in search of:

an inspiration. a sign. a bolt of lightning. my late-night interest in david copperfield wanes; amos oz's the same sea waits on my deep yellow shag carpet, untouched.

shortly, i will away to new york, stay with charmaine uptown, work for the league for a few days, visit old friends up at purchase, lay down a few funky flute sounds for marc wolf, and on my way out miss nick's solo stone gig.

newly minted: my own fancy flash website. (in progress)

discovery: the very cool, sparse yet rich art+culture site.

pattie

i would like to know a guy named paulie and ride a bicycle with a peppermint stick in my mouth. to roll with the punches.

predicting

being jobless, young, without much work experience, with too many degrees, in this economy, is risky.

i am passionate about tutoring, teaching flute to kids who haven't been touched by the rampant adolescent jadedness, working on musicals where everyone has good creative energy, and playing music that forces me to take a second, or third, look.

i struggle not to take personally every absent email or call from a potential employer. i'm qualified to do this work; why not call me? you stand to gain more than you stand to lose by doing so. it's a tough scene; i should've set myself up for it better.

lynn's compadre from her madrigals group at the rennfest yesterday liked my self-dubbed moniker: "marauding martha."

this week: wednesday, "glee" party with richard, pizza, twizzlers, ice cream...is this what i wish high school had been? sticky fingered sugar high, tripping on my own pretend happiness? it truly was the apex of our teenage lives, with a relentlessly regimented schedule, like the army with more social hierarchy and less yelling. i've convinced myself over the years that the few mentions i got in our senior year yearbook signified that i had made something of myself. now i realize it was only in mr. wright, our militaristic, baptist preacher of an AP english teacher, who saw beyond what we were and peered into what he hoped we would become.

wince: reality

i've been home a few days now and know that traveling this summer was the right, if untimely, decision. i risk nothing by sending out a few resumes, putting out feelers.

between new mexico and europe, i crashed for a couple of nights at jake's apartment in queens. i knew that i would be without constant access to a computer for nearly 2 months, which was exhilarating....free! unbound! unreachable! myself.

i came across the inimitable nick at quiet jam session in new jersey on a raining june evening and can't (won't) forget it. 

returning to france - specifically, to paris - after two years' absence was a poignantly nostalgic experience. nothing, and everything, had changed. 

someday i would like to play music with mira benjamin's beautifully reckless abandon, alexandre's expansive curiousity, and nick's incorrigible exploratory thirst. i can only strive.

now playing: ali farka touré, "tchigi fo"

very nearly returned

last night i was in the company of a few lovely domaine forget-ers for dinner (burger with avocado and onions - feve, anyone?) and leave today for new york to work.

i have been absent, but not for quietude's sake. i have been traveling on and off for the last 2 months or so, encountering incredible landscapes, places, and folk (sans doute).

i will be sporadically posting photos, perhaps even creating a snapfish link within, if possible.

i started mid-june with a 10-day séjour to new mexico with my mother for topaz's wedding. topaz, the pirate-clad creative anachronist who grew up as a tibetan buddhist in the wilds of santa fe, wed in his brother jeff's backyard (albuquerque or thereabouts) at sunset to the sounds of their favorite songs. perfect.

we spent a few days exploring albuquerque (really hard to spell) - i <3 nob hill, a 'hood right around the university, for its herb store and satellite coffee - , and then took the high road to santa fe (madrid! pronounced maa-drid, not like the capital of spain), stopping to see handmade cerrillos turquoise jewelry and take in the clean air. we stayed "comme l'habitude" at a beautiful inn with many hanging flowers all around and a charming marquez-esque ambiance. we wandered around old town hunting for good pieces of jewelry (a cargo woman weakness) and i tried to eat green chili whenever and wherever possible. on our way back through albuquerque, we stopped on the recommendation of a girl in a store in santa fe at a jewelry wholesale place that sells not only to the public but also to various dealers around the area (and beyond)....i found a fantastic ring that i now wear every day, sans cesse. more to come...

once upon a time

i was stuck in anton's apartment in stockholm in mid february without means to get out. now, fatefully it seems, i am sweltering in the midmorning early july heat in iván's paris studio waiting for my baggage. not the most thrilling or hilarious of exploits, but nevertheless i am falling under the spell of rushdie´s newest novel the enchantress of florence, reminding me simultaneously of 100 years of solitude and the moor´s last sigh. 

not to seem ignorant or judgmental but: i hesitate to succumb to any great writer's chef d'oeuvre because i prefer to be entranced by a book on its own merits, not by the reputation that precedes it. three cases in point: jonathan safran foer, everything is illuminated; milan kundera, the unbearable lightness of being; and dave eggers, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. the first i read having heard magical, transformative things, so in a sense i had already set myself up for failure. i found the narrative convoluted and contrived at best, and so i followed up a few months later with his second novel extremely loud and incredibly close, which i treasured for its precociously naïve and hauntingly poignant narrator, oscar.

...not that you signed up for my rarely astute literary ramblings, margaret vignola, but when i have had my share of heady narrative for the morning and foggily reminisce of my erstwhile turn as children's book reviewer for Junior Editions, such is the result...

the second novel, by kundera, had received brilliant and reverent accolades from every source, it seemed. the story for me was neither revelatory nor charming. i later gave kundera multiple chances, finally loving laughable loves if only for its sentimental proximity to hanif kureishi's spellbinding collection of short stories, midnight all day.

dave eggers sits in a strange place with me. i had first heard meta, a beautiful, if slightly spacey, cellist from rice rave about it the summer i spent a few weeks in colorado springs. i was still in the thick of my southeast asian lit phase, scribbling book lists for anyone who cared, espousing my passions for kureishi, roy, kunzru, mistry, et alia. so, when i approached this tome by eggers i was disgusted to discover word vomit from an american writer with an overwrought sense of self. when diving into the purchase library's collection of african literature in english, however, my interest was piqued when i discovered that eggers had ghostwritten the gutwrenching and staggering memoir what is the what. 

my conclusion? just because you win a booker, or a pulitzer, or a great Times review, does not grant you license to follow up with crap literature. for me, i know i should stop with this negative slander and just buckle down and read joyce's odyssey, chased by the boris vian and italo calvino narratives that have thus far eluded me. 

to be continued from acanthes...

ahi, vita mia.

uncloistered's recording of monteverdi's "si ch'io vorrei morire"

i leave for france tomorrow (!). 2 weeks in acanthes. what will it be like? i can only speculate.

so, amants, my blogging will be anything but constant over the next month- 3 weeks in france, 1 week in istanbul, sans laptop or much in the way of spare change for internet cafes.