Dating by Committee

I got a text today at work today from someone not in my phone book, so no name appeared. It puzzled me, so I read it out loud to the five of us, and Melinda said,

"I know what it means! I know who it's from!"

Well.

It was from a man with whom I had a date, about three weeks ago, who offered to make a connection with a friend of a friend about a job possibility for my son. How was it that Melinda made this connection, but not me? Lord knows. There's a lot fidgeting around up there in the brain.

But anyway. I sent back a friendly thank-you, and got back to painting.

And then....ding. Another text:

How are you doing?

Of course, everyone wanted to know what it said, so I read it out loud.

"What should I say?" Not certain if I want this to go forward, in the romance department, I put it out the the assembled masses. And there ensued a hubbub of advice, from an assortment of people ranging in age from 26 to 60....

Don't answer right away!
Make him wait!
Answer right away!
Don't make him wait!
Give it 30 minutes.
Just say you're fine, and leave it at that.
You don't want to appear eager.
(I'm not sure I wanted to appear anything at all.)
Don't be chomping at the bit!

And on it went, a cacophony, a rabble, a hilarious noise and banter about being coy,  of timing.

I listened.
It continued.

Finally I responded.
He responded.
The end.

(I should mention that this is a common occurrence here on the job — these group advice consults — as two of us are single. Can't imagine what any of these prospective dates would think if they knew what goes on behind the scenes of their communications. Tee hee.)

Eve Begat Raspberries.....

The guy at the cable store today had a tattooed wedding band with the name "Eve" in blue ink around his ring finger. I exclaimed at this — in the middle of trading in my old non-functioning cable TV gear for new fancy shiny boxes (and believe it or not I was excited about the fact that after three years of no TV I was going to be getting the most basic of all cable TV possibilities) — and I said,

"What if you get divorced?"
And he said, "We did."
"Really?"
"Yeah. No regrets. I'd have a bigger problem if I had a tattoo with a misspelling. Anyway, what have you been doing for the past three years without TV?"

How to answer this? I mean, first of all, the notion of a wedding band tattooed onto one's finger — there was no way I could respond to this. And the issue of no TV? How could I explain that the only thing I missed was Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy? A few random advertisements? And that it took me three years to get to the point of missing them? How could I say to a stranger that I've spent this time engaged in frenzied writing, in deep and entrenched periods of thought and processing? I couldn't explain. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I mumbled something, of little consequence. For the most part I've eschewed TV, not wanted TV, not needed TV. But now, there's a tiny part of me that wants to be part of some larger group activity, part of the group of us boomers that sits down at 7pm (on the west coast) and watches Pat Sajak (who makes $8,000,000 a year)  and Vanna White talk about inane things and spin wheels and witness people buying vowels. Can I buy a vowel? I've always been fond of "o". I want to buy an "o".

So anyway.

I didn't say any of this to the Eve-tattooed man, just took my shrink-wrapped modem-thing-a-ma-jiggie and new remote control device and high-tailed it outta there, excited for wheels containing fortunes. Not my fortunes, mind you.

But there are other paths to gold, and mine, today, took the form of raspberries, at 99 cents a cup, at the fruit stand. Not local, and most unseasonal, but damn good and ripe and perfect.

Foggage

The Point at Seward Park

At Water's Edge

Sunset at Sayres Park

The day began lost in fog, ended in pale pink streaks across a cold sky.

Noise, Oranges

Driving through the International District today was surprisingly easy, despite the mobs of people packed into Century Link Field for the Seahawks game. My timing was mid-game, so the streets were easily negotiable, even on this Sunday before Christmas.

I've been inside the stadium for football games, and the noise is tremendous, numbing, deafening. Today I stood in the parking lot at Uwajimaya (an Asian market), practically a stone's throw from the game, and the sound of 67,000 fans cheering was spooky, ghostly, traveling in waves that rose in tone and intensity then just as quickly died down.

A foggy mist sat heavy on the city, and everything dripped. A vendor sold hot chestnuts from a cheery red umbrella'd cart by the store entrance. In my bag were a few Japanese mandarin oranges, the kind with the green stems and leaves still attached, and a few blood oranges — seasonal splurges. The price of food is high these days.

I looked up the price of tickets available for the next Sunday's Seahawks game: starting at $170, for a single ticket. The maximum monthly alottment for a person receiving food stamps in this city is $189 a month.

I don't think I can say anything more.

Things being where they are....

When my poetry group met at my house this week, my friend Anne looked up at the ceiling at my Christmas branch, ornamentally laden.....

.














 ...and down to the wall where the tiny plastic nativity set is lined up on top of a picture frame (inside the frame is a stencil pattern for a hand-printed Japanese kimono fabric, which I purchased in Paris for my ex-husband for his birthday, who gave it back to me [I didn't ask for it] when he severed the relationship).....

.....and then she proclaimed, "Nothing is where it should be!"

Kind of the story of my life.

Tra la.

Why We Write

I had a conversation yesterday with a woman who just finished a novel and is doing the publisher search. I'm fascinated by why people write, and lately have been asking this of writer friends. The answer is generally something like this: It's what I do.

Seems it's as simple as that: it's what I do.

I said to her, You mean, like breathing? 
She said, Yes, that's it.

On one hand, I envy her a little. She's shopping a novel around, and there's always the (remote) promise of payment. Poets don't possess that illusion. But still we do it, day after day, hours at the keyboard or notepad, typing, scribbling.

And for what?

It allows me to breathe, this daily practice.

It's what I do.

Writer friends, any thoughts on this?

And lo, a branch —

On a ladder, tangled in my hazelnut tree with a Japanese saw in one hand (and I was wearing a skirt) and the grave of a cat below me: a pair of hummingbirds visited, swirled about me, swooped and dived and performed winter acrobatics while I reached high up and cut a single branch, which caught in the twig jumble. Stuck. I climbed higher on the ladder so as to get some leverage, pushed the damn thing down into the neighbor's yard. I retrieved it, opening the neighbor's eight-foot-long gate which felt as if it hadn't been opened in many years. Dragged the branch up the alley and into my yard, up on the deck and in to the kitchen where the cats scattered, spooked.

And the hummingbirds? Sipping deeply of sugar-water nectar from the glass feeder hung on a hook above the dead sunflowers. (The chicadees and Oregon juncos sounded alarms when one of their branches fell. Clearly they were distressed!)

There's a hazelnut branch hanging from my living room ceiling now, strung with white lights. It was more work than a tree, involved yet more ladder-climbing, a trip to the hardware store, a drill, anchor bolts, 19 gauge wire, plyers, cursing.

I am a reluctant handyperson.

Fir

A wee visual posting of seasonal nature —
green sprig with red tips,
the sparkle of a snowflake
ever-so-delicate
that caught the light
at the right angle —

Cracking the Shell

"Whereas our direct experience of nature is limited, science has enabled us to become aware of the vastness of the world outside us. A colleague's metaphor has us like an embryonic chick, consuming the stored food inside the egg until it is all gone and the world seems to be at an end. But the shell is cracked open and the chick emerges into a new, vastly greater (and more interesting) world." From Quantum Physics for Poets, Leon M. Lederman and Christopher T. Hill.

My newest labor, this book, and after several weeks I'm on all of page 46. Granted, I only read it before I fall to sleep, so it's a few pages read (and reread) at a time. I think it'll go on my Christmas list; don't know how many times I can renew it at the library!

But consider this: what if all of us, together on this planet, are embryonic chicks, consuming all that there is to consume, until there is no more, and then, what? Will we reach the point of no return, our own event horizon?  Will we emerge into "a new, vastly greater world"?

This is what I'll ponder tonight, where on my side of the planet the temperature has warmed up to 41 degrees fahrenheit, (up from 18 a few days ago) and I'm basking in the relative balminess of it all.

Ends and Odds

I'm thinking of a Christmas branch this year, maybe from my apple tree in need of serious pruning, suspended from the ceiling of my living room, strung with white lights. Maybe. It'll take a ladder and the sawz-all, a son or two. Hung from hooks, gotta find the studs (in the ceiling).

Just don't know about spending the $$ on a tree that sheds and tilts (and sometimes tips) and demands water. The $$ would be better spent on, oh, say, meat (rather a luxury these days). (And I do love to eat meat occasionally.) Or even on some really good vodka. It's the holidaze, after all.

And when I find a publisher for my manuscript, I want this to be the cover:

Tiny Tornado, by Rachel Maxi

Reminiscent of Edward Hopper but with an urban au courant sensibility, Rachel's subject range from
the odd vehicle....

Little Ghost Van, by Rachel Maxi

...to the dumpster —

Big White Rusty, by Rachel Maxi

— to oysters, unexpected still lifes, rusty locks and plastic ponies. 

Check out more of her work here.
And if you can, write her a big fat check, get a big fat painting. Or a tiny one.

A Small Step

Childhood's End Gallery in Olympia, Washington took 14 of my pieces on consignment this week, a sweet serendipitous moment in the middle of one of my work days last week. A real gallery, not a coffee shop. Dare I hold my breath?!

Smacked in the Face: Racism

Years ago, when my sons were in elementary school, I volunteered to help with the Christmas play, and was assigned backstage duty on the night of the performance, where I mostly kept a bunch of very lovable and delightful first-and-second-grade boys hijinx-free. They called me "Miss T.", which always, of course, came out as "Misty". It was joyful duty. I loved those children, and their unconditional trust of me, a white parent among black children.

My boys were the minority at that school; we were the minority in our community. Our zip code, 98118, boasts the most ethnically diverse population in the nation. Proud to boast! (Although I suspect that, due to rapid gentrification, this will not be the case in ten years or so.)

And although the student body tended to be a bit rough, I'm glad my sons spent their first years at a school where their white skin tone granted them no favors.  As Reilly's first grade teacher said to me once, when he was experiencing a run of bullying, "I know you feel like you're throwing your son to the wolves when you drop him off at school every day, but this is the real world." This, from a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed first grade teacher who looked like a human version of Bambi's mother.

A harsh real world, but indeed the real world.

Months after that Christmas play, I was sitting in the bleachers at a little league game on a balmy Saturday morning, when one of my backstage first-graders came running up to me shouting "Miss T.! Miss T.!" He charged into my lap, hugging me and laughing, nearly knocking me off the bench in the process. What complete delight!

Until his mother caught up with him, yanked him up and away by his arm, shouting: "DON'T YOU TOUCH THAT WHITE WOMAN! DON'T YOU DARE! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!" The boy tried to explain, and she slapped him and dragged him away as he burst into tears.

Believe me, it wasn't that she was worried that her son was "touching" a white woman. It was more that I was poison, garbage, worthless. Her glare might have withered someone with a disposition more delicate than mine. All it did was sadden me, mightily. Devastated me, really, that the lesson her effervescently joyful child was receiving was that the white woman sitting on the bleachers was someone to be reviled.

Here was racism smacking me in the face.

That single incident changed me, really. At that moment, I understood, deeply,  what racism meant, on my very small and, albeit, insignificant scale. I was judged by my skin color, period.

I want to believe that the child grew up to be a young man with an open and generous heart, with perhaps some memory of his early grade school years when a woman with pink skin, or green skin, or purple skin, maybe, kept him and his friends in good-natured line at a Christmas play at Whitworth Elementary School in Seattle. That we giggled quietly and waited for the right cues, backstage, where in the darkened light, we were all the same color.

What if —

I'm reading a book titled Quantum Physics for Poets, and I'm able to get through about two pages an evening. Read. Reread. And read again.

It got me thinking today about this:

What if we reached a point in our discoveries about the universe where we had learned all there was to learn, and there was nothing left to discover, to reasearch, except the present, which quickly becomes the past. What would this do to our sense of expectation, as humans? Our predilection for hope? Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun, advocates banishing hope from our consciousness, in order to embrace, and be content with, the present, and to live more fully with what we have instead of extending our desires into the future, and basing a future happiness, if you will, on events that may never come to pass. What if this were the case?

I proposed this to co-workers today as a premise for a novel, and the young neuro-scientist painting beside me quickly vetoed the idea, even when I posed it as a sci-fi novel setting.

"That will never happen!" He insisted.
Ah. The young and the hopeful.

We sparred a few rounds, then let the notion go.

But what if, indeed?
I wish I had it in me to write a novel. I like to think that in an alternate universe, in one of the infinite universes that exists in the Multiverse Theory, that I'm already well at work on that piece of writing. (Be sure to check my blog in the other universe — I'll post updates on the progress.)

Floating Holiday

We sailed across the Salish Sea, my oldest son and I, for Thanksgiving dinner, delayed by long ferry lines and fog. I worked in the morning, layering color with hog bristle brushes: sap green, perylene maroon, lamp black. A swirl of Aztec gold. A holiday means a half day of work, the rest to be made up on Saturday.  It costs a lot to live in Seattle.

Departing the dock from downtown, a slight thinning in the clouds allowed a momentary view of just the tops of a few buildings —

Eerie, elusive, my city quickly faded from sight, and we glided silently through salty waters with nothing to mark our place on the planet. All trust given over to the boat's crew.

On land again, late afternoon, we drove the eleven miles to my sister's house through forest and rural pastureland, the fog our enduring companion as darkness settled in amongst the alders and firs.

Hours later, stuffed and sated, we reversed our journey, only this time the wait was in a queue on the side of the road in the dark, car after car compliantly lined up, each awaiting its turn, each filled with passengers much like us — trailing the scents of things mashed and salted, things heaped with cream, the diminishing essences of champagne and coffee.

Only an hour there in that darkness, every so often starting up the engine to roll ahead a dozen feet, to stop again, and wait some more.

When finally our turn came to board the ferry, we drove all the way to the front of the boat, and remained in the car, worn from the day's bustle. A crewman jacketed in reflective stripes stood at the prow, in front of the main car deck and in direct view of the bridge above and behind him, where he kept watch for channel markers, every so often signaling dramatically either left or right. I thought: there must be radar or GPS some other more sophisticated method of navigating the MV Tacoma, a Jumbo Mark II Class Ferry, which can carry 2500 passengers and up to 202 vehicles as it crosses the 202-feet-deep water between Seattle and Bainbridge Island. Again: our absolute trust. I noted the location of life preservers and then felt silly: the water was so calm I could barely even perceive that we were traveling. And how lost could we get? The distance from departure to destination was a mere 10.1 miles.

But there's something about darkness, and then the fog within the darkness, that wants to strip us of our bearings, radar or no radar. GPS be damned. Enveloped in fog and the blackness of a November night on the Salish Sea, we're all helpless, vulnerable idiots.

The fog rolled in through the open car decks, spectral, chilly. I got out once to check if there was anything more to see out in front of the boat other than what I could see from my car, but it was the same: nothing.

About when I thought that Seattle must be coming in to view, she did, faint yellow lights piercing the fog, becoming gradually brighter: the Space Needle, the giant red "E" of the Edgewater Inn, the neon lights of the giant ferris wheel (which weighs 280,300 pounds) on Pier 57: a dazzling spectacle, all of it, as it emerged from sea-level clouds.

And then something more: a flock of cormorants, apparently roused from their saltwater slumber by the boat-roiled waves, flew directly in front of us, one after another, groups of two and three, perhaps several dozen birds in all, black winged figures silhouetted against the Seattle skyline.

My son and I were both stunned into silence —

I exited the boatyard onto Yesler Way, drove a straight line three miles or so to the crest of the hill above the city center, then looped and switch-backed down steep lanes all the way to Lake Washington. Wound my way home along the unlit waterfront drive, endlessly in love with my city.

This Thanksgiving Oddness.....

....in that this is my favorite evening of the year, Thanksgiving eve, in anticipation of my favorite day of the year where the only thing we really have to do is feast. Need there be more? No.

But then, there's this:

“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills....
"As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems....
“This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules....
“In this system, which tends to devour everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which becomes the only rule.”
          --Pope Francis I, Apostolic Exhortation

Happy Whatever-it-is-you're-thankful-for Day, y'all!

Hatted Finns and a Human Orchestra

It's past midnight, and I'm looking at this....

....from the Museum of Modern Art, Helsinki, Finland. Here's the link:  Old Finnish People with Things on Their Heads.

Have you seen the Jane Campion movie Bright Star? It happened to be playing on the TV at a friend's house tonight, to my utter delight. This "human orchestra" piece (based on Mozart Serenade No. 10 in B flat major) is plucked from that movie. If you have sufficient techie skills, I recommend turning on the "human orchestra" first, then listen to it while perusing the elderly oddly hatted Finns:

Ferrying, Painting —

Monday after work I went to have dinner with some family on the other side of the water, a long journey in turbulent weather, but then, I love turbulent weather. It was a drive to the light rail, then a walk, then onto the train to downtown Seattle, then more walking down to the ferry dock, then onto a boat for 35 minutes, more walking, into a car, finally arriving at my destination. Phew!

All worth it: glasses of wine and a slow-cooked chicken in tomatillo sauce, lots of laughing with my niece and sister and brother-in-law.

Then I reversed the itinerary to get home, with less turbulence but a walk through a very quiet downtown late in the evening, a little spooky. (I walk fiercely and with don't-fuck-with-me intention.)

But I must admit how much I love my city, and the patched-together transportation required to get to the other side of the Salish Sea. It's never dull, and the notion of crossing a large body of water so that I can dine with my family tickles me, really.

It's more than once I've been accused of being a romantic.

But O, this winter darkness is settling in, the last of the sun through the western windows at work today at precisely 4:26pm.

 The colors in the sky matched the colors on the glass I was painting: indigo blended into gold.

Crossing the water, painting the sunset: these small miracles of everyday.

Out of Season

It felt like Bach, but was only Excel.

(I hate working on Saturdays.)

We're in a race to the end of the year, galleries call daily to get status updates on their orders or to plead, plead for us to ship something, anything to them. And we're book solid, er, rather, we're overbooked/behind/working our asses off.

So it was in to the factory today, entering info onto an Excel spreadsheet — a learn-as-I-go kind of project,  learning out of necessity to get a job done that should've been done yesterday. It always amazes me just how much one can learn when one Has To. Damn. As I was tinkering with the tab key and the directional arrows and backspacing etcetera, and the power kept going on and off because there were carpenters outside rebuilding the front steps and overloading the circuits with their power tools (yay for auto-save!), it suddenly felt as if I were sitting at the piano plunking out a Bach's fugue. (Would have preferred that, actually.)


Done with that, I moved down to the studio to expose a bunch of film, alternated the requisite 8 minutes soak in a dark sinkful of hot water with peeling off the masking of already-sandblasted vessels, for a while doing one task with my left hand and another with my right, on either side of the double sink.

Still, it wasn't enough, and I could probably work a full day on Sunday too but I need a day off.

We still haven't quite recovered from July's smashing/crashing/gashing, although the gap has narrowed from six weeks to two. It'll all reconcile in about a month, but then this year for the first time since I've been here, we have reserves in January, and some orders booked through 2014. 

If you're in the area, come to the Home Holiday Sale, December 8th and 15th. (We'll do the annual transformation [aka magic] from factory to showroom, promise!)

Meanwhile, sleep is in order.

When Magic Doesn't Exist

There's a drama going on that I am witness to that wants to take me apart and lay me out in the smallest of pieces in the middle of the highway. Without violating privacy I can say that there are very young children involved here, and homelessness, and helplessness. Few, if any, safety nets remain in this country, and I'm watching a family flounder amidst chaos, and sink. And my heart breaks.

As I watch — mostly from the sidelines — I am constantly reminded of being burned out of an apartment when I was 31, and my oldest son was not yet a year. The small family of us (three) moved in with my in-laws for a few weeks until a house turned up in an unlikely location, and is the address where I sit now and type. I didn't desire this location then. It was considered most unsavory,  even dangerous. I remember my brother not allowing his daughter — my niece — to babysit. (Ironically, now that gentrification has had its way, my 'hood is hip.)

What began in terror and fire, with my rescue of my baby from his burning bedroom, ended up becoming a beloved home and neighborhood: a life. We rented here because it was what we could afford. We purchased the house for the same reason. I happily, and gratefully, live here now because I choose to.

In my version of prayer and intention, this young (very young, and with four children under the age of four) family in distress will get their own chance at a future that will offer stability, community and a measure of abundance. Only, I can't guarantee even a micro-fraction of that. (And O, for a magic wand.)

All I can do is listen, offer advice from the sidelines, and be emotionally supportive to those who are attempting to bolster this precarious collection of vulnerable souls.

Tallying my own modest blessings this November night: shelter, food, heat, family, friends — easy to type on this keyboard, easy to make appear on a computer screen. Not necessarily so easy to conjure when you're living out of a car.

from "The Migrant Mother Sequence", Dorothea Lange