I really had no business going to work today, since I spent the past two days suffering from a cold so bad I could barely feed and clothe myself. But go I did, and somehow managed to put out all of yesterday's fires and today's new ones besides. The goodies I had waiting for me in my mailbox when I got home were my reward for making it through:
- A Lonely Planet Thai phrasebook. I'm fully planning to work my way through a good part of my Teach Yourself Thai CDs before my trip to Bangkok this fall, but Lonely Planet always includes the important things standard language courses don't cover, like how to explain that I'm a member of the Green Party or how to tell someone to piss off.
- A Postcrossing postcard from Beijing, featuring a photograph by David Shrigley. I only got my first Postcrossing postcard yesterday (a kitty card from Germany!), so I feel lucky to have gotten my second one today already. I'm newly energized to send more cards out too. So far my own cards have reached Finland, Brazil, and Germany.
- Last but absolutely not least, the new SFMOMA calendar. I already knew that the museum would be hosting the West Coast premiere of Eve Sussman's The Rape of the Sabine Women at the beginning of May, with a host of screenings of the film as well as a performance and panel discussion, and I'm eagerly waiting for tickets to go on sale for that. But now I discover their May film series is going to deal with the 40th anniversary of the events of May 1968, and then oh my lord throughout June they are going to screen the entirety of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, divided up into 4 programs. Yes I will be at all of them, though I'm going to have to miss Program 2 the weekend that I'm in London. I suppose it's worth it.
Speaking of SFMOMA goodness, this last Saturday I attended a discussion there called Landscape Is Destiny that was organized in conjunction with the excellent photography exhibitions the museum has on display right now, and it was just one of those talks where I walked out literally vibrating with new ideas and connections. All three of the speakers were Bay Area locals and shared unique perspectives about landscape gained through their art and writing, and I knew I was in the right place when they favorably name-checked CLUI halfway through. I was already a huge fan of Rebecca Solnit's writing and activism and Michael Light's work with both lunar photography and images of nuclear test blasts, but now I can also add Trevor Paglen to the roster of my favorite local artists. His work is difficult to classify but centers on trying to see things the government doesn't want us to see, whether the patches assigned to secret operations or the planes used to conduct renditions. He has a solo show opening at the Berkeley Art Museum in June called The Other Night Sky which I think will be addressing satellites, and you can bet I will be checking that out. Experimental geography? Hot.