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Yesterday’s Poem: New Edition

I got up this morning and the first thing I thought of was Talkinggrid.  I leapt out of bed and onto to my computer.  I hit the keys and before I knew it,

BAM!

I wanna thank Joe Rez, our Rock n’ Roll Music Specialist for sparking renewed interest in publishing, reading and writing Talkinggrid.

Oh! By the way, I promised you a poem.

Here it is:

Yesterday’s Poem

Eye see the day when we awake.
Shake off tarnished yesterdays and
Dance in the fountain of forgotten youth.

Ponce de Leon liked it just fine in Florida.

Until the crocodiles came and ate his fifteen minutes

He was left to legend and the late night healers
“Splash!” says the serpent girl, curled on the banks
Of the Henry Hudson River, with a view of the
George Washington Bridge, at sunrise.
She’s not voting. Mermaids don’t vote.
They float over and under the words of Hope
Promises sway Neptune’s trident in Shakespeare’s Tempest.
The world has become a parody of itself.
Yates said, “the center can not hold,” since
the lamest claiming “Supremacy,” and
The Orange Orangutan parading his Illegal Immigrant Bride.

On that Happy Note, I wanna continue.  Allow me to share with you,

Top Fifteen Things To Thank #DrabTrap 2016 For Now! 

  1.  D.T. helped me to instantly shed a lifetime of feeling weird, outrageous, and “flamboyant,” in my big floppy hats and striped beach cardigans.  Suddenly, I feel so normal, stable, and emotionally secure compared to the big Orange Turd.  I am a magnificent garden of peace in comparison to the manic monstrosity of amped up blond Ape machismo that the perverse one embodies.
  2. D.T. and his Immigrant Bride, how ironic! She inadvertently, but never-te he-less shined a spotlight on how amazing the first lady, Michelle Obama is.
  3. Allow me to see that my petty self-promotion is precisely that.
  4. You remind me to appreciate that I speak English and Spanish well.  Thereby reflecting an American ideal.  We see that speaking Spanish well is a plus on the campaign trail.  Bilingual people are more likely to vote than… not?  What am I saying?  I don’t know.  I’d like to thank DT for making me think about my multi-ethnic heritage and face it, in a white supremacist world, I’m not welcome.
  5. I appreciate, more than ever, those of us, incapable of erecting gold towers and sitting naked on virtual reality thrones made of tweets and clicks are not slow, most were taught not to toot their own horns. In other words, D.T. has devoted his life to bragging about assets that may be a mirage the size of Texas, for all we know.  Debt, being one of his best friends.
  6. Everyday, I become more American.  I’ve never before found the political situation worthy of my art focused, entirely self contained, and mostly maternal attention.  Suddenly, for the first time, I really care… oh wait… this is not true.  I cared before.  Obama.  Remember?  Hope.  Yeah… those were the days.
  7. It becomes obvious that we have freedoms, rights, and ground gained to lose.  We refuse with a BIG THANK YOU, to anyone that suggests that we are not invested and devoted to supporting life, love, and liberty to thrive within the existing political structure of American democracy.
  8. Allow us to see clearly how important it is for all to become politically aware and active, making it clear that WE stand together in LOVE and refuse to be bullied by liars we intend to manipulate public opinion.  We, Americans, that vote are not interested in politicians who want to reduce our rights and civil liberties, which are currently under attack on the streets, as men and women who are not white, are with shocking regularity abused by so call, “servants,” of the Law.  We are on the road to more mutual respect, not less.
  9. I’ve come to appreciate that being, “politically correct,” is a way to demonstrate caring for the sensitivities of others.  In other words, it is akin to being polite or well-mannered.  I don’t expect that everyone is suddenly going to become poised like Michelle Obama but we can try.  We can attempt to “go the high road.”  My mother, not my real mother, but the made-up mother I have inside me, always says, “take the high road.”  I’ve done that, most of my life.  However, I’ve slinked around—a bit—mostly for fun when I was an adolescent, runaway, punk-street-kid.  It was only fun in the summer.  As winter set in, fall really, I found I job.  Waitressing, no less… and the rest is…
  10. DT is proof that the history of inequality, violence, flagrant, systematic, and institutional exploitation of disadvantaged groups, all  best left in the past, has the potential to repeat itself. We must take action to address the needs of those that feel so insecure as to wish to carry weapons.  What is up with that?  Yet we are here now and determined to make a difference.  Voting has never meant more.  The choice between Evil and Maintaining our multicultural, vibrant, jazzy, rich American way of life is yours.  Vote with gusto and thank Delirium Trash-Muffin for motivating you to cherish our hard-won political and social status.
  11. DT reminds me how important it is to laugh at myself, my supercilious and pretentious attempts at grandeur, my New Yorker Naiveté, and my recent near death experience. Yes!  I am freakin’ hilarious!  Anyone who takes themselves too seriously is set to blow a gasket whenever the wind blows their fake hair or top rug upside down pineapple upon their orange mash potato face.  It is vital to keep laughing.
  12. Speaking of laughter, I don’t really find you funny at all, Punk, you suck!  However, I’m willing to admit that I’ve never felt so smugly superior in my life.  Compared to you my manners are impeccable, my education: stellar, my personal achievement HUGE, Dude, I’m everything you are NOT.  I am real.
  13. In the war between good and evil you White Nigger Gold Digger Dunce Dream Daddy Pimp Punk are not worthy of a name. Just because your wife was born and raised in a communist country and your associates love Russia and you love Russia and you birthed the birther nonsense doesn’t make you worthy of a name.  Please— slither—back under the golden turd you slithered out from under, pretty please.  Ha!  Ha!  Funny right… I know, I know… all jokes fall flat, when we consider, “The Horror!  The HORROR!”  It would mean the end of American, home of the brave, beautiful, countless cultures and endless rainbow of economic and social possibility if you, two-bit clown, became the representative of our GREAT NATION.
  14. That you are promiscuous and proud to father a bigamist’s dream of offspring with various women who you use and abuse at will is obvious.  And Dude, one has to admire the audacity of you.
  15. You are that which we thank god we are not.
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Make Caridad Great Again!!!

Thank you for visiting www.talkinggrid.com! After a long silence, a long hiatus, a more mature, seasoned, understanding of reality is set to grace this rendezvous space, this on-line location, which you have come to cherish as you would an open home where celebrating life is the priority and a buoyant voice forever welcomes you.

Hello, Old Friend!  So much has happened since we last met.  Sit down.  Kick back.  There is a feast about to be served.  I’m cooking up new stories for you. I wanna nourish your soul and feed your mind with what is possible, probable, and sustainable.  Let’s eat up healthy ideas and look to build a world where love rules our actions and defines our conduct.  We decide, the quality of our lives, daily we dictate the direction our lives will take with the way in which we approach living.  Never shrug off the responsibility you have to create the world that you aspire to living in.  We must shoulder creation, since we are the ones informed and blessed by the capacity and responsibility to make of the world we inherit into a garden of earthly delights.  The culinary arts, agriculture, theater, fashion, and film all flow from creative souls who sculpt the edifices of culture which will house the findings of future seekers.  We must continue our studies, enhance our experiments, combine our wits to make a world we can all find a place, a point, a parcel, and an acreage of love.

I am part of a circle of creatives, artists, that are ever ready to expand your world, with their fascinating insights into Art, Music, Spirituality, and Political Healing, taking you to the edges where the art world and reality kiss each other and keep moving.  I come to you with mastery of “The Vacation Approach,” my way of making it from one day to the next, making the most of my time, and resources.  I have living insights from, “Cancer with Style,” my second unpublished private handbook for getting on with the business of life, despite setbacks, obstacles, which I will share with you from time to time. (I might even publish some of my new poems and art works here.  Image that!)

The staggering health challenges and the blessings that come with suffering have proven to be a portal to my higher self.  Death almost ended my musings on art and culture, living and loving, my travel plans, and the perpetual discovery mission I’ve embarked upon, a year ago.  It has been one year since my last post.  Only today, did I feel strong enough to write to you again and reinstate my wish to inform and entertain.

Mr. Skip Snow, a full time art machine, promises to write to us about the shifting models of the museum level art gallery scene, in Los Angeles, a city we know too well, but eludes comprehension. The  Talking grid’s Music Specialist, Joe Rez, promises to take us to the Guns and Roses concert and show us why Axel, ain’t dead yet.  The Music Specialist, is also an expert on Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Master, so don’t be surprised as Talkinggrid becomes, even more reliably, a source of healing for your wounds, aches, and pains. Since this is one with our intention, to heal you with love, laughter, music, art, travel, thereby reminding you of all that makes life a delight.

The Muse, New Mexico based, inspiring beauty and travel guru, Ms. Crane and Mr. Finehouse, concert pianist living in Boston, are sure to chime in from time to time with reports from the frontiers of Food, Art, Social issues, and Music. The Scientist (my husband) Dr. Hartmuth Kolb, may feel compelled to share his latest recipe for bread or holographic 3-D printer projects.  We all want to learn from him, since he is so very knowledgeable.   I plan to venture to an art show or two, including a group show in New York, sometime in October.  Adventures beckon, creativity calls, and you are invited to take a seat at this long and commodious table, laden with possibilities.

 

So  much may happen yet some of it depends on you.  You have donated to this open mission before, do so again.  Thank you so much for your previous donations, don’t forget that without your donations, comments, and general interest this show won’t shine.  The plea is that you put your money into activities and individual projects, ours and others, that mean the world to you.  Endorse with your attention and time, that which puts a smile on your mouth, in your eyes, and in your heart.

Thus:

Make Caridad Great Again

by Donating to Talkinggrid.

So simple!

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Fly with Frau to Utopian Spaces!

IMG_9949The years have punched us, around a bit, but we learned to duck.

Together, “we fly like mandarin geese.”  We dip.  We dive. We fly past obstacles to Paris, France… Miami! Rome.  New York. No problem.  Hong Kong.  Here we GO!  Effortlessly, we transform from cocooned, invisible beings, into GRAND winged creatures.  Image:  WE wear ankle length, bat capes and fuzzy ears.  Cute, huh?

Now, BACK OFF!!! WE are serious, deadly.  Dangerous, ARTISTS!  Visionaries… Seers.

Social critics?

WE STING! We spear chuck.  We have outbursts.  We are… INVISIBLE!!! Or not…  we deflate, rapidly, like rubber sex dolls to be used as needed, and then put away for another day… no hard feelings.

Tears, drip down my face, from laughing at you, laughing at me in this ridiculous outfit, onstage.  The audience, eats up our raw chemistry.  We soar, creating jacked up rock-jazz-poetry, fresh with your hard chops and silver AXE and me, long legs akimbo, exploring the range of experimental accordion tactics, in a micro-mini.  How refreshing! Talent springs forth. Together, we rock out.  Your friendship empowers me.  You get me out of the house, out of my books, and into the world.  I appreciate that.  Thank you.  When we JAM, the sound is so good not only because you know music but because I didn’t until I bumped into my sixth grade music award… oh yeah, I’m a player, too… and I’m willing to make some righteous noise, just listen.

ROAR!IMG_6241

Now imagine: a zipping hornet of international black and pink polkadot WASPS!  Unlike bees, WE stay ALIVE, after we sting.  Honey, we don’t fight CANCER.  Instead, we DANCE!  Tango?  Anyone?  Buzzing.  Social Butterflies. Diving into the pleasure of being here in ernest.  Double dipping.  Tax paying.  Party Animals!

(Imagine it.  Mix all the metaphors, in your head.  Make a cocktail of images.  Bees.  Flowers.  Birds.  Painted rock stars in platform shoes performing before an eager and excited audience. Throw some gold in there, why don’t you? Diamonds, check!  Feathers. Add, graceful dancers in tuxedos, sequins, (fake) furs.  LIGHTS!!! Glamour. check. Frau Kolb. Check!)

Everyday, irrespective of what goes, “wrong,” or isn’t perfect in our lives, we have the option of seeing the GOOD that IS and digesting the FACT of our good fortune.  We each have gifts.  Perhaps you are a writer or seriously good looking.  Perhaps you are a spirited salsa dancer.  It doesn’t matter if you are short.  IF you can salsa Hotties wearing elastic band dresses will follow you out on the dance floor.  YOU know it… You have seen it.  Remember Salsa Johnny?  Shortest guy in Salsa-Land.  The ladies don’t care.  They just shimmy up and wiggle to his smooth moves.  He leaves with the girl that twirls  and looks BOMB in glittering spandex.

If you are the biggest NERD, well… everybody knows that the Nerds of the Eighties are the Tech Wizards of Today.  Rich as Gates… We all have a purpose.  Yet, it is easy to forget that everyone is special and worthy of love; so much is annoyingly WRONG, according to NEWS and Media.  We are ALL OVERWEIGHT!  People KILL people for no good reason.  We are all VIOLENT, angry.  History proves that humans are completely capable of hating themselves, and  their brothers and sisters.  The news confirms our worst fears and collective memories of HORROR.  The flexing of power, which renders some into killers, soldiers, and officers… others into robots that follow orders to torture and maim or worse, design methods of “extracting information,” which are inhumane.  Lest we forget, the fact that killing is central to the diets of billions, including myself, who cannot conceive a life in which not a single pig is grown for Sunday Bacon. Yet, do I want pigs to die senseless cruel deaths?  No.

Do I wish for humans to hurt each other?  Do I wish to harm?  No.  No.  No.  My mission is to remind you: BE GOOD.  Write.  Start your own blog.  Above all, enjoy your life and respect the lives of others, no matter how tempting it is to think of some people as “Pigs.”  It is wrong to demote humans into species traditionally farmed or hunted, hated… “rats,” the Nazi called the people they decided were not their brothers, sisters, and friends.  Suddenly, the Jewish people, so civilized and entrenched in their German lives, were worse than enemies, they were pests.  How we can transform into predators and others into prey is a mystery, if one forgets that not too long ago…

Die Entwicklung der Menschheit

Einst haben die Kerls auf den Bäumen gehockt,
behaart und mit böser Visage.
Dann hat man sie aus dem Urwald gelockt
und die Welt asphaltiert und aufgestockt,
bis zur dreißigsten Etage.
Da saßen sie nun, den Flöhen entflohn,
in zentralgeheizten Räumen.
Da sitzen sie nun am Telefon.
Und es herrscht noch genau derselbe Ton
wie seinerzeit auf den Bäumen.

Sie hören weit. Sie sehen fern.
Sie sind mit dem Weltall in Fühlung.
Sie putzen die Zähne. Sie atmen modern.
Die Erde ist ein gebildeter Stern
mit sehr viel Wasserspülung.

Sie schießen die Briefschaften durch ein Rohr.
Sie jagen und züchten Mikroben.
Sie versehn die Natur mit allem Komfort.
Sie fliegen steil in den Himmel empor
und bleiben zwei Wochen oben.

Was ihre Verdauung übrigläßt,
das verarbeiten sie zu Watte.
Sie spalten Atome. Sie heilen Inzest.
Und sie stellen durch Stiluntersuchungen fest,
daß Cäsar Plattfüße hatte.

So haben sie mit dem Kopf und dem Mund
Den Fortschritt der Menschheit geschaffen.
Doch davon mal abgesehen und
bei Lichte betrachtet sind sie im Grund
noch immer die alten Affen.

Erich Kästner

In other words, no matter how SPIRITUAL and LOFTY we like to think we are… we are merely, the same old apes that slipped down from the trees a second ago.  We are working on becoming BETTER.

I work to remind myself that It is mostly on television, in movies, or in novels, that people shot people.  I’ve never really had much attraction to guns and can’t image why one would ever want to shot anything, except of course for target practice or in the case of, “a brace of pheasant,” being secured for Christmas

"A Brace of Pheasant," © R.M. Hogan, 2014
“A Brace of Pheasant,” © R.M. Hogan, 2014

dinner.  Yet, some decide to go into “Law Enforcement,” which means they are paid by taxes “protect and serve.”  We appreciate their valor.  I couldn’t do it. Imagine going out and responding to the calls of the insane and abandoned, hurt and abused.  You’d have to be very brave.  It must be very scary!

The thought of serving the public as a police officer is overwhelming to me, but I appreciate that IF there is an emergency, we have the option of dailing 911.  We are glad to have specially trained support, a social recourse, on call.  That police officers work for our benefit is part of the story.  That some have loss sight of the value of each human life or see some citizens as instant targets for investigation, intimidation, and worse is NO NEWS. (Yet, we can not come to accept evil.  We must continue to demand reforms, amends, and justice for all those caught in the net of evil that is prejudiced or violent Law Enforcement.  We must or we are part of the problem.)

In books, noir detective novels, sexy smoky films with women in clingy gowns and men in linen suits, that show up, armed, dangerous KILLING is COOL.  Imagine the moment when the fedora wearing man felt, “a calling to work with guns,” on the streets, sorting out the cigarettes and the fabricated misery from the true distress call of the frail, the battered, helping heiresses sort out their complicated family history and teaching these wayward girls how to slip in and out of a martini before the gangsters arrive and…. It would take almost superhuman power to face the world with a gun, badge, and number.   Image, your first murder case… I mean in novels, murder is the novelty, the spark which propels the action of the narrative forward.  Undoubtedly, there is a THRILL of reading of the dark passages where assassins lurk, waiting until apprehended by cleverer detectives… Yet, in real Life, murder is no laughing matter, no passing fancy, no story backdrop.

Fortunately, I did not become a police officer.  I am not sure I would have ever qualified.  I am fit but in a funky spirited art waif, way.  As it is, I live a much safer life, than I image is that of either criminals or law enforcement.  Really, I spend most of my time and energy, hiding out, in study, and cultivating peace.  I invest my time in observing and encouraging goodness, prosperity, and harmony.  People call to ask for advice because they know I’m pretty good at navigating through this sea of possibility we call, “LIFE.”  Yet, I’m not one to shy away from discord in music or my private life…. In other words, HERE hiding in the comfort of my womblike abode, I am brave, I am willing. I protest by forwarding some news stories and commenting, however obliquely, on current events.  I feel outrage mingled with great joy at being here in this world, now.   Sure, I’ve had moments of intense confusion, RAGE beyond control, induced by… you don’t care to know… yet, I’m mostly about peace and cultivating global acceptance and mutual understanding.  REMEMBER: FRAU KOLB is not Perfect.  I know… I know… you don’t believe me.  Unless, of course, you have read this blog for long enough to know that I am indeed, far from perfect… perhaps… I am like YOU, divinely flawed!

One thing I know: we are but shades of each other, each a little more, a little less and identical, the same.  We try as we might to differentiate but we must all eat, shit, and die.  Therefore, we are left with this instant in which to decide for what we stand.  Or are we with the BIG BAD WOLF howling and gorging himself on fear?  Do we binge on BAD NEWS?  Do we cultivate DRAMA in our lives?  How, precisely, are we investing our days, spending our lives?  Are we designing with our actions a Romantic Comedy or a Horror Flick?  Let’s forget about pointing fingers. Let’s LOOK at our own actions in the mirror and forget about a perfect people, perfect race, perfect blog.  FUCK perfection.  Let’s LOVE what is.  Let’s love each other, flawed, ugly.  Fat. Poor.  White.  Trash. Priceless princess.  Devoted servant.  Teacher.  Scholar.  Voluntary Sex Slave. Let’s collectively forgive our employers, parents, neighbors, therapists, siblings, and friends for all the harm they have caused us and let’s LET GO of the anger, pain, entitlement that allows us to make victims of ourselves and others on a global scale and let’s KEEP DANCING!

(You can tell that I just finished reading a fabulous work of fiction by Los Angeles resident, author, Lisa See, “China Dolls.” This book was a light, fun, sexy romp into the dark crevices of HORROR which history, World War II era, Asian American DRAMA, a classic love story following the tried and true boy meets girls… has sex with both, marries the nice respectable lovable predictable SHOW girl…YET enchanting pattern… I loved it, because sometimes we all need a little stability in a story line to keep us turning pages.)

Lately, I’ve been tortured that my writing is not to par.  How dare I keep writing this awful blog?  I mean, my best friends tell me how horrible the BAD grammar in the earlier stages (remember when I went through that ass for as, phase, when I couldn’t resist playing with my butt and my buts in public…) listen, forgive me… I was just getting words OUT.  OUT.  OUT. Some people may be able to wait, I can’t or couldn’t.  I had to get the words OUT.  I’ve been writing in diaries, journals, most of my life. I read and read and read some more… I’ve so many books, ideas, and art images in my head.  I’m bursting.

The BLOG, this blog, is an extension of three strong urges. One: have FUN!  Two: Get WORDS OUT!  Three: connect with my kind, my friends, my people.

YOU that read my words, regularly, observe that I’ve distinguished myself as someone that has a message.  Moreover, let’s not forget that I am a Columbia University graduate… I know grammar rules… let’s not forget that it is easy to criticize and much more of a challenge to build an audience, a rapport with the public.  For those of you that know me well, it will come as no surprise, that I’ve always wanted to be a writer.  I’ve approached it in a myriad of ways. Yet it is here, on-line that I’ve found my voice, my outlet.   (I’ve started novels and nearly three hundred pages of drivel to prove it.  I painted,  participate in art events,  and I draw daily… yet, there is a part of me that knows I don’t have the stamina to become a full time fine art painter.  It seems, to me that a person would have to be made of nails to want to do that.  You have to be very tough, maybe as tough as a cop… maybe not.)  Anyway,  I’m an artist, for sure… I write.  I dance.  My dance is impromptu, a jazz I fashion from the shock others experience when they witness me shake it.  Now, the fact remains.  I write.  I write right here.  Now.  I publish.  Miraculously, you read my words. Thank you.

More amazing: you are not alone in reading ALL THESE WORDS.  You have waded through this long text.  You have clicked and dug around and spent… hours of your life here, reading.  Lots of readers frequent this site.  Maybe they LIKE BAD GRAMMAR.  I mean… there is so much good grammar out there… so many people writing scholarly reviews on Yelp…. yet SOME of YOU are even generous and supportive enough to DONATE to the Talkinggrid, which really means the world to me, to us.  Now:

Let’s be grateful IF we have fingers, with which to type of LIFE as a JOY, a pleasure to be shared! Let’s remember that not everybody is so lucky as to be able to see, touch, smell, type, read, write, and/or tell the difference between right and wrong.  Nope.  You can, sometimes.   So can I, until I can’t, but I don’t let myself forget my good fortune in being able to address these issues and share with you my perspective, my joy, my gratitude.

At the end of the day, it is my experience that goodness rules.  Most people want to be and are mostly good.  Sure we cheat, lie, and fail to live up to our ideals, but we have ideals and we will continue to improve. We may lose sight of this fact that most humans simply want to live, love, and grow old, when we watch children arm themselves and attack with weapons meant for military combat on our multiple screens and many NEWS (Horror) sources.  We may eat meat, but we aren’t here to steal the life of another over political cartoons and we aren’t planning on wearing a cartoon hero suit  and gunning down movie goers or drawing ourselves up to be warriors in video games, avenging High School Slights, paternal permissiveness, by gunning down our neighbor children.  Daily, all over the world, humans exchange so many little supportive gestures, courtesies,  which are the food that nourishes our collective spirit and allows us to continue despite the exceptional misery and astounding crimes that we know to be part of this endless narrative of sorrow and suffering, celebration and birth, called, “Life.”

Here we are!  Dip.  Rumba! Soft shoe. Flip! Dancing?  Finding romance in the eyes of the partner we picked long ago, in our reproductive prime… finding the strength in ourselves to leave the abusive parent, the over taxing best friend (like the protagonist, Grace, in Lisa See’s stunning little novel of Asian American Show Girls shaking their cans into the retirement home lounge show circuit).  On must learn to let GO, swing it, shake it UP, roll around like a clown and find BALANCE in the midst of the madness by being honest about one’s true and unique position as a STAR in the introverted and meandering, luxurious, and unpredictable, fun and carefree world of Frau Kolb & Talkinggrid.

 

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The New Muse: Kathy Goodell in San Deigo!

Gently, a day is taking shape.  This visit is chiseled from the veined marble of long understanding.  Kathy Goodell and Frau Kolb are friends with a connection that spans decades in this life and the infinite in some other plain of existence, past lives playing a prominent role. Yet, this is our first time spending an entire week under one roof.  Will we get along?

Photo © Kathy Goodell, 1 Dec. 2014
Photo © Kathy Goodell, 1 Dec. 2014

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IMG_1138
Hartmuth Kolb is pleased to visit Point Loma in San Diego, California

Frau experiences refreshed awareness that life is phenomenological blooming of energy, fleeting blooms on the edge of time, the wind of ideas stirs reflection, when in the company of this refined Contemporary Art Muse. Thus, OPEN to talks on closing acts and end game strategy, we embrace a day of deep talks, woven into the breezy fabric of classic San Diego sight seeing.

We wake up early, as usual.  The morning zips past.  At noon we were at San Diego International Airport, picking up our friend, a soul sister and personal Art Muse of Talkinggrid, Kathy Goodell, a human flowering of loveliness and edgy intelligence has arrived!  She is easy to spot, looking fashionable, in her HUGE sunglasses and “Op Art,” silk blouse.  She is a powerful Muse. We rush to greet her.  She embraces us with the warmth. BIG HUGS!  Flowing kisses.  “Hello! Hello!” All around, our day is off to a rip roaring good start!

Kathy Goodell looking lovely with BIG SUN GLASSES in San Diego with Frau Kolb and The Family
Kathy Goodell looking lovely with BIG SUN GLASSES in San Diego with Frau Kolb and The Family

On the way to lunch in Little Italy, in San Diego, The Art Muse of Talkinggrid, Kathy Goodell’s winning  personality is like a shawl, comforting.  In my world, Goodell is famous not just for her expansive and intellectually daring sculptures and art installations, but also for being a person whose personality is at crossroads of glass and metal, transparent grace, fragile, yet of enduring strength and lasting fortitude.  Her artistic oeuvre touches on the accidental, dreamy and quasi scientific in scope.  Her art work moves me.  She is a venerated teacher of art, mentor to many, with a following that spans generations, continents.  She graciously speaks to my little children about the recent Henri Matisse, exhibition, up now in New York City, now, connecting with them immediately, tending to that sacred spark, an interest in art, which we hold dear.

Muse Goodell is loving the organic food market, Jimbo's in San Diego!
Muse Goodell is loving the organic food market, Jimbo’s in San Diego!
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Always creating, Kathy Goodell, takes in San Diego
I painted this portrait of our amusing guest in a burst of inspiration, joy.
I painted this portrait of our amusing guest in a burst of inspiration, joy.
Snapping a Selfie!
Snapping a Selfie!
Goodell's good looks inspire artists, young and old.
Goodell’s good looks inspire artists, young and old.
Goodell by Annabella
Annabella, age 8, makes a nice drawing of Kathy Goodell.
My Kid finds Goodell a worthy subject for a portrait.
My Kid finds Goodell a worthy subject for a portrait.

IMG_1401 Goodell Looking Beautiful IMG_1419

The Muse Departs
The Muse Departs

Goodell, simply, oozes neon talent.  She is one of those beings that lives and breaths the mystical condition of being a “True Artist,” a multi-faceted creature, adventure ready.  She thrills me with her floating free generosity of spirit, her cool fashion sense, and her quick mind.  She is a favorite of the lively Contemporary ART MUSES, a female goddess of great creativity and wit, a source of artistic inspiration to many a young and an old artist, both inspiring to art legends and generations of students.  Goodell is friend who has earned the extra attention not just from Frau Kolb but from all her army of adoring students, all grateful for her indefatigable encouragement and support.

Photo © Kathy Goodell, 1 Dec. 2014
Photo © Kathy Goodell, 1 Dec. 2014

Imagine being a real Contemporary Artist, an art professor, paid for your expertise in art, a Guggenheim Grant recipient, Best Friend to Frau Kolb, Star of Talkinggrid, and international MUSE!  A respected person known for knowing about ART!  Think of that… Imagine being known as an Contemporary Artist and being a woman respected for her solid creativity and staggering productivity? Now, go Google yourself.  What does Google say about you?  Google Kathy Goodell, you will discover a woman at the crossroads of American History, a person of singular interest, and tremendous charisma. Be impressed.  I am.

We drive to the Historical and Natural Preserve of Point Loma, gladly paying $5.00 per vehicle entrance fee.  We look about and then decide to visit the Light House.  “I Love LENS!!!” Goodell purrs. Up into the little hill we go, which like so many such relics from a time past, seems tiny, a little precious jewel of a home, which once housed the keeper of the lonely lighthouse and his family.  The rooms, spick and span, chamber pots under the beds, pitcher and bowl for washing one’s face, a little guitar in the corner, hand made quilts… the usual American frontier artifacts of a time just recently past, idealized as formerly simpler.

Point Loma is a lovely vista point from which you can see all of downtown San Diego, Bay and Harbor.
Point Loma is a lovely vista point from which you can see all of downtown San Diego, Bay and Harbor.

The Point Loma lens are so beautiful.  Old glass, it captures the room around it, the light, the rainbows, upside down and inside out, the play of here and there is OTHERWORLDLY.  One could image that these objects might somehow be portals to different dimensions.  Doorways into space.  The infinite.

Excellent iphone image of the LENS at Point Loma in San Diego.
Excellent iphone image of the LENS at Point Loma in San Diego by Talkinggrid Muse, Contemporary Artist, Kathy Goodell.

In Goodell’s company I find myself thinking about the perpetual.  What is FOREVER?  Our friendship is a lasting one, the seed of which was a casual comment Goodell made as the young Frau Kolb… I wasn’t Frau Kolb then… I was a very young woman working in an Italian Restaurant in Soho, when Kathy came in to dine.  I waited on her.  She saw something in me.  That we became like family is a testament to her OPEN heart and generosity of spirit.  Her friendship is an unwavering source of good in my life and I hope to be forever that in hers.  All this LOVING makes me think of DEATH.  Death.

The finality of it… really, each of us only has a few close friends in this world.  Goodell is one of mine.  Thus, with her I discuss the grand plan, my vision(s).  We share the minutia of our days and compare notes about people that admire us, her, and/or me.  We know a number of the same people, being that we are both California/New Yorkers: girls who wear the robes of Muses, forming a Muse Team, inspiriting each other to new heights.

Actually, when I die, I’d like for my tombstone to say: “Artist, Mother, Friend!”  I’ve always enjoyed imagining my own funeral.  I like the idea that ALL MY X Boyfriends might come together to mourn me.  A handful of handsome men in tuxedos, of course.  They would drink whiskey, or ambrosia, make toasts, boasts, and talk about what a pain in the ass I was.  Hartmuth, my husband, would defend my memory!  I would attend the event, as a sexily clad ghost, wearing a gigantic black hat bedecked in veils.  The men, steadily drinking might glimpse me here, there.  However, I vow, not to linger… wouldn’t want to get stuck as a wandering spirit, on this side of the river Styx.

I ask Kathy Goodell:

What three words would you chose for your tombstone?

“OH MY GAWD!”  She answers.

Who do you imagine might most weep when that moment of dropping a handful of dirt on the casket arrives?

“Besides YOU, Frau?”  She asks, hazel eyes twinkling.  (Of course, Goodell, did not really say that… but I can dream.  If I really asked her this question, I think she would say her niece would be there, eyes a flood.)

What achievement(s), as a public person, artist are you most proud of?

“As a public person… I have to think about it for a minute… That my art might infect some with a sense of the eternal.” She answered, really.

How do you expect to be remembered?

“All depends on who is doing the remembering.” She says reminding me that every memory is but a flickering candle in the unceasing wind. Who cares how we are remembered when so much of what is remembered is tarnished in the self serving act of remembering?  We live but for a flashing instance, to be forgotten is inevitable. Yet, by making great art Goodell is among those that will leave an enduring legacy.

I ask Goodell a handful of earthy questions (above) on her second day in San Diego.  Each day here Goodell tells me of at least one beautiful story of her life and her development.  She is a San Francisco native, successful transplant to New York, with an international exhibition record and a following that spans generations.   As a child she was curious about religions, not finding the perfect spiritual fit she designed her own rituals, methods of observance.  Her family, long established in the United States, has historically interesting characters galore.  She is a person whose personal history is fascinating and instructive to the extreme.  I would like to learn more about her and a week in her gracious company, leaves me longing for more of her causal bounty/beauty.

I’d like to share with you, more of Goodell’s Goodies, stories, images and a creative perspective unlike any other.  I am inspired by Goodell’s tenacity, wit, and inner glow.  She represents the mature woman we’d all like to become, a person that owns herself and holds her own in any situation, a woman I admire.  As Goodell prepares to depart we sit next to each other and I relinquish a little control over the image I want to project of her glory.  Her unwavering modesty, overrides, my desire to BANG a DRUM, toot HER HORN, and CELEBRATE like a champion gladiator her enduring brilliance, her remarkable SHINE.

Acrylic on canvas,
Acrylic on canvas,4th of December 2014 © Frau (Caridad) Kolb

 

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An Asian Bookstore Encounter with Homelessness

Udon!
Udon! Mituswa, a Japanese Grocery and Plaza offers comfort in a bowl, a favorite for Frau Kolb when she visits the used book store, nearby.

I’ve developed a ravenous appetite for Asian Studies.  I hunger for understanding.  Reading is my way of coming to grips with reality.  Yet, I recently found that books may not be the magic bullet for every problem.  Yet… Books beckon. Today, I went again to my absolute favorite business location in San Diego. There is an Asian area of town, I gravitate toward the Asian quarters, of any town that offers the cosmopolitan luxury of Asian markets, spas, and bookstores.  I enjoy trying to make sense of the Japanese writing, Korean Letters, and Chinese Massage Parlor offerings. The bookstore I go to more often than any other, a passionate love of books and reading is my OPEN secret, I will not name because, then EVERYBODY might become obsessed with collecting used books on Asian Studies, as I am.  Then, where would I be?  Locked out of a spiking market for intellectually rewarding reading.  Hah!  The bookstore is where I sneak off to replenish myself and my stash of life enhancing reading material.  After a delicious trip to Mitsuwa Market, where I always pick up two rice balls with salmon for my offspring and a big bowl of UDON for Frau Kolb, I hit the books!

This is a great book.  It offers beautiful translations of central Chinese literary works.
This is a great book. It offers beautiful translations of central Chinese literary works.

There is one creepy element, at the used book store… the place I dig, so ardently!   My favorite used bookstore  in San Diego, is haunted by a homeless woman.  She looks to me to be a North African woman, perhaps Ethiopian or Egyptian, she looks like she was once very pretty.  She wears a handwoven dirty plastic gown of garbage bags, twisted with shopping bags, and ingeniously fastened together with rubber bands.  Day after day, she hide, lurks in the safety of the bookstore with its timid staff of international bookworms, mostly Japanese.

She is to be seen snatching at books and muttering to herself, wedged in the long skinny isles, there is no way to get around her and her filthy baggage.  I try to avoid her.  She looks feral.  She might bite.  Poverty is no stranger to most of us.  Yet, what is really scary is raving mental illness which distinguishes this specific homeless woman, it is thick like a nimbus around a medieval saint.  To see a person engaged in a violent argument, snapping and hissing, against THIN AIR… is rattling. We may have homes but seeing people that are clearly in desperate need of psychiatric assistance, wandering urban areas, muttering ancient curses and twisted mantras, protestations to alien courts, accounts of villainous murders committed in outer space, in the isle of benign bookstores, makes me THINK about how flimsy the social safety net of our great nation is.

Yet, all over the world, an untold number of people are without shelter, without homes. (Or, labor under unacceptable conditions, it is only recently that workers had rights to defend.) In Europe, where the social net is stronger, homeless humans crowd train stations and sleep on urban streets. Every book, I’ve ever read on Asia features human suffering on a colossal scale.  What is it that makes it so that so many humans are without homes, alone?

I was recently accused of being, “out of touch,” with the plight, the struggle for survival, of a particular individual— perpetually—struggling to make ends meet.  I am keenly aware of the cost of privation, poverty is the ultimate luxury lifestyle, because if TIME is MONEY,  those without money often lavish inordinate amounts of time on agonizing over it. Yet the homeless seem to be a class above or outside this equation of money and time.  The homeless seem to have ETERNITY on their hands… day after day of nearly dying… until, their end is like all others, final.   Most “working stiffs,” one encounters are not too far from being destitute, yet as long as health holds out, most of the people can continue their  struggle with money for a lifetime.  What is interesting to me is that the poor, with access to public libraries, never become interested in the nature of compound interest or the fluctuations of the stock market, topics everyone should study.  Money is for the financially struggling an utter mystery.  Yet, via books, anyone can learn to GO WITH THE FLOW, invest wisely, and live within a budget.  Therefore, it seems to me that in a lack of desire to confront a topic they find thorny, CASH FLOW, every accuser is pushing away viable opportunities, actively seeking, to live outside the flow of currency.  Yet, I know my perspective is that of a hot house flower, sheltered and unreal to those that do not share it.

The relationship between indoor and outdoor aesthetics is the glorious topic of this work!
The relationship between indoor and outdoor aesthetics is the glorious topic of this work!
A book about how to really get clean, inside and out.
A book about how to really get clean, inside and out.

We ALL experience suffering in our lives.  Pain is the absolute confirmation that one is ALIVE!  In recent memory, health concerns, and financial struggles, squeeze the life out of some.  Yet, The Glorious Present, when anxiety is at bay and memory is not strangling it, is always blissful.  However, the wall between having and not having is thin…feeling safe and being in danger is separated by a flimsy membrane, don’t look at the potential danger, stay here with me… in the NOW, which is where the decision to keep looking for obscure printed words on Asian Cultural Studies, while deftly ignoring the mental illness of others, may be the way of keeping one’s own equilibrium.

The perspective of a superior artist, world renown, Geisha and last of a dying world of traditional Japanese artists.
The perspective of a superior artist, world renown, Geisha and last of a dying world of traditional Japanese traditional arts.

What do I know?  The homeless African woman, creeping about my favorite bookstore, may be perfectly happy.  She may live under the most sheltering bridge. Her days may be better than those of the frustrated office workers or Walmart employees.  Yes, she looks feral.  She looks like she might bite. Yet, she is in a book store, a center of civility, learning!  What a paradox!   So, I don’t leave.  I studiously avoid her.  Yet, I’ve made up my mind to find that book, “Cheerful Money,” a memoir by Tad Friend on the passing of the WASP age of cultural dominance in America.  At the check out, I tactfully mention her presence to the employees up front and they looked frightened.  “She’s still here?” asked the sweet woman with the loose orange curls.  I nod and keep moving.

A Book I intend to read, soon.
A Book I intend to read, soon.
Propoganda writing is a lot like celebrity magazine writing, totally insubstantial  and dull.
Propoganda writing is a lot like celebrity magazine writing, totally insubstantial and dull.

Public Libraries… in California… in Santa Monica and in New York can be like train stations and other, “points of mass transit,” where mentally ill people are “allowed,” to perch with their filthy packed baggage and without being charged with loitering.  Bookstores often serve as refuges for me and other readers, spending time in them is one of my favorite means of relaxation, education, and of preparing myself to live in grace and gratitude, but how can one relax with a living zombie muttering to themselves in the corner isle?  She serves as a reminder, that no matter how much I want to avoid DEATH, I too am just a person seeking the shelter of the bookstore’s apparent security.  Moreover, I ask myself, “how does that woman, wearing a garbage bag gown FEEL about being without home, alone, abandoned inside a portable hell?  How different is her day than the day of a Wall Street broker after a series of monumental declines and crashing after snorting a mountain of lines, lies, chopped on a hand held mirror?  What does it say about our society that this woman would seek shelter in a public place, day after day, and that somehow no one stops or aids her?  Is this good?  Bad? Beyond judgment?

In the face of the ugly truth that some people live with close to nothing and they find a different kind of refuge indoors in public spaces where staff are not quick to shoo them away… away to where?  That is a question we don’t want to ask.  Yet, that stale question lingers in the air around my favorite hobby, book hunting, amassing, collecting information!

Totally moving book by Adeline Yen Mah, an award winning book for young adult.
Totally moving book by Adeline Yen Mah, an award winning book for young adult.
Books for Learning Chinese
Learning Chinese is Frau Kolb’s Idea of a GOOD TIME!

Now, before you start thinking I’m some kind of spoiled brat… I might be, actually but not really, my parents were not rich, by an means, except perhaps in their cultural heritage.   I left home at seventeen and I was HOMELESS, for the first three (summer) months.  I squatted with the PUNK KIDS and other street people at 3BC’s (A legendary Punk Squat House) on the Alphabet Streets of The Lower Eastside in Manhattan.  Later, I had a Drunk boyfriend, twenty years my senior, and desperately handsome, that with his suave sound and big green eyes led me into the thick of poverty, no money I earned was enough to keep up with his drinking habits.  After that break-up, I decided to AVOID such company, no matter how fetching and started making conscious choices to align myself with the abundance that is New York.  Since my early twenties, based on reading all kinds of books on finance and experience of moving into different circles, where FLOW called, I have managed my reality via deliberate measures aimed at creating well being, establishing a status quo, I care to maintain.

My father, a direct descendant of literate house slaves from the isle of St. Croix, always encouraged me to carry a book with me, everywhere, every day.  In his understanding, books were salvation.  Literacy was the key to gaining power, acceptance, and recognition. Thus, I am forever reading.  I had a wealth of books in my room, to chose from as a child.  I read them all before entering Kindergarten.  So… spacey as I always looked, I always had a lot to think about.

This book is a great introduction to Chinese Characters.
This book is a great introduction to Chinese Characters.

Dad would visit famous used bookstores in New York, like The Strand.  Having trained as an attorney, with his eye on political power, dreaming of prestige, in the government of our island nation, my father, in actuality, worked successfully as a furniture salesman in New York City for decades.  Yet, father aspired to BIG WEALTH, so by his standards, we were, “poor.” (It took years for me to understand that my father just had distorted ambitions, which prevented him from savoring his achievements.)  Therefore, we always felt rather pinched by his big dreams, and dissatisfaction with his level of attainment, sort of like the characters in a D.H. Lawrence’s novel, about The Rich.  Father married  Mother in a vain attempt to secure for himself a bride from a prominent Dominican family.  How shallow!  Yet, don’t we all make such cosmic miscalculations when we put materialistic considerations is the seat of primacy?  My parents immigrated to the United States via Dominican Republic, which is the verdant half of the isle of Hispaniola… blah, blah, blah… I don’t want to bore you.  I’m sure I’ve already lost the less determined visitors to this… yes, very personal… intimate meandering artist’s blog.

This sweeping history carries me away.
This sweeping history carries Frau Kolb away.
Bloody Murderess or Cunning Leader?  History can not decide how to judge this singular female on the Chinese throne.
Bloody Murderess or Cunning Leader? History can not decide how to judge this singular female on the Chinese throne.

Now let us return to the cave, with the products of our book hunt.  What do you have?  What did you find?  You plop down with aplomb and begin to sink into a thick paperback on China, a New History.  You wake up in Japan, Land of the Rising Sun!  The martial aspects of culture are not so interesting to me. I love the stories of Geishas, an artistic elite, trained to listen, to serve, and entertain.  Reading, I lose all constrains and wander from nation to nation, crossing oceans of time.  Fired up, Frau Kolb settles into a pattern of voracious learning. The questions propelling Frau Kolb, deeper into the green tea, are “Who is Asian?  Am I Asian?” an appreciation of calligraphic letters as pictographic conduits of layered meaning, the personal knowledge of pure silk’s transcendent quality, a historical interest in everlasting jade, and its healing properties, with a momentary flickering thought on the power of embroidery, the monumental tombs, ancient bronzes, the overriding centrality of the Emperor(s) and the, at first, hidden power of Empress Wu, who ruled during the late Tang (my favorite) dynasty.  And the concubines, sheltered possession of rich men by Mandate of Heaven. Divinity in the person of an all powerful ruler. How does one become Asian?  The founders of the Wei Dynasty were actually Turkish, they adopted Han, Chinese ways. Studying Asian Cultures one can legitimately ask, “Who are the quintessential Asians?”  I could ask similar questions about “Blacks…” Who are they?  I’ve heard that I am, “A Black Girl.”  Does this render me the same as every other, “Black Girl?”  Perhaps.  I am happy to agree, but what does that mean, exactly…when Spanish is my first language, your are reading my English, and German is my third language conquered, mastering it, via daily self motivated study, the same personally effective method I am now applying to the learning of French.  What if I told you I feel most at ease in Europe?  It appears to be like there is a push to lump people into these big racial categories, which often obscure the individual’s personal identity. I understand what Euro-Asian means.  Do you understand what “Waspy Afro-Latin,” means?

IMG_0785
Books by Chinese American Authors, Gish Jen and Gus Lee

Fraud!  Fortune!  Famine!  Oh!  What romance… Lost in the history of China, Japan, Korea… I find myself reading up on India, you can understand Asian without having a grasp, however slippery, on Buddhism…  I get lost, trying to figure out how these locations, cultures, and peoples relate to each other.  Monks.  Monasteries. Rebellions.  I see that this is a lot like European history, a complex story of nuanced WAR in which brothers fight for crumbing empires, and frail wives, while the universe wails, singing, its eternal and infinite abundance of budding universes.

Thank goodness I've secured a source of good reading material.
Thank goodness I’ve secured a source of good reading material.
Great stories!
Great stories!

 

I have departed, entranced by my readings, my sacred books. I am FAR OUT!  I LOOK toward the East and what do I see? I see me.  I see myself, my values… the appreciation of rice as a source of life.  My need for incense and meditation.  Yoga.  In order to flesh out the dry bones of history, I read novels, and recently I read, “The Good Earth,” by Pearl S. Buck, a book that puts poverty, firmly in the cycle of Fortuna’s cruel whims.  I went through an intensive phase of reading “Judge Dee, ” highly stylized novels by Robert Van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat and “Authority on Chinese Culture,” and have recently invested many an hour into the contemplation of bound feet in the historically appealing novels of Lisa See.

The homeless woman, finding temporary shelter in the bookstore is no different than me.  We both know where to go to find shelter.  We are both free to roam!  Imagine having your feet broken by your mother as a child, in order to make you into a virtually crippled sex object, unable to run, unable to flee? Or the fact that until recently in China and elsewhere, literacy was a luxury few enjoyed.  We can be certain that LIFE has never been easier, that it is here and NOW.

By Jung Chang  (and John Halliday, on "Mao,"
By Jung Chang
(and John Halliday, on “Mao,”)
A fascinating person, Empress Cixi brought China into the modern age.
A fascinating person, Empress Cixi brought China into the modern age.
This is just a small part of the collection of Asian books I have at the ready.
This is just a small part of the collection of Asian books I have at the ready and waiting!
Great Book by Yu Hua
Great Book by Yu Hua.  You get the feeling of what it was like to grow up in Revolutionary China.  The dry, terse, style of the author is reminiscent of Hemingway.
I have a enough reading to last me a few weeks!  Hah!
I have a enough reading to last me a few weeks! Hah!
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Nude Women in Hot Water

 

You walk down a long hall, that until recently was decorated with small golden lacquer plates sporting swirling calligraphy on scrolls, on which Chinese characters proclaim: LOVE, Friendship, and Happiness.  Yesterday, the plates were not up on the long narrow hall.  The wall was freshly painted, but not wet, with tape indicating that a transformation is in progress.

At the Olympic Spa, they are forever improving the facilities, expanding and refining their vision yet retaining the same staff, the same treatments, and best-of-all the same affordable pricing.  I have visited this Spa for over five years, almost six…  The first time I visited, I had a small lump in my breast, which I did not yet know was cancer. As I discovered that I had a serious medical obstacle before me, the nurturing, meditative bathing, and social silence of the spa became a haven for my battered body.

The location was less sleek, smaller, just the core rooms of wet tubs, treatments.  No big salt sauna, or fancy bathrooms… just a little restaurant that looked like communist era, in a far away land… it was a trip, from the first dip, to another world.

Lucky Number 23, photo ©Frau Kolb, 2012, at Olympic Spa in Los Angeles
Lucky Number 23, photo ©Frau Kolb, 2012, at Olympic Spa in Los Angeles

The front desk is manned by two or three pretty Korean women.  They smile as you approach and inquire if it is your first time.  If you nod, “yes.” They will explain to you what is to be expected and walk you through the basic etiquette, which ensures that Olympic Spa is a pleasure for everyone that visits.  Unless, perhaps, you are Frau Kolb, they know YOU from a half decade of faithfully enthusiastic patronage of the well run business.  You pay your fee, sign the liability waiver, and you can come in and use all of the facility for a mere $15.00, that is an outstanding value.  Sure the outside of the building is beat-up, the neighborhood is ethnic funky, which I LOVE, and it is NOT Santa Monica.  Nope.

You enter, past the thick double doors which represent the outside world of stress, obligations, and competition, into a structured world of self care, reflection, wet meditation, sweat therapy, and enforced gentle voices… AH!  You put your street shoes in a locker and then proceed in your socks or bare feet to the larger lockers for clothing.  You put away your things and put on a green Olympic Spa robe and then you walk over to the big scale, take your weight, maybe… or you get yourself a cup of barely tea from the urn, and eye the Korean women laying languidly on the jade floor, next to the equally lovely Scandinavian Blonds that speak gently among themselves.  Now it is time for the baths!

Selfie in The Mirror at the Olympic Spa in Los Angeles.
Selfie in The Mirror at the Olympic Spa in Los Angeles.

Pull open the door and take off your robe.  No robes are worn in the bath.  Now you must clean your body before you get into any of the pools, steams, or saunas.  YOU wash.  I like to squat on the little plastic seats and douce myself with water from the traditional long tub of hot water.  I use the little mitts, I purchased for a couple dollars at at the front desk and scrub myself.  Around me women are quietly letting go of burdens, pain, anger… negativity is scrubbed off and washed down the drain. Others shower, before going into the bubbling warm tub, or the healing medicinal Mug Wort Tea, bath in which up to four or five women, quietly group.

Frau Kolb after a super hot soak and scrub!
Frau Kolb, feeling rejuvenated, after a super hot soak and scrub!

I always get the same treatment, The Milk and Honey Smoothie, which begins with having milk, which exfoliates the skin, poured onto one’s horizontal body on a padded table made specially for SPLASH and SCRUBBING. The treatment includes a fresh cucumber face mask and peppermint hair shampoo. Toward the end honey, which nourishes the skin is applied and rinsed off with bails of hot HOT water.  The scrubbing is intense and when I first experienced it, I was overwhelmed and surprised, never having been scrubbed so fiercely or felt so babied since… well… EVER!

I always request this head to toe, Milk and Honey Treatment from the same woman, one among perhaps twenty that work giving bath treatments, she is my favorite.  We connect.  She cares for me, and was/is part of my self care routine and even though she speaks little English I know she has an adult son of whom she is very proud and that she has worked at the Olympic Spa for almost thirty years.  She looks so young, fit, and content in her black bra and panty set, which is the uniform of the women that work, scrubbing and massaging tired mothers, sisters, wives, waitresses, lawyers, and doctors… all the women require nurturing and carving out time to take care of the self is essential to preserving mental equilibrium and personal power.

Once, I went alone to the spa, and my Korean friend was there on her day off, bathing.  We scrubbed each other’s backs, like old friends, laughing.  Another time, I visited with The Muse.  As usual I had the Milk and Honey Treatment and we soaked together in the Mug Wort tea pool, which is the smallest of the three in ground pools which are at the heart of the complex.  The Muse, quickly found her own favorite treatment, she swears by the facials given at the spa.  After our treatments we lounged on the heated jade floor, whispering to each other… before we roused ourselves to lunch, the restaurant being pretty delicious! Look here:

IMG_5139

The Olympic  Spa is traditional in the best sense of the word in that it upholds the tradition of Asian communal bathing and presents it in a way that is accessible to the savvy women of Los Angeles.  The Olympic spa is for women only.  You are welcome to come and relax and women of all types, ages, shapes, and sizes share space and bathe, together.  One avoids starring at others but it is comforting to see the variety of physical forms femininity manifests itself.  Women are universally beautiful if you look at them through a cloud of steam and from the vantage of your own unclothed vulnerability.

 

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Nitespa, Mar Vista, Los Angeles: Book a Royal Blast into Autumn Bliss!

New Friends,

Frau Kolb & DJ Frankenstein in front of three "Rush Hour Grids, For New York," Paintings by Frau Kolb, 2011 on view at Nitespa Mar Vista, now
Frau Kolb & DJ Pink Frankenstein in front of three “Rush Hour Grids, For New York,” Paintings by Frau Kolb, 2011

 

I dressed up as a BLACK BIRD, loosely inspired by the blackbird in the delightful coming-of-age love story, “Moonrise Kingdom,” another great film by Wes Anderson. I was feeling shaken, having had a medical emergency earlier in the week. Fortunately, all were forewarned that I was, “mysterious.” Which made my entrance all the more smooth, that and the super tunes spilling from DJ Frankenstein’s turntable, I could have to arrive on a stretcher to the wonderful party arranged by Julia Martin, and I’m sure it would have not offended the super-cool crowd or  the proprietress of the new Nitespa Loft in Mar Vista, on the West Side of Los Angeles.

Frau Kolb with Anne Barron and Christopher Strimbu photo © Jess Barron, 2014
Frau Kolb with Anne Barron and Christopher Strimbu photo © Jess Barron, 2014

 

Lovely Ms. Martin has successfully established new place for our set to meet, hang our hats, get our nails done, a massage, a facial, a needed Brazilian… all kinds of services to help us recover that coveted baby-fresh and pampered GLOW. Nitespa is a space specifically tailored to those that are looking for a more personal, intimate, fitting refuge from the mundane, the coarse, the ordinary, impersonal spa.

(We all have so much to worry about, with ebola, police brutality, social disparity, the cost of living, the tumbling market, the children’s issues, marital demands of fulfilling obligations you never imaged you might ever be expected to meet, all the while maintaining one’s standard of living, in a world where the competition and the caprices of the ancient goddess, Fortuna, are not without a cruel sense of humor.)

Fortunately, Nitespa has expanded. The new location ROCKS! Some of you remember the dilapidated little beauty shack where we drank wine, communed, and got our nails down in Venice, Beach California. It was very hip and easy access. It was near Abbott Kinney Blvd. I’ve written about the spot before. The NEW LOCATION is a true hideout for those needing serious pampering in an indulgent VIP friendly, luxury loft location, which feels like an upscale home, where BEAUTY is welcome to perch.

You really must experience Ms. Martin’s unique sense of urban hospitality.  She is creating a new way of being beautiful, in a breezy easy, health conscious surge of FUN!  Nothing could be better for you than going to Nitespa, in my book.

WE, Julia Martin and I met years ago, when I tripped into Nitespa Venice for a manicure. I was delighted for the white wine she, so graciously, served and the cute Japanese girls that were creating lovely nail art for Julia’s fortunate cliental, including me! My nails wet, I asked Julia to rummage in my big old patchwork leather bag for my wallet. She was amused to discover a little travel bottle of tequila in there (I still, almost a decade later, have that same little bottle… somewhere in my home). Our pure connection was instantaneous, we felt ONE with each other’s fun loving spirited being!

Over the years our friendship has grown. Other less firmly founded, connections from that fun frenzied Los Angeles period, have faded away. In contrast, I am continuously impressed with J. Martin’s unique sense of urban hospitality. The astounding tenacity and insight of a woman with goals, a family, and a business to run is a wonder to behold and an inspiration for anyone. She managed to keep Nitespa on the map, in Venice, while so many other businesses folded in the high rent, high density area, jammed with trendy restaurants and slick boutiques competing for clients among the cash strapped, the striving, and the few that are flush, alike on the pure force of her personal charm and dedication to providing excellent beauty treatments to extravagant eccentrics and other demanding divas. She managed this feat by being a friend to her neighbors and an active part of the local art and business community.

"42nd Street, Times Sq. Grid," acrylic painting, 24x30", 2011, by Frau Kolb
“42nd Street, Times Sq. Grid,” acrylic painting, 24×30″, 2011, by Frau Kolb

A supporter of artists, including me (notice that four of my paintings are now available for viewing at Nitespa’s beautiful big white walls…) , Julia Martin has earned her place of recognition, trust, and affection in the west coast art community, from San Francisco to San Diego Julia Martin is LOVED and her following grows more staunch, loyal, and determined with each year of her continued success. No wonder that with so many beauty options available in Los Angeles, those in the know, have come to prioritize the ever-soul replenishing treatments offered at her open yet exclusive beauty hide-out and become her frequent VIP guests. Julia’s new Nitespa location is spacious and private with comfortable treatment rooms and a full kitchen available. Her space is a place where we can face ourselves and make time to ponder matters of personal and public significance in a comfortable, yet luxurious, Townhouse loft.

 How do we tune into our selves and find time for all the parts of our being that might otherwise be neglected?

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(I’m so glad I managed to get my act together and appear as Frau Kolb, in full Frau Kolb verbosity, at Julia Martin’s Royal Moonrise, Wes Anderson tribute party, on Saturday Night. Especially because, I was the Guest of Honor!) I’ve NEVER had that happen before.  I’m touched!

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Friendship is the answer. Last week, Frau Kolb had the pleasure and privilege of being honored by the honey eyed-genius, behind the living vision of intimate manicures and memorable massages, Ms. Julia Martin… a unique source of good in the world of Beauty. She is now The West Coast Beauty Muse for Talkinggrid as of last week’s splendid display of magnificence in entertaining a fun-loving group of way-ward intellectuals, part-time revelers, and party crashing troubadours in search of cosmic booty! What a grouping of interesting humans! I even had the pleasure of a powerful art chat, with an informed and active art collector, residing in Santa Monica! (He promised to have us over for dinner that we may enjoy his private art collection. Imagine that! )

 

We had a blast!   The magic number of cool, elegant, educated, chilled-out, party-people, sipping cocktail punches presented with faultless aplomb by the excellent Ms. Martin. For the party she wore a short fur and a stripped dress, a loose interpretation of Margo Tennenbaum’s smeared eye liner, big fur routine,  in Talkinggrid’s favorite movie, by Talkinggrid’s favorite director.

We were hoping Owen Wilson would just magically show UP at the party. I prayed for his super-coolness to just appear, but alas he did not. We did, however, enjoy discovering a lemon juice soaked ONE dollar bill inside a lemon… thanks to magician, who entertained us with the old fashion slight-of-hand the soul craves and somehow, my Post Paris Blues have VANISHED! I am cured!

Thank you, Julia Martin, superlative hostess, proprietress, and vision behind the one-and-only Nite spa, Mar Vista for a more than merely wonderful evening. It was a true pleasure and I can’t wait to come in and have lovely French, Pascal take care of my visage and lovely Christina to paint my nails, like little masterpieces, each one.

Thank you.

 

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Joan Rivers, Burt Lancaster, and Jerry Saltz Waltz Into a Bar…

We interrupt the regularly scheduled writing on Paris by Frau Kolb

For a message from the great pool party in the sky…

Read HERE: choice snippets from a posthumous interview with Burt Lanchaster (Via Sighle Lanchaster) and a moment of glittering reflection upon the work of comedy genius, entertainment goddess, the eternally amusing, Joan Rivers, these two heavenly talents, combine, as the subject of this meandering tribute to “The Swimmer,” Joan Rivers, and Everyone’s Favorite Art Critic… Two Giant Talents reaching from beyond the grave to touch and one living guide into the deep end of art a, “Sister Wendy in Swimming Trunks”.

critique-the-swimmer-perry35Last night we fell into a cult classic, “The Swimmer,”  directed in 1968 by Frank Perry and Sydney Pollack, starring Burt Lancaster, with Janet Landgard and Janice Rule in key roles, plays Ned Merrill, a man with only his swimming trunks left to lose. His mind, he lost sometime before the beginning of the film. He returns into a manicured world of Connecticut glamour. Mansions are backdrops, sets for petty dramas to unfold, poolside. Ned Merill (Burt Lancaster) is a fallen hero, come back from someplace beyond the conventional realm of understanding. He was dead to his friends, a stranger straggling from one former friend’s private pool to the next, for a quick dip in chlorinated symbols of renewal, prosperity.

He never had his own pool. He was a guest, a husband, a father, a lover of beautiful women, and a “suburban stud.” Yes! Burt Lancaster plays the role of a man losing it all with faultless grace. His face made mask-like by what he called, “The Grin,” a special smile, so difficult to read that it might be the emblem of archaic nobility.  Yes, Lancaster plays, “The Swimmer,” with the prowess of an mythical beast trapped in a maze of HORROR.  He is primal, an actor turned animal, so free and beautiful as to be beyond the pale of comparison with another male demigod in any American surrealist film.  This may be the most beautifully shot film of the 1970’s.  Lancaster, holds his mantel of acting genius, wearing only swim-trunks in the lead role of a “major motion picture!” Sighle reveals, the personal detail that the Academy award winning actor, he was going through a divorce, his marriage to my friend, Sighle’s mother, the alcoholic mother of his five children, was unraveling. His personal life was a perfect reflection on his distorted personal experience of reality as a Hollywood Star.

We were watching, “The Swimmer,” because Sighle Lanchaster or I mentioned Joan Rivers’s death, earlier and Sighle informed us that River plays a small role in the classic cult film. Yet, her performance, and her personal acting power, a strong presence able to match the greatness of Lancaster’s toned, tanned, athlete’s body in motion, diving, dripping, a fish in water.

Rivers plays a party person, poolside… looking perhaps for… and then he is there, flirting… bright blue eyes flashing, a vibrating magnet of seductive intention, pulling her toward something deep… maybe wet. She leans toward his masculine beauty, male perfection. She is confused, insecure. She wants to dive in, maybe… runaway with the mysterious swimmer, but then a man calls her possessively toward him, “Joan!” She turns away and The Swimmer drifts back toward the water. His strokes are perfect. Yet he comes crashing into reality as he emerges from the water, on the other side of the gigantic heated purified swimmer’s paradise, a private Olympic size pool.

It becomes all too clear that, he is not welcome by the owners of this particular mansion pool. They throw him out after he attempts to lay claim to a hand painted ice-cream truck, which was once his… from his home… toward which he swims on, running, walking hiking barefoot through fields adjoining the “five acre lots,” of the very wealthy, in a stratified town where middle class business owners are but servants, in a rich man’s world. The ultra rich, stand apart in a self celebrating sphere of private pool glee, are not OPEN to anyone unable to afford the entrance ticket, which requires access to a fortune.

The Swimmer, is shunned by most of his former friends.  He was once an advertising executive, married to a “Vassar girl,” presumably an heiress.   Those that still embrace him, have some meager  purpose for him, now that he is penniless, yet still handsome in his swim trunks, he commands a few invitations to bed and pitiful job offers.  His once-upon-a-time ardent mistress, an actress, of course… reveals that she was always faking it with him, even when they were intimate in her private backyard pool, she didn’t really like it or him. This revelation almost kills him, another well placed blow to his dying ego. She kicks him out. He keeps walking and swimming, being rebuked, rejected, and refused entry into all his old haunts.

Is he a ghost? Is he a man in a swimsuit that has perhaps escaped from a mental Institution? We do not know.  Yet, the film invites us to ask questions not only about the narrative and its arc, but also about our selves, our flimsy ambitions and wildest desires.  Are we all yearning for pool of our own… to “drown our sorrows,” in the the glittering liquidity of the affluent?

WE all know the feeling, the feeling of not being welcome, of being suddenly rejected, of running, of needing to get home, of looking for salvation by diving into the ocean of Voodoo, in cleansing pools of “healing waters,” bought at the nearby Santeria shop. We all seek a fountain of youth. We are all convinced that with enough money we might be able to buy eternal fame, fortune, and enduring happiness.  Yet… we all know that money creates as many problems at it solves.  When one is well off, one is often seen by others as a resource.  This can be exhausting… I imagine.

Several years ago, the New York Magazine Senior Art Critic, Jerry Saltz  wrote that he intended to “swim,” from one museum to the next, all summer, basking in the air conditioning, “immersing,” his self in great art, which is “refreshing,” to the overtaxed “aspirational,” visitors to great museums.  The critic, writes, “I spent a month dipping in and out of our city’s museums, like the character in John Cheever‘s classic short story, “The Swimmer.”  No mention of the Hollywood movie.  No mention of Burt Lancaster in his glorious fading Adonis swimsuit glory… no, no mention of Rivers and her bit part, in the beautifully shot and creative film, which tanked at the box office, none.

This film, “The Swimmer,” is a work of art.  You may agree with me that the possibility of immortality is encased in the degree to which one is able to dive into the making and venerating of the encapsulated timelessness that is art. Dance.  Writing.  Music.  Painting.  Sculpture.  Performance.  Film.  All is art if made by artists.  The artist seeks to create that which represents what is of deepest significance to the shallow and vain and deep, alike. LOOT with aspiration of being more than mere gold, but rather gold and jewels expertly fashioned into objects utilitarian and spiritual!  The artist seeks fulfillment in the creation of a ripple, a connection, a spark of emotion… some alteration of the status quo by which the dirt becomes clay and pigment becomes priceless porcelain, portraiture, landscape, framed significance, power on a pedestal, and The Artist is thus transformed from one that comes and goes, into one of the ever present immortals of memory and historic importance. For example, “Picasso!”

The artist’s greatest achievement maybe in the willingness to dive into the unknown.  It is a gel-like and glittering, preserving liquid, the ambrosia of the spirit, which gushes from a hidden spring, a common source.  Saltz nailed the feeling that I have when replenishing my “aspirational,” soul in the grand halls of great museum collections, it is one of refreshment, and charged inspiration to do, be, and enjoy the deeper end of the sparkling pools of loot, stores of endless splendor, pageantry, human achievement, the wars, the battles fought and made memorable with songs and soaring banners!  The blood splattered and marched into the mud… the forgotten mushroom cloud over Hiroshima… can be transformed into a silkscreened ornament for an elite abode.  Art is thought.  It maybe carved or poured, pasted or sanded, sprayed, etched, splattered, stained, dripped, and hammered.   It comes in all shapes, sizes, materials, and immaterial forms.  It is enduring, fleeting, transient, permanent, monumental, priceless, and/or “readymade,” for the trash and interchangeable with… other objects… as proven by the many replicas of Duchamp’s Urinal, the many “Fountain(s),” which are housed in Museums around the world.

What is art?  We don’t know.  The pool is too deep, murky.  Yet, we know that museums are more than merely amusing and that for Frau Kolb, the study of art… is something of an obsession… not on-par, of course, with the truly immersed, “Sister Wendy in Swim Trunks,” specialists which invest their entire lives in learning to LOOK deeper and share their insights with the rest of us, but in my own breezy focus, which tends to latch onto the absurdity of glorifying the golden and forgetting that we all shit.

Art is, for me, a refuge from the shallow, and yet I know that it often comes into being, BLING as a devotional playthings upon which wayward “Kings,” can see reflected their own image(s)…(to paraphrase Author Danto… sort of because I don’t really know what “Beyond the Brillo Box,” was about… other than being about modern art.) mirrored sculptures being a HUGE HIT every year when Art Basel, pitches its tent, in culture starved, Miami.  This “refreshment,” I crave remains a rarefied experience despite the fact that all major museums have FREE days and people of all kinds,  students especially, are welcome into the museum to gawk and experience a moment of ownership over the glorious… the preserved eternal… except The Barefoot (no shoes/no service) in swimming trunks… type.  Lunatics are not welcome, anywhere.  One must conform to a degree of convention to be allowed into the temple.

Joan Rivers, born Joan Alexandra Molinsky, on June 8th, 1933 in Brooklyn, was famous for many reasons. Plastic surgery became one of her claims to fame and like so many stars famous for… drinking, drugging, or otherwise obliterating themselves for the public’s pleasure, she was masterful in her execution of a collective fantasy. (Amy Winehouse lived up to her name).  Rivers flowed with the Hollywood ethic and became the unapologetic poster girl for plastic surgery.  She was an exceptional woman that could laugh at her own folly, tragedies, and invited others to laugh along with her at herself and anybody that wore the wrong outfit to the right party.

We have the pleasure of seeing her in “The Swimmer,” when she was a young woman, long before her excursions under the knife began. She was a goofy looking B E A U T Y a sweet Jewish American Lovely, with a charm that distinguished her from a universe of Hopefuls. She moved with TALENT we venerate.  The great comedians: George Carlin, Woody Allen,  Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor were her early peers, playing the comedy club circuit in Manhattan’s West Village.  It is clear, seeing her, on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, courtesy of You tube, which was the professional moment that launched her career in television as as a talk show host, that she was at ease in her black cocktail dress and pearls, before all the surgeries began.  She was a blast of fresh air in the mostly male business of being willfully entertaining.  She was dexterous enough to pull back the curtain on Hollywood and show herself to be as naked as the next human playing Emperor, nude. She was masterful in the construction of a queen sized mask to protect herself until the day she died on the operating table.

We “pool,” our money and crave “cash flow.” The English language is replete with metaphors that equate money with water, “liquidity,” and being “flush.” Water, in turn, being synonymous in Judeo-Christian traditions with purification and cleanliness.  I’ve also heard of the “healing waters of the Ganges River.” When the old testament god gets angry, he washes humanity away with loads of water.  The women of Judea have long practiced ceremonial bathing to ensure a purity which Nietzsche found… amusing or significant… to say the least.  Protestants insist, “cleanliness is next to godliness.”  Rivers made no bones about the necessity for a youthful visage, vicious styling, and merciless materialism.  She was it. Aphrodite, Venus, was said to become a virgin again after every bath.  Rivers, sought the same level of miraculous transformation with every new procedure.  She pushed toward immortality.

Spirituality is freedom from physical limitations, from need.  Rivers never promised us a dip a deeper pool.  In fact, she appealed to the simple desire to laugh at misery, including one’s own.  She demonstrated a strength to find the humor in life’s tragedies, which distinguished her again and again.  She was true to her mantra and believed in herself, to the degree that she was willing to forge forward with her mission to “self improvement,” via surgery until the end.  In this mastery over her own course, Rivers embodies a type of divine purity that makes it easy to imagine her having a hoot at the never ending pool party in the sky.

WE want to know that there is more to life than this.  Yet… in the meantime, until we figure out what all this need for significance comes from… well… we might as well, have another drink, another kiss, another lover, and erase the worry about tomorrow or the next day or what happens when we die… with the colossal splash of a cannon ball executed from the greatest possible distance, the highest possible springing board.

In Joan River’s case, a dogged determination to ACT, to be seen, heard propelled her march to legend status. She shared herself with the public, from behind the increasingly tight mask of a youthful façade.  The importance of being physically attractive was a theme in River’s work.

Burt Lancaster’s beautiful physique made him the object of attention, when he was “discovered,” somewhat reluctantly acting in a short running Broadway play and cast in “The Killers,” (1946), a runaway hit, which launched his long career.   (I had the pleasure of seeing “The Killers,” and “Cris Cross,” at the invitation of Sighle Lancaster, at The Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater.)

Alcohol, which provides a thirst enhancing false nutrition of the body in exchange of a taste of oblivion, the little sink, on ice, a cup in which sins are dissolved, minimized, or dismissed until the hangover sets in an consequences become to big to bare, plays a major role in the drama of the American Dream. 90% of American Adults drink. According to Gabrielle Glaser, author of “Her Best-Kept Secret: Why Women Drink and  How They Can Regain Control,” American women guzzle oceans of white wine, in swimming pool sized vessels, with a gusto matched only by the girls of “Sex in the City,” downing Cosmopolitans with the aplomb of screen legends since the beginning of Tinsel Town projections of the relief from cares and the cultured delight to be found in spirits.

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What is it about alcohol that so entices? Lures?  Why is intoxicating the self such a… vital… part of Western Culture.  It is as though… we just can’t enjoy the show, without our “beer goggles.”

The film opens with, “The Swimmer,” Burt Lancaster running through forested sunlight, onto a pool terrace where he is warmly greeted by friends utterly surprised to see him, again. They are terribly, “hung over,” having had, “too much to drink, last night.” This story of poolside bars and perpetual drunken decadence in cycles of debauchery and cartoon redemption, hollow respectability, flaunted by those that manage to construct a fortress façade to hide their entirely human frailty.

Martinis, and other “Cocktails,” are offered to one and all accept children… who appear at key moments in the film to remind us… of what innocence might look like. A boy, left alone for the summer by his honeymooning mother, “swims,” across an empty pool with the imaginary support of The Swimmer. In another key scene, Our “Hero,” offers a girl (Janet Langard) her first sip of Dom Perignon, from the bar at a “Happening Party,” the two crash, after he plucks her like a ripe crocus, from a teenage gathering about another private pool, and runs with her—a leaping, prancing, show horse—a man, the actor, the star, over fifty years old and jumping over obstacles with a blond Barbie girl, face painted to look younger, at his side. Before long, she confesses, to having had enormous crush on him years ago, when she babysat his… no longer so young… daughters. Yet… she reveals herself to be completely shallow, an accident waiting to happen, when he tries to dive in for a kiss, with worn out promises of love and protection, she leaves him to his fate. “I have a boyfriend,” she suddenly reveals, explaining that she met her new lover (a very jealous fellow… with real problems), “on the computer,” (how progressive!) before running off, back to her peers, presumably.

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“The Swimmer,”  is linked, in my mind, to “Under the Volcano,” by Malcom Lowry, a book on an alcoholic man’s last day among the living. He surrenders to the abyss that is obsessive alcohol abuse.  He sinks, dying from an unquenchable thirst for a reason live, the soul of the abyss is a lack of faith in goodness, a replacing of authentic values with false idols… glittering golden calfs held high until they, too are melted down and used for some other soon forgotten purpose.  Some sacred objects bob and float, emerging from oblivion to be held dear for eternity.

Yes… we all know the myth of Narcissus and his ever-locked relationship with a body of water. I think of David Hockney’s paintings of swimming pools... evoking the placid purified depths of ambition and the filtering systems that keep some places segregated, entirely WHITE… fenced in… Swimming pools, splashy and full of water that one can not drink, but which cool the body and promote a feeling of well being in those that dream of swimming forever and never needing to reapply sunscreen.

“A River of Swimming Pools,” a wait.

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A Step Into The Profound, at The Louvre in Paris, France with Frau Kolb

 

Behold the mind spinning splendor of a crystal chandelier at the Louvre, in Paris France!
Behold the mind spinning splendor of a crystal chandelier at the Louvre, in Paris France!

 

In discovering a tossed away strip of silence, amidst the droppings of the ever hapless hordes, I found more than just an empty moment, which I picked up and folded, wrapping a bit of that precious silence, to be found… anywhere/anytime that one requires restoration… into a small shawl of contemplation. A snatched treasure, a  chunk of sweet folded silence, which works as shawl of contentment around my sometimes fragile body. I rediscovered myself, my purpose… wandering the halls of the Louvre, again.

 

Sit with me!  Let's have an imitate art chat... tell me... what are you thinking of painting, next?
Sit with me! Let’s have an imitate art chat… tell me… what are you thinking of painting, next?

Tourists, everywhere… Frau Kolb, no different, really… just taking in the eight miles of art… the whole grand history of theft and creation, slavery and the evolution of social norms. We stroll, and time peals back and reveals its secrets in rooms decorated to meet the taste of Napoleon.

Look!  Frau Kolb, texting The Muse, Ms. Crane, begging the beauty to join us for an art rich afternoon at the Louvre in Paris, France.
Look! Frau Kolb, texting The Muse, Ms. Crane, begging the beauty to join us for an art rich afternoon at the Louvre in Paris, France.

 

 

At the Louvre, I feel at home.  Hungry! We stop for lunch… the Angelic, a restaurant inside the Louvre. We sit down. I am aglow with pleasure. The sights! The Winged Victory of Samothrace! Ah! What splendor! What a treat! Ah! To be so far away from home and… oh… we are not so far from what we seek to avoid… there is a slick blond, one of those viciously expensive looking, women whose face is always freshly moisturized and glistening from a four-hour hydration and suction, green mud, facial(s). The woman announces to everyone within a one mile radius that she is American, from Miami, no less! Her blue eyes WIDE with determination, an indefatigable will to communicate, with the quiet bookish looking French couple seated just across from her, “We have gone to hugely expensive formal restaurants, two nights in a row!” She is agog with wonder. How is it even possible that such a HORROR could exist??? She continues, “Could you recommend something more casual?” She wails.

Frau Kolb at Lunch at Angelina, a cafe inside the Louvre Museum in Paris, France
Frau Kolb at Lunch at Angelina, a cafe inside the Louvre Museum in Paris, France

 

 

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My husband, Hartmuth Kolb, saying something smart, phone and lens in hand, as he prepares to document the situation, at the Louvre, in Paris, France.

 

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Hartmuth Kolb’s, priceless, photo of the ceiling at Angelina in The Louvre Museum in Paris France, Summer 2014

I feel sorry for her. She is in Paris, the birthplace of the casual bistro, the superlatively casual corner cafe… NO ONE NEED ASK FOR A RECOMMENDATION! No. No one. Not a single person need ask an entire room of strangers a question so stupid. Nope. Moreover, we do not care to know that you have eaten, nor where. Please be quiet. Frau Kolb was having a sublime moment. Frau Kolb was feeling a tense joy of self importance, savoring her much anticipated arrival at the world-famous LOUVRE, center of world LOOT, and to share it with this… clearly rich, pampered, loud, spoiled, BABY of a woman… well… that offends Frau Kolb’s refined sensibilities.

Loud American women and their public announcements of vacuity interfere with an on-going fantasy of sublime independence from the generall noxious environment, which I hold dear.

After lunch, we keep moving, allowing ourselves the pleasure of walking deeper into the bowels of the museum… ah! See the foundation… oh! Words, in blue neon, adorn big thick underground walls from when this building was a castle… a fortification, a keep, and all of the rest. We emerge into the throng of gawkers into the venerated Egyptian wing. Snippets of conversation catch our ears and hang like rings around the unfolding art adventure which is a much awaited and desired trip to the most extraordinarily well stocked cultural treasure house, in the world.

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An ancient Egyptian kitty… how very human… we animals are!
Frau Kolb is taking in the pictorial art of the ancient Egyptians at the Louvre in Paris, France
Frau Kolb is taking in the pictorial art of the ancient Egyptians at the Louvre in Paris, France

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Ack! Egyptian ART!” Exclaims the tubby girl in tank top and flip-flops to her following, of two boys about her age, and of a sheepish devoted sort. “Ya’ take the body of a human and stick it with an animal head!” She waves her hand dismissively at the vitrines housing objects whose history, provenance, and miraculously enduring meaning is of religious intensity to me… to us… the treasures of north African antiquity, dismissed by a slightly overweight, grossly underdressed, loud, person of probable mixed European, background. What else is new?

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The Pharaoh Taharka offering two wine cups to the Falcon God Hemen. XXII Dynasty, at the Louvre in Paris, France.

 

 

Ok. We move on. A few steps further, away from the girl and her companions, we fall into that slow and unwinding revelry which is waking up to the profundity of human ingenuity, triumphs in the face of daily examples of mass ignorance threaten to cloud our hope in humanity. We see and sense and experience the sacred that is really there in these sumptuous objects invested with human thought, values, intelligence, and priceless concentration.

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Nature deserves veneration, no? Our leaders need to remember what the ancient knew.
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Frau Kolb & Eternity: The Winged Victory of Samothrace

I had to go back to the Louvre.  I had to give myself more time.  The minutes in front of The Mona Lisa left me with an unsatisfied hunger.   I had seen and not experienced the overseen, bullet proof, Mona Lisa. I walked back to moment and I played it again.

The crowds were no less intimidating. Yet, I found something… else… in the experience. Yes, I did. Among thousands of people all rushing, pushing, and ticking off ART selfies to prove their level of cultural depth. I found… well, first I noticed this couple. They were in the same room as the Mona Lisa Pandemonium but they were far removed from the panic, the frenzy. Taking strength from their connected, centered, energy. I let myself walk away from the Mona Lisa.

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I sit myself down and forget where I am. The crowds disappear as I focus on The Winged Victory of Samothrace

Not too far away I sat down. I took my sketch book out. I began to draw. Then the magic happened.

Frau Kolb Takes in The Winged Victory of Samothrace in Paris, France
Frau Kolb Takes in The Winged Victory of Samothrace in Paris, France

 

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We capture the fleeting, made stone, in antiquity with our high tech gadgets.
Panoramic picture of the culture hungry hordes invading the Louvre in search of the enduring, by HC Kolb, Paris, France, Summer 2014
Panoramic picture of the culture hungry hordes invading the Louvre in search of the enduring, by HC Kolb, Paris, France, Summer 2014
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“Why are you bothering me? Can’t you see I am in the middle of something!”
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“Thank you for leaving me alone… now I can see what I am doing.” Frau Kolb at the Louvre, Paris, France. Summer, 2014 and forever.
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“Ok, now, I’ve got it…” Frau Kolb on NOT noticing this great backpack behind me, at the Louvre, in Paris France, Summer 2014.
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“I am totally focused. Screw the crowds!” Frau Kolb sketching The Winged Victory of Samothrace in Paris France at the world famous Louvre.
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“Peintures Italiennes, are that way! GO!” Thank goodness for signage, otherwise we’d all be so LOST!
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Glorious side view of “The Winged Victory of Samothrace,” all pictures associated with this piece are the copy written work of HC Kolb, Summer 2014Suddenly, I was alone. It was only me and the eternal curves of, another desperately famous work of art, yet not held in the distancing grip of bulletproof glass and wave of smart phone camera clicks.

 

Suddenly, I was alone. It was only me and the eternal curves of The Winged Victory of Samothrace, another desperately famous work of art, yet not held in the distancing grip of bulletproof glass and wave of smart phone camera clicks.

As soon as I focused my eyes on her, The  Victory of Samothrace, opened up to me. I saw how marvelous she really is! Her wings are powerful!  They look entirely proportionate to the strident female body. She is stone. Yet the artist’s mastery over stone is complete, pure virtuosity. A fluttering cascade of transformations occurs as you allow your eyes to rest on her heavily reconstructed form. She is at once static and full of a vitality that one associates with LIFE, living, good health. She is a harbinger of good news, Victory!

She is on the brink of activity, in the midst of being a viable being, larger than life, monumentally scaled, yes… but entirely of this world. Proof of the higher orders in which all creatures meld into hybrid forms of superlative wonder. The wings, feathers articulated with scientific detail, might be those of an actual bird… which one, I don’t know… but I sketch their basic shape and take in the realization of a very complex idea, in this most enduring modality of marble.

The total visual transformation of stone into wet drapery covering the ripe body of a perfectly formed female, invites awe. Her arms are missing, yet I can’t image what they might have added to what looks like a perfect composition. (However, there exist scholarly drawing and replicas which depict the complete Victory.) Perched the prowl of a triumphant ship, looks about to fly away with the elegance of a swan, the ease of a heron. Water, “splashing up,” on the statue would have made the illusion complete. Imagine that! Imagine the effect that this sculpture would have had in its time upon people not desensitized to the static marvel of marble. Ancient people, steeped in ritual, ready and willing to contemplate the profound wonder offered by spiritual symbolism. People for whom this work must have held significance deeper than its mere representational (of the impossible) value, because it was stone yet looked like a living being, ready to reward those that have fought, and triumphed.

The crowds swarming past, determined to get their image of five-centuries-of-fame, and run to the next GREAT thing… on a packed itinerary… Yet, they do not disturb me. I draw in my red book, on a page after a Cafe sketch, and before another Cafe doodle, sandwiched between my habitual sketches, I now have my own “Winged Victory,”  mine is no where near as perfect as the reconstructed masterpiece, yet she is a personal reminder to fly above the petty problems and annoyances which threaten to confuse one’s mind and push a person toward the abyss of popular culture’s all encompassing oblivion.

Frau Kolb finds herself sketching Winged Victory, for NOT a long time, just forever.