She had many thoughts running through her head, but none would gel into anything tangible.

She turned 34 today. At lunch she sat and watched the world dissolve in front of her until it became ghostly translucent. “So ephemeral,” she thought.

A wealth of interesting links from Online 100, an online "exhibition" curated by one hundred people who were asked to select links that examined five aspects of the arts on the web, could have kept her surfing for hours. She was especially interested in the project because it covered a wide scope of artistic fields and it featured a large number of UK sites with which she was unfamiliar.

She had spent the last several days working on her big, soft, fabric sculptures for an upcoming exhibition at Spark Gallery called It's a Girl Thing. She still had one piece that had to be finished, which required hours of hand stitching. The exhibition was scheduled for installation on February 4, so she was running against the clock.

She came across some work by Stefan McGrath on Slate. He had turned quotes from Bush's speeches into strangely fascinating poems. After reading them, she thought perhaps she could make it through the next four years if she thought of the presidency as a long Dada poem.

"Families"
Families
Is where our nation finds hope
Where wings take dream

"Who Them Was"
When I was coming up,
It was a dangerous world,
And you knew exactly who they were.
It was us versus them,
And it was clear
Who them was.
Today,
We are not so sure
Who the they are,
But we know they're there.

"Koan No. 9"
I understand
Small business growth
I was one.

She found a website where this artist was selling all of his life on ebay. It made her fantasize about selling all her stuff--her bed, computer, clothes, dishes, even her toothbrush. She imagined she would feel so light and free when everything was gone.

The artist had also chronicled a road trip to North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas in an online publication called Temporama. It made her feel nostalgic for Missouri.

Last night she came back from a two day trip to Manhattan. She had moved away over a year ago now. She wondered if people could tell she wasn't a New Yorker by looking at her. The problem was that she felt like an outsider--an instantly recognizable outsider. Like those fresh faced, rosy cheeked Europeans--toting backpacks with smiles on their faces--too healthy and happy to be New Yorkers.

She visited twenty-eight galleries and one museum. Unfortunately, not much of what she saw stuck in her mind with the exception of a couple of video works by artist Omer Fast. Her favorite was the 2-channel video installation at PS 1 entitled Glendive Foley. The artist juxtaposed views of suburban houses in Glendive, Montana--the smallest television market in the U.S.--with shots of himself producing the soundtrack footage with his hands and mouth. On one screen would be a view of a house with a couple walking past and a car driving by, while on the other would be gridded scenes of the artist making the sounds of the couples' footsteps, the car's "whoosh" as it passed, wind in the trees, and a dog barking. She felt a desire to hear the sounds as really belonging to the places, but it was countered by the visual evidence that they had been produced by the artist in a studio. It created a strange sense of displacement.

Most of all it had been good to see her friends. It seemed to her that although she lived and worked upstate, her social life was still in NYC.

In the morning:
The freshly curled hair--warm from the curling wand--felt lighter as it curled against her scalp. She had almost forgotten the pleasure the warmth caused. Her face and body relaxed. She remembered when this feeling was commonplace, a morning ritual of her teenage years. It held something special, like a promise.

At lunch:
She sat down at the cafe table. Across from her were a man and a woman at separate tables. She opened her book, took a bite of muffin, and looked down at the words on the page. She could feel someone staring at her. It was the gaze of someone checking her out the way men did to women they thought were attractive. She looked up expecting to catch the man in the act, but it wasn't the man who was staring at her. It was the woman.

In the afternoon:
She came across an article written by Douglas Coupland, the Gen X guy. It was on getting the joke of Jeff Koon's artwork. It was a good read.

Over the past few nights she dreamt of being held hostage—first by terrorists on top of the World Trade Center, next by a suburban Connecticut family of cannibals, and then, last night, by a husband/wife duo who were leaders of a cult. In each dream she plotted her escape, but each time she failed.

Her mother sent her a letter. The letter was from her grandmother--the last one written before her grandmother's mind succumbed to the painkillers and to the growing confusion caused by the deterioration of age. The letter was written in a shaky, sprawling hand. She read:

"Fri Nite

Dear Mellie,

Every nite I think
Mellie is coming this
eves end. But you
still have to come.
So hurry up and come.
You will realize
what it is to be free.
It is so good to be
free.

I've had my supper.
I was free to pick
up what I wanted.

I forgot what I
wanted.

Elena is coming in
tomorrow. We are
going shopping. But what
do you ware, just
staying in bed."

Today she slept through most of the day.

Last night she saw something horrifying. It was the museum’s After Hours, an event where people can come to the museum and enjoy sitting at cabaret style tables while visiting and listening to local musicians. A white woman jazz pianist, who had wrangled her way into a booking through her friendship with a museum trustee, was the evening’s performer. The woman started with standard jazz fare—backed up by a bass and drums. It wasn’t good music, but the woman made up for her lack of musical talent by having a great rapport with her audience. A large number of the audience were friends of the woman, and they were caught up in her performance—smiling and singing along.

In the second-half of her act, the woman stood up and said, “Sixty years ago my father made a little dancing man. This little man is very special to me." The woman reached into her bag and pulled out a black-face minstrel doll with white gloves and spats. The wooden doll was jointed and attached to a stick.

"He doesn't have a name, he's just a little nameless man," the woman said. "I'd like a volunteer to make him dance while I play." The woman went into the mostly white audience and gave the toy to a man sitting at a near-by table. The woman went back to the piano and played a jig while the man wiggled the stick making the toy jump and dance.

The curator was beside himself and she was quite in shock at the performance herself. They stood there, uncomfortably going over their options on how to stop what was happening without making a scene. She did not know what to do, but the curator decided to write a note to the woman telling her to put the doll away. He went up and gave it to her and waited for her to read it. The woman took the doll and put it back in her bag. The curator then asked if the woman had thought whether this stunt might not be offensive to African-Americans. The answer was a simple “Yes.”


In the morning a man phoned the museum asking for the name of the person who had organized the event. “That would be me,” she said. He thanked her and said that he wanted the information because he was going to write something for the local newspaper.

“Was there something about last night’s performance that you had an issue with?” she asked. He would not answer her query directly.

“The museum staff had concerns about last night’s performance,” she said. “I wanted to know if you also had some concerns.” He asked if she was speaking of the jointed black-face doll. “Yes,” she said. “We were very upset about it. We have no control over the content of a musician’s act and we were shocked when we saw the doll. We spoke to her and put an end to it as soon as we could.” He said he was glad to hear that the staff had taken action.

“Please accept our apologies,” she said, “We won’t be asking her back for another performance.” Her voice was trembling at this point, the damage had been done and she knew that no apology could undo it.

She loved screensavers, so she was thrilled to find Refresh, an online exhibit of screensavers by artists. It included 80s artists like Peter Halley and Jenny Holzer, along with some of her favorite young artists like Paul Pfieffer and Chris Finley. She was especially excited by the Pfieffer piece. She'd seen the video in a NYC gallery several months before. It featured a close-up of a basketball taken from televised games. The video was carefully edited so that the ball remained centered on the screen, defying gravity as it spun with hands passing over and around. She'd fallen in love with the work, with its seamless interweaving of spirituality, art, and sports. She never dreamed she'd be able to have a copy of her very own.

She wished she had a faster internet connection so that she could download all of the screensavers and save them forever on a compact disk.

She was always on the outlook for new art. Today she found that SFMOMA had just put up the website for their new show 010101. They had commissioned a number of artists to do web-based projects for the exhibition. Not only was the site for the exhibition well designed, but the artists' work was some of the better projects she'd seen online. She especially enjoyed entropy8zuper!'s Eden Garden 1.0.

The people at work were so nice to her on this her first day back since Christmas. The director was smiling and happy. Her two new bosses, who were her co-workers just two weeks ago, were gentle and easygoing. She felt guilty for her negative thoughts about them on New Year's Eve. "Maybe my ego was out of control," she thought. "Maybe yoga is helping me get perspective."

She decided to look into a masters program in museum studies.

She found the McKnight Foundation survey of 405 artists from Minnesota online in a nicely designed Flash format. The survey, entitled Six Questions, 2,430 Answers, asked six questions including, "How much do you think an artist needs to live on?" and "Have you any specific advice to give to young people who wish to earn a living from art?"

In reading the responses, she was amazed how dissatisfied most artists were with their current situation, and yet their advice leaned towards "Don't give up" and "Be true to yourself."

Her January horoscope noted that she would be "in a positively reclusive mood now," which was true because she wanted to spend her time thinking about her artwork and her writing. She liked reading that after January 10th Mercury would be moving into Aquarius, her own sign, "adding some spirit and incisiveness to your communication."

However, there was a downside. "Mars is creating some very unpleasant vibes from bosses and colleagues at work," the horoscope read, "Some jealousy is likely, or at least certain grudges may be being held against you. Be aware that your own assertive, rather self-righteous and arrogant attitude at times could be the cause of the problem. You are nearly always right in your perception of issues, but not always gracious in your expression of them. Others often interpret your detachment as a sense of your own superiority, and it can infuriate the other guy, especially if they are Taureans, Scorpios or Leos. This month, those most subject to this sort of confrontational wrangle at work, are those born January 24th to February 12th."

Her birthday being on January 26th, plus her own knowledge that she came across as too pushy and superior at work made her realize the truth that was held in the horoscope's statement. She better watch her attitude or things could get really miserable.

Except for the work stuff, the horoscope seemed pretty positive. "A day of almost spiritual inspiration is indicated on January 14th, especially if born January 24th to 26th. The really good news is that Jupiter's renewed direct motion on the 25th is really going to add momentum to your love life and creative inspiration, and further the interest of issues to do with your present or future children. Your social life and desire for fun will also get a boost, and sexually you will definitely start to feel a little more predatory."

She wondered at the sexual predator part. It would take more then Jupiter for her to get that kind of boost, she thought.

Horoscope by Leigh Oswald from artnet.com