Today I moved the CD player from beneath a table and behind lumpy containers of Christmas wrapping accessories to the top of a table beside my bed. To celebrate this emergence I dug back through music, overlooked or misplaced, to find Nanci Griffith's "Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back To Bountiful)" on which she and many pals of the folk persuasion (of which I am an unrepentant fan since teen years) celebrate classic, traditional songs of the genre.
Many of the selections, like "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" and "Darcy Farrow" not only conjure visions of our country as it was but paint for me scenes known mostly from film but partly from life, perhaps some from dreams.
Portions of my childhood were spent in the shared backseat of a series of Ford stationwagons, trying, as were both of them, not to have any human contact with my brother or sister, pulled entirely into myself, body and mind. I can hear my sister shriek, "Mike's shirt is touching me," and see the hand reach around the driver's seat and begin swatting blindly with a bunch of maps or newspapers to make us shut the hell up.
These journeys were sometimes called vacations, though I suspect there was always a business aspect, for mostly they were embarked upon to fill the columns our father wrote for various regional travel magazines. He shot his own photos, did on-the-spot interviews, collected history through research - this was way before computers, probably before electric typewriters - and compiled information on highway conditions, tourist destinations and anything one might want for a recreational drive around the less-traveled roads of California.
Something in me responds to aspects of the American western migration, especially when it involves mining. Our first visit to the Mother Lode, land where gold was discovered in 1849 which started a world-wide frenzy to find a treasure-filled spot of earth or stream, felt for me like returning home. I cannot say just what it is in those rolling hills or visions of panning the waters, ghost towns and their names, that resonate for me but the response carries over to movies that edge on that sort of life, like MC CABE AND MRS. MILLER, even THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (both of which are made all the more atmospheric by their music, the first by Leonard Cohen, the second by Nick Cave). I have almost stopped puzzling over a connection that can't be reincarnation or cellular memory, at least I don't think so, but must be more alligned with what lived in the hearts of those seekers and dreamers, those with the vision of, as Cohen writes, "...the hand so high and wild you'll never have to deal another." I have never felt that I possessed an adventurous soul but it seems I must share the impossible visions, pipe dreams even, with the foolish and daring from stories real or invented.
So I listened to Nanci Griffith, songs filled with longing and lament, wonder at how it could have gone so wrong in spite of such good intentions. I was left with more melancholy that I wanted to handle this afternoon, so chose, instead, to write about it. Perhaps all our experiences are mystical, we only mistake them for ordinary since processing them seems beyond our skill.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Paper bag ornaments
Three of the Suspects stamped onto a blank paper bag, colored, cut out fronts and backs, glued together in increments, stuffed with very small pieces of polyester fiberfil, glued the rest of the way closed (Aleen's Tacky Glue works well) and there you are. Glue a loop of ribbon, yard, twine, whatever to hang on the tree or decorate a package. Merry, merry.Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Let it go
In 1948 I moved with my mother and father from her parents' light-filled and substantially-built Pasadena home on a block-deep lot near a drugstore, Chinese restaurant and coffee shop with malts, to a new subdivision in Baldwin Park. My brother was born later that year.
Harlan Street had no trees, no sidewalks, no lawns, no fences. At one end of the block was a working dairy - cows and all - and at the other the hard and dusty scrub land that reminded everyone Southern California was simply a desert in disguise. Nearby was a gravel pit with the trucks that came to carry the gravel away, and a drive-in movie where the program changed a couple times a week.
We were late-comers to the tract, those already settled having arrived seemingly as soon as the paint dried. While at age three I was young, I was a very good listener and heard the gossip the neighbors shared about each other with my very young mother. Compared with Pasadena where she had grown up, it must have seemed an outpost - Fort Apache from some western - and the smudgepots from nearby orange groves left us with sooty nostrils when we awoke on cold mornings.
The greatest attraction for me - the only attraction - in our backyard was the clothesline, two metal uprights with rows of rope strung between. My dearest cloth doll, named Checkersocks, was frequently pinned there as she dried, having been washed following - probably - being dragged through the Baldwin Park dirt that passed for a yard day after day. I remember sitting under the dripping doll, talking to her, waiting for her to be ready to play again.
It was the absence of fences, and the fact that our little neighborhood had been, not that long ago, just like the land around it, that inspired me to make friends with the tumbleweeds. I can't say the friendship went in both directions; I captured them, kept them around for a while, then turned them loose. Since they blew through our yard and every other yard in the region, stopped only by the houses, I began to catch them and tie them to the clothesline pole with the leftover rope. I gathered them in bush-sized, prickly bouquets and would talk to them as I did to my doll. We had a cocker spaniel named Ginger who only barked and jumped on me and they made better company; at least I had some control over them. Ginger never stopped jumping on me and finally "went away" which I assumed to mean back to the people who had given her to us. It was many years and a few dogs later that I caught on to that old parents' tale about sending Fred or Duke or Lobo to live with a nice family who had more space.
Eventually I would free the tumbleweeds, picturing a windy day so they could really make a break for it, then begin to collect a new batch. What I don't remember is how I managed to wrangle such dry, sharp and hostile relics and how I arrived at the place of considering them friends. When released, they raced west, eventually piling up along the chain-link that surrounded the power lines.
Lawns and fences did come to Harlan Street, about the time I started kindergarten, walking to school past the dairy and a road full of squashed frogs whose swampy home had been built over with two-bedroom stucco. As more families arrived, they had to add a second session of kindergarten and a bus carried me past the frog bodies but the sense of waking nightmare never quite left. When my brother was still less than a year old, we moved back to Pasadena for the smudge pots made him ill and the doctor said he couldn't live in such a place.
What caused me to think of Baldwin Park and my strange collection of skeletal, botanical friends was a conversation this morning, a suggestion that perhaps I might be able to let sad and unwelcome thoughts pass through my mind rather than allowing them to pitch their tents and suck the joy out of all I used to love about Christmas - the lights, the music, making cards and gifts, surprising my son, cooking. I saw myself stubbornly, but intentionally, grabbing hold of something that was meant to breeze on past and binding it fast in a place where it didn't belong. I acknowledged that I might find a way to observe the arrival of the tumbling thoughts and the feelings they brought without giving them energy and floor space. I imagined that I could nod at their passing, know they were just part of the territory and let them go.
Harlan Street had no trees, no sidewalks, no lawns, no fences. At one end of the block was a working dairy - cows and all - and at the other the hard and dusty scrub land that reminded everyone Southern California was simply a desert in disguise. Nearby was a gravel pit with the trucks that came to carry the gravel away, and a drive-in movie where the program changed a couple times a week.
We were late-comers to the tract, those already settled having arrived seemingly as soon as the paint dried. While at age three I was young, I was a very good listener and heard the gossip the neighbors shared about each other with my very young mother. Compared with Pasadena where she had grown up, it must have seemed an outpost - Fort Apache from some western - and the smudgepots from nearby orange groves left us with sooty nostrils when we awoke on cold mornings.
The greatest attraction for me - the only attraction - in our backyard was the clothesline, two metal uprights with rows of rope strung between. My dearest cloth doll, named Checkersocks, was frequently pinned there as she dried, having been washed following - probably - being dragged through the Baldwin Park dirt that passed for a yard day after day. I remember sitting under the dripping doll, talking to her, waiting for her to be ready to play again.
It was the absence of fences, and the fact that our little neighborhood had been, not that long ago, just like the land around it, that inspired me to make friends with the tumbleweeds. I can't say the friendship went in both directions; I captured them, kept them around for a while, then turned them loose. Since they blew through our yard and every other yard in the region, stopped only by the houses, I began to catch them and tie them to the clothesline pole with the leftover rope. I gathered them in bush-sized, prickly bouquets and would talk to them as I did to my doll. We had a cocker spaniel named Ginger who only barked and jumped on me and they made better company; at least I had some control over them. Ginger never stopped jumping on me and finally "went away" which I assumed to mean back to the people who had given her to us. It was many years and a few dogs later that I caught on to that old parents' tale about sending Fred or Duke or Lobo to live with a nice family who had more space.
Eventually I would free the tumbleweeds, picturing a windy day so they could really make a break for it, then begin to collect a new batch. What I don't remember is how I managed to wrangle such dry, sharp and hostile relics and how I arrived at the place of considering them friends. When released, they raced west, eventually piling up along the chain-link that surrounded the power lines.
Lawns and fences did come to Harlan Street, about the time I started kindergarten, walking to school past the dairy and a road full of squashed frogs whose swampy home had been built over with two-bedroom stucco. As more families arrived, they had to add a second session of kindergarten and a bus carried me past the frog bodies but the sense of waking nightmare never quite left. When my brother was still less than a year old, we moved back to Pasadena for the smudge pots made him ill and the doctor said he couldn't live in such a place.
What caused me to think of Baldwin Park and my strange collection of skeletal, botanical friends was a conversation this morning, a suggestion that perhaps I might be able to let sad and unwelcome thoughts pass through my mind rather than allowing them to pitch their tents and suck the joy out of all I used to love about Christmas - the lights, the music, making cards and gifts, surprising my son, cooking. I saw myself stubbornly, but intentionally, grabbing hold of something that was meant to breeze on past and binding it fast in a place where it didn't belong. I acknowledged that I might find a way to observe the arrival of the tumbling thoughts and the feelings they brought without giving them energy and floor space. I imagined that I could nod at their passing, know they were just part of the territory and let them go.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
A brief tutorial
The new stamp collection, The Un-Usual Suspects, appeared in the late summer. They were created to be all-purpose, utility characters. But we have moved into the Christmas season and their distinct oddness does not exactly connect them to any particular holiday, certainly not Christmas. So I prepared samples for one of the manufacturer's newsletters, with detailed instructions, which may be found at the link below, following ordering instructions for the stamp sets. The sets are also available from Stamp Your Heart Out in Claremont, CA (909) 621-4363.
http://stampington.com/html/unusual_suspects.html
http://stampington.com/html/unusual_suspects.html
Monday, November 17, 2008
The Absurd Is Always With Us
As a Girl Scout leader for more years that she wished, my mother sometimes sought inspiration for troop projects from sources other than her own imagination. One such aid was a magazine called "Pack O' Fun" and her subscription seemed to run for years. I know it was still arriving when I was a teenager and she had long-since abdicated her woven-newspaper mats and paper bag puppets duties to a woman we all knew was a real Girl Scout leader, someone who could construct shelter in the wilderness, glare us into having mayonnaise on our sandwichs even though it made us gag, and remain unflappable when cornered by a flash flood or forest fire.
When I find myself in situations that feel like one of the infrequent funny episodes of THE X-FILES, I can draw a line of the bizarre back to "Pack O' Fun" and the issue, must have been March, which suggested leprechaun sacks of gold as party favors...made from used tea bags glamoured up with spray paint and glitter. I was and have been happy and willing to recycle and find creative uses for discards but this went too far. Forever after, any family party plans included at least a mention of "Pack O' Fun" and that particular extreme of thrift.
Which brings me to my point - the fact that identifying the absurd is a skill handier than knowing how to spot poison oak. We all find ourselves, some much more often than others, in circumstances when the bubble in our personal level tips steeply to one end. This presents different choices, but the only one I can think of is laughing. Maybe not in the moment, maybe not on the spot, but certainly inside where our most wise and philosphical self has just noticed we've been swallowed whole by someone's vast, lunatic episode, disguised as normal behavior and rational thought. I willingly own that a used tea bag party favor rates pretty far down the list of human folly but it is a simple, clear example.
There was the landlord whose ad I called about as we were preparing to move, nearly 7 years ago. Our rented house had been sold and, having experienced one harrowing fire-and-evacuation scenario, we'd been thinking for some time of moving into the flatlands. When I called about the rental I said we were still twitchy at the sound of helicopters and sirens and thought life outside the red flag zone would be more peaceful. "Yes," said the landlord, "but how do you feel about snakes?" Turns out his property was even further up the mountain than our present location and, by his innocent-seeming yet telling question, we knew this was not the place for us. My son and I imagined a patio landscaped like a serpent amphitheater or the writhing ground beneath Indiana Jones as he dropped in to discover the Lost Ark. And we shuddered. Some are reptile people, some are not. Now any time we are presented with a hard sell of something that holds zero appeal, we ask each other, "How do you feel about snakes?"
During that same search, we found a pleasant-seeming cottage - on a flat street - with a large back yard, ringed by avocado trees which surrounded a raised square cement platform roughly half again the size of the house which we decided must be a landing pad for the mother ship. As the realtor had simply given us the keys and sent us out to look on our own, there was no one to ask but sometimes weirdness just shrieks to let you know it's there.
The absurd dwells among us and the sooner we can recognize its sundry disguises, the quicker we can get to stepping on down the street or remembering that we left the iron on or the kettle boiling and need to get home, get off the phone or call for back-up. Some of us are magnets for the bizarre. My father was one, thanks to his daily newspaper column which led readers to believe, perhaps not incorrectly, that he was a kindred spirit in their diverse searches for whatever Truth Is Out There. My mind remains open about things which we truly cannot explain but I'm very clear about snakes as houseguests and can still spot a used tea bag, gilded or not, across a crowded room.
When I find myself in situations that feel like one of the infrequent funny episodes of THE X-FILES, I can draw a line of the bizarre back to "Pack O' Fun" and the issue, must have been March, which suggested leprechaun sacks of gold as party favors...made from used tea bags glamoured up with spray paint and glitter. I was and have been happy and willing to recycle and find creative uses for discards but this went too far. Forever after, any family party plans included at least a mention of "Pack O' Fun" and that particular extreme of thrift.
Which brings me to my point - the fact that identifying the absurd is a skill handier than knowing how to spot poison oak. We all find ourselves, some much more often than others, in circumstances when the bubble in our personal level tips steeply to one end. This presents different choices, but the only one I can think of is laughing. Maybe not in the moment, maybe not on the spot, but certainly inside where our most wise and philosphical self has just noticed we've been swallowed whole by someone's vast, lunatic episode, disguised as normal behavior and rational thought. I willingly own that a used tea bag party favor rates pretty far down the list of human folly but it is a simple, clear example.
There was the landlord whose ad I called about as we were preparing to move, nearly 7 years ago. Our rented house had been sold and, having experienced one harrowing fire-and-evacuation scenario, we'd been thinking for some time of moving into the flatlands. When I called about the rental I said we were still twitchy at the sound of helicopters and sirens and thought life outside the red flag zone would be more peaceful. "Yes," said the landlord, "but how do you feel about snakes?" Turns out his property was even further up the mountain than our present location and, by his innocent-seeming yet telling question, we knew this was not the place for us. My son and I imagined a patio landscaped like a serpent amphitheater or the writhing ground beneath Indiana Jones as he dropped in to discover the Lost Ark. And we shuddered. Some are reptile people, some are not. Now any time we are presented with a hard sell of something that holds zero appeal, we ask each other, "How do you feel about snakes?"
During that same search, we found a pleasant-seeming cottage - on a flat street - with a large back yard, ringed by avocado trees which surrounded a raised square cement platform roughly half again the size of the house which we decided must be a landing pad for the mother ship. As the realtor had simply given us the keys and sent us out to look on our own, there was no one to ask but sometimes weirdness just shrieks to let you know it's there.
The absurd dwells among us and the sooner we can recognize its sundry disguises, the quicker we can get to stepping on down the street or remembering that we left the iron on or the kettle boiling and need to get home, get off the phone or call for back-up. Some of us are magnets for the bizarre. My father was one, thanks to his daily newspaper column which led readers to believe, perhaps not incorrectly, that he was a kindred spirit in their diverse searches for whatever Truth Is Out There. My mind remains open about things which we truly cannot explain but I'm very clear about snakes as houseguests and can still spot a used tea bag, gilded or not, across a crowded room.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Running on empty
Our political process matters to me. Voting is essential. I have had strong feelings about candidates since my grandparents used their wide, wrap-around porch as the neighborhood polling place. I think I have now grown too old to survive another presidential campaign that lasts as long as this one. Trying to take in, as we count the days, not only what bombards us in the way of election news, but also financial woes, guesses and massive uncertainty and, here in Los Angeles, the threat and reality of fires, I have become depleted. I am not alone.
In my mind I see a guage, vertical like an old thermometer in a metal frame which advertises either soda pop (yes, THAT old) or a very successful garage. The mercury (for the sake of this illustration) has reached the top, past all the lines and numbers. Which might make one think "full" but the kind of full that so many of us are confronting really amounts to empty. We have no more room to take in anything other than gentleness, laughter, good news and rest. In conversations with a number of friends, I find that we all require greater amounts of sleep than normal. I would not be unhappy to wake up in spring and learn that I'd been transformed into a hibernating creature. My muscles and joints ache, my head feels like sponge cake that for reasons unfathomable has been left sitting in a bowl of milk. It cannot hold a thought or produce innovation.
Under the best of circumstances it is a task to find a path through life, come to recognize what we know to be our own personal truth and stand with that information, regardless of the situation. We need our energy, our rest, our clarity. I have come to feel that intentional chaos surrounds us, put there for the purpose of keeping us from the quiet in which we are able to find our way. Some years ago I recognized an uncommon virtue which I call "a capacity for stillness." In this stillness I find whatever wisdom I can access and what resonates within me as my truth. In chaos I become confused.
From now until Nov. 4 and, I can only trust, days beyond that, I have to remember that quiet is my ally and my source of renewal. Noise, news and uproar cause me to lose my bearings and my strength, I am Dorothy in the field of poppies, deflected from my purpose. None of us can function adequately in the midst of constant stress - and this doesn't even take into account all the personal crises with which we are faced, the ones that have to be processed and addressed.
I was led to stillness by losing my health which, ironically, was the result of running on empty for too long. I have come to know it as a great gift and become impatient with myself when I allow it to be interrupted by someone else whose hair seems to be on fire, but, in fact, is not. So I sleep and rest, draw and color, have calm conversations where laughter is the goal and focus simply on where next to set my foot. The tank begins to fill.
In my mind I see a guage, vertical like an old thermometer in a metal frame which advertises either soda pop (yes, THAT old) or a very successful garage. The mercury (for the sake of this illustration) has reached the top, past all the lines and numbers. Which might make one think "full" but the kind of full that so many of us are confronting really amounts to empty. We have no more room to take in anything other than gentleness, laughter, good news and rest. In conversations with a number of friends, I find that we all require greater amounts of sleep than normal. I would not be unhappy to wake up in spring and learn that I'd been transformed into a hibernating creature. My muscles and joints ache, my head feels like sponge cake that for reasons unfathomable has been left sitting in a bowl of milk. It cannot hold a thought or produce innovation.
Under the best of circumstances it is a task to find a path through life, come to recognize what we know to be our own personal truth and stand with that information, regardless of the situation. We need our energy, our rest, our clarity. I have come to feel that intentional chaos surrounds us, put there for the purpose of keeping us from the quiet in which we are able to find our way. Some years ago I recognized an uncommon virtue which I call "a capacity for stillness." In this stillness I find whatever wisdom I can access and what resonates within me as my truth. In chaos I become confused.
From now until Nov. 4 and, I can only trust, days beyond that, I have to remember that quiet is my ally and my source of renewal. Noise, news and uproar cause me to lose my bearings and my strength, I am Dorothy in the field of poppies, deflected from my purpose. None of us can function adequately in the midst of constant stress - and this doesn't even take into account all the personal crises with which we are faced, the ones that have to be processed and addressed.
I was led to stillness by losing my health which, ironically, was the result of running on empty for too long. I have come to know it as a great gift and become impatient with myself when I allow it to be interrupted by someone else whose hair seems to be on fire, but, in fact, is not. So I sleep and rest, draw and color, have calm conversations where laughter is the goal and focus simply on where next to set my foot. The tank begins to fill.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Lyndon Street Neighbors
A short update on the stair walking - 17 out of 19 days, and off to climb when I've finished typing. A day of fatigue after the show on Sept. 28 and one day of 103 degree temperature caused me to allow myself a little slack. I cannot say if it was my best idea, but it was what I could manage and I am back.
What I have found - there is a precedent, so I shouldn't be surprised - as I wobble down and up the stairs, probably creating an alarming image of unsteadiness, which is not really true for while there is wobble there is also steadiness, is the number of neighbors who have asked if they could help me, did I need a hand. In each case I've said that this is practice I have to do but so appreciated their kindness, the fact that they asked. On that first day, one neighbor was just waiting at the top of the steps and helped me manage that last increment.
Nearly two years ago my son was acutely ill and his recovery took months, during which time our building manager and many of our neighbors helped carry packages up the stairs (it was Christmas), helped me bring groceries from the car - my mobility was greater in those days - and took trash to the bin. Our apartment is built around a courtyard and kindness poured from both floors, every door. Younger tenants simply came and took the grocery bags, and our manager told me just to leave anything that needed to be trown out on the balcony where he would see it as he made his evening rounds. I thanked each for every act of kindness and eventually posted a collective letter of appreciation by the mailboxes. I don't know what I would have done without them.
Today I received e-mail which spoke of our currently uncertain times and how we have strength we may have forgotten, the strength of being there for each other. I am grateful to live among people who notice, who pay attention, who act, who care. While none of them may ever read this, it gives me the opportunity to say thank you all over again and to re-examine the difference that can be made by a single hand extended in kindness and support.
What I have found - there is a precedent, so I shouldn't be surprised - as I wobble down and up the stairs, probably creating an alarming image of unsteadiness, which is not really true for while there is wobble there is also steadiness, is the number of neighbors who have asked if they could help me, did I need a hand. In each case I've said that this is practice I have to do but so appreciated their kindness, the fact that they asked. On that first day, one neighbor was just waiting at the top of the steps and helped me manage that last increment.
Nearly two years ago my son was acutely ill and his recovery took months, during which time our building manager and many of our neighbors helped carry packages up the stairs (it was Christmas), helped me bring groceries from the car - my mobility was greater in those days - and took trash to the bin. Our apartment is built around a courtyard and kindness poured from both floors, every door. Younger tenants simply came and took the grocery bags, and our manager told me just to leave anything that needed to be trown out on the balcony where he would see it as he made his evening rounds. I thanked each for every act of kindness and eventually posted a collective letter of appreciation by the mailboxes. I don't know what I would have done without them.
Today I received e-mail which spoke of our currently uncertain times and how we have strength we may have forgotten, the strength of being there for each other. I am grateful to live among people who notice, who pay attention, who act, who care. While none of them may ever read this, it gives me the opportunity to say thank you all over again and to re-examine the difference that can be made by a single hand extended in kindness and support.
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