Antarctic Bloggers

You may have noticed that I have little links to other cool stuff down the sidebar on the lower left. Well, there are two new ones on there, The blog of Mykle (!!!), and Orion's Antarctic info page. If you want to learn whether the vomit-spatted penguins are real (supposedly, the penguins at McMurdo station cluster around the heating out-vents of the McMurdo bars for warmth in a big penguin/dog-pile, and consequently get vomited on as a result of drunk patrons stumbling OUT of said bar and losing their dinners on the happless birds) and exactly how damn cold it really is at the bottom of the world, you can read it there.

Hardly Strictly

rarara!

The other aviatrix is here, if you want to see her. Yes I have two blogs. It's been a secret until now. Obviously this is the one I use more.
Oh boy the bluegrass festival is this weekend. The lists of artists is totally overwhelming: Artists!!!
So far on the guestlist are my mom and pop and Pete and Lucia and perhaps Zina. Jordan and Jesse are coming into town too. We may meet Luke and Dan and Siobhan and Davey and Dagney there. I imagine Cooper and Travis and George will be there too. And Renee and JJ. All Mykle cares about is seeing Doc Watson. I really care about Steve Earle and Dolly Parton and Gillian Welch and The Be Good Tanyas. Whew. See what I mean?

Illustration Friday

FRESH



This is done in watercolor pencil and regular pencil on bristol. I was trying to represent fresh as in: lemonade and springtime, as well as fresh as in: "Don't get fresh with me, young lady!"

breathless

My love is going (surprise!) to Antarctica too. I have intense super-conflicting feelings and well, my life has been flipped upside-down. Here is a sketch to show how I'm feeling:

Mykle called to tell me and I felt so peculiar, hot and cold and breathless, with watery eyes, my hand still holding the phone long after he had rung off (I was at work). This has been going on for years, his attempts at Antarctic employment, but I never thought it would really happen. 6 months is a long time, especially for a very affectionate and friend couple (as in: we are friends) as we are.

All my life I've been bound in the chains of love.

September 24th

Mykle sent me this today. It is a letter sent by my favorite poet, Sharon Olds, to First Lady Laura Bush, which was published by The Nation. (Sounds strange, but the letter outlines pretty exactly how these two came to be in contact with each other.)

Sharon Olds on the Iraq war

San Francisco residents:

STOP THE WAR!
MARCH AND RALLY IN SF

This Saturday, Sept. 24

Gather at Mission Dolores Park 11am
March to Jefferson Square
for Major Rally

(My rightous parents will be there, as will I.
Please come. I'm not sure I believe in the power of the people anymore, but just on the offchance that we live in a democratic society and that our voice matters....)

U.S. death toll in Iraq as of today: more than 1,900.

The Cold place vs. The Warm Place

Sedentary day at the end of a long weekend. Lemon yellow sundress with black spots, purple and black striped socks while scrubbing the sink and mopping the kitchen floor. Dirty hair and glue on my fingers, a pile of cords on the living room floor. Green houseplants illuminated in the fading last light. This morning woken by a phone call that I thought was from Antarctica.

To explain:
Orion is going to Antarctica. My man Mykle has been trying to get employment down there for 2 years now, a process which involves sending blood and urine samples to labs in Colorado, getting teeth fixed ($$$), piles of bureaucratic paperwork, and him driving to Boulder for a job interview. He would be living at McMurdo station, the largest community in Antarctica (3,000 cold souls), and employed 6 days a week doing IT stuff (that means fixing computers, my fellow Luddites). Orion recently decided it would be rad to go too, and applied last spring when Mykle did. I don't understand these men, but the best I can fathom it is either:
A. A yearning to be on an unearthily beautiful part of the planet that is relatively unspoiled by the petty presence of man, where day to day living is a survival situation.
or
B. An adult summer camp fueled by insane fringe types zonked on booze chasing penguins around in their underwear.
Learn more about McMurdo and the entertaining folks employed there at Big Dead Place.

Anyhow, Orion is a mathmatical genius and scientifically inclined and knows about physics and stuff, so he has been accepted to be at THE SOUTH POLE for 13 months. That is the South Pole itself, NOT McMurdo. I don't know what kind of setup they have down there (and I do mean down), but suffice to say that you get two 2-minute showers a week. Wow. I have this feeling there aren't many women there, since there are certain times every month where it is nice to take a shower EVERY DAY if you are of the female persuasion. Some girls are more rugged than others though.

So we are all sad about his leaving, Mykle the most especially because he is gripped with jealousy. He's still an alternate for another team of about 5 people though, so if one of them gets sick he may get a call that he has to go to the cold place anyway. That's why I thought it was Antarctica on the phone in my dreamy state this morning.

So what happens here at our cozy home? The lovely Michelle Medina is moving in, and i am overjoyed. She's Orions sad sad girlfriend, but she'll be in good sad sad company with his best friends here on Webster street. I haven't lived with a girl for a little while and gee I'm so excited. We are going to do Yoga together and watch old silent films and be crafty and artsy. I mean, she almost lives here anyway (I got her keys to the apartment as a birthday present) but it will be joy having her around all the time. The girl is a beam of fucking sunshine, I swear. Just seeing her face light up in happiness or surprise can seriously make your day. And her laugh!....She laughs more than anyone I know or have ever known. So that is the upshot of this whole fiasco. We are all sort of stunned. I don't really know how Orions feeling (he's in Seattle meeting with the scientist he will be working for), but he seems celebratory. Mykle and I actually didn't know he was going for 13 months until this morning. We thought it was a rather managable and sane 8 months.

I haven't posted in so long because my computer had crashed. The hardrive is shot, and would cost 300$ to be fixed, but my brilliant boyfriend hooked up an external hardrive, so now my laptop is "on dialysis" and I have to cart around many cords and a big black box with me. That's fine though, cause repairs costed SO much less.

I have been painting, the subjects being (of course) faces and outlines from one of the most amazing books; Blossfeldt's photos of plant structures, with pictures like this:

Another project is the mailing of stickers that I just recieved from Sticker Guy. That's right, Kai Smart promotional stickers....with an old drawing I did of a bespeckled and very mad gentleman and my website along the side. I made envelopes out of magazines and wrote a letter to go with each one, detailing my expectations as to the desemination of the stickers! I always say, "I give good mail". I took some pictures of the pile on envelopes just cause I was so proud. Feel free to send me your address if you think I don't have it. This applies to everyone!



Highly reccomended (recent infatuations):
1. The Woods- Sleater-Kinney An incredible ravishing wild album. Passionate and rockin', with wild vocals. There is one slow song on it that breaks my heart called "Modern Girl".
2. Autolux (a band) Dreamy swirly badassedness. For fans of My Bloody Valentine.
3. John Krakauer (the author) I read "Under the Banner of Heaven" and then "Into the Wild". He's a magazine writer mainly, and therefore can make anything so spellbindingly exciting that you can't turn the pages fast enough.
4. Edna O'Brien (the author) Whenever I shelve lit I discover a new author I have to read, mainly because I read the back of almost every book I see. This woman is Irish and really likes Joyce. She has the prose style i eat up; lyrical, poetic, sensual, gritty. However if you just suffered through "Tess of the D'Ubervilles" crying because of the woeful life of Tess in the British countryside (like I did), you probably don't want to go to the Irish countryside and suffer with all of the murdering and starving and raping micks. Read something happy before and after this.
4. Making your books and movies match I just read "Jarhead" (about the first Gulf War) by Anthony Swofford, and then I watched "Three Kings". Then I read "Wild Decembers" (about rural Irish people) and watched "Bloody Sunday" (about the massacre of Irish peaceful protesters by the British in 1972). Doing this makes you feel like you are learning something, and appeals to all the senses.

Well I hope that covered the last 2 weeks or so! Much love to everyone.
Sincerely,
Kai Smart

hehehe

Dillard and desruction

My computer has crashed and burned again, so no posting until money is spent and hassles are tussled with. In other news, all is well and grey in the little bookstore by the Bay, and I look forward to a Fall of intoxicating change and many rewards. It has always been my favorite season, symbolizing a retreat into Nature.
In honor of my father, who has just read his first book by Annie Dillard (my favorite author), and describes the day he finished it as "one of the best days I've had in years";

"We sleep to Time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it's time to toss things, like our reason, and our will, then it's time to break our necks for home.

There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom.The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times."

-Annie Dillard, from "Holy the Firm"