage." I think this is supposed to be a play on the word Camouflage.

-They have a daily fact section, today's being that the human eye blinks on average 4,200,000 times a year

-There is a "parents" section, where they offer tips on maintaining your child's health.  Which is where I may have found the answer to the initial question.  Looking at the nutritional fact popup, the 4th ingredient, after whey and all the other microingredients that comprise the main ingredients (corn meal, ferrous sulfate, niacin, thiamin mononitrate etc.), is in fact CHEDDAR CHEESE.  I should have guessed, as cheddar is a really popular cheese.  And has supreme alliteration when placed next to Cheetos.  So cheddar they are.

I am now officially bored of topic #1.

Angryearth

#2. Carbonated water is no less hydrating than non-carbonated water, as the liquid element is still identical chemically.  Assuming there are no additives in the bubbly drink, there is no reason not to drink gas water when intending to hydrate.  There is some speculation however, that the carbon dioxide that is infused into water may cause oesophageal cancer.  If you are a regular soda drinker and are concerned about this, you might want to check out experthydration.com

I am not really bored of topic #2, but I think it's possible other people are.

I can in no way validify any of these answers.  My sources are not credited institutions, and my research was probably not as thorough as it could be.  But I feel satisfied.  I feel that this is an accomplishment, preparation to tackle the next crucial controversy to arise.  Which is probably what to eat for lunch today.

Callous