The shoe does not fit: and other stories: moving...

The sunset from the new place

My most devoted blog readers are composed of my mom, her friend, my grandmother, one friend who lives in Qatar and the mystery follower, who happens to be following my blog from India, so this post is for you devotees.  Anyone I forgot to mention, feel free to carry on reading.  Actually, I started this whole blogging thing to understand what a blog is, and in the name of it's-great-to-have-a-place-to-express-yourself and more because, if I need to have an online presence, I find that little box on facebook where it says: "What's on your mind?", just exceedingly small.  I have also tried tweets on twitter.  In the beginning I thought, "Great!" It's not friends like facebook, it's followers!  I'll be famous!  But I got to the point where my only followers were my mom and my ex-husband (feel free to laugh out loud here, because I was feeling really famous).  So naturally slightly taken aback, my creative juices were stumped.  I posted a couple of exceedingly short utterances in a box on twitter, and I was done.
But I'm not giving up.  Today I posted a sentence in my little box on facebook which is totally taken out of context.  I intend to think outside the box and use many boxes to make a story. Maybe you'll be my follower and make me feel famous, but it's not that really.  It's about moving.  Most of my worldly possessions are packed in boxes now and waiting to be opened in a newly revised country, a new place.  My box!
Yours, from the packing front,
Mrs Crocodile

Custom Search

Cuba in Basel: EG Lounge

Ella and Uncle Thierry

I like the kind of destination that transports me to another place without really leaving where I am and without doing too many drugs... So when the kids took me to their uncle's bar, suddenly I felt like we were in a lovely little hacienda, enjoying a break in the beach life in a Latin American country.  It's really all down to Thierry Dunkel and Philippe Kiefer's hospitality and the need to feel like the summer really is not ending, but the EG Lounge, a souped up courtyard between Parterre and the Reithalle is wall to wall sand, has lovely lounge chairs and the bartenders will serve you up some mean drinks, so that, buzz-wise you can convince yourself you are on the other side of the Rio Grande.  Take your shoes off and don't forget to bring some sand toys.  Obviously, it opens so late that it's not really for kids, but they might get jealous if they find out you've been there without them.  There is a rain cover and heating so never mind that you have to wear a winter coat to get there.  Check it out, here's the link:http://www.parterre.net/?navid=Z776NG
Or just go to the Kaserne in Kleinbasel and ask around.  They open in the evenings.
Yours,
Mrs Crocodile

Custom Search

Alexanderfest at the Augusta Raurica

The most exciting thing I'm doing right now is working backstage as a dresser at the Alexanderfest at the Augusta Raurica, the Roman theater in Augst.  The production is being put on by the Theater Basel and is billed as a mix of Opera and Oratorium by Handel.  If you remember to take a blanket and a thermos flask and pray for no rain, you'll stay warm enough till you can go back home with stars in your eyes and the warm feeling of having participated in something wonderful.  But in the back is where I'd really rather be.  These two extras: Bettina Kestenholz and Noelle Blind have the hard but exhilarating job of being cinched into a corset, then stepping into a ten-kilo skirt (that's a 22-pounder to you) which is made of plastic crystals and ribbing.  This costume is nothing less than brilliant and in fact the highlight is when they flick on a switch and the skirts light up.  It's something between Christmas tree and chandelier, but it's really one of those take-your-breath-away moments when fantasy becomes reality.  This time, I assure you folks, the reality is better than the fantasy.  Okay, okay, it's on the stage, so who knows if it's really reality?  So if you can't make it to see it in the flesh, visualize the designs by erte which were too heavy ever to be built, or the elaborate costume drawings Dali made, add a whole team of very skilled seamstresses and tailors, the best of what Basel has to offer and BANG!  The light comes on!  You're wearing it!  The designer of this creation is the costume designer Marie-Thérèse Jossen.
Oh! I almost forgot!  It is of course all about the music so when you go you'll bask in the best voices of Basel and be treated to wonderful special effects, but for me these extras should get all the glory, the team of skilled seamstresses behind them and of course the lighting people who have to check the chargers every night.
So to see this skirt in all of its crystal glory, and to experience the cast of about 70 in the open air, get tickets on the Theater Basel web-page: http://www.theater-basel.ch/
There you'll also be able to read all about the story and the people behind this production.  I like the web-cam, too, where you can see what's going on there right now: http://camserver.z-online.ch/showpics_01.asp?KundenID=&S=1&OwnPic=1&cam=a11r
Yours,
Mrs Crocodile

Custom Search

Somewhere in the middle, feeling as big as a soufflé

My 'horror'-scope said I should do something creative today.  Oh shreck!  As if everything I had done up till reading those words had been un-creative.  And to be fair, the cutting up of life is a little like un-doing something.  Well, here is a collage that should set the mood:  Her body is a soufflé.  She's feeling just a tad bloated and could fall at any moment.  Her arms are big fluffy purple fur for pushing people out of the way.  She put on two different pairs of shoes before she left the house.  Her legs are sweet, just some wrappers from chocolates.  Her hat is a chandelier.  So here you have it: some days are just like this: You wake up, find yourself bloated, two different shoes on and a chandelier on your head with sweet legs you don't know are going to hold you up.  Oh!  I almost forgot!  You're walking up stairs ten times your size.
My dear readers, don't worry, the weather is awful, but the day is not so bad, I'm just pondering the un-creation of things, so I can un-do things and re-do them.  
"It's a step backwards, " you say.  No, actually, it's forwards but it's a little like the song with the king's soldiers, when you're up, you're up and when you're down, you're down and when you're only half-way up, you're neither up nor down. I leave you with that today and now I must excuse myself because I'm off to (un)create something else.
Yours, with two different shoes on,
Mrs Crocodile

Custom Search

Guest blogger Christine Gerber-Rutt chops up the pages on Mrs Crocodile...

Here is a guest blogger on Mrs Crocodile for your reading pleasure: Christine Gerber-Rutt. American and Swiss, she now lives in Qatar.  I love how she chose to write about this chopped up Middle Eastern dish.  Enjoy!

Given the choice between being in a kitchen or being, well, anywhere else, I’d choose the kitchen. All the important stuff happens in the kitchen: birthday cakes are baked, wine bottles opened, kisses stolen from the cook. That’s why I like being the cook. Most days.

Then we moved to the Middle East. All the cheesy food I’d learned to make in Switzerland is totally not happening here. Eating melted cheese in the desert is like eating mega-sized Slushies in Iceland. It happens, but wouldn’t you rather eat tabbouleh?

Tabbouleh, even that isn’t what I always thought it was. I’ve tried making tabbouleh in the States and even in Switzerland, which seemed totally out of place since it lacks any dairy products whatsoever, but give me a pat on the back, I tried anyway. Turns out the main ingredient is parsley. In my mind parsley will always be plate decoration. I’m certain that any scientific study would unequivocally support the fact that in the States parsley is most often used to encourage burger and fry eaters to feel better about their choices. I don’t like parsley; don’t like burger and fries for that matter, unless the fries have that slightly dry, slightly smoked taste with almost no salt and a side of catsup, only Heinz will do. What can I say, I’m a catsup snob.

When I made tabbouleh, I searched out recipes that had more bulgar than parsley. While bulgar isn’t on my top ten list of favorite foods, it does have a demeanor of health and is hands down better than parsley. Hop back to the Middle East and here you have it, tubs of tabbouleh. And it’s green. Why? Because it’s made the way the Lebanese intended it to be - with loads and loads of parsley and just a touch of mint. Even the local (French) grocery store gets it right. Turns out if you get it right, parsley has a pleasing crunch to it with a little bit of grind. Addicting. And there’s no need for me to cook it up in my kitchen. That’s okay I’m content to stand there opening plastic containers filled with store-bought tabbouleh and receive stolen kisses.

Even if you don’t like tabbouleh or parsley or bulghar, check out the dance video by GoRemy.  Taste that parsley and shake your bum bum. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FaNzrtu0KM

Step right up; cut it up and mix it up.
Chief Cook
http://JustKooki.Blogspot.com

Custom Search

Cutting up the Day...

Last time I said that quilts were made when big events happened in life.  I forgot to add an important bit of that post..I'll tell you what it was, but before I do I should tell you that I really wanted to tell you a week ago and it annoyed me to no end that for several days, I was out of range of a computer, in a tent, in the mountains, the phone battery even died--and I couldn't tell you!  No, really.  Being so remote was great.  Being really "cut off" and finding myself walking in the postcard beauty of the King's Canyon National Park.  I broke down.  I needed to call home.  I used a pay phone!  I know it sounds crazy but some kids walked by, they pointed at me and I heard them say as I battled with the door to close and searched for three numbers all at least 20 digits long: "Hey!  I've seen those, they are really rare, d'you think it works?"  I think they were teenagers at least because they were carrying coffee cups.  Amazingly, even in a place with no mobile access, they had coffee from a large American company which I'm sure you know the name of.

So my wonderful idea I've been carrying around in my very own head is this:  forget the whole sewing it back together stuff, just think, we can cut stuff up at any moment and it never has to be made into anything.  You can cut up an argument.  You can cut it up on the dance floor.  Or you can just cut peices out of the day and hang them on your wall, even if the wall is the inside of your eyeball.  So here's me cutting up my day, and the image I've wanted to give you for a week: a blue nylon swatch from the tent at Carpinteria State Beach, a tie-died cotton bit of a little girl's dress, a square foot of sail cloth from the boat my brother sailed,  a page ripped out of a journal with slanted backwards writing and so deeply imprinted it is almost embossed,  a bit of that cream colored neck brace of my mom's, a silver plastic spoon (I really like that they make plastic spoons that look silver), a pocket from the back of my jeans, a square of sweatshirt that says "shark" on it, a bit of wonderfully hard dry ground and a huge gulp of foggy sea air.  You can use your own imagination and emotion to sew it all up for me.   That was one of my days last week.  What's your day like?
yours, with scissors (which are the allowed length to be taken on an airplane)
Mrs Crocodile

Custom Search

The Wetsuit Quilt

It occurs to me that people start chopping up fabric to be sewn into quilts predominantly when a) you die, or b) you are born or even (heaven forbode!) c) you get married.  In the you die case, the quilt is stitched together out of your old cherished clothes and you live on in some sense.  In the second case, babies don't seem to mind that the fabric has been cut up, they have enough in their lives to be getting on with--such as the being born and meeting the parents issues--so whether the quilt is quilted or tied, made form great grandmas soft lacy nighties that she never wears--baby doesn't seem to mind.  In the you-get-married scenario, well, it's probably just a quilt of wills:  who has made the quilt to grace your marital bed?  Is it a mother?  Mother-in-law?  Sister?  Sister-in-law?  If my dad had made the quilt it would have been made of neoprene.  And there you have it:  that is the best quilt idea I've had: the wetsuit quilt.  I have cut up just about everything I could take scissors to, except of course items that were still of value to people I wanted to remain in contact with.  But what an idea!  I wonder if my brother has a few old wetsuits around I could start cutting up...
Love from the road,
Mrs Crocodile
P.S.  You could even sew the quilt together with duct-tape.

Custom Search