August (Part 3)
Imma be super honest right now: I watch The Vampire Diaries. What started as a way to bond with Julia in July has morphed into a genuine appreciation of a show that is full of contradictions: it is both boring and exciting, realistic and inconceivable, fleshed out and one-dimensional. On a recent trip home, my friend Bonnie got me introduced to TV.com’s completely brilliant photorecaps of TVD. I will be using some of my favorite images to help tell my August recap today.

The Monday after getting back from the Bachelorette Party weekend, I took myself out for a date night at the Film Forum. Now, when I signed up for a documentary on Anselm Kiefer, I knew what I was getting into. Let’s take a look at some of Anslem’s work:

Here is a brief description of Anslem’s style:

His works are characterised by a dull/musty, nearly depressive, destructive style and are often done in large scale formats. In most of his works, the use of photography as an output surface is prevalent and earth and other raw materials of nature are often incorporated. It is also characteristic of his work to find signatures and/or names of people of historical importance, legendary figures or places particularly pregnant with history. All of these are encoded sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; this has resulted in his work being linked with a style called "New Symbolism."

Now, I love Anselm Kiefer with a fiery passion ever since I saw his 2006 Heaven and Earth show at the San Francisco MOMA. He’s the kind of artist that paints all of the dreamscapes in my head, no exaggeration. And yet, despite my love, I gotta say, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow was a tough sell. It was a documentary about Kiefer’s opus: a derelict city he built on top of a field in Provence. Sounds cool, right? I mean the man literally built an entire city, an underground labrinyth, roads, staircases, everything.
So that was fascinating. But did I mention that almost the entire documentary is silent? Except for a super crazy atonal score by Jörg Widmann and Gyorgy Ligeti? And that when Kiefer does speak, he talks only about how our blood is an ocean, and Heidegger, and how his sculptures are reactions to facism? YIKES.

Running, yoga, running over the next few days. No weight loss, but definitely a lot of emotions vetted in an appropriate way. Being in isolation definitely helps with the feelings too. Comfortably numb.
Thursday the 18th I had to stay at work until 1am to make sure the iPad app beta edition was bug free. Surprise! It wasn’t. We had to type up a list a mile long of different bugs, which is an extreme exercise in patience.
Friday was the day of probably the best storm EVER. I start walking home, and the sky is all bruise-colored and sinister, and the wind is whipping up and everyone is scrambling indoors. And as I get to the W4th street subway, where I usually catch the M, huge drops begin to fall. In one of those hilarious moments where you realize your short term actions are symbolic of long term metaphors, I decided to walk home.
And man, did the sky open up! I mean sheets and sheets of rain, by far the craziest rainstorm I’ve ever seen. Tons of lightening, and buckets of rain. By the time I got to my front door I looked as if I had been swimming in the Hudson. It was AWESOME.

Saturday the 20th, I went to my first district meeting since being called the seminary coordinator. What was supposed to be a 1 hour meeting ended up being 4 hours, and I was pretty burned out by the end. Left Woodside, and back in Williamsburg sat at a café all afternoon writing, then edited my dad’s book and read all of my teacher training materials.
On Tuesday the 23rd, my coworkers and I threw a goodbye party for Sam, who was taking 3 weeks off for her wedding/honeymoon. After ice cream cake, there was an (unrelated) earthquake which I did not notice AT ALL because I assumed it was my normal vertigo. Tells you a little something about what I am dealing with, doesn’t it? THINK ABOUT IT
One of the bad things about being good at something is people want you to do that something a lot, when you’d rather be doing other things. Yeah OK #whitegirlproblems but still. So when my agency was doing a last minute new business pitch, word got out that I have all sorts of digital experience or whatever, and I got sucked into the vortex of the last minute pitch. Last minute pitches are like being assigned a 25-page paper that’s due tomorrow ie the worst. You know what else is the worst? Krokodil. Seriously, google that shizz. It is hideous. Russians be ruining my access to over-the-counter codeine y’all.
I took Friday off—did some laundry, had brunch with the South. I was sort of sad that my eremitism (thanks, Serge!) was coming to an end. I felt very calm and centered and happy, and was not looking forward to entering the fray once again. Watched Network finally, after having it on my Instant Queue list for forever. Kind of awesome, but mostly terrible. The one thing I did genuinely adore was the whole subplot with the Ecumenical Liberation Front trying to negotiate broadcasting rights. Wish I could find a Youtube clip of that genius.
I’ll admit it: I love a good crisis. Nowhere do I flourish more than in a moment of distress. I clamp down and the robot takes over, man, and I am all business. So when Hurricane Irene was set to smash into New York, I was thrilled. I was imagining how I’d handle flooding and looting, no water and electricity, makin’ plans and whatnot. They canceled church on Sunday in anticipation, so I didn’t have to prepare a lesson or anything—I could just chillax, do mah cross-stitching, and catch up on the Tivo. NBD. I did have to answer the door at some point because the fire department needed to check my apartment because my building had a toxic carbon monoxide leak. Who knows how many brain cells I lost in that incident.
Speaking of losing brain cells, after watching Die Hard (LAME guys), The Rock (Ugh), and Tenderness (almost), I was bored and stircrazy, and no storm had yet hit. Irene was supposed to be at her peak sometime around 2am, so after I went to bed (I kid you not) I woke up every hour to look out the window and see if there was flooding or tree-breaking. NOTHING. And then I woke up in the morning around 730 and guess what? Nothing. AT ALL. I turn on New York 1 and they announce that by the time Irene limped up to New York, it had been downgraded to a tropical storm. (Inspiring the amazing tweet “Hurricane Irene hits Wall Street and gets downgraded. Typical.”)
I gotta say, I was super disappointed by this. I realized that it was a blessing people didn’t get hurt, or have their homes and precious things ruined, but man—I wanted something to happen! Something to get my mind out of my mind, something external I could focus my energies on solving, something I might actually be able to fix.
I threw on my jacket and walked outside to grab some pictures before the goon squad stepped in to clean up the branches and whatever. I was super annoyed that the cops were out in full force, stopping everyone’s fun by barricading off the few areas that were genuinely flooded. Assuming the coast was clear, I climbed over the yellow tape down by Grand and the waterfront, and I snap a few pictures and then literally 2 seconds later a cop shows up and tries kicking me off, yelling at me about trespassing and trying to get me to come over and show her my ID.
I was listening to my early 1910-1930’s mix (Cole Porter and Al Jolson for the win!), which made the whole thing seem pretty surreal, so I just kind of walked away like I didn’t hear anything, and luckily, the cop did not follow me. As Jolson would say, yessir, that’s my baby.