Mother's Day

Jose at Castro Food Center said, "Happy Mother's Day - I don't know if you a mother or not, but ..." Some mother I would be, since he only ever sees me buy Ballantine Ale, cafe con leche, and toilet paper.

I've been in a strange mood all day. In Josef Joffe's The Way We Live Now in the New York Times Magazine today, a phrase really affected me. "Between Vietnam and Iraq." Not as in, the similarities between the two, but as a chronological period: "Between Vietnam and Iraq, America's cultural presence has expanded into ubiquity, and so has the resentment of America's soft power."

I have never seen this phrase used this way in print before but it was instantly familiar. Four words that describe the time period of my life (our lives, most of us) thus far.

It made me really sad.

New observations

I didn't notice in the last post the parallels between getting a (master's) hood and leaving the (neighbor)hood. I guess no one else did either.

Other notes: Fortune 500 company apparently hates me. I hate them back (unless they change their mind). Looking for a job is worse than dating, seriously, in both situations you try to look pretty and sit across the table from someone and sound interesting, but no one even buys you a drink at a job interview. (If they do, please forward listings asap.)

And, finally, an observation during the research for my last paper of grad school: There is now one whole entire room on the fourth floor at MoMA devoted entirely to a single female artist. Ok, it's the smallest room in the place and it only has three pictures, but Bridget Riley wins this week's token prize. I honestly wasn't paying enough attention to the permanent collection galleries the last ten times I've been there, so I can't say if it's new or not. Heartening or disheartening, maybe both.

DONE

I am finished with graduate school. Tomorrow I will put on my pretty dress, my shiny shoes, and my rented polyester robe. Then Dr. BA will "hood" me and I will go eat fancy mexican food with my family and drink with my pals.

I am terrified of this. Today at the Sopranos bar I cried because of the whacking-Adrianna flashback sequence, but that wasn't really it. I cried because I don't have a permanent job or a significant other or a grandma.

I am done with the 'hood. I am moving next week. I haven't packed. I have reached the same level of education as my parents and my beautiful pregnant sister in law.

I am having seraration anxiety. I think I might get another Master's, this one in actual "art history." Maybe at Hunter. Maybe a pH.D. after all. I am a lifelong learner. I listen to the French PodClass.

I'm scared and excited and lonely.

Tomorrow I get my M.A.

I (heart) 95

Chatty valiantly agreed to drive down to Philly to see Zoe's show under I-95. And it was the greatest thing ever. As we all know, I am slightly prone to exaggeration, but I really mean it this time. I bought eight $5 pictures (a huge expense on my finishing-grad-school budget, but I did manage to snag two pretzels, about a dozen hugs, and three sticky pieces from the pillars at 3:05). Zoe is pure f**king genius, I say this because of her impeccable eye, her phenomenal cuteness, and her commitment to art in (and ABOUT) public spaces. But most importantly, Zoe is the rarest of fancy artists today: she appears genuinely, deeply in LOVE with what she is doing. She obsesses about the tiniest details of the hanging, freaks out about her cool new printer, does not appear to ever stop talking to random members of the public about her work, and best of all, smiles. Smiles! constantly! And I have never seen her wear black. Here, my friends, is the perfect example of the post-postmodern artist. Somebody who gives a shit and wants her work to actually say something.

By the way, I called the Bucksbaum! Congratulations Mark Bradford!!

Mark Bradford
Originally uploaded by markart.