Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Monday, April 2, 2012
Tuesday Poem: Reilly, Escaping
A blur of blond curls between houses,
scrape of an elbow, heel of a shoe around a corner:
Reilly runs from any open door.
When we install trick locks
six feet up, he opens them
with the tip of a plastic sword,
a wooden spoon, anything long enough.
Today he runs panting from the alley with
a branch of apple blossoms torn from a neighbor's tree,
its pink extravagance waving in the blue May air.
How can I be angry:
This child plies me with flowers.
At five, already he knows about love,
which gifts to bring,
what small penance we must serve.
© T. Clear 1991
---
At a party last Saturday was a woman to whom I hadn't spoken since a conflict arose between her husband and my late husband, many years ago, concerning a flooring installment gone bad and the ensuing repayment. There was intrigue and deception (not on my husband's part) which resulted in late-night threats of violence. Scary stuff, which has lingered and left me uneasy whenever I'm reminded of it.
So when she entered the party, our eyes met, and I offered a courteous hello, hoping to avoid her after that. But no: she sat down across from me, said hello again, asked me how I was, and said,
"I have a wonderful memory of you, T. There was a neighborhood party, and you read some poems, and I remember one particularly, a poem about your son Reilly, and his running off, and apple blossoms. In fact, it's stayed with me all this time. It really touched me."
I think my mouth dropped open in amazement. The poem (appearing above) was written years ago, and I'd long left it forgotten in a box in my basement, not even in the current roster of work on my computer.
I told her as much. I was stunned — both that she'd remembered the poem and that she'd decided to sidestep the uncomfortable issue between us and moved instead directly to something founded in love. I told her that I hadn't thought of that poem in years, and expressed gratitude that she mentioned it at all. I know that, without saying, the unmentionable incident was dancing in front of us, flashing red lights.
Instead, she offered a gift of inestimable worth.
She added, "It's so rare that one remembers a poem so clearly as I remember that one."
And even better: it's my son's birthday tomorrow.
I can't believe I have a 26-year-old son.
Poetry — with all its mystery and enduring power — healed a long-simmering feud.
I bow down
at the altar of the poem,
in humble gratitude.
scrape of an elbow, heel of a shoe around a corner:
Reilly runs from any open door.
When we install trick locks
six feet up, he opens them
with the tip of a plastic sword,
a wooden spoon, anything long enough.
Today he runs panting from the alley with
a branch of apple blossoms torn from a neighbor's tree,
its pink extravagance waving in the blue May air.
How can I be angry:
This child plies me with flowers.
At five, already he knows about love,
which gifts to bring,
what small penance we must serve.
© T. Clear 1991
---
At a party last Saturday was a woman to whom I hadn't spoken since a conflict arose between her husband and my late husband, many years ago, concerning a flooring installment gone bad and the ensuing repayment. There was intrigue and deception (not on my husband's part) which resulted in late-night threats of violence. Scary stuff, which has lingered and left me uneasy whenever I'm reminded of it.
So when she entered the party, our eyes met, and I offered a courteous hello, hoping to avoid her after that. But no: she sat down across from me, said hello again, asked me how I was, and said,
"I have a wonderful memory of you, T. There was a neighborhood party, and you read some poems, and I remember one particularly, a poem about your son Reilly, and his running off, and apple blossoms. In fact, it's stayed with me all this time. It really touched me."
I think my mouth dropped open in amazement. The poem (appearing above) was written years ago, and I'd long left it forgotten in a box in my basement, not even in the current roster of work on my computer.
I told her as much. I was stunned — both that she'd remembered the poem and that she'd decided to sidestep the uncomfortable issue between us and moved instead directly to something founded in love. I told her that I hadn't thought of that poem in years, and expressed gratitude that she mentioned it at all. I know that, without saying, the unmentionable incident was dancing in front of us, flashing red lights.
Instead, she offered a gift of inestimable worth.
She added, "It's so rare that one remembers a poem so clearly as I remember that one."
And even better: it's my son's birthday tomorrow.
I can't believe I have a 26-year-old son.
Poetry — with all its mystery and enduring power — healed a long-simmering feud.
I bow down
at the altar of the poem,
in humble gratitude.
When the corpse of a dream lingers....
Have you ever awakened from a dream still so completely entrenched — flesh & spirit — that it's nearly impossible to escape it? My eyes were literally bleary with dream imagery when I woke up today, and I can't seem to shake off its disturbing details. With a rapidly shifting cast of characters, I was visited by:
1. Serial killer Gary Ridgway's mother, who, though long-deceased (or so I thought) had changed her identity and was still working at a JCPenney. (In my non-dream life, I worked with this woman when I was in college. You can read about that nightmare-ish adventure here.)
2. A man who was my supervisor at a job when I was nineteen, who'd repeatedly asked me out, and was repeatedly turned down. In the dream, he was mistakenly introduced as my husband. I DON'T THINK SO.
3. Paul Newman. (Back from the dead. And damn — no opportunity to get his autograph!)
4. A two-year-old child throwing a tantrum, who screamed one long, dramatic, drawn-out note so completely exquisitely that a crowd of people gathered around him, and applauded when he finished.
In addition, there was the recurring appearance of the non-functioning phone, the recurring disappearance of my car (lost in a parking lot!), and I was late for work at a job where I was to sell forks and CD's.
What I need now is a good night's sleep, so I can recover!
1. Serial killer Gary Ridgway's mother, who, though long-deceased (or so I thought) had changed her identity and was still working at a JCPenney. (In my non-dream life, I worked with this woman when I was in college. You can read about that nightmare-ish adventure here.)
2. A man who was my supervisor at a job when I was nineteen, who'd repeatedly asked me out, and was repeatedly turned down. In the dream, he was mistakenly introduced as my husband. I DON'T THINK SO.
3. Paul Newman. (Back from the dead. And damn — no opportunity to get his autograph!)
4. A two-year-old child throwing a tantrum, who screamed one long, dramatic, drawn-out note so completely exquisitely that a crowd of people gathered around him, and applauded when he finished.
In addition, there was the recurring appearance of the non-functioning phone, the recurring disappearance of my car (lost in a parking lot!), and I was late for work at a job where I was to sell forks and CD's.
What I need now is a good night's sleep, so I can recover!
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Cold
Will spring never come? It feels like the answer to that is a resounding "NO!"
I don't know how many times I was out in it today, wrestling with a tarp or dodging rain or just trying not to get blown askew. Late this afternoon, I went to war with the giant umbrella where we stage orders for UPS — the tremendous gusts of wind had everything topsy turvy, and I was in danger of losing an eye to the whipping spokes. J. got on the table to set the umbrella upright so I could reel it in, and the table began to tip, and shouting began, but in the end, we finally got it secured without any organ loss.
March has been unforgiving. In like a lion, out like a cyclone. The year has me feeling beat up, slapped to bits, tossed inside out, and we're only three months in.
Cherry trees are in blossom and daffodils brave their cheerful souls in the cheerless gales, and I want to tell each flower go back inside. It's not time yet, really.
Recalling the anticipation of my first son's birth, twenty six years ago (come April 3rd). Pre-birth, I recall not a leaf on a tree, not a bud on a rose. Coming home from the hospital with my new baby, the world had gone crazy green with new growth in a matter of three short days. Nothing has been the same since.
Every year, late March, I search out Spanish bluebells, so that I can cut a bouquet for his birthday. This year for the first time, they are nowhere near blooming. And I'm still bundled in my black cashmere muffler, black beret; and somewhere the vague notion of summer exists — a mirage, an illusion, a conceit.
I don't know how many times I was out in it today, wrestling with a tarp or dodging rain or just trying not to get blown askew. Late this afternoon, I went to war with the giant umbrella where we stage orders for UPS — the tremendous gusts of wind had everything topsy turvy, and I was in danger of losing an eye to the whipping spokes. J. got on the table to set the umbrella upright so I could reel it in, and the table began to tip, and shouting began, but in the end, we finally got it secured without any organ loss.
March has been unforgiving. In like a lion, out like a cyclone. The year has me feeling beat up, slapped to bits, tossed inside out, and we're only three months in.
Cherry trees are in blossom and daffodils brave their cheerful souls in the cheerless gales, and I want to tell each flower go back inside. It's not time yet, really.
Recalling the anticipation of my first son's birth, twenty six years ago (come April 3rd). Pre-birth, I recall not a leaf on a tree, not a bud on a rose. Coming home from the hospital with my new baby, the world had gone crazy green with new growth in a matter of three short days. Nothing has been the same since.
Every year, late March, I search out Spanish bluebells, so that I can cut a bouquet for his birthday. This year for the first time, they are nowhere near blooming. And I'm still bundled in my black cashmere muffler, black beret; and somewhere the vague notion of summer exists — a mirage, an illusion, a conceit.
The way in, or the way out?
I walk a crooked road to get where I am going
To get where I am going I must walk a crooked road
And only when I’m looking back I see the straight and narrow
I see the straight and narrow when I walk a crooked road
— Darrell Scott
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
More Matching
Online dating provides, if nothing else, great opportunities for humor. When I look at the profiles of single men on match.com, I can't help but see something other than their chosen profile name.
To post an online profile on any of these sites, one must first choose a profile name. And often, the profile name one dreams up (as the perfect! name!) has already been chosen by some other single person somewhere else on the planet. Suggestions for available alternate names then pop up on the screen, and you can choose from one of those or try again with your (seemingly) very original second choice. Or third.
What many people end up with are odd altered versions of their original choice, with numbers and punctuation added in, or something else entirely. And when I look at them, I also see, well, something else entirely, which has the unfortunate result of making me quickly look to the next profile, moving Mr. Weird Name — who most likely is a perfectly charming potential dating candidate — to the slush pile, toute de suite.
For your entertainment, here are some actual names, and what I see when I read them:
Issy_Spirit, and I see Pissy Spit. (Yuck.)
Sirwhitfield, and I see Shitfield. (Um, no.)
eKghHUNTER, and I see Ug Hunter (How does one hunt an Ug, exactly?)
CharlesGilstrap, and I see Charles Jockstrap (Ewwwww.....)
BaBallard, and I see Babar (The Elephant. Cartoonish. Wearing a yellow crown.)
JRPringle and I see potato chips in a can, which I like a lot, but how does one date a chip?!
kindaneasy, and I see kind of sneezy (Either one of the Seven Dwarfs or a highly allergic man.)
richard_reach and I see Rich! A Ready! (Been there! Done that! Failed!)
---
More on this later, including a recounting of My Date From Hell.
God help me.
To post an online profile on any of these sites, one must first choose a profile name. And often, the profile name one dreams up (as the perfect! name!) has already been chosen by some other single person somewhere else on the planet. Suggestions for available alternate names then pop up on the screen, and you can choose from one of those or try again with your (seemingly) very original second choice. Or third.
What many people end up with are odd altered versions of their original choice, with numbers and punctuation added in, or something else entirely. And when I look at them, I also see, well, something else entirely, which has the unfortunate result of making me quickly look to the next profile, moving Mr. Weird Name — who most likely is a perfectly charming potential dating candidate — to the slush pile, toute de suite.
For your entertainment, here are some actual names, and what I see when I read them:
Issy_Spirit, and I see Pissy Spit. (Yuck.)
Sirwhitfield, and I see Shitfield. (Um, no.)
eKghHUNTER, and I see Ug Hunter (How does one hunt an Ug, exactly?)
CharlesGilstrap, and I see Charles Jockstrap (Ewwwww.....)
BaBallard, and I see Babar (The Elephant. Cartoonish. Wearing a yellow crown.)
JRPringle and I see potato chips in a can, which I like a lot, but how does one date a chip?!
kindaneasy, and I see kind of sneezy (Either one of the Seven Dwarfs or a highly allergic man.)
richard_reach and I see Rich! A Ready! (Been there! Done that! Failed!)
---
More on this later, including a recounting of My Date From Hell.
God help me.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Otters
A friend tells me there are otters in our urban park, our sanctuary a mere stone's throw from where sirens blare and gangs go about their dirty business. The otters emerge long after sundown, or so I hear, swirling their sleek furred selves in the velvet of 2am. I must trust in this, as I've not even once seen evidence that they exist. Trust — and marvel at the simple and complicated fact that they live so close to so much that is deadly.
There's a woman who shops in the same local co-op as I do, and she once discovered a body in the park. It was a suicide, by gun, of a friend and neighbor just three houses from me. The woman who happened upon the body desired anonymity, but word gets out, and whenever I see her, usually in the produce department, surmising something as common as an onion, all I can see is my friend with half her face blown off. I've been tempted to scream, beside the celery.
As The Tearful Dishwasher says, "how do we reconcile the beauty with the horror?"
I am drawn time and again to these mythical otters, as well as to rumors of a heron rookery down past the dead-end of my street, perched in maples or alders above a ravine -- the same ravine where on a sunny Sunday afternoon twenty years ago a SWAT team apprehended a shooting suspect.
And yet we can't stop believing in the goodness of the universe, in possibilities, in hope.
Can't stop believing that sometime soon, in the wee hours, I'll stumble upon a raft of otters, and their nocturnal splashing in the tranquil pool of the lake will cancel out the lone siren half a mile away, the ambulance with its terrible and fragile cargo.
There's a woman who shops in the same local co-op as I do, and she once discovered a body in the park. It was a suicide, by gun, of a friend and neighbor just three houses from me. The woman who happened upon the body desired anonymity, but word gets out, and whenever I see her, usually in the produce department, surmising something as common as an onion, all I can see is my friend with half her face blown off. I've been tempted to scream, beside the celery.
As The Tearful Dishwasher says, "how do we reconcile the beauty with the horror?"
I am drawn time and again to these mythical otters, as well as to rumors of a heron rookery down past the dead-end of my street, perched in maples or alders above a ravine -- the same ravine where on a sunny Sunday afternoon twenty years ago a SWAT team apprehended a shooting suspect.
And yet we can't stop believing in the goodness of the universe, in possibilities, in hope.
Can't stop believing that sometime soon, in the wee hours, I'll stumble upon a raft of otters, and their nocturnal splashing in the tranquil pool of the lake will cancel out the lone siren half a mile away, the ambulance with its terrible and fragile cargo.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Dirt
Two cubic yards of planting mix (screened soil, sand, compost) arrived yesterday afternoon — dumped on my parking strip, on a blue tarp. I'm building containers out of slashed-down cardboard boxes, all tape and tags ripped off. Ten years ago I'd have called it kind of "ghetto", but now it's a decomposable raised bed built with recycled materials. Very EC. (Environmentally correct.) And with a minimal cash outlay.
As the plants grow, and the soil becomes more stable and compacted, the beds will (hopefully) stand on their own. And if the cardboard doesn't all decompose, I can tear it away.
As it's streetside (in public view), I'm waiting negative responses from neighbors, but so far it's all good. And it's where the sun is, so for the first time in 25 years I can grow edibles without battling shade. I'm also looking at it as my "summer club" — I can attend to my plants and visit with passers-by at the same time.
Post dirt, I got busy with the KitchenAid and made a cake (and yes, that's 52) —
Post cake (and post party), there was dancing at the Royal Room (African music) and for two hours I forgot that dancing and I are not the best of friends. A little dirt, a little sugar, some chocolate and some vodka, and anything seems possible.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Tuesday Poem
I'm the editor for this week's Tuesday Poem entry. Check out Paul Hunter's poem Talking Mean here.
Here's a teaser:
I'm interested in how poetry collides/intersects/accompanies the varying landscapes of our living. It's one thing to listen to a poem being read in an auditorium, at a podium, with a microphone. It's another thing entirely to hear that same poem read, say, on a wild Pacific Northwest beach, or in the poet's kitchen, or in the bar that Theodore Roethke frequented. I don't believe that a poem should exist only in the rarefied atmosphere of academia. Although long a safe haven for poetry and poets (myself included), poetry needs also to live the life of the working-class individual. I've seen people frightened away by poetry, certain they would not understand it. (Admitting to being a card-carrying poet is a guaranteed crowd silencer.)
And remember: don't take yourself too seriously.
Here's a teaser:
I'm interested in how poetry collides/intersects/accompanies the varying landscapes of our living. It's one thing to listen to a poem being read in an auditorium, at a podium, with a microphone. It's another thing entirely to hear that same poem read, say, on a wild Pacific Northwest beach, or in the poet's kitchen, or in the bar that Theodore Roethke frequented. I don't believe that a poem should exist only in the rarefied atmosphere of academia. Although long a safe haven for poetry and poets (myself included), poetry needs also to live the life of the working-class individual. I've seen people frightened away by poetry, certain they would not understand it. (Admitting to being a card-carrying poet is a guaranteed crowd silencer.)
And remember: don't take yourself too seriously.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Skidding into Sunday
It's a good exercise in spontaneity to say "yes" to walking in the park at 3am. (The lake's surface still and silken.)
Even better: staying late at a party and forgetting that I was twenty-something decades ago.
Not so good: sleeping until past 2pm, and the poetry reading and book release party I'd planned to attend, on the other side of the city, started in 45 minutes.
(I arrived at 3:01, to a standing-room only crowd at Open Books. Fell into a sliver of space, my back up against the door. Couldn't see the poet Kathleen Flenniken, but am thankful for amplified sound.)
Here's the trailer from her new book Plume, from University of Washington Press:
Even better: staying late at a party and forgetting that I was twenty-something decades ago.
Not so good: sleeping until past 2pm, and the poetry reading and book release party I'd planned to attend, on the other side of the city, started in 45 minutes.
(I arrived at 3:01, to a standing-room only crowd at Open Books. Fell into a sliver of space, my back up against the door. Couldn't see the poet Kathleen Flenniken, but am thankful for amplified sound.)
Here's the trailer from her new book Plume, from University of Washington Press:
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Lá Fhéile Pádraig Shona*
Friday, March 16, 2012
Red
A bit fixated on this dress.
I found it at a thrift store on Highway 99 in Everett, Washington round about 1982. Wore it to a few parties. (My late husband also wore it, once, to a party. Couldn't zip it up though. His accessory was an aluminum colander, as a hat [of sorts]. He was a very funny man.)
Now all its good for is stuffing full of pussy willows.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Bluster
Here in Seattle we've been plagued by massive storms -- none of that "lite" rain which, though seemingly ever-present and having given us our claim to rain-fame, rarely causes much of a fuss. These past seven+ days have behaved quite the contrary. March is exhibiting terrible-two's tantrums: one minute rosy and soft, the next all bluster and spit. I'm worn out by it all.
It's a particular problem when setting boxes out for UPS. Outside this afternoon I repaired the giant umbrella which serves as shelter for our shipments during inclement weather, securing each arm to the disintegrating fabric with zip ties: a bandaid. And not wanting to lug out the massive blue tarps in the wind, I used cut-open packing-peanut bags as both a dry surface for the boxes and as cover, both of which kept flapping up and away in each new gust of wind.
When finally all was secured -- pinned down with mossy bricks -- I hunkered down -- dripping -- and made my way up the steps to the house/factory, feeling for all intents and purposes that the rain had penetrated my skin and cold had settled into my marrow. Such is the glamour of working in The Arts. Once inside, I positioned my sodden jacket in front of the blazing wood stove and got to work with a paint brush and several pots of acrylic paint: lamp black, sap green, perylene maroon, irridescent Aztec.
More orders to ship tomorrow, and the forecast looks just as grim.
It's a particular problem when setting boxes out for UPS. Outside this afternoon I repaired the giant umbrella which serves as shelter for our shipments during inclement weather, securing each arm to the disintegrating fabric with zip ties: a bandaid. And not wanting to lug out the massive blue tarps in the wind, I used cut-open packing-peanut bags as both a dry surface for the boxes and as cover, both of which kept flapping up and away in each new gust of wind.
When finally all was secured -- pinned down with mossy bricks -- I hunkered down -- dripping -- and made my way up the steps to the house/factory, feeling for all intents and purposes that the rain had penetrated my skin and cold had settled into my marrow. Such is the glamour of working in The Arts. Once inside, I positioned my sodden jacket in front of the blazing wood stove and got to work with a paint brush and several pots of acrylic paint: lamp black, sap green, perylene maroon, irridescent Aztec.
More orders to ship tomorrow, and the forecast looks just as grim.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
The Dating Game
I wish I'd had the presence of mind to record the conversation today at work when the subject of dating came up. Consider this: three middle-aged people, two straight, one gay, two women, one man. Creative, independent, erudite. (Translate to: picky.) All currently single. And from the looks of it, the prospects for the single gay man appear to be about even with the prospects for the straight women: next to nothing. (Or no one.) As I like to say, there are not exactly great herds of 50-something single men roaming the streets.
What is a girl (or guy) to do?
The default option these days is online dating, but even those sites tend to be eye-rollers now. I met my most recent spouse on match.com, and that ended up being a disaster. And now, eight years later: the pickins are slim. (And when did these men all get so old-looking?!!)
From what I can see, most age-appropriate straight men on Match desire a package-deal-woman containing the following traits:
1. Must love walks on the beach.
2. Must love a glass of wine by the fire.
3. Must be financially stable.
4. Must not have any "baggage".
5. Must not be a drama-queen.
My requirements for Mr. Right are, um, different:
1. Must have a sense of humor.
2. Must be able to pay his own bills.
3. Must appreciate drama.
4. "Baggage", which I like to refer to as "luggage", is fine. (If he doesn't have any, then he hasn't lived.
5. Must laugh at my puns.
6. Extra points if he knows the difference between a Bordeaux and a Sauvignon Blanc. Fire optional.
7. Extra points for correctly conjugating the verbs in his profile.
8. Extra points for not posting a photo of himself astride his Harley, wearing a baseball cap. (Flashing red light: BALD.) Own up, men! And ditch the macho motorcycle!
I figure if I post a profile with those requirements, my chances of snagging a man are next to nil. The good ones? Already spoken for, or dead.
Best possible scenario: he comes knocking at my door.
I know: I'd better dream on.
In the meantime,
I'm right here:
What is a girl (or guy) to do?
The default option these days is online dating, but even those sites tend to be eye-rollers now. I met my most recent spouse on match.com, and that ended up being a disaster. And now, eight years later: the pickins are slim. (And when did these men all get so old-looking?!!)
From what I can see, most age-appropriate straight men on Match desire a package-deal-woman containing the following traits:
1. Must love walks on the beach.
2. Must love a glass of wine by the fire.
3. Must be financially stable.
4. Must not have any "baggage".
5. Must not be a drama-queen.
My requirements for Mr. Right are, um, different:
1. Must have a sense of humor.
2. Must be able to pay his own bills.
3. Must appreciate drama.
4. "Baggage", which I like to refer to as "luggage", is fine. (If he doesn't have any, then he hasn't lived.
5. Must laugh at my puns.
6. Extra points if he knows the difference between a Bordeaux and a Sauvignon Blanc. Fire optional.
7. Extra points for correctly conjugating the verbs in his profile.
8. Extra points for not posting a photo of himself astride his Harley, wearing a baseball cap. (Flashing red light: BALD.) Own up, men! And ditch the macho motorcycle!
I figure if I post a profile with those requirements, my chances of snagging a man are next to nil. The good ones? Already spoken for, or dead.
Best possible scenario: he comes knocking at my door.
I know: I'd better dream on.
In the meantime,
I'm right here:
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Crow, twigs, etc.
(With thanks to Melinda Wellsandt for providing this amazing subject.)
(Suffering from a dearth of words at the moment.)
Monday, March 12, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Blustery March along the lake, bundled to my teeth for a walk Sunday afternoon, when what I thought I really wanted was to sink into the couch with the NYTimes. Glad as always that I opted to leave the house. Why is it sometimes so hard?
It wasn't until I was reviewing my photos that I saw that an eagle had passed before my viewfinder. I consider an eagle sighting to be a gift of good fortune, and I'm counting this as a sighting, blurred and dim as it is --
Shoreline --
I was looking for a beavers' lodge that's supposed to exist just past the marina, but could find no trace of it as I slipped quietly through the reeds and red twig dogwoods. I want to believe that it does indeed exist, and that perhaps I'll never find it.
In 1965, the several-acre wood behind my house contained every bit of my imagination. And even though I knew intimately every path, tree, boulder, stump, fern and lily, I never gave up believing that somewhere there existed a hidden reliquary of water, a well of holy secrets that would never give itself away.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
What Lies Behind The Color
Yesterday I tried to write about something that happened at work. When I sat down at the computer to write, I was stymied by an upwelling of fear and sadness, and the best I could do was write the word melancholy and a post about seeing what one wants to see.
At 4:30 yesterday, one of my work-mates, C., got a call following up some tests she'd had the previous day. The diagnosis: stomach cancer.
Everything screeched to a halt. C. sat down, shaken, bargaining with herself. M. got out the single malt Scotch.
C. is whisper-thin, and has complained of stomach issues since last July. We've been at her to see a traditional doctor, but she's insisted on naturopathy, a Chinese herbalist and acupuncture. I don't know what compelled her to finally go the mainstream route, but on Monday she succumbed to an afternoon of bodily invasions, and came out of there thinking she only had to deal with an ulcer.
People recover and go on with their lives. And, at the same time, people don't recover. The one thing that is true, mentioned the other day: none of us will get out of this alive.
The world seemed a grave and lonely place last night, no matter what color I attempted to conceal it with.
And for the moment, I'm one of the lucky ones.
At 4:30 yesterday, one of my work-mates, C., got a call following up some tests she'd had the previous day. The diagnosis: stomach cancer.
Everything screeched to a halt. C. sat down, shaken, bargaining with herself. M. got out the single malt Scotch.
C. is whisper-thin, and has complained of stomach issues since last July. We've been at her to see a traditional doctor, but she's insisted on naturopathy, a Chinese herbalist and acupuncture. I don't know what compelled her to finally go the mainstream route, but on Monday she succumbed to an afternoon of bodily invasions, and came out of there thinking she only had to deal with an ulcer.
People recover and go on with their lives. And, at the same time, people don't recover. The one thing that is true, mentioned the other day: none of us will get out of this alive.
The world seemed a grave and lonely place last night, no matter what color I attempted to conceal it with.
And for the moment, I'm one of the lucky ones.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Prussian Blue, Melancholy, Burnt Sienna
In the hour before sunset I drove by a field where about a dozen crows were spread out across the grass. There was no spare time: a trunkful of groceries and a date with a friend in a few minutes; but even so, I parked and quickly walked to where crows held court. And as soon as I got my camera out, hundreds more crows came swerving across the sky, swirling in black ribbons above me -- and then were gone in an echo of ruckled ca-caws.
With the marvels of technology at hand, I can take a photo and make it any color I desire, make it appeal to whatever combination of hues are currently fueling inspiration. At work this week I've been juxtaposing a deep Prussian-blue/turquoise with a burnt-Sienna/brown-pink -- not unlike the tones in the header photo. Paint colors are incredibly powerful visual stimuli. Some days there is nothing can settle my addled self save for a good sit-down with a palette of oils. A photograph and a computer can serve the same purpose.
In both the header photo and the photo above, the landscape belongs to me. The only truth lies in what one's eyes are able to see.
I hear someone ask: what did it really look like?
I tell him: it looked like this.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Work
I'm wondering if I'll ever have another vacation, or if I'll ever retire. This isn't a litany of complaints -- I'm grateful to have a job that I love, and grateful for having had seven years worth of assorted cavorts around the globe. Just wish it had been spread out over a longer time period.
As things stand now, I'm looking at the necessity of continued employment until I drop dead. And at this rate, it's probably going to happen when I'm on the job, or a job. Whatever it takes to pay the bills.
I didn't expect to be looking back at 55 years from a standpoint of being twice-married, twice-unmarried. Death & divorce are both knee-bucklers. A better person would have planned more carefully -- at least that's what I hear from people who are close to me and should know better than to reprimand. What they don't know is that so many of those years have been spent scrabbling together enough to get by. Everyone has a back story, and I possibly don't fit the stereotype of The Working Poor, but I'll stand up here face-forward and say that I'm one of them. But then, that's the problem with stereotypes -- they don't take into account the myriad number of variables that make up any group of people.
For a short while, I thought I was home-free, had hit a home run, was out of the woods.
Alas.
Life has a way of jerking the rug out.
It's all precarious --
And not one of us is going to make it out alive.
That being said, my fortune is in the minute-by-minute details that make a day, a week, a life.
Today it was to find energy in the bluster of the March wind, humor in my work companions, comfort in dinner shared with my son, and an ephemeral nirvana in a quarter-cup of homemade chocolate-peanut-butter ice cream. (And yes, it was only a quarter-cup.)
As things stand now, I'm looking at the necessity of continued employment until I drop dead. And at this rate, it's probably going to happen when I'm on the job, or a job. Whatever it takes to pay the bills.
I didn't expect to be looking back at 55 years from a standpoint of being twice-married, twice-unmarried. Death & divorce are both knee-bucklers. A better person would have planned more carefully -- at least that's what I hear from people who are close to me and should know better than to reprimand. What they don't know is that so many of those years have been spent scrabbling together enough to get by. Everyone has a back story, and I possibly don't fit the stereotype of The Working Poor, but I'll stand up here face-forward and say that I'm one of them. But then, that's the problem with stereotypes -- they don't take into account the myriad number of variables that make up any group of people.
For a short while, I thought I was home-free, had hit a home run, was out of the woods.
Alas.
Life has a way of jerking the rug out.
It's all precarious --
And not one of us is going to make it out alive.
That being said, my fortune is in the minute-by-minute details that make a day, a week, a life.
Today it was to find energy in the bluster of the March wind, humor in my work companions, comfort in dinner shared with my son, and an ephemeral nirvana in a quarter-cup of homemade chocolate-peanut-butter ice cream. (And yes, it was only a quarter-cup.)
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Mass Hysteria and Saturday Morning Jell-O
Although my subscription lapsed last November, The New Yorker mysteriously keeps showing up in my mailbox. I made a decision to get the Sunday NYTimes instead, but, after reading this piece in this week's The Talk of the Town, I might have to pony-up for another year. According to Emily Eakin, twenty high school girls in Le Roy, New York -- home of The Jell-O Museum -- have been diagnosed with conversion disorder, aka mass hysteria: "a relatively rare phenomenon that, for reasons that are poorly understood, typically strikes groups of adolescents girls. The symptoms are real but their cause isn't genes or germs; it's stress."
Mass hysteria and Jell-O with oatmeal and coffee on a Saturday morning -- how much better can it get?
As a reverse-snob-foodie-of-sorts, I don't hesitate to express my love of Jell-O. (My former husband once asked me how I could profess to be a foodie when I didn't like mussels or oysters.) Not that my cupboard has ever been fully-Jell-O-stocked. In fact, I don't know when the last time was that I had a box of it in my possession. But I do know that I last ate Jell-O a mere nine months ago, while visiting long-time friends in Port Townsend, and B. -- bless her heart -- remembered my odd love of fluorescent gelatinized ingestibles, and served up a crystal bowl of raspberry Jell-O with whipped cream at the dinner table.
It's not food, really. Adding ingredients like ham and onions to, say, lime Jell-O tops my list of Things Not To Eat, Ever. And although meat jellies date back to the Middle Ages, leave it to entrepreneurial Americans to take take a broth of boiled bones, connective tissues, and intestines and add sugar and dye, patent it and make a million.
In 1923, an artifically-sweetened D-Zerta was introduced. Check out this commercial, from the 1970's:
I'd have never guessed that a Saturday morning would go this route, complete with "Chinese-type baby" and "glate Western invention, the spoon" --
I couldn't write any more without mentioning one of my favorite vintage cookbooks:
There's time to make these for Easter -- time enough, in fact, to perfect the problematic chore of blowing eggs (or resort to a plastic egg mold)--
Who knew gelatin could possess such grace and elegance?
I don't know if mentioning the word Jell-O ten times in a post qualifies as a blogging tic, but now for some odd reason I can't help myself from harboring obsessive thoughts about Ring-Around-The-Tuna and Cherry-Mallow Medley. Is it happening to you too? Are we experiencing Blogger Mass Hysteria?!
Maybe it's time to break open a box of raspberry Jell-O, pour a handful onto my palm, and lick it up. Of course, that may well induce an hysteria all its own.
Mass hysteria and Jell-O with oatmeal and coffee on a Saturday morning -- how much better can it get?
As a reverse-snob-foodie-of-sorts, I don't hesitate to express my love of Jell-O. (My former husband once asked me how I could profess to be a foodie when I didn't like mussels or oysters.) Not that my cupboard has ever been fully-Jell-O-stocked. In fact, I don't know when the last time was that I had a box of it in my possession. But I do know that I last ate Jell-O a mere nine months ago, while visiting long-time friends in Port Townsend, and B. -- bless her heart -- remembered my odd love of fluorescent gelatinized ingestibles, and served up a crystal bowl of raspberry Jell-O with whipped cream at the dinner table.
It's not food, really. Adding ingredients like ham and onions to, say, lime Jell-O tops my list of Things Not To Eat, Ever. And although meat jellies date back to the Middle Ages, leave it to entrepreneurial Americans to take take a broth of boiled bones, connective tissues, and intestines and add sugar and dye, patent it and make a million.
In 1923, an artifically-sweetened D-Zerta was introduced. Check out this commercial, from the 1970's:
I'd have never guessed that a Saturday morning would go this route, complete with "Chinese-type baby" and "glate Western invention, the spoon" --
I couldn't write any more without mentioning one of my favorite vintage cookbooks:
There's time to make these for Easter -- time enough, in fact, to perfect the problematic chore of blowing eggs (or resort to a plastic egg mold)--
Who knew gelatin could possess such grace and elegance?
I don't know if mentioning the word Jell-O ten times in a post qualifies as a blogging tic, but now for some odd reason I can't help myself from harboring obsessive thoughts about Ring-Around-The-Tuna and Cherry-Mallow Medley. Is it happening to you too? Are we experiencing Blogger Mass Hysteria?!
Maybe it's time to break open a box of raspberry Jell-O, pour a handful onto my palm, and lick it up. Of course, that may well induce an hysteria all its own.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Moon Viewing
Tonight the moon is 51% of full.
The past seven days I've watched a crescent, waxing, slung low in the western sky. Seen its cratered surface grow each night through my binoculars, on my 2nd story balcony, in the cold. I won't pretend to understand all the numbers on my small pair of binocs., but I do know that the 9x25 means that the moon, instead of appearing to be 238,857 miles away, appears a mere 26,539 miles away.
Pondering the notion of insignificance. It's good to get perspective on this when the irritations of daily living mount, growing to the elevation of Mt. Rainier: 14,411 feet, which I'm able to see when the omnipresent cloud cover dissipates.
When I view images like this cat's-eye nebula, on the Hubble site --
I wonder whether what I'm seeing is a jellyfish illuminated in moonlight or indeed an interstellar dust cloud. Does it matter? Probably not. Nature replicates itself over and over again.
Tonight while prepping dinner, I observed a cabbage-in-miniature when I sliced each Brussel's sprout in half. There seems to be nothing new under the sun -- except our ability to wonder, which waxes and wanes more often than la lune. When my focus becomes narrowed and claustrophobic, I benefit from nebula-viewing, and from standing outside late-winter with my binoculars, trying to fathom distances and the speed of light. My brain can't seem to take in that the light from a star has traveled so far and for so long that all I'm seeing is, essentially, a memory of light.
Ready -- more than ready -- to relegate the current winter to memory. There remain -- give or take a few -- 1,641,600 seconds until the advent of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
And then closer to the surface of things, there's my 16+ years cat at his end, rendered weak from seizures and attended to by my son who, years ago, suffered his own idiosyncratic cranial electrical storms. Moon-viewing may offer slim consolation, tonight, as we prepare to usher this old boy to his next state of consciousness. Won't help, I think, while I'm rummaging for a length of cloth in which to wrap him before he is layed-out, two feet down, into the garden.
At once -- a single particle of soil, and all of the heavens stretched away as far as the imagination dares.
Joy and woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
--from Auguries of Innocence, William Blake
The past seven days I've watched a crescent, waxing, slung low in the western sky. Seen its cratered surface grow each night through my binoculars, on my 2nd story balcony, in the cold. I won't pretend to understand all the numbers on my small pair of binocs., but I do know that the 9x25 means that the moon, instead of appearing to be 238,857 miles away, appears a mere 26,539 miles away.
Pondering the notion of insignificance. It's good to get perspective on this when the irritations of daily living mount, growing to the elevation of Mt. Rainier: 14,411 feet, which I'm able to see when the omnipresent cloud cover dissipates.
When I view images like this cat's-eye nebula, on the Hubble site --
I wonder whether what I'm seeing is a jellyfish illuminated in moonlight or indeed an interstellar dust cloud. Does it matter? Probably not. Nature replicates itself over and over again.
Tonight while prepping dinner, I observed a cabbage-in-miniature when I sliced each Brussel's sprout in half. There seems to be nothing new under the sun -- except our ability to wonder, which waxes and wanes more often than la lune. When my focus becomes narrowed and claustrophobic, I benefit from nebula-viewing, and from standing outside late-winter with my binoculars, trying to fathom distances and the speed of light. My brain can't seem to take in that the light from a star has traveled so far and for so long that all I'm seeing is, essentially, a memory of light.
Ready -- more than ready -- to relegate the current winter to memory. There remain -- give or take a few -- 1,641,600 seconds until the advent of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
And then closer to the surface of things, there's my 16+ years cat at his end, rendered weak from seizures and attended to by my son who, years ago, suffered his own idiosyncratic cranial electrical storms. Moon-viewing may offer slim consolation, tonight, as we prepare to usher this old boy to his next state of consciousness. Won't help, I think, while I'm rummaging for a length of cloth in which to wrap him before he is layed-out, two feet down, into the garden.
At once -- a single particle of soil, and all of the heavens stretched away as far as the imagination dares.
Joy and woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
--from Auguries of Innocence, William Blake
Sunday, February 26, 2012
On the Practice of Blogging, Post #1738
Certain interactions of late have caused me to ponder just what it is I'm doing here, and why I do it. On a purely practical sense, I see this almost-daily activity as exercise to hone the muscles of my more serious craft, that of poetry. All my published work is poetry, and many a poem began as a thread of a blog post.
(And before continuing, I want to state just how much I abhor the word "blogging." It is a word much more suited to describe what one does on one's knees before a toilet after over-indulgence.)
My five-year blogiversary is quickly approaching. In May 2007, I posted my first entry, newly engaged with a diamond. My oldest son was in cooking school and my kitchen, for a few weeks at least, was alight with his newly-learned flambe skills. A close friend had just died. My circle of friends, on a global scale, was considerably smaller than it is today. I had no theme in mind except to not be predictable. Confessional to a point -- omission is as telling as inclusion. It was a little like setting off on a long train ride to an unknown destination, wearing a blindfold.
In the ensuing years, I got married, got divorced. One son graduated from college, another son went to college, dropped out, went back. I moved. I traveled to Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, Texas, Los Angeles, Boston, Maine, Wyoming, Manhattan, and left a considerable portion of my heart in the West of Ireland. My oldest son was bound & gagged in a home-invasion robbery, a gun held to his head. He suffered a heart attack. There were breakdowns, tragic family secrets unveiled, near-suicides. There were deaths of people in my inner circle, and more deaths on top of those. Two cats were buried in the yard. I moved again, went to war with the banking industry. Adopted a kitten.
And through it all, my attempt at unpredictability grew increasingly difficult. As an audience developed, so did my blog persona. It's inevitable, I think. When we present our selves in this venue -- all we have is words (and photos), and our words become the persona. Is it the total of who I am? I certainly hope not. The inner sanctum is a closely guarded place, my own private tabernacle, as it were. Hands off!
But that's what blogging allows us -- complete freedom to create whatever it is we want on the screen. In my own blog-hopping through the universe, I am most inspired by blogs that allow us to peek into a window of another life. While confessional blogging is exhibitionist, reading confessional blogs is a form of acceptable voyeurism. You post, I read. Or, I post, you read. And every time I hit "publish", I ask myself if I'm willing to stand behind what it is I'm going public with -- yes, all 1,738 times.
It can get a bit heady. (Or one can get a "big heady", which is what I typed first and then corrected. Oops!) There's the frisson which happens often when reading comments, and I admit a certain addiction in relying on comments for ego nudges. But in a larger sense, this activity builds community. The edges of my ever-widening circle have stretched across the planet. During the fraught days of last spring, there was a posse of blogging friends who helped keep my head above the rapidly-rising waves of despair -- I'll be forever grateful to them.
And then there are stunning synchronicities that occur -- last Saturday I posted a short video of solar flares, and my friend Claire in New Zealand commented that she'd just been watching the same video. This morning I visited Scott at
The Dishwashers Tears, to see he'd posted this marvelous short film , which I'd just yesterday watched. There almost seems to be a magic afoot, or shared consciousness, created solely by this electronic presence. I am in awe of it all.
Predictable? Probably. When you get right down to it, a pattern of unpredictability is in itself predictable. And after five years, I guess it doesn't matter so much. I know that I can get up every morning and stop in for a quick visit with Cro in France, Tara in Sacramento, Polly in Albuquerque, Susan in Maine, Elizabeth in Los Angeles, John in Portland, Marguerite in Louisiana, Jacqueline in Canada, Mary in Eastbourne, C. in Manhattan.
I guess, in the end, I do this for the community I now share with the larger world - - with all of you out there -- even those who read and never comment. (And remember, not everything you read is true....)
Happy Sunday!
(And before continuing, I want to state just how much I abhor the word "blogging." It is a word much more suited to describe what one does on one's knees before a toilet after over-indulgence.)
My five-year blogiversary is quickly approaching. In May 2007, I posted my first entry, newly engaged with a diamond. My oldest son was in cooking school and my kitchen, for a few weeks at least, was alight with his newly-learned flambe skills. A close friend had just died. My circle of friends, on a global scale, was considerably smaller than it is today. I had no theme in mind except to not be predictable. Confessional to a point -- omission is as telling as inclusion. It was a little like setting off on a long train ride to an unknown destination, wearing a blindfold.
In the ensuing years, I got married, got divorced. One son graduated from college, another son went to college, dropped out, went back. I moved. I traveled to Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, Texas, Los Angeles, Boston, Maine, Wyoming, Manhattan, and left a considerable portion of my heart in the West of Ireland. My oldest son was bound & gagged in a home-invasion robbery, a gun held to his head. He suffered a heart attack. There were breakdowns, tragic family secrets unveiled, near-suicides. There were deaths of people in my inner circle, and more deaths on top of those. Two cats were buried in the yard. I moved again, went to war with the banking industry. Adopted a kitten.
And through it all, my attempt at unpredictability grew increasingly difficult. As an audience developed, so did my blog persona. It's inevitable, I think. When we present our selves in this venue -- all we have is words (and photos), and our words become the persona. Is it the total of who I am? I certainly hope not. The inner sanctum is a closely guarded place, my own private tabernacle, as it were. Hands off!
But that's what blogging allows us -- complete freedom to create whatever it is we want on the screen. In my own blog-hopping through the universe, I am most inspired by blogs that allow us to peek into a window of another life. While confessional blogging is exhibitionist, reading confessional blogs is a form of acceptable voyeurism. You post, I read. Or, I post, you read. And every time I hit "publish", I ask myself if I'm willing to stand behind what it is I'm going public with -- yes, all 1,738 times.
It can get a bit heady. (Or one can get a "big heady", which is what I typed first and then corrected. Oops!) There's the frisson which happens often when reading comments, and I admit a certain addiction in relying on comments for ego nudges. But in a larger sense, this activity builds community. The edges of my ever-widening circle have stretched across the planet. During the fraught days of last spring, there was a posse of blogging friends who helped keep my head above the rapidly-rising waves of despair -- I'll be forever grateful to them.
And then there are stunning synchronicities that occur -- last Saturday I posted a short video of solar flares, and my friend Claire in New Zealand commented that she'd just been watching the same video. This morning I visited Scott at
The Dishwashers Tears, to see he'd posted this marvelous short film , which I'd just yesterday watched. There almost seems to be a magic afoot, or shared consciousness, created solely by this electronic presence. I am in awe of it all.
Predictable? Probably. When you get right down to it, a pattern of unpredictability is in itself predictable. And after five years, I guess it doesn't matter so much. I know that I can get up every morning and stop in for a quick visit with Cro in France, Tara in Sacramento, Polly in Albuquerque, Susan in Maine, Elizabeth in Los Angeles, John in Portland, Marguerite in Louisiana, Jacqueline in Canada, Mary in Eastbourne, C. in Manhattan.
I guess, in the end, I do this for the community I now share with the larger world - - with all of you out there -- even those who read and never comment. (And remember, not everything you read is true....)
Happy Sunday!
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Revelations
I've been out searching under rocks, and have come home with the most amazing finds.....
We live in a universe of twisting pathways, arrows that point us in directions we'd previously never considered, and yet --
Once there, the riches are ours to gather, one precious detail after another.
Oh internet, how I do love thee!!!
We live in a universe of twisting pathways, arrows that point us in directions we'd previously never considered, and yet --
Once there, the riches are ours to gather, one precious detail after another.
Oh internet, how I do love thee!!!
Friday, February 24, 2012
Facebook, which I always refer to as Fishbowl....
Being somewhat of a social junkie, I'm the kind of person who takes her social networking seriously. Or, at least, as seriously humorously as possible. (Huh?) I mean, what I really need is my own club. I had it, in a sense, for a while, during my bakery days: a cookie and a floor-show for a buck; please leave a tip for the baker. Thank-you.
In the absence of a bricks-and-mortar setting, I am forced these days to settle for the NBT: the Next Best Thing, which, in my world at least, is Facebook.
Now I know there are those of you out there who wouldn't touch Facebook with a ten-foot keyboard, but I find it difficult to imagine life BFB (Before Facebook). This is how I see it: at any time, day or night (thanks to my handy handheld device), I can step into an on-going party, check in, exchange some social niceties (or not-niceties, whatever the case), and make a sly exit.
And what a party -- all the predictable types are present:
The guy who only talks about music videos, or the show he saw last week. He fakes modesty when a girl he hasn't seen in thirty years suddenly speaks up and declares him her guru! Golly!
There is the person who shouts the headlines, all bold-upper-case-caps.
There is someone telling cute pet stories and passing around pet photos. (Admission of guilt.)
Suddenly someone strides forth from the kitchen carrying a hot apple pie!
Two or three people stand around day after day promoting their latest book/film/song.
Baseball. Football. Basketball.
Someone limps in on crutches: broken ankle. (Sympathy, please. Thank-you.)
A group over in the corner are playing a game: What kind of dessert are you?
Someone drags out a box of black-and-white photos from their childhood, tacks them up to the wall, one at a time.
Someone else wanders in trailing everyone they went to high school with....
Someone drinks too much and slobbers and blathers.
And then there are those who come to the party but lurk in the shadows, silent and brooding, occasionally stepping out of their comfort zone to offer a thumbs-up: "like".
Private conversations occur, websites exchanged.
There are trails of information, clues, answers, insights, embedded secrets -- the A to Z of human behavior and experience.
And my facebook persona? I'm just trying to make someone laugh.
Yes -- you.
In the absence of a bricks-and-mortar setting, I am forced these days to settle for the NBT: the Next Best Thing, which, in my world at least, is Facebook.
Now I know there are those of you out there who wouldn't touch Facebook with a ten-foot keyboard, but I find it difficult to imagine life BFB (Before Facebook). This is how I see it: at any time, day or night (thanks to my handy handheld device), I can step into an on-going party, check in, exchange some social niceties (or not-niceties, whatever the case), and make a sly exit.
And what a party -- all the predictable types are present:
The guy who only talks about music videos, or the show he saw last week. He fakes modesty when a girl he hasn't seen in thirty years suddenly speaks up and declares him her guru! Golly!
There is the person who shouts the headlines, all bold-upper-case-caps.
There is someone telling cute pet stories and passing around pet photos. (Admission of guilt.)
Suddenly someone strides forth from the kitchen carrying a hot apple pie!
Two or three people stand around day after day promoting their latest book/film/song.
Baseball. Football. Basketball.
Someone limps in on crutches: broken ankle. (Sympathy, please. Thank-you.)
A group over in the corner are playing a game: What kind of dessert are you?
Someone drags out a box of black-and-white photos from their childhood, tacks them up to the wall, one at a time.
Someone else wanders in trailing everyone they went to high school with....
Someone drinks too much and slobbers and blathers.
And then there are those who come to the party but lurk in the shadows, silent and brooding, occasionally stepping out of their comfort zone to offer a thumbs-up: "like".
Private conversations occur, websites exchanged.
There are trails of information, clues, answers, insights, embedded secrets -- the A to Z of human behavior and experience.
And my facebook persona? I'm just trying to make someone laugh.
Yes -- you.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Harmony
Music again, with my friends T. and J. on guitar, and myself trailing behind on the melodica. Even as incompetent as I am, it's an amazing feeling being in the middle of that sound, and I felt a moment (several, actually), of complete and utter gratitude. And wondered, why haven't I been doing this my whole life?
My answer: because now is the right time.
Dare I say that the gift of this time, making music with friends, is a result of the uncoupling I slogged through these past eleven months? And now that this particular joy is becoming familiar, the suggestion that I might not have known it, ever, chills me. How close I came to enduring the rest of my years in an entirely other life --
Anyway.
The assignment for the three of us, who have been lazy and have not brought new songs to the group -- is to learn this perfect jewel of a tune, by Tom Waits:
I think we can manage it, with practice, in the here and now.
[Coda: I must add that my friend T. did play for us one of his own new songs -- J. and I are in awe of his talents.]
My answer: because now is the right time.
Dare I say that the gift of this time, making music with friends, is a result of the uncoupling I slogged through these past eleven months? And now that this particular joy is becoming familiar, the suggestion that I might not have known it, ever, chills me. How close I came to enduring the rest of my years in an entirely other life --
Anyway.
The assignment for the three of us, who have been lazy and have not brought new songs to the group -- is to learn this perfect jewel of a tune, by Tom Waits:
I think we can manage it, with practice, in the here and now.
[Coda: I must add that my friend T. did play for us one of his own new songs -- J. and I are in awe of his talents.]
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Still, Winter
Stepped outside this morning in my bathrobe to fill the birdfeeder and lingered among snowdrops and crocuses --
--as well as the one odd brick.
Lucky no neighbors were out.
And this seed pod, from a plant I purchased about 15 years ago, and from whom a seed unexpectedly germinated last spring, long dormant, as I haven't seen it for as many years. Plant names seem to be escaping me at the moment.[Cynthia? Any help?]
Here it is from last summer in full flower....
Listening obsessively to this --
...recalling an Irish afternoon driving around Connemara, listening to every version of Shenandoah on the iPod -- I think there were 13 variations. A day with the light blown in from the Atlantic, every color magnified, every blue more intense than I'd ever known, or known since.
--as well as the one odd brick.
Lucky no neighbors were out.
And this seed pod, from a plant I purchased about 15 years ago, and from whom a seed unexpectedly germinated last spring, long dormant, as I haven't seen it for as many years. Plant names seem to be escaping me at the moment.[Cynthia? Any help?]
Here it is from last summer in full flower....
Listening obsessively to this --
...recalling an Irish afternoon driving around Connemara, listening to every version of Shenandoah on the iPod -- I think there were 13 variations. A day with the light blown in from the Atlantic, every color magnified, every blue more intense than I'd ever known, or known since.
A Brief Discourse
"You shouldn't have done that," he said. "You don't know who you're dealing with -- he's the kind of guy who'll break your legs with a baseball bat."
She took a moment to look out the window of the Starbucks where they sat across from each other, the cup of coffee in front of him on the table grown cold.
"Honey," she said, "there is probably someone walking by right this moment who'd do the same to you, if I gave them the go-ahead."
His already-pale skin blanched to the shade of a skinned & boiled potato.
"Oh now honey," she said, reaching across to pat his fingers, "settle yourself down. You know I'd never do any such thing --"
She took a moment to look out the window of the Starbucks where they sat across from each other, the cup of coffee in front of him on the table grown cold.
"Honey," she said, "there is probably someone walking by right this moment who'd do the same to you, if I gave them the go-ahead."
His already-pale skin blanched to the shade of a skinned & boiled potato.
"Oh now honey," she said, reaching across to pat his fingers, "settle yourself down. You know I'd never do any such thing --"
Monday, February 20, 2012
Last week the muse showed up -- without warning -- at my door in full-on party mode, complete with a 16-piece jazz band and costumes (feathers, frills), culminating in a dinner for eleven Saturday night, in the aftermath of which she declared herself frazzled to her last thread, and made a French exit.
(Funny, but I'm visualizing her as Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey with a purple barge-of-a-hat run aground on her head.)
I may attempt to lure her back this evening.
We'll see.
(Funny, but I'm visualizing her as Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey with a purple barge-of-a-hat run aground on her head.)
I may attempt to lure her back this evening.
We'll see.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Woke up cold, the kind of cold where you calculate how much colder you'll get, and how long it will take to recover your heat if you get out of bed for another blanket/sweater/earmuffs/ultra-loft-goose-down-mummy-bag. I swear, even my teeth were cold. So I did one of those wrap-myself-around-myself tricks, went all-pretzel on myself. Folded and refolded, trying to trap pockets of warmth. The rain lashing the roof on my attic room.
Sigh.
But waking up -- however chilled -- from a good dream, is worth whatever effort it takes to gather a unit of heat. I know -- other people's dream are the stuff of yawns, but bear with me, because it really is relevant (and I'll be brief):
I've been visited by variations on the same dream for 37 years: I'm in my vegetable garden in the yard of my childhood home, and with generally considerable alarm, realize that I've neglected it, and it's on the verge of drying up, wherein I frantically go to work watering, weeding, propping and tending. But last night, although I had indeed neglected it, it was bursting with life, overflowing its borders -- petal and leaf and fully-fleshed fruit abounded. (There was the odd detail of the coffee pot plugged into a fencepost but sometimes a coffee pot is just a coffee pot.)
At the back side of the garden was a slight slope where I'd planted rows of six varieties of corn, and each variety had a different color foliage, and there was a slight breeze, so there was this lovely sinuous silky movement as the breeze passed through, and I thought: I have to take a picture of this for my blog!
If only my iPhone had a Dream-Camera App.
Alas.
Chattering teeth, and a chuckle upon waking.
Happy Saturday.
Sigh.
But waking up -- however chilled -- from a good dream, is worth whatever effort it takes to gather a unit of heat. I know -- other people's dream are the stuff of yawns, but bear with me, because it really is relevant (and I'll be brief):
I've been visited by variations on the same dream for 37 years: I'm in my vegetable garden in the yard of my childhood home, and with generally considerable alarm, realize that I've neglected it, and it's on the verge of drying up, wherein I frantically go to work watering, weeding, propping and tending. But last night, although I had indeed neglected it, it was bursting with life, overflowing its borders -- petal and leaf and fully-fleshed fruit abounded. (There was the odd detail of the coffee pot plugged into a fencepost but sometimes a coffee pot is just a coffee pot.)
At the back side of the garden was a slight slope where I'd planted rows of six varieties of corn, and each variety had a different color foliage, and there was a slight breeze, so there was this lovely sinuous silky movement as the breeze passed through, and I thought: I have to take a picture of this for my blog!
If only my iPhone had a Dream-Camera App.
Alas.
Chattering teeth, and a chuckle upon waking.
Happy Saturday.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Heart, of Glass
When I first started in this glass work, five years ago, my level of calm around so many breakables in a small space was close to non-existent. On my first day I think I broke two pieces. (Don't know why M. let me stay!)
Since then, it's been an ever-increasing choreography of body and glass. In the home-factory as well as the studio, we manoeuvre unwieldy (and heavy) cases of raw material around dozens of martini glasses and vases large and small. (As well as around one very large cat who likes nothing better than to spread out in the middle of it all and sleep.) Going around corners has become a geometrical calculation, at which, surprisingly, I've become quite skilled.
Some days I feel awash in packing peanuts and the sharp edges of cardboard -- which can inflict a nasty slice on the hand. But the actual breaking of glass is a much more rare occasion these days.
Wherein I introduce the lingering theme of the heart, so present of late. Like glass, a heart is tempered by the fires of many years of living and loving. Left untouched on a shelf, the likelihood of breaking is next to nil. Introduce the metaphorical earthquake, and it shatters all to hell. Sometimes the impact shatters the shards to the next continent --
I walk with ease amongst the daily glass of my craft. But the human heart and all its vulnerabilities seems likely to shatter at any moment. Certainly the fires have blazed long enough, frequently enough and with sufficient heat to make mine seem able to bounce -- but then there's the fact of flesh, of tissue, of touch.
I will not let my heart become an untouchable objet on a shelf.
Therefore, subject to breaking, and gluing back together, and tempering. Repeat. This seems to be the practice of my living.
And so off I head to another day amidst the angles and sharp edges of not only glass, but life itself.
Since then, it's been an ever-increasing choreography of body and glass. In the home-factory as well as the studio, we manoeuvre unwieldy (and heavy) cases of raw material around dozens of martini glasses and vases large and small. (As well as around one very large cat who likes nothing better than to spread out in the middle of it all and sleep.) Going around corners has become a geometrical calculation, at which, surprisingly, I've become quite skilled.
Some days I feel awash in packing peanuts and the sharp edges of cardboard -- which can inflict a nasty slice on the hand. But the actual breaking of glass is a much more rare occasion these days.
Wherein I introduce the lingering theme of the heart, so present of late. Like glass, a heart is tempered by the fires of many years of living and loving. Left untouched on a shelf, the likelihood of breaking is next to nil. Introduce the metaphorical earthquake, and it shatters all to hell. Sometimes the impact shatters the shards to the next continent --
I walk with ease amongst the daily glass of my craft. But the human heart and all its vulnerabilities seems likely to shatter at any moment. Certainly the fires have blazed long enough, frequently enough and with sufficient heat to make mine seem able to bounce -- but then there's the fact of flesh, of tissue, of touch.
I will not let my heart become an untouchable objet on a shelf.
Therefore, subject to breaking, and gluing back together, and tempering. Repeat. This seems to be the practice of my living.
And so off I head to another day amidst the angles and sharp edges of not only glass, but life itself.
My Austin, Texas friend Nita Lou Bryant has a marvelous piece up at the online 'zine Drash Pit. Check it out here.
Go Nita!
Go Nita!
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Of The Essence
Stopped at the store tonight to pick up some tuna for my ancient (and wasting) kitty, and thought of my mom, decades ago, walking home from the store carrying a giant bag of dog food. While she was gone, the dog had been hit (killed) by a car, and I can still see Mom coming along the side of the road, past the hedge, arms-full with, what exists in my memory, a massive bag of kibble. I don't know which of my sisters rushed out to break the news, but there was a look on her face the moment before she found out, and a look after, and I can describe neither.
In the line at Safeway, I wondered if Tippy would greet me at the door -- his habit for 16 years. I've meant for weeks now to get him some tuna, his favorite food, and kept forgetting. I thought of the brevity of life, how sometimes we have only one chance to get something right. Wondered: am I getting this right?
Tip --scraggle-boned, his fur a miskempt scruff -- was on the couch, wide-eyed, very much alive. Relief from me. There is, apparently, still time.
In the line at Safeway, I wondered if Tippy would greet me at the door -- his habit for 16 years. I've meant for weeks now to get him some tuna, his favorite food, and kept forgetting. I thought of the brevity of life, how sometimes we have only one chance to get something right. Wondered: am I getting this right?
Tip --scraggle-boned, his fur a miskempt scruff -- was on the couch, wide-eyed, very much alive. Relief from me. There is, apparently, still time.
Botanicals
What I found in the yard this morning when I went out to fill the bird feeder (lucky squirrels will relish the accidental spillage of black sunflower seeds I left for them):
I can't remember the name of this flower -- possibly in the primrose family? In any case, a snippet of them and a few sprigs of snowdrops now sit in a miniature beaker on the kitchen counter.
M. is off to Philadelphia for Wholesale Show #2...I'm staying behind to ramp up production. We are experiencing serious growing pains here at Studio Hijinx, and a ream of yet more new orders (a distinct possibility) shall prove to be a challenge and an adventure for which I feel ready and primed. At the eleventh hour, and after a month of attempts and setbacks, Melinda left for Phillly with three prototypes of the new line. And by eleventh hour, I mean that we were painting and repainting and rethinking on Tuesday up until about 4pm, when we declared the new incarnation good-to-go. Into the kitchen kiln they went (aka, the oven), and she departed early the next morning with them boxed-up and ready to be checked as baggage.
(Art/inspiration as baggage. Hmm.) Anyway, here's one of the pieces, amid the considerable chaos at my workspace:
I neglected to photograph the sides: black pinstripes. They remind us of old-fashioned hat boxes.
I can't remember the name of this flower -- possibly in the primrose family? In any case, a snippet of them and a few sprigs of snowdrops now sit in a miniature beaker on the kitchen counter.
M. is off to Philadelphia for Wholesale Show #2...I'm staying behind to ramp up production. We are experiencing serious growing pains here at Studio Hijinx, and a ream of yet more new orders (a distinct possibility) shall prove to be a challenge and an adventure for which I feel ready and primed. At the eleventh hour, and after a month of attempts and setbacks, Melinda left for Phillly with three prototypes of the new line. And by eleventh hour, I mean that we were painting and repainting and rethinking on Tuesday up until about 4pm, when we declared the new incarnation good-to-go. Into the kitchen kiln they went (aka, the oven), and she departed early the next morning with them boxed-up and ready to be checked as baggage.
(Art/inspiration as baggage. Hmm.) Anyway, here's one of the pieces, amid the considerable chaos at my workspace:
I neglected to photograph the sides: black pinstripes. They remind us of old-fashioned hat boxes.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
At ten I knew the location of every bird's nest in the woods behind my house, at least every nest to which I was able to climb. I gave tours to whoever was interested -- suffice to say that my career as a youthful tour guide was short lived. My passion was a solitary one. But the thrill of finding a nest filled with blue eggs was unlike any other. I always wanted to tell the mother bird not to fret -- I was only after a glimpse. They were fearless and frantic, those maternal robins, diving perilously close to me, full of squawking and bluster.
Hours were spent slung over an alder limb, in the company of leaves and sky. I possessed an intimate knowledge of how a tree grew, could calculate the weight-bearing capabilities of a branch, how far the uppermost tip of a tree would sway once I climbed as high as I dared, and higher, often.
And the new leaves, that bright yellow-green in April.
Hours were spent slung over an alder limb, in the company of leaves and sky. I possessed an intimate knowledge of how a tree grew, could calculate the weight-bearing capabilities of a branch, how far the uppermost tip of a tree would sway once I climbed as high as I dared, and higher, often.
And the new leaves, that bright yellow-green in April.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Succuming to Temptation
After all that fancy talk last night about not making sugared hearts, I eventually gave in to temptation and did indeed break out the paraphernalia of baking. Without, though, checking first for all necessary ingredients. And when it came time to drizzle icing, there was only granulated sugar. And not the proper sprinx.
Undaunted, and not wanting to drive (suffer with me here) the two blocks to the store for powdered sugar, I told my son to google "how to make powdered sugar". Without googling, he said to just put some granulated in the food processor. "They add an anti-sticky ingredient to the commercial stuff, but you don't really need that." Mr. Science.
So I did that. After about thirty seconds, I removed the top of the Cuisinart: no change. Okay -- so I buzzed it again, this time for about a minute. When I removed the top clouds of sugar dust floated up. Briefly I considered all the things we breathe-in during a lifetime: pollen, smog, lint particles, hairspray, the swirled bouquet of a glass of wine, baby powder, dirt, what else? What other microscopic bits are, as I type, clinging to my alveoli? Ground black pepper? DDT? Polychlorinated dibenzoflurans? (Note to self: get back to the subject.)
Back to business. What I thought while lacking success in making my own powdered sugar was: I can't imagine a sweeter death than asphyxiation by sugar dust.
I complained to my son that his suggestion was failing and he said, "oh, you have to do it for a long time".
Me: "How long? Two, three minutes?"
R."No. Fifteen. At least."
Fifteen minutes?!! I don't think so. Fifteen minutes of continued metal-blading in my 30+ year Cuisinart (the original model) would surely hasten it to its impending death, sugar dust aside.
The results, made with granulated sugar, a tablespoon of butter, hot water, vanilla and two drops of red food coloring, were acceptable, but a bit odd texturely. Pretty, though, with the glistening of undissolved crystals.
And the sprinx (gawd I love that word), which have the shelf life of twinkies and pre-date my move back to B-Street by I-don't-know-how-long, were acceptable also. Let's be honest here: pretty much any homemade cookie, slightly warm, drizzled and sprinkled, at 11pm, is fabulous.
Undaunted, and not wanting to drive (suffer with me here) the two blocks to the store for powdered sugar, I told my son to google "how to make powdered sugar". Without googling, he said to just put some granulated in the food processor. "They add an anti-sticky ingredient to the commercial stuff, but you don't really need that." Mr. Science.
So I did that. After about thirty seconds, I removed the top of the Cuisinart: no change. Okay -- so I buzzed it again, this time for about a minute. When I removed the top clouds of sugar dust floated up. Briefly I considered all the things we breathe-in during a lifetime: pollen, smog, lint particles, hairspray, the swirled bouquet of a glass of wine, baby powder, dirt, what else? What other microscopic bits are, as I type, clinging to my alveoli? Ground black pepper? DDT? Polychlorinated dibenzoflurans? (Note to self: get back to the subject.)
Back to business. What I thought while lacking success in making my own powdered sugar was: I can't imagine a sweeter death than asphyxiation by sugar dust.
I complained to my son that his suggestion was failing and he said, "oh, you have to do it for a long time".
Me: "How long? Two, three minutes?"
R."No. Fifteen. At least."
Fifteen minutes?!! I don't think so. Fifteen minutes of continued metal-blading in my 30+ year Cuisinart (the original model) would surely hasten it to its impending death, sugar dust aside.
The results, made with granulated sugar, a tablespoon of butter, hot water, vanilla and two drops of red food coloring, were acceptable, but a bit odd texturely. Pretty, though, with the glistening of undissolved crystals.
And the sprinx (gawd I love that word), which have the shelf life of twinkies and pre-date my move back to B-Street by I-don't-know-how-long, were acceptable also. Let's be honest here: pretty much any homemade cookie, slightly warm, drizzled and sprinkled, at 11pm, is fabulous.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Day of Hearts
I should get out measuring cups, the teaspoon and the mixer. The butter and vanilla, the sugar, the flour. If there was more inspiration, I'd mix a batter, set it to chill. Rummage for the heart-shaped cutter which broke once (and a welder-friend soldered it whole). (A broken heart cannot really be soldered, can it?)
I'd cut row upon row of delicate hearts, bake them on parchment upon aluminum sheets. Twelve minutes, maybe thirteen. Until browned at the edges.
(A neglected heart will burn.)
How long does it really take for a heart to be done?
Cooled, I'd line them up in neat rows, drizzle icing in jagged streaks, sprinkle with the smallest nonpareil.
I might even bring you a boxful -- if you ask.
I'd cut row upon row of delicate hearts, bake them on parchment upon aluminum sheets. Twelve minutes, maybe thirteen. Until browned at the edges.
(A neglected heart will burn.)
How long does it really take for a heart to be done?
Cooled, I'd line them up in neat rows, drizzle icing in jagged streaks, sprinkle with the smallest nonpareil.
I might even bring you a boxful -- if you ask.
The Bank
Being generally tired of the dark, I googled daylight savings time and discovered this site. The curious thing I discovered is that people all over our planet are saving daylight from March to November, EVERY YEAR!! I wonder how much is in the Daylight Savings Bank. Probably lots.
I think I need to open an account and make regular withdrawals from November through March.
Cuba saves daylight!
So does Estonia!!
The Holy See saves daylight! (Thank God.)
Namibia saves daylight!
Samoa saves daylight!!
The Territorial Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon saves daylight!
As does Uruguay.
Among those with no daylight saved are Bahrain, Belize & Benin; Gabon, Ghana & Granada; and Oman, Pakistan and Sudan.
The Tonganese save no daylight. Neither do Yemenites. Nor Singaporeans.
I suppose some countries are too busy saving endangered species or rainforests to spend much time thinking about saving daylight. All I can say is I can thank my lucky stars that I live in a country where attention is given to things that really matter. I mean, who has time to think about things like universal health care or war when we spend eight months out of the year saving daylight?
I think I need to open an account and make regular withdrawals from November through March.
Cuba saves daylight!
So does Estonia!!
The Holy See saves daylight! (Thank God.)
Namibia saves daylight!
Samoa saves daylight!!
The Territorial Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon saves daylight!
As does Uruguay.
Among those with no daylight saved are Bahrain, Belize & Benin; Gabon, Ghana & Granada; and Oman, Pakistan and Sudan.
The Tonganese save no daylight. Neither do Yemenites. Nor Singaporeans.
I suppose some countries are too busy saving endangered species or rainforests to spend much time thinking about saving daylight. All I can say is I can thank my lucky stars that I live in a country where attention is given to things that really matter. I mean, who has time to think about things like universal health care or war when we spend eight months out of the year saving daylight?
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Pleased to announce that Kathleen Flenniken -- a member of my writing group -- has been chosen as the new Washington State Poet Laureate.
Read the full story here.
Yay Kathleen!!
Read the full story here.
Yay Kathleen!!
Offering
This is the time of year in Seattle when we seem perpetually stuck in grey, so I'm offering up to the gods of light and color these few objets, in the hopes that contrast and a polychromatic perspective to the day returns soon:
red vintage dress --
brown muscled horse --
pink salmon in shadow:
three small teacups --
an impossibly tiny feather (with cork for perspective) --
an equally-impossibly-tiny compass, with lichen --
red vintage dress --
brown muscled horse --
pink salmon in shadow:
three small teacups --
an impossibly tiny feather (with cork for perspective) --
an equally-impossibly-tiny compass, with lichen --
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Assault
A young man with whom I'm acquainted -- J., a barista at the local coffee shop -- was recently, without provocation, stabbed sixteen times while out walking his dog. A clearly mentally-ill man knocked him to the ground and stabbed him in his face, neck and chest. The dog (a small one) barked and barked. My friend offered the assailant his wallet, but to no avail: the attacker was delusional and paranoid. J. was finally able to throw him off.
I don't know what happened next except that the police were called, the knife-wielder caught, and J. was rushed to emergency. I was at work when this happened, about a half mile from the scene, and both Melinda and I remarked on the number of emergency vehicles racing by the house, not knowing, at that time, what had happened.
The Seattle Times reported the incident briefly, and spoke of "superficial wounds."
I ran into J. this week on the light rail. He's perhaps thirty, studying to be an EMT, a tender-souled man with a quiet friendly manner. There's a genuineness, an honesty about him that is striking. (Wishing he were, oh, twenty-or-so-years-older....)
Sitting on the train, he pulled up his shirt to show one of the (healing) wounds on his chest, and another on his shoulder which came precariously close to nicking his lung. I pointed out that the gouge on his cheek will only make him more handsome, and he laughed. He seemed relaxed, at peace, but I can only imagine what the long-term effects of an act of violence such as this will have on his psyche. The knife-wounds will heal, the scars will fade with time, but my fear for J. is of the lingering effects of this incident.
J. was present at the man's arraignment, and said that he is clearly a disconnected person, undoubtedly mentally ill.
That this happened just blocks from my house increases the volume of the alarm I feel, on many levels. This attacker did not belong on the streets, but given the state of public health in this country, I know that he is one of many. But how many? Will this man be released back into the world at large? I feel tremendous compassion for J., but also for his assailant, who, with appropriate medical care and supervision, would probably not be posing a risk to the general population, and could very possibly be living a productive life.
There exists sadness and tragedy in every aspect of this.
And what to do?
Love those we love more fiercely.
Be mindful.
Rejoice in the ordinary day.
I don't know what happened next except that the police were called, the knife-wielder caught, and J. was rushed to emergency. I was at work when this happened, about a half mile from the scene, and both Melinda and I remarked on the number of emergency vehicles racing by the house, not knowing, at that time, what had happened.
The Seattle Times reported the incident briefly, and spoke of "superficial wounds."
I ran into J. this week on the light rail. He's perhaps thirty, studying to be an EMT, a tender-souled man with a quiet friendly manner. There's a genuineness, an honesty about him that is striking. (Wishing he were, oh, twenty-or-so-years-older....)
Sitting on the train, he pulled up his shirt to show one of the (healing) wounds on his chest, and another on his shoulder which came precariously close to nicking his lung. I pointed out that the gouge on his cheek will only make him more handsome, and he laughed. He seemed relaxed, at peace, but I can only imagine what the long-term effects of an act of violence such as this will have on his psyche. The knife-wounds will heal, the scars will fade with time, but my fear for J. is of the lingering effects of this incident.
J. was present at the man's arraignment, and said that he is clearly a disconnected person, undoubtedly mentally ill.
That this happened just blocks from my house increases the volume of the alarm I feel, on many levels. This attacker did not belong on the streets, but given the state of public health in this country, I know that he is one of many. But how many? Will this man be released back into the world at large? I feel tremendous compassion for J., but also for his assailant, who, with appropriate medical care and supervision, would probably not be posing a risk to the general population, and could very possibly be living a productive life.
There exists sadness and tragedy in every aspect of this.
And what to do?
Love those we love more fiercely.
Be mindful.
Rejoice in the ordinary day.
Friday, February 10, 2012
the hearts
I begin with 80# paper, and a hand-cut stencil.
Add layers of pastel, thick thick.
Use the tip of a utility knife to scritch a pattern.
Then: photograph.
Then: computer. And messing with the images.
(Suffering from a dearth of words.)
Add layers of pastel, thick thick.
Use the tip of a utility knife to scritch a pattern.
Then: photograph.
Then: computer. And messing with the images.
(Suffering from a dearth of words.)
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Breathing, as a Ninety-Nine Percenter
At the bar of the four-star hotel where we stayed in Manhattan (special rate for Gift Fair exhibitors), we sat down beside a man who, within minutes, announced that he was a one-percenter. Not knowing quite how to respond to him (other than vomiting, but hey -- how can you begrudge a guy his $3million dollar home, for which he paid cash?), I mentioned the economic reality of living at the bottom of the food chain. It didn't take long for the conversation to veer into politics, and for Mr. One-Percenter to complain that he had to pay a half-million dollars in taxes last year. I brought out my tiny violin and intoned a dirge. The poor fella!
And he really said this:
"Say you make $250,000 a year, have a house payment and a couple of kids, and you want to send both those kids to college. How are you gonna do it?"
My response:
"Say you make $30,000 a year, have a house payment and a couple of kids, and you want to send both those kids to college. How are you gonna do that?
He looked pensive for a moment, obviously pondering the question with great thought. And honest to god, he looked at me, considerably perplexed, and asked:
"Why are salaries so low in Seattle?"
I nearly spit my drink out.
Need I say anything more?
Further conversation brought to light the fact of his son's autism, for which he is not capable of purchasing the cure. If I was not so kind, I would have pointed out the thousands of dollars he'll save not sending this son to college. As it turned out, a conversation with a poet and an artist about his sense of helplessness in dealing with his son's health brought him to his knees: his eyes welled up. He cried.
This, of course, was after he told us about the 12,000 square foot house he's renting for a vacation in Puerto Vallarta. And the food & drink "budget", for five days, is $7500.
Yawn.
As he slid further and further down into his cups, his use of language diminished into half-words and slurs, and he said,
"I have an amusing antidote."
Holy crap. I began to laugh before he even began to tell his "antidote". I don't know why I attempted to suppress a growing out-of-control giggle-fit -- good manners, maybe? He didn't deserve it. (The giggles were erupting from me in powerful bursts, which I tried to hide by coughing. He was too drunk to notice.)
But the poor fella, indeed. All that cash, all those taxes handed over to a president he despises, and he doesn't know an antidote from an anecdote.
It occurred to me that nothing I said, nothing Melinda said, was going to sink into this guy's brain. He had the wherewithal to hire an entire string section of violinists to accompany his over-taxation lamention. He was one of the Bad Guys, a bond trader, a target of the Occupy Movement, on a bar stool in New York. In the flesh. (Alcohol-marinated flesh, but flesh nonethless.)
The next day I flew three thousand miles back to my real life, where one son (with health issues of his own) is unemployed and living with me, and the other son is "doing it" -- going to college, on loans and a part-time job loading and unloading UPS planes at the airport in the middle of the night.
I work for an artist -- for, well, um, considerably less than $250,000 a year.
According to Mr. One-Percenter's standards, I shouldn't be able to survive at all on anything less than $250k, much less even breathe.
How do we do it?
And he really said this:
"Say you make $250,000 a year, have a house payment and a couple of kids, and you want to send both those kids to college. How are you gonna do it?"
My response:
"Say you make $30,000 a year, have a house payment and a couple of kids, and you want to send both those kids to college. How are you gonna do that?
He looked pensive for a moment, obviously pondering the question with great thought. And honest to god, he looked at me, considerably perplexed, and asked:
"Why are salaries so low in Seattle?"
I nearly spit my drink out.
Need I say anything more?
Further conversation brought to light the fact of his son's autism, for which he is not capable of purchasing the cure. If I was not so kind, I would have pointed out the thousands of dollars he'll save not sending this son to college. As it turned out, a conversation with a poet and an artist about his sense of helplessness in dealing with his son's health brought him to his knees: his eyes welled up. He cried.
This, of course, was after he told us about the 12,000 square foot house he's renting for a vacation in Puerto Vallarta. And the food & drink "budget", for five days, is $7500.
Yawn.
As he slid further and further down into his cups, his use of language diminished into half-words and slurs, and he said,
"I have an amusing antidote."
Holy crap. I began to laugh before he even began to tell his "antidote". I don't know why I attempted to suppress a growing out-of-control giggle-fit -- good manners, maybe? He didn't deserve it. (The giggles were erupting from me in powerful bursts, which I tried to hide by coughing. He was too drunk to notice.)
But the poor fella, indeed. All that cash, all those taxes handed over to a president he despises, and he doesn't know an antidote from an anecdote.
It occurred to me that nothing I said, nothing Melinda said, was going to sink into this guy's brain. He had the wherewithal to hire an entire string section of violinists to accompany his over-taxation lamention. He was one of the Bad Guys, a bond trader, a target of the Occupy Movement, on a bar stool in New York. In the flesh. (Alcohol-marinated flesh, but flesh nonethless.)
The next day I flew three thousand miles back to my real life, where one son (with health issues of his own) is unemployed and living with me, and the other son is "doing it" -- going to college, on loans and a part-time job loading and unloading UPS planes at the airport in the middle of the night.
I work for an artist -- for, well, um, considerably less than $250,000 a year.
According to Mr. One-Percenter's standards, I shouldn't be able to survive at all on anything less than $250k, much less even breathe.
How do we do it?
Friday, February 3, 2012
Sunny and 62 in Seattle today -- and home from NYC, this "small town" seems so tame, so quiet, so roomy, so accessible! There's nothing like travel to expand one's perspective.
It's one of those clear, clean days with a brisk breeze where every visual detail of everything seems magnified. The Cascade Mountains, in the sunset, glow pink and lavender. I like to look at the mountains with my binoculars -- a bit surreal, those snow-cragged peaks which seem so close from my urban treetop perch.
A quick survey of the garden this morning showed violas in tentative bloom, buds on the clematis and a few early leaves on the honeysuckle. This is the annual tease -- winter is not finished with us quite yet, I fear. Nonetheless, a day like today is enough to make me forget the persistent grey of a Seattle winter. (And a reminder to myself that the color grey has an infinite number of shades!)
The Gift Show was a success, and well worth the time and effort. We picked up 30+ new accounts and enough orders to most likely guarantee a fruitful 2012.
Onward!
It's one of those clear, clean days with a brisk breeze where every visual detail of everything seems magnified. The Cascade Mountains, in the sunset, glow pink and lavender. I like to look at the mountains with my binoculars -- a bit surreal, those snow-cragged peaks which seem so close from my urban treetop perch.
A quick survey of the garden this morning showed violas in tentative bloom, buds on the clematis and a few early leaves on the honeysuckle. This is the annual tease -- winter is not finished with us quite yet, I fear. Nonetheless, a day like today is enough to make me forget the persistent grey of a Seattle winter. (And a reminder to myself that the color grey has an infinite number of shades!)
The Gift Show was a success, and well worth the time and effort. We picked up 30+ new accounts and enough orders to most likely guarantee a fruitful 2012.
Onward!
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