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Revelations

2012-02-25T20:44:00.002-08:00

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!!!

Facebook, which I always refer to as Fishbowl....

2012-02-24T22:26:00.002-08:00

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.

Harmony

2012-02-23T22:32:00.003-08:00

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.]

Still, Winter

2012-02-22T12:44:00.003-08:00

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.

A Brief Discourse

2012-02-22T01:04:00.004-08:00

"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 --"

2012-02-20T09:48:00.000-08:00

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.

Heat

2012-02-18T14:29:00.000-08:00

The antidote for this morning's chill:

2012-02-18T10:09:00.000-08:00

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.

Heart, of Glass

2012-02-17T09:15:00.000-08:00

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.

2012-02-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

My Austin, Texas friend Nita Lou Bryant has a marvelous piece up at the online 'zine Drash Pit. Check it out here.

Go Nita!

Of The Essence

2012-02-16T19:58:00.001-08:00

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.

Botanicals

2012-02-16T09:06:00.000-08:00

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.

2012-02-15T18:39:00.000-08:00

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.

Succuming to Temptation

2012-02-14T08:10:00.000-08:00

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.

Day of Hearts

2012-02-13T19:16:00.000-08:00

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.

The Bank

2012-02-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

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?

2012-02-12T18:49:00.000-08:00

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!!

Offering

2012-02-12T16:18:00.001-08:00

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 --

Assault

2012-02-11T19:27:00.000-08:00

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.

the hearts

2012-02-10T21:49:00.000-08:00

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.)

2012-02-10T21:27:00.001-08:00

[Delmar, New York: who are you?]

(And to the rest of you, in case anyone is wondering: no, I have not lost my mind.)

spiked

2012-02-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

i-can-see-through-you heart

2012-02-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

under glass

2012-02-07T19:26:00.001-08:00

this new heart is a messy one

2012-02-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

Breathing, as a Ninety-Nine Percenter

2012-02-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

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?

2012-02-03T17:01:00.000-08:00

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!

More City

2012-01-31T17:50:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about the birds who visit the feeder outside my kitchen window, the juncos and chickadees and finches, the bushtits who hover a dozen at a time at the suet block. Thinking about how watching them settles my brain, eases the accumulated tension. And then there's my ten-month-old kitten, frantic with excitement on the sill, chittering and eck-eck-ecking at them, desperate for a mouthful of feather.

R. called me yesterday to tell me that the old cat had a seizure. Maybe he has a few months left in him; hard to tell. He's such a good old cat, the best, really. Crankier these past few years, but nonetheless with pretty much a good perspective on it all, if you'll allow me to assign perspective to a cat. My son is tender and so very engaged in the feline universe. Sometimes I think he's more cat than human. (He too limits his daily word output.)

---

Slow at the gift show today, a trickling of buyers and a stuffy, sleep-inducing atmosphere. The only place for a lie-down was in the 18-inch space between curtains, between booths. I decided that it probably wasn't a good idea.

Headache.

Where is my remedy of finches?

Cuisine

2012-01-30T18:37:00.000-08:00

A crappy dinner at a Spanish restaurant in Midtown, its only saving grace the fact that it was within walking distance of the hotel. We were tired of paying $$$ for a single martini and a midget bite of food, so we tried something else and, although the price tag was lower, the quality was equally low. We've been twice to Union Square Cafe, which is superb and in the realm of what one would want to shell out for great food on an artist's budget, but it's a subway ride away which equals added effort.

Alas.

I like to cook, and I won't be shy in saying I'm a damn fine cook. It does get to be a curse, though, when eating out. I do get tired of deconstructing every bite of food I eat in a restaurant but the obsessive part of me insists on doing it every single time. It can't be helped. On the other hand, I abhor food snobs. Food needn't be complicated, or pretentious. It just should be mindfully prepared, and prepared with respect for not only the ingredients but respect for whomever shall consume it.

I can make a feast from whatever happens to be in my larder at any given time (often slim pickins), and when a restaurant, with its (hopefully) well-planned-out menu can't deliver even a basic decent meal, then all is wrong with the world.

Well, with my world, at least.

Does it show that I'm ready to be back in my own kitchen?!

(I should mention that I had an absolutely perfect bagel with scallion cream cheese and Irish smoked salmon today for lunch. Ate every bite sitting on a bench in the cold winter noontime. Wanted more.)

The City (The Big One)

2012-01-30T14:19:00.000-08:00

I've been caught up in the zip-pace of NYC since last Wednesday, at the New York International Gift Fair, as well as spending some time hoofing it in the city. I wandered all over the Lower East Village today, as well as Soho, in a kind of meditation, taking it all in.

Yesterday in Chinatown, I stood two hours to keep my place at the curb to watch the Chinese New Year parade, and by the time it finally started, my fingertips (lost my gloves) were numb. After a few dragons (and one drag queen) --

I elbowed my way back out to the sidewalk and found a warm bakery where for $2, I wrapped my hands around a black tea with milk and ate a cream bun. Took about ten minutes for the feeling to come back in my fingers. A bit scary, but I survived my flirt with hypothermia in a city of 18.9 million people and no lack of heat.

Taking off my coat back at the hotel, I rained down glitter and confetti -- shot from long confetti popper tubes -- which kept the hoards entertained during the cold and lengthy wait.

Boot, to the end....

2012-01-25T08:49:00.000-08:00

She pulled down the lid, not bothering with the latch, and repositioned The Civil War Narrative – Fort Sumter to Perryville, Vol.1 and The Autobiography of Cubby Broccoli, and began hatching a plan of confrontation. (She could’ve sworn she heard a whisper of constricted panting coming from the now practically throbbing trunk.)

When the confrontation finally occured, several days later, and she flamed at him her accusations of his secret sex life, he claimed obedience to the holy vows of monogamy. Conveniently, at some point in the past few days he’d also availed himself of the opportunity to dispose of the “equipment”, as it were. If there had been one time she'd regretted not documenting the evidence, this was it. He'd been caught with his pants down, and yet he'd managed to cover himself.

When the season shifted and every legal document of undoing had been filed, signed, stamped final, and every last buckle between them had been forever unfastened, she found herself in possession of only the left black boot. And when he admitted (when they finally spoke, after long silence) to shunning the bed they had once shared, to sleeping on the sofa night after night in his own personal cocoon, twisted and swaddled in the thread-worn quilt his mother had sewn him decades ago -- her first thought was bingo! He's got that bit of leather nestled in beside him, probably rubs himself with it before he nods off to sleep.

And while she yearned to be reunited --
with her boot --
part of her was secretly enjoying the thought of man and boot entwined in a pill-balled blanket of poly/cotton calico with rickrack trim.

So when the missing bit of mid-calf footwear suddenly turned up in her basement, she was just a tiny bit wistful. Did this mean that he didn't, each night, secretly nuzzle a piece of black leather that had once embraced her leg? That his couch-cocoon was not a repository of regrets, of souvenirs from a middle-aged marriage gone awry?

Was there something else ferreted away, perhaps, snugged down between his thighs in the cozy glow of Mommy's blankie? Maybe her notion of his secret stash was her particular kink. Less colorful than the one she imagined he maintained, but in the end, it sufficed to entertain her for months after the reappearance of the boot-mate.

And wasn't there a black sock, decidedly not her size and very limp (very him), that she kept in a corner of her lingerie drawer beside the now rarely-worn cleavage-plumping, lace-spiked brassieres? Well then.

But the boots, again the happy couple, fit like the fawn calfskin gloves (irresistibly tiny suede bows up the backside of each) that he'd once gifted her, with the request that she "use them". And which, suddenly -- and with great delight -- she realized were missing. She emitted a private snort of a laugh.

Would the fun never end?

More Boot....

2012-01-23T18:59:00.000-08:00

These were not merely about clandestine expeditions into the world of solitary ecstasy – the many athletic possibilities they represented, the opportunities for enchainment, for cinching and collaring -- all clearly required a partner. She seethed at his deception, at the outright lie he’d attempted to parade before her like a pair of brand-new whitey-tighties. (And furthermore, when had she ceased to be the #1 attraction in his daily get-up-and-go?)

Continued

2012-01-21T08:32:00.000-08:00

-- how should she phrase this? -- intimate accessories, or, uh, toys. Good god almighty: had these all been sitting here beside their bed ALL THIS TIME?

And/Or

2012-01-20T18:17:00.000-08:00

These days have been all about light and the lack thereof. Mornings I open the curtains to what should, IMHO, be well before dawn and in fact it's getting on 8am. Where last week I laid in my bed and watched brilliant winter sunrises above Lake Washington and Mt. Rainier, this week has been all drab dim January haze, snow underfoot and no intimation of sun.

It's more dark when living a solitary life, when there's no hubbub of another human to fill in the gaps between the sparks, or another human to provide the sparks. Cats are a meager substitute, try as they might, and try as I might to believe that they are enough. Their limited vocabularies of squeaks and rumbles, though entertainment in themselves, just don't quite expand the edges of human imagination.

Sigh.

I recall a winter, eight years ago, newly widowed, where I didn't want the darkness to end. Each night was a descent into swaddled-down, drugged comfort, and silence. When the light began to re-emerge as spring strode forth, I mourned the solace of my 8pm bedtimes and the many hours devoted to the perfection of dreamless sleep. This year, though, rings decidedly different. I've developed a sensitivity to light of all kinds, have become terrifically opinionated about sources of light and intensities of light. Last night I again walked the circuit around the block, late, in the illumination of street lights on snow, and the contrast seemed perfect, and warming. Odd, I know, when this small corner of the world was frozen into place, when all meteorological predictions of a thaw continually held false promise. Yet the balance of light and dark, the highlights and the shadows teetered not on the edge of a descent into the depths but offered a glimpse of some other light, some other universe where darkness opened a door into something yet undiscovered and overflowing with possibilities.

Tomorrow the snow will be gone, and night will resume its seasonal gloom. I'll light candles, shift the curtains, adjust the lamps and plug in my red-pepper lights. There will be no late-night glasses of wine under the kiwi vines, no squares of bittersweet chocolate shared on the balcony as the sun sits itself down on the western horizon. No midnight constellations, unless I desire to stand outside -- barring a cloudcover -- and shiver while searching out Orion.

Can't it just be summer already?

And yet the speeding-up of time, of the seasons, brings with it the general speeding-up of life. Yin/yang, yes/no, here/there.

It's a persistent quandary, to which no answer if sufficient.

Cake (and Boot [embedded])

2012-01-19T09:02:00.000-08:00

The world outside has been reduced to dark and light -- snow and not-snow -- punctuated by the rare Seattlite who braves wearing anything other than a neutral color, mostly likely someone either pre-adolescent or post-menopausal. We are a neutral Gore-Tex culture.

I'm readying myself for the mile-trek to work in what has now become an ice-pelted landscape. Perilous footing ahead, and being so drizzle-centric here on this corner of the continental United States, in our very comfortable Temperate Rain Forest, we are never quite prepared for this maybe-once-a-winter Arctic deluge.

Late last night I took a tromp around the block, and an icy crust had formed on everything, which not so much sparkled in the streetlights but glowed in smooth swaths where the snow was untrammeled. Quite satisfying to step down onto that crunch into the five inches of pillowy snow beneath. What came to mind immediately was meringue -- an entire landscape of meringue and the earth one giant cake. A version of heaven for which I'd stay upright on the planet for as long as possible!

Extending this baker's metaphor, I recalled a birthday cake I'd made, at age 18, for two of my sisters whose BD's are on consecutive days in May. The cake recipe itself was from my mother's much-used 3-ring binder Betty Crocker: Black Midnight Cake. (The devil was in the food.) The icing was White Mountain (aka Seven Minute), and by some meteorological anomaly, some odd bit of moisture in the mid-spring air, formed a crisp crust atop the billows of sugar-whipped egg-whites. I have not, in the ensuing decades, been able to reproduce this same effect. Seven Minute Icing is one of my faves, and has turned-out recipe-perfect for 30+ years, but not once has that same delectable edge again made itself known.

But by god, I was walking through it last night in the frozen sugared landscape.

[When she easily picked the lock on a Sunday afternoon while he was out -- after his explanation of a lost key and his lie it doesn't matter there's nothing in it -- she discovered his stash of -- ]

I am in awe at the power of weather, how it not only physically alters our basic movements on the planet, but also in its power to affect a significant shift in the psyche. Where, two days ago I was enswamped in a winter mopiness, slug-footed and lacking inspiration, last night I walked out to a Black Midnight Cake universe, and White Mountain Icing in which to contentedly travel miles, if I so chose.

2012-01-18T17:56:00.000-08:00

Snow Event at dawn:

Snow Event at noon:

Intermission-Event

2012-01-17T19:32:00.000-08:00

Alas, but necessary.

The local media has created a monster out of possible blizzard scenarios, with the current monikers running the gamut from "slushmageddon" to "snowmageddon" and everything in between, my favorite being "Snow Event", for which I possess season tickets. In internet minute-by-minute updates today (as we prepped for the big shipment to NYC) the forecast became more and more absurd. When I checked my iPhone weather app at 11:59, there was 100% chance of snow at noon -- in sixty seconds. Outside a scattering of clouds gave no indication of giving up even a single iota of moisture. WTF? Are we once again being forced to gauge precipitation by actually looking up at the sky? How very twentieth century.

Granted, it was sloshy underfoot. I walked to work today in waterproof hiking boots and multiple socks, determined to keep a constant toe temperature. And between 10AM and noon, the residual snow on the steps did indeed slough off in runny rivulets, enabling an ice-free path from production-line to pallet, down on the sidewalk, in advance of the shippers which -- barring actual blizzard conditions -- are scheduled to arrive tomorrow afternoon.

We were not only on-time but early in completing the line for the show. All last week I was in denial of the viral microbes streaming through my sinuses (cough, sneeze, cough cough cough) and spent all of Saturday -- my one day off -- at a funeral and immediately afterwards, dinner with friends. There is no time for wallowing in the throes of wretchedness.

And now, close to 8pm Tuesday, no sign of the apocalyptic storm in the star-strewn sky. My poetry group was cancelled (or should I say my "Poetry Event?). I fear a Rain Event is beckoning. In my kitchen, a Pork Event is nearing completion. And earlier, Melinda and I celebrated the shipping-off-to-the-show with a Martini Event at Lottie's Lounge. (Afterwards, we struggled with a Walking-Uphill-Event.) Before long I'll engage in a Sleep Event, and with any luck, a Dream Event will present itself during my REM-Event.

Eventually, I'll post the remainder of Boot.

(Which will be an event unto itself.)
(Ahem.)

2012-01-16T20:18:00.001-08:00

....possessed enough kinks to last them both several lifetimes. That trunk, for example; and what she -- before knowing the actuality of what it concealed -- considered nothing more than a block of black metal upon which he piled his benign biographies and yawning histories.

Continued

2012-01-15T19:14:00.000-08:00

Bordering on one, possibly, but not a full-blown, parade-around-the-bedroom-in-boots-and-only-boots fetish.

But he, on the other hand,

Boot, Continued.

2012-01-14T09:19:00.000-08:00

Not quite a fetish.

Sentence 3

2012-01-13T18:39:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, she had a thing for boots, preferably black, the more buckles and straps the better, the longer-the cord-to-tie-around-her-ankle-the-better.

The second sentence (of which there are 36)....

2012-01-13T09:02:00.001-08:00

(Her entreaties to the ex- to search the closet for its black-buckle evidence resulted in neither heel nor zipper.)

Boot: A Short Fiction. Sentence One.

2012-01-12T17:45:00.000-08:00

She was, actually, a bit disappointed when the missing boot turned up, after disappearing, it seemed, upon her sudden exit from marriage.

2012-01-11T09:14:00.000-08:00

All of you lovely people with all of your useful suggestions on curing this condition of winter: I am most grateful.

In the meantime, I've written something rather risque -- a fiction (it's all fiction, isn't it?) -- and I'm of two minds about publishing it here.

Hmmm.

I'll admit that it was deliciously fun to compose.

Will the fun never end?!

Impossible Blossoms

2012-01-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

One week into the darkest of months, and while out digging in the garden this morning I came across these most unlikely of unseasonal flowers. It's not unheard-of to snip a few hard rosebuds for a Christmas vase, but I've not ever witnessed such color in the winter landscape. I'm certain that a hard freeze will, anytime soon, snap each of these to death.

And while these anomalies of the natural world -- small and understated -- continue to sing their warm-season song, my own voice has gone into its cave wearing a coat of dense fur, desiring one long nap until spring.

But.

We don't get to indulge ourselves, no chance of going all-bear.

So instead there's a daily grumping, a slumping through each hour.

Remedies include:

1. English breakfast tea with milk.
2. Marathon video sessions (Showtime's Shameless is highly recommended).
3. A stack of novels.
4. A martini, three olives, very cold.
5. Popcorn (which I stuttered out as "cop-porn" yesterday. [Um, no.])
6. Homemade soup.
7. Sleep, when it graces me with its increasingly rare presence.

And seeing that the likelihood of my going geographic in my quest to find a cure for winter is highly unlikely, I welcome any/all suggestions: tisanes, tinctures, infusions.

My new, um, "entertainment".

2012-01-05T20:59:00.000-08:00

Now, one could say that he's of Scottish descent with a name like that. Easy to come to that conclusion. And boy-oh-boy -- so easy to turn on, this one! (TMI, I know, I know.)

The one before, every time I brought out my photos he'd freeze up -- bam -- and stay like that for hours. No fun! I got SO tired of that. I mean, that just doesn't work for me AT ALL. (And his memory was crap.)

But this one -- a memory unlike anything I've ever seen!

The best part, though, is how he lights up the moment I touch him.

I am one lucky girl.

2012-01-05T08:38:00.000-08:00

“But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years - and it opens.” --Marcel Proust

2012-01-04T21:15:00.000-08:00

Sgraffito

2012-01-03T17:04:00.000-08:00

It's all squares filled with scritchings & scratchings,
piled one upon the other. And not just black
and blue, but new-leaf green beginning to show
in the shadows.

Back to the art factory tomorrow after
two and a half weeks off. Thought I'd be frantic
trying to fill up the space but I've found
that I'm craving more free time.
Alas, free time comes with its price tag.
(And I mean literally.)

We ship our glass line to the New York Gift Show
two weeks from tomorrow -- current lines
as well as the quickly-emerging new line....
Lots of #'s of freight, and then soon after
Melinda and I will catch a plane for NYC
ourselves. Lots to do in the meantime.

It's a new year, a new life, a new perspective.
Whew!

Glad you're all here -- even you lurkers!!

My favorite book, front to back....

2012-01-02T20:47:00.001-08:00

Woody Guthrie, 1942

2012-01-01T12:14:00.000-08:00

Discount

2011-12-30T21:44:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I was in a Ross store buying some tights, and the clerk, who was -- maybe -- 12, looked at me and said in a monotone: "Are-you-55-or-older." No question mark. Just a statement. Something she said to all the old people, I guessed. But why was she saying that to me??!!

I stuttered, "Well, I'm 55, but not older!"

She replied, "Okay. You get the Tuesday Senior discount."

There's a first for everything, and this was the first time I saved 46 cents for being "55-and-older".

Obviously, this is not my path to riches.

---

On a brighter note, my friend Robin and I walked the trails of Cougar Mountain this afternoon, awash in pale winter sun: a universe of ferns and alders, big-leaf maples and cedars. The stream was high from last night's rain, and spilled over a cliffside onto rocks draped in lush moss, slipped under a lashing of windfall saplings, vanished beyond our vision into second-growth forest.

It's been too long since we've shared this pleasure of walking these trails, but thank god we figured out the world in that hour and a half. There are few secrets left between us, I'm guessing.

And weren't we just in our twenties, when we were certain the world was a knowable entity? I admit a certain sense of thanks for reaching 55 (and not 555, which I just typed but corrected) and realizing that the world needs figuring-out on a regular basis. A daily basis. An hourly basis. Minute to minute. Right now!

I don't know about Robin, but I certainly didn't feel 55 or, for that matter, any age. But then, just what does 55 feel like? I think it feels like this (which was in my head this morning upon waking):

Rain City

2011-12-30T11:47:00.000-08:00

I possess an unwavering affection for Seattle, especially in the rain....

Reality Check

2011-12-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

After the fuzzy la-la-la-chorus-of-angels-humming scenario I posted yesterday (stars a'twinkle) the oven overheated and the parchment nearly caught fire, the bread burned, the Kabocha squashed charred (but what was scraped free was incredibly sweet) and the baked garlic-mashed-spuds formed a crisp blackened carapace, which, though nearly impenetrable, did reveal edible potato within.

The smoke alarm BLARED AND BLARED AND BLARED and we opened all the windows and a door and it didn't stop so we got out the Giant Fan and cranked it up to hurricane force. My son and I engaged in a shouting match on the subject of the pizza stone in the oven and the general lack of oven space because he'd decided to make candied blood orange slices (which he should've done the day before, not an hour before dinner), and we were forced to yell REALLY LOUD to hear each other because of the gale force winds blasting through the kitchen.

He retreated in a pissy huff to his room (are we two years old again??!!), abandoning his remaining dinner prep.

I poured myself a tumbler full of punch, with extra vodka.

My guests were mercifully late.

12.25.11

2011-12-25T15:13:00.000-08:00

I managed to slip away just now for an hour or so, to the silence of my upstairs room-amidst-the-trees, with bread set to rise on the stovetop and pork shoulder slow-cooking in the flame beneath. Riles is attendant in the kitchen, setting his white-chocolate ice cream to spin in the electric ice core. Friends arriving in a few hours.

Yesterday evening, before heading down the street for Christmas Eve with neighbors (aka My Chosen Family), both boys were in the house: R. was shaping strips of red & white dough for candy-cane cookies, N. was wrapping. I was funneling my homemade vanilla bean liqueur into small bottles, and then corking them. R.'s holiday music sampler included some Jimi Hendrix:

I admit I didn't know who was playing, and I don't think R. takes greater delight in anything more than when I have to ask him who we're listening to, especially when it's someone from my generation. (I was too busy, as a teenager, working out on the piano the most mournful of Chopin pieces.) I'm discovering the music of my youth three+ decades late, but that's okay. For some reason, it makes more sense to me now.

Anyway, as I was exclaiming how f---ing fantastic this electric guitar was, I couldn't help notice that the flavor of this Christmas -- from the week-to-week buildup (which contained, astonishingly, almost zero baking) to this moment with the three members of my family unit in the family house at the same time -- was decidedly different from any other Christmas. Few, if any, of the old rules remain. The prime directive is to eat well & laugh often. Other than that, it's open to anything.

And I thought: this is it -- a moment of absolute contentment, where, for that tick of the clock, the house quietly humming with filial activity, all is as it should be in this planet we claim as home. In this house that's seen more than its share of heartache and yet is still the best place I can be, and the place where I can just be best.

You know what I'm saying?

I didn't expect this, long given-over to worry and a pervading sense of perpetual sinking doom. And yet there it was, wave upon wave of well-being -- and I was afloat, head above water, not gasping for a damn thing.

I may need reminders of this fleeting, flashing moment on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, when January grabs hold and threatens to pull me under the icy surface of winter.

But for now, there's dough to punch down and a cranberry punch to spike up.

And a Happy & Merry Etcetera to every last one of you!

Agenda

2011-12-23T12:59:00.000-08:00

There exist days where the schedule is lickety-split sewn-up, everything happens according to its location on the list. And then there are days like yesterday, when my car wouldn't start, then almost started, then went dead dead dead. Called AAA, called the mechanic, and then the car started with all kinds of Warning! Lights! Lit! Egads.

I managed to get it to the shop, then headed back home afoot, 28 degrees and a hint of sun easing through fog. Plugged in my earbuds, cranked up Handel's Messiah and set out on a route I've only ever driven, down the long decline from the top of Beacon Hill, across the light rail tracks, back up another hill, through a neighborhood that some would think of an unsavory but I look at for the diversity. My zip code is the most ethnically diverse in the nation, and I passed elderly Asian men on their morning constitutionals, African-American teenage boys in their oversized coats and butt-saggy pants, Muslim women with little skin unswathed. A storefront church with JESUS SAVES painted on the plate glass. My Vietnamese dentist with his red neon tooth in the window. Lots of empty storefronts: "For Lease". A corner store with a large HALAL MEAT sign painted on plywood.

As I neared the small business district of Columbia City, everything suddenly became tidy, swept, minus the peeling paint and tired disuse visible just two blocks prior. Gentrification seems to have strict boundaries sometimes, edging out from a few core businesses. Signage goes from hand-painted to factory produced. There's a not-so-interesting Starbucks, and an even less-interesting Subway, and about ten independent restaurants, all relatively new. A co-op gallery, a used bookstore, a florist, a butcher. People were out, but not in any great number.

It was the first day of winter, and despite the below-freezing temps, with Handel piping into my ears I was content in my wandering back home. And flowers -- what a surprise! I counted eight
different varieties in bloom in front yards or parking strips -- nothing I'd ever notice while driving:
calendula
lavender
rosemary
oxalis
valerian
geranium
campanula
nigella

It continued, one surprise agenda following another, about which I will not bore you, except that while waiting for a prescription at Costco (where I had to park [in my son's car] in The Outback: Costco was very tiny in the distance), a woman sat down beside me and commenced to talk about back fat. WTF?!

The car was repaired for less than a thousand dollars, which is a Big Deal.

I was treated to a martini and a bowl of French onion soup at Cafe´Presse. Heavenly comfort.

I participated in a lengthy debate about the women's movement, which in the end, turned into a semantic argument more than anything. Words!

And Christmas! I nearly forgot about it.

Food

2011-12-20T17:59:00.000-08:00

My computer is achingly slow. I come here to respond to comments and the whole damn thing goes Rainbow Wheel. So that's my excuse.

Edging closer to Christmas, the solstice. Can it just be spring already?

I'm theorizing that if I can just keep cooking I can get through this year. Three more months to come full circle, to begin what will be my new year. This grieving sometimes gets its teeth into my neck, the bones of the vertebrae, and shakes me until I'm ready to fall down. And damn it if I just don't crawl back up. One millimeter at a time. Slowly slowly slowly.

Yesterday I hung old glass ornaments on the skeletal pink dogwood arching above the sidewalk. Some are handblown and not old, and if they're stolen, may they find a good home.

Riles has cassoulet on the stove, and I just pulled two loaves of sourdough baguette from the oven. Old friends -- from the beginning of time I do believe -- are coming to share in the feast.

I don't really know how to be divorced.

My weekend of funk....

2011-12-19T10:04:00.000-08:00

Not one, but two live performances (unquestionably better than dead performances) by Seattle groups, two nights in a row.

Hard to choose which I liked better, so I'll say I loved them both.

First up: The Balls Out Booze Band --

The curly-topped, hip-spectacled guitar player on the left is Gus, aka P.J.Williker, who spent a good chunk of his early years at my house. He lived down the street, and was the best buddy of my boys. (I claimed him as one of my own.) So how in heck did he go from his Ninja-Turtle-cowboy phase to this ultra cool guy on stage with idiosyncratic style and uber-confidence? All I can say is dayam. I knew him when.

And to add frosting to this already marvelously sweet evening, BABB performed at a new music venue a mile from my house: The Royal Room. I am SO lucky to live here!!

Funk event #2, plus a family Christmas party --

My late-husband Mark's family hosts an annual event at the local community club, and this year included a performance by the reformed (minus several band members claimed early by hard living) Acapulco Gold, a seventies-era Seattle funk band. This is the best part: before I knew this family, when I was in high school in the suburbs, this band was the one to get for school dances. (And also the most difficult to get, they were so scheduled-up.) I remember listening and dancing to them at a club when I was in college.

When Mark and I were first living together at the eponymous "109" (former neighborhood grocery store building), his brother and an ever-transient assemblage of musicians lived downstairs. Those were some sweet days, albeit with all the glassware tinkling in our apartment because the volume emanating from below was, well, at times deafening. My favorite music memory from then is of entire afternoons of Mark's brother Paul doing riffs on his electric guitar: a mightily talented man.

Several times Paul borrowed Mark's car, and while we were at work, Paul and his friends -- perpetually cash-poor artists -- came up to our apartment and helped themselves to breakfast, leaving a mess of dishes that made it appear as if an entire touring roadshow, groupies included, had converged in our tiny kitchen for a feast. It wasn't long before Mark caught on to the trick, and lent the car minus our apartment key. I don't think either of us would have minded so much if that had just cleaned up after themselves, damn it!

Bittersweet moment last night, sitting with my two sons listening to their uncle perform. Life has completed a circle, despite fewer of us sitting in the warmth of the extended family beside the Christmas tree. There was delight and elation in the listening, as well as a wrenching of the heart that Mark wasn't with us.

And even more bittersweet in that, had I still been married to NoGoode, I most likely wouldn't have been sitting there, wouldn't have made the Sunday evening trek alone across the lake to Southeast Seattle. (His interest in anything Seattle was/is marginal, at best, even as colorful a piece of history as Acapulco Gold.)

Big sigh.

Here they are in a cheesy iPhone video, but trust me, these guys (even with a noticeable decrease in hair) are HOT!

And finally, cousins....

HiJinx

2011-12-17T16:20:00.000-08:00

I was shopping at the Seward Park Clay Studio Sale yesterday afternoon when a woman came in the door and announced: there's a head in the lake. Of course, all five of us inside immediately turned our attention to this messenger and voiced a unified what? Right away I pictured the grisly remnants of decapitation: the sawn neck, bulging eyes, the skin bloated and discolored. I thought -- this is Seattle's latest incarnation of Ted Bundy (who once used Seward Park as a dumping ground for one of his victims, and indeed decapitated 12 of his victims), or of Gary Ridgeway -- the newest murder-and-dismember modus operandi.

I was soooo relieved to be wrong. This instead turned out to be a case of "guerrilla art repositioning": someone had taken a clay head that was on display outside the studio and placed it ever-so-carefully in 5 inches of water. Eerie, but benign. Phew! And good for a damn big chuckle. I LOVE stuff like this.

Surrender

2011-12-15T20:21:00.000-08:00

3:30pm, and every street locked up tight with stopped cars, so I did a u-turn in the apartment building parking lot where my former step-son once lived and where his father bought him out of his lease because he heard gunshots at night. Welcome to the city. Ho hum.

But to the point: I was enroute to yet another meeting with the Big Bank re: $$$, and, finally freed from gridlock, made a quick escape down Yesler Street, a hill which careens almost vertically into downtown Seattle, and which gives one the impression of being dumped into Elliot Bay aka The Salish Sea. Luckily I managed to hedge dunking, and zipped up 3rd Avenue, only to be greeted by a Do Not Enter 3-6pm sign: buses only. Feck!! And late, to boot.

Downtown Seattle is made up of one way streets, crazy steep streets, a freeway which slices through everything, and water. One would think that I'd have it all under my belt, having lived here since the previous millenium, but I try to avoid driving down here and WHY IN HELL DIDN'T I TAKE THE LIGHT RAIL? (Because The Bank was offering validated parking and I thought piece of cake lickety-split. Wrong.)

And then this story came onto NPR about the 1500 grebes who crashed into a snow-covered Wal-Mart parking lot at night, mistaking it for open water. I thought: I can't listen to this. It's too sad, I'm too anxious about this f---ing meeting. No stories about dead grebes. I wanted to cry.

The entrance to the free parking lot was down a one-way street on Mars, as it turned out; and after driving around first one block, then another, and driving under the freeway, encountering yet another Do Not Enter, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, I parked on the street, grabbed the leather briefcase that my deceased mother-in-law gave me 14 years ago that I've never used, and high-tailed it down the sidewalk to the highrise (floor 17) (did I get the correct bank of elevators for god's sake?!).

Jesus Mary and Joseph: life shouldn't be this hard.

And all in vain.

(Did I mean: Life shouldn't be this hard and life shouldn't be all in vain? Maybe.)

Getting back to the car, my parking expired, I switched on the radio, and there it was again: the dead birds, trying to find safety, only to crash-dive onto Wal-Mart blacktop.

This is our world, folks.

No matter how hard you try to follow the migratory patterns proscribed by your specie, you are doomed to end up beak-down in a parking lot with a Price! Rollback! special on a Disney Cars Lightning Mcqueen Twin Bed just footsteps (or wingbeats) away.

I felt the doom of every last grebe, heading for a safe port in a storm, only to be smacked to death by corporate America, by greed.

(Now put your glasses on [this is not victory, but compromise, and so must be whispered]:

Upon returning home, I called yet another functionary of the above-mentioned Big Bank, who, months back, had offered me a see-no-evil-speak-no-evil refi, and who I'd kept on the back burner if all else failed.

Within about ten minutes I was approved: Merry X-Mas to me. Ho.
It's not as good as I wished, but for us poor slobs making less than $200k per annum, it's almost acceptable.)

George Whitman and Shakespeare & Co.

2011-12-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

From the NYTimes:

PARIS — George Whitman, the American-born owner of Shakespeare & Company, a fabled English-language bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris and a magnet for writers, poets and tourists for close to 60 years, died on Wednesday in his apartment above the store. He was 98. Read more here.

I had the good fortune, in the summer of 1979, to sub-let a Paris apartment with a college friend. When we weren't idling away long afternoons-into-evenings lingering over a single glass of Côtes du Rhône (very limited budget!) we could often be found at Shakespeare & Co., amid the musty books shelved, stacked and piled floor to rafters. It was a maze and all quite amazing, and we felt like a part of some secret society, like characters from a page of French history. Once George Whitman, who I remember as somewhat cantankerous, gave me a vintage Parisian address book, circa 1900, with marbled end-papers and written in elaborate fountain-pen script. (I still have it -- when I dig it up I'll post a photo.)

What I've seen of this film is marvelous (I admit I've jumped around in it) -- but I'd venture to say that it's worth all 52 minutes if you are even remotely interested in Paris, literature, or quirky characters.

2011-12-13T23:47:00.001-08:00

At four o'clock this afternoon I was outside (wearing a dress and an apron), Sawz-All in hand, tree propped ready for lopping when my phone rang, and I stood out there in the cold and talked to my friend Jeff until my fingers began to lose feeling and I thought why am I standing outside? It's f---ing cold out here!

Because the phone rang while I was out on the deck, I felt like I had to carry on the conversation in the same location where I answered the phone. Still rooted in those old habits: as if tied to a cord. Uh, walk inside, dolt! Go towards the heat!

Nonetheless, the tree got its trunk trimmed and I shimmed and propped the damn tree in the stand BY MYSELF and tightened the screws and untightened the screws and repositioned the tree and stood back and looked at it and said damn. It's crooked.

And it's still crooked: crooked with white twinkle lights and about twenty ornaments.

My poetry group came over and I made crème brûlée and seviche and yam chips and a chili lime dip and cocktails. Lots of candles. Five minutes before people were scheduled to arrive I went out to the yard in the dark and cut strands of ivy and snipped the tips of the lowest branches of the Douglas fir. Inside I prised open a pomegranate and took the last of the satsumas and twirled the ivy and the fir snips around the candles and nestled the oranges in with the ripped-open pom. Lit the candles.

I took three old apples, leveled the bottoms of each, took a melon baller and scooped flesh from the stem-end, making enough space for a votive candle in each. Onto the windowsill with these.

Cava, cranberry-pomegranate juice, triple sec: swirled ensemble in a pitcher, poured into wine glasses, slung an orange twist over the lip of each glass.

Damn it was FESTIVE.

And what a great group of people: poets and poets and poets.

My element.

My people.

In my home.

On my turf.

(Happy.)

Lap of Cats....

2011-12-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

....living the Life of Reilly.

Conifer

2011-12-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

I could not have imagined, before today, the ease with which one picks out a Christmas tree by oneself. No yackity-yack, no dithering, no opinions. Just look at a few trees, walk around for a few minutes, look at the trees again and then bam! Done.

No more tree lots on every other corner, no Boyscout troops raising funds. I succumbed to Lowes (Home! Improvement!) -- a couple of miles from my house, a minimum of carbon fuel burned in the process. Everything bondaged-up in a plastic mesh and crammed into my trunk.

The romance of it -- I used to love tree-shopping -- is just plum gone.

I forgot to have them lop off the trunk end so I have to lug up the Sawz-All and get all butch with my boy-tool.

There were two or three charmed years when we picked the kids up from school, stopped for some hot chocolate, and headed east to Hobart, in the Cascade foothills, to a tree farm. I recall the boys running slap-happy down a rut-pocked hillside, choosing first this tree, then that, every last one of them too tall and frightfully broad at the hips (the trees, not the boys). We found one, of course. Draped with lichen, mossy. An honest-to-god tree. Alive.

So fleeting, those years; and also at times interminable. It all ends: the shape-shifting of time.

Which brings me to here.

Blogging about it.

The tree, as yet un-Sawzed, lies in the front yard.

(And admittedly, solitary pseudotsuga menziesii shopping is dreary.)

2011-12-09T21:19:00.000-08:00

Surrounded by hydrangeas still, in various stages of losing their blue. Two stems have taken root in their glass vase, sprouting bright leaves as if spring were upon us. One small sprig I've let dry completely on a shelf in my bathroom.

Ice fog this morning.

The kitten is back from the vet, snipped clean of all her internal girl parts. Sad incision up her belly. Subdued. All her minx seems to have eked from her. Nothing but sleep, a limp purr.

I intend to succumb to a Christmas tree this weekend.

Found

2011-12-08T21:18:00.000-08:00

My red binder, repository of years of research, has thankfully resurfaced. It's been missing since August, when I lent it to a friend. (Stupid thing to do.) And why would I do such a thing? Because she wanted to make a load of cookies, and my red binder has all the secrets: every last instruction of all my best formulas for personal happiness, perfected during my tenure as The Baker at Two Tartes Bakery.

I paged through it tonight, and relief and joy bubbled up. Old friend! Everything was as it should be.

Some of the pages are so stained and tattered, I'd surmise that entire microscopic plant/animal kingdoms exist on the paper. I could do tissue samples! (Eww.) (How utterly unappetizing!)

The day I made my final exit from TTB -- the day I discovered that there was something fishy going on, and confronted my business partner -- I had the presence of mind to grab the binder. I found out later that she wanted to sue me for what she considered to be her intellectual property (figure that one out), but her attorney told her not to bother. The recipes were mine, and she possessed no rights to them.

(She turned out to be a criminal; I had managed to expose only the tip of the iceberg, it turned out. And although I was summoned to testify on behalf of her husband at their divorce trial, she's managed to evade prosecution.)

I haven't written much here about Two Tartes, and stories are simmering on my back burner. Those few years there -- beginning with the building of the business until the demise of the partnership and long-friendship -- are best summed up by Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us....

Ah. Yes.

Sigh.

(But the red binder: all mine.)

2011-12-07T20:51:00.000-08:00

Post has been deleted by blog administrator.
(That would be me.)

Tuesday Poem: Seamus Heaney

2011-12-05T11:30:00.000-08:00

From Clearances

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

The Other Woman

2011-12-03T20:42:00.000-08:00

It never fails to stun me when a woman betrays another woman. I don't care what the story is, the bottom line is: we are sisters. We are sacred. We honor each other, and we honor the relationships that each of us nurture, and that sustain us. Period.

Recently I rendez-vous-ed with a high school friend who I hadn't seen for many years. She told me that her ex-husband left her for her best friend. WHAT???!!!! I was dumbfounded. What woman would do this? Is any man worth this?

The answer is a resounding "NO!" I don't care how "in love" you profess to be with someone else's husband, you just don't do this. End of story.

No matter what he tells you about how bad his relationship is, remember that you are hearing it through his filter. There is no way of knowing just what kind of damage your hijinx may prove to cause. And another thing -- if he can cheat on his current wife to dilly-dally with you, you can be certain, and I mean certain, that he'll do the same to you. It's just a matter of time.

So women, if you're entertaining this idea, let it go. Not. Worth. It.
Consider your own sense of self-respect.
Consider the potential for long-term harm down the line, and on and on. The fall-out from your actions most likely will go farther and hurt deeper than what/who you can, at this time, imagine.

If you are reading this, and feel perhaps just a little uncomfortable, well then perhaps you should feel a lot more uncomfortable. Yes, I'm talking to you.

Shame.
And shame again.

Sale

2011-12-02T18:57:00.001-08:00

As the afternoon glowered down on me, my paint colors got brighter and brighter. Payne's grey gave way to cadmium yellow and alizarin crimson.... The darker it gets outside, the more challenging painting becomes, everything shifting with the light, losing intensity, going dormant.

Our annual studio sale is this Sunday and the next, and Melinda and I have been cranking out the work at a manic pace. Post-Thanksgiving reorders are trickling in -- yay! Job security. But the big push is getting all our seconds in sell-able shape -- it's the big draw for this sale. So it's been out to the sheds in the cold, digging back into the webbed corners and lowest shelves to extract boxes and boxes stashed all this past year.

It's a little like reliving the past twelve months -- an evolution becomes visible in the painting style, the color choices. As Melinda comes out with a new line each year, there's always a handful of the early versions of whatever it is that's currently in demand. I have just a moment to feel wistful, then it's on to the next thing.

I'm rather bleary and just a bit dizzy from this pace. There's not a lot of breathing space in a small business like this, especially in these unpredictable times. If all goes well at the studio sale, there's a chance that M. will take her work to the NY Gift Show in January -- a new venue, potentially new clients. Keeping fingers crossed. We're ready to grow into the next phase.

2011-12-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

This is ridiculous but I want it:

Voice

2011-11-30T19:49:00.000-08:00

I've been taking lessons, free of charge, from a young man who's doing graduate studies in Arts Administration, and who is also a musician and dancer. As part of his thesis work, he is pulling together a 200-person choir to create "a river of song" in the park behind Columbia Library, where 100 years ago a river did flow but has been long filled and forgotten.

He's a tall, understated, erudite man, healthy and square-shouldered, handsome, with blue eyes. He speaks in the voice of a poet and sings as if he's the (undiscovered) lead in an opera. I used to sing -- all the time -- until the morning I woke up (twenty years ago) and discovered that the middle register of my voice had vanished. The cause: a drip on a small section of my vocal cords, allergy-related. Antihistamines help only marginally. I can still sing a decent first tenor, and an okay limited-range second soprano, but my alto -- where the heart & soul of my voice resides -- is nowhere to be found.

Campbell -- my teacher -- is absolutely certain that his instruction will bring it back, or release it from its constraints. Singing with him this afternoon in the studio at work, my voice cracking and cutting out, it felt as if all good sounds were trapped somewhere in the back of my head, lodged in a part of my skull: impenetrable bone.

I am less confident of the potential for success.

We're working on relaxing the throat muscles. My homework is a lot like the breathing exercises that one encounters in yoga, and that which I find most difficult in yoga: being still, listening, breathing. Isn't breathing something we do automatically?

Campbell spoke of the necessity & importance of silence -- as necessary as the presence of voice. Then he said:

"Think of your voice as a flame which melts away that which is bad in all people."

Well.

At the rate I am not progressing, I fear that evil may well exist on this planet for a long time.

Nonetheless, I have my assignment for the next month while he jets off to NYC to assemble a choir similar to his Columbia Park choir, but on a slightly smaller scale.

Tra la!!

2011-11-28T20:44:00.000-08:00

Melinda and I are doing a holiday show at the Rainier Club in downtown Seattle tomorrow afternoon. Check it out here.

We've been advised to wear "business casual", but since neither of us had any inclination to go out and purchase a "business casual" ensemble for a three-hour gig, we both decided, instead, to go, um, "artistic". Which means, to us, "normal".

My own composed attire will include the "recycled" skirt that I bought yesterday at Value Village for $4.99.

The Rainier Club is very Olde Seattle. Exclusive. Moneyed. I figure that we artists are going to be their little December sideshow. Exotic! Quirky!

But as long as they wield their wallets generously, I won't be complaining. Their money is green.

And we're allowed one complementary cocktail each. Woot! Party!

Melodies

2011-11-26T23:16:00.000-08:00

It's late, Saturday night, and I've been playing music for hours and my hands aren't aching, despite painting at work all afternoon. Did someone shoot some cortisone in my knuckles when I wasn't looking?

It's really weird.
I like it.

There's a piano piece that my sister taught me in the 1970's that I like to play, but for years I haven't been able to summon up the bridge. I don't even know the name of it. But tonight it suddenly came back -- go figure. I started playing and there it was, unlodged from some previously-dormant part of the brain. I remembered it, played it through, was astonished. Who can account for lost melodies, suddenly called forth?

I played three of six Bach Variations. I played Moonlight Sonata, if even in the absence of moonlight on a rainy November night. I played and sang "Gravity" by Sara Bareilles.

Stacks of music heaved from the big wicker basket: Chopin, Mozart, Fats Waller, Strauss, Carole King. Single sheets of notes, out of order, rag-eared & ripped. Ghosts of pianos past. Notations written in pencil, some from the 1960's.

Buried in the basket was my melodica, unused for years because of a wonky key. I said fuck it and got my handy-dandy multi-tip screwdriver and took the damn thing apart, poked out the loose pieces, repositioned them, put the screws back in, et voilà: music. And of my own doing.

I worked out Cal Scott's The Lighthouse Keeper's Waltz, key of G.

Heaven.

Post T.G....

2011-11-25T18:59:00.002-08:00

....and the pecan pie is gone.

Woe.

Nonetheless, it was a grand feast for the six of us, my dining room aglow with new paint, the furniture in a yet new configuration, candles lit for the comfort they offer. The kitchen hummed with cooking.

Earlier I clipped the last of the cosmos from the garden, a sprig of borage and two sprigs of pink valerian. Meager, but still in bloom.

My massive harvest of five sugar pumpkins yielded squash for pie. Fresh sage for stuffing, parsley from my neighbor Candy's garden.

For the first time ever I love my house.

I am grateful for it.

Grateful for my convivial, big-laughing, handsome sons.
For the friends who came bearing vodka and vino: grateful for their reliably generous and loving hearts.

I would not have guessed -- a year ago -- that T.G. would be hosted this year in this reconfigured house, this life-under-construction. But here we are, here I am, and (dare I say) it's a good thing.

Underfoot

2011-11-22T18:44:00.000-08:00

My mother would wax her kitchen floor late, the night before thanksgiving, all of us in bed. It was the only time she could be certain of no one making tracks across her gleaming floor. But me? I'll be lucky if I get the floor swept, much less mopped.

And do people really still wax floors? Mine is old-fashioned (but not old) vinyl composition tile, and could definitely take a wax coating, but lord, who could be bothered?! Yet I still judge a holiday by the cleanliness, or lack-thereof, of my kitchen floor.

It will be swept.

Will make an honest attempt at mopping.

But mop or no mop, our dinner Thursday is going to be damn good.

And that's enough by me.

Tuesday Poem: Nesting

2011-11-21T17:50:00.001-08:00

(collage by Michael Bristow)

(I've posted this before, but it seemed so appropriate for today, for right now -- )

Nesting

--for Mark Benchley Anderson
September 28, 1956 - November 21, 2003

July

You called me out for a sparrow
fallen from the Douglas fir,
the nest invisible in the endless web
of branch upon branch reeling above us.
And what comfort was I,
your earth-bound wife, nine months
pregnant, barely moving?

You lifted it into the warm cradle of your hands
and for a long moment we didn’t speak.
The child inside me shifted and turned —
a certain impatience, I suppose, to get on with things.
And then so gently you balanced the bird
on a low bough, out of reach of cats.
We knew it would not survive the night.

January

The City Light crew
has trimmed the upper branches,
sheared off most of one side
to keep us safe, they say, from a collision
of evergreen and wire. Now it stands
lop-sided, north-heavy.

In wind I fret over gusting limbs,
a shattering of glass and timber —
I keep watch over our sleeping children,
yet they wake and cry
to the rhododendron’s rasping
against storm windows.
My bones shiver
under cover, safe
from careening branches, from small birds
dropping into darkness.

©T.Clear

Stormy

2011-11-19T09:38:00.000-08:00

Minus Poundage + Youth

2011-11-17T21:12:00.000-08:00

I've shed more than a few #'s in the past seven months, and suddenly realized (or, rather, it was pointed out to me by MMW), that most of my clothing is literally falling off me.

And then this week when I tossed the last of the summer things to the back of the closet, there remained but a handful of things actually in my size. I know, I know -- I should be rejoicing in the New & Improved Me. It's just that the journey (which I've been advised to trust) has been a chapter straight out of hell. (The Ninth Circle, to be exact.)

Okay. This is really boring.

This is not boring -- came home tonight to this framed photo, a birthday present from my son Nelson:

In September he did something called "Warrior Dash" -- an "extreme 5k dash from hell". And although the photo is obviously photo-shopped, he really did leap over fire, muddy legs and all, carrying a beer the entire way.

Yes. That's my boy.

Damn -- to be 23 again!

2011-11-16T20:27:00.000-08:00

These are not girly hands. More likely to be smudged with paint. More nails jagged than smooth.

They can heft a Sawz-All as easily as a pie crust. Rub a cat's belly and come away with torn skin. Never polished. Often softened. One ring, two. Or none.

Can quickly raise a middle finger in an emergency, but has raised a thumb just once. Left thumb smashed at age six in a car door before Mass, the bone crushed and a dearth of ice. The writer's lump still evident despite years now of a keyboard. Will push concertina buttons, but not for cash; plunk plastic chipped piano keys.

They toss garden gloves quickly: in love with cool dirt. Deadhead cosmos with a snap, pinch dahlias. Caress the unfurling of a frond. Check a grape for sugar.

They uncork like a sommelier: quick & snappy. Pour, twirl the glass. Sponge lip-prints from rims. Wipe spots with a linen cloth.

They rub eyes, a furrowed forehead. Conceal a yawn. Rest atop the body as if in prayer, but only in sleep. And only in dreams do they pause -- poised as if gloved in kid, tender as a peach, blushing.

2011-11-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

Pablo Neruda nails this one:

Ode to the Present

This
present moment,
smooth
as a wooden slab,
this
immaculate hour,
this day
pure
as a new cup
from the past--
no spider web
exists--
with our fingers,
we caress
the present;

we cut it
according to our magnitude
we guide
the unfolding of its blossoms.
It is living,
alive--
it contains
nothing
from the unrepairable past,
from the lost past,
it is our
infant,
growing at
this very moment, adorned with
sand, eating from
our hands.
Grab it.
Don't let it slip away.
Don't lose it in dreams
or words.
Clutch it.
Tie it,
and order it
to obey you.
Make it a road,
a bell,
a machine,
a kiss, a book,
a caress.
Take a saw to its delicious
wooden
perfume.
And make a chair;
braid its
back;
test it.
Or then, build
a staircase!

Yes, a
staircase.
Climb
into
the present,
step
by step,
press your feet
onto the resinous wood
of this moment,
going up,
going up,
not very high,
just so
you repair
the leaky roof.
Don't go all the way to heaven.
Reach
for apples,
not the clouds.
Let them
fluff through the sky,
skimming passage,
into the past.

You
are
your present,
your own apple.
Pick it from
your tree.
Raise it
in your hand.
It's gleaming,
rich with stars.
Claim it.
Take a luxurious bite
out of the present,
and whistle along the road
of your destiny.

2011-11-15T21:48:00.000-08:00

Well, damn.

Promised not to blog about this.

Tuesday Poem: What the Living Do

2011-11-14T23:32:00.000-08:00

by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

--Marie Howe

2011-11-13T16:34:00.000-08:00

Been back in this house since the first of May and other than a few potlucks this summer on the back deck, there hasn't been a whole lot of entertaining going on. Just haven't had the heart for it. But yesterday I inhaled deeply and hosted my first full-on dinner party of this new life in the B-Street house.

I just had the living room painted, and haven't yet hung a single thing on the walls, so it felt a little austere. I sent my son to the hardware store in the afternoon to pick up a picture-hanging kit and he came back with something completely other than what I expected. (Growl.) Sigh. Bare walls.

Nonethless, low lighting and the warmth of candles amped up the ambiance considerably. And then there were the numerous bottles of wine, all of them, incidentally, French, save for the 1957 -- yes, 1957! -- bottle of Tawny Port and an 18-year-old Jameson's. Ah. Lovely stuff, every drop.

I've still not unpacked everything that was frantically stuffed into boxes last April, and when it came time to serve the meal, I hadn't a platter anywhere. No baskets for bread -- wait! My sister had just minutes before given me a beautiful red basket for my birthday, so it was put to quick use. Espresso cups? Teacups? A sprint down the basement stairs solved that, a hurried rummage through a box labeled, amazingly "teacups". Okay -- that wasn't so hard.

Last week my trusty Joy of Cooking reappeared (minus the first 167 pages!), but my red binder with all my own recipes is still oddly nowhere to be found. I've done this gotta-move-immediately twice now in this lifetime and if I have to do it again, may it be in another lifetime. It fucks everything up, washes away every last remnant of carefully constructed foundation. (I'm a girl who needs the underpinnings to be not only solid but thoughtfully reinforced.)

Rebuilding, one cookbook at a time, one teacup at a time.

The big hit of the meal was the stuffed pork loin -- the scent of onions and red apples sauteeing and caramelizing yesterday afternoon was the stuff of inspired dreams -- made even better with a handful of chopped fresh sage, panko crumbs, nutmeg. Tied it, rubbed in a generous portion of S & P plus some spices (my son pulled the rub together), layed two slices of bacon along the length, roasted it for an hour. (It just occurred to me that we no longer "bake" anything: we "roast". Ha. Even the language of cooking has its ins-and-outs.)

Dessert was an ice cream pie:

-crust of crumbled ginger snaps and melted butter
-softened vanilla ice cream for the bottom layer
-pumpkin mousse for the top layer

Um, yeah. Divine.

My toast: "To loyal friends and family -- may you endure."

I did it.
And I think maybe I can do it again.

God it's good to be alive -- really alive, this right-now alive, this moment.

Meanwhile....

2011-11-10T18:28:00.000-08:00

I want to be here, under this sky, in this mist, on this beach....

No Words.

2011-11-09T20:17:00.000-08:00

Poets

2011-11-08T23:26:00.000-08:00

I often leave my monthly writing group in a kind of spell, charmed by the company of poets. Tonight was no exception.

Eve appeared, and also Lucifer, and a Danish audiologist named Old Bentzen who died from laughing in 1989 while watching A Fish Called Wanda. There was a hummingbird and the beating heart of a bird, a grieving carpenter, the semi-colon, blond spiders and live music (guitar & voice). There was a reading from the New England Journal of Medicine about the changing language of medicine. There was a saw.

The spell begins to diminish the moment I walk out the door, and lingers always not long enough. I hear their voices, though, for weeks afterwards, as I pluck and prune the flaws from a poem-in-progress.

It's all good stuff.

Hallelujah

2011-11-06T20:33:00.000-08:00

I've not done this:
played music with friends.
I've sung, played piano, sung harmony, but not an instrument with other instruments. Do I have permission to do this? Do I need permission?

Guitar, mandolin, concertina.

I'm new to it all and play badly, and every time J. picked up the beat I'd lose it and my fingers would begin to stumble, tumble, and T. would give me a look like I don't think that's part of the melody and then of course I could barely stop myself from dissolving into laughter. GAWD it was hard to concentrate and not forget fuck-all. To makes things worse, really bad, they decided that I was the one to follow because the concertina is dominant and I HADN'T A CLUE.

O.

We were in luck.
The music police weren't patrolling that street; no one banged on the door demanding cessation; the two other musicians were patient; our audience of ONE was very mellow.

But when it worked, when I hit the right buttons and J. and T. hit the right chords, it was a hallelujah moment, an I-can-barely-sit-still-for-this-joy moment.

The question, of course, is Why Did I Wait So Long To Do This?

(I'm not sure why All The Upper Case Letters but sometimes they just leap to the fingertips and demand to make their presence known.)

Anyway, I survived.
And here is John Boutte in NOLA singing his version of Hallelujah (a song which has been covered at least 200 times):

X

2011-11-06T20:25:00.000-08:00

Hello early darkness.

2011-11-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

Fall Back

It’s returned, that hour lost last April,
slipped in at 2am while a half-moon
gleamed in the pine. Hovered
while I slept, unclaimed
angel, tick-tock.
But

I don’t desire to use it yet: I want to be
selfish, to hoard, tear it into ten
minute bits. Fold one into
my wallet for the late
appointment,
one

in the vegetable bin to forestall wilt.
Under my pillow to prolong
the dream, into the oven to
extend the fragrance of
Quick Yellow Cake
rising.

I’ll give one to my son to get out of jail
free. One I’ll bury in the garden
in eternal plastic, mark an X
with apples. Maybe I’ll
forget it’s there.
And

maybe, in the next century,
someone will unearth this
ten-minute treasure,
and it will be that one
extra moment they’ll
need to save their life.

© T. Clear 2011

How It Is.

2011-11-03T21:55:00.000-07:00

Out of focus and off-kilter.

The Dimming of the Day

2011-11-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

Richard Thompson closed his show last night with this:

His voice drops me to my knees, makes me weep.

Today at work I said:

"No more inspiring words. I just want to feel better."

Damn.

It's been one of those weeks.

Yoga Strange & Wonderful

2011-11-01T21:20:00.001-07:00

It was a little like walking into a prayer -- an unremarkable bungalow, circa 1900 -- going to "Quiet Yoga." My friend C. and I were the only people there other than our facilitator, a beautiful young woman named Lin, whose hair was pulled back in a long black braid and moved with the ease and grace of the young and fit. All very hushed, no music. Silky light. We unrolled our mats and Lin told us we could do our own practice or follow her.

At first the silence was disconcerting -- we were all-breath, and without a melody or chanting the breath-sounds grew magnified and took on greater importance. My usual (bad practice) breath-holding was more evident than ever, and finally I settled into a rhythm, air in, air out. Who knew breathing was so important?! (Duh.)

Stiff. Out of yoga-shape.

At one point I was facing Lin's calendar, and saw that she volunteers at the Crisis Clinic. It struck me as very odd that here I was in someone's home, knowing nearly nothing about this person. (C. had seen an advert. for "Quiet Yoga" on a local reader-board.) Lin had opened her door to us, complete strangers. And we took off our shoes and went to work, bending and contorting our limbs in this stranger's house.

Lavish blue blossoms and some East Indian characters were painted on a wall; paper shades concealed the sliver moon, city lights. The energy was that of peace, at a slow simmer .

When an hour was up, and we regained speech, she asked if we'd stay for meditation. Alas, it was time to go.

C. and I walked the half-mile back to our houses through dark November streets, a day past Halloween. No pumpkins lit, the noise of the world turned way down.

Life continues to offer up the new and the unexpected.
I bow my head in gratitude.

Intermission, Carmen

2011-10-31T19:18:00.000-07:00

I headed for the nearest refreshment stand in search of anything to assuage my hunger. The choices, unfortunately were cookie, cookie or cookie. I opted for a Big Cookie , paid my $4(!) for a single cookie(!), slung my vintage evening bag -- seventy years old and a hand-me-down from my mother -- across my arm and began to make my way through the wine-sipping crowd. The cookie was ridiculously big, and cake-like, and I decided to break off a piece instead of taking a bite from the whole thing. When I did that, a big chunk crumbled off and fell -- ah! Dinner on the floor! Did it again, and another chunk fell to crumbs at my feet. Damn. At least it wasn't very good. Tasted like whoever the baker was substituted oil for butter to cut costs, and didn't add any salt to compensate. Bland damn thing, even with the chocolate chips.

The cookie was crumbly, I was grumbly and still hungry. Then someone pointed to me, pointed to the carpet and said, "I think you lost something."

About four steps back was my iPhone. As I stooped to pick it up, one person, and another, and then another stepped in front of me -- as if choreographed -- hands extended with currency. What the? For me??!! I couldn't figure out what was happening, but as long as people were stepping out to hand me cash, I was going to grab it.

Then I figured it out: after I paid for the Big Cookie, the ancient clasp (shaped like a rose, gold-toned) had failed, and my vintage silk evening bag, slung near my elbow, was swinging wide and free. And I, (as Gretel), while attempting to negotiate my Big! Cookie! was leaving a trail of not only crumbs and cookie chunks but five-dollar bills as well.

After a good long laugh, I headed back to my seat. As the curtain rose for Act II, I had a short-lived moment of panic, thinking "Keys!" In the darkened performance hall, I reached my hands into the shallows of the purse: credit card, driver's license, lip gloss, phone and, yes, keys. Whew.

The whole story would've been much better, of course, if I'd ended up with more cash than I started with, and even better yet if each handing-over of cash was accompanied by an aria excerpt. Come on people! Be dramatic!

But I don't wish to appear ungrateful.
So thank-you to the good people of Seattle, thank-you taffeta-skirted opera-goers!
Bravo!!

Burning

2011-10-30T20:13:00.000-07:00

Getting into the trenches, the deep deep archival depths, on the borderlands of gravity. Reaching up to top shelves and pulling down the reams of legal paperwork from seven, eight years ago, nearly puking at the language, the presumptions of people that I paid $$$ to drive away demons. (And who were not really all that successful.)

So out I went with my box of baggage, to the fire pit which hasn't been lit yet since I've returned to B-Street. I sat in the nearly-dark and lit the whole of it, sent flaring paper-fluff & embered bits high into the air until it all vanished. The rain held back save for a drop or three. Warm enough to go coatless. No cats.

What pleasure to be done with it -- that box of saved damages, the evidence of a life prior to the most recent undoing: the layers and layers upon which a life is stacked. I must say it's teetery here at these heights, but I'm feeling an approaching balance, albeit faint as yet, and tinged with smoke, fogged at the edges.

Consider this:

The words solitary and solace both contain the word sol.
Sun.
(And precariously close to the word soul!)
(The sun each of us holds within.)

---

I'll be 55 in a week, and would not have guessed that I'd be rebuilding a life at this age. But then, the surprise of sorrow may as easily be the surprise of joy: equally possible.

I say Bring It On.

2011-10-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

Lucky me -- I have a friend who does reviews for a Seattle arts organization and gets free tickets to various events, and last night she invited me to Carmen at Seattle Opera: fabulous.

I'm generally about a 50% opera fan -- I can listen to about half of any opera before my ears start to go wonky with the tremendous vibrato pounding my eardrums. But Carmen was an over-the-top spectacle of non-stop color, dance, costume and song.

AND there's the added bonus of seeing ordinary people in their not-s0-ordinary going-to-the-opera costumes. Seattle, with its recent roots embedded in grunge, tends to dress-d0wn for most everything, and neutral tones are de rigeur in this city. Clothing and fabrics tend to reflect the sky (grey) and the soil (brown). Not so at the opera. I saw women in full-length taffeta strapless gowns with -- get this -- color! Woot! Not so many man in tuxedos, but there were a few. And as expected, the birkenstock/feed-sack crowd was appropriately represented.

Our seats were Orchestra Center -- about ten rows from the front. Hard to beat.

Sitting there in the first act, the stage aswirl with skirts, dance and song, I couldn't help thinking of the color-names of the oil paints that just a few hours before I'd been rubbing onto sand-blasted glass: Prussian blue, luminous violet, brown-pink. I couldn't help thinking that everything one experiences in life is linked to something else. Earlier in the day, these colors were at hand, just inches from my eyes. And then there they were on stage, in glorious lighting, a spectacle that seemed to crawl into my every cell and take up residence for those few hours, and that lingers still, the next morning, in the muted rainy greens and slate greys of an off-stage Saturday.

Off now -- it's grape pressing time!

The Enigma of the Keys

2011-10-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

Is this staring me in the face?
If it is, I'm lost.

As are several more keys.

The day following my lost-and-then-found-in-the-apron key adventure, Melinda (for whom I work) suffered a key disappearance after opening the trunk of her car. Between the car and the kitchen, her keys did their magic act. And no white bunny of fortune to point us in the right direction. We looked:

1) in the car
2) in the street
3) in the garden
4) on the porch
5) under the porch
6) in the kitchen
7) under the kitchen

No luck.
A mystery.
A *poof* of disappearance.

And today, the secret hidden spare also went missing, with the last remaining set of keys inside the house and both Melinda and I outside the house.

No, it wasn't in my apron.
It wasn't in my jacket pocket.
It wasn't anywhere.

It isn't anywhere. And although that's technically impossible, it's what I believe. It is GONE. Whoosh.

The locksmith arrived while we both shivered in the October chill, and told us that he recently went to a job on Norman Street. His first name is Norman. The next street over was the same name as his last name. What are the odds of this? He said he was able to take a photo with both street signs visible. Cool.

Then he waxed philosophical on the value of locksmiths, and said that a previous governor, Gary Locke, enacted a Locksmith Appreciation Day. I asked Norman if that had anything to do with the fact that the governor's last name was, well, Locke.

"Well!" He said. "I hadn't considered that!"

Well indeed.

He also said that, in light of the fact that Melinda's assistant called the locksmith and not Melinda-the-homeowner-herself, he (Norman) could be charged with a felony if this wasn't indeed Melinda's home. A quick show of ID remedied that worry. I mean, what if we were two middle-aged woman burglars sitting out in the cold trying to gain access to someone else's house? Cherish the thought.

But the thought I'm cherishing -- or not -- at the moment, is this ongoing theme of lost keys.

Lost keys.
Entry denied.
The opening of doors.
The opening of new doors.
The reaching for the unreachable.
Entry gained.

It's a cliche, and threatens to smack me in the head, this symbolism. But sometimes synchronicity isn't just synchronicity.

Equal Temperament

2011-10-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

More about this later.
My head is too filled up at the moment with the science, the mechanics
and the mathematics of sound.
Got it?
Me neither.

(98.9545922303676 CENT)

(99.9066043792227 CENT)

(100.0000094845790 CENT)

(100.0000006728490 CENT)

2011-10-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

The first inspiration of today comes from Elizabeth at a moon, worn as if it had been a shell. She's a baker extraordinaire, and when she writes about food, I always want to drop everything and head to the kitchen. Elizabeth is taking a class called Food Crafting 101 -- a kind of home-economics redux, where she'll make cheese, jam, bread, and mustard, etc.

I suggested to my son that we make our own mustard, and he said, "I've done it."

Well.

It's hard to find something he hasn't made.

Last week it was ice-cream, again, and -- the brat -- he failed to let me know that there was HOMEMADE DARK CHOCOLATE PEANUT-BUTTER CHUNK ICE CREAM in the freezer. This is grounds for expulsion, I think, but then, who else would come into my kitchen and cook up a storm of everything marvelous?!

This is my small benefit of the recession and an unemployed son. One can always find blessings, often right under one's nose (and apparently in one's freezer).

But back to the ice cream: the first spoonful, and the second, and the third, ad infinitum, was an OMG moment. An OMGOL moment. (O! My! God! [Out Loud!]) So chocolately (gawd, I sound like Keebler elf) it was almost black, with spoonfuls of chunky peanut butter. Sublime.

Earlier this summer, there was fresh coconut ice cream, served with sugared blackberries just moments off the stem, and then there was fresh blackberry ice cream with a color so deeply and so perfectly purple I wanted to sit down and weep. Wanted to roll in it. Wanted to wear it, which I would've done had I given in to the urge to roll.

I do believe my son has found his niche.

Anyone looking for an ice-cream maker? That is, a human one?

2011-10-24T21:46:00.000-07:00

Spirits ran fairly high all summer, despite the barrage of seemingly never-ending Major Life Events. Walks to-and-from work buzzed with activity: people gardening, people playing music with all the doors and windows open, people walking to the store. Children riding bikes, children in the middle of the street with balls, children on the sidewalk, bright chalk at hand.

Fresh-cut grass, smoke from a grill, the sweet vanilla breeze from my neighbor's hedge in bloom. From every house and from every life: evidence of the here & now.

A child's cry from down the alley. From an open kitchen window, the clink of dishes being washed. From the synagogue: chanting, or prayer, low and rhythmical.

Life hummed along at a pleasant pitch. Bees hummed in lavender, and if someone told me that tomatoes hummed in their ripening in parking-strip gardens, I would have listened, and I would have heard.

Then every evening: dinner in the garden, a glass of wine beneath the kiwi and grape vines, an abundance of birds in the apple trees. I existed outdoors: a walk around the block at dusk, a midnight accounting of stars from my upstairs balcony.

And now with autumn in full leaf-fall, everything appears shut down, closed out, turned inwards. My one-mile on-foot commute is minus the soundtrack of people living their urban lives. Curtains are drawn, windows latched. And only a few bees persist on the last few flowers: cosmos, calendula, here and there a dwindling rose. A sudden damping-down in the volume of life, a volume that, in summer, was easy to keep wound-up.

Descending into melancholy.
Feeding it, one song at a time.