Sheryl Decterow

I would like to officially announce that if I die before I change my mind about this, I am to be cremated and made into pencils, and people have to actually use them.

ie:
http://www.nadinejarvis.com/projects/carbon_copies

But don’t do it for her project, I want to have all my pencils available all at once to anyone. Price them to recoup the costs. Sell them at an art supply store or something where creative people can access them.

Use them for anything, but I highly recommend drawing. I wonder how the quality of the carbon differs from person to person? that would be a very interesting art project.

Nadine’s project is widely blogged about and people’s responses to it distress me. People are so sensitive in the most pathetic ways and insensitive in the most destructive ways. They can’t face their own self, can’t stand being nude. Magazines are spilling with advertisements of beautiful nail laqcuers, but nail clippings are disgusting; people are beautiful when they’re young, but then they get old and then they DIE and are GROSS. Truth is UGLY so we turn away from it. I call bullshit. Beauty is everywhere. Everything changes. Everything is beautiful. The truth is only ugly when we turn away from it because we are stripping it of its reality and imposing upon it our ideas of it, which are not it and are not based on it. It is not an idea, you are not an idea. You are beauty waiting to become a pencil, which is beautiful too.

The good thing is that shit like this shakes me out of the self-conscious stupor I am prone to settling into, particularly among these vastly hyper-judgmental Minnesotans, reminds me of what I really am and that I don’t care what people who can’t face themselves think of me. I think the drawing exhibit opening tomorrow night will take that a step further by affirming that I’m not the only one who doesn’t jump at the opportunity to write the vast majority of life off as gross. I hope it will.

We finally got our heaters working a while ago. It’s lovely. They make explosive gurgling noises and wake us up in the early morning.

I’m visiting Calgary for the first couple weeks of December, alone. I’m imagining an espresso-fueled bender of cat-cuddling, manga-reading, project-finishing, family-cherishing, Daniel-missing, lurk-revisiting, happy times.

I logged in to Facebook and a Haagen-Dazs advertisement confessed to me that Oprah’s secret to staying slim and beautiful is their acai berry ice cream. I do love Haagen-Dazs; it’s probable that their coffee ice cream is my favourite ice cream ever. Oh, I’ve gone to their website now and it looks like their acai berry product is a sorbet, which makes more sense. I like their proposed idea of eating their fleur de sel caramel ice cream after eating salty oysters by using their shells as spoons, maybe I should try this except with the mussels I’ve been tempted to try every time I’ve gone to the French Meadow Bakery for the past five months and then I will die with pleasure.

I like this jacket a lot and it could be very useful as a top coat to my Prairie Underground hoodie in San Francisco. The reviews sound solid. I found it because on my way out today I had an idea for a coat to crochet, and was researching materials including a transparent waterproof shell or something. It always happens that when I get an idea for a coat, I find a sweet one that’s more suitable to the environments we plan to live in in the future. (San Francisco, Vancouver.) I could still manifest the idea I have, which is a longish hooded trench pea coat in red, probably this yarn, with silk lining. Honestly, the combination of all three could probably do me through this ugly winter creeping in. … Hmm.

Something smells like a sheep here.

It’s funny, if I haven’t eaten anything in a while then my mouth starts tasting like cilantro. No complaints here.

It’s a Sigur Ros day, rainy and dark and cold.

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test…

Simple, Progressive, and Sensual

7 Ukiyo-e, -4 Islamic, -5 Impressionist, -3 Cubist, -5 Abstract and -5 Renaissance!

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

I discovered this dinnerware at the Wedge today. I want it. Just one set, for myself, since either I’m the only one in the house who gives much of a shit about what I eat off or I’d want to serve a bunch of people on it and that would be expensive enough. The dinner plate, the medium bowl, the tea cup, and the tea cup saucer. I wonder if they will still be churning out those tea cups when I open *encrypted name for future coffeeshop*, because they are fucking divine.

I also may name my fibre art brand “Organic Soda Keg Party”. Daniel likes it, and that’s a big part of it. But it’s a little high-energy. I don’t know. Right now it’s “Cappuccino”, which is a little low-energy. Hmm… “Organic Soda Cappuccino Party?” Er. (now, that just sounds like the political party I would belong to)

I offer Daniel the deal that if I name my fibre art brand Organic Soda Keg Party, he will buy me one set of the dinnerware for Christmas.

If you don’t like cow’s milk, then you haven’t drank cold, sweet, pure, local, new-shipment, non-homogenized, grass-fed and pasture-raised, hyphenated-term-rich cow’s milk from the glass bottle. Or, you don’t share my tastes. At all.

When I went to Anthropologie today to purchase two of these hooks for my crocheted garment photography studio, I waited in line behind a girl who was about to drop a few hundred dollars on tall leather riding boots. It was apparently her first time. As she waited for her card to clear, she moaned, “oh god”. The salesperson consoled her with encouragements to breathe and information regarding their eagerness to accept returns if the boots turned out not to be her thing.

I fell dramatically in love with these gorgeous flats while I was there, but I just don’t have $128 for them. And that brings me to the glory of this entry: the end to my winter boot hunt resulting in two pairs for, coupon activated, just pennies over $20. It’s called buying used, babies. One of the pairs is a fine, furry, wintery kind, brown with copper sequins, but the one that induced my beeline is a caramelly leather platform heel. Probably like a four inch heel. They’re terribly gorgeous. Very seventies yet sophisticated and refined. I feel like Austin Powers’ lover, and that wouldn’t be far off the mark (but Dan has very little chest hair). Anyway, here is the sinker: they both have great traction, and the boots don’t clack obnoxiously on hard floors. WHEW! The only noise that turns my hands into fists faster than clickity-clacky heels is the buses screeching as they slow down as of late.

Daniel has decided that we are eating at an Indian restaurant, so this is the end of the entry.

For a long while I have intended to make daily entries documenting the best parts of the days, to help jostle me into writing again and just because. What a pleasant thing to have a written chronicle of.

The best part of today was tied between two beverages: the first, chronologically, being a con panna Andrew insisted upon me, unlike any other con panna I’ve had – he used one of those skanky little vibrating frothers to thicken (unsweetened) whipping cream, then dolloped it into a shot. It drifted between the liquid and the crema. It was really divine. I was totally opposed at first, because I do have a cavity of a weak spot for the American con panna, but my perspective flip-flopped quickly and I have a new love. Then, I had to make new whipped cream because we do serve it (for now) and I made it supersweet and Mariah had leftover hot chocolate steamed up (dark) so I combined them and blissed out for a while.

it is the purity of the succulence of the con panna vs. the intense instant gratification of spooning sweet whipped cream into my gawking gabber to be washed down by deep dark liquid chocolate. They weigh pretty evenly.

There is a staff meeting on Monday to discuss the menu, and such things as whipped cream, decaf beans, Monin syrups and skim milk are on the table to be considered for pushing off. It’s exhilaratingly ballsy to think of, and I fantasize that customers would be appalled only momentarily and only because their conventions are being shaken. Our motivation is of course to offer them only the best product we can, in good faith and spirits, not to be just another decaf-vanilla-raspberry-2-percent latte java hut. I think as long as we are all well educated and articulate about it, it could work. Anyway, obviously these thoughts are all better suited to the meeting than the blog :)

Some people have simple things to do expensive things with. Some people have expensive things to do simple things with.

The sky was a cellulite blanket as I walked home from my unsuccessful – but I did find the most adorable plaid button-up shirt, the first plaid thing I’ve owned in years – boot hunt this afternoon. It was lovely. Today was cold and rainy, and, due to the cold, instead of calming them the rain made all the people rush to get to warm places. You have to be very careful.

All my life I have trustfully believed most of whatever I was told about the way the world works. Not anymore; now, sometimes, I call bullshit. I see when people are trying to control me with their insecurities. And I choose charcoal over them.

Calgary Transit’s buses all displayed at least one Poetry in Motion banner, which would promote the art with a small section of some influential poet’s words. The other day I saw such a banner on a Metro Transit bus and nearly cried with nostalgic glee. It said:

Don’t go outside to see flowers.
My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
inside the body and out of it,
before gardens and after gardens.

It is very much like my favourite Rumi poem, which is probably indeed my favourite poem, which goes:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language – even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.

Hence such glee at reading.

We are nearly all moved in :) Daniel did a wicked job of unpacking last night. He organizes a mean bookshelf, utulizing his clever utilitarianism with stacks of books for bookends. I’m good with closets.

Going to swing up downtown while Daniel does musical errands in preparation for a recording tomorrow, then prepare our dinner which is Heidi’s slurptastic herb noodles. (I have chopped up the herbs and oh man, I just want to make a cilantro hand lotion or something!!) Daniel’s friend Nate is celebrating his 25th birthday tonight. I’ve never attended a party with a keg in attendance too, so add that to the list of growing-up milestones passed. I work tomorrow and begin training on milk this week! Very excited to work with the Synesso; its steam wand is particularly phallic.

I picked up two yards of incredible organic cotton sherpa to make some cozy winter pants, and have to get around to that soon because it ain’t too warm out yet when I catch my first bus at 5:40!