In which I share with you a list of things you might find in the closet while roomening

* That book you borrowed from but never returned to that one bitchy professor back in college. You remember the one with the hedgehog hair. The one who reminded you of a Micki doll turned evil. The one who laughed at your pronunciation of the word "viscount", scarring you enough to henceforth tell people that it is actually The Baron in the Trees that is your favorite Italo Calvino novel.

* A March 2000 copy of Teesha Moore's now defunct art zine The Studio. This makes you sad, because it was really cool. Then, upon doing some research, you find out that she has a new, similarly cool sounding publication called Art & Life Magazine and your world is again set right.

* A Webster XL-747 manual typewriter that used to belong to your grandfather.

* A box containing all of your "lost" sheet music for the violin.

* An unsettling amount of dust. It is, however, not more unnerving than the fact that your faithful assistant decided to gack on one of the shelves while you were in the kitchen getting a frosty beverage.

Women In Art

A Thing of Beauty: Women in Art

These past few Sundays, I've found myself having little desire to go to church. Just between you and me, this has been coming on for a while now. It is not that I don't enjoy the church we go to. It is open and tolerant - a really nice place. Even if I still don't feel completely comfortable proclaiming myself a Christian (spiritual polyglot that I am!), the particular community we have found there does feel like home. I just find myself needing a bit of a break. The seeker in me is needing to stretch her legs and explore - and she's wanting to explore spirituality, not religion; heart, not dogma.

So, on my first (and possibly last - it's hard to know) Spiritual Sunday, I am looking at things that touch my soul and create reverence. As I was reading an interview on Lipstick Mystic this morning, I came across a link to Linda Dodds' website, which in turn had a link to the Women in Art video. It is well worth the three minutes or so it takes to watch. The music is peaceful and lovely - the perfect complement to the images.

In Kurt Vonnegut's "A Man Without a Country", he writes that his epitaph should read: "The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music." I think that these images could easily be absorbed into that sentiment. There is something sublime in the act of creation and there is a reason why we still look at centuries old artwork today - it touches the soul, it connects us to its creator, and even to the act of creation itself. And there is something beautiful and spiritual in that.

Holiday

The 4th of July is over. The Cling-on (aka Baxter the Wonderdog) no longer needs to be sedated due to the nightly neighborhood stupidly explosive, houseshaking, fireworks extravaganza that enhances his already neurotic and paranoid tendencies. If anyone ever needed a visit from the dog whisperer, it's him. The poor little guy gets so scared that you can feel his heart thumping inside his chest, making it seem like it's going to explode into cardiac arrest at any moment. For the past week he has been following me around so closely that he bumps into me any time I stop too suddenly. But now that things have quieted down, the absence of a shaking dog in my lap has again made room for my laptop. This means that I can share with you my crackpot theories on the fourth of July.

Really, it's not so much a theory as the admission. Since the war started, I find it increasingly difficult to enjoy fireworks. No matter how pretty they are against the night sky, somehow the explosions make me cringe. The thought of watching a spectacle that mimics the sight of bombs bursting in mid-air just makes me feel guilty. I can't enjoy it as entertainment when I know that there are women and children a half a world away cowering at our real bombs. I used to love going to fireworks displays, but the nagging guilt somehow takes the fun out of them, so fireworks and I are on a break. Maybe one day, like Ross and Rachel, we will get back together, but for now, we're seeing other people. I guess I've been shocked and awed enough at this point.

So, instead of loud fireworks, Independence Day was quietly commemorated at my house. Despite it being a day off, I was up by seven. This provided ample time to sit outside and work on a story for a while before it started getting too hot to bear. That's right! I didn't talk about writing or thing about writing, I pulled out the notes for my nano novel and just did it. Then, as a reward for my hard work, the rest of the day was divided between the various forms of lounging - lounging around reading, lounging around eating, and lounging around watching movies.

Reading took the form of Cherie Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds, which turned out to be the perfect "it's my day off, so I just want to be entertained" read. It had everything that I love when I'm a great escape suspense novel - mystery, ghosts, and a high suspense/low gore factor. I am so happy that I plucked it off the library shelf and took it home on a whim. It was so hard to put down that I ended up reading all but the first two chapters in one sitting and that means that I will be going back to enjoy Priest's other books. Reading this one reminded me of that lazy feeling I'd always get in college after exams were over. When I was in grad school, one of my favorite traditions after the last paper of the year was written was to buy a big carton of fresh strawberries, a bottle of spumante, and a good book (usually a Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters) and spend an afternoon just lounging around with them, knowing that I didn't have to feel guilty because I really should be researching something or reading Thomas Mann or Rilke or Hesse instead.

Priest's book gave me the same sort of feeling (minus the alcoholic buzz), especially after spending the past few days struggling through C.S. Lewis' dreadfully boring and pedantic Mere Christianity. I swear to you, if it hadn't been July's book group selection, I would have aborted reading and chucked it into the deepest, darkest abyss or slime covered bog I could find (and, trust me, I would have shopped around to make sure this was the deepest!). I'm sure the Multnomah County Library would not have appreciated a piece from their collection being handled in such a way, but it would almost be worth it...almost. Given my reverence for books and feelings about finishing the ones I start, I think we all now understand how little I am enjoying being lectured at by C.S. Lewis and how much I appreciated not being lectured at by Cherie Priest. So, in conclusion, yay witchy-ghost-suspense mysteries, boo prescriptive religio-philosophizing! (And yay making up works like religio-philosophizing! And, so as not to be a complete hater, yay C.S. Lewis' fiction and p.s. I loved Anthony Hopkins as you in Shadowlands.)

Once there was no more left to read, the day's festivities continued with a highly anticipated barbeque dinner outside. Can I tell you how good it tasted, especially after being on a diet for the past few weeks? We had shish kebabs - chicken, fresh red and green peppers, pineapple, and mushrooms marinated in marionberry barbeque sauce, pasta salad (with red grapes, walnuts and gorgonzola cheese), barbequed beans (my new favorite recipe ever from the Southern Living barbeque cookbook), grilled ears of sweet corn served, refreshingly minty Italian sodas and then NY style cheesecake for dessert. It was all so good that it could make a person want to barbeque every day! It also makes me think that we really should cook and entertain more often. Somehow I've rather fallen out of that habit.

And that was (with the exception of the evening's "two movies that don't fit together at all film festival" - Green for Danger and Seven Years in Tibet) Independence Day in Powellhurst. I had contemplated going to Living Earth's Interdependence Day Picnic in the park, but think we did just fine with our own celebration at home. Even without the fireworks, it was a pleasant, laid back day of appreciating a mid-week day of independence from work and war-related images, a day of celebrating and appreciating a lifestyle that many people in the world are not lucky (or spoiled) enough to share.

Alfred

Other than those last fifteen minutes of Vertigo that I seem to catch every time it's on, I have a huge Bildungsluecke when it comes to Hitchcock. In an attempt to remedy this, I borrowed The Lady Vanishes from the library this past week. We finally got around to watching it last night. A perfect blend of comedy, intrigue, mystery, and romance, the plot centers around the disappearance of a sweet, older woman from a train. The hitch? Except for one young woman, who may just be a little nutty from having suffered a blow to the head shortly before making friends with the elderly governess, Miss Froy, everyone on the train denies that she ever existed. Convinced that she is not just losing her mind, the young woman sets about solving the mystery of what happened to her new friend.

The film does not disappoint. Margaret Lockwood's Iris Henderson was lovely, smart and determined and what great clothes she had! Just as an aside (if clothes don't interest you, now would be a good time to go get a drink or something), can I tell you how much I love me some 30's couture? I absolutely covet her peignoir set in the scene where she meets the future object of her affections, Gilbert, played by a delightfully obnoxious Michael Redgrave. The two have such a great chemistry together that it's difficult to believe that this was their first time working together. In fact, it was (as I learned from the DVD insert - which has great commentary by Michael Wilmington) Redgrave's first movie.

But it's not ony Lockwood and Redgrave who are great in the movie. The deftly woven plot features a great cast of characters, all with their own agendas for making sure the train is not stopped due to any shenanigans - real of imagined. Caldicott and Charters (a duo that Wilginton refers to as a "sublime pair of aging British public school boys") are in a hurry to get to a sporting match. Mr. Todhunter (so aptly named, considering that Tod is German for death!) is on a trip with his mistress and does not want the publicity and ensuing scandal that would inevitably arise from a disappearance if the train were stopped. Dr. Hartz has his mysterious patient to transport for surgery and something is not quite right about the high heeled nun who guards her. Signor Doppo the magician (who reminds me so much of John Lovitz that I can barely stand it!) is suspicious and squirrelly from his first moment on camera as is Mary Clare's cold Baroness. All together they make for one engaging movie.

And so my first steps into the non-vertiginous world of Hitchock were good enough that it would just be wrong not to take my foray a little deeper. Any suggestions for what to watch next?

Party Girl!

Yesterday, I went to my first quinceñera. As a big proponent of extended birthday festivities that morph from just a day into birthday week, even month, I must say that my Mexican neighbors know how to celebrate a birthday! I know that the event specifically commemorate turning fifteen, but after yesterday's party, I am feeling a bit gyped at never having had one. Would it be wrong to have a plenty-nineceñera? I look young for my age, and, just between you and me, I totally think I could pull off the gown and tiara. The truth is, just as I feel that feather boas, ornate headgear and fans (of the fan dancing ilk, not ceiling fans or portable fans!) are way underused as accessories, I often lament the lack of need for a gown and tiara while going about the business of daily life.

How fun would it be to spend the entire day dressed like an extra from Gone with the Wind? Okay, so technically the dress my neighbor chose for her big day only had a skirt that would qualify for a ball at Tara. The bodice she was rocking was pretty, but (unless she her goal was to be labelled the slut of Atlanta-town and the subject of vicious gossip at Aunt Pittypat's parties) far too immodest to be more than a foundation garment in those days. But back to today (or at least yesterday), my neighbor looked absolutely lovely in her gown with its dusty pink corseted bodice as did her sister (who was one of her satin clad damas) in her pink dress and their eight year old housemate, who who looked like a little fairy princess in her white gown.

It really must be an exciting day for a young woman. By ten o'clock all of the birthday girl's damas and chambelanes were dressed up and milling around the front yard, waiting for an obscenely large limousine to come pick them up. The boys were looking very killer-diller in their pinstriped zoot suits and shiny black and white patent leather shoes. The girls were equally flashy in their shirred pink satin dresses, though I have to admit they were not so much to my taste, being of a cut that is unflattering for about 98% of the population. Still, as a group, they looked really lovely.

The day began with a trip to church for a mass. This part was particularly interesting to me, because it combined my first quinceñera celebration with my first visit to a Catholic church during service. Because everything was conducted in Spanish, there was a lot that I missed, but it wasn't too difficult to get the gist. It was, in many ways, quite similar to attending a wedding. It is funny, the things that cross a person's mind when attending an event where only about 30% of what is said is understood - for example, what kind eyes the one priest had or how the other would kneel to be at eye level as he gave communion to the children.

After church, there was a bit of a break until 3 p.m. when we all went over to the banquet hall for dinner, the big dance number (the kids had been practicing in my neighbor's back yard for weeks and I must say, I believe I saw shades of my famous turtle dance in the birthday girl's solo, so I really think my style of choreography is catching on with the young people), and family dance. As it turned out, the location was the same place where I had my high school graduation party and was much nicer than I remembered. Once we got there, we fortuitously ran into another Mexican neighbor, who invited us to sit with her, which was great, because it provided me with my own personal cultural tour guide who was just awesome about explaining everything from the padrinos to the order of the dances to the significance of the various gifts. It really was a great evening - the perfect way to set the mood for the remaining birthdays, weddings and assorted celebrations of the summer.

If I only had a quill...

Lately (more precisely since the blue screen of death followed by the multi-colored hue of resurrection), I've taken to doing the majority of my writing longhand - a somewhat forgotten pleasure. Somehow the pages haven't made it from notebook to the computer, but they are there. In fact, I am only one away from filling up my old writing book. This is satisfying in a palpable way that hitting "save" could never be.

It probably dates me that I feel this tension between the electronic and the manual. When I got my first computer in grad school (late bloomer!), I could not write on it at all. Somehow ideas flowed better into pen than keyboard. At this point I can produce either way if I must, however typing on keyboard is a very different experience from writing. A computer does have the advantage of facilitating speed when ideas are flowing freely; what it lacks is the kinesthetic element. With a pen and paper, the whole body becomes engaged in the act of writing. For me, this creates an immediacy that is very different from sitting at a computer, which feels somehow more distant, more academic, less personal. I suppose that immediacy is why an old school notebook and pen are still my favorite tools for creative writing and for working out the finer points of ideas before releasing them into the wild. It is not a neat process.

My little notebook is filled with arrows, scribbling, scratch outs, and (sometimes cryptic) notes quickly jotted down while out in the world during non-writing time. I carry it with me pretty much everywhere. You never know when you'll need to write something down. I am no longer sure at what age it was that I started carrying a notebook. As far as I can remember, it has always seemed natural do to so. It fills time in moments where there is nothing too do and is the perfect tool for a collector such as myself.

I am not a big collector of items. There is no book of stamps tucked away in my dresser drawer and you won't find Precious Moments figurines lining my mantle (if you ever do, you will know that I've lost my mind and whatever good taste God gave me). What I do collect are words and ideas. My notebook is filled with notes, quotes, snippets of poetry, interesting turns of phrase. Sometimes thumbing through the pages later, I have no idea what I meant at the time or why it seemed important. My almost full notebook includes (among other things) the following:

- The barely legible scrawl: "Count guy who never died" (I think this might have been my way of referring to Count St. Germain. He is just the sort of figure who would intrigue me)

- A list of writing prompts gleened from various books on writing and sometimes just my own head

- The quote "Testosterone is the great equalizer; it turns all men into morons," which was scribbled down during a particularly resonant moment in a Buffy episode. (Since I'm more prone to assigning idiocy on an individual basis than a gender specific one, if I had to guess, I would say this was jotted down around the time I began to feel ambivalent about the Swiss - or one in particular)

- Notes on an unfinished piece about living between cultures that was started after hearing the story of an Aramaic Turk who, after twenty-five years of living in Germany, made a failed attemped returning to his native village in Turkey with his wife and kids who were German citizens and had never been out of Germany.

- A poem no one but me will ever read. It is perhaps a little melodramatic, containing the words "flowering moment of grief taking root in a garden that will grow into a thousand hallelujah's spreading like weeds"

- An outraged note stating: "Contents of desktop inevitably reveal character??? I don't have a desk, does that mean I have no character???" (I'm not sure what about it got me excited enough to use the repeated question mark technique)

Basically, my notebook contains a lot of crap. But in between the crap, there are some worthwhile ideas too. I guess it's a lot like my head that way. Besides, even fertilizer has its place in growing a flower. As long as the flower gets there, who cares if its seed was planted in a pot or in the ground?