rinue: (inception train)
[personal profile] rinue
Discovery 1 (bad):

I've been trying for the last three years to track down a cape gooseberry in the U.S., having picked up a taste for them in London. This quest was met mainly with confusion by produce dealers who wanted to make sure I didn't mean kiwi or kumquat. Accidentally, through seeing a photo online and following it, I determined today that they are perhaps better known as ground cherries here, despite not growing on the ground or looking or tasting like cherries. (They're a small, tart golden fruit related to the tomatillo.) I still do not expect to be able to find any, but am now disgruntled over the name ground cherries, which sounds terribly unappealing.

Discovery 2 (good):

During a tangent while researching letterpresses in the Boston area, I discovered gyotaku, which is (I quote wikipedia) "a traditional form of Japanese fish printing." As in "smear a fish with ink and slap it on a piece of paper." This is maybe my favorite thing ever. I am never finger painting again; I now have superior technology at my disposal.

and so on

I had forgotten that I have a much easier time acting friendly when my hair is unnaturally colored, mainly because it places me contiguous to a punk/drag/black context and a history of left-identified resistance, which roughly means that it scares off the kind of people I don't want to talk to and gives fair warning to everyone else that I am willing to create social discomfort if I don't like how things are going . . . which means I can be nice and friendly to everyone without having to worry that it will turn into a perception that I'm a pushover and "nice girl," with all the baggage of "nice girl." Instead of nice girl, I can just be nice, and I can talk to people much further outside my social circle without them tripping up and saying something casually offensive about minorities.

Otherwise, it gets confusing, because I look like I belong to a certain culture that I don't belong to, and everyone feels awkward and disappointed. It's easier when I look too clean-scrubbed to be a rock star, but not really ordinary enough to be not a rock star. I may be over-analyzing this.

(no subject)

Date: 2010-09-28 05:22 pm (UTC)
movingfinger: (Default)
From: [personal profile] movingfinger
I have a gyotaku T-shirt somewhere. There was kind of a fad for it in the '80s. I haven't seen any prints in a long time---for a while they were a staple of print and fabric-craft stalls and shops.

There's a pretty active letterpress culture in Boston and environs.


---ETA
Thinking about hair color, it can be startling how people'e reactions to the same person vary depending on the person's hair color. Part of your own responses to others, may be that you are reading (unconsciously) something in their reactions to you and acting on their expectations of what kind of person you are. Perhaps, given what you associate the purple hair with (on you anyway) you bear yourself more confidently, or perhaps people in your area associate purple hair with those more-assertive types and present a slightly deferential, submissive affect to you? I don't think I'm expressing this very well (MORE COFFEE THEN).

Anyway, it takes a certain amount of gumption even in our much-colored modern era to dye your hair purple, and not everyone does it, so the color alone flags "I am a person who has the confidence and nerve to dye my hair purple and I do not care what you think!" You might be a rock star incognito after all.
Edited Date: 2010-09-28 05:30 pm (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2010-09-28 05:28 pm (UTC)
valancy_jane: (Default)
From: [personal profile] valancy_jane
1) God, I miss Japan.

2) I hear you. You know me; I'm little Classic, and every time I think I'm being daring, people say things like, "Oh, how darling, I wore something like that in the [20s, 50s, 60s, 70s]." This has so often lead to frustrating conversations where people expect me to be a conservative housewife who bakes.

(no subject)

Date: 2010-09-28 05:28 pm (UTC)
valancy_jane: (Default)
From: [personal profile] valancy_jane
Little *Miss* Classic. Dangit.

(no subject)

Date: 2010-09-28 08:24 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Baking is good. :D

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