"When a girl marries, she works, of course," said Mrs. Davis flatly. "For her home. For her husband. What kind of a home can a girl make for herself and her man if she's running to an office daytimes and skipping out to the delicatessen at night?" (from Week-end Marriage by Faith Baldwin 1932)
My father was a chess player. One weekend we went to Santa Barbara for a tournament. There were 100 tables and players were seated according to their rankings. My father was at the very last table with his opponent. I was too embarassed to hang out in the losers camp so I wandered around toward the first row of tables. Bobby Fischer was about 12 years old and was sitting opposite a grown man at table number 4. I was smitten and spent the rest of the day lurking beside a big marble pillar quietly stalking my new love.
When my son, Sol was nine or ten years old I was working full-time at George Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. I brought home $88.00 every two weeks and drove an old car that overheated and went through several re-caps a month.
I was lying in the dentist's chair today stoned out of it on nitrous oxide when it came to me: The story I'm writing isn't visceral enough! I've been tramping from one scene to the next hell bent on coming up with a conclusion...an ungainly march toward the end...
I need to stumble around in the particles a little..
Hmmm, I should get my whole mouth done!
In California, even when you're feeling a little wan you get out there and excercise...(I actually took this photo in Rhyolite, Nevada last year..but then there's poetic license and all..)
A very early look at the sculpture we're building to take to Burning Man in late August...(sorry, my tech support isn't here right now to help me with this picture's direction...when it's time to roll she'll (the sculpture as well as Irene) be headed in the right direction!)
"If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed." Lily Tomlin 1939-
This morning at the flea (market) I was pawing through a pile of books on the asphalt and came across "The Book Thief". I read the jacket...the story of a young girl who steals books from libraries during Hitler's heyday. She distributes the books in her neighborhood to people without books. I was going to buy it until I read it is narrated by "Death". I just couldn't handle that this morning so I put the book back in the pile and went on to another stack.
....they plead as they queue up on my craft table waiting their turn to be included in one of my very famous sculptures....
" Loneliness is the poverty of self; 
It's been a dry season...
Some mornings I can let anything distract me: Scientific studies and impending doom. The way early morning light creeps into the sculpture garden just outside my door. The painting hanging over my desk with its purple door and barebulb and straightback chair. A pregnant "daddy long-legs" spider traipsing across the wall. But where, oh where is the book I'm writing?
In the early 80s I worked in a county Food Stamp unit. It was as if we'd hand picked each other to form this group, all of us peculiar in some way...
It's been a long time since I've hung out in a neighborhood bar. But there is still something alluring about them. I used to just pass within the shadow of a bar and I'd drift in and slouch onto a stool and ask for a "cold one"
Oar in water
Irene's been fishin this same spot for 62 years!
The next load of blog posts on 7-22-07. I'm off to the woods for a week where there is no computer, no cell phone, no tv. Just a kayak, a little dog afraid of water, cold beer and lots of trees! See you next week!
When my younger son, Sol was 18 he joined the navy. I was pretty freaked out but did my best to be supportive.
"Oh!" I said. "Well! That's great. But are you going on a ship?"
Sol actually traveled the world, just like the billboards promised.
I never stopped worrying about him and kept a world map over my desk at work with stick pins marking his voyage.
One day at work I went to the postoffice to retrieve a package he'd sent me from Mombasa, Africa. I hurried back to my office and while my co-workers watched I ripped it open, tore through the newspaper stuffing, unwrapping carved giraffes, wooden bookends of women with big bosoms, tiny black elephants and this beautifully carved and dyed mask. When I'd finished I sat down and wept.
It wasn't enough. What I wanted wasn't in the box, it wasn't some trinket...I wanted my son back, safe within my reach.
Here's a photo of my older son, Aaron taken when he was a writer/editor for Sojourner's Magazine in Washington DC. I believe in the mid 90s, (?) Besides being incredibly handsome I think he does, in this picture at least look a little like a cross between Errol Flynn and Isadora Duncan, what with the scarf and all...
Check out my new "flickr" feature on the far right! The pics are of various found art projects, in all states of development. Thanks, Irene for the tech support and thanks to my son, Aaron http://almas-soulfood.blogspot.com whose blogging has inspired me!.jpg)
Sun rising over the Shadow Mountains in the Mojave. Photo taken in "downtown" Phelan March 07.
my neighbor's identity, transferred the property into his name and the authorities won't listen to me at all...in fact I imagine them saying: "Who do you think you are anyway, Nancy Drew?" Meanwhile I keep my eyes glued to the little attic crawl space in his rafters looking for some kind of sign....
