Zina: My Latest SFMOMA Blog Post

I just posted a column on Open Space, the blog for SFMOMA, about having my portrait painted by Zina Al-Shukri.  Kind of crazy, switching from their WordPress to my Blogger, but here I am.  I really enjoyed writing this article.  Zina did the portrait in February, and I meant to write about it from the get go—it was too interesting an experience to allow to dissolve into memory.  But I kept writing other things for Open Space, mostly because I felt so frazzled with the semester and I knew this was one I'd have to think about, really think about.  I dabbled on the post on Thursday and Friday, and then yesterday I threw myself into it.  When things are finished, they seem so effortless, it's odd.  But, I suppose if they don't seem effortless, they're failures.  Nobody wants to see the author sweating behind their words.  I don't think that last sentence is universally true, in fact I think there's lots of writing where we very much do want to see the writer sweat.  But this wasn't one of them.  Friday I realized I'd been flaky in my note taking, and I called up Zina and declared, "I have no facts!"  So, as I sat in a Pakistani restaurant stuffing my face with aloo palak, vaguely staring at a Bollywood movie on a flatscreen TV on the wall, she graciously gave me a recap of what I should already have had in my notebook.