b-ratedly yours

mes amis–

il y a beaucoup de temps that i don’t write.

je sais, je sais.

fugit hora, memento mori

i have been re-acclimating to human life after my time at the ant colony better known as macdonalds. i encourage everyone to apply. it was a delightful experience and one i hope to repeat before i die! the sledding wasn’t half bad either.

scivolare!

allora? where does this leave us.

i have been shy of the theatre of late but am hoping to get back on the band wagon with some posts about various art ongoings. but one must rest in order to feel resplendent. my hibernation will soon conclude and i am sure i will then back to the web logs.

in the meantime, i gift to you a new blog titled “b-rated.”

80-89

i caught wind of this blog at the end of 2012 (a b-rated year if ever there were one!). yes, mes amis, life is not just made of As and A+s… life is made up of second bests and almost could haves. this blog celebrates the second tier and those courageous enough to admit preferring a silver medal to a gold. i try to avoid most B-rated eateries in nyc but what can one do? they do crop up now and again. and often the pull of nostalgia is too great to fight.

C grades are rare… there is a C-rated dining establishment below the office-i-frequent-mondays-through-fridays (the poetic justice is too juicy that i will avoid all quips and snips) and let me tell you: chef yu, despite it’s C or perhaps because of it, continues to bustle.

in any case, i do hope that the B-rated blog staff gets its act together to post more often than on a quarterly basis. you’d think they were as lazy as literary folk! heh.

kippy

journaling di nuovo

my friends and fellow citizens—

greetings from a land where the earth is frozen but the heart and mind are afire…! i am enjoying a sojourn at a country estate where other artists work on various projetti. as for me, i am relaxing and basking. long walks, long naps and reading reading reading.

plus, I have been keeping a record of my state of mind and (lack of) activity with a notebook. si, amici miei, I have been journaling di nuovo! as a youth I kept a journal—never a diary mind you!—and it is a most pleasant thing to do. better to get all your worries and frets out on paper than have a turmoil of the tum!

a personal journal!

i also find that putting pen to paper has a kind of ancient and olden feeling. to see my dear chicken scratch move across a page… to marvel as the pen’s ink catches a glint in the low evening light…these things bring a small joy to me—however small they may be.

moreover, as I write down my thoughts and observations—and yes feelings too—I sometimes realize: oh kippy, you are such a tom petty! a woe written down from a few days past seems not so tragic in the present.

i have also been deeply engrossed in a biography about wittgenstein. my studies of philosophy were entirely continental so reading this analytic mumbo jumbo both fills me fear and dread. yet, on an interpersonal level i have great affection for this fellow, even if he is also confouding.

anyhoo, time to make the donuts! (yes, i am doing a small kitchen stint here at macdonalds!)

i dream of a gluten-free versione

a bientot,
kippy

mac bowel

mes amis—

life is nothing if not a series of strange coincidences, n’est pas? i write to you from a colony .. no not a penal one but an artistic one! macdonalds is the oldest artist colony—not to mention fast food chain—in the united states. or does that distinction go to the in and out burger? at any rate, one can feel the ghosts of past artisti! thornton wilder, i tip my hat to you. now get me a happy meal. gluten free bun. and step on it!

c’est delicieux!

anyhoo. imagine my surprise when no sooner had i dropped my bags in my “monday music” studio to discover the names of playwrights, poets and composers past. there on the “tomb stone” as they call it (always macabre at old micky d) was the name “C. Dale Young.” i shrieked and lept off the bed in both surprise and delight.

john hancocks of macdonald fellows

in my salad days i was on the staff of my college’s art and literature magazine. my matriculation to stylus was more a reflection of my hope to overtake the magazine than a genuine interest in art and letters. alas. i would succomb to stylus even attempting to make it good. after all, it was the only group of misfits who would have me. in my final year as editor-in-chief, i relished my authority even though i did none of the actual work. leave that for the grammarians. this kippy still don’t know her commas from her colonoscopies!

semi colon

anyhoo. one day there was some kind of lecture convening. i arrived rumpled and late. no surprise there. to my intrigue the speaker was not the typical BC fare but a handsome man of ambiguous ethnicity sporting a fine suit. he intoned instead of spoke. perhaps i misrecall him as pompous in my head. i cannot know. i just remember being enraptured. he informed his audience that he was a poet and a doctor. “I don’t know why people always act so surprised,” he declared. “I see poetry and medicine not as mutually exclusive tracks but subjects that work with each other.”

i leaned in. might i be able to do incongruous things with my life too? C. Dale Young was an accomplished man of medicine and of letters (he had recently published a poetry collection). might i one day do something, anything with my life? ooh the hope of youth! the lecture’s lasting impression on my impressionable brain creates a nice confluence of coincidence pour moi as I attempt to write my own poetics here at macdonalds. now, where’s that happy meal?

—

the day is a misty gray one and i am anxious to dig in. but what of it and how of it? how to dig when the weeks lay ahead, sprawled out like a lover on a bed? i don’t want to get everything done at once. nor do i want to stress myself out over the making of the art, bien sur! the yoga felt good this morning but can I keep this up? perhaps I should have brought my water colors…’twould have been a welcome distraction.

i suspect my moon boots will be getting a lot of good use.

the finest footwear

i do hope that the snow doesn’t all melt. i’d rather have a cold snap, long johns and all, and feel winter proper than be in the wilderness of global warming with mucky downtrodden fields. but these are just one colonist’s wishes.

a bientot,
kippy