The Visa Diaries

I went to go hear some live music the other night. Tuesday night to be exact. The only reason I went was because Arvind was in town – otherwise I would have felt far too busy and/ or tired to go out and hear music on a Tuesday. Lame! I am so lame. It is amazing how small we can let our world become through routine and laziness, and how refreshing and invigorating it is to break out of that.

Cafe 9 is a small bar & live music venue, literally less than a 10 minute walk from my house. It is the type of place where the musicians are sitting in the audience until just before their set, and where the locals who to the singers in between songs. Tuesday as a girl-with-guitar night, three of them, really great singers and songwriters each. The show was free (!), so I bought CDs form each of them to help subsidize their gas.

Rebecca Pronsky, Jennifer Greer, and Lys Guillorn took me a land of lullaby and bittersweet harmony. I swear, I swear I will be going back to Cafe 9 soon.

This weekend I went to the Durham Fair, in Durham CT.

The Durham Fair is one of the biggest in the area, and apparently the largest agricultural fair in the country totally run by volunteers. Arvind is visiting from London, and I thought I’d take him to see an authentic, Americana experience. I have great memories of going to the country fall fairs when I was growing up – marveling at the year’s biggest turnip, the Junior League’s best pumpkin pie, the most perfect goat, etc etc. The horse pulls were always a favorite, when they brawny horse teams would stamp and snort and foam as they strained to pull the great blocks of concrete. Fairs meant conady apples, carnival games you never win (for big stuffed animals you don’t really want), and those frisbees that spun around as you poured paint on them to and made psychedelic splatters. So it was with great anticipation that I planned to go to the Durham fair this year, and show all the quaint joys of simple country life to my sophisticated Anglo-partner.

Well. Maybe some things are better left nostalgic memories. The experience started in a parking lot that had been until very recently a corn field – a beautiful bumpy, rutty, once-a-year justification for all the SUV drivers. The lot was right next to a cow-filled barn, the odor of which got us into “country” mood right away. From the lot, we piled into a bright yellow school bus, directed by Dunkin’ Donuts-fed volunteers. In fact, everybody at the fair looked rather Dunkin Donuts-fed, not quite the exemplars of the healthy outdoor life that us urban dwellers might fantasize about as we pound the treadmills at our indoor gyms. And if it wasn’t Dunkin Donuts, it was fried dough, or pulled pork sandwiches or corn dogs, or hot fudge sundays… let’s just say the prize pigs weren’t the only well-fed livestock at the event.

There were some highlights: we saw a pig race, five little porkers sprinting around a track, which was quite sweet; some charming llamas with snaggy teeth shorn like poodles; and a lady hand-cutting those old-fashioned black paper silhouette/ cameo/ whatevers. I think my favorite thing was the baby goats in the petting zoo, adorable as they piled on top of each other on the barrels in their pen, legs that wouldn’t quite fit dangling off.

It all started to go a bit wrong when we made the mistake of patronizing the Durham Republicans food booth not just once (for the Lime Ricky) but twice (on the way back for a pulled-pork sandwich) – before we noticed their subtle political identification and solicitous behavior to the Marine in full dress uniform. Having been out of the country, and for Arvind not being from here, the heaviness of the barn-sized American flag, the stall selling “Baghdad Bracelets” and the country girl group singing about “God Bless the American Housewife” all became a bit overbearing.

Sadly, I realized that my romantic notions of pastoral autumnal bliss are much better served by overpriced farmers markets that come into the urban centers and trips to apple orchards in chi-chi towns like Guilford. I find this is sad on several counts – for urban sylistocrats such as myself who can only take a gentrified pastiche of a rural or foreign other, for the conservative strain gripping much of non-urban America, and for the widening cultural gulf between us.

Despite the fact that this blog is not meant as a product-endorsement platform, I must do a bit of raving about my latest skin care purchase. I was wondering around town the other day, in the mood for a little shoppy-shoppy, specifically a little beauty shoppy-shoppy, and found my way to Origins. Now Origins is not usually my choice cosmetic brand. For all of my own new agey/ woo-woo/ yoga proclivities, I want skin care products that are going to work. To me that usually means some scientific-looking “breakthrough” rather than some smell-good combo of essential vegetable blarney. I’ve slathered on enough fruit enzymes and nut-oil creams in my time, and woken up the next morning with absolutely zero visible improvement, to be a bit skeptical about the beautifying properties of the plant kingdom.

However, as options for quality cosmetic outlets in New Haven are limited, Origins it was. I walked out with a small green bottle of something called “Plantidote“:

According to the product schpiel, Plantidote is formulated out of some groovy mushrooms by Dr. Andrew Weil, whom Origins is promoting as a holistic health guru. It turns out that “inflammation” is the root of many evils according to Dr. Weil, and these lovely mushrooms calm our overly inflamed selves.

Turns out, this stuff is fantastic. I have truly been feeling radiant-of-visage ever since using it.

Skin is so important to how we look. I read once that whether we are having a good or bad hair day is the biggest factor that affects our mood. I think skin is at least as important. Obviously a big zit can just totally shoot your confidence and make you want to catch some good re-runs on a friday night instead of facing social scrutiny, but I think that less obvious gradations on the skin-glow factor can have big self-perception implications as well. You know how there are those people that just have nice skin? And how it seems like you would just face the world with a greater joie-de-vivre if you were one of them? Well, I now feel like one of them. Thanks, Dr. Weil.

Well, it turns out I have totally been made redundant! A recent article in the New York Times describes zebo.com, the newly launched “World’s biggest repository of what people own.” Zebo is a social networking site based entirely on people listing what they own and what they would like to own. Literally millions of people listing the contents of their closets and garages. Glad to know I was on to something when I started this project. Maybe I should close up shop and just start a profile on Zebo instead.

According to Roy de Souza, Zebo’s founder and chief executive,“’For the youth, you are what you own,’ he said. ‘They list these things because it defines them.’ Compare it to gleaning something about someone’s personality by reviewing their book or music collection.”

That makes sense – marketers have spent so much time and energy clearly defining the personalities of their products, that your average pair of jeans or piece of cookware these days says as much about what kind of person you are (or what kind of person you would like to be) as something more elaborated and personal, like a novel or album, used to say.

I wonder about this frenzy of self-definition through the shorthand of products. Do people feel more need to define ourselves these days than they did in the old days, or is it just that we have more products now with which to express it? If we are feeling more need now, is it maybe in reaction to all the images the media shows us of who we could or should be? Are products really a good way to define ourselves anyway, or if we really knew who we were, would we need to buy the latest iPod to telegraph it? Why does our self-definition need constant fortifying through new purchases?

The problem with Zebo is not that it’s about people’s things (I like things!). The problem is that it doesn’t ask anything about these objects we own and covet. If everybody on Zebo was using their lists to do that, then I definitely would close up shop and take notes!

I have been buying a lot of books recently, which I guess is apt for the beginning of a new school year and a thesis topic to come to terms with. It may also have something to do, however, with Amazon.com, their FREE! SuperSaver shipping, and one-click purchasing.

In the last couple of weeks I have bought:
Design Noir, by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
Celebration Park, about the work of artist Pierre Huyghe
Typography, by type maestro Wolfgang Weingart
Pornotopia, by Rick Poynor
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell
The Writers Journey, by Christoher Vogler
Consumer Behavior, by Michael Solomon
and, belatedly, the last issue of Emigre magazine, called The End

What is it about the purchase of a book? It is like acquiring a whole world in a small paper packet. Whether it is a fictional narrative that invites you into a character’s life, or an explication of an idea or process that explains the world from a whole new vantage point, books pack an amazing amount of experience into a sublimely economical form. Browsing a bookstore is like going to a travel agent, and buying a new tome is almost as good as going on a trip – each book is a ticket for the mind to escape from its usual rut and and take flight above the small world of our daily habits.

It is somewhat shameful to admit, but I often to prefer browsing and buying books – acquiring bits if the world like parcels of land – to actually reading them once I have gotten them home. I am sure it means I am a shallow person, and I justify it by reading the reviews on Amazon or asking somebody who actually did read it to summarize it for me. I have always been a slow reader, so maybe that is my excuse. But somehow the promise, the advertisement if you will, for the trip to Tahiti or Freakonomics-ville, or wherever, is often more tantalizing than actually plodding through the text.

Anyway, buckling down for school, I am determined to actually read these books – at least enough of them to get the gist. Since I am a designer, and they have lots of pictures, that should help too.

As my lovely friend Bernadette mentioned, she works at a fantastic company called ASOS (”As Seen on Screen”) Basically, they cull the tabloids and source cheap versions of things that celebs have been photographed wearing. “Celebrity” of course having an elastic definition, and mainly seeming to focus on tabloid princesses like Nicole Richie & co

Now, B. gets a 40% discount on all the clothes the company sells, which include a selection of nice brands in addition to their own label stuff, so she can be forgiven for piles of clothes that spill out of her closet and overstuff her drawers. The funniest purchase, though, was this jumpsuit, which she modeled for me when I was over at her house recently:

This jumpsuit is a mosh up of a varsity jacket with Ronald McDonald’s outfit. It is a backless yet hooded one-piece, maroon and yellow, with fuzzy striped athletic bands at the waist and leg hems (which are cropped). The best part of it is the varsity letter-styled “RW” patch on the left lapel, standing of coarse for its maker, RocaWear. I have never seen anything like it, which shows you just about how cool I am. I love it when I get a window in to “what the kids are up to these days.”

B. explained that last time she had gone to the break-dancing championships in Brixton, she had felt a little out of place. Not because she is a tall, gorgeous Hungarian, but because she was wearing heels instead of trainers. (”Nobody is checking out your outfit – they are just looking down at what trainers you are wearing.”) This year she wanted to wear something more appropriate, to blend in more – hence the Golden Arches majorette ensemble.

Well, cheers to ridiculous jumpsuits – most of us take ourselves far too seriously and could use more furry varsity letters past the age of 18. And cheers to the fact that you can go native in the sub-culture of your choosing with the purchase of a carefully chosen new outfit.

Alas, summer is over. The last Bank Holiday (for the Brits in the house) and Labor Day (for the Americans) have passed, and we are into September. This month always brings that back-to-school feeling, long after we’ve graduated from colored pencil sets, Hello Kitty erasers, and trapper keepers. Or even from heavy organic chem textbooks and college sweats. Of course, I haven’t graduated form any of that, or rather have come back to it. I have a somewhat bittersweet feeling as I start what will most definitely be my last year in school until I am, like, retired.
Getting back into the harness of early alarm clocks and constant assignments and deadlines always chaffs the tenderized summer skin. But I do love the autumn – with its crisp air, crackling leaves, and anticipatory melancholy, it is very possibly my favorite season. And I love something about gearing up again, getting the mind going to learn and think new things. If summer is about indulgent laissez-faire, autumn is about fresh ambitions and new projects. My inner Puritan list-ticker eats it up.

To honor that inner school head-mistress, not to mention to look chic when my eyes are so tired from multiple all-nighters that to insert my contact lenses would feel like scraping my eyeballs with sandpaper, I treated myself to a new pair of back-to-school glasses. Eyeglasses trends are somewhat like jeans trends – they morph subtly from year to year, so that you can easily miss the change, and then all of a sudden wake up one morning with a closet full of boot-cut jeans while the rest of the world has moved onto skinnies. This was the case with my old frames – they were perfectly respectable small, squarish, dark brown frames. I distinctly remember that when I got them about 5 years ago, their smallness and darkness felt very stylish. They were a statement that I was joining the ranks of small-ly, darkly bespectacled designers.

That was 2001, and now that I am firmly within those ranks in 2006, sadly the glasses were feeling a bit dull. Giorgio Armani and 20/20 Optics to the rescue. My new ones are pistachio green (faux) tortoise shell, with thicker arms (is that what the things that go over your ears are called??) and a bling-ish monogram at the hinge. Green is, of course, the new black. Or at least everybody’s favorite color right now. It also makes a nice contrast with my dark eyes and hair (at least it did in the super lighting they had in the shop – I have yet to get quite the same effect under normal light conditions…), and somehow makes me feel Swedish – northern skies over wheat fields or something.

With glasses it is absolutely critical to get ones that project the right image. While most frames will automatically grant you a couple of IQ points in others eyes, “smart” is not always “sexy” in our intellectual-phobic culture. The line between looking alluringly switched-on and looking like a big nerd is scarily thin, and the wrong glasses can very firmly place a hapless bookworm into the ‘untouchable’ category. We all know poor, perfectly nice souls from our high school years to whom this happened – they just let mom or the eye doctor suggest something, ended up with those horrid squarish gold-chrome frames with the double bar over the nose, and have suffered the social consequences ever since.

The right frames however, can project intelligence, power, and sophistication. All of which are good attributes to have. And, if you wear them right, sexy.

Well, if you thought I got away form Marrakech with just a couple of rugs, you still don’t know me very well! The total booty haul was:

2 rugs
1 yummy woolen winter hat
1 gorgeous rafia woven handbag
3 punched tin lamps (2 are a wedding gift for my friend Steph)
3 bottles of rose water
1 black leather belt with gold studs (woof!)
1 malachite ring
1 pair of handmade leather slippers

Plus an assortment of food, drink, and entertainment, including 2 hammams and 2 suppers at the amazing outdoor food stalls in Place Jemma El Fna.

If this seems like a lot, you will be amazed at the restraint I showed, given all that I possibly could have bought out of the pile of teak, ceramics, leather, silk, spice, and on and on that jammed the souk

I am particularly chuffed about the hat, which is just toffee-colored hand know yumminess and will be a constant companion this winter (unsure why the Moroccan knit heavy woolen hats? it was over 100 degrees the whole time). And also the tin lamps, which were made by Mak’s friend Hassan Hajjaj, who is Morocco’s answer to Andy Warhol. He takes traditional Moroccan crafts, and mashes them up with funky pop references. Very cool stuff, and a big shout out to both him and Abdul for giving me a bit of orientation around Marrakech. If you are ever there, you must stay his Riad Yima.

Anyway, what can I say? I love traveling, and I loved Marrakech – warm desert air and dusty pink walls, donkeys in the streets and snake charmers in the square. Mint tea and more mint tea. Objects are memory devices, a physical way to bring home and save a small bit of a beautiful experience. I don’t know when I will get back there, but padding about my apartment in my handsewn leather slippers, I will remember the souk fondly and, just perhaps, be able to close my eyes and feel a warm ray of the north african sun.

Well, amazingly I can find no way to link this to anything that I have bought, but Arvind has been pestering me to link to the blog of the movie he’s currently shooting (and hell, he is my most faithful reader!) So check it out: www.sugarhouselane.com – very cool urban thriller, currently shooting in London’s way easy end…