By the next afternoon, the demonstrators and the cameras had vanished. Does this look like a campus in turmoil to you?
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Back To School
By the next afternoon, the demonstrators and the cameras had vanished. Does this look like a campus in turmoil to you?
Monday, September 2, 2024
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (4*)
Here, on the edge of memoryWhen you are free only for the length of your name held in my mouthAnd the dawn coming off the windows turns our hands blood-redAnd we are children againRunning heart-first towards the end of laughter
And yes, Vuong adorns On Earth with jewel-like phrases (needles clicking down like the hands of smashed watches) but he's also telling two tragic love stories in this clearly autobiographical novel. It takes the diffuse and meandering form of a letter the protagonist, Little Dog, is writing to Rose his deeply scarred mother (“Everything good is somewhere else, baby. I’m telling you. Everything.”). This is the second immigrant mama's boy book I've read recently, and Hombrecito suffers mightily in comparison because Vuong betrays little if any of that author's narcissism. He vividly renders the horrors of his grandmother's life in war-torn Viet Nam but he also treats the American soldier who becomes his grandfather with both kindness and understanding.
Trevor, the first person who "sees" him, anchors the second love story.
I was seen—I who had seldom been seen by anyone. I who was taught, by you [his mother], to be invisible in order to be safe, who, in elementary school, was sent to the fifteen-minute time-out in the corner only to be found two hours later, when everyone was long gone and Mrs. Harding, eating lunch at her desk, peered over her macaroni salad and gasped. “My god! My god, I forgot you were still here! What are you still doing here?”
The setting for Trevor's and Little Dog's mutual exploration of their burgeoning sexual orientation--an unlikely tobacco field just outside of Hartford, Connecticut--enables Vuong to do for Latino farmworkers and white trash (He was only nine but had already mastered the dialect of damaged American fathers), what he also does for his Vietnamese forbears: to see THEM, as well as the mostly bleak, working class environment they share. His mother hits the jackpot in the chemically toxic nail salon where she's practically enslaved when an elderly woman tips her a Benjamin after Rose successfully mimes massaging her phantom limb.
Particularly fond of animal metaphors (monkeys, Monarch butterflies, buffaloes and veal calves) to convey the near hopelessness of the life Little Dog eventually escapes, Vuong wanders a little too far from narrative at times. That said, he still leaves readers with an intense appreciation for his resilience in the face of the severe trauma--both historical and personal--experienced by a sensitive and extraordinarily observant gay child of the Vietnamese diaspora.
Oh, and Vuong also writes as well as anyone I've ever read about gay sex, unflinchingly.
After he came, when he tried to hold me, his lips on my shoulder, I pushed him away, pulled my boxers on, and went to rinse my mouth.
Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.
Friday, August 30, 2024
Artists Make New York
What can I say? It's true, or maybe it used to be.
Plenty of non-New Yorkers were on view at PS1, the MoMA satellite in Long Island City that's free for residents. Yto Barrada, scattered her building block sculptures in the courtyard. She calls the commissioned work "Le Grand Soir (The Big Night)."
"Fistful of Love," the first museum show for photographer Reynaldo Rivera, drew me to PS1. His work, shot in Los Angeles and Mexico, where he was born, reminded me of Nan Goldin's with its (mostly vanished) demimonde vibe.
"Patron, Silver Lake Lounge" (1995) |
"La Plaza" (1997) |
Paquita and Reynaldo Rivera, Le Bar (1997) |
"Scaling the Caverns" (detaill, 2023) |
"Power Up" by (detail, 2023) |
"Path of the Snake" (2013) |
Most of the work in "Hard Ground" was too abstract for my taste but I did enjoy the back story of Jerry the Marble Faun, a Brooklyn boy. The budding sculptor was nicknamed by "Little Edie" Beale when he did odd jobs for her and her sister at Grey Gardens in the early 1970s, when the Maysles brothers were filming their classic documentary. He also worked as an assistant to Wayland Flowers whose performances with Madame, a puppet, delighted New York City cabaret audiences during the same period.
"Tecumseh" (2007-14) |
"Always Something to Remind Me" by Dora Budor (2023) |
Untitled by Gianna Surangkanjanajai (partial, 2024) |
"African Mephisto" (1981) |
"Marcos & His Cronies" (1985-95) |
"L.A. Liberty" (1992) |
"Caught at the Border" (1991) |
"Freedom from Illusion" (1984) |
Sunday, August 25, 2024
DKE in Quechee
We spent Saturday morning at Billings Farm where Magda had no time for the Jersey cows. Did you know their milk is so high in fat that it's great for making butter?
Fruit leather snack time. It just doesn't taste as good without bunny ears!
Let me tell you, if Dagny's passenger behavior influences her driving skills, she'll be terrorizing Vermont's twisty roads in a decade.
We spent at a sunny afternoon at the local country club. Membership is required for all residents of Quechee. The D-Girls definitely take full advantage of the swimming and skiing opportunities. Dagny says she prefers the latter. And thanks to videos of them both zooming down the bunny slopes, I now know the difference between two food metaphors instructors use to teach proper form: French fries, good; pizza, bad.
Remember what women always used to say about Ginger Rogers' dancing when someone extolled Fred Astaire? "She did the same thing, backwards in heels!" Well, Magda hikes with Desi, up and down gorges while keeping a sharp eye out for everyone! As well as monitoring their photo opportunities!
The Ottauquechee River carved the narrow gorge on its way to the Connecticut River, which empties into the Long Island Sound.
Joe identified suitable walking sticks for our two-mile trek.
Family portrait by the pond.
The D-Girls' curiosity about all things natural reminded me of my own in much drier El Paso. Except for Della's grabby obsession with penises, oddly enough!
See what I mean? Apparently, Desi weighs even more when he's sleeping. I needed Zoltan to give me a push!
Saturday, August 24, 2024
Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park
Dining Room |
Chair Upholstery |