Valentine's Day is Coming

I think I've mentioned this but I'll say it again: I am not the fan of Valentine's Day. But my daughter will be on school vacation around that time and she has become aware of the significance of the holiday. And last year she had me convinced that Valentine's Day is best celebrated with children. They have the best perspectives on any life event. So I have downloaded loads of images to inspire me. I am thinking of hosting a Valentine's Day sleepover for Hazel. We'll see..

All of Me

This Jazz player is deaf. Mandy Harvey lost her hearing gradually, and then completely by the time she was 18. She was always involved in music but when she lost her hearing her father persuaded her to sing. She has a beautful voice...she doesn't "audibly" hear the music or the musicians accompanying her. But she can feel the music...like the drums under the sole of her feet, the booming bass in her chest and the high pitch sound of the saxophone on her skin.  Beautiful, lovely music. When the Lord closes a door He opens windows...

I know I have been missing all year...I promise to do better.  Just over here in the forest trying to figure out all of me.

Kaziukas

Every first weekend in March teh city of Vilnius has a craft fair and the vendors roll out their traditional foods, specialty tea, Easter bunnies, woodwork, straw/hay floral arrangements, beeswax candles, knitwear and linen-tailored shirts and dresses. My midget and I went to have a look. Our favourite? The Easter Bunnies.

So what did we get? We got smoked cheese--smells like smoked red herring and tastes like haloumi. Very yum. And a Pony Ride.

For most of March there'll be craft fairs put on by schools and other towns. This Friday at my midget's school there'll be a craft fair in the gymnasium and parents are expected to make and bring their own crafts. I am making candles in teacup and mint-eucalyptus bath bombs and sugar body scrubs which I'll put in little Ikea spice jars. Seems relatively straight-foward, right?

Children and Prisoners at the Opera

I only know about Joyce Didonato because of her performance at Sing Sing. Singing at a prison: the ultimate in captive audience, right? I had heard about Joyce on the BBC and listened to a clip of her explaining how she aroused the interests of the female inmates.

I started googling the Opera because I was looking at what the upcoming shows were at the National Opera in Vilnius. They have some great productions for the family and I was looking for something that would arouse the interest of my midget. I figure if opera is universal, as Joyce has said, then the midget must find something she can appreciate about it. So I take my midget to Zuikis Puikis this weekend.

Graffiti Vilnius

This one you may know from a previous post I did on the restaurant called Keulė Rūkė, Vilnius. This work is actually on the front/entrance wall of the ribs joint. Trump and Putin blowing smoke up each other's ass.

 By a bridge which bisects the river Neris

Curiously the Lithuanians have no problem with graffiti on their city buildings. It's contemporary art, they think. I hate graffiti and I hate them on buildings.

Years ago, I had a colleague from work who wanted to take me to her favourite hang-out spot in Berlin. She took me to an area called Kreuzberg. I suppose in her mind it was a super-hip (translation vomit-inducing hipster) and artsy, cultural melting point (translation: disaffected and disintegrated/marginalised migrants making it work to the best of their ability). I had many problems in Kreuzberg (the beggars at the train station, the garbage everywhere) but I mostly hated how the locals had desecrated beautiful churches with graffiti. It's like a mark of disrespect in my view. Growing up I learnt that poor should not equate to dirty. Also it's a sure sign that I am in a town where the youths feel disaffected, dissatisfied, under-employed and side-lined when there is graffiti and the garbage is piling up. Simply put, I associate graffiti with ghettos. And I especially hate when the well-to-do glamorise ghetto-living so they can live with the guilt of their wealth. I spent half my childhood living in an innercity/ghetto. There is nothing glamarous about that life.  Don't come to a ghetto neighbourhood to sightsee and for a bit of fun while wanting nothing to do with/not trying to understand the locals.  So I do not think of it graffiti as art usually. And I am never impressed by any of it. Just like I was never impressed by so-called "hipster" Kreuzberg and I certainly do not find graffiti Vilnius to be cool. Just me, I guess.

All photos from Ultimate Travelist @utravelist on twitter.

Come Over, Look at My Renoir

I'm home. I watched Terms of Endearment on the plane. It's put me in the mood to walk around in a silk peignoir set....maybe something with a Japanese motif. Shirley Maclaine played the pretty, feminine, tough, no nonsense, neurotic mamma with a nice dose of older woman sexy in that movie. Set against Jack Nichols' "old man falling apart and clinging to astronaut glory days" character, Shirley was everything you hope and fear growing into as an older lady. Totally heartbreaking and sad in the end but I love that movie and always discover something new I love about it. This time around, I love Shirley's peignoir in the bedroom scene. She is sitting in her bedroom with the phone cord wrapped around her fingers building up the courage to tell Jack's playboy character to come over for some sugar...she hadn't had any sugar in over 15 years so she was overdue...but she wanted it to be on her terms...lol..it's funny. Here goes:

              "The astronaut is impossible. An arrogant, self-centred, and, yes, somewhat entertaining man who has realised his ambition, and is at last a spoiled child.

              - A match made in heaven.

 - Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you? I don't think he wants to have anything more to do with me.

              - Oh, why? 
- I don't wanna go into it.

              - Cos you wouldn't go to bed? - On a first date, Emma?

              It's hardly a first date. You've lived next door for    years.

              - Why not say the real reason? - What do you mean?

              It's been that long since you've done it.

              Shut up! I mean it! Shut up!

              Oh, it's just me.

              - No. - Call him!

              - No! I'm hanging up. - OK, I'm sorry.

              - I'm hanging up. - Call him now! So long.

......

              - Hello? - Hello, Garrett.

              Yes?

              Well, I was just sitting here realising...

              realising that I had never shown you my Renoir.

              What are you talking about?

              I'm inviting you to come over and look at my Renoir.

              - You're inviting me to bed. - It happens to be in my bedroom.

              Is the Renoir under the covers?

              Don't cackle, Garrett.

              Do you want to see it?

              Do I want to come to your bedroom?

              - Let me think. - Do you?

              Just give me a minute. It's a tough one.

              I guess... I don't know.


              Yeah, OK. I guess so, sure, why not?

              I'll see you in a bit.

              If I don't answer the bell, the back door's open.

              The back door's open."

Find yours at Meng, Victoria Secret or Anthropologie

Ping

It's irritating, uplifting, distracting. Ping. The sound of email, text message, facebook or twitter. Up until 2016 I carried an old Nokia brick. I did not want to get into the SMART phone era. And you can count on me never to answer my cell phone or to not be able to find it for weeks at a time. I've seen mothers on the tram who pay more attention to their phones than their children. But traveling as much as I do I had to give in. I need to stay in contact with my daughter and to take advantage of the free international video and phone communication apps. So here we are: I carry a Samsung something or other SMART phone, bought my daughter a tablet and I also have a flip book laptop from ASUS. The pings drive me nuts but what pushes me past my limit is the clutter. I am thinking of getting one or more of these device holders. I love that DIY cutting board holder the best.

What I'm Reading: Zadie Smith

 I have been missing in action, it's true. I hope I get some down time to blog more this week. And, when I actually do have some free time, I am going to be reading the novels of Zadie Smith. I am starting with On Beauty:

''On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent. "

Zadie, orginally named "Sadie" is half Jamaican, half Brit and is now professor in the creative writing programme at New York University. I want to dive into the world of her work for a number of reasons. Something she said resonates with me. "Not being able to write in the first person was very much about ...self-disgust or anxiety about saying ‘I'...It did seem to me, when I was a kid and also now that I’m a grown-up writer, that a lot of male writers have a certainty that I have never been able to have. I kept on thinking I would grow into it, but I’m never sure I’m doing the right thing." What sticks with me is that it is true that men feel assured about their place in this world, in any profession, in any social setting.  And a writer at T Magazine says the same "[T]he authority a male writer assumes doesn’t originate in himself but in the structure of society, which he inherits like a mantle". True, no? 

Anyway, as a woman with her feet straddling different societies and cultures---and having to raise a daughter who will no doubt do the same---I want to see what Zadie Smith has to say about it all.