tuesday time. tuesday time again.
it’s been one of those weeks where it seems like it’s been busy, but looking back, i’m not really sure what i have to show for it. some of the excitement has been work-related: two houses i worked on are now under construction and there are, of course, as always, problems to solve that only crop up when things are underway and timelines are tight and money is on the line. questions that need answering that are only just now being prompted.
this part of the job can be very stressful (if i fucked something up), tedious (if i did not fuck something up and just need to point someone to the information they already had) and/or thrilling (when someone else fucked something up and now we all need to figure out how to fix it together.) it usually means a lot of driving around from site to site, which is fun, and pointing at drawings and squinting at half-built buildings and starting sentences with “what if we just…” and waiting for people who know more than me to either tell me i’m an idiot or do the “hmm, actually, maybe this guy’s not an idiot” type of face. you probably know that face. slam on you.
it’s also a good reminder that the way we build things is, with some exceptions, pretty stupid. architects and builders should be in the same room from day one. i shouldn’t be getting clarifying questions thirty seconds before the concrete truck starts pouring. we should have figured out if we could afford to do things a certain way like, six months ago, together. there should be fewer surprises, and there should be more communication.
in general though it’s a fine job. we all have to have jobs. as a friend recently told me, at this point you probably have to spend your life staring at some kind of screen and clicking around on some kind of computer — you’re never going to be rich enough not to do that. and with that context, clicking around on a computer in the way i have been trained to isn’t too bad.
except when i meet people who are younger than me and make more money than i ever will in my life, and seem to have absolutely no moral qualms with the work they’re doing. in those moments, sometimes, i wonder.
anyway what i was i talking about? i forget. let’s get into it.
1. painting
not what you expected, is it! probably not, assuming i managed to change the preview image correctly.
when i was in chicago, i visited the garfield park conservatory — an incredible collection of art-nouveau-looking greenhouses and domes and passageways and ponds. it’s a pretty magical place. chicago was humid as shit the entire time i was there, so the interior was not too different from the exterior, but i can imagine that going there in the wintertime must really be something special. experiencing the stark contrast between the brutal snowy cold and the steamy, slightly ethereal man-made jungle.
and i took a lot of pictures and one of them was of fish. so that’s the inspiration here.
so what were the goals for this one. well:
simple, graphic composition
fish in water - how does the color change in the water vs above it
ferns overhanging water and the way the tones step down the further back they are
ripples and reflections
with that in mind here’s the sketch. very straightforward.
initial colors. i didn’t go back through and revise these endlessly like i sometimes do or like i expected to - they worked for me off rip. rare! probably means i’m getting incredibly good at picking colors. probably means i’m becoming some kind of genius.
once again i did not save a lot of process interval shots here and for that i apologize. but you can see the gradation on the ferns and the effect of the water. also adding fern shadows on the water and slightly gradating the water color
almost done. the shadows have been tweaked into ripples as well, and a couple deeper fish were added. by me, to be clear.
for the final i added a light red wash over the fish to make it seem more golden.
now for the traditional end-of-segment-one review and analysis of my own shit. this is fine. i think the composition is OK and i like the graphic whites of the ripples. the fish does not look how i wanted it to in my mind’s eye — i just wasn’t patient enough to find the balance between drawing a million fussy little scales in exactly the way i was picturing, and actually finishing the thing. i like the shadows on the water. i don’t like the shapes of the ferns but i do like their colors. i think i would take the fish’s eye off if i did it again, but i might just make it a different color. the green is slightly too brown.
simple!
2. poem
thread poem - summer 2021
you’ve been sinking through rooms
full of people whose books you’ll never read
this city goes on forever
and somewhere under all that brick
is one end of a thread
3. kitchen cleanout noodles
i’m moving soon. i’ve been living in a one bedroom apartment on the west side for a year now, in the part of portland that you’d call the pearl district if you were a realtor but if you were looking for a bar to hang out at you would not google “pearl district bar.”
it was nice to have my own place for a huge chunk of the pandemic, and it was big enough that i could somewhat separate my work area from my cooking area from my sleeping area etc. it had zones. but a big part of the reason i moved here was they gave me two months of free rent, which, when spread across a 12 month lease, took the rent from “insane” to “affordable if i stretch.” and stretching was easy when everything was closed and there was nothing else to spend money on. but now, the deal is over, and i cannot afford insane rent.
so i’m moving back to the east side, into a house with some very lovely-seeming people i found on craigslist. i’ll have a lot less of my own kitchen space, so i’m trying to eat through as much of my cabinet food as possible before i move.
which brings us to these noodles.
the plan is to roast some broccoli, make some spicy tofu crumbles, throw that all on some buckwheat noodles with tahini sauce, and top the whole thing with various condiments and sauces i haven’t finished that are living in jars in my fridge.
i love roasted broccoli. olive oil, salt, pepper, and a 450 degree oven, and 15 minutes later you have a delicious load-bearing column for almost any meal.
sauce for the tofu crumbles to marinate in — chili sauce, soy sauce, oil, rice vinegar (i used the oil tablespoon, can you tell), and sesame oil.
press a block of tofu, cut it up into 8 even-ish slabs
fry it up in some oil, flipping each slab over once, and let cool on a rack
then roughly crumble up the slabs. they’re crispy on the outside but still soft on the inside. you should just use your fingers but these were too hot still so i used a blunt spatula. it’s good to have the crags and snags, so don’t just chop them.
then toss the crumbles in the sauce, and let them sit while you make other stuff. actually you’ll just let them sit permanently - the sauce stays with the crumbles. it’s nice to keep a container of these just in the fridge so you can throw it on stuff when you want some extra protein or something.
meanwhile cook up the buckwheat noodles, drain, and rinse in cold water so they stop cooking. then: this tahini sauce is amazing. tahini, soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, and ginger if you have it (i did not). blend it up, and pour over the noodles.
add roasted broccoli and spicy tofu crumbles
finally, top with some of that ginger-scallion sauce i made the other week and some sesame seeds and some chili-garlic sauce i needed to finish. and voila! noodles with leftovers.
4. was it good?
kind of a boring section four this week but for a lot of reasons i’ve been thinking about this vaguely boring question that i have nevertheless been noticing forming the basis of a lot of interactions recently. not just mine, but in the general atmosphere.
i went on a date last week (thankfully becoming less of a rare occurrence - please hold your jokes) and when you tell people that you went on a date the other night, the first question is usually some variation of “was it good” (or “how was it” to which you reply “good”). and it was good, as far as these things go — we had a great conversation, our senses of humor weren’t complete mismatches, etc. we may see each other again but that’s none of your business.
this is also the first question that comes up when someone mentions a show they recently saw, or a movie they watched. was it good? yes, it was good. or a restaurant or new bar: was it good? eh, no, not really. and from there, you can easily change conversational direction, and move on to the next piece of content or recent experience that needs to be categorized.
in most cases this is a basically fine and normal way to communicate, which i think is actually what i find frustrating about it, now that i’m actually sitting down to think about it via writing. i don’t really care if you thought something was “good” — we are each moving through life in such different ways that that really is meaningless to me. i guess it gives an overall framework through which to navigate the rest of the conversation, if there is a “rest.” but as a starting point, it’s pretty bland — which is, of course, the whole point.
you can’t really start a conversation with “oh, you saw that movie, i’ve been wanting to see that — based on the path your life has taken to bring you here, where did it resonate the most deeply?”
or “oh yeah, your date! what’s the biggest secret you two shared with each other, and why didn’t you share anything deeper?”
or “i heard about that bar — was it the kind of place that made you feel better about drinking on a Tuesday? did it remind you of your parents house? in what way?”
those are much more interesting questions, of course. and maybe much closer to the things that are actually potentially compelling about each of those experiences. but asking them like that, you sound like a total lunatic. or if not a lunatic, one of those people who are exhaustingly sincere about everything to the extent that it’s actively off-putting. or one of those people who “hates small talk” and sees it as their mission in life to spend as much time as possible hovering just outside other people’s comfort zones, like a mosquito outside a tent.
i guess part of the onus is also on the person relating the experience. “i saw a movie the other day” is really just as boring of a thing to say as “was it good.”
i guess also at this point in my life i would rather know if something is interesting rather than “good” and isn’t that a tedious thing to say. was it “good” when the lighting designer for this house i’m working on compared the house to the Berlin wall in the very first meeting she ever came to with the clients? well i don’t know. i guess probably not. but it sure was interesting.
ultimately i don’t have a big point here. probably something something consumer culture or whatever. it was just something that for some reason, i noticed recently, but which has been going on for, i assume, our entire lives. so once again, who cares.
and if someone asks you if this newsletter is good, well. i guess i wouldn’t be offended if you just said “yes” and changed the subject.
okay well. another long one. i think it’s all the pictures. have a good week everyone. see ya next tuesday. bye.