The Ann Arbor Art Fair and my day of work. Yep, work.

I am woman. I patch drywall. I disguise inordinate delight when drywall-patching substance changes color to indicate level of dryness. Well, almost.

So today, I spent the morning working. Yes, working. I:

1. cleaned out my old room at my parents' house,
2. patched up some drywall,
3. did some domestic labor with my mother (which I did not succeed in escaping from despite humming "Cinderelly, cinderelly" rather pointedly whenever assigned a new task), and
4. worked on setting up my work study for fall term.

Not truant activities but necessary tasks. Sooo I don't have much to say about today. Although if I'm really bored later, I may post the contents of my closet, which reveal a lot about my tendency to keep limitless loads of crap indiscriminately. Or maybe just a lot about my discriminating abilities.

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Yesterday, however, my father and I went to the Ann Arbor Art Fair.

Ann Arbor, MI, is the city that is home to the school from which I will be one day (hopefully) be receiving a degree, so I'm trying to welcome any opportunity to explore it. Also, my father was very excited to go to this event, to which, as he told me with a debonair air that he acquires at the oddest times, he used to take my mother often. Well, my mother did not want to come yesterday (she explained that she had many tasks to do, but I suspect she wanted to bask in solitary glory. Aloneness has become rare in their house ever since my father, as she said, "retired to travel from kitchen to television to computer for every waking hour") so my father and I went alone.

We got there early to get parking spots and found the tents just opening up.

But it got busy quite quickly. Here's a few hours later:

In the very first tent we stopped at (at right in the first picture, where the purple-draped tushy is protuding) we found a couple from Pennsylvania selling woodworking miscellania. My father exuberantly reminded them of how glad they must be to be here, asking if, as he would guess, this was one of the "top five" art fairs in the country.

The man sitting on the folding chair replied that, yeah, it's probably the biggest, but -here he leaned closer to us with a half-confidential, half-condescending tone- it's a "hodge podge" with some good art but much more crap, because "they let everyone in." My father waved his hand and loudly proclaimed how great it was to be so inclusive and big and then smacked the man on the shoulder and warned him with a chuckle to lower his voice and take pity on the less talented artists. The man was a little obnoxious, but the entire rest of the art fair, I was trying to evaluate everything, bemoaning my utter ignorance about art and tendency to equate good with large and colorful (oooh, an enormous grinning pig!).

A lot of the painting tents had "no photos please!" signs, but this one didn't.

I really want to buy this tea set. Just to stare at it.

above: what's not to love about fruits and vegetables? Was this one of the not-authentic-artists tents Mr. Pennsylvania warned us about?

below: a very kitschy painting that made me wish I had a house with a weeping willow

And this tent, with their accessible, not-wax food! I saw the "for display only" sign on the table. I saw the chips & dip.

Except, um, not in that order.

Just as good as they look, by the way.

The Tiny Indie Oasis that is Royal Oak and My Old-lady Hero

I was driving around this morning, sick of the overpopulated, generic, chain-store-ridden, dying auto plant that is Metro-Detroit, so I decided to go to Royal Oak.

Royal Oak is a little city that I love foolishly and unconditionally because it makes me feel like part of a secret, artsy world where people listen to non-mainstream bands and go to plays and attend photo exhibitions and support local businesses and have delightfully random literary and political conversations at little fair-trade-organic coffee shops like Bean & Leaf. Last year I went to a play in Detroit (Edward Albee's The Baby) as part of a literature class and the next day, I was getting some coffee at Bean & Leaf and I recognized the actor and actress who had been in the play, these two unassuming, beautiful, kittenishly playful acting students, and I got to talk to them, and ever since, Royal Oak and that coffee house have acquired an air of romance for me that I cannot reason away (and why would I want to?).

I know I must sound unduly delighted by all this, but really, compared with the land of strip malls that the rest of my state seems to be, Royal Oak is like a witty bit of stimulation in the middle of a very boring conversation. With a very boring person. Who very boringly talks about their health all the time. And whose boring fashion choices always seem to land somewhere between Walmart and Abercrombie & Fitch. And who will be on unemployment and welfare until eternity because of a chronic (and very boring) inability to magage their budget and refrain from spending at aforementioned strip malls. (See bailing out Detroit)

Anyways, so I was driving into Royal Oak, the sun was shining, and people were roaming all over the sidewalks. Except for one elderly lady in a wheelchair. She had two saggy arms on either side of the manual wheelchair (think pre-Power Scooter era) and was making a steady way down Main Street, a slightly wearied expression on her sandpapery face, Crocs on her feet, and a little girl on her lap. A tiny imp of about four with a sparkly headband in her corn-husk hair had her lanky little legs sprawled over the old womans' in a position of matter-of-fact abandon. Both were facing forward and both were silent.

I don't know why this affected me so idiotically but I started laughing and tearing up and in general developing signs of hysteria, so it's probably good I couldn't find them when I looped around, camera in hand, but I wish I could've gotten a picture. That is the old woman I want to be. That is it. I thought I wanted to be Bette Davis, but I've changed my mind.

The Behavior of the Hawkweeds

Playing truant again. This time from painting the fence at my parents' house. Winding lengths of rough wood planks waiting to be primed or feeding coffee addiction and reading? Well, if I'd picked option a, this blog would have a different title and I would be a better person.

So, I'm sipping coffee at Panera and listening to French music (is Edith Piaf a substitute for my French language cds? I'll note unfamiliar words to appease my guilt at shirking study) while reading stories by Andrea Barrett. "The Behavior of the Hawkweeds" is my favorite so far. I love stories within stories. There is the realism of the main plotline, with its university setting, the main character's straightforward-yet-stilted relationship with her husband, her attraction to the young student. Then the author entertwines another story from another time, a story that, despite its scientific basis, feels tinglingly like folklore. Andrea Barrett got her bachelor's degree in biology, and although she didn't make a career as a biologist, I'm guessing she chose the major because science intrigued her in some way, and continues to do so. It is only a writer's passion that could pique my fancy about something as esoteric as the genetic code of peas and hawkweeds and a nineteenth-century scientist named Gregory Mendel.

[Ah, PAUSE, unfamiliar word in the Edith Piaf music: "plaisirs".... per google translation, pleasures. See, I'm studying, responsible, other-self. Meanie. I'll call her CR, for Christina Rose. She's the driven one. All I want to do is sip my coffee and she all like, gurrrrrl, you gotta be studyin'... (apparently she's also fond of ghetto speak) ]

ANYway, yes, so Andrea Barrett's writing enchants me and brings me closer to believing that you can be (which I intellectually know you can, but for some reason have never been able to completely believe) passionate about both writing fiction and also about science or perhaps economics or maybe math (like that story by Joyce Carol Oates about the girl who is fascinated by numbers...what was that story?). I just always think of the restlessness necessary to be a writer (a good one) and the groundedness necessary to be a good anything else somehow mutually exclusive. But maybe scientists aren't as grounded as I thought. Maybe they have to be dreamers too.

Bonjour! A new day!

I'm sitting here, running away from my responsibilities, throwing glances into all my usual web haunts, and thinking about my last blog, "Reflections of an Only Child." I know how it's been missed by my numerous (ha, ha) readers (are you there, Marie? Marie?!)

Anyways, I deleted it because all my entries sounded like the self-indulgent panderings of an adolescent gazing at her reflection in a dimly- lit mirror. In other words, I cringed every time I read one of my entries.

However, as I'm currently on summer break, alternating between bemoaning not being employed for the first time since the age of sixteen, trying to convince employers that it's not utterly senseless to employ me for two months, and contemplating the various ills of idleness, I'd really love something to do.

Not that I didn't have ideas -- I intended this summer to be a virtual model of self-discipline -- but instead I've been shiftily avoiding planned chores (like painting the walls. And the garage. Oooh, and the rose bush!), eyeing my self-prescribed summer studies (French cds? Calculus worksheets?) with wrinkled nose, and instead drifting through libraries, museums, and the widest variety of cafes ever frequented by one American.

Then this morning, the lethargy was purged from my over-rested veins by the warm light of the sun and a totally unexpected, almost oceanic breeze. Intoxicating, invigorating, effervescent summer. And I suddenly remembered the quote about incorrigible Lily Bart-- "The day was the accomplice of her mood: it was a day for impulse and truancy.

So I'm surrendering myself, and following my first impulse - creating this blog while sipping cold coffee on a stone-covered veranda.

Of course, truancy is not worthy of the name if there's no responsibility from which to escape, so I must go now. I'm driving my mother to Lansing (capital of the state whose economy is less structurally sound than the ethics of Detroit's previous mayor). We're going to Mass (think Catholic, incense, altar boys) in a hotel room. No, I'm not very happy about this. It does not correspond with my new impulse attitude. But that's okay. I'll tell you about it later.

Sooo, to conclude, I'm hoping to make the paltries on this blog less paltry, more frothy, and less self-indulgent. I hope. Anyways, off I go.