Pirouettes Get No Applause In Goldengrove
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Pirouettes Get No Applause in Goldengrove
To the other passengers aboard a transatlantic ocean liner, Katharine Monahan might seem like a typical sixteen-year-old American girl on her way to study in a Junior-Year-Abroad program. What they don't know is that her family physician has given her only a year to live. Desperate to realize every dream she's ever had, she has left family, school, and friends in New Orleans to live in the only place she believes she truly belongs: Paris, France. But the Paris of 1986 proves not to be the Paris of Piaf, Chevalier, and Colette. Language and cultural barriers, hard as they may be, will prove the least of the crises she will face. Lonely and alienated in her newly adopted home, she finds solace and companionship with a congregation of expatriate American artists and misfits at Lost Generation Bookstore. Shadowed by the consciousness of her own mortality and driven by a panic-stricken desire to drink up as much experience as she can leads her into a number of bizarre relationships and even dangerous situations which challenge every moral, religious, and political belief she has ever held, but also expose the political and moral hypocrisy of those with whom she is involved. Among these is an expatriate American with heavy Marxist-Leninist leanings as well as a questionable past; a fashion designer with an equally questionable sexuality; a wealthy American businessman, who knows only how to wield power but is incapable of love, and a spoiled art student, whose immediate family prove to be a sample of French bourgeoisie life at its worst. Strengthened by her ordeals, she is suddenly overcome by a tragic new set of circumstances she cannot handle. Fleeing to the south of France, she is taken into the home of a wealthy Riviera couple, whose hospitality is inspired by motives less disinterested than they at first seem. A pilgrimage to Lourdes in the company of a kind yet worldly-wise young nun seems to promise a way out of her predicament. But upon her return to Paris, she encounters new pressures which eventually force her to make the most critical decision of her life: the choice between the ways of the world or the ways of the spirit.
Portrait of Betsy
She wasnt a dog anyone wanted. Bald from the nape of her neck to the tip of her tail, she was a scrawny little black dog with little to recommend herself to anyone other than the little tricks she used to perform to amuse people. A loser dog. But then, I wasnt a person anyone wanted either. A loser in the eyes of the world. A neer do well named Jamie Fairchild, who, at the age of forty-one, had tried his luck in many places and invariably had failed. For twenty years, I had become a stranger even to the members of my own immediate family. I didnt want a dog. I wasnt even looking for one. But God has a way of intervening, regardless of our hopes, dreams, and personal wills, not necessarily giving one what one wants but what one needs. Th ey tole me you needed me, Betsy told me. Who told you? My superior offi cers, she smiled, elevating her chin toward heaven. Th ings hasnt been goin so well with ya these past twenty years. I hear tell ya had big dreams once, but you went bust, was homeless jes like me fer awhiles. I also hear tell them folks of yourn aint much of a family. But then, mine twerent neither. I hears ya likes adventure, aint afeerd of takin risks. I aint either. I also hear tell ya likes to perform. I does too. But ya lost your confi dence along the way. Well, Im here to give it back to ya. Before long, Betsy was putting me through my paces. Ah-ten-tion! shed bark at me. Th ats what our C.O. always barked at the fellas I worked with in New Guinea. Saunders was his name. Man, he was a doll, but he could also be one mean sonofabitch, let me tell ya. When Saunders barked them orders, them guys all shot up straight as ramrods. Shoulders up, ass in, chest out. Now, lissen up, Pop. Ah-ten-tion! Git that chin up! What goods it doin hangin down thataways on your collarbone? Well, no one would be able to cuff me under it if its hanging down. Lissen, Pop, she would say. No ones gonna cuff you under the chin. And if they does, Ill take care of em so good, they wont need to wear no shoes! No one messes with a Marine. Not if they know whats good for em. Now lissen up! Chin up! Shoulders back! Ass in! Awkward as these unaccustomed positions felt to me, I complied with her commands. Yeah, her muzzle widened into a grin. Th ats more like it, Daddy. If Betsy had set me onto the road of physical exercise, she also corrected my posture. If it hadnt been for the disciplines that she imposed upon me, Id now be a walking question mark. Why are ya walkin with your shoulders down on your chest? shed bark. You wanna be a hunchback one day? No, I said. Th en stand straight and stop hangin your head, she said. How are ya ever goin to see where youre a-goin lookin down at the ground all the time? You look at the ground when you sniff , Id say. Yeah, but thats only to get the smell of direction. Its in the dog world what you call a map in the human one. But ya caint go nowheres by always lookin at the map. Time comes when youve gotta keep your eye on the road. Th is was the army now, and I had become Private Jamie to Sergeant Betsy. When I would slump down into that easy chair, one of whose armrests she had completely disemboweled, and had sunk into those pointless ruminations about what I should or should not have done so many years before, Betsy would approach my feet and deposit at them the tug o war rope, fall back on her rear haunches, her big brown eyes shining with excited anticipation, her muzzle dropped open in an eager smile. Come on, Dad, lets play. Oh, please, not now, Betsy, Id say. Oh yes, now, she insisted. Come on. What goods settin there goin over things you caint do nuthin bout? When you does stuff like this, youre like me when a fl ea gets on my tail and I keep tryin to bite it off of it, but the more I turns around, that tail jes keep gittin further away from me. Memories is like fl eas, Dad. You chew on em too long, they gets your tail sore. Ya gotta keep your eye on your star. Th eres one up yonder thats yourn and yourn alone. Keep your eye on it, and it wont be forgettin ya. You jes take a hold on my tail, Pop, and Ill take ya to your highest dreams.
Drawing Futures
Drawing Futures brings together international designers and artists for speculations in contemporary drawing for art and architecture.Despite numerous developments in technological manufacture and computational design that provide new grounds for designers, the act of drawing still plays a central role as a vehicle for speculation. There is a rich and long history of drawing tied to innovations in technology as well as to revolutions in our philosophical understanding of the world. In reflection of a society now underpinned by computational networks and interfaces allowing hitherto unprecedented views of the world, the changing status of the drawing and its representation as a political act demands a platform for reflection and innovation. Drawing Futures will present a compendium of projects, writings and interviews that critically reassess the act of drawing and where its future may lie.Drawing Futures focuses on the discussion of how the field of drawing may expand synchronously alongside technological and computational developments. The book coincides with an international conference of the same name, taking place at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, in November 2016. Bringing together practitioners from many creative fields, the book discusses how drawing is changing in relation to new technologies for the production and dissemination of ideas.