99% of the art at Art Basel Miami was for the 1%, the remaining 1% was for the 99%.
You get the math?
Global capitalism at work! Consumerism in overdrive, showcasing the trickle-down effect to a select few formerly starving artists (most now dead) and their Prada clad uber dealers. Selling masterpieces or rather masturbation pieces to the super rich.
But where is this irony reflected? Is a Picasso still a radical challenge to the status quo? Where is the new rage?
This commodification of status art is boring. The endless (and I mean endless) rows of mind-dulling booths with static canvasses, photos, installations, sculptures and hangings is so overwhelming that it’s impossible to recognize the good from the bad from the new from the old.
Picassos, three in one booth, look blah, Calder, Delaunay, Miro, feel like so what? An entire gallery filled with about 200 original Warhols, cute but can we go home now…
To present art, some great art, as interior decorating like an all-you-can-eat art buffet to binging collectors in the same space that held the car show just a few weeks ago and the boat show next month diminishes its cultural and historical value. Just because the creamiest 1% of the 1% cream have agreed to agree, leaving nothing to chance. Their millions safe within the vaults of big brand investment art.
intertwined tires made from black marble
Design Miami was nestled like a co-dependent snooty mistress in a tent alongside the massive convention center.
Design Miami used to be in the Design District, where this year the Buckminster Fuller Dome and Dymaxion car where re-created by Sir Norman Foster making an inspired statement for inventive design that reflects past and future. Art Basel Inc. has taken over Design Miami and keeps it close to their all-encompassing police-state-of-the-art campus, with Schwarzenegger-esque guards who look like they will pepper-spray anyone that does not meet the humorless Swiss code of conduct.
photo: Alastair Gordon
Design Miami houses designers. Or rather galleries who sell the work of furniture, jewelry, lighting, life-style designers. No art allowed in this building. Just design. One booth had two blank walls with nails where their fifties wall weavings would have hung had it not been for the style police deeming them to be art and forbidding the gallery to sell them.
So, you may wonder, what happened to art that says fuck you to all this monitoring, keeping track and bourgeois judging of what should live and what should not?
Where is the To Create Art is To Burn Alive spirit behind this snob spectacle?
Where is the devil-may-care, I have the urge to get lost, give me a piece of wood, a canvas, a block of clay and I’ll see you next year, spirit of the artist?
Sanitized! Lobotomized! Exorcized!
Even the satellite shows with younger and edgier work were eager to register on the luxury radar, and attract those god-like collectors who spread the magic gold that makes or breaks careers.
Baseled Barbi
Still there was the upside that the remaining 1% of art was for the remaining 99%
This 1% was getting dirty in Wynwood where another set of walls had been given up to artists who painted manically, obsessively grinding and wielding their cans, sprays and ladders.
The 99% was there, in the street, raw energy alive with loud music, swanning the galleries, eating from food trucks, dancing, taking pictures, making movies, kissing, noisy, funny, sexy, young…
And the art was there on the walls, being created in the moment for everyone to see – a democracy of participation.
No luxury price tags.
Unavailable for ownership.
Art that hopefully foreshadows an awakening to a time where status is lost, luxury deemed boring and boundless creativity – like anything – is possible…again.
“My career is really taking off here” was not something I expected to say seven years after I first walked the beaches off Eleuthera . When I first noticed the colored plastic bits in the surf line and was strangely attracted to their paradoxical existence, the color they added to the natural elements, the way many plastic shapes seemed to find organic companions and together created still-lives in the sand. Like the green flip flop perfectly aligned with matching green beach grass, a white bottle top buried in black seaweed paired with a round shell of the same color and texture, two golden seeds cozied up against the edge of nylon string as if they had agreed to meet there.
synergy
Seven years later I notice it still and still crawl the beaches hungry for more, for pieces I have neither found nor captured before.
I sat with my friend Maureen on her most perfect porch overlooking the long curve of Wyckee Beach. The sand and sea tinted vibrant pink by the early sunset.
Career and Eleuthera in one sentence, how’s that possible? I asked.
I had just returned from the Island School down in south Eleuthera, beyond Green Castle near the settlement of Deep Creek. The school takes juniors and gives them a mind, body, and spirit journey that takes them away from their traditional high school curriculum wherever they live.
Nadine, the art teacher, had invited me to teach a beach plastic workshop to 48 kids in the Fall semester.
But on the first day I taught a workshop at the Deep Creek Middle School which is affiliated with the Island School.
We started the day with a beach sweep at the Cotton Bay Club (Juan Tripp’s Eleuthera dream of more than half a century ago.) Its ruins hide just beyond the dune amongst the Casuarinas, gaping and crumbling fifties bungelows some with indestructible nylon drapes ghostly in the wind. Here we collected beach plastic that had been swept into the dune grass and beyond by hurricane Irene last August. Stories of the eye passing over the island twice still fresh on everybody’s lips.
It was a good time for harvesting beach plastic…
Deep Creek
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That evening Nadine showed the One Beach film to faculty and staff of the school, projected on a white wall in her apartment. The film, which is 24 minutes long, took about an hour. Five minutes of loading, five minutes of watching, everyone was used to slow connection, laid back, on island time.
I answered questions while waiting for buffering.
The next morning we had our first Island School workshop.
I love the intensity in the class room, everyone scavenging the piles and looking for ways to make beautiful from beach plastic, tentative at first, picking up a piece, feeling it, studying its color and shape, teaming it with another, then picking up the tools and shaping it, insisting that NO it’s not trash, it’s not orphaned, it is material.
Insisting that “Away” is right there, in their hands… claiming ownership.
(We did stop for 11.11.11.11, standing in a large circle counting down while one girls kept trying to peek out of the window to see if the end of the world was reaching the Bahamas.)
workshop1
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By the end of this workshop Nadine and I felt we were out of good beach plastic which was a perfect excuse to take my first trip to the famous Lighthouse Beach, where beyond the dune amongst Casuarina pine needles we found enough for many more earrings, bracelets, neck and other art pieces.
harvesting on Lighthouse Beach
The next morning was workshop #2, a second group of 24 students.
Afterwards a 16 year old girl wrote about her solo overnight camping experience and beach plastic on the school’s blog:
(It made me weep for it captures past, present, future and the possibility of change…)
by Cacique Claire
Sitting in my solo spot on one of the most beautiful beaches in existence it seemed that the world was perfect. That was until I turned around and saw the pile of trash behind me that had washed up on the beach from Hurricane Irene. In my time in this spot, I had picked up a tiny fraction of the trash and put it into a pile. But, what good was it in a pile? It was organized, and parts of my spot looked neater, but I had done nothing more than transfer the trash to another spot. For the next forty-eight hours I continued to try to pile the trash. I found funny little things including many bottles and a strange little dog toy in the shape of a bear. As I walked away on day three I looked back. Now my spot looked clean of trash, only I knew that behind the bushes was a large pile of garbage I had hidden, but it was there.
I have been thinking of this a lot lately, this whole idea of where our waste goes. The reality of it is that when we throw away our garbage and it disappears into a truck it still sticks around, forever. Our guest artist today Barbara de Vries talked about how when you buy a drink in a bottle we have this idea of just owning the liquid, but we need to own the plastic bottle as well and realize that it will never really go away. When I walked into Barbara’s workshop Saturday, I was astounded. Lining the walls were beautiful pieces of art, it wasn’t until Barbara began to explain her materials that I realized the earrings, necklaces, bracelets, shirts, rings and decorations were all made up completely of trash. Then Barbara explained that we would be working with the same plastics today to create art. She said that she had found all of the materials for today’s workshop from Lighthouse Beach, the same area where we had our solos. My mind flashed back to my pile of trash in my spot, and I had this strange feeling of relief. Finally, the junk would be put to use and be safe from washing back into the ocean. I went out to look at our options, and staring back at me was a blue and white dog toy, resembling a bear. She had discovered my pile of trash, and saved it. I watched, amazed as the trash was transformed into art. At the end of the day one of my friends had created a pair of earrings made from the handles of the dog toy. I realize now, this trash may never go away. But we can save it. We can transform it into something beautiful, and continue to educate about keeping our beaches clean. This experience forever changed the way I look at plastic and ‘garbage’. Instead of feeling guilty about the trash at my solo spot, I am wearing a little silver ring, with a piece of blue plastic set into it, that came from a funny little dog toy.
Did she know that the face of the little dog toy is in my toolbox? I had nabbed it off her table to incorporate as the clasp of a yellow necklace.
But now I am keeping it with me, just as it is, to remind me of Cacique Claire, Nadine and everyone else at the ground breaking, paradigm changing, most awesome Island School.
Beach plastic necklace. Crosses made from crate embellished with seed pearls
Today the ether is atwitter with quotes from Steve Jobs to “think different”.
Everyone is encouraging everyone to think different.
(A paradox I think)
The TED movement is based on this Steve concept, in fact TED has branded thinking different with “Ideas Worth Sharing” and encourages people from all over to share their ideas, their ways of different thinking, around the globe.
Many people are asking about my TED talk, “How did you get in? How did you do it?”
To be honest it had not occurred to me until I was invited by TED to share my recent work at their next event in Miami.
The evolution of my relationship to what I find on the beach and what I do with it has been organic and compared to the speed of my previous life on 7th Avenue where a new collection was due every six weeks, it was slow.
Very slow.
Slow is good. Slow gave me more time to think . But, because the thoughts happened over an extended period of time, they no longer feel different. They have become part of who I am.
So when I talk about my passion for beach plastic it does not feel like I think different.
Different may well be in the eye of the beholder and it’s in constant flux.
For instance.
Sixty years ago plastic was a “different” material. It was introduced as the material that would give nature a break because we were depleting wood, bone, ivory etc. Now there is not a moment in our life when we do not interact with it. The entire planet is awash with plastic. Oceans carry plastic particles around like cells in a bloodstream. Plastic has been found in tens of thousands of living species, including us. Single use plastic is no longer giving nature a break, it is suffocating life.
In the past I put my creative work out there, but not the thought behind it. I have always been more interested in the outcome rather than the explanation of the creative process and believe that authenticity resonates on its rightful frequency. But because my work now has an element of activism I succumbed.
Still
I’d hate to preach. I am not here to make any individual feel guilty. I can inspire but I cannot tell you what to do.
(Corporations, hell yes, I’ll make them guilty all day long, as well as government and policy makers).
But as individuals we have free will. We are in charge of our own destiny. We can inform ourselves and choose to act. We can decide to bring our own bags to the supermarket instead of using 20 plastic bags instead. We can recycle, reuse, repurpose and refuse. We have the choice to take responsibility.
in between the lines
My personal transformation started in Eleuthera 8 years ago.
On my first beach walk I noticed, in between the lines in the sand, bright flecks of color. My initial thought was how pretty but then I realized these specks of plastic were not supposed to be there.
By the end of that first walk I had encountered everything that mankind had ever made in plastic.
Crates, chairs, brushes, lids, containers, barrettes, flip flops and sneaker and endless lengths of nylon rope.
Even on this remote “pristine” beach I realized that we live in a man made world.
Being a designer I look at almost everything as shape, color, texture and inspiration and what I saw that day I’d never seen before.
The beach plastic had been tumbled in sand, salt and coral. and was bleached by the sun. It had been in nature for so long that it had taken on a natural patina. Some pieces looked like stone, like little colored gems.
I started picking them up.
My love hate relationship with plastic started in that moment .
Back home I tried to find out more.
I learned that we each consume roughly 300 pounds of plastic a year of which a mere 7% is recycled and 8 million pieces of plastic find their way into the ocean every day.
What could I do?
I had an ever increasing “collection” of beach plastic in my studio and I started making earrings.
Eventually I had an awakening to the possibilities of this material that was never really owned but had been thrown to the mythical place called away.
To make jewelry was a transformation, not just for me, but also for the material.
Think of a water-bottle top. Does anyone ever feel that they own a plastic bottle top? It just keeps the liquid inside the bottle, right? Which you don’t feel you own either. Does the manufacturer of your water feel he owns that bottle?
Nobody owns single-use plastic.
I like finding weathered bottle tops. They make great earrings, and I love selling single use plastic, beach plastic, into ownership.
If plastic is made to last forever then maybe, like diamonds, it can be loved forever.
I got this comment yesterday:
“Keep cleaning up the beaches lady.. but what are you gonna do with all those balloons with the plastic string ties and can you make something with all the garbage those people in Miami leave on the beaches while you’re at it???”
He does NOT think different!
I am not cleaning up the beaches for him or anyone. I do it for me. Creating beauty with beach plastic makes me happy and by getting your attention I implicate you in the tragedy of our single-use throw-away culture.
Almost four weeks later and my TED talk is not online.
I practice my ZEN patience and wonder if:
When one does a TED talk and nobody can see it, is it still is a TED talk?
As I write this I have not seen myself TED talking.
Still.
I am glad it is over.
Was it fun?
Did I do good?
I did terrible in the dress rehearsal. Like really awful, like I wondered if they could fire me.
It was the clock. Right in the middle of the audience, at perfect eye level, is a monitor. It shows the slides or video that is projected behind the speakers so we don’t have to keep turning around to address our images. Its about 3ft by 18″. But I could not really see because over my pictures there was a giant fluorescent 13 that took up the entire screen. 13 minutes for my talk. Seconds and minutes passing backwards, like the proverbial bomb in James Bond movies and I was James, responsible for saving the world in 13 minutes.
photo: Ilmar Saar
So.
At 8 minutes I thought.
As I was talking my dress rehearsal TED.
I thought. 8? 13 minus 8? Thats is 5 minutes done. Is that all?
Seriously, I did math while I was still speaking. Isn’t it amazing? The gymnastics of which the mind is capable.
Then I worried. Could I fill those 8 minutes?
I lost my train, my momentum and I blanked.
Bluh.
Mouth and head full of cotton wool.
Bluh.
Nothing came to mind. Nothing came out.
Nada.
Was I stupid?
I had felt really stupid late August when I had written my entire talk and started practicing. Almost 2000 words. I did not really memorize, which, as I was told by both husband and Gina from TED, was a bad idea, but I did have an order and a rhythm for what and how I would TED talk.
Besides I had a 13 minute multi-media show which played behind me.
Not that I would talk to slides.
Like manually click them.
I hate that format.
“Oh, and here we have me, at the beach, finding my beach plastic…”
Too much like those family vacation slide shows of our neighbors that my parents sneered at as ever-so bourgeois.
Anyway I was stupid when I started working my TED.
Unable to memorize anything more than one paragraph.
I got advice from everyone.
Do it in the mirror. In the car. Film yourself and play it back. You will be fine, wing it, you know your stuff , just make it up as you go along…
Right.
I felt so dumb that I bought Gingko.
I almost overdosed on Gingko.
I still felt stupid. I am too old I thought.
I have an old brain.
Then I worried about what to wear and I felt shallow.
I had my roots done, but did hair dye kill more brain cells?
I told husband who was still in Milford.
I had not seen him in weeks but he was coming to Miami for my talk.
He sounded sharp, bright and cheery.
“Not to worry, you’ll remember when you’re up there.”
Husband was away. But husband was coming to Miami three days before my talk.
That would give me enough time to clear my mind.
And he would love it.
As soon as he arrived I started clearing my mind.
Wow, he said. This is great. I should stay away more often.
The next morning I practiced my TED and could remember four minute spans. I had two days left to dress rehearsal, three to actual night. That was four to five mind-clearing sessions.
It so happened to be our 21st anniversary.
An excellent excuse for siestas. Back rubs. Jacuzzi’s and what may ensue…
By Monday morning, driving back from Iona’s school, I remembered my entire TED in exactly 13 minutes. What had been the big deal? I could do it backwards…
But then.
There was the clock.
The unknown factor.
That screwed me up.
“Its why we have dress rehearsals,” Gina said. “Now go home and forget about it. Do not look at your speech again. Relax. You’ll be fine tomorrow.”
I did relax on Tuesday the 13th of September. I had a pedicure and told husband I was having a nap at 2pm.
Afternoon delight, he hummed rather absent mindedly.
But happy.
Afterwards I confessed that I had been using him.
“What do you mean?” He asked.
“You know, the Seinfeld Theory?” I hinted.
Wha’? he said.
You know that episode where George thinks lack of sex makes his mind sharper and he feels smart, then Elaine uses this abstinence method but she becomes more stupid. So she begs Jerry to have sex with her just so she can clear her mind.
You know? No? You don’t remember?
Nah. I don’t think so. What day is it again? shall we go and see a movie tonight or something…?
That uber message we look for in our otherwise boring Inbox.
The one that says:
We have been following your work with beach plastic pollution, we love it, would you be interested in being featured in a movie we are planning?
Delete?
Not me!
Looking for a hidden sales message? Like the next line would say: If you take part in this short questionnaire you too can be captured on film.
You bet! I did not trust it. I proceeded with caution.
It was not until I had spoken with all the makers of the film, the creative director Sean, the producer Michael, the director Jason and had signed a non-disclosure with Barefoot Wine (to keep it all hush until the premiere, hence no previous mention here at BDM) that I became excited.
They wanted to shoot in Eleuthera, where I find all my beach plastic, and so I sent them the limited list of places in Governor’s Harbour. Three low-key hotels, Cigatoo, Pineapple Fields and Coco Di Mama, and a handful of rentals that have 5+ bedrooms.
Squires Estate, Toad Hall in foreground, Main Russell House beyond...
I had always wanted to stay there, ever since it had been restored two years ago. Alastair and I even looked at the main house when it was on the market. Its a dream property, on the hill, a 120 year old Victorian House, overlooking Cupid’s Key, walking distance to Club Med Beach – the most beautiful beach I know.
They booked me for four days early June. Two travel and two shooting.
“Bring your tools and your favorite designs, we’ll do the rest.”
If the camera added ten pounds then it was the time for a diet.
I did a two-day fast, a nine-day shake/powder regimen and swam a million lengths of the pool.
I departed, lithe and pre-tanned.
First to arrive, I chose the ground floor bedroom of the main house because it was the most private, like a mini wing, overlooking the pool and the Caribbean sea to the west. Everything was new, done by an Italian designer with exquisite taste, who’d mixed old with high-tech, quirky with traditional.
I got my old red truck from the garage.
I was already happy.
A few hours later the crew arrived. Curt, Sean, Jason, Michael, Scotty and Tyler.
Six surfers from California.
Had I died and gone to heaven?
OK. Yes! I am happily married. I’m a mother of three. I’m not young as such.
But hey, I’m still a woman!
lunch at the Beach House
I had an eery feeling – after years of being a service-driven mother, feeding, cleaning, chauffeuring, organizing and wondering (within the safety of my own head):
What about me?
A dawning sense that maybe someone (who can hear beyond the safety of my own head), had been listening, that somehow I had been good enough, that getting attention was actually allowed when you try your hardest to be a good wife and mother and employee and world citizen…
And I let go.
Snap.
This was going to be about me (and my obsession with beach plastic) and it was OK.
Those six guys were awesome, I don’t know much about them beyond those four days, but they were easy going, considerate, creative, charming, talented, professional and funny, so funny…
They made it possible for me to be me. To do my work, make my stuff, tell my message without ever making me feel self-conscious or insecure. At least three cameras captured me at work for at least 24 hours. It felt natural. It felt great. I felt beautiful. They helped me believe that what I was doing was worthwhile.
I wanted it to last a bit longer.
Last shot, left to right, Tyler, Jason, Barbi, Curt, Sean, Michael and Scotty
Still, we dispersed. They went on to do the next “innovator”, Tim in Australia, and I was just a tad jealous.
But I mainly felt empowered. Things were falling into place. back home I was asked to apply for the Miami TED talk. I went on my teaching trip around Eleuthera.
*
Last night I saw I Don’t Know How She Does It with my three daughters. I had read the book at a time when I identified with the author, when I was the overcommitted mother of three little girls who felt she had to do it all, or else…
Leila wanted to know if I had ever felt like Kate did in the film.
You mean, like, I Don’t Know How I Did It?
Kiki and Leila @ 2 years, by barred stairs in Milford.
My daughters are now eleven and fifteen. I asked if they remembered when I was the Mother with a Career in NYC.
They don’t!
They don’t remember that I went to Hong Kong for two weeks over Christmas when they were six months old, nor being in day care at age two because the latest nanny had disappeared without trace while I worked on 7th Avenue three days a week (living in Milford,PA). They don’t remember my equivalent of Kate Reddy’s bake-sale angst amongst the zealous fundraising stay-at-home mothers of the Homestead School.
Its great to find out that it it did not matter. That they are fine. More than fine. That I can forgive myself for those perceived shortcomings, that getting off the fashion merry-go-round to have more time at home with them was a good choice too. That feeling out of it and disconnected and fat and dumb maybe was just a cocoon, a small, limited space, where the next incarnation of me could shape itself.
Of course we always are exactly where we should be.
This is easy to see with the gift of hindsight, like looking at an old photograph and wondering why you did not really enjoy the way you looked back then.
When I first saw One Beach I felt that I was exactly where I should be in the big picture of life.
So.
Thank you all Barefooters for making this possible.
Jason Baffa, Scotty and Tyler for making me look good.
Michael Pizzo for producing and Curt O’Brien for setting it up.
Sean O’Brien for his creative foresight and green spirit that gave birth to the idea of One Beach.
And of course the entire Barefoot Wine team in California and New York that worked so hard to pull it all off in time for the premiere in NYC last week.
We were all there.
In New York.
The team that made One Beach and the people it featured, called The Innovators in the film.
Kevin Cunningham, a surfer from Rhode Island who incorporates beach plastic in making surfboards from recycled materials.
Richard Lang and beautiful Judith Selby Lang, the king and queen of beach plastic, fell in love on their first date while combing Kehoe Beach for plastic debris. They incorporate beach plastic in their art from installations to photography and jewelry.
Left to right: Stephanie Gallo, Kevin Cunningham, Sean O'Brien, Barbara de Vries Jason Baffa, Judith and Richard Lang, Elizabeth and Anne. Lying in foreground is Tyler from Smash.
We watched the first screening together, wept at the end, and were all amazed at the synergy between us, four people who have never met, in three different parts of the US, who collect and work with beach plastic and whose dialog and message has evolved in an eerily similar way without ever speaking to each other.
We also had beach plastic envy as we drooled over pieces in each other’s collection.
The premiere was at the Helen Mills theatre in Chelsea, with a live feed to our own Facebook app where over 5000 people had signed up to watch the film and subsequent Q and A online.
Sitting in the director’s chairs, below ground in NYC, taking questions that Tyler, our MC, received on his Ipad from Facebookers all over, had a surreal sense of opportunity, the feeling that when we all connect we can make a difference.
Below is the One Beach film, which we hope will help raise awareness of beach plastic pollution. Numbers just released estimate that six million tons of what becomes “marine debris” (non organic material that does not break down) enters the oceans every year. One Beach has a positive message, it is upbeat about creativity and possibility, but none of us have the illusion that just selling up-cycled beach plastic into ownership can significantly reduce what washes up on our beaches every day with every tide and every wave. We want to connect to people through beauty, and our message is to for everyone to reduce our plastic foot print (300 pounds per person every year) NOW by saying no to single-use plastics.
Tip: Start with refusing bottled water and plastic shopping bags, relatively easy steps, then pick an alternative material every time there is a choice…
Here are Sean’s pictures of the making of One Beach in Eleuthera: link
My new commercial website is up, glitches and all, final version moving at laid back Miami speed. Please check it out, I welcome any feedback on look and how it works. Thank you!
To the bachelor pad which is being de-bachelored by turning the “pool” room (as in shooting pool with your mates at 3 am, after getting home from the Wall without scoring) into a third bedroom for the twins so they can do homework, hang out, bicker and sleep behind a wall (instead of the exposed upper mezzanine).
Tiesto mural in pool room will be preserved
Of course this was to be done in the ample two months that we were away and of course it was started on the Friday we returned. So now we neither have an office (pool room) nor a bedroom for the girls since everything from one room is piled in the other.
But thats OK.
They say they will be done by Wednesday.
They say.
They said they’d be done by now.
But I’m not bothered. There are bigger problems.
Like school uniforms.
Maybe one has to be genetically programmed to deal with procuring kid’s uniforms. Maybe I’m too hippy-dippy Dutch to even think about universal clothing for creative kids. See I always look to blame myself first (Have you noticed? Do you do that too? I wish I were a bit more Teaparty, and blame everyone else. Like only everyone else all the time.), still I was proud to have gathered, at Woodbury Common (Like/Love), four khaki bottoms that my trendy twins would deign to wear to school, and one pair of black pants that may get them sent home (while the color is right, the fit will be deemed too sexy, which in this city of underdressed exhibitionists is paradoxical but don’t get me started, I already wrote that blog.)
The preppy polo tops have to be bought locally since they are emblazoned with the Miami Arts Charter School logo.
lime, teal, white or black with MAC logo
Another bigger problem was getting an e-mail from TED, shortly after arrival, requesting a full run-through of my talk at 1 pm on Wednesday. This Wednesday? This Wednesday!
TED? But I was still on uniforms. Saturday was uniform day on my “what to do when we get back” list. Which also has finish homework with the girls, unpack, get food in fridge, get 2nd floor toilet and phone fixed , you know the drill.
TED!
So while I should be writing and practicing my TED talk, I’m chasing uniforms.
Yes, I’d ordered them online as the school suggested, but got a notice a few days ago that the polo’s would be ready for delivery in 5 weeks!
WTF? Right?
What are the suggesting? Homeschooling for five weeks? I mean the school is clear:
All students and parents have agreed to abide by the school uniform as described in the parent/student contract signed during registration.
Students not in uniform will be required to contact their parent and sent home.
I’m scared!
Ibiley suggests I visit any of their conveniently located Miami stores.
They lied. None of them are conveniently located. All of them are in scary shit neighborhoods that are at least 40 minutes away.
I settled on North Miami and was wise enough to call first, just to make sure they had said polos in stock, but of course got the robot who told me that August is too busy to answer the phone, and tells me to leave a message.
They’re also too busy to answer.
I find out just how busy.
But not till after getting lost in the maze of NE and NW 159th street Drive and Street and Court, at the very place where 95, the turnpike and 539 intersect in a spider-web of flyovers and underpasses and of course the exit ramp that Mapquest told me to use is Closed for Construction.
What?
You are sorry for the inconvenience?
Fuck you!
Why not just post some signs up telling how to get the fuck to Ibeley Uniforms in the industrial park (with one entrance) that I can see from the overpass which points towards the Everglades, at 70 miles an hour.
OK. So.
50 minutes later, and isn’t it amazing how proud those moments can make you (forget about a TED talk), I pull up in front of Ibiley.
Pride turns to nausea in a nano second.
Swarming around the huge warehouse, are hundreds of people of many colors (none quite as white as the three of us), several stainless steel quilted food trucks are randomly parked, and something that resembles a long line, made up from entire families (bring the kids, the toddlers, the babies, the grannies, aunts, uncles and don’t forget the neighbors) comes out from the front door into the 95 degree sunshine.
We “politely” battle our way inside only to find many feet of empty shelves and another line that resembles immigration at JFK before Christmas.
Determined (if nothing else) I find 8 tees (4 each), while yelling at the twins to help me. Unfortunately they’re catatonic with the otherness of it all, like in some culture-shock transition from the verdant woods to this urban jungle.
We join the immigration line.
After ten minutes we move close enough to spot a tiny sign over the counter.
We are out of the folowing logo patches. (you buy the tees and pay in line #1, they give you your school’s logo patches, you join line #2, the one outside, and they apply the patches).
Come back on the 28th and we will apply them for free,, it also read. (You’d have to bloody well pay ME to come back!).
There’s no actual list of said missing patches posted. I guess it changes by the minute.
So.
I grab an Ibiley sales girl who looks like she will get really drunk that night.
MAC is not on her list of out-of-stock patches.
I ponder if this is good news. I’m rather praying for an excuse to leave. But it sounds like we will be there for the next few hours. (Could I get into this Cuban/Caribbean/South American block-party atmosphere?).
The girl walks away.
The girl comes back.
“You are at the wrong location”, she says. ”MAC uses special embroidery and is only available at our Little Havana store on SW 8th Street.”
We are on NW 167th street.
You have to be from Miami to know what that really means, but imagine flying to London instead of Sydney.
We are fucked.
We leave the line.
We are hungry and buy three sandwiches, and three Cuban drink cans ( sexy looking mixed mango. papaya, passion fruit that taste like water) from the guilted truck.
“Mom, these are the best sandwiches I’ve ever had,” the twins chime, ”Yes, at least we got some really good sandwiches out of it.”
They encourage me. (Afraid that I might have a shit-fit meltdown?)
Instead I find 95 South (easy), and head towards Little Havana.
I call husband who is on the porch in PA and tells me its the first nice day in weeks.
@#$%^&* !!
He also tells me to give myself a break.
He often tells me this.
I listen. The only breaks I take are the ones he tells me to take.
He’s good to me in that way.
“You did your best,” he says. “Go home, have a swim, enjoy being back.”
He has a point.
I compromise with myself. I settle on Target, which I happen to be passing, buy the last three (a terrible number for twins) white polo’s and HP iron-0n tee shirt transfer paper.
I feel clever.
I shall go home, get the MAC logo online and iron it on.
Which I do.
While arguing with the MAC principal in my mind that this is as good as the real thing from Little Havana and that the Ibiley store was completely out of stock (good chance of that anyway, right? Given the odds so far?)
While the trip to Little Havana still looms, since three tees between twins won’t last me the promised five weeks.
They wont even last two days.
And then there is TED.
TED needs attention.
As soon as the girls are in school TED will be my lover.
But I cant. I just cant be that deliberately controversial only to lure readers into yet another story of a fight with my husband.
Anyway.
We are finally, years after buying a piece of land in Eleuthera, thinking of putting in the driveway, so I met with Mr. Sands (yes, he of making sandy driveways) to discuss topography, mature trees and boundary lines.
Serious stuff.
But Neville (Sands) is also chatty. He likes to sit in his windowless air-conditioned office and shoot the breeze.
So I told him one of my favorite Eleuthera (there are many) stories. One that involved me directly.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The year before we had rented an old house in the town of Governor’s Harbour over Christmas. Tamarind is a big, stone sea captain’s house with four big bedrooms upstairs, a large wooden central staircase, porches, etc. A little run-down, but perfect for all six of us.
In those days I was already collecting beach plastic like crazy, the yard was full of it, and I used the kitchen table for making my “jewelry”. My tool kit stood open. A small amount of silver and even less gold wire lay amongst the beach debris.
I don’t know if somehow the word got out that I was a “jeweler”.
And we were careful, Eleuthera is very safe, but still we were in town and so we checked doors and windows every night before going to bed.
That night I got up at 3 am to pee.
I never pee in the night.
I go to sleep at night and I wake up in the morning.
I do not pee.
I am also blind.
I am legally blind when my contacts sit in their little blue box in the bathroom and when I shut my eyes its about the same as having them open only darker (I am -7.25 in both eyes for those in the know).
So I get up and walk onto the landing (which is the only way from our bedroom to the upstairs bathroom.)
There….
Running up the stairs, not more than 4 feet from me, is a kid (I can tell) in a black hoodie (pulled up).
So what do I do?
I say:
HI!
What does he do?
He says:
HI!
Then he realizes that this is not quite how these situations are supposed to go (I was a little slower and still thinking that if this guy was in my house at 3 in the morning I probably knew him and ought to be polite), he turned and ran.
Raced like Jackass down the stairs and out.
OK. So now am awake, like fully and I think.
SHIT! That was a burglar!
I still have to pee so I pee and I think.
I decide that the last thing I want is husband running through the bushes with a very blunt (rental homes never have sharp knives) kitchen knife after a kid 30 years younger than he (give or take, he was at a disadvantage.)
Next I check on the girls – they are all three fast asleep.
Fate had me at their door like a sentry just in time, and when I realized this I did get shaky.
So I woke husband. Or tried.
“I just saw a burglar on the stairs, honey.”
No response.
I considered going back to bed but this would not look good in the morning. Like my story’s credibility would be diminished.
So I woke him up hard and together we found the window in the front parlor that been pried open.
the merry window access
Then we called the police.
Governor’s Harbour has one policeman on duty, at night, and he arrived about ten minutes later, looking sleepy and, well, very relaxed.
He sat down at my kitchen table, I cleared some of my beach plastic to make room for his paper work, and we filed our case.
Was anything stolen?
I hadn’t checked.
So I looked around and found that my wallet had been emptied (about six dollars,I never have cash), and that one of my bling flip-flops was missing.
One!
The chief sent me upstairs to get my passport and when I came down he was playing with my plyers and wearing my super over-magnifying glasses that are made to make tiny detailed work easier . They also make eyes look like this:
how the policeman looked up at me
He asked if I would be able to identify the kid and I said no way. I am blind. I wouldnt even be able to tell you if he was black or white.
He thought this was funny.
SO.
Now back to Neville Sands, a year plus later.
I tell him the story. Just like above, only when I get to the bit where I say:
HI! To the burglar.
Neville sits up, slaps his hand on his desk (I jump), and shouts:
“So YOU are the lady that says HI to burglars.”
WTF? I think (one does not say this in Eleuthera.)
“How do you know?” I ask.
“You are famous, man!” He says. (the man-thing one does say to women in Eleuthera). “Like everyone knows.”
“Everyone?”
“Like that stupid kid tells all his friends that he’s doing this house in town, and this lady sees him on the stairs, and she’s so crazy – she says HI to him, and he’s even more stupid and he says HI back and this makes all his friends laugh and they think its the funniest thing thats happened all year!”
How do you know this? I ask.
“Well, meanwhile the policeman on duty that night is also telling all his friends. They also think its hilarious, so everyone is telling everyone and then the “bad” guys are telling the “good” guys the story, you know the kids name and all, and now they have him cause he’s telling everyone bout you sayin’ Hi and all.”
“So they got him?”
“Yeah man! He went to Juvie for six months, he’d done some other stuff too, so don’t feel bad, it wasn’t really you.”
Then Neville told me the story of another kid who stole a Princeton (bright orange with Princeton logo) sweat shirt during a burglary and decided to wear it right away, around town. What ensued needs no further explanation.
I am procrastenating ( I need spell check) writing this new blog.
Its been a while and I have much to tell you.
Like I have been less than fair to those who may have wondered whether I did get picked to be one of the eight speakers at the TEDxMIA talks on September 13th in Miami’s New World Center.
between the lines
Yes! YES I did.
Maybe I did not post this jolly news sooner because I was kinda in denial.
Like getting it was one thing, doing it another.
And when I write now, I have to be serious and write about what I’m gonna talk about. Fifteen minutes is apparently only 1500 – 2000 words and thats not very much. I have a lot to say. I want to be poignant yet funny yet serious yet positive yet convincing.
I think too much about it, get dizzy with info and ambition and then I start loitering around the internet .
nature paints with trash
I visit HuffPost to feel manipulated.
Like this trash story about a woman, Sandy McMillin, who was evicted from Walmart for wearing a string bikini that she had bought there a year earlier (and visibly worn 24/7 ever since).
“Dress code”, was Walmart’s defense.
I have an opinion on the Walmart dress code. A strong opinion in fact. I’ve had this opinion for a while, like ever since I’ve had the opportunity to shop at Walmart (which opened in Milford circa 2000.)
You see, if Walmart really had a true customer dress code then I’d be applying for the job of enforcer (or counselor while I evict).
With enthusiasm.
Call me a snob. Call me shallow. But before you do check out the link to the tattooed/leg-braced/shaven headed Sandy McMillin, who was spotted shopping for sour cream in the clothing aisle (was she looking for a new top, and decided on sour cream instead?) and her 15 mins of fame interview and then check out an entire site devoted to the standard Walmart dresscode, link.
Now I dare you to be saintly yourself.
BTW, can someone explain to me why the story of this year’s “celebrity inspired” bikini trends, where the fashion reporter chirps: “Kate Middleton and Pippa looked white hot and we loved their sporty chic style” earned prime exposure spot right under poor Sandy in her once turquoise threadbare bikini top?
Is HuffPost merely cheering me up?
Or is this a novel guerilla tactic to sell the masses a new bikini? Like, “Well, my last year’s bikini is a lot like Sandy’s and I’d rather look like Pippa diving in that white little number so off to the mall I go….?
synergy
Another reason for not writing sooner was that I went to Eleuthera to teach two workshops. (See ,I’m not such a bad person really, just a Walmart bigot for personality texture).
The first one was at the Tarpum Bay Cultural Center (The Prep) which opened officially with my beach plastic jewelry making event. Twenty-three local kids, teenagers, had signed up and on the first morning we went to Winding Bay for a beach clean up and to collect plastic that we’d turn into jewelry. I had brought the necessary tools and trimmings, aka findings, like wire and earring hooks and stretchy string.
The inauguration of The Prep in Tarpum Bay
I displayed my jewelry and showed a slideshow of my work so far for guidance.
It’s hard to describe what happens next, but it feels like a breeze of inspiration enters our space and sweeps everyone along to a level of awareness where creation comes naturally.
Like a spell almost.
After lunch the next day I strung a (recycled) fishing rope between the porch columns and everyone, in turn, dispayed the collection they had created. I made a short film of each workshop and here is the first one:
This landmark building was first built in 1897 but was ready to be demolished when Michele Johnson, local superwoman, and her friend Ros adopted it about two decades ago and carefully restored the ruined site to its former glory. To me it is the most beautiful library anywhere. It sits on a slip of land with Caribbean sea/beach on either side. Every summer the library runs programs for the local kids and this year I was invited to be part of the recycling program.The video below tells it all.
Haynes library workshop
►
Since I taught these two workshops I’ve answered questions about where to buy tools, supplies and findings to make more jewelry. Michele, Shaun, Toni and others have brainstormed about opening a retail outlet, or maybe just have stalls that sell beach plastic jewels to the tourists who leave their artificial floating environment, i.e. cruise ships, to sample some “local” culture.
Now that would be poetic justice, since those floating cities are one of the worst polluters of Eleutheran beaches.
Sabrina from Haiti and beach plastic star at the Haynes Library
