A poignant indicator of the passage of good things

Like certain people, there are those special places you come across in life that hit you in the heart like a ton of bricks (in the best possible sense) and leave you bleary-eyed in love, in lust, and in awe of the unbearable beauty and simplicity of good things. And when that happens, when that first impression is made, it's like walking on air, bathing in sunshine, feeling ticklish inside from a glass of champagne. I recently experienced this giddy head-over-heels crush over a venue at the inviting little gem that is FOOD+LAB in West Hollywood. The heart-fork-plate-knife-happy face logo pretty much sums up the vibe of this place, and the vibe you get upon leaving it. Not to mention the delicious food. Mmmmmm, the food...and the sweet teas and chocolates and homemade caramels.


But perhaps what left the biggest impression on me was, upon my exit, coming across the b&w photo postcard of the mother-and-son owners. He as a wide-eyed infant and she as a stunning, smoky-eyed model and new mom. The photo said everything: it encapsulated beauty, love, life, and time. It made me think about what remains despite the passage of time: style, grace, and passion. And I left with a postcard and my bag of goodies, thinking about this treasure of a place and motherhood and infancy and food and love. I knew I would not be back for a while, but I was comforted just to know that such a lovely place exists.

Coming back home to Berkeley, I continued to visit my favorite local spots. This one in particular had charmed its way into my heart and pulled me back for more...


and more...


and more....


Until it closed its doors two days ago and left this devastating note for its many lovers:


Cafe Fanny--also something of a mother-child affair as twenty-eight years ago Alice Waters named both the cafe and her newborn daughter after the heroine of Marcel Pagnol's Marseilles triology--with its intimate space, delicious poached eggs on toast, the best granola on Straus Family Creamery yogurt, and, of course, the cafe au laits, was a treasure trove of yumminess and warmth and fond memories that held a special place in my heart. Most recently I've been bringing my daughter there for cocoa and a bite of muffin or cookie before school. Her favorite treat was the lavendar chocolate chip cookies. My favorite treat: the time spent there, in cozy quarters and good company.


It's hard to say exactly why I feel the need to write about this--about my new cafe love and my former one--here in this place dedicated to clothes and vintage. Surely it has something to do with the arresting photo of Esther Linsmayer looking like a chic Madonna figure in a black cashmere sweater, with her darling baby, Nino, leaning into her cheek with total abandon. And the thought of Alice and her own daughter, and the influential role of Pagnol's epic tale of desire and romance on the foundation of a beloved cafe that is suddenly and tragically no longer.

Mostly, I'm reminded that nothing we love is forever. It's such a hard lesson...knowing that something exquisite is gone, accepting that temporal pleasures pass. In a way though, isn't every act of love and falling in love a belief in the good things that are and that might be, and a testament to the good things that have come before?

A cette pauvre, Cafe Fanny. Thank you for the opportunity to fall head-over-heels in love.

(Photo: b&w is by Food+Lab)

Five

I so often dwell on the bittersweet or morose. For a change I thought I would post a few photos of some lovely items I saw today that are simply delightful--and not anything more to analyze or get heart-achy over. There's nothing like a gorgeous, sunny day, a view of the San Francisco skyline, all the time in the world to spare, lovely aunties to help keep the little ones (somewhat) at bay, and salivating over antiques and vintage to bring joy to the soul. Enjoy!

Colored glass, elegant and timeless:



Looking closer, finding motifs:



Coral, spiky and sculptural:



Miu Miu, red velvet. Need I say more?



(Photos: All items from the Alameda Point Antiques Faire)

Patterns

These past two months, if lacking in warmth and exceedingly cruel as winters can be (yes even in the sunny East Bay, winters can be excessively harsh for some of us, certainly emotionally), have at least been visually generous: Pina Bausch's Danzon at the Zellerbach, with its girls giddily sucking on oranges, dresses taken on and off and on and off again, and large-screen goldfish/male-dancer duets; Hugo and clock towers, trains and train stations and people in train stations...and, of course, Georges Méliès film clips and their stunning reproductions; the Francesca Woodman retrospective at the SFMOMA, and all the eerie beauty and the steely strength in the vulnerability of nudity, vintage dresses, the dead, decaying, and the ghostly. All of the beauty and sadness swirling around in my head but never landing, never really making complete narrative sense but all of it making an impression.

And as January is full of birthday celebrations--my mother's, my daughter's, my niece's, MLK Jr's (my daughter said that Martin Luther King Jr "was shot in the head by a bad guy" and that he "is the most important person in the world" and also that "he's lucky because even though he died we celebrate his birthday...when I die will you keep celebrating my birthday?"--god, she's morbid like her mom)--it is also full of commemorations (my mother's, MLK Jr's). And so I think about the potential of the present but also about the opposite of celebration and that is mourning. Mourning for the past, mourning for those we have lost and the things we are, maybe, at any moment, just about to lose.



So I take refuge in seeking meaning in art. And seeing patterns in art and in life somehow makes the unknowable more tolerable, because at least I know someone at some point must have experienced this very emotion and made something beautiful out of it, or at least expressed that emotion and so validated it. Like the V's in Woodman's photographs of bent arms and colliding stripes, my hand-knit (not by me) blue sweater reassures me with its tassels and "V" motif. I mean--tassels. They make life at least seem richer and more elegant. Even when they simply dangle on dusty curtains they instantly give the room a more regal/fancy air in their excessiveness and silliness. I guess with my head stuck in thoughts of the cycle of life, death, celebration and mourning, the frivolous tassels, like hiccups on the road, make life not so awfully serious for an all-grown-up person like me who deals with not very fun grown-up affairs on a winter's evening.

(Photo: Knitted by Hand Jamie Scott sweater from Mars Mercantile)

Layers

December: A time for lathering up with lotion, cozying up to the fireplace (or blasting the heat, in my case), and dressing up in layers.

My first blog post promised rebirth, reinvention, and a shedding off of layers. Today, twelve months later and as 2011 draws to a close, I find myself obsessed with layers: layered clothing for warmth and protection against the elements; layers of meaning and suggestion in our spoken and written words; the layers of myth and storytelling that hide or attempt to capture our versions of the truth; layers of chocolate ganache, buttercream, and amaretto-infused chestnut cake that blend together in my mouth; the swirly layers of rich yumminess in a buche de Noel; the pastel layers of a winter's sunset; layers of the metaphorical onion and the presumption of a spiritual nirvana at its center; and the layers of our skin, flesh, muscle, organs, bones, and everything in between that make our bodies function or fail.

It's hard for me to make sense of any of it. Sometimes I confuse transparency and the vulnerability of the naked body with the truth--they seem to represent the same thing. As if our flesh and body equate with a deeper reality while the layers we pile on are just dust in the wind. But the clothes, the representation, our actions, stories, and words...I think these are all we have in the end, or at least all we have some semblance of control over. While we ride the tide of time and witness the changes to our bodies, the comings and goings of sickness and health...all we can do is to carry on, to seek protection and comfort and meaning, and to pile on the layers and attempt to stay warm.

(Photo: wearing my grandma's sweater vest from Hong Kong circa 1980s)

distance = speed x time

How fitting that I write about vintage, because my head seems always to be stuck in the past. Not only the distant past, but the still-smell-it-and-taste-it-on-your-tongue past of the weekend.

This morning when I woke up I was feeling quite moody, a bit romantic, exceptionally gloomy and dreamy and sad...morose even. So it's no wonder that as I got dressed I found myself drawn to this soft, vintage velour bolero of bruised turquoise blue and dusty pink paisleys. The last time I wore this somber yet subtly audacious spectacle, I paired it with the shoes in this post--making a definitively different statement than the dusky gray flats I'm wearing today.

It's been years since I felt inclined to slip on this tattered homespun bolero. Maybe because it feels frivolous, or maybe because it is falling apart in places, with its exposed, unfinished hems spilling out from beneath an otherwise haughty, somewhat imperious facade. Every time I see it patiently hanging there in my closet, I think of the fashion-design or art-school student who labored over the details and construction of it. Who no doubt spent hours on it, and whose earnestness and sartorial aspirations were likely abruptly abandoned in favor of a more practical yet fitful career in retail or waitressing or accounting. I wonder about the choices she has made after that day when she dropped off her unfinished sewing project, and where her path has taken her since.

But mostly, I find myself wondering about time, change, and distance; about bridge crossing and recrossing and the lengths we will go to seek out that which we desire or believe in; about the expectations, hopes, fears, and surprises that come with arrival; and about the many circumstances out of one's hands that ultimately lead to departure. And how the speed of fleeting moments can create a universe of distance between two people.

I think about all the events and emotions that fell into place in order for me to obtain this sweet little handcrafted bolero. And I can't help but wonder whether it was a choice or an inevitability that I would wear it again years later, on such an appropriately beautiful, gray, and bittersweet day.

The ground beneath my feet

This post began with many fits and starts, with a million themes and events racing through my mind but not one that I could focus on as the dust hasn't yet settled. So I will safely retreat to writing about fashion and fantasy.

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of watching Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, an inspiring, visually rich documentary of the former fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and, in her later years, an unconventional, ground-breaking curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vreeland was a lover of nostalgia. She loved beautiful things and extremes--nothing ordinary would do. She loved Russia but claimed to know nothing of Russian things. What she loved was the idea of Russia.

Which got me thinking about reality and fantasy. I think the film spoke to me at a time and place where so much in my life was (it still is) in transition, so much of my reality was quickly crumbling beneath my feet, and any steps toward the future fueled by uncertainty...and here I was watching a manifesto for a pleasurable life worth living as much as a celebration of Vreeland.

But back to the idea of Russia. Vreeland was infatuated by Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. She considered herself an ugly duckling who loved the language of dance. Through dance, she shed away inhibitions and fully immersed herself in movement, wordless expression, storytelling. It's no wonder that, as a fashion editor (a role that she defined and heralded), she turned the spotlight on performers, musicians, and artists; in so doing, she seamlessly fused emotions, desire, theatricality, and fantasy to capture and shape the collective imagination of her time.

In my day-to-day life, I find it so easy and pleasurable to escape in a performance, book, or magazine. In that safe space anything is possible and fantasy is unhindered by reality. Loose strings are neatly tied up or, if they're not, they are left beautifully--not dangerously--tangled. But what I felt strongly that night when I left the theater was that fantasy is not the antithesis of reality. It is a totally valid and perhaps even a reverential interpretation of it and its endless possibilities...if we only had the freedom and the courage to pursue what is possible and not to stagnate at what is.

I love the idea that the eye has to travel, from one point to another and from one chapter to the next. Sometimes I wish that in life as in art I could step back and see the bigger picture. But as I cannot, I will continue to let my eyes travel, and attempt to make sense of the path they take as I follow along, exploring what is possible.

From Ashes

Since last Sunday, I've been feeling the tremendous push and pull, unbearable weight and lightness of the past. As the anniversary of 9/11 approached, I knew that I would have to reflect on that day, but I resisted it. To think about all the lives lost, all the children grown up, all the families affected, a scarred New York...and the passage of time, for better or worse...it was all too much.

But my sister and her boyfriend were covering the 9/11 stories and events for Yahoo, and they told me about all the personal accounts, photos, documentaries, and memories that were being featured, all the lives--of those living and gone--that they were shining a light on, and I knew it would be necessary for me, for us, to honor those who lost their lives and to reflect upon how the world is a changed place.

Like many others, when I think of that day I feel vulnerable and helpless. Unlike those who lost a loved one, I was a mere witness. That day ten years ago I walked away unharmed save for the image of the towers on fire, in smokes, crumbling, and then completely, utterly, hopelessly gone. The sense of disbelief and shock and horror has over the years been replaced by something else--something more vague and nebulous and foggy. Could that really have happened? Is this how we heal, by forgetting?

As I made my way through the horrific images and heart-wrenching stories, it all came flooding back. When memory fails or words are lacking, the visual, like this photo of a woman in shock, seeking shelter in a building, can scream the truth. It reminds me of our fragility and our beauty, of destruction and resurrection. And eventually my mind wanders back to clothes--clothes as an expression of ourselves and our aspirations, as a representation of our frail armour against the world, and clothes as a means of reinvention. From that day ten years ago, we have all shed our clothes and dressed countless times. We have put away the past and carried on. Even in the wake of tragedy, let's never forget who we are and what we are. And let's continue to get dressed, and to not take each day for granted.

***
I'm back again. I reread my post and it just felt so sad and depressing to share this entry during Fashion Week. To see how New York has risen from the ashes of 9/11 with brilliance, check out Tommy Ton's inspiring street fashion photos here. Color! Beauty! Skin! Life!

(Photo: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)