Taking your living room elsewhere.

...I've been working lately on writing English subtitle's for this filmmakers' German films.  I always work at home with iffy internet, but I fnally got myself down the street to Dritter Raum, a cafe/could be living room with WiFi.  He's playing Adam Green, and I'm sipping on my soy Milchkaffee - All the while being productive.  I like this. 

My brother always told me about his unemployment days that he spent at the "office" (a Cafe in the neighborhood), what a good idea it is to take your living room/office elsewhere.

habits

3:29am Ashley Benzwie's Current Status: habits. . . thinking about habits

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Recycling is the last resort !   Just avoid getting things that would need to be recycled in the first place.  i.e. bulk purchases with less packaging, glass containers. So actually this image has it wrong and it should be rearranged to REDUCE, reuse, recycle. So try to eliminate using extra material at all in the first place, then consider what has greater reusability, then if you really have to consider what is recyclable.

Biodegradable things are only biodegradable when given the chance to break down with the aid of sunlight and oxygen...in other words when not put into a landfill, otherwise they are just as bad as plastic packaging.

Just some food for thought!

Brought Back

Music reminds me that I am the same person I always have been.

Seriously I have noticed that.  Sometimes it's hard to recall the person that you were years before.  How you thought, what you did, and how you felt about anything, but when I hear certain songs I am just instantly brought emotionally to a moment from my past.

For instance yesterday I was listening to a classical music radio station and a song came on that immediately triggered a specific emotion.  I didn't know what the piece was called but I suddenly realized that I used to hear my mom playing it on the piano as a kid. Part of me was brought back to this time and state, sitting in my family room at my small white table and chair set listening to my mothers' notes with such awe.  Again earlier this evening I found myself walking from my house to Ideenfabrik with my ipod on shuffle mode, when a Modest Mouse song came on.  From there I got nostalgic and emotional.  I was brought back to a time in my Ford Taurus driving from my high school to my babysitting job a couple towns over.  And I remembered how I felt about things at this time, and I saw how different my perspective has become.  But nonetheless I felt a bit of what I felt at this time.  I recalled with whom I had close relationships and where my priorities were.  It's an interesting thing.

Pictured here is certainly an old place to be brought back to

 

 

Music can remind you of who you once were and how that is part of the same person you are today.





 

Kleber Kochen

Mehl       +         Wasser           =                selbstgemacht Kleber

durchmischen

und abkalten

Salmon Corn Chowder

I have fond memories of touring Westwood with Christina to find the best soups in town as a child. Soups have always been close to my heart.  The winter is winding down (wishful thinking?), and soups will soon become less of a staple.   I really like cooking them and Ben wants to learn a thing or two. So....we're going to make this.  mmmmm....I'm pretty excited for tomorrow's dinner!

Boskops

 

My latest possibly unhealthy, should be healthy obsession: Boskop Apples - luckily they are a lot cheaper than dried mango.  These giant, intended baking apples,  are crazy big, and delicious.  I've been going through crazy amounts of them along with Courtney.  Fruit vendors are starting to recognize me as the girl who cleans us out of Boskoop Apples.  Courtney and I have conversations about which establishments have them and which don't,  we even joked about (well discussed) making a map marking the hot spots.

Not in the mothers' club

I go to a 'rappelkiste' every week with Jonna my one year old.  This is basically an indoor playground for toddlers and babies in the basement of a church.  All the mothers and such see me there every week with what they percieve to be my baby.  I'm really not much younger than many of these mothers.  Anyway one of the girls that works there (probably about my age) asked me today if Jonna "ist mein kind?"  (my child).  I said no, but thought about how awkward it would have been if she had been.  Imagine someone asking me that implying that I shouldn't be her mother and I were.  Anyway she told me that they have  all been trying to figure it out. 

low-key evening

Have been working on a low-key friday night, and writing a bit.  Decided to take a break and straighten up the kitchen a bit.  3 AM in my pajama pants.  I was about to pour out a glass of water and decided to drink it instead because I was feeling a bit dehydrated.  Lo and behold, it was leftover vodka from Courtney and her friends' cocktails. That situation is always such a shock !

Sculpture Mocking the 2-dimensional

 

Courtney showed me this.....I love it

Snobs with money

bwaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I'm just not as used to people like that anymore

on a side note I think it is very funny to put my last two posts together....on the one hand I am this boxcar child and on the other an alleged mother.

Motherhood

It is such a funny experience being a nanny at an age that one could actually almost be a mother. I go every week to this indoor playground with Jonna and see the same other mothers' there every week as well.  There is no reason for them to believe that I am not part of the German mothers' club.

When you walk down the street with a stroller you are given much more respect and endearing eyes by passerbys.  I've even been complemented by my baby's outfits before, and of course as though it were my purchase, I reply with a danke.

Here is one of said babies

I am a Boxcar Child

I live in a mold/mouse laden apartment pieced together with random objects that I have collected from the streets or strikingly cheap at Flea Markets.  I share a literal 'bed' room with two other girls.  I am always seeking money making schemes and finding odd jobs and trying to find things to serve as functional objects in my life.  I am living the life I always fantasized as a third-grader when I obsessed over the Boxcar Children. 


I am a Boxcar Child fulfilling my childhood dreams. When do I become I real person?

My Horoscope

Sometimes they are just spot on!

Cancer

By Rick Levine

The emotional anchor that has been tethering you to your home and family may feel less stable today because your feelings are up in the air and you want to fly on the thermals. Luckily, you don't have as much holding you back now, but this means that you'll need to pay closer attention to establishing your own limits. You can always push them a bit further if you ascertain that there's still something more to learn.

Wow!

A Camel Cigarette Ad I found

Plane old coincidence

I got on my plane (one of the first ones on) and arranged my overhead belongings. After returning to my seat from a restroom break, I found the woman who'd be my neighbor for the flight rearranging my things. I didn't quite understand why she felt the need to move my things to the empty overhead compartment across the way instead of hers, but I decided to just let it be. Anyway as she was moving everything, she carelessly handled my laptop case so that it came tumbling down using the side of her face as a crash reliever. My heart dropped as I quickly swiped the case to make sure the computer still functioned. I didn't even receive an apology, only a shocked expression and a hand holding her recently braised cheek. I was annoyed, but relieved that my new-to-me computer seemed to still be in order.

Anyway it was at this moment that I realized that I had met this woman before. She had actually sat next to me on my flight over. An older, German lady whom was on her way to Florida. As I recalled from our bits of conversation last flight, she was actually quite lovely. I jogged her memory and we realized how strange it was that we were not only again on the same flight but also again sitting beside one another. Not only was I this time sitting at a different part of the plane but I also had chosen both seats. Anyway somehow I have decided to take this all as some sort of sign and I feel as though I should have taken her information or something. I didn't but somehow the fact that she had sat next to me once before caused me to feel less animosity to her. The rest of the flight we exchanged smiles and small bits of conversation.

Anticipating Funnyness

Last night I watched Napolean Dynamite with some friends in Simon's apartment. It still made me laugh a lot. I have seen it a billion times but it still gets me. Then we watched Funny Bone a film that Sirkka brought over. It was very good and she has seen it many times, and she was cracking up the whole time in expectation for what was to come. Just was thinking about how the anticipation of a funny part is probably even more fun than the scene itself. Just a tiny thought.

The point is I spent a lovely Saturday night bumming around with the other Friday-night-party-weathered-people, watching movies

Our Vernissage

If you lived here, you'd be home by now.

After spending the last year in a new country, the idea of what 'home' is, and more importantly, 'where' home is, has become increasingly complicated for former New York based artists Ashley Benzwie and Jessica Snidersich.

A shadow edits the current moment while a static image captures a manipulation of a memory. Ashley's objective was to procure a photo of nearly every home connected to her, beginning with the childhood homes of German grandparents up until her current residency. This included not only places that she actually lived in, but also homes of old friends and family members where she spent a considerable amount of time. This entailed reconnecting with those whom she lost touch with to obtain such images. As Ashley did not inform the speaker that she was recording until after the conversation had taken place, conversations are often awkward and uneasy. Ashley presents us with a compilation of moments extracted from these conversations.

Furthering a previous exploration, blurring the lines between what exists in a private sphere and what belongs in the public domain is an additional theme in Jessica's work. How a space, or the objects in a space, function is a perpetual question concerning the comforts, or lack there of, that come from each place. Jessica provides us with a thorough investigation of a sense of disorientation and upheaval surrounding ideas about home, placement, and displacement.

The two pieces are linked thematically, but evoke varied sensations and experiences. Ashley feeds us a dose of longing nostalgia with a tinge of chaos. The piece is physically intricate and almost overwhelming, while focusing attention on a single image induces a kind of stillness. Jessica on the other hand, weaves subtly underhand sentiments into elements of beauty and comfort. We are reminded of home and its contents, and then jolted into a far less secure reality wrought with uncertainty and fragility.

Pillows and monitor are from Jess's installation, the photo/wood installation is mine.  Then there is the listening room where one can listen to my conversation excerpts photographed as well.

If you lived here, you'd be home by now.

total sidenote...but that's young Michael Benzwie in that photo