diabolical views

I've only been here a few weeks, but at any given moment my mouth is hanging open, gaping at the crazy splash of fog and light and sea that nature throws at you. This is an incredibly beautiful city; I'm not sure that I've lived in a more stunning place in the world, although there were many beautiful moments in Los Angeles and New York. The air is fresh here too, incredibly so for a place like this, and we find ourselves constantly driving to mountaintops of which there are many.

We're tourists in the city we live in. People are always dropping by too; a friend we met in Berlin had been out of the country for six years with absolutely no visits inbetween. He's on this West Coast tour and we're having a lot of fun enjoying the crazy boisterous life in America. Only W can appreciate how weird and interesting America is, and he looks a little dazed, all this new information, all these incredible landscapes. We sit contemplating the Sonoma Valley, how beautiful it is, as the tour guide tells us tales of mega mergers and corporate distribution, and it's incredible how this small strip of land influences so much outside of its scope.

Most of the wineries we visit are not very exclusive, so they admit a certain kind of tourist like us, and we're fine with that, because I don't know enough about wine to know the difference between the really amazing stuff and the very ordinary. The really good places require guest lists and are quite particular; or so people say. i have no idea what it's really like. The guides are patient, treating us like very eager but stupid children, explaining in excruciating detail how to taste wine. It's not like we haven't done it before, but we've never had things laid out end to end.

There's this beautiful little Tuscan restaurant in downtown Sonoma with a huge poster of Lucca, and just like Lucca there are lots of little hokey touches to remind us that this is authentically Italian and indeed a family restaurant. Black and white photographs of grandma; when I went to Lucca the last time they did the same thing to assure us that everything was small-scale, even though they were more efficient and businesslike than they'd like to admit. The wineries in Sonoma are incredible stone affairs made to look like postcards from Italy, the driveways lined with incredible cypress trees.

A friend's family tells us where to go to get the very best South Indian food in the Bay Area, and they warned us that it would be packed, which it was--big brawling families and packs of tech workers and pairs of young men in North Face and preppy upturned collars.

They're working at these companies that we were always aware of when we were working in Berlin, addresses where important things were sent, where deals were made: Sunnyvale, San Jose, Cupertino, Mountain View... they're all mashed up next to each other at the south rim of the Bay.

Strangely enough, everyone's speaking English, and a wife lectures a couple facing her, "The wife makes these important decisions in the family," while juggling a child on her hip. I'm struggling to eat a dosa the right way, which is always the wrong way, and two guys next to me talk about some kind of industry stuff as a hovering waiter apologizes for my entree being later than my husband's. Everyone's teched out though, mothers pecking at very expensive new laptops and little girls mesmerized by their text messaging.

People my mother's age bike up incredibly steep hillsides, gray-haired women with incredibly muscular legs in designer bicycle wear, the logos and team jerseys from some faraway land across the sea, smiling good naturedly at us as we drive by. Everyone's invariably running, jogging or kayaking somewhere here. The uniform of the day is a hiking North Face jacket; if you're not careful you can go around being overdressed unless you're downtown, where you'll be spoiled by the slim and handsome shop boys in pinstripe suits smoking.

We drive to the highest mountain peak, Mount Diablo, which has the second clearest view in the world after Mount Kilimanjaro, and some bicycles are huffing and puffing up an incredible distance to the top, inadequately clothed in spandex. It's freezing up there, wind whipping you by, but you can run into the tower at the top for protection, which they do, or if you have a parka like me, stand on the cliff's edge and look down from what looks like an airplane's view.

We're always climbing peaks to get good views; from Mount Diablo San Francisco looks like my fingernail and the Golden Gate Bridge is nothing but a toy. As the sun sets, the mountain casts a long shadow across the valley below; I like to thing that if I point my hand upwards I'm creating night for hundreds of people. It's like playing God.

keep up the good fight

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

- Albert Einstein

control

just like everyone else in town, we went to see the ian curtis biopic control... in a lovely theater as well, small-screened with bright stars scattered across the ceiling.

sam riley, playing ian curtis, is absolutely stunning in a way men can be only before they turn 24, when men still have fragile dreams and can walk down the street as ladykillers in a slim suit.

ladies allow men a lot of leeway when they're like that. his behavior would simply be annoying if he were my age, paunchy and bloated from years of alcohol and drug abuse. it would also make no sense that the two women in his life would remain so attached.

and as far as music is concerned, movies like this love to celebrate the tortured, self-destructive artist. preferably young and really really hot.

in my life at work and at home, so many more brilliant things have been accomplished with group work, however tormented and chaotic it may be. i wouldn't say that working with a large group of international artists was one of the easier and smooth things i've done in my life--nothing will turn your hair grey than juggling many personalities, but it is usually worth it whether the project turns out to be a disaster or a success. bands and groups can be petty, small-minded and self-destructive, but there wouldn't be a wonderful underground in places like los angeles if the surface weren't so conservative. at least it's something to react against to make a positive change.

after the tragic end, i teased T with our ongoing joke over the years, "when you were in a band touring around different countries, did you have a lot of groupies?"

"No, never," he says with that mona lisa smile of his. "I didn't have any!"

"But you were the singer, don't they usually choose a pretty boy to be the singer?" My friends and I always say this, it's become ritual now. "Did they throw roses on the stage? Did they try to kiss you?"

"What are you talking about?" He never talks about these things, just like our friend B, who's a natural ladykiller and at ease with most all women and going around with three or four girls at a time who smother him with love. they're the kind of men that women gravitate to, and they feel no need to boast or obsess.

A old school r & b manager told me all his battle tales about musicians and artists he'd managed a decade ago. talk about dealing with groups of temperamental, difficult people! A huge problem was always the competition between two touring artists, especially if one got more girls than the other. "Some guys got it, they don't even have to try. And others don't. And they're just hatin on it--guys just hate that some other guy got it."

"I know. If a guy's got it, he doesn't talk about it. The guys that are always talking about chicks try so hard, and it doesn't work. No wonder they're frustrated. I wish I could make a magic potion to bottle it, it'd make me rich," i said. maybe even start up a company with the idea since i'm near silicon valley anyway.

it would put all the neurotic men's magazines out of business, with their pages and pages dedicated to acquiring the perfect six pack and bizarre "systems" for picking up "hot chicks." i read those at my gym every day, and they've made me really insecure about my own six pack which doesn't exist and whether or not my hair's thinning and if i've got a hot car--stop! too much psychosis! i always have to put those magazines down or i'll absorb the classic middle class male mid life criss by osmosis even though i'm a woman.

which brings me back to the original topic--not to mock the tragedy of ian curtis' life, but it just shows that women aren't really that different from men on the inside. it's just that i'm not ridiculously handsome and gangly enough to get away with murder...

harvest time sketch

large version

guardian angeles & the starlets of la la land

in the city of angels there are thousands of lost souls.

a beautiful guardian angel, plump and healthy with desire, watches over the hungry lanky girls who dream of being starlets, although sometimes they cannot save them before it's too late.

bay area love

how do you draw paradise?

sinking into paradise

I confess that although I have been reading a great deal, plowing through as many as two or three books a week, I haven't been drawing or painting as much as I'd like or even writing. Life is a constant social whirlwind as well as the realization that it takes some energy to get settled into a physical place, a city, and for some reason it's taking longer than usual to understand San Francisco's neighborhoods and geographies.

How can anyone live here without knowing that they are in paradise, or a strange, slightly flawed variant of heaven?

I mentioned the famous restaurant that I had visited the week before, the one that C wholeheartedly recommended and that people on the bus kept saying was worth the two hour wait. A friend from high school flew back into town, and she said that it was one of her old drinking buddies, and that she was staying with her.

We found ourselves in the sister restaurant down the street. During the heady days of the San Francisco internet boom they had both worked at start-ups as graphic designers... then when things went bust, one went to law school and the other bought the restaurant. "Damn!" said the lawyer half-jokingly, but for some reason I could see my good friend starting her own restaurant.

And it's such a different experience going to a place when the owner is hovering nearby, constantly asking how we liked the food. She fussed over where we would sit. The interior was gorgeous, modern and spare.

It was a large, talkative group that had lived all over the place and had travelled every which way. We ordered six or seven plates and I was told what went into what; the flavors exploded in my mouth. It was all about sharing tips about where to eat, because San Francisco is really, really about food, and not so much about nightlife or clubbing. Secret dining locations in the south bay were passed back and forth.

When we were finished, my friend brought out big plates of exquisite desserts from nearby gourmet bakeries. Then the owner came by, inspected what we ate and what was loved the most by our group, and I'm just beginning to realize how rough it is to run your own business, especially when it's something you're very passionate about, which is turning food into art. The two tall, strangely thin and elegant women exchanged comments. These are serious food lovers.

I tasted some Asian rice cake ice cream dessert swirled with condensed milk and I almost died and went to heaven, as stuffed as I was. It was also the first time I'd gotten so drunk on cocktails with swirls of mint. My Time Out guide says authoritatively that "If you can make it here in the restaurant business, you can make it anywhere" and that is so true!

There are such a multitude of cool ladies in this city. You don't see the tragedy in their eyes. They're filmmakers, not movie starlets; DJs, not groupies; photographers, not models. It makes me happy when people find their centers and build up from there.

A director gave us advice for travelling in our parents' countries. "Bring gifts, save up, but don't tell them you're there until the last minute." Otherwise we'd be corralled and locked into endless shopping trips and not be allowed to go anywhere unescorted. Show your love at the end of the trip, but don't tell anyone where you're going, or they'll be dying of worry, and you can just show up and show them that everything's ok!