Any Fruit Will Do: New Things.

Lately I've been trying new things.

New things are usually good, usually.

I like it that this weather is new. Fall makes me want to roll up into a giant ball made out of every scarf I own and sleep for days; except - I would want to get out to drink coffee, get diabetes from the coconut cake I just discovered at Corbo's Bakery, and chill out to Cat Power's new CD.

What else is new?

Preston and I ... just bought a house. How's that for trying new things? We've been looking since May, and just happened upon a sweet little cozy house with a great kitchen. Heaven on earth. Pictures to come. It was such a great deal. No more apartments without a yard! No more weird people next to us slamming the door and listening to bad music. No more people next door hating us because they think we are weird and listen to bad music.

Sarah Veak came to visit me in all of this newness, and we went to the Cleveland Art Museum. I confessed to her my secret distaste for most, NOT ALL, Contemporary Art. Do you hate me now? I'm sorry. I don't hate it all (Dali? So crazy good). I am into all of these new things, but not so much into the new art.

I mean, I just love how detailed, real, intimate, and relate-able not so Contemporary Art is. From the 3,000 BC chastity belt and 2,900 BC Woman-Bear Vase with a vagina, to the African Fertility Voodoo dolls, to some of the first copies of the (beautifully painted) leafs of Luke's Gospel, to the muses in their bright colors and perky breasts, to St. Jerome's tears and wrinkled forehead, to red-rimmed eyes and crucifixions, it's all so gripping. The canvases are huge, the paint strokes are mixed, minute, detailed, complicated, and just so beautiful.

Then, we walk out of all this beauty into this wide, white space, and a giant neon orange canvas (slightly varied) was before our eyes. It was the opposite of all that came before. Sarah said something about it being "void," and I think that is the perfect description. I can't have the same appreciation for the pink tissue paper sculpture (in what shape?! Are people making up new shapes!?), or the giant piece of graph paper, that I can for the Egyptian vases or the Head of Christ painted by Rouault. Though I found most modern art to be lacking in meaning, cold, or a bit silly, I do have to give major props to the dude that finally decided it was ok to paint women with pubic hair! That's what I call progress!