Tuesday, July 31, 2007

All About Marriage

"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)

All about crows and their cousins




Some days it's just all about crows...

Searching for Bobby Fischer

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.

For years I told people Bobby and I were friends. In 2005 after being indicted by the US for playing chess in Yugoslavia and being arrested in Tokyo Bobby Fischer asked for and received a citizenship offer from Iceland. You know, Bobby, if you're reading this: It never would have worked out. I'm more of a desert girl myself...

Monday, July 30, 2007

Hollywood or Bust

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.

One day out of the blue, Sol said: Mom, take me to Hollywood so I can be in commercials!

I said: I don't have enough gas to take you to Hollywood...

I can just imagine where we'd all be now if I'd earned just a little bit more...

Open Wide...



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!

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Reluctant Rider

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..)

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Peek Preview

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!)

I don't get it...


"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-

Friday, July 27, 2007

The Book Thief

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.

A woman came along, picked up "The Book Thief".

woman: have you read this one?
me: yes, I did.
woman: wow...I've never met anyone besides me who's read this book! (woman elated) It was so...
me: strange?
woman: yes! that's it exactly! But the....
me: the death narrator?
woman: yes, the thing about the narrator being Death!
me: personally I found it a little hard to take.
woman: oh, me too.
The woman then put the book down and moved to the next stall. I don't know why I told her I'd read the book when I hadn't. But I did seem to understand it better than she did....

Harvest




Bountiful Harvest....








From our neighbor's garden. Thanks Teresa and Bobbi....



The Big One

I'll be ready for the big one if you just tell me when it's coming....

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Pick Me, Pick Me, Pick Me!

....they plead as they queue up on my craft table waiting their turn to be included in one of my very famous sculptures....

Loneliness or Solitude?

" Loneliness is the poverty of self;
solitude is the richness of self"
May Sarton 1912-1995

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A walk in the hood

This morning I came across a neighbor's yard decorated in corndogs!?
The easy way to "climb" a wall...sideways It's been a dry season...

Crime scene? (jeans in chalk)
Watch out...the psychotic mob lives here....

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Distraction

5:45 AM in my writing room. (note Diet Coke...this morning I read a new study indicating a higher risk 0f heart disease in people who consume diet drinks.)
The view from my writing room door....
I'm not a minimalist...(stuff everywhere...) 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?

Monday, July 23, 2007

Best Toes

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...

We played darts on a frayed bristle board hung next to the regulations against one wall. Jay and I draped a madras cloth bedspread over our two desks, tent-like. One of our group surfed on his breaks and we won't go into what our clerk was doing tucked away in her little cube. We took Italian lessons and read a chapter of Nancy Drew outloud each day...

And I was voted "Best Toes"....some say I've still got it....

Neighborhood Bar

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"

Now when I walk by I can hear the dull crack of a cue ball and a one note twang from the juke box. Smell the drift of cigarette smoke and hear the muffled clap of two old timers playing "horses"against the countertop. The seedier the bar the better, the more grizzled the men and lacquered the women. Watered down drafts for a quarter and grit on the floor and a Clydesdale horse clopping around and around in a neon Bud sign. And just the faint hint of expectation in the air. It does make me pause and hold in the scene like a lungful of good smoke before I move on...

Sunday, July 22, 2007

more of the woods....

Irene and Annie take a hike...














Legs on early morning lake....

Oar in water




Irene and red pack




Ferris wheel in Snelling, CA

A Week in the Woods

On the trail...
Annie Bones and Irene chillin'
All tuckered out... Irene's been fishin this same spot for 62 years!
Friend Sandra and me kayaking near the inlet...

Friday, July 13, 2007

Gone Fishin'

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!

Escape!


I was driving the back streets to Book Cafe this morning when a man in a wheelchair crossed the street right in front of me going 40 miles an hour! A toothy grin split his face and trailing behind was a long disconnected extension cord and surge protector bouncing against the asphalt...(it's summer...we're restless..)

At one with whatever...



There are times when you just don't want to live in the moment...

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Never enough



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.

Uphill...


Ever have one of those days?

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Because it's here..

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...

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

My Friend Flicka

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!

Come To Our Senses...

NOT WAR...

Sunrise

Sun rising over the Shadow Mountains in the Mojave. Photo taken in "downtown" Phelan March 07.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Bedtime


One of my very favorite times of the day...when I go quietly into my room, turn on a lamp and in the stillness, open a book and disappear into another world...

Egads!

I was in love with Nancy Drew when I was 12 and 13. Now I have a suspicious mind. If I don't see my reclusive neighbor for several days in a row I figure his renter has done away with him, wrapped him in an old tarp and stuffed him in a trunk in the attic. Then this renter has assumed 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....

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Two years old!


Annie Bones is two years old today! She is fierce, funny, sweet and "cool". She barks at the wind, leaves, shadows and skateboards. She loves salmon, balls, belly rubs and long walks...
She's curious, energetic and a real traveling trooper. Happy Birthday Annie...Here's to a long and happy life!