Nautical Lusting

With the heat wave subsiding and the weather actually being quite congenial and pleasant, contemplating sweaters is not a sickening task; normally, as June is waning, I am basking in the natural briny perfume of my own sweat. This simple cream knit is adorned with the navy outline of a ship anchor, conveniently placed across the bicep, a tribute to the sailor tattoos of old. Rough texture and bulky form, this would be ideal across the shoulders of any man, seafaring or not. Though he loves his sweaters, the filmmaker may not be the first to embrace this modern yacht club aesthetic. Sigh. One day.

(image taken from Plum Pretty Sugar Loungerie

Withdrawal, or, When Your Stylist Goes on Sabbatical

Just before I left for Spain two weeks ago, as I do before most longer business trips, I paid a visit to my hair salon and got a relaxing and needed trim. Sitting in the leather swivel chair, catching up with my stylist of three years and explaining the typical routine, cleaning up of my many layers and blunt bangs while mostly maintaining length, I was greeted with a friendly and professionally written letter, from stylist to all her clients. Detailing that starting the end of July, she would be taking a six month leave of absence, to study Italian over in Rome and hopefully intern and learn the ropes from local establishments in her native land. While certainly elated and excited that she has such a promising opportunity, and will be journeying and adventuring with her younger sister, my mind then turned to more selfish matters: what about me? What am I to be expected to do while she is gone? 

For much of my past, I have been decidedly and laughably less than high maintenance about my hair; there were many points when I had physical dreadlocks. I considered this to be a type of more raw, less hygienic tousled bedroom look. Now, I still, comparatively, put forth little effort, mostly relying on a few key products that allow me to have legitimately elegant tousled hair or an actual straight style that only requires my amateur blow drying skills, also known as dry with my head between my legs. Nonetheless, upon seeing this notification, having grown very comfortable to the almost intimate relationship I have with my stylist. With my hair being longer, past the shoulders, I come in for a trim about every six weeks, sometimes more frequently. It is my luxury, but also a necessity, so that I do not appear at the office like some repulsive cousin of a banshee. Even though my hair is long, thick, grows quickly, and is in a very basic and near impossible to screw with cut, my heart palpitated and my palms sweat, at a time when normally, my scalp being massaged and my hair toyed with, I am supremely relaxed. I have one last appointment with my girl before she departs for her grand Roman trip, where I will surely wish her the best of luck, and advise her to drink as much red wine and kiss as many young, old, single, married, what Italian men as possible. Hopefully, she can make a recommendation, for a stylist mistress, a quick fling that will ideally be fun and not painful, while she is away.

(image taken from Bangkok Post)

Woman, Bird, Star

(image taken from City Tours Barcelona)

(image taken from Visit Flanders)

(images taken from Joan Miro Foundation)

I spent this afternoon at the Joan Miro Foundation, up on Mount Juic near the infamous Olympic Stadium grounds, slowly weaving between tapestries, paintings, and bronze sculptures. Organized chronologically, with accompanying biographical context, the museum aptly displays his progression in use of color, balance, shape, abstraction, and gesture. In his earliest works included, the vision is amateurish, however, he already indicates a wild movement of brush strokes, a familiarity of color of which most other artists can only dream; his landscapes are crude but delightfully so. As he morphs, imbibing influence from the Dada movement, the Surrealist philosophy and aesthetic, and French poetics, as well as reflecting on the dramatic political and cultural tensions in his home country, his work becomes simultaneously cosmic and microscopic. In a word, universal. He rejects accepted schema and coda that we are accustomed to, inventing his own visual language, and yet invites the viewer to partake, envelopes the viewer into this seemingly simplistic and bemused symbology. 

During a brief video interview in a streaming documentary, towards the end of the collection, a local Spanish physicists remarks that Miro embraces a scientific outlook; indeed, his geometry at once alludes to overwhelming astronomical bodies, the spheres in the great space above our own planet, immense and floating and mysterious, and to the miniscule microcellular machinery hidden within our own bodies, intricate and floating and mysterious. Golgi bodies, mitochondria, vacuoles. Representations in colors unnaturally bright, yet compelling in their nascent beauty. As though he, Miro, discovered these colors in our world where no one had before, did not mix or concoct them in some process of chromatic alchemy. In some pieces, he juxtaposes with these organic and nebulous bodies straight and definite lines; in others, he does not. Certain patterns and thematics recur, without becoming signature or trite; the entire collection was awe-inspiring. For me, in particular, uplifting, especially when seeing a comment Miro had made, transitioning interest and scope from traditional canvas medium to larger scale public sculptural and mural works: painting on a canvas is to inspire poetry. He is certainly right there.

Celine Resort 2013

Over-sized, near briefcase clutch? Check. Tailored navy blazer? Check. Silk neck scarf? Check. Red accents? Check. For the traveling, bustling, and hustling businesswoman who very nearly forgot it was resort season as she entertains high-maintenance clients with cheap beer. If only.

(image taken from Style)

Hazy Cosmic Jive

(image taken from Screened)

(image taken from Science Fiction Wallpapers)

(image taken from Movies MMGN)

(image taken from Cinema is Dope)

So I was wrong. So wrong. This is neither a rare nor a monumental occurrence, surely not one that requires any type of shame or celebration, however, it is a bit ironic, given my rather vehement and facetious recent post, in which I heralded turn down service chocolates as the highlight to a trip to South America, due to the exquisite executive level ecstasy they elicited. For, my broad generalization about a stay in one business hotel in any city being essentially the equivalent to a stay in any other business hotel in another was, obviously, wildly off base. In a truly American myopic perspective, I neglected to think of the innumerable national and regional franchises, ones that, surely, adopt the local cultural flavors and aesthetics. The little guys.

For the past four nights, I stayed at the Barcelo Sants, a hotel that claims to be both business and resort based, though, when situated above a large train terminal in the heart of Barcelona, more than a stone's throw from the beach or any body of water, the resort seems more than a gross stretch. This locale had been chosen based on two core items: a low price and an open availability. A colleague had informed me that it had been recently renovated, though he was unsure of the exact details, having yet to visit. Nonetheless, this all seemed quite optimistic. As I approached the front desk, passing through the requisite revolving doors, I was a bit shocked by the starkness of the white walls, with a black carpet, scattered with colored stars. Above the front desk, large capital letters read "Boarding Desk"; all chairs and furniture appeared to either be some sort of bizarre capsule, meant to launch a monkey or dog or other non-human creature far beyond the stratosphere, or some retro-futuristic, 1970s rocket ship cockpit. With one sweeping glance, I quickly realized, indeed, the entire hotel was spaceship and space travel themed, with not a subtle but an overt and brazen tribute to the Stanley Kubrick epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Above the entire front lobby, a large and spacious and overwhelming neutral atrium, a simple geometric mosaic mural of the infamous 2001 astronaut character, in his space helmet, staring with an amazed horror at the computer before him. A friendly enough receptionist gave me the key to my modest accommodations, not surprisingly labeled as a "boarding pass."

Beyond the front desk, all walls, carpets, and other ornamentation still a stark contrast of either black or white, there was this computer console that could be borrowed from the set of the Men in Black franchise, a comment both painful and pathetic, because, it is actually a franchise. I was soon greeted with more moon-shaped chairs, sliced into half cross sections. The bar is clean, quite befitting for freeze-dried foods and vacuum sealed beverages, though, disappointingly, this seems to be the only arena in which the hotel decided to drop the metaphoric front. Tables scattered about were decorated with bizarre stunted cacti plants in silver colored pots, cacti that had been spray painted neon colors to appear ethereal and unearthly; perhaps this stratagem worked for some. Stepping into the elevator, again clinically white, the floor was an onyx black with glittering celestial-like glittering objects, in a rather regular, non-constellation forming pattern. At my floor, a large faux window, looking from the confines of a our constructed craft into a superficial space, the moon prominently and inaccurately portrayed in the background. Again, white and black, odd geometric lines and weird capsules. The hall was completely dark; as I neared my room, low vertical lights between each room automatically illuminated. I nearly burst out laughing. 

Thankfully, in addition to the now familiar white and black, my room had some fake light wood paneling. It, too, had some strange bubble window that looked onto an alien landscape, one that connoted an unknown and forbidden planet; across the window glass, in white, were the numbers of fabricated coordinates. And I believe a random temperature listing.

Alas, unfortunately for me, despite this incredibly ridiculous pretense of cosmic modernity and technological mastery, the tap water still tasted as though I were licking the used hamster shavings inside of a busy pet store, and there were no wash clothes, anywhere, on the entire premise. The evolution of man.

Snarky commentary soundtrack: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust David Bowie; "Erase/Rewind" the Cardigans (on repeat)

Day to Night in Barcelona

I have been here in Barcelona for about a week now; as is to be expected, packing for a trip that entails both professional business ware and some romping clothes for a weekend off from the job is nearly impossible, at least, when confronted with limited suitcase volume. Earlier in the spring, I purchased this stylized Ralph Lauren black sport coat, immediately recognizing its worth in utility and in aesthetics for my wardrobe. Since landing a spot in my quite contained and crowded closet, this beauty has earned a few stamps in the passport traveling to and fro with me. Not formally part of a suit, it is a great complement, and professional partner, to a number of my tailored dresses, a combination I tend to favor during the summer months when pant suits seem suffocatingly toxic. This week, I paired the blazer with a new broad striped white and black sweater for the daytime look, coupling this with a clean, simple camel pencil skirt. Broad stripes lent a sort of official nautical look to the jacket, as in, work on an executive steam liner ship as the captain, however, overall, the look was fun and youthful, as well as warm Mediterranean weather appropriate.

Earrings of gold, pearl, and a sort of onyx black were an obvious choice for this jacket and sweater combination; the black and gold are mirrored, while the pearl just exudes a classic lifestyle that befits a blazer emblazoned with an embroidered emblem.

For the evening following any professional obligations, spent wining and dining with colleagues at a local delicious dive Thai joint, otherwise known as copious consuming of hot curries and cheap white wines, I switched out the sweater for this plain white tee shirt. A well fitted plain white tee shirt is a true gift from God. Paired with some denim and a deep red lip, the white tee will immediately evoke 1990s Guess girl connotations. It is simple and effortless. With a blazer like this, which, frankly, is a bit superficially bombastic and stuffy, the plain tee shirt drops down the pretension to something casually traditional and elegant. True classic. Alas, this particular white tee shirt has seen its time in rotation: wear, frolic, wash, rinse, repeat, many times. It is probably time to be retired, or at least, demoted to weekend cleaning. I am glad it had one last whirl out here in Barcelona. To cover my legs and other more sensitively intimate regions, I wore a plain black skinny jean from the Gap.

I found these teetering on the obscene gold Capricorn earrings a number of months back in a small antiques shop in a neighboring town. They are about an inch and a half in diameter, a feat which these images really fail to capture in its true disgusting glory. Between the gilded almost Byzantine look, the impeccable texture, and the gorish flaming red bejeweled eyes, not to mention the symbology relevant to my birth date, these were love at first sight.

Leopard print tuxedo flats were the perfect shoe to marry the classic prep aesthetic of my jacket with the gaudy funkiness of my goat hoop earrings; these were one of the wiser purchases I have ever made in the shoe department.

Excitement on the Executive Level

In a modern global economy, one where markets across the continents are connected through various modes of instantaneous communication and transaction with technological and media advances, when you have been to one large franchise chain business hotel, you have been to them all. Certainly, outside the tall portrait window of the twentieth floor of a particular establishment, the vista will transform, conform to the landscape of the city in which the assembly-line building was constructed: desert, strip malls, skyscrapers, Pacific Ocean, wide open and empty plains. I am eternally grateful to imbibe these views greedily, as a recycled air conditioned wind sweeps across my hair, a backdrop of large square prints that hang obtrusively and uninspired above the set of double beds. During these first few years of my arguably professionally legitimate career, I have acquired more than a handful or so notches on my business hotel belt; thankfully, these generally come with the frequent flyer miles to prove it. Overall, no single property comes to mind as outstanding, each one fairly uniform in their mediocre breakfast buffet offerings and each one diligent in the requisite and humbly respectful toilet paper triangle fold. Not surprisingly, each also dedicated in the fight for our environment, kindly pleading with patrons, but not enforcing any ecological edicts, to reuse towels from shower to shower. To be honest, as I am often delinquent about laundry in my own home, one of the welcome aspects of busy travel is the prospect of perpetually new and clean towels and linens. After one use, that towel is tossed aside, to the ground. There is some shame, but only a little. Not sufficient shame to cease my wanton towel use, consistent from cookie-cutter room to cookie-cutter room.

Occasionally, however, through a fortuitous force known as random dumb luck and poor scheduling, or perhaps, working in an absurdly regulated and stringent industry, I am promoted to bask in the glories of the executive level when all other hotel rooms are booked solid. Apparently, such an echelon is beyond industry compliance for many typical physician attendees for most pharmaceutical-sponsored events, so, a simple and lowly writer such as myself must make the sacrifice. Last weekend, in Lima, I was called upon to greet this dutiful compliance challenge, accept the top floor executive suite, so that some deserving consultant neurologist could slum it in a lesser room and not cause any regulatory eyebrows to raise. In addition to stretching towards infinity views of a new and exciting city, I was able to singularly enjoy more down pillows than is needed or is necessary for at least five people. Lovely and obscene.

In addition to the copious pillow comfort, I obviously, as is evidenced by the ludicrous accompanying photographs to this jocular rant, enjoyed the simple and well executed luxury of the J.W. Marriot turn down service. The meticulous packing featuring tiny black satin bows was such a beautiful touch. I overcame the exhaustion of jet lag and the hard labor of sitting in a chair at a six hour meeting just to document the conscientious effort.  And, those waiting with a suffocating bated breath, my delight did not end there...

Two different flavors: coffee and coconut. Each admirably delicious and worth the calories, calories my bathing suit-averse and disappointingly soft body did not need. Slaving away in a ridiculous cubicle does not, apparently, exclude one from some of the finer mundanes of life.