I’ve been tardy in posting new links to blogs I read regularly. For my convenience (oh, it’s always about me), I’ve added Herhimnbryn’s site, Secret Hill and Jamie’s place, Story of a Girl. I’m delighted by this expanding community – from Australia to UK to US and who knows where next. Bless you for visiting – but even more for sharing moments of your lives and posting such incredible photos.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Terminal introspection day
Ok. I must then. Jess, Mary, Zhoen…so far. I must. I can’t help it, it’s too inspiring to read you all…
Accent: I’m Canadian, for God’s sake. Generic Anywhere - North America. Don’t say “aboat” for “about,” (but thank you for asking).
Booze: Bombay Sapphire Gin. Because the words “Bombay Sapphire” roll off my tongue like little tiny candies. Because the shade of blue of the bottle is so damned beautiful. Because once, my father suffered a brain hemorrhage and his wife and I, petrified with anxiety, spent 16 hours in a hospital with toxic air, then lost the car park where her vehicle was, and subsequently drove an exhausting hour to their home – because she gave me a gin and grapefruit juice when we finally sat down and it tasted better than anything else I’ve ever ingested. I keep tequila and lemons for the Scorpio. I like how it burns in my mouth but my stomach remembers it’s tumultuous departure long ago – and I can’t actually drink it.
Chore I hate: One? How much time do you have? None, if I manage to be present for the chore.
Pets: Dogs. Cats. I sorely miss having one in my life but can’t afford the possibility of vet bills and the guilt of not being home enough. I live vicariously through my friends’ animals. And my superintendent, Alice, is St. Francis of Assisi, reborn.
Essential electronics: None. You’d think “computer” but when I had a lemon of an Acer (I named her Helen Keller) and she spent more time in the shop than on my desk, I learned that I could live as a 19th century person quite nicely.
Favorite perfume: Pine trees.
Number of sexual partners: Come on! I was a child of the 60’s for god’s sake. And you’ve read the entries about the Scorpio. I’m a smitten woman. There’s no objectivity to be found here. And numbers mean absolutely nothing.
Hometown: Myself. Where I am.
Insomnia: I’m 58. Of course I have insomnia. Rather, I have an aversion to the artificial schedule I have to live with. I sleep best at 2:00 in the afternoon, for approximately one hour. And I wake early. I feel disappointed if I get up past 6:00 a.m. because I’ve missed the best part.
Job: This question is just played out. I am a rocket scientist, dancer, singer, biologist and Queen of the Amazons. But you knew that.
Kids: Lovely people, kids. Have you read any of the new mother blogs I’m linked to?
Most admired trait: Admired by who? I dress like Peg Bundy meets Art College. Do I get points for bravado?Admired by who, again?
Hospital stays: Oh god let’s not go there. Several. Most nightmarish. One of the worst (emotionally) was having my tonsils removed a month after my mother’s death and being given a bed on the same floor, same ward she died in. And it went downhill from there. Who wants to hear a surgeon say, “I had to go look at the diagnosis and x-rays again because when I got in, I wasn’t sure I had the right person.” Followed by, “You were in there for four hours.”
Phobia: Bullshit. Religious fanaticism of any kind. Hospitals, come to think of it.
Quote: “Oftentimes I have heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say to you that even as the holy and righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.” - Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, “Crime and Punishment”
Religion: See the above quote
Siblings: Scattered. A brother. A “half” sister and brother. In truth and reality, a handful of friends. Weedy is listed on all official “notify” documents as “designated relative.”
Vegetable I refuse to eat: Trout.
Worst habit: whining.
X-rays: I don’t think they’ve got to my hands yet.
Unusual talent: Oh don’t think I’m not tempted to tell you.
Worst habit: Habit? Singular? I can’t pick. The list is too damn long.
Yummy foods I make: Toast. I’m excellent at toast.
Accent: I’m Canadian, for God’s sake. Generic Anywhere - North America. Don’t say “aboat” for “about,” (but thank you for asking).
Booze: Bombay Sapphire Gin. Because the words “Bombay Sapphire” roll off my tongue like little tiny candies. Because the shade of blue of the bottle is so damned beautiful. Because once, my father suffered a brain hemorrhage and his wife and I, petrified with anxiety, spent 16 hours in a hospital with toxic air, then lost the car park where her vehicle was, and subsequently drove an exhausting hour to their home – because she gave me a gin and grapefruit juice when we finally sat down and it tasted better than anything else I’ve ever ingested. I keep tequila and lemons for the Scorpio. I like how it burns in my mouth but my stomach remembers it’s tumultuous departure long ago – and I can’t actually drink it.
Chore I hate: One? How much time do you have? None, if I manage to be present for the chore.
Pets: Dogs. Cats. I sorely miss having one in my life but can’t afford the possibility of vet bills and the guilt of not being home enough. I live vicariously through my friends’ animals. And my superintendent, Alice, is St. Francis of Assisi, reborn.
Essential electronics: None. You’d think “computer” but when I had a lemon of an Acer (I named her Helen Keller) and she spent more time in the shop than on my desk, I learned that I could live as a 19th century person quite nicely.
Favorite perfume: Pine trees.
Number of sexual partners: Come on! I was a child of the 60’s for god’s sake. And you’ve read the entries about the Scorpio. I’m a smitten woman. There’s no objectivity to be found here. And numbers mean absolutely nothing.
Hometown: Myself. Where I am.
Insomnia: I’m 58. Of course I have insomnia. Rather, I have an aversion to the artificial schedule I have to live with. I sleep best at 2:00 in the afternoon, for approximately one hour. And I wake early. I feel disappointed if I get up past 6:00 a.m. because I’ve missed the best part.
Job: This question is just played out. I am a rocket scientist, dancer, singer, biologist and Queen of the Amazons. But you knew that.
Kids: Lovely people, kids. Have you read any of the new mother blogs I’m linked to?
Most admired trait: Admired by who? I dress like Peg Bundy meets Art College. Do I get points for bravado?Admired by who, again?
Hospital stays: Oh god let’s not go there. Several. Most nightmarish. One of the worst (emotionally) was having my tonsils removed a month after my mother’s death and being given a bed on the same floor, same ward she died in. And it went downhill from there. Who wants to hear a surgeon say, “I had to go look at the diagnosis and x-rays again because when I got in, I wasn’t sure I had the right person.” Followed by, “You were in there for four hours.”
Phobia: Bullshit. Religious fanaticism of any kind. Hospitals, come to think of it.
Quote: “Oftentimes I have heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say to you that even as the holy and righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.” - Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, “Crime and Punishment”
Religion: See the above quote
Siblings: Scattered. A brother. A “half” sister and brother. In truth and reality, a handful of friends. Weedy is listed on all official “notify” documents as “designated relative.”
Vegetable I refuse to eat: Trout.
Worst habit: whining.
X-rays: I don’t think they’ve got to my hands yet.
Unusual talent: Oh don’t think I’m not tempted to tell you.
Worst habit: Habit? Singular? I can’t pick. The list is too damn long.
Yummy foods I make: Toast. I’m excellent at toast.
Self portrait. No dance.
I have mourned
the insidious etching
of
my own history –
laughter
grief and tears
58 years,
skin
capitulating to gravity.
Jaw line
loosening.
Neck no longer taut,
eyelids no longer smooth.
The spidery markings
on my upper lip.
This time don't
Photoshop it.
Don’t
light it.
I pick the one
that shows the
wearing
of my life.
After all -
I love
and am loved
in exactly
this face.
It gives me courage.
And besides -
“Be happy – promise -” he says,
“if I die before you.
Remember this. Don’t grieve.
The thing I've learned
from death is
mourning
is ungrateful.”
Blessings
I wait each Spring to see if the Grandmother tree survived another year after being blown down in the hurricane. And it makes me unreasonably happy to post this picture.
The other is a shot of the Mac Run. No longer grey-branched and naked.
One thing about our late spring is that the enjoyment is almost orgasmic because we wait for the green, the blossoms, for so long.
This was my R&R today. Camera case slung over my shoulder as I travel from studio, to housework, to grocery and hardware store and back.
Sepia Saturday
Time out to play with the camera.
And now…on with the life at a dead run.
I’ll be posting soon…
And now…on with the life at a dead run.
I’ll be posting soon…
Friday, May 26, 2006
Monday, May 22, 2006
Gentle.
You turn
as you always do,
halfway down the hall,
to smile at me one last time.
I close the door behind you,
crawl into bed,
fully dressed,
and press my face into the pillow
to inhale.
You are still there
on the pillowcase.
The merlot curtains
transfigure sunlight.
Purple red.
Shadows
dance the wall.
Is this loveliness for me?
I can barely contain it.
Beat, beat
heartbeat
animal pleasure of
breathing in
breathing out.
You have woven
yourself into
my day –
left it magical with
color and scent:
Red curtains, playing with wind.
Brilliant green grapes
in a glass bowl.
Clean smell of soap and sweat.
Perfume of coffee brewing.
Your brown eyes.
Your presence
always
brings me home.
as you always do,
halfway down the hall,
to smile at me one last time.
I close the door behind you,
crawl into bed,
fully dressed,
and press my face into the pillow
to inhale.
You are still there
on the pillowcase.
The merlot curtains
transfigure sunlight.
Purple red.
Shadows
dance the wall.
Is this loveliness for me?
I can barely contain it.
Beat, beat
heartbeat
animal pleasure of
breathing in
breathing out.
You have woven
yourself into
my day –
left it magical with
color and scent:
Red curtains, playing with wind.
Brilliant green grapes
in a glass bowl.
Clean smell of soap and sweat.
Perfume of coffee brewing.
Your brown eyes.
Your presence
always
brings me home.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Stepping into the ring, weighing...
Me and the Scorpio are talking about fighting and fighters.
“I wish that I hadn’t been raised thinking I was too tall, too thin, not athletic enough …”
He’s been a coach and a fighter too long to put up with this kind of negative self-assessment and shakes his head no. I hold my hand up –stop a minute, let me finish-
”…and taught that our family didn’t “lower ourselves” to violence and that I should turn the other cheek – I wish, instead, somebody had taught me how to fight.”
“You’d have been a good fighter,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because you project your feelings. If you meant to win, your opponent would see it and back up. I’m the same.”
We’re talking about Million Dollar Baby, which I’ve just watched for the third time. He’s quizzing me.
“What was her mistake?”
“She didn’t move her feet. Punch left, move to the right foot…”
“What else?”
I go over it in my mind. “She was punching the heavy bag when it was coming towards her and she didn’t have the power.”
“And…?” I don’t know what he’s looking for. He starts to demonstrate what angles have power and which will cause you injury. He shows me how the heel of the hand, brought upward and resting on a large bone, will have more impact than a fist. I imitate his actions until he thinks I’m catching on.
I’m mesmerized and grateful that he understands my interest is serious. I watch fight movies, boxing matches and martial arts like I'm studying for an exam. I don’t glory in the blood or injuries, but the physical skill fascinates me and I understand why someone would get in a ring and risk life and limb. I know why, and I’m trying to figure out why I do.
Later, I’m recounting this to Weedy, who, like many people, is sickened by boxing, by fights. “It’s the friction. It’s the friction of all the things that are at war inside. Fighters have that kind of friction, that kind of personality. I think it would be a relief to resolve it physically instead of having it trapped in your head.”
And frankly, there are times when popping someone in the head – or at least knowing you were perfectly capable of it – wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Once, the Scorpio asked me how I dealt with my enemies. My jaw dropped open.
Enemies? Enemies? I tried to think of an enemy. “I stay away from people who mean me harm. Or I try to see how something looks from their eyes.”
The question stayed with me. I asked Miz T and she had the same reaction.
“What if,” I say, “when you were walking down that street after dark and someone came at you, you knew could knock them out cold? How would that change things?”
“I’m so used to thinking defensively that I can’t even imagine….No. It would feel pretty good, wouldn’t it? It would be empowering.”
This train of thought jumps the tracks this morning as I’m reading blogs. Specifically I’m reading about the fear of writing that so many of us suffer – the fear of putting ourselves out there and having the knock-out punch land on our exposed chins. What else are we afraid of?
“You know how you handle anger?” the Scorpio asks me.
“How?”
He puts his fingers on my mouth. “With this. And your words can do more damage than any fist.” His own anger pattern, he says, is Passive-Aggressive, too, but also “explosive.” He hasn’t exploded for a long time. Age has brought enough wisdom that he handles it now without fighting. Age has made me cautious of the blood my words can draw.
But in my heart, I’m still propelled by that internal friction. And I write the way boxers box. This is the ring I step into to relieve the clamor inside. And I’ve learned that everybody is scared before they put on the gloves and risk the chance of going down in full view of an audience.
What you do is – tape up, put the gloves on anyway, throw your best punches, keep your feet moving.
Count on someone landing one on you sometime, but believe, with the bloody-minded persistance of a fighter, that you'll go on getting in the ring and no one is going to knock you down.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
My name is not Linda and I am not an addicted blogger. I can quit. Anytime.
Honestly, this isn’t a blog entry. This is merely a quote. Someone else’s writing. I could not, for the very life of me, remember where I’d seen this poem – until (for the fifth time, at least) I read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.
This is a thank you for your unwarranted and valued support. And for Jess’s suggestion that you could all snicker at me even if I didn’t blog. An idea this poet would surely have loved as much as I do. Dysfunctional, you say, BB? Hope you all love this as much as I do.
Here goes:
We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.
-Phillip Lopate
This is a thank you for your unwarranted and valued support. And for Jess’s suggestion that you could all snicker at me even if I didn’t blog. An idea this poet would surely have loved as much as I do. Dysfunctional, you say, BB? Hope you all love this as much as I do.
Here goes:
We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.
-Phillip Lopate
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Blogger Overboard!
A pause in the proceedings.
What I haven’t said is that, in the rush to establish a source of grocery income for my impending retirement/foray into fixed and inadequate income, I’ve managed to land a couple of gigs teaching beadwork for the Mary Black Gallery this fall. Pending enrollment quotas. This means, come October, I could be working a six day week. Before June, which is when the Gallery’s brochure goes out, I have to produce photos and large quantities of written words for them. (That last sentence was a whole long detailed paragraph a minute ago - and you have been saved by the delete key.)
Essentially, since I made the initial decision to retire, and since I briefly experienced the relief of looking forward to less stressful circumstances, I have managed to expand my stress levels to previously unimagined size. I am busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest. I did the math. It was obvious that I will not be rising at noon and eating breakfast in bed upon retirement. Or eating breakfast at all, really. So I got busy. Very busy.
Unfortunately (for those who come here), I have not stopped blogging. No. Stopping blogging while I’m trying to accomplish 582 tasks in a day would have been the reasonable thing to do. It’s obvious why that died in the water, isn’t it? It would have been sensible.
And the quality of my writing would have been less abysmal when I did write, if I waited until I was actually breathing. There would not have been photographs with vines over my face and long discussions about nothing. Or, I like to think, there would have been more articulate discussions of nothing.
So, I’m going to swear off for a few days. Any minute now.
And when you find a new entry (I lie to myself on a pathological level, you realize), it will be beautifully, carefully written. There will be content. And live verbs. Fabulous metaphors. Deep meaning. Profound insight. Or excellently written crap.
Like I said. Pathological.
You are all very kind, you know. To have commented and kept reading in spite of the slumping standards and hysteria.
See you soon. I’ll still be reading you all of course!
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Night of the Iguana
It’s telling that, in certain moods, I forget to tell you the really interesting things that happen. Instead, I caterwaul on about the vicissitudes of shopping.
As it happens, Friday night after making purchases I’d be doomed to return on Saturday, I am toting fat enough bundles I need to cab it home. I watch the Yellow Cab navigate through the gauntlet of dazed shoppers emerging from the store. He pulls to a stop in front of me. The driver flings himself across the front seat to reach and open the passenger door for me. Before I’ve loaded cushions and tablecloths into the car, he starts to chat. “Whoa! Looks like you’re doing some decorating are you?”
“Yep. Kitchen chairs cushions.” I’m willing to be friendly with anyone on earth who is getting me away from Wal-Mart.
“Do most of my shopping at Value-Village,” he informs me, “Got myself two beautiful throw cushions – velvet with tigers on them – for two dollars, can you believe that? And they’re right comfy, too.”
Right comfy. He’s a down-home Maritime boy, this one. Could be in his late twenties, maybe his thirties, but has what I suspect will be life-long boyish looks. He’s wearing a baseball cap and denim jacket. He continues to expound on the virtues of shopping at Value Village and the Salvation Army store.
“I pick up bags of old clothes,” he says, “for my Iguana.” Oh? He continues: “Iggy-Lulu, I call her. They make quite a mess when they dirty the cage, so I put the old clothes in the bottom and that makes it easy to clean. Got it fixed up real nice. She loves it. Got her mirror hooked up and she thinks it’s another Iggy. And I got her a Teddy Bear.” He glances at me in the mirror with a conspiratorial grin. “I sneak up and move the Teddy Bear’s ears and she watches it like a hawk when I do that.”
“How big is she?”
“Ohhh…she’s about three and a half feet. Cage takes up the whole dresser top. I put a chair in front of the dresser and she climbs down and wanders around the house. When she gets tired of it, she climbs back up into her cage.”
“You’re really fond of her, aren’t you.” I see a happy grin reflected in the mirror.
“Yeah. I don’t know what I’ll do if she ever dies. I sing to her, you know? I sing to her when I get in at night. She loves that.” And he belts out his homemade original, the “Iggy-Lulu-How-Are-You” song without a trace of self-consciousness. I sit there with my mouth open, the rigors of my trek through darkest Wal-Mart completely forgotten for the moment. This is, I’m thinking, one of bravest things I’ve ever seen (or heard) anyone do.
When we arrive, I over-tip him. Hell, it wasn’t just a drive home. There was original music.
As it happens, Friday night after making purchases I’d be doomed to return on Saturday, I am toting fat enough bundles I need to cab it home. I watch the Yellow Cab navigate through the gauntlet of dazed shoppers emerging from the store. He pulls to a stop in front of me. The driver flings himself across the front seat to reach and open the passenger door for me. Before I’ve loaded cushions and tablecloths into the car, he starts to chat. “Whoa! Looks like you’re doing some decorating are you?”
“Yep. Kitchen chairs cushions.” I’m willing to be friendly with anyone on earth who is getting me away from Wal-Mart.
“Do most of my shopping at Value-Village,” he informs me, “Got myself two beautiful throw cushions – velvet with tigers on them – for two dollars, can you believe that? And they’re right comfy, too.”
Right comfy. He’s a down-home Maritime boy, this one. Could be in his late twenties, maybe his thirties, but has what I suspect will be life-long boyish looks. He’s wearing a baseball cap and denim jacket. He continues to expound on the virtues of shopping at Value Village and the Salvation Army store.
“I pick up bags of old clothes,” he says, “for my Iguana.” Oh? He continues: “Iggy-Lulu, I call her. They make quite a mess when they dirty the cage, so I put the old clothes in the bottom and that makes it easy to clean. Got it fixed up real nice. She loves it. Got her mirror hooked up and she thinks it’s another Iggy. And I got her a Teddy Bear.” He glances at me in the mirror with a conspiratorial grin. “I sneak up and move the Teddy Bear’s ears and she watches it like a hawk when I do that.”
“How big is she?”
“Ohhh…she’s about three and a half feet. Cage takes up the whole dresser top. I put a chair in front of the dresser and she climbs down and wanders around the house. When she gets tired of it, she climbs back up into her cage.”
“You’re really fond of her, aren’t you.” I see a happy grin reflected in the mirror.
“Yeah. I don’t know what I’ll do if she ever dies. I sing to her, you know? I sing to her when I get in at night. She loves that.” And he belts out his homemade original, the “Iggy-Lulu-How-Are-You” song without a trace of self-consciousness. I sit there with my mouth open, the rigors of my trek through darkest Wal-Mart completely forgotten for the moment. This is, I’m thinking, one of bravest things I’ve ever seen (or heard) anyone do.
When we arrive, I over-tip him. Hell, it wasn’t just a drive home. There was original music.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Habitat
A collage of living room shots. Left to right top: An amethyst druse and chunk of a druse, sitting on a carved log piece I found outside NSCAD, some of my father's oval stones, a leaf-size chunk of Labradorite, river stones, the new tableclothes - I returned everything I bought last night, got fabric and sewed one (damn it), and a clip of one of Dad's paintings.
Nice to be finished with Consumer Land. And I hope you’re all having a good weekend.
Love,
LJ
Friday, May 12, 2006
Shop drop and...return.
Wal-Mart. I’m on my way to tablecloths and kitchen chair cushions, but get side-tracked in ladies underwear. It's this sick obsession with finding bras that are not sport-style pullovers or body armor with padding so thick you could use them as floatation devices. (We are evacuating the plane. Please put on your life-bras and exit in an orderly fashion.) I’m bloody fascinated by these things. Today, I braved touching one, just to see… And yes, they are three inches thick. You could ship dinosaur eggs in these without fear of breakage. They are more appliances than underwear. What happens, I wonder, the first night you decide that a man you’re dating is worth taking off your clothes for? What look is on the man's face when you undress and remove your... breasts? Just a thought, just a thought. Never mind. You know how I digress. On to the tablecloths.
Jogging the requisite half mile to the back of the store, I wander around blinded by towering walls of fake flowers so lurid they approach menacing….move on to the notions isle of the sewing section and discover that the lowly snap is extinct and has been replaced entirely by ugly Velcro fastenings. Soon, shoelaces will be an endangered species. I spy an area that looks like it has householdy stuff and travel through the country of Beds in Bags and its neighbor, Towels and Shower Curtains. Finally, I find tablecloths.
None of them are navy blue, which is what I need. They are sage green. And maroon. Mostly. I locate blue striped woven cushions, a couple white lace tablecloths, and a table “runner” – an idiot item I’ve never considered owning before but which coordinates with the cushions. And then, without even having to consult Map Quest, I blunder my cushion-bulked way to the cash and get the hell out of Dodge a hundred dollars poorer.
Drag the loot home and wrestle packaging, fishbone tags, and cardboard inserts. Everything is wrong. The chair cushions stick out five inches beyond the edge of the chairs. The “runner” is as stupid an idea as I originally thought it would be. The colors are wrong. So very very wrong. And what would be better? Plain navy blue. Why didn’t I think of that? Oh.
And, by the way. I found a bra. It was the right size, black, not ugly, didn’t have padding and hooked at the back. When I tried it on at home, I found that the straps were designed for a woman whose breasts emerge slightly below her chin. And that “firm support” means “ Skin abraiding elastic and cups made from the finest ground glass.”
I’m beginning to believe that this consuming thing is not as satisfying as it should be. Could that possibly be?
Thursday, May 11, 2006
It isn't Shakespeare but there are lots of words: the dreadful result of free writing blame Natalie Goldberg
Tuna sandwiches may not be romantic but add a little curry, lots of black pepper, raisins, some mayo and crunchy romaine, slap it all between two pieces of excellent rye bread and serve it wearing your fabulous new sky blue tunic (with the cleavage) to a man who knows for sure that lunch will end in the bedroom, and it works fine as an aphrodisiac.
Alright. I’ll admit the romance did not come out of a tin of solid white tuna packed in water. And this is not about sex or romance. I’m not sure what it’s about, but I’m certain there will be a lot of words involved.
Back to today.
Mushy with the relief of doing something (anything) other than being at work or racing around trying to launch the beginnings of a career to feed myself after my impending retirement, I tell the Scorpio, “You’re such a nice man.” We are wearing a sheet. I am feeling, to say the least, kindly disposed towards him.
“Actually,” he replies mildly, “I’m not.”
Well, I know that. What would I be doing with a nice man? I’m not a nice woman.
“Yes, yes,” I say, “You’re moody and dark and irritable and stubborn and opinionated and a regular pain in the ass, I know. And you are too blunt and you’re given to hypochondria. But I don’t live with you, so that’s part of your charm.” This how I give compliments. You see? Not a nice woman. “You’re terrific at sex, though – and funny,” I add, in case the rest sounds a tad harsh.
I am so comfortable with this man. And I realize that it’s precisely because “nice” is something he does only when it feels genuine. It often does feel genuine to him and to me too, for that matter - but I prize honesty more. Weedy is right, nice isn’t the first adjective you’d use to describe me.
None of my close friends are nice, either. They are all quite comfy with large parts of their own shadows. Me? I’ve got to an age where life has worn much of the nice right off.
And good riddance.
Nice is what gets you on committees, taking minutes and attending ego-feast meetings that accomplish little or nothing. It buys you the attention of every pan-handler on the street. Nice, traveling to a prison visit once, got me a one hour lesson in bigotry from a shuttle driver who ended his monologue with, “so, this fella you’re visiting…he’s a colored fella, is he?
Come to think of it – there’s a little scouring left to do. Some of the nice is still stuck there like gooey candy floss. And it’s visible, apparently.
Just this week, waking up in one hell of a belligerent mood, Nice got me the sordid details of a complete stranger’s car-wreck marriage at the bus stop. Nice kept me pretending attentiveness while my brain was screaming, “Shut up now! I’m not even awake yet.” Nice was the fuel this stranger used to continue droning on until – 40 minutes later, I staggered off the bus with mosquito thoughts eating my brain.
The worst of it was, it was all the nice I had left for the entire week. The stuff is rationed these days. There isn’t enough to stretch over, say, an entire work day.
There isn’t enough to last past arrival – when I discover “the system” is dead as a doornail and am launched into the daily routine by listening to a patron complain bitterly about the policies of other libraries (which he expects me to do something about, thanks.)
So today was a real vacation. No need to lie or flatter or pretend attention to things I don’t care about. Two moody, tactless, cynical, people blissfully enjoying each other’s weird company.
It was a nice day, is my point. If in fact I have one.
(Echoing sound of chair scraping the floor as the remaining reader – the one who foolishly believed there would be a point, or was too nice to leave in the middle – sneaks to the exit.)
Alright. I’ll admit the romance did not come out of a tin of solid white tuna packed in water. And this is not about sex or romance. I’m not sure what it’s about, but I’m certain there will be a lot of words involved.
Back to today.
Mushy with the relief of doing something (anything) other than being at work or racing around trying to launch the beginnings of a career to feed myself after my impending retirement, I tell the Scorpio, “You’re such a nice man.” We are wearing a sheet. I am feeling, to say the least, kindly disposed towards him.
“Actually,” he replies mildly, “I’m not.”
Well, I know that. What would I be doing with a nice man? I’m not a nice woman.
“Yes, yes,” I say, “You’re moody and dark and irritable and stubborn and opinionated and a regular pain in the ass, I know. And you are too blunt and you’re given to hypochondria. But I don’t live with you, so that’s part of your charm.” This how I give compliments. You see? Not a nice woman. “You’re terrific at sex, though – and funny,” I add, in case the rest sounds a tad harsh.
I am so comfortable with this man. And I realize that it’s precisely because “nice” is something he does only when it feels genuine. It often does feel genuine to him and to me too, for that matter - but I prize honesty more. Weedy is right, nice isn’t the first adjective you’d use to describe me.
None of my close friends are nice, either. They are all quite comfy with large parts of their own shadows. Me? I’ve got to an age where life has worn much of the nice right off.
And good riddance.
Nice is what gets you on committees, taking minutes and attending ego-feast meetings that accomplish little or nothing. It buys you the attention of every pan-handler on the street. Nice, traveling to a prison visit once, got me a one hour lesson in bigotry from a shuttle driver who ended his monologue with, “so, this fella you’re visiting…he’s a colored fella, is he?
Come to think of it – there’s a little scouring left to do. Some of the nice is still stuck there like gooey candy floss. And it’s visible, apparently.
Just this week, waking up in one hell of a belligerent mood, Nice got me the sordid details of a complete stranger’s car-wreck marriage at the bus stop. Nice kept me pretending attentiveness while my brain was screaming, “Shut up now! I’m not even awake yet.” Nice was the fuel this stranger used to continue droning on until – 40 minutes later, I staggered off the bus with mosquito thoughts eating my brain.
The worst of it was, it was all the nice I had left for the entire week. The stuff is rationed these days. There isn’t enough to stretch over, say, an entire work day.
There isn’t enough to last past arrival – when I discover “the system” is dead as a doornail and am launched into the daily routine by listening to a patron complain bitterly about the policies of other libraries (which he expects me to do something about, thanks.)
So today was a real vacation. No need to lie or flatter or pretend attention to things I don’t care about. Two moody, tactless, cynical, people blissfully enjoying each other’s weird company.
It was a nice day, is my point. If in fact I have one.
(Echoing sound of chair scraping the floor as the remaining reader – the one who foolishly believed there would be a point, or was too nice to leave in the middle – sneaks to the exit.)
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Death and recipes: goon island
Don't tell anyone.
I'm sneaking off to Goon Island to eat capitalists.
On Goon Island. They eat the dead...(and capitalists). In fact, eating anything that becomes a problem or turns out to be a Bad Idea is pretty much the daily routine. In the last episode from the Island, Goon discusses the strange and alarming burial customs of other societies and concludes...
"But a Goon couldn't consign the body of someone they knew, lived with, and possibly loved to such treatment. Especially when, with a properly banked pit of coals and a decent molasses rub, they could honor them by making the tender and juicy main course at a well-attended island cookout under the stars....
We all look forward to our last bar-b-que. I know Arnie did. That's why Goons don't travel much. If something happened and we croaked while abroad and couldn't make it back to Goon Island before going rancid...well, we like an aged cut of meat as much as anyone, there are limits. We're not French, after all."
I think Pogo would approve.
I'm sneaking off to Goon Island to eat capitalists.
On Goon Island. They eat the dead...(and capitalists). In fact, eating anything that becomes a problem or turns out to be a Bad Idea is pretty much the daily routine. In the last episode from the Island, Goon discusses the strange and alarming burial customs of other societies and concludes...
"But a Goon couldn't consign the body of someone they knew, lived with, and possibly loved to such treatment. Especially when, with a properly banked pit of coals and a decent molasses rub, they could honor them by making the tender and juicy main course at a well-attended island cookout under the stars....
We all look forward to our last bar-b-que. I know Arnie did. That's why Goons don't travel much. If something happened and we croaked while abroad and couldn't make it back to Goon Island before going rancid...well, we like an aged cut of meat as much as anyone, there are limits. We're not French, after all."
I think Pogo would approve.
Pondering entropy
Pension company
“All our representatives are busy. Your call is important to us. Your call may be monitored for quality control. Please remain on the line to retain your holding priority.”
Five minutes. Thankfully it is not a musical interlude.
“If you would like to leave a voice mail, press 1.”
Repeat sequence several times a day, for two days. Be away from your phone when the call comes in. Repeat sequence.
Get the number for an in-town representative. “This is John Doe. I’m sorry I’ve missed your call, but if you leave a number I’ll get back to you.”
Transit Company
Morning at the busy shelter. A big man in an olive green jacket gestures to the shattered wall of glass on the south side of the shelter.
“I called them to ask why this wasn’t fixed. Do you know what they said?”
“No. What?”
“They said they weren’t fixing it because of the neighborhood. They said they were tearing about four of them down because of the vandalism.”
The Bank
“I want to make an appointment to discuss setting up a business account.”
"Your name?"
"Linda Jones"
“Our account manager is out today. What’s your number, Nancy? May I call you Nancy?”
“No. You may call me Linda.” And I give my number and she promises to call back in ten minutes.
Two hours later, “I want to make an appointment to discuss setting up a business account.”
"Your name?"
Daily News
I open the morning paper and by the time I’ve skimmed section one – world news, the new budget that kills daycare, the Kyoto Accord, and leaves the poor standing in the cold - and I've covered various and sundry daily horrors – I feel like a tire with the air rushing out.
Strap in because…
I know that the systems are breaking down. As Weedy says, we’re getting less and less inclined to even try to get information or service because we know that the hateful phone menu is waiting at the other end of the call. We’re waiting for the blow-off, the excuses, or the impossibility of actually talking to a human being who knows anything. We know that a trip to the emergency room means up to a 12 hour wait, unless we are about to expire on the premises and a member of the too-small, too-busy staff finds time to notice. Mere profuse bleeding or double vision is not urgent. The cable company promises to send someone to fix the cable line, but no, they can’t tell you what day, or what time. Let’s not talk about passports.
I know the systems, the basic paradigms of our society are dead and just haven’t fallen down. I needn’t even list the unsustainable basics. We’re all familiar with the issues. I have a sense of it sometimes like a growing weight, like one of those dreams where you are running for all you’re worth but you’re not moving. Only it’s not just me. It’s all of us…running and running, getting nowhere.
I have to remind myself of the other thing I know – which is that it’s necessary for the systems to break. We are a stubborn lot, human beings. We aren’t going to believe that what we’re used to doesn’t work until it’s stopped working on the grandest of scales.
And while the breakdown proceeds, I like to think about the idea that a better world and paradigms more respectful of nature and man and those we think of as “other” are already emerging from the increasing chaos. I have to think about this, actually. It’s what slows me down to look around. It’s what takes the weight off and gives me the determination to keep moving – no matter how much resistance there is…
Years ago, Marshall McLuhan said:
“If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness?”
-Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, MIT Press, 1994
Now there’s a paradigm that weighs lightly. Let's hope on that.
“All our representatives are busy. Your call is important to us. Your call may be monitored for quality control. Please remain on the line to retain your holding priority.”
Five minutes. Thankfully it is not a musical interlude.
“If you would like to leave a voice mail, press 1.”
Repeat sequence several times a day, for two days. Be away from your phone when the call comes in. Repeat sequence.
Get the number for an in-town representative. “This is John Doe. I’m sorry I’ve missed your call, but if you leave a number I’ll get back to you.”
Transit Company
Morning at the busy shelter. A big man in an olive green jacket gestures to the shattered wall of glass on the south side of the shelter.
“I called them to ask why this wasn’t fixed. Do you know what they said?”
“No. What?”
“They said they weren’t fixing it because of the neighborhood. They said they were tearing about four of them down because of the vandalism.”
The Bank
“I want to make an appointment to discuss setting up a business account.”
"Your name?"
"Linda Jones"
“Our account manager is out today. What’s your number, Nancy? May I call you Nancy?”
“No. You may call me Linda.” And I give my number and she promises to call back in ten minutes.
Two hours later, “I want to make an appointment to discuss setting up a business account.”
"Your name?"
Daily News
I open the morning paper and by the time I’ve skimmed section one – world news, the new budget that kills daycare, the Kyoto Accord, and leaves the poor standing in the cold - and I've covered various and sundry daily horrors – I feel like a tire with the air rushing out.
Strap in because…
I know that the systems are breaking down. As Weedy says, we’re getting less and less inclined to even try to get information or service because we know that the hateful phone menu is waiting at the other end of the call. We’re waiting for the blow-off, the excuses, or the impossibility of actually talking to a human being who knows anything. We know that a trip to the emergency room means up to a 12 hour wait, unless we are about to expire on the premises and a member of the too-small, too-busy staff finds time to notice. Mere profuse bleeding or double vision is not urgent. The cable company promises to send someone to fix the cable line, but no, they can’t tell you what day, or what time. Let’s not talk about passports.
I know the systems, the basic paradigms of our society are dead and just haven’t fallen down. I needn’t even list the unsustainable basics. We’re all familiar with the issues. I have a sense of it sometimes like a growing weight, like one of those dreams where you are running for all you’re worth but you’re not moving. Only it’s not just me. It’s all of us…running and running, getting nowhere.
I have to remind myself of the other thing I know – which is that it’s necessary for the systems to break. We are a stubborn lot, human beings. We aren’t going to believe that what we’re used to doesn’t work until it’s stopped working on the grandest of scales.
And while the breakdown proceeds, I like to think about the idea that a better world and paradigms more respectful of nature and man and those we think of as “other” are already emerging from the increasing chaos. I have to think about this, actually. It’s what slows me down to look around. It’s what takes the weight off and gives me the determination to keep moving – no matter how much resistance there is…
Years ago, Marshall McLuhan said:
“If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness?”
-Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, MIT Press, 1994
Now there’s a paradigm that weighs lightly. Let's hope on that.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Places in my apartment #1
Studio.
One corner. One section of wall.
Two hundred Pez-shaped containers of seed beads,
my wine bottle faces, wicker and sea grass.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Self-portrait Monday
Slumped in my favorite corner of the sofa. The original was done in such dim light, I’m barely distinguishable from the sofa – but I liked the picture. It’s me, more than the jazzy stuff (or deer in the headlights). I imagine that I often have this expression on my face…that not-quite-in-the-room look. Possibly not quite in the solar system, truth be told.
I had fun playing with brush strokes and altering the background, lighting it, bumping up the textures. Generally attempting to turn a sow’s ear of an underexposed photograph into a silk purse. Something to do while I should be doing other things - and while I wait for Halifax to become less grey, so that I can bore you all with pictures of my haunts.
I know. I know. I’m not writing. This will have to do for now.
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