The Visa Diaries

As I said, Arvind and I were in LA last weekend. Back for almost a week, my tan is definitely beginning to fade. My fake tan, that is. Arvind benefits from a year round toasty brown skin color, and has no qualms about complaining that I “glow in the dark” at night. He is a big proponent of the suntan for me, and is always rather disappointed when I resist. (I must come clean and admit that the biggest reason I resist is not for the sensible prevention of skin cancer, but for the vain prevention of wrinkles… but to the same end.)

So, we have agreed upon the fake-bake in sunny situations that might otherwise call for a tan. I have tried several of the apply-at-home lotions, and though the results are good enough, its rather a lot of hard work to apply, and more than I can be bothered to do on a regular basis. So, he was thrilled to learn that there was a spray tanning salon just a block from our hotel. (Rather inexplicably, this salon also has regular UV tanning beds – why anybody would pay for sunshine in LA is beyond me.)

Well, my first spray tanning experience turned out to be a complete ordeal. We had dinner the first night in town with my lovely friends Melissa and West, and coincidentally Melissa said she had tons of extra tans at this place because they had used to live in the area and then had moved away. “Give them my name when you go in,” she said. So the next day I potter in, and tell them I am Melissa Hampton. H-a-m-p-t-o-n I spell it out. The guy looks though his database, then said, “I’m sorry Melissa, but you haven’t been in for a tan in 535 days. You had 13 tans left in your package, but it has expired. However, if you buy a new package of tans for $500, all of your old tans will be reinstated.” Some in some instant karma for having tried to get a free tan, I was now in the uncomfortable pickle of having to buy a several hundred dollar multi-tan package…! Speechless I stammered and muttered that I had moved away, didn’t want o buy a whole new package so as not waste them again, etc etc. I thought I was going to have to walk away, pale as ever, as I didn’t see any way to come clean and just buy one tan as regular-old-Kate.

After lots of muttering, looking at the floor, and hedging toward the door, the guy offered to reinstate my/ Melissa’s whole package if I bought just one tan, so I did that (for $50!! jeez, I could buy a whole jar of eye cream for that much. I might have well have gone for the regular (free) sunshine!).

But then the problem was that I couldn’t ask him how to use the thing, seeing as I had supposedly done it many times before. So I go into my little cubicle, where there are no instructions, strip, and step into the booth, where there are still no instructions. There is only a big green button that says “start.” I push the button, and after a few seconds, nozzles start moving and spraying, but seemingly not evenly or all over. I hop around and turn myself around trying to get even coverage, as the noxious stuff goes up my nose and dribbles and streaks down my torso and legs. The the spraying stops, and some blowing starts. Then the spraying starts again. And then its over.

I am left wet – unevenly wet, unfortunately – with little rivers of bronze water snaking down my calves, and absolutely no idea what do next. I see a plate at the back of the booth, where I was obviously supposed to have stood, rather than directly in front of the nozzles. Panic builds at the thought of tan zebra streaks forming in the pattern of the drips on my legs, and as I scurry to spread the liquid evenly with my hands, I realize that my palms and fingernails are all going to be died an unnatural brown. Panic mounts.

FYI to anybody who goes in for a spray tan without instructions: stand at the back of the booth. Let the first sprat cover your front, then turn around for the second spray to do your back. Then towel off all the liquid evenly – this is the key. Then make sure you wash your hands thoroughly and scrub off under the nails. I finally broke down and asked the guy at the front, who looked at me very strangely, but did tell me what to do.

Fortunately, the damage was not as bad as I feared. Apart from strangely dark elbows and between my toes, I quite enjoyed the golden goddess look

Ok, girls and boys, no more talk of microscopic nasties or the banalities of daily newspapers. I have recently bought something utterly fabulous. Arvind I and I have just spent a long weekend in LA, land of sunshine, exhaust, and laid-back chic. Nothing and nobody in LA look like they are trying too hard, but when they get it right (silly boob jobs and bad Botox are NOT right), they manage to be utterly, languidly fabulous.

True to form, I bought several things in LA that warrant careful dissection and discussion. But, the very coolest, the one I absolutely must tell you about right away, my wonderfully guilty purchase, is this beautiful necklace from Kaviar & Kind.

Apparently, Kaviar & Kind is something of a legend. It was recommend to me by my actress friend Indira, after I admired a ring she had gotten from there. The sales lady informed me that, “We are so well known that designers usually send us their stuff. It is more a process of filtering than searching.” And I must defer, everything they had in there was spectacularly elegant, breathtakingly unique, and stunningly hip.

The shop itself was a bit strange. Even though Indira had told me about it, and that it was on Sunset quite near to our hotel, I actually stumbled upon it by mistake, in pursuit of a nail salon instead. (See – it was meant to be!) The shop was quite a plain, non-descript white strip-mall box. Rather than noting the sign, I was intrigued by the jewelry on display, and only then realized that I had happened up on the pirate’s treasure, despite its odd housing. And this necklace was one of the first things I laid my eyes on, and it was love at first sight. The rosy colored gold, with the two vintage black cameo-fobs, hanging off a thick gold ring, just so… I think it is that jaunt, the careless way they rest on my sternum and tumble over each other as I move, that really got me. Also the perfect mix of delicate and sturdy, and the combination of heritage (made form vintage watch parts, chains, jewelry pieces etc), and GOTH. It is a talisman, and amulet, bestowing a whole semi-mysterious heritage, if not special powers, upon its wearer. The whole thing says something like “care-free vixen sorceress.” Like maybe I am a shape-shifter, or have been around for thousands of years, only now taking on the form of a young woman named Kate. Yeah, magic. Cool.

Today I will buy a copy of the New York Times. Because it is a lovely paper, and they have a lovely illustration on the second to last page of the A section (a.k.a the Opinion section). Blogs are great, blogs are cool, I understand they are the wave of the furture. But, stodgey and retro as it is, there is a certain rush to having your name on the New York Times Op-ed page…

I am a bit of a sucker for the bizarre, pseudo-medical, purported miracle cure. I’d say the afore-mentioned MBTs fit into that category. There also seem to be lots of lamps, doling out various sorts of beneficial light therapy in that category – I am the proud owner not only of a daylight lamp to lift my mood in winter, but also a special UV lamp to clear up my skin, and an infra-red lamp to help heal repetitive strain injury. Then there are the cures leave even the pseudo-science behind, and that fall into the woo-woo physics camp, like sacro-cranial massage, homeopathy, and acupuncture. I love them all! I have even been known to wear a “Tachyon energizing coil” that my friend Steph gave me to wear around my neck as a pendant, that was supposed to do something like reverse the spin on our core molecules…?? Maybe I’m making that up, but whatever it was, was equally unintelligible. Anyway, I happily wore it, and did feel better I swear, until I misplaced it.

Each time I learn about and embark on one of these new regimes, I feel a sense of uplift. Maybe *this* little malfunction, that the cure is now purporting to fix, has been the root of all my problems! Maybe, rather than being a complex cookie, the only thing the matter all along is that my spinal fluid is not in proper sync, or I’m not getting enough sunlight. I have this vision of simplicity, a cosmic key, that once it fits in its proper spot, all the stars re-align, and I live happily ever after.

My latest foray into this realm of wishful thinking through weird science is a set of anti-allergy covers for my mattress and pillows. These are supposed to form an effective barrier against dust mites, these gross microscopic little suckers.

Just seeing the pictures of these beasties is the best marketing ploy these companies could do – they are nastier than any alien or monster ever invented by Hollywood, and there are literally millions of them living in your mattress and pillows, feeding on your dead skin… Really, I’m not trying to scare you away form my blog – you can go barf now, I’ll still be here when you get back.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe that these mattress covers will do what the doctor and company say they will. Where I am straying into my wishful thinking territory is in going, “well maybe without those nighttime allergies, I will sleep much better, so I’ll only need, like 4 hours of sleep. And then I’ll wake up much more rested and be super-productive. Like, I bet I’ll get 4 times as much done as normal! And, like, maybe there’s some link between allergies and mood, and weight loss…”

So basically, I am expecting to be a whole new person when I wake in the morning tomorrow. Stay tuned. And next time I will talk about something pretty, I promise.

I just dribbled some burrito filling down the front of my white (now, previously white) sweater. As the rogue band of black beans and gooey, flanked by gooey, marinated onion compadres, made their break-away tumble down my chest, my heart dropped a little. While I understand that there are plenty of new-fangled laundry/ stain removal products out there, I had that feeling of surrender to the inevitable – this sweater has had a long and good life. I don’t know if putting it through the angst and rigors of stain removal treatment will really buy it much more time.

As much as almost any item of clothing I’ve owned, this particular sweater has been the guardian of a significant chunk of my aspirational self-image. I bought it when I had first graduated form college, and was working in Madrid. I was living in a sweet, recently re-furbished apartment in a beautiful old building on Calle Barquillo, in the hip Chueca neighborhood, and the sweater was from a local boutique of precious things. Something about its Italian origin, chic putty off white color, the crinkly acetate yarn with which it was knit, and the fanning ribs down the front and back embodied an image of mediterranean-euro savoir-faire. I envisioned myself wearing it on the sunny deck of a yatch bound for Portofino, or in beautiful home filled with european kitchen appliances, whenever I would wear it. Alas…

Google, in their web stats package (Google Analytics which I recommend to anybody with a website, despite the fact that Google is obviously on its way to world domination through data) has this amazing feature where they show you a map of the world over-layed with little spots indicating where people have visited your site from. I just discovered today that if you mouse over those spots, it tells you the name of the place. One of the absolutely best things about this blog for me, and what makes it worth spending the time on it instead of all my other “real work,” has been feeling like I am reaching out and making a connection with people all over the world – that is simply amazing!

So, my next natural question is: what do you think? and, in the theme of this blog, what do you buy and what does it mean to you? What was the significance of something that you bought, you in Leeds? or Lima? or in Petaling Jaya? or anywhere really! Tell me about anything, whether it cost 50 cents of fifty dollars (or francs, or pounds, or pesos, etc etc) Send me an email at visakate@gmail.com and I will post your stories.

Maybe shopping is not quite Medecins Sans Frontiers, or the UN election monitoring program, but I do think that investing objects with meaning, and aquiring things that symbolize some aspect of our larger hopes and aspirations, is something that we all share. So, though it may not save the world, I hope to hear from you anyway, Malmo, and from you, Montigny-Sur-Canne…