Saturday, March 26, 2011

La Regina del Mondo

La Regina del Mondo
Looks like a  Skimpy Buffet for such a Beautiful Woman
Thailand. She was always the most beautiful one, no matter where she went. She had her favorite dressmakers and special stoff handler in town and she picked the most exquisite materials to make outrageous dresses. I remember her at the hair dressers a few times week, the Thai girls adored her whiteness and loved to paint her eyes, Slavic almond shapes, similar to their own. She was then and is still a rare breed of bird, solitary and bestowed with extraordinary plumes, as you can tell from the picture.

And, she was kind. All the fat (or thin) American ladies who lived in various parts of our compound off of Sukhumvit Road and the mall, and who were either very Christian and from Alabama or brunettes from New Jersey who smoked a lot of cigarettes, ostracized  her because she paid Vilai, our domestica, a few dollars more a month for her services than was the norm.

She didn't care. I don't know if she even noticed the ostracization. I did because they wouldn't let me play with their offspring in the pool. Guilt by association. But that's another picture.

When her sister got married Vilai invited the Queen to come to the wedding and she agreed, even though, a) mingling with your help was unheard of and b) making a very long and arduous trip into the uncharted Thai countryside in 1970, as an American woman- alone- was preposterous.

It took her 7 hours to get there, one way, first by car and then a boat up river and then even a smaller boat with no motor to a forsaken little hinterland in the jungle. She had a special cream and dark gold color traditional Thai dress made for the occasion and brought some money along with her grace and charm. I always forget to ask her what shoes she wore, delicate slips or knee high boots against snakes & bugs, it's such an important detail into who she (or any of us) is.

I don't know how she managed to be generous her whole life, she was always buying and giving and we had the finest clothes, even though the rake spent most of it most of the time. The whole village waited for her arrival to start the wedding and once she arrived the monks fawned over her and served her food. She was delicate and shy. And proud and strong all at the same time. And, today, she still is, always against the tide always regal in her adamant beauty. My father was a lucky SOB. I never understood it.

The Scholar

It's that time again, the weekly though sometimes it's daily or even monthly on occasions Bosnian Coffee Grounds!

Friday, March 18, 2011

Crazy Love Summer

This picture that I found while reading the Ephemeral New York blog makes me dream of summer. Not the beach-y summers of my stuck up 20's, but the loud, sweltering, 15 people milling around a tiny city kitchen on the 4th floor of the projects in Crotone that I spent one summer with boyfriend number 3. Kids everywhere and fresh burrata from the corner grocer and old nonno with the Hitler mustache who wore the Alan Ladd hat even if it was 95 degrees out. Terribly happy in that silly & stupified 'I'm finally living 'real life' kind of way. That is what I long for today.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

La Vie en Rose


A pretty birthday celebration, quiet and subtle with Prinz Achmed in the background supping on Z's famous Assiette de Charcuterie and an earthy glass of rouge. An early night, as far as birthdays go, I left before midnight and walked to my car following the noiseless, dark sliver of Z's side street up the hill. Dimmed street light streaming through the trees hightened the atmospheric experience of the evening even more...the duPays magic is truly in every detail.

Was feeling most Parisian when I encountered ....

Lotte Reiniger - The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Faith in Language

 I love this quote from Moacyr Scliar that I found in the NYT today:

"It is in language that I have faith, as a vehicle for aesthetic expression and also — and above all else — as an instrument for changing the world in which we live.”

Friday, March 4, 2011

Die Sterntaler & Werner Herzog


Die Sterntaler
 "..the aim of his films, he says, is "the illumination of something that is beyond sheer facts", what the New Yorker described as "the ecstatic truth". Does he experience that illumination when he is making his films? "Yes, I sometimes feel like the little girl in a fairytale," says the 68-year-old. "She steps out into the night sky and golden stars fall into her apron. These moments, when you have that shudder of something falling into your lap and you don't know how it happened – that happens."..
Werner Herzog Stipetic  The Guardian

I have this book in my memory from when I was a child. I always identified with the picture, maybe because I too was a blonde little girl who loved looking at the stars at night.