Yes, ladies and gents, what I saw on the other side of the Baita’s* window, was worthy of a “When Harry Met Sally” moment. (I think we all know which moment I’m referring to.)
The place is packed, tiled-floor-to-wooden-rafters, with the most delectable formaggi on the planet. But my eyes and heart were riveted on two. The extra-aged Parmigiano Reggiano—be still my cuore. And the Gorgonzola, from Piemonte, which is scooped, dripping, out of its own skin with none other than a spoon. There will be no slicing for this baby.
Are you feeling what I’m feeling?
NOTES: 1. A “baita” is a typical, Alpine construction—think big chalet—made of stone and wood. In the old days, and maybe still today, cheese producers made their cheeses in them, from the milk given by the goats, sheep and cows that graze on Alpine pastures. 2. The parmigiano pictured above is a “stravecchio” (extra-aged, 30-36 months), from the high pastures of the Emilian Apennines. 3. The Gorgonozola is a Novarese Gorgonzola, which was voted the Best sweet gorgonzola of 2011 and which is among the top 14 best cheeses of Europe (“Tuttofood Cheese Award”). 4. The spoon is the “Daily Cure” spoon. Did you recognize it?
I had so much fun creating the first Urban Pattern, that I thought I’d give it another whack. For this one, I chose as my starting point, a humble pedestrian ramp on Via Canonica, in Milan. The results are in. Strangely it ended in (1) A fish-scale kimono pattern (which you’ll see near the bottom of the post)—a minimalist curved take on the linear structure that I started with and (2) A repeated cloudburst pattern—shown here—in which the linear spokes, but not the silhouette itself, dominate. But that’s the fun of these exercises. You have no idea where you’ll end up.
So. Here’s what I saw, followed by what it became, more or less step by step. There’s also a half-fan version in my drawing folder, based on the original half-ramp rendering you see below, where the shape lies in layers like wings or feathers. Very nice, but maybe for another day:
Then I amused myself by making wallpapers out of a couple of them. Forgive me, Farrow & Ball for covering up your lovely wall colors.
It’s been snowing today. So the sky and the general palette of the day are overwhelmed by whiteness (read: cold). And yet. And yet. When I walked into the vegetable vendor’s this morning, I was pleasantly ambushed by the persistent presence of red, pink and rose. Taking the charge, among the salads, was a radicchio rosa that I’d never seen. Befitting a Valentino runway, surely it would be as good to eat with the mouth as with the eyes. I took two small heads of it. And was pleased to discover, that it did not disappoint.
But this was just the beginning. There were several varieties of radicchio—both darker and variegated. (I passed.) There were radishes (rapanelli), red scallions (cipollotti), and rose tinged heads of garlic. And then, calling my name, was a small tub of olives, trying to be green, but wearing a veil of pink despite themselves. I grabbed a few of these items, though there were more, for the purpose of photographing them, and then I thought: what the heck, I’ll toss them together and eat them, too.
As if a gastronomic painter were at work behind the scenes, the flavors married and mingled beautifully as one might—sort of—have anticipated. The cautiously bitter nip of the rose radicchio, the audacious snap of the radish, the surprisingly sweet tang of the scallion, and the decisive punctuation of the paper-thin garlic slices mingled sociably under a drizzle of olive oil and a scattered pinch of sea salt. The olives were thrown on for appearances and to satisfy the voglia (craving) of the hungry photographer. Most likely the experiment of putting things together that visually “go together” doesn’t always work, but maybe it does. Nature is funny—and obliging—that way.
Hopefully you know me well enough to know that the category designation “What We Wear” does not necessarily mean what I wear. In this case definitely not. Not because I wouldn’t like to try, but because it would be suicide-by-shoe. What with the ubiquitous cobblestones and the fact that I seem to run everywhere I go these day.
Nevertheless, let us celebrate the ridiculous taken to a luscious extreme, shall we? Spotted in the vicinity of Via Moscova last week, a boutique dedicated to all things Memphis (yes, the style does persist here and there in Milan where it came into being in the 80s—brainchild of Ettore Sottsass)*, including a new line of shoes by Sergio Rossi. Eye Candy? To be sure. Foot Candy? I’m not betting on it.
•Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, the name Memphis was chosen because the first night the Memphis design collective met, they listened repeatedly to the Bob Dylan song, “Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.” How’s that for wacky?
My beleaguered Harry’s ashtray says it all: when you’ve been there, you want to hold on to the experience forever. As Cipriani the Younger says, “Treat people like kings, and kings like people.” This video says so much about why we who love Italy love Italy. The country, the people, despite the many problems that define their day to day existence give and give and give of themselves…
Growing up in the United States, I was not accustomed to seeing dogs in restaurants. In Europe, as you probably know, dogs are family and allowed most places that people are. On my last trip to New York, it seemed to me that dogs there had achieved a similar status (or maybe they’ve always had it), entering restaurants, lingerie shops and bookstores. But according to the December 17th issue of the New Yorker, in the section “Briefly Noted,” and the new book What’s a Dog For? by John Homans (Penguin), dogs all over the U.S. are undergoing a humanizing process based on a shift in the “philosophical, scientific, and popular ideas about what a dog ‘is.'” Hmmm. (Shades of Bill Clinton, no? “That depends on what “is” “is” or whatever he said.) This sounds interesting.
Meanwhile, here, you can take your large or small Best Friend with you to your favorite haunts as long as he or she is behaved at least as well as you are. Yesterday, for example, at the lovely tea room, Ristorante Grand Café al Porto, in Lugano, Switzerland—tucked into our lovely nook with a hot chocolate dense enough to hold a footprint—we noticed the following printed announcement on our table:
“Our esteemed guests appreciate the elegant and refined ambience of the Ristorante Grand Café Al Porto. So that our four-footed friends may continue to frequent the “Lugano Tea Room” we invite them to observe the following rules of “Bon Ton” (Good Manners):
• I am kept on a leash • I have class, I am well-behaved and discreet • I am fed at home • My place is under the table • I make my master look good
Compliments on my impeccable behavior flatter me and I will continue to be welcome here in the future!”
And as we were leaving, we sensed a pair of well-behaved eyes following us out the door from under a table, as if to say, “You see! That is indeed the way things work here in the Tearoom!” A lovely 8 year-old Corgi who, her “padrone” informed me, was quite used to having her picture taken by strangers, although she refused to make eye-contact with my vulgar cell phone.
This isn’t me yet, but as these ladies astutely point out, some day it will be. Gotta love their chutzpah: (Please click here; you won’t regret it: Advanced Style: Age and Beauty from Ari Cohen on Nowness.com.)
Hi everyone. And Happy Back-At-It. Just exited from a long tunnel of work work work. And though I’m tired and satisfied on the one hand, my creative mind (such as it is) wants to play on the other. So I’ve indulged myself in a project I’ve often thought of but never undertaken, and that is to create a pattern (such as for a textile) from texture that I see in the city. The pattern I’ve come up with is this:
And it came into being like this: From a wall fragment of the Castello Sforzesco to variations on color that could go on and on. I stopped when my heart felt happy and I had something I’d like to see printed on silk and wrapped around my own neck (even though yellow never does anything good for my skin):
This has been fun. I think I’ll try it again. #2 should be coming soon.
I’m really doomed on this front. I was born under the sign of Cancer, and wishywashy might be my middle name. If I ever seem strong and determined and disciplined, it’s only because I’ve struggled most of my life against my natural tendencies to see both sides to the exclusion of making up my mind, and to react with emotion instead of brain and then to lose sight completely of reason because of how I’m feeling about it all. Rather like Pooh, that bear of little brain. I digress. Or maybe I don’t. See…it’s happening even as I type. Wish. Wash.
When last I uttered the word “resolution” in this blog, I was undecided as to whether I would have any or not. And I can now say with certainty, I think, that my lack of decision is unchanged. I might. And I might not. Jonathan Cainer, a horoscopist whom I rather enjoy though I am undecided as to whether I should put any stock in such things or not (ask me how many times I read Love Signs in college with my friends, in an attempt to decipher the “signs” of love that were, I felt, all around me), had this to say about my January, and I rather liked it, as it is so unlike the way I tend to think:
Your greatest hope is that you won’t spend 2013 repeating the mistakes of 2012. You would like to feel that as you learn from past errors, you can start to enjoy life more. But are you sure that you know what you have done wrong? Perhaps some of the things that you feel most keen to correct, have more merit and meaning than you realise. This January, be open to the idea that you don’t have quite as many problems as you thought and that your year may yet bring the story of a surprisingly smooth journey to success.
I like that. I’m most often driven ad nauseum (my family will testify) by that all-American notion that I can do better. That I can improve. That action is probably required. Which is great (in doses), except that it works contrary to that other great all-American idea of living in the moment. I ask you: how the hell can a person feel relaxed and happy if he or she is consumed with idea that he or she must improve and pronto? Add to that the fact that the human brain, left to its own devices, has the dreadful tendency to think the same thoughts over and over again, and you have a recipe not for improvement but for depression.
I suppose the secret lies in writing resolutions for yourself that are reasonable, attainable, and for which at some point in the not so far future, you can say to yourself, “Well done!” and have a glass of wine in celebration. (Very similar to child-rearing, minus the wine part.) Or maybe, the success of resolutions depends on the character and nature of the person making them. And if I am to be true to my Cancerian self, it is fitting and correct that my resolutions take a bit of time finding their way. They will express themselves in terms of feelings and notions and water-colory impressions instead of hard, clean bullet-pointed items.
Rather like the lights in these pictures, they will glow and attract me, even though I can’t quite put my finger on what they are. And I’ll feel my way forward, blindly except for the intuition that in this direction a light is shining…as I’ve done for so much of my life. And I will, for once, let that be OK. Self-acceptance would be a great achievement. Maybe it will play out like that. Or maybe not. I’ll let you know.
It’s been raining here in Burgundy. And raining and raining. Presque sans cesse. But I have finally learned—all those years in Oregon helped—that when a day looks too “ugly” to venture out into, it is exactly time to do just that. Ugly is a delightfully relative term, and an ugly day, given the chance, is a jewel in the rough.
Wetness is Nature’s monosodium glutamate, without the ill side-effects. And there’s a reason saturated colors are called “saturated.” As I walked this morning, it was impossible to notice that what was green under a bland sunny sky, is now really green. What was turquoise redefines the color. And all these luscious colors, sidled up against a grey sky, only appear more delicious. The effect is stunning.
Today, my eye was pulled continuously to the mosses and the lichens which rival the most audacious flowers with their brilliance. Neon colors sprang up all around me, filling the landscape and permanently crowding out any misguided notions I had that the day wasn’t fit for man nor beast. Dilapidated buildings, gates in need of paint, and faded plastic drapes, pulled over woodpiles and pulled out of place again, here and there, by an aggressively playful wind—they were beautiful too. There was no stopping the chromatic proof: if your eyes and heart are open, you will see something that makes your day.
The Daily Cure for me is trying to smell taste touch—really experience— something, each day, that reminds me that I'm alive and, mostly, happy to be here. A small moment that should go a long way, at least in theory.
The Daily Cure 
