Winter Wonderland Feast + Fairytale Fête
by angeliska on January 4, 2011
My whelping day once more approaches! A celebration is being
prepared! Grackle Grove is being scrubbed and groomed, and
much bustling and to-do is occurring to make way for the festivities!
This year, the theme was inspired by Paco Peregrin’s milk-white maidens:
It is to be a Winter Wonderland Feast, by way of the Balkans and
the Black Forest, to be sure – and then taking last year’s neglected
Trans-Siberian Express maybe up near Finland. I’m thinking Saami
princesses, a forest of white dresses, silver dowry coins and cuffs,
and an excess of wimples and other elaborate headdresses. If this
is too much for you, just wear all (or mostly white), and pile on the
tatty furs and buffalo robes, but it will probably be rather chilly!
Snowflake-dappled red apple cheeks, and frozen eyelashes.
Shivering towers of crystal and ice, antler and pelt, snow glitter!
Animistic fashions are always welcome, as are Mongol hordes.
These ladies are excellent inspirations:
Frozen Maidens in Folkloric Fantasyland
I missed out on having my birthday party at home last year, due to
inclemently cold weather, and and general sense of being overwhelmed.
Hostessing a party in a half-gutted house in the middle of winter is no
minor task, and considering that our abode currently looks like a bad
episode of hoarders, I definitely have my work cut out for me! I love a
real birthday party though, and nothing else ever seems to be quite as
much fun for me, so it’s worth the frantic hustle and bustle. I like creating
an environment wholly devoted to one purpose: celebrating and reveling
in fantasy, my magical life, and my wonderful friends! Also, going to restaurants
with a large group is always slightly awkward. I prefer to just have a massive
potluck, because it’s much cozier and loads more fun! Also: awesome leftovers!
We’re entreating guests to bring their favorite wintertime dish, treat or beverage –
Recipes from cold countries, cozy-making comfort-food and
copious arrays of exotic boozes + champagnes are always
sure to please, isn’t it so? Bring a musical instrument if you play,
or a performance of some kind, if you feel moved to.
There will be bonfires, cozy sherpa-tent lounging and hot Glögg.
I’m hoping for reindeer dancers, snow queens and Mr. Tumnus!
Inspiration for boy guests:
In fact, all male guests must dress like this. It is by my decree.
Look at this debutante party that went down recently in New Orleans:
Snow White-themed bash was a deb party for the ages
Why am I not absurdly wealthy so I can make parties as extravagant as that?
Feh! I will make do with pennies and twigs! Wish I could’ve crashed it, though…
Past birthdees:
✷ Trans-Siberian Birthday Wishes
✷ Birthdee Glee
✷ Black Forest Fashion
✷ Black Forest Wishes
✷ Black Forest Birthday!
✷ Balkan Birthday!
A Bright Blue Wish
by angeliska on December 31, 2010
This is an invocation. Breathe in blue, breathe out black.
Throw the old wishes in the river, detritus of the old year,
burnt to ash, warped and transformed, buried on the land
where your ancestors spun in circles in May, plowed through
snow-drifts in winter. Here my great-grandmother stood,
under this tree that is now dead, posing for a photograph
in her faded feed-sack day dress, with her gentle pet doe.
Charge me up from the roots to my diamond crown, shower
me with sparks, my feet bare, toes dug in the sandy soil.
(Photograph by John-Paul Pietrus)
I am wrung out, but I still have an Mariana Trench worth
of tears – I squeeze dead seahorses and hagfish from
my tear ducts. Blackened crones beat their breasts and
begin the keening that signals the end of the this turning.
(Photograph by Ice)
I stand on the hill, I kneel in the dirt, I find myself flat on
the earth hours later, gasping – reaching frantically for
the moon to take my hand and pull me out of this dark
crevasse. Leafy waterdragons ripple under a glittering
membrane of sky, and the world is alight in blue and violet
prism fire. I am wrenched by their claws, shaking me like
a doll, pulling me up by my guts. The woman with the white
hair is coming with her birch broom to sweep me up, out to
sea. The oaks are alive, and straggle their witchfingers out
to trap tangles of cloud, moon-shadows. The next day I am
calm as glass, humbled, tabula rasa. Let me hold the hands
of those I love, let me look in their eyes and thank them for
all that they do. It’s time to shake awake, rekindle the heat,
dance like a manic child, unabashed. I’m ready for the stars
to swaddle me, to be blanketed in milk and wake in a field
of crystalline frost flowers. Sleeping in the hills and dreaming
for days. Let me come back to town with some wisdom in my
pockets, some release in my bones. Ease the passage of those
travelers, let their journeys be tranquil – but keep the others
close, don’t let any more slip out the back door before their time.
It’s never enough time, I know that – but please help me spend
it with more love. Keep me there, against your breast, my arms
encompassing each of my myriad darlings. Keep us safe, heal
our hearts, wash our eyes so that we might see. Please, please.
(Photograph by Minililimi)
Give us the memory of diving into fountains of petals, the knowing that there
will be green tendrils and rosy afternoons again soon. For now we have fairy lights.
(Photograph by Sofia Ajram)
May all of our brightest wishes be true, may our work be sweet.
(Photograph by Jostein Walengen)
Give us reverence for the night, for the winter, for death.
Remind us of the tiny wonders, mysteries, magic everywhere.
(Photograph by Kate Young)
Breathe in blue, breathe out black.
Whisper goodbye to this hard old year,
and stand tall to receive the tiny seed
that will be our new one. Open hands,
open everything. I wish all this for us.
✶ New Year’s Redux
✶ Stargazer Honey
✶ Blue Moon
✶ Lone Grove New Year
✶ Pink Moons
✶ The New Year
✶ Lucky Stars and Garters
✶ La Nouvelle Année
Wayfaring Strangers
by angeliska on December 30, 2010
The dark days are here to stay, it would seem – at least for all my friends in New Orleans.
It feels wrong to even try to write about it at this point, but I really don’t know what else to
do, and this heartbreak has to go somewhere. The night of Flee’s memorial Second Line
parade, eight of his friends and their dogs burned to death when their squat, an abandoned
warehouse, caught on fire from the barrel they were burning scrap in to stay warm. A few
names have been sussed out, but I’m still not sure who was in that place when it went
down, or if I knew them. Three women and five men between the ages of 19 and 30 died in the
inferno, all described as “accomplished musicians or artists – jolly, happy people.”
Apparently one of the girls who died had been jumped by a guy on her way back to the squat
recently, and had her face and arms slashed by his knife. She had been considering filing a
report, but never got the chance. This insane rash of random violence with little motive brings
to mind the shadow-play I saw performed at the Mudlark Public Theatre on Halloween, about
the Axeman of New Orleans, who terrorized the city from May 1918 to October 1919. My friends
are in a similar panic right now, though there’s no speculation that the assailants are possibly the
devil in disguise. Monsters, maybe. Disenfranchised young men, raised in poverty, abused, angry
and numbed to the violence and death that surrounds them, that they wreak. There is a bleak
miasma, a rotten swamp-funk of despair and fear that seems to be seeping up through the
banquettes and curling around every corner down there right now. This fire wasn’t part of
that crime-wave, no – but all this bad shit happening at once, without even giving people
a chance to catch their breath… It’s just brutal. What’s really fucking with me is the response
of “concerned citizens” who callously voiced their opinions about the kids who died
with nasty comments on a local news site. I should know better than to ever read that shit,
because it’s usually horrifying, and makes me feel very sad for humanity.
It got under my skin, though – these people basically saying “good riddance to gutterpunks”
and that they got what they deserved for choosing to live the way they lived. Unbelievable,
and so sad, that people would respond to the accidental deaths of eight young people with
such vitriol. Even the more compassionate news stories refer to them as “homeless” or “transients”,
and lead in to discussions about the pitiful lack of resources and shelters in New Orleans,
which is of course important, but not actually very relevant to who these kids were.
Here’s a couple comments from the thread which address it better than I can:
“You just assume that because they were squatting they don’t have jobs, but a lot of these kids do work.
They do bike delivery in the quarter or wash dishes or tend bar. They travel a lot, so often they don’t tie
themselves down to a lease. They sleep on the couches of friends or in abandoned buildings. It may not
be your choice of lifestyle, but it’s not malicious and it’s not lazy. It’s just different. Their lives matter
just as much as yours or mine. Grow a heart and some perspective.”
and
“Every human deserves a warm place to sleep and healthy food. I didn’t know those kids well, but I knew
that they were working on that building, that they had built lofts and had made more improvements to that
structure then who ever owned had in years. They weren’t homeless – that was their home and it burned down
and its a goddamn tragedy anyway you write it down, and if you think otherwise you are a cruel person who
needs to go back to whatever godforsaken suburb you crawled out of and stay there.”
Goddamn right.
I was one of those kids once, actually. I was an obnoxious spare-changing, dumpster-diving,
sidewalk beer-swilling gutterpunk brat. I was homeless because I refused to live with my parents,
in the middle of nowhere, in a situation where I was utterly miserable. I couch-surfed, and slept on
floors in houses where roaches crawled on my face at night. I met a lot of the friends I still love and
cherish at Project Phase, a free service for homeless kids where you could get tested for STDs and
clothes and food. Most of my friends were travelers, and some of them still are – though many grew
out of riding the rails, and came to appreciate a different kind of freedom, that of having a place to truly
call home. I respect and admire all my train-hopping friends, my hard-working, hard-partying, beet
harvesting, harmonica-playing, spray-painted butt-flap sporting friends. It fucks with me to see them
fucked with, treated as less than human. It makes me wonder what it is about their wildness, their
feral freedom that make them so threatening to people who have settled. Settled for banality, I mean.
All this reminds me of reading about my mom’s experiences in the 60’s and 70’s, when she and
her friends were treated like filth for having long hair and beards and for not wearing makeup.
It was a regular thing to see signs warning “NO DOGS OR HIPPIES” in restaurants, or to have
people not want to rent to you. It’s a weird hysteria – the loathing of the caged for the free.
Since I don’t have pictures or names to properly mourn the eight unlucky kids who died,
I’m posting instead these polaroids taken by Mike Brodie that have long captivated me.
Some of them are of friends, or friends of friends. All of these faces are familiar, beloved
somehow. Mike is one of them, and you can see the love and trust between him and the
people he photographs reflected in their eyes.
Farewell, farewell – Fairport Convention:
Farewell, farewell to you who’d hear
You lonely travellers all.
The cold North wind will blow again
The winding road does call.
And will you never return to see your
Bruised and beaten sons?
Oh, I would, I would if welcome I were
For they loathe me ev’ryone.
And will you never cut the cloth
Or drink the light to be?
And can you never swear a year
To anyone but we?
No I will never cut the cloth
Or drink the light to be,
But I’ll swear a year to one who lies
Asleep alongside of me.
More photos here: The Aesthetic Poetic – The Polaroid Kidd
and here: POLAROID KIDD AT NEEDLES + PENS
✶ Mike Brodie’s Glimpses of the Under-Underclass – by David Forbes at Coilhouse
✶ Also, this piece from New Orleans Slate – Just Kids moved me.
Day of the Dead in New Orleans
by angeliska on December 27, 2010
Thinking about New Orleans all the time, and worrying for all my friends there.
People are afraid to leave their houses, talking about buying shotguns, and
reinforcing their doors and the bars on their windows. It’s hard to think back
to a few short months ago when everyone’s guard was down, and we all sprawled
on the sidewalk like it was a sandy beach. I never really went through all my photos
from Day of the Dead, but I started feeling very hungry for so many sweet faces that
I wish I could be near right now, and remembering that the parade was the last time
I saw Flee alive. Always in the middle of a parade – Mardi Gras morning, 2006 was
the last time I saw Helen Hill, too. Ah, New Orleans. There couldn’t be a more perfect
metaphor for the river of life, though. Flowing through, doubling back, mourning,
celebrating, and dancing your heart out in the middle of the street. These processions
are sacred, necessary. Today is Flee’s second line, and I wish I could be there to ramble
through the streets in his honor, but sadly – the memories from this last parade will have
to be the next best thing. Taking part in these processions always reminds me how perfect
and powerful these simple rituals can be for joining a community together. The rest of the
country needs reminding. My goal is to create a real Day of the Dead procession here in
Austin next autumn. We desperately need it. There is a fun event that happens about a week
before the actual holiday, but it’s more family and kid-oriented, and happens during the day.
I want to organize a huge parade, with multiple bands, and everyone with calavera faces,
to go down to the river and light candleboats, and then parade back to a big dance party
with altars and mariachis – another Disko de los Muertos! I know I have to make it real.
Darling Amanda Stone – this is my favorite picture from the whole night.
Her wings seem to be fluttering with light! What a beautiful + loving elf.
La bella Alita!
Pandora and her beloved Auntie Doreen made beautiful lanterns
to carry the memories of their muertos, which they set aflame by the river.
Ladybabymiss aka. Miss O.
Ryan Rossi representing Krewe du Poux!
Calamity! So divine.
I have forgotten this lovely beastmaiden’s name,
though I was so captivated by her ensemble.
Isn’t she amazing? Here’s the view from the back.
Calavera girl down by the water…
At the river we sang a dirge for all the loved ones lost,
and people cast their memories and ashes into the great
Mississippi. Some brave fools waded in, and crossed over
to a sandbar, looking for all the world like dead souls dancing
in the mist, on the other side of life. It was surreal and magical.
This dogpuppet danced on the drummer’s shoulders all night.
A kinetic effigy built in honor of his departed canine companion.
Kozmo + Boo
Me + Jay (Rusty Lazer)
Oops + Grapetta
My love + I drinking hot toddies at Pravda.
My teeth had all rubbed off from snot-faucet nose blowing,
as I was sick as a dog! I ignored it, and kept on trucking, though!
Johna Goldenflame, Colin and Ratty’s disembodied head!
(Photo byRachael Eastlund)
Jonny Flee’s last Dia de los Muertos. Next year we dance + mourn for him.
(Photo by Sasha Kopfler)
So happy and full of life. Beautiful and defiant in the face of death.
Now he’s one of that bony krewe, waiting for us across the river.
The last photo of the night – because a good laugh will do us all good.
It was a booty-pumpin’, animal-screamin’, jambalaya-clutchin’ kinda time
at the Hi-Ho Lounge that night. I think this image just about sums it up.
Hexmas Spirits
by angeliska on December 25, 2010
✶ A Very Haeckel Christmas
“Ernst Haeckel’s 1904 “Kunstformen der Natur” [Artforms of Nature] is a classic
of biological illustration. What is less generally known is that the artist started as a
Christmas card designer. The book was originally simply an album of holiday designs.”
So cute. Three cheers to John Holbo for coming up with this.
Christmas dawns, cold and bright, and we rise and craft our morning
with a decadent brunch in a warm kitchen. Guava mimosas with good
champagne, and strong tea. A mincemeat pie and bubbly for dear Flee,
in hopes that his spirit is wandering for a bit from house to house, taking
part in any joyful rituals his loved ones might muster – and we must!
The weird ancient symbolism is not lost on me, and so I must limn it here:
this is the dark season of death, where we struggle to bring back the light,
rally in the shadows and make merry as best we can to hold back the dark.
Light your candles, sing your songs, drink your wine – and celebrate what
we have: each other, a warm place to be, and the bright memory of those
who have gone on before us. Let their ghosts gather close to us, leave
something sweet out for them if you feel them draw near. It’s all we can
do, and something tells me it’s essential that we try. In hopes of bringing
a little of that cheer (or at least distraction!) to you and yours, here are some
tidbits to stuff in your stocking, and some deep wishes that all of you have a
safe and cozy holiday. Reach out to the people you love, and let them know.
✶ “The Hooded Congregation” – The Christmas Service of the Dead – one of my favorite stories from the
Time Life Enchanted World series, lovingly brought back to mind by the
sere ladies at After Dark in The Playing Fields. Enjoy the shivers!
✶ What the Dickens? – A Spiritualist’s Take on the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present & Future
“Yule is a haunted time of year. Beneath all the feasting and gift-giving lurks the primal fear
of deepening dark and killing cold. In modernized society we are insulated by false light,
false heat, and a material wealth that our ancestors could not have imagined. Yet still –
there stirs on these drear winter evenings some distant memory, genetic perhaps, of the
nearness of elemental danger. A century ago, that nearness was felt much more keenly.”
✶ A much beloved Polacheck family hexmas tradition is to listen to King Hepcat Lord Buckley’s rendition
of Scrooge – presented here for your pleasure with trippy beatnik animations:
✶ ‘Twas the Night Before Pogo (Thanks, Ebert!) and another one of our family favorites – Deck Us All With Boston Charlie
✶ Reindeer & Other Animals Get High On Magic Mushrooms, Scientist Claims
✶ A Creepy Monster of the Forest: The Albino, Vampiric Redwood Tree
✶ merry and bright – Hexmas wishes from Mlle. Verhext, who always does it up just right!
✶ Holiday Greetings From Siouxsie and Friends at Coilhouse
One of my favorite Siouxsie songs – Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant
✶ Gruss von Krampus! This makes me super-duper happy:
✶ Ah, thanks Boing Boing! This is how I want my hexmas to be: Peewee Herman + Grace Jones, frolicking in the Playhouse!
✶ Billy Bragg + Florence Welch do Fairytale of New York:
Florence & The Machine – Fairytale Of New York (Live BBC)
Uploaded by Henrietta-Aime-Fumer_Tv. – Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.
Sitting near our magical tannenbaum, with my sweetheart’s head in my lap,
a fat cat snoozing on his chest, and our dogs pressed alongside us, I feel at
peace. I’m getting absorbed already in the copy of Patti Smith’s Just Kids that
I got for him and cracking up at finding pieces of smashed ornaments in the rug
from when he popped the champagne cork right at the tree. Everything outside
this warm room feels scary and fucked up, but for this moment – all seems right
with the world. We have to hold on to those fleeting moments, and to each other.
This is our great work, my friends: to walk tall through the fire, to keep on laughing,
and loving. Let’s all stick around for this next round, okay? I know we can make it good.
✶ My friend and most favorite songwriter Michael Hurley posted this winter wish today, and I
thought it too perfect not to share with all of you. It sums up my feelings exactly:
“Heretofor Here’s sending to all the people I know, both intimate and casual, and all the people
and all the creatures I don’t know who might receive it; the pure and healing love that thrives in
every heart rebounding and harkening the realms of all energies both terrific and terrible, and of
such as we are comprised; love in all the above, pure and going, one moment everlasting hello”
✶ Texas Hexmas
✶ Happy Hexmas!
✶ Imps of Winter
✶ send me your flowers of your december
Jon Flee – R.I.P.
by angeliska on December 24, 2010
Hey Flee-flee, long time no see. I’m not sure how else to do this, but in my usual way, which always seems to help me a bit – and sometimes others too. Maybe if you’re out there somewhere, a buzzing column of light still flitting around this plane for awhile more, you’ll find your way into this ether and be able to read this. I can’t believe you’re gone, and you probably can’t either.
I’m guessing one minute you were making some dinner, or fiddling around with a project, or reading, and the next – some guy was up in your house with a gun. I know your bravado, and I’m sure you tried to defend your home, and maybe deal with this person who was, no doubt, in some way involved in all the recent robbings, violence and attacks. I wish it was him and not you, kid. He put a bullet in your head and left you lying in a pool of blood for your roommates to come home and find. He’s still out there, and will probably do it again, if given the chance – and there will be loads of chances, because all our friends are basically sitting ducks. Unarmed, in shoddily protected old houses that aren’t hard (apparently) to get in to. Meanwhile, the police are no help at all. I heard that last night, they arrested one of your friends who was freaking out with grief. What the fuck is that? They also tried to say that your death was a suicide, which I, and everybody else who knew you know is utter bullshit. Not to mention your neighbors who told the cops that they clearly heard multiple gunshots. Not to mention the fact that you didn’t own a gun, and that you had so much to be living for. I know you did. I wish you had the chance to live it.
I wanted to say that I’m sad that we hadn’t gotten to sit and talk in such a long time. Every time I ran into you over the past few years, it was a quick hug in the middle of a parade – you looking stunned, and me rushing back so as not to lose my companions in the flood of revelers. Just the other day, a bunch of your pals and I sat in my warm kitchen, admiring these photobooth self-portraits you made, and telling stories about you. I asked them to give you a big, sloppy kiss for me, and I dearly hope they did. You might not know this, but I’ve treasured this little strip of photos for years, and loved seeing your face every day on my refrigerator. Now you’re on my altar, candles lit.
I wanted to tell you thank you, again – for being so good to me when I first moved back to Austin right after Katrina. I remember that night outside the Carousel Lounge, at the benefit we’d put together. You came up to me, so determined to help me with whatever I needed. You offered to bike over with dishes and silverware the next day. You showed up and put in the elbow grease when few of my old friends made any effort to help. You came over almost every day to lend a hand with painting, moving furniture, and later, cleaning mold off of the treasures I was able to salvage from my house in New Orleans. You were there with me when Myrtle called to tell me that she’d been in my house, and that the roof had blown off. You held me when I fell apart, steered me to the movies to see Mirrormask, in hopes of distracting me from my despair. You put me to bed and sat silently near me, solid and full of empathy. You went to New Orleans later, and brought back a bag of mix tapes I’d bemoaned leaving behind. You shimmied up my rickety, blasted balcony and busted into the ruins of my old apartment to retrieve them for me. You were the only person I know who would do stuff like that, selfless, dedicated and sometimes foolhardy acts of love. Thank you for being so beautiful, so kind, and so good.
Wolf-eyed brother. Stray puppy with the hungry face. You tried to look tough, but anyone who knew you will remember how your pale face would crack in two with that crooked little boy grin of yours. Your busted up teeth later proudly replaced with silver, now soon to be ash. That terrible-ass tattoo you got on your skinny white chest – a gnarly pirate sneering beneath the words “If you ain’t a pirate, then you ain’t shit”. That’s the kind of tattoo guaranteed to make a mother weep, though I know now she’d give anything to see it again, to see your face.
I feel so heartbroken for your family to get this news on Christmas Eve. Anytime would be bad, but this? It’s just not right. How can this be?
It hasn’t really sunken in at all that you’re gone. That I won’t run into you at the St. Roch Tavern, or here in Austin. The pieces don’t fit. You worked so hard to do right by people, and this is what you got from humanity in return. It’s really hard for me not to be bitter right now. I don’t understand what is happening in New Orleans, but it kills me that so many people I love are bearing the brunt of this cycle of violence. I’m so scared for our city, for all of our friends. Please watch over them.
I know how much you loved it there – how at home you always felt in New Orleans. It’s your final home now, and although I hope you can pass smoothly onward into being part of everything, a part of me hopes that I’ll see a shade of you sitting on a leafy back-stoop like this again. I love you, Jonny Flee – thank you for loving me.
Imagining you being dead isn’t really the hard part, you know. I just always thought that if it happened, it would be some gory train-hopping incident, or a bike accident, or, I don’t know – pirates or something. Not murdered. Not shot in your house right before Christmas. I’m sorry you went this way. I was hoping to see what kind of old man you’d make. Now you’re a lost boy, forever – waving a wooden sword and swinging from vines in Neverneverland.
Jonathan Hall – “Flee” – May 2, 1983 – December 24th, 2010
To everyone else reading this, and feeling sadness and fear for the violence in New Orleans, please – whatever you do, don’t write the city off. It terrifies me to think of any more loved ones being made victims, but at the same time, I don’t want them to abandon their home. After Helen was murdered, I had to stay away for a while. The fear and despair overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t be there to celebrate Mardi Gras because of all the dark dreams I kept having. I regretted not being there, and promised myself I would never miss another one. I’m keeping that promise, and I hope that things will change soon, somehow. If you live there, please be careful, be canny, be safe. Make sure that your house is secure. If you plan on getting a gun to protect yourself, please learn how to use it responsibly. I can’t help but agree with friends who are wondering if the police turning a blind eye to the rash of robberies, rapes and murders in the 8th Ward recently aren’t somehow in cahoots with the thugs who are doing this shit. Sounds crazy, but when you look at this video from last month, and then look at all the violent shit that’s gone down, it’s hard not to draw lines. These attacks have all been on our friends – punk rock kids with nothing, no money, really, to take. So why are they being targeted? To get them out? Or maybe it’s just random. Maybe the ten dollars from a bike-delivery kid on a shitty night is worth it to them. Worth murdering for? It doesn’t make much sense. At the very least, the cops and the city aren’t bothered that people are being predated on, especially since those people are “transients”
and “rowdy punk kids” who they don’t want here anyway. Much stranger things have happened in New Orleans, where the city government and police force are so mind-bogglingly corrupt it’s hard to believe it’s not Juarez. Watch this video and tell me there’s not something wrong with this picture:
“Cops call them a nuisance. Residents say they’re dangerous.
Now, some are wondering why transients, or gutter punks as they’re
often called, congregate in the St. Roch neighborhood.”
I call bullshit.
Winter Solstice – Blood Moon
by angeliska on December 20, 2010
(This photo, and all others in this post, unless noted, is by the marvelous Sofia Ajram)
Dark times, my loves. Dark days before the sun returns to us. Tonight even the moon
will hide her face, turn the color of blood, turn away. I’m ready to honor this solstice,
this turning, and bring back the light. The past month, and in particular this last week
has held so many bleak moments, more for those I love than for me directly –
but something about the nature of the various tragedies experienced by those
in my circle lately has been especially devastating. My heart hurts for my friends
that are hurting. I’ve been so sad for my ladies, especially. Something tells me we
need to stick close together through all this, be there for each other, and nurture
each other. I lit a pink candle inscribed with names of all my sad girls, my hurt
and wounded girls. Sometimes, it feels like what happens to one of us, happens to
all of us. I’m heartbroken for the violence against women that’s been happening so
rampantly in New Orleans of late. Men are the victims of muggings and shootings
there as well, naturally – but women are in a particularly vulnerable space there, and
there’s no real protection from the police. Someone I love a lot was raped recently,
and I can’t stop thinking about her, and what she must be going through. My words
fail me – I’m struck dumb and shattered when I try to process that information. It has
cut me to the quick, and made me so angry and sad that this could ever happen, to
anyone. I think of all my friends that have been raped, assaulted, or sexually abused,
and I realize with horror that very few of the women I know don’t have a story to tell.
It’s happened to me, too. I’m still working on how to talk about this, how to share my
thoughts, all these stories – but I’m glad to think that some of this pain might be the
catalyst for a space to come out and talk about this subject without shame, without
hiding. It feels important, to create that openness. I hope it will make for some healing.
I’ll post more as things progress. For right now, I also want to honor the life and death
of Magnolia Shorty – an amazing woman, and New Orleans Bounce queen, who sang
proudly and loudly about love and sex and what it means to be a powerful woman.
She was shot and killed today around 4pm. This excerpt from an interview she gave
when she performed in Austin during SXSW last year makes me so sad:
What inspires your lyrics?
My life, period. It’s about how women are towards other women, things that men do
to women that hurt them. I just give a woman a message that she can relate to.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I’ll be in Hollywood.
We need strong magic right now. We need to be together.
It’s so easy to withdraw, to curl inwards – I’ve been doing my share of that lately.
Hibernating, waiting for spring, for brighter days. It’s good to do, up to a point,
but as much time as I take to process, I must also try and spend in communion
and celebration with the people who make my life as amazing as it is. I am very
lucky to be surrounded by magical, beautiful people who are like a family to me.
I have to remind myself to come out of my cave, and see their shining eyes, and
hear the sound of their laughter, their singing. I realize that there are so many
out there who do not have what I have – the strong community, the dear friends.
So many people in this world live in such isolation. It’s not what we were built for.
We need these circles, these solid friends to share with – it is the most important thing.
(Photograph by Alicia Carrera)
I’m doing the work. Weaving the circles of protection and healing. Digging my hands in between
the roots, sending out green shoots of love and light to all those with trouble in mind. I want to
fire balls of glowing light to float over the bodies of loved ones who need surgeries, who need
their bruises to fade. I wish I could hold my hands to their brows, and wipe away their sorrows.
In half an hour, I will join a small circle of powerful brujas to honor the winter solstice,
the full moon, and later, to view the total lunar eclipse through telescopes. Tomorrow,
I travel out to the hills to continue that work, and to embark upon a spirit journey that
I hope will bring me some clarity and insight. I’m ready for more light, and for longer
days from now on. This is the time. I hope I can stand up to greet it bravely, serenely.
Ancient Origins: Winter Solstice
First Winter Solstice Meeting With Lunar Eclipse In 456 Years
The Winter Solstice in Prehistory
Lunar Eclipse – a great article from Mike Brown at Boing Boing
Pink, pink, pink moon.
Related posts from days of yore:
Winter Solstice – Messe de Minuit
Winter Solstice – Dark Season
Sylphide Treasures – Gypsy Honeymoon II.
by angeliska on December 13, 2010
This flock of blue morpho butterflies seems to be exploring…
Gypsy Honeymoon is one of the special spots on my list of pilgrimages whilst visiting San Francisco.
I met the ravishing owner, Gabrielle Ekedal the first time my grandfather and I dropped in, and we
instantly felt a deep kinship. She is a very magical woman, and her shop is a perfect reflection of her tastes,
(which are very refined indeed.) On our last trip to Gypsy Honeymoon, we trucked up many hills –
me burning off Tartine’s croissants while pushing my grandpa in his portable wheelchair past block
after block of stunning painted ladies. The trek was worth it, happily, and Grampa snoozed in a sunbeam
while I nosed into glass drawers stuffed with frippery and wonder. In the interim between our visits, the
shop has traveled closer in, and now adorns the strip of bohemia on Valencia in a glorious new space.
I liked the old incarnation very much, but it was rather small, which is not a problem in the current shop,
with its spacious expanse and elegant high ceilings. It feels more, airy – calmer. I love it in there.
These hairpins are made from kingfisher feathers. They are beyond words.
The store’s motto is: “Find what has disappeared”, and with Gabrielle’s eye
for exotic treasure, you are sure to find it here – whether it be exquisite alabaster
pendant lamps that once hung in grand ballrooms, or ancient carvings from foreign
lands. There is a strong appreciation here for things well-made, and clearly loved.
Any object designed or created with an love of beauty, and a desire to make things
that would last a long time. Between these solid, comforting pieces flits the ephemeral,
taking the form of a faded love letter, or a shattered-silk parasol. I’ve been to hundreds
of antique shops, and there are certain ones that really just get it. The aesthetics, the
passion, the joy of the hunt, the deep browse – it’s not an easy combination to nail,
and very few actually even try. I love a dusty, ramshackle hodge-podge any day,
(especially when the prices fit the atmosphere) but those are a dying breed, and
sadly few and far-between these days. More often than not, you find the neon-lit,
sterile antique mall filled with aisle after aisle of overpriced depression glass and
arrays of offensive saltshakers. Or, it’s the quaint “shoppe” run by a coterie of biddies
on a straggly small town square. I prefer these to the former, but the aroma of potpourri
and desperation can be overwhelming. When I tell people I deal in antiques, I always
wonder if they flash to places like these. I imagine many picture one of those fancier
places, always very quiet and chill, with never a speck of dust on the perfect Edwardian
sideboards or exquisite carpets. I guess there’s Antiques with a capital A, junk, and um-
“junque” (oh yes – I see it all too often in some “shoppes”) which can be identified by
sponge-painted country geese. Thankfully, a new breed of curio shops has emerged
from the detritus that manage to combine the rare and fine with the imperfectly exquisite.
Natural objects like wasp’s nests might find themselves priced alongside woven gold tapestries
with the same reverence for the genius of both their makers. I’ve been lucky to have worked and
sold in one of the best – Uncommon Objects, where I’ve learned so much about all the beautiful
things humans have loved or used long enough to treasure, and the business of dealing in them.
The Tree of Life mural on the back wall was painted by Gabrielle’s mother, if I remember
correctly, (& I may not.) I love the lamia tucked up in the branches on the left-hand side.
Sailing away to a fantasy-land of flapper beads and reliquaries!
Lichen-love.
I want these girls to be my doll-friends. I love picturing them flopped on pillows in elegant boudoirs, clutched to the
feverishly rouged cheeks of sleeping jazz-babies. Stuffed in trunks of rotting satin, awakening here – together.
I would wear this heart on my hip everyday – paying respects to Marguerite Royer rather fabulously.
I like my saints softened with pink ruffles and frills. It suits him, don’t you think?
This guy is my wax boyfriend. He’s very quiet, but I like the way he looks at me.
The perfect setting for a tea party where only absinthe, cockle-shells and silver bells are served.
La belle Gabrielle, lost in thought, more luminous every time I see her. She comes from the moon.
We ladies: myself, Gabrielle, and Mlle. Dana Sherwood.
Oh, and I can’t resist sharing my favorite picture of Miss Ekedal (age what, 16?)
I’m guessing snatched from a high-school yearbook. What a wild elf! Gorgeousness.
Go and see her:
at Gypsy Honeymoon
1266 Valencia St
(between 23rd St & 24th St)
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 821-1713
Maraschino Honey
by angeliska on December 1, 2010
★ This interview with Patti Smith in Japan just rocks my world.
She is so raw, and unafraid – totally unfiltered, totally high.
This world needs more role models like her.
“I might be 31 years old, but I’ve just begun.”
She is forever my hero.
★ This incredible interview with Sleazy is prefaced by an almost even more wonderful
introduction about counter-culture in the 80’s and early 90’s. Really, really good stuff:
This Mortal Coil: A Final Report on Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson
★ 2012 The End of the World – from Information Is Beautiful
Curious about what might happen in 2012? This fabulous infographic pits the skeptics
against the believers and analyzes the evidence from both that might save you a lot
of time spent combing through articles about geomagnetic reversal and consciousness shifts.
★ The Mystery of the Red Bees of Red Hook
“…Mr. Selig said there was something extraordinary, too, about those corn-syrup-happy bees
that came flying back this summer. ‘When the sun is a bit down, they glow red in the evenings,’
he said. ‘They were slightly fluorescent. And it was beautiful.'”
(Vintage 19th c. marbled paper, Gold vein Overprinted over Spanish moiré on Turkish pattern
from the University of Washington Decorated and Decorative Paper Collection.)
★ The ever-marvelous BibliOdyssey always has just the thing to float my boat:
Marbled Paper Designs
I’ve been obsessed with marble paper ever since I was a child. I got it from my mother,
who collected anything marbleized. It is totally psychedelic. Making it is basically the
most fun thing in the world (if you’re me, that is.) The first time I visited New York, I was
around seventeen. I was staying with a friend of friends on the Upper West Side and it
was Christmastime. I just happen to be wearing the exact same carrot oil face cream
that I had found during that time to combat the moisture-sucking dryness of the radiators
in Tom Piechowski’s apartment, and I’m having a powerful olfactory memory which I think
I’ll share with you now. Whenever I smell this stuff (it’s Burt’s Bees, and it really does work),
I am instantly transported back to that moment in time. The cold tiles in the bathroom, all
of Tom’s exciting books, the homemade chocolate chip cookies someone had given him,
and my first northern winter. It was so cold, that every exposed inch of skin would shriek
in pain until you got indoors. I had just read Nicolas Christopher’s Veronica and so insisted
on finding Tibetan restaurants that served bocha, hot black tea with yak butter, and smoking
clove cigarettes. Veronica is a good book to read if you happen to be in New York in the winter
(another one is A Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin.) This story does actually have to do with marbled
paper – bear with me if you have a minute. I was spending a lot of my time wandering alone around
the alien, snow-muffled city streets, much like the characters in both of those books, and this one day, I had
an epic walking adventure, that began with me “taking a short-cut” through Central Park, where I consumed
most a bottle of very good French wine that Tom had foisted upon me, and tried to sit and write letters on a
log by a frozen pond. My fingers were too cold, and the winos were circling, so I ended up leaving the rest by
a tree, and heading to the Guggenheim to commune with my boyfriends, Mr. Cornell and Mr. Bellmer.
When I left, it was quite dark, but I had it in mind that I needed to try a Lexington Avenue Egg Cream,
which I found at the Lexington Avenue Candyshop. It had by then become exceedingly cold,
and I was a bit lost, wandering around aimlessly until I spied a very interesting-looking bookstore…
The owner was an old man, very intense, animated, and quite rude. He seemed to be playing a game
of chess against himself, which he was none to happy about me interrupting. His store was a wonder,
filled ceiling-high with beautiful first editions and remarkable hand-bound books he had created, with
tooled leather covers and marbled flyleaves. Being a book-binding enthusiast, I began to ply him with
questions, which he seemed happy enough to answer as long as it served to keep my grubby fingers
off of his pretty books. I have this odd talent, it seems, for taming the orneriest and most curmudgeonly
of shopkeepers. The trick is to show them empathy and appreciation while continuing to ask them more
and more questions every time they make motions towards kicking you out and closing up. Eventually,
I had him more or less docile, and I inquired as to whether he might have any marble paper scraps lying
around that I might have. He hemmed and hawed and grumbled and grizzled, all the while leading me
down a rickety little elf staircase to a basement workshop where all the book-magic happened. He flung
his hand towards a vast heap of the most gorgeous examples of marbled paper I had ever seen, and told
me to take as much as I could carry. I stood stunned for a minute before scrambling to gather up big
sheaves and loaded up a garbage bag full. I have no idea how I managed to lug it all across town!
Did I take a taxi? I doubt I had any money for one at the the time. I still have some of that gorgeous
paper – a bit of it survived Hurricane Katrina. The rest was used for countless art projects, gifts,
collages, and eventually my own experiments in bookbinding. All my New York stories are shaggy
dogs, because you can’t just get somewhere there. You have to go through all sorts of adventures
and turnings that make what you find at the end that much more rewarding. I have lots of stories like
that, but this one was brought to you by my acute olfactory-memory triggers, and by the letters N, Y and C.
Full set of marbled paper designs on flickr
★ My new favorite vintage paper ephemera blog: Agence Eureka (mille merci, Cousin E.!)
✷ I adore Forgotten Bookmarks,
a beautifully presented blog from Michael, who lives in Oneonta, NY. He works in a bookstore,
and keeps a record of all of the odd things he finds tucked into the old books. I once asked a
librarian what were the most unusual objects used as bookmark she had every come across:
she told me the best was a hundred dollar bill. The worst – a piece of cooked, greasy bacon.
✷ I recently stumbled back across this piece from Two Four Flinching on photography in New York’s
graffiti-covered subways in the 1980’s, and thought it was too special not to share. What a different era.
Beautiful images from Bruce Davidson, John F. Conn, Jamel Shabazz and Martha Cooper:
Subway, lifeblood.
“I wanted to transform the subway from its dark, degrading, and impersonal reality into images
that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that
ride it each day.” In “Subway”, passengers of the city’s subterranean world are portrayed in detail,
revealing the interplay of its inner landscape and outer vistas, set against a gritty, graffiti-strewn
background and displayed in tones that Davidson describes as “an iridescence like that I had seen
in photographs of deep-sea fish”.
✷ My Top Ten Favorite Psychedelic Folk Songs
by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
This is a treat, especially as I was raised on some of this stuff!
Definitely worth digging up, as these songs provide an excellent
soundtrack to paisley-wearing psilocybe picnics on the moors.
✷ One of the things on my “must do in this lifetime” list is see the aurora borealis.
In the meantime, these might tide me over:
Breathtaking photos of the aurora borealis by Jónína Óskarsdóttir
(Many thanks to Maria Popova at the ever-awesome Brainpickings for this!)
Tsariwa Mama (The Mother of the Tree) – 2009
30 in. x 40 in. – Oil and egg tempera on panel
✷ My dear friend Madeline von Foerster has a new show up:
RELIQUARIES
Nov. 12 – Dec. 18
Vernissage: Nov. 12, 7pm
Strychnin Gallery
Boxhagenerstrasse 36, 10245 Berlin
There’s a great piece on her work from Coilhouse here: Madeline von Foerster’s Reliquaries
“This new series of artworks grows out of the artist’s fascination with reliquaries:
the jewel-covered statues and treasure chests where remains of sainted persons —
from bones, to scraps of clothing, to vials of blood — are enshrined. Old, beautiful,
and mysterious, reliquaries often become objects of worship themselves. The impulse
to preserve and make precious seems to represent a common human urge, spanning
across many cultures, and not only confined to religion: we create reliquaries for vanquished
cultures in our Natural History Museums, and living reliquaries, in the form of zoos,
for animals all but extinct in the wild.
Whereas a reliquary represents the end of a worshipper’s pilgrimage, von Foerster’s works are
an entryway to contemplation, rather than its terminus, and provoke questions rather than provide
answers. Do we value things more in these contained and decorated settings than in their natural state?
Why do we make such efforts to preserve what is gone, instead of living with respect for what is robust?
Can we venerate the living as well as the dead, the natural rather than the supernatural?”
She is beyond amazing, so if you’re anywhere near Berlin, please go see her work
(so that I can be terribly envious! Oh, if only I could!) Seeing these pieces in person is
a revelation. She has incredible skill, and is also one of the sweetest ladies in the world.
I wasn’t able to figure out the source and artist for this lovely scratched face girly, or for yonder
fancy bird-head, or for the nice mineral collection (I think it’s from a textbook.) Got any leads for me?
Oh yes, and p.s. – I’ve been nominated in two categories for The Austin Blogger Awards!
I’ve never been bothered about having or wanting any kind of award or notoriety for what
I do here, but you know what? I’ve been at it a long time, and I love it immensely, and it
seems that some of you love it too. If that’s true, then I’d be most grateful for your support!
It would tickle me pink to have some recognition for ye olde Gazette! If you have a minute,
please vote for me for Blogger of The Year and/or Best Art/Design Blog – and thank you!
Also, check out all the other rad writers nominated – I am proud to be included in such good
company! My girl Amelia of Vintage Vivant is nominated for best Style Blog, and if you
haven’t yet seen her vintage finery and naughty embroidery, go take a peek –
you’ll agree that she definitely deserves to win! Oh, and – the deadline for this stage
of voting is 5pm, on December 3rd!
Votey-vote-vote please & thanky-danke-gracias-merci!
Magic Windows #20
by angeliska on November 29, 2010
More Magic Windows photos from my New Orleans adventures:
This house was decorated so wonderfully for Hallowe’en + Dia de los Muertos,
I had to stop and gawp at it for a bit. I wonder who lives there? I like them already.
A view from the back of Rusty Lazer’s trusty minivan, on the morning we left
New Orleans: my bike was secured by ropes, my bed was an amazing vintage
Peter Max quilt, my breakfast – a delicious Hubig’s pie. The factory is a street
over from my old house, and I miss standing on my balcony and breathing in
the sweet aroma of juicy fruit-filled fried pies being baked in the morning. Hu-dat!
This is my new boyfriend, Orestes. He and his sister Electra belong to Pandora,
and they are super high-fashion designer glam movie-star cats. They’re famous.
Miss Pea’s kitchen is a minature ocean, sailing high above the rooftops.
Her red-ribboned leather shoes share space with bottles found in her excavations.
Flying fish made from sequins.
You can sing sea-shanties while you do the dishes and swab the decks.
Rabbit lace! Do you swoon? I swoon.
I was invited to a miniature tea-party hosted by velour-flocked rabbits, but all they
served me were anise pastilles, arsenic and dust. I had a pastille. Wouldn’t you?
