l'astronave

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Night 24

2011-12-24T23:44:00.003-06:00

Advent ends in 17 minutes, and so my calendar closes.
Sleep in heavenly peace, my friends. I know the Tiny Rhino will.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 23

2011-12-23T17:08:00.001-06:00

The night before the Night Before Christmas:
only one more calendar window to open after this.

Dedicated to You

2011-12-23T10:18:00.002-06:00

My "Friend Me!" history of social networking book arrived in the mail, printed and bound!
It's dedicated to you, "friends in the blogosphere." (Sorry if I missed anyone.)

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 22

2011-12-22T17:12:00.001-06:00

The Classic.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 20

2011-12-20T22:36:00.000-06:00

The coin drops: only 5 days until Christmas!

I went to the St. Paul zoo to film camels for this calendar, and there are no camels at this zoo!

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 19

2011-12-19T23:00:00.001-06:00

Marz (and bink) employ rigorous scientific methodology to choose a Christmas tree.
With Fred Astaire's "Isn't It a Lovely Day."

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 18

2011-12-18T22:58:00.001-06:00

Only one week until Christmas, now!
The song--a variation on "John Henry" called "Gonna Die With a Hammer In My Hand" --just happened to be playing at the coffee shop where Marz and I were finger painting Christmas cards.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 17

2011-12-17T21:58:00.000-06:00

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 16

2011-12-16T21:56:00.001-06:00

By me.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 15

2011-12-15T20:02:00.002-06:00

My longest Advent video yet, at 27 seconds, but I wish I could watch this corvid longer. Snippet = Annie Lennox, "In the Bleak Midwinter"

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 14

2011-12-14T17:01:00.000-06:00

"Lost and Found," with help from Marz and Maura.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 13

2011-12-13T18:03:00.005-06:00

17 seconds.
I think I've started to speed the tempo up too much on my little calendar days, as we tip toward Christmas. Only 12 days! I will slow the coming vids down.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 12

2011-12-12T12:34:00.000-06:00

(One of my favorite things.)

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 11

2011-12-11T12:36:00.001-06:00

For bink and Maura.
(This will be Joop the dog's last Advent, as he is preparing to leave the world.)

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 10

2011-12-10T11:52:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Marz for filming Mr. Fat Squirrel in Loring Park.
Snippet of music = Rufus Wainwright, "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 9

2011-12-09T08:10:00.000-06:00

Reflections along the way to Christmas.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 8

2011-12-08T14:39:00.001-06:00

17 seconds: a bit of warmth as the Northern Hemisphere gets darker.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 7

2011-12-07T09:00:00.002-06:00

Someone asked, and yes, I am the Tiny Rhino responsible for these glimpses into Tiny World.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 6

2011-12-06T08:54:00.004-06:00

The snippet of music-- "Holy, Holy, Holy" by Sufjan Stevens--fits Tiny World so well, I think this is my favorite so far.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 5

2011-12-05T17:19:00.000-06:00

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 4

2011-12-04T10:30:00.001-06:00

Day 4, 2nd Sunday in Advent: "We light a candle today, a small dim light against a world that often seems forbidding and dark."

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 3

2011-12-03T08:20:00.001-06:00

15 sec.

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 2

2011-12-02T08:39:00.005-06:00

By me.
22 seconds.
Viewer must supply own chocolate.

ANSWER to this, via Marz: "How to change that videos automatically play when I open blog?"
Vimeo gives you "embed options" along with the embed code---turn off "autoplay this video".

Tiny Rhino's Moving Advent Calendar, Day 1

2011-12-01T09:36:00.007-06:00

19 seconds, the 1st installment of my video Advent Calendar.

[Move the cursor off the movie, to get rid of the Vimeo bar.]

23 more to come!

"Year of Joop" Desk Calendars

2011-11-30T09:05:00.000-06:00

My wire-fox terrier friend Joop is staggering under vet bills:
at 19 pounds, he owes $78.94 per pound.

His human (bink, aka Lucinda) is selling desk calendars to help him out. You can order one through me: $12, shipping included (hm... unless you live overseas).

This picture is my favorite from the calendar.

See all 12 pix here.

My Communications Book...

2011-11-14T13:25:00.005-06:00

...that one for young adults I was fretting about writing all last winter? It won't be released until 2012, but its first review is in.

And it's a good one:
"Acting as a perfect companion to that film The Social Network ... this book is bound to make adults everywhere feel roughly 10 million years old. That’s right, kids! People used to meet in placed called “coffee houses” and “church groups”."

Whew.
I lost all perspective on this book long ago, so I'm relieved I hit the note I wanted to hit.

Notes from Camino, V: Jun 15, 2011 ***from Marz

2011-11-14T09:24:00.011-06:00

BELOW: Baby Rhino (Frex), Woolly (bink), and Marz brush their teeth before bed.

[E-MAIL FROM ALONG THE Camino de Santiago]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 10:34 PM, Marz wrote:

HI FREX!

Everyone's falling asleep upstairs, and everyone's eating or making talking sounds downstairs.
Marz is e-mailing Baby Rhino who is upstairs making sleeping spaces before morning when everyone are stomping shoes and on and on.

Why is Marz e-mailing the rhino if it's upstairs?
Because it's sleeping.
Why is it sleeping?
Because it's a rhino.
But why? Because it is.
Woolly sleeps too. Fine.

Here's what I've done while you've been sleeping:
I went outside and looked at the clothes on the clothesline.
THAT'S THE HUMANS WITH THE GRAPHIC T-SHIRTS, THEY ALWAYS LIKE THOSE.

I thought about moving to Minneapolis, and how great it is.
[bink and I had invited Marz to come stay on our respective couches and try out Mpls. as a place to live.]

Then I thought about how it's part of a series of welcome things happening to Marz in a small space of time.
Then I thought, what if welcome things keep happening?
MAGNUM GOLD?!

[RIGHT: Bink, Fresca, and Marz eating "Magnum Gold?!?" ice-cream--the rule being that you had to buy and eat one of this brand every time the ice-cream case carried it. I wasn't feeling well, so I just drank green tea here.
Photo by Fred from Amsterdam]

King David said this but you know Kirk totally says this everyday too:

"Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life."
SURELY. OF COURSE. OBVIOUSLY. WHAT ELSE.
But actually, you can have a terrible life. I'm not saying anything about it, I'm just saying.

Anyway, I talked to Paulette, and she said if your socks are damp after washing them,
you sleep on them and the heat from your back dries them, FYI.

OK, I only have 6 minutes left so GOODNIGHT BABY RHINO!

Love,
Marz

[The Kirk macro was part of Marz's e-mail: she made it then and there.]
_______________
All photos by bink (unless otherwise noted).

Click for all posts about the Camino de Santiago here.

Notes from the Camino, IV: June 7, 2011

2011-11-12T11:20:00.000-06:00

Above: Marz and bink walking a pilgrim-made labyrinth. Passing people add stones to the widening spiral.

[E-MAIL from the Camino de Santiago]
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Fresca wrote:

Hello all!

Thanks for all your messages! It is really really nice to hear from home (and other familiar places).

This is a shared computer, as always, so I'm going to respond rather impersonally, but I LOVED hearing your individual voices.

Today we walked almost 20 miles so checked into a private room in a hostel (57 euros for 3 people, compared with the 5-euro/pilgrim albergues)--we wanted a bathtub and some quiet over the very friendly but sometimes grating hubbub of the shared albergue spaces.

So........... Here I am---still walking.

And still walking, again....
[Above: Marz (and me to the left) walking through vineyards]

.... And--what the hey!--STILL walking.

It took me THREE weeks, no lie, for my brain to settle down and accept it.
One day, walking across the central meseta (plain) I actually felt my brain unclench and unfold, like a flower opening.

Oddly, or not so oddly? it was like giving up hope. But, as the Buddhists say, it was not a loss but a liberation.

Since then, and that was only a week ago, I've really entered into the pilgrimage. I went from wanting to go home to not being able to imagine a life not made up of walking.

Iborpofen, which is sold in Spain in large tablets of 600 mg (vs USA's 200 mg tablets) no doubt helped me get over the hurdle of blinding blister pain.
And Saint Michael helped in the form of San Miguel beer.
I am relieved to say the blisters have healed.

The other day Marz (Margaret) opened her pack, took out the ubiquitous can of the tuna fish, and said,
"If you can't find god in a can of tuna fish, you won´t find god on the camino."

(The tuna, I should add, is in olive oil, not water, so is a very luscious treat, tho it gets a bit boring after a month...)

Whether that´s proof or disproof of god depends on the individual, I guess (can one find ultimate meaning in a can of tuna fish?), but it sort of summed up the walk for me:

It´s all about my relationship to physical creation, physical existence.
And it´s also about the people who share that physical world, who continue to amaze me with their kindness.

[RIGHT: Tom from England helps me fill my water bottle from a local fountain. Public water supplies are usually clean and safe to drink (or are clearly labeled if not).]

Last night Giancarlo, an Italian peregrino (pilgrim), commented that he had never seen such joy shining out of people´s eyes as he sees on Camino.
Yes.

The route is more commercialized than it was when I walked in 2001, but it´s still a pilgrimage, not a bus tour.
It strips people down to their essences.

Amazingly, those essences prove to be good and kind and generous. OK, and sometimes cranky and snappy too!
But generally that is soothed with a foot rub and a glass of wine...

[Above: Or sometimes it takes a bottle of wine. My end of the the table was a tad crabby until we'd downed a couple. --Photo by Fred from Amsterdam]

I told Sara [right], a French pilgrim, that walking was like practicing for a good death, and she replied,
"Yes, it takes a lifetime to have a good death."

I know I am middle aged because the young walkers talk about high school and college, and I talk about death!

It's ALL good.

On the road again in half an hour, so off I go.

I think this is a very scatty message, but such is Internet on Camino.
I trust it conveys love and best wishes
from your pilgrim friend,
Fresca

[RIGHT: Me and Marz with Sara: Eating al fresco from shops was cheaper and often better than eating bocadillos from the usual bar-cafés.]
_______________
All photos by bink (unless she's in the photo, in which case it's probably by me).

Click for all posts about the Camino de Santiago here.

Notes from Camino, III: May 29, 2011

2011-11-09T09:18:00.013-06:00

[E-MAIL I sent, on the Camino de Santiago]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Fresca wrote:

Caros amigos!

I am in an albergue in Fromista, on the meseta--the central plain. Like many but not all albergues, it has public computers. They usually cost 1 euro ($1.69) for 20 minutes.

The last couple days, we've been walking through a Monet painting of poppy-splattered waving fields.

"Poppy" in Spanish is amapola.
"Blister" is ampolla.

I have both. While I´m sorry about that, if I can't have poppies without blisters, I guess I'll take both.

Though, damn, blisters hurt just as much as I remembered.
[Taken at end of Camino--this blister is almost healed.]

I hear that there are earthquakes and demonstrations here, but I only hear that news from you all, here on e-mail.
Among pilgrims, it's all news of feet and souls, same as last time.

Well, not quite true.
I did see a political demonstration march past outside the window of our hotel room in Burgos, the Hotel Norte y Londres [right].

(Ever since 2001, when I'd walked past this a peach-colored Victorian hotel with salmon pink geraniums in its French windows, I've regretted that I hadn't stayed there. I swore I would this time.

Luckily it turned out to be only a 2-star hotel, so only cost 71 euros for the three of us (albergues are running 4 to 10 euros, per person)--not the 200+ euros the swank Paradors cost.)

But at the time the demonstration was passing by, I was in the middle of washing ALL MY CLOTHES (heaven) in the bidet, and hence was wearing only my undies.
I didn't want to lean too far out the balcony to see what was what... not that I'd have been able to tell anyway.
But something is up.

(The one Spaniard I asked later told me he was an anarchist who didn't care about politics.)
[Political poster in Leon. Local elections were held on May 22.]

Today we walked 15 km before I decided I'd better stay here in this largish town rather than risk limping on, on my blistered feet, in the hot afternoon. I felt a little wimpy until I realized I had walked 9 miles, after all.

I'm glad we stopped, though I faced the harshest test yet, in checking in:
The albergue owner of this privately run place gave me two 20-euro notes in change instead of two 5-euros.
(They're both kind of blue, tho very different sizes, as you may know, so I don´t know how she made that mistake...)

Everything has been much more expensive than I'd hoped (due in part to the bad exchange rate, a bocadillo [sandwich] costs about $6), and I'm well over budget, so I confess I actually pocketed the bills and walked to my bed space... before going back and returning them.

Lucinda and Marz are doing great---no big feet or knee problems for either, and we all get along well.

Marz calls us Baby Rhino (me) and Woolly Mammoth (L), and she gives running color commentary on our daily activities, in a funny voice.

I just asked her to sum us up (she´s sitting at the computer next to me listening to Justin Bieber's song "U Smile"), and she says:

"Baby Rhino likes candy.
Woolly Mammoth likes navigating.
And Marz likes to play catch with oranges."

[RIGHT: bink, navigating with help from the ubiquitous yellow arrows and Saint James]

EEK! 1 minute left on this computer.
Signing off!
Love you! Francesca (Fresca)

Below: Workers painting navigational scallop shells (the sign of the pilgrimage) for walkers to follow through the streets of Pamplona.

All photos by bink (unless she's in the photo, in which case it was probably by me).

Click for all posts about the Camino de Santiago here.

Notes from Camino, II: May 21, 2011

2011-11-08T08:08:00.015-06:00

ABOVE: Me walking through Obanos, Spain.

Here and there, we met pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago who complained that the walk was "not spiritual enough."
I think they meant it is crowded, and full of people who are laughing and talking. If you want silence and solitude, you have to work hard to find it.

I expect we three Americans were exactly the sort of boisterous people they objected to. We talked all the time, laughed loudly and often, played, and generally goofed around for much of the walk.

[LEFT: Marz laughed so hard at bink singing in a chipmunk voice that she collapsed on the road.]

For me, the spiritual on the Camino comes in being IN the physical world, amongst people from all over the world. The snoring, the blisters, the smells, the sometimes-annoying pilgrim... they are all part of the spiritual.

And so, here is an example of my far-from-elevated concerns when we stopped for the night:

[E-MAIL to Annika, who will meet us in Santiago on June 19]

May 21, 2011

Hi, Annika!

bink, marz & i just watched, here on the albergue's computer, "the worst fight scene ever" on youtube -- do you know it?

It's the fight between Kirk and the Gorn, and we had to watch it because we were arguing as we walked along about who picks up whose leg.

Of course I was right--- it's the Gorn who hoists Kirk's leg up.Day One: Marz & Frex, reenacting the Gorn/Kirk fight, heading out from Roncesvalles

All is going well tho my little toes HURT.
Good luck breaking in your boots!

See you in Santiago on the 19th.
(We are almost to Burgos.)

Sci-Five from your Camino pals,
Fresca

Of course, sometimes we were quiet and contemplative.
Here, me with a cup of ginger tea under a statue of the Hindu god Ganesh, at a roadside rest stop a young man maintained, offering pilgrims healthy treats, "donativo" (for a free-will donation). The whole-wheat-y goodies were a nice change from ice cream and potato chips.

___________________
All photos by bink (unless she's in the photo, in which case it was probably by me).

Click for all posts about the Camino de Santiago here.

Notes from Camino, I: May 16, 2011

2011-11-07T09:02:00.028-06:00

_________________________________

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Above left: Margaret/Marz/Marzipan (20 years old)

Above right: me, Fresca/Frex/Baby Rhino (50 years old)

Below: Lucinda/bink/Wooly [Mammoth] ("Don't Stop Walking")

[First E-MAIL from along the Camino de Santiago, northern Spain]

On Monday, May 16, 2011, Fresca wrote:

Hello Everybody!

We are near Estella, having café con leche and bizcucho (sponge cake) for breakfast in a little bar below the albergue, both run by José Ramon, who is very kind (muy simpatico).

ALL IS WELL!!!
I don't even have any blisters.

[Café in Pamplona]

Here's some stuff people said that I've been writing down.

From Naomi, a French woman we met on the road, who has given herself a year to do things she's always wanted to do:

"I was walking the Camino as part of my year of dreams, and I decided to extend the year to my entire life."

Quote from me, explaining the gifts of the road:

"When you need a bobby pin, a bobby pin appears ... or not."

Quote from Margaret (Marz):

"I just want to explore, then lie down, explore then lie down."

No quote from bink (Lucinda) yet, but I could show you a drawing she did of me (as a Gorn) stealing cheese from the refrigerator in the Obanos albergue in the middle of the night.
(IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!!!)

@ANNIKA---we are on time to meet you in Santiago, so far!

My brain doesn't remember how to write online anymore, so adios for now!

Buen camino!
Francesca/Fresca (Baby Rhino, my name from Marz)
ABOVE: Sheila, Marz, Buddy, me airing my toes, and Estelle (discussing William Shatner's peculiar pinky finger?), the first serendipitous group to form.

We met Sheila on the bus from Pamplona to Roncesvalles, where we started the walk.
Buddy & Estelle were walking the Camino for their 7th time, I think. They told me my introduction--"Hi, I'm writing a short story about the apocalypse"--was the most brilliant opening line they'd heard on the road.
__________
All photos by bink (unless she's in the photo, in which case it was probably by me).

Click for all posts about the Camino de Santiago here.

Halloween

2011-11-06T19:41:00.003-06:00

Marz as Tintin, bink as Snowy, me as Captain Haddock.

Marz has been living with me for 4 months, as of tomorrow. For the first month or two, she was a guest. Now we are roommates.

It's been almost 13 years since I lived with anyone.
I've talked more in the past 6 months (since I met Marz standing under a streetlight in Pamplona) than I have in the past 6 years.
Possibly one reason I haven't been writing.

"It is only a door."

2011-11-06T19:29:00.003-06:00

Prospective Immigrants Please Note
--by Adrienne Rich

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.
____________

Young me thought that going through the door guaranteed some sort of fulfillment--artistic, spiritual, romantic.

Now I understand why people choose not to go through the door and even think they are quite sensible not to.
It is only a door.
No guarantees.

Also I no longer think I know who does and who does not go through the door, or even where or what the door is.
I know I do not know.
Which is a weight off my shoulders.

________________

Today would have been my mother's 77th birthday.
Did she go through the door or not?

She looks at me doubly,
and I look back and live with what happened.

Eulogy for Susan Barrett Newhall

2011-10-10T08:01:00.008-05:00

Eulogy for Susan Barrett Newhall, (1934–2011)
October 10, 2011

Over the past few weeks––starting, in fact, around the time Barrett went into hospice––my friend Marz and I have been reading out loud the children's classic Charlotte's Web. You might remember it's about a spider, Charlotte, who saves the life of her friend Wilbur the pig by spinning words into her web, such as terrific and radiant.

Last night we finished the book.
At the end, Wilbur is remembering Charlotte, who has died long ago. Though he had loved many spider friends since, Marz read:

“…none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart.
She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes
along who is a true friend and a good writer.
Charlotte was both.”

“A true friend and a good writer”? I couldn't believe it! I jumped up and said, “That's Barrett! I'm going use that at her celebration tomorrow!”

I don't remember Barrett ever mentioning Charlotte's Web. She was more likely to quote someone such as Marcel Proust,
the Frenchman who wrote a 6-zillion page novel Remembrance of Things Past.
(Maybe you've read it? I could never get past page 12.)

A couple weeks ago, I was visiting Barrett in hospice with two other friends.
Between morphine and fatigue, Barrett couldn't fully join in the conversation, so we visitors were telling stories about her life while she listened, reclining on the bed.

At one point she sat right up and said, "Someone should be writing this down.”
And she wistfully said, "Maybe you'll say something nice like this about me at my memorial?"

As if I wouldn't! I didn't have anything prepared at the moment, but I knew just the thing to say.
"Barrett," I said, "I'm going to say you had l'esprit, like you told me Proust wrote about."
At that, she smiled a smile of satisfaction.

L'esprit is French for "spirit." I have no idea what Proust meant by that, exactly, but godknows Barrett had spirit.
She brought her spirit to her work as a mother, an artist, a musician, but I mostly connected to her in the spirit of a word-spinner, a storyteller, a writer.

I first met Barrett in 1991, when she joined the staff of the MCAD library, where I worked. Our first day together, our boss set us to inventory books in a certain section of the library. We should have averaged an entire bookcase in an hour, but when our boss came back to check on us after a couple hours, we'd inventoried maybe one shelf of one bookcase.

Of course, we'd been talking.
Or, Barrett had been talking, and I'd been listening, enthralled, to her tales of riding a motorcycle around the West Bank, back in the 1960s, or moving with her kids and her cats and her lover to the Atlantic and throwing their last pennies into the ocean, or the time she interviewed to be a secretary for author Norman Mailer but told him she couldn't take the job because it would interfere with HER writing...

Our boss said, "Could I ask you two to talk after work?"
And so we did.
For the next 21 years.

We had our ups and downs, and off and ons, as longtime friends might. I imagine Barrett's spirit as a cat that didn't appreciate having her fur rubber wrong. (And I have my prickly side too, of course.) For instance, once we fell out over one of her favorite authors, Arthur Koestler, and didn't talk for weeks.

But no matter how long we went not talking to each other, I always knew that she would take me back, and I trusted that she knew I would always welcome her back too.

And, as it turned out, this past spring, we hadn't actually talked for more than a year. I was preparing for a walking trip: a pilgrimage across Spain, from the mountains to the sea. On my blog, I'd invited people to write out and give me words––prayers, hopes, dreams––to walk to the lighthouse at Finisterre, which means Lands End, or the end of the world. There, like pilgrims of old, I would burn them.

Two days before I left for Spain, Barrett e-mailed me:

Dear Francesca,

I see you are leaving for a pilgrimage. This is one of those moments of synchronicity for me.
Last fall I had a dream: I woke up and wrote it down.
It never occurred to me it might be prophetic.
Now the cancer has come back and I don't have very much time left.
I love life, I don't want to leave, but death is a part of life
and I would like to know my dream is being carried to the end of the world by you.
Somehow this ceremonial end––or beginning––of my dream of death
has become of great significance to me.

Love always, Barrett

I was honored to be her messenger. I contacted her before I left and told her she had to live until I returned in July so we could meet in person again.

I carried Barrett's words with me for 550 miles. And when I got to the Atlantic––the other side from where Barrett had thrown her pennies in so many years ago––I walked out on the promontory past the lighthouse, and read them out loud to the little group of pilgrims with me, to the sound of their tears. This is what she had written:

There was an explosion.
I was thrown violently into space, thousands of feet above the earth.
With my arms straight out in front of me, as if I were diving,
I plummeted downward into an enormous golden cone.
I'm leaving this earth, I realized, leaving forever!
After I spoke these words, I noticed a small black dot at the bottom of the cone.
As I got closer, the dot became larger and I became acutely aware
that I was going away from all I had ever known in my life,
away from the anchor of my own reality.
I wasn't afraid, I wasn’t frightened, only awed at the way this was happening.
A blanket of calm acceptance enfolded me as my eye remained fixed on this
Approaching mysterious blackness.

Then I woke up.

I read Barrett's words. I burned them. And, out on the rocky edge of the world,
I offered the ashes, Barrett's spirit, to the spirit of the sky, and the water, and the earth.

Barrett and I did get to spend a lot of time together when I came back. Toward the end,
I asked her if the calm acceptance of the dream had held, and she said it had.
She said she wanted to be remembered as someone who faced her cancer with grace and humor.

Did she ever.

The last time I saw her, just hours before she died, I told her I would always remember her that way, as someone with grace, and humor, ... and spirit.

After all, as Wilbur discovered, it is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
Barrett was both.

"Bohemnian Rhapsody" on Ukulele?

2011-09-17T13:19:00.005-05:00

Here at the coffee shop, we are experiencing an overload of acoustic music on a radio station called, Marz says, the Coffee House or something.

Right now, "Bohemian Rhapsody" on ukulele.

What, in an unpremeditative mode,do we think of this?

Marz: It's music like these [pointing at coffee bean sacks next to us].. these burlap bags.

FREX: How so? Bland yet irritating?

MARZ: Why "yet"? Don't those go together?

FREX: I was thinking bland like pudding, which is not annoying.

MARZ: If you were wearing this [touches burlap bag], it would be very irritating.

FREX: Whereas if you were wearing pudding, it wouldn't be scratchy.

MARZ: Pudding would be great as clothing. A pudding clothing line! Pudding You Can Wear.

FREX: How would you keep it from sliding off?

MARZ: I wasn't thinking that much, just if pudding could be translated into clothing, it would be very cool.

FREX: Like silk.

MARZ: Yeah, and they're working on charged clothing, so you can put your phone in the pocket of your shirt and it will charge. So they can knit all sorts of things into fabric, I'm sure they could do pudding.
You just need someone who would devote a lot of time and energy and money to it. The kind of person who would measure themselves in Cheetos. That would be the same sort of person.

FREX: That would be you, Marz.
But I have an idea. Pudding in little Zip-Lock bags, stitched together into an item of clothing.

MARZ: That's very do-able. But... does pudding go bad?

FREX: Sure, it's a milk product. This would be a one-time wear.

MARZ: You could do it for Halloween and go as Lady Gaga.

FREX: And it would be cheap.

Trumpet

2011-09-07T11:43:00.009-05:00

Trumpet
by Marzipan P. Marmot

a trumpet has a bell
but you shouldn't hit it like a bell
it will dent

[photo: Wynton Marsalis]
____________

MARZ: But you have to explain this. It doesn't make sense.
...
This does NOT mean copy down everything I say!!!
[laughs; stabs your typist in the arm with a pen; hangs head when this has no effect]

THIS IS NOT EXPLAINING IT!

FREX: OK, so... explain it. I won't type it until

MARZ: YOU'RE TYPING THAT YOU WON'T TYPE IT!!!

FREX: [typing] [scerad,td.fd,g]ouf]p''[rbdft

MARZ: NOW YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT! Now there's even more to explain. STOP!!!
[hits back of chair of your typist]

FREX: [scerad,td.fd,g]ouf]p''[rbdft looks like it looks because I was typing with a pillowcase over my head, placed there by one Marzipan P. Marmot.

OK, really now. Here's what happened.

This morning, instead of writing my [Frex's] resume, I sat on the couch with Marz and made up a song off the top of my head. It was terrible and I don't remember anything except it ended with
"Juice, juice, juice, juice."

Then I quizzed Marz on the properties of brass instruments. (She plays trumpet.)

"Trumpet," she said, "has a nice color."

"What's the color?" I said.

And she said, "It's not a particular color, it's just a brightness, like glossy paint instead of matte."

I said I think I prefer the darker smokier sounds of, I guess sax and trombone.

"Tenor sax," Marz clarified. "That's what Captain Kirk plays."

Then I asked her to compose a poem about the trumpet, unpremeditatedlyish,
and the above poem was the result.

"Justin Bieber Playing Trumpet" from Gifninja.

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, Illustrated & Unpremeditated

2011-09-03T12:50:00.015-05:00

Today, Marz and I made pineapple upside-down cake with my mother's handwritten recipe.

Then we talked about it.

MARZ: [This cake is] like dissonance.
Is it?
No.
Is it?

FREX: Yes! Because it shoves into close contact elements which we normally keep distinct.

MARZ: Uh, yeah... with the fruit and the cake touching. That could be disturbing. It could make you feel like you're upside down. Even the name of the cake... you might have to sit down after hearing it.

FREX: Yeah, and the tart acid next to the fat sweet. It's like... what do you call it? When the chord isn't a comfortable major cord, like C-major?

MARZ: I don't know what that's called. You mean minor chords? Or, dissonance? Dissonance is major and minor chords touching?
Let's hope no one who knows music theory reads this.

FREX: Well, they could help us.

MARZ: Yeah, but it's not about the theory. It's just about the metaphor. Like how you can talk about math if you don't know it.

FREX: OK, but, you know what? I don't think dissonance is the best metaphor for this cake, because in fact, the cake is much more comforting, very much LIKE a C-major chord.

MARZ: When everyone was warming up for marching band, the section leader would say, "OK, everybody, C-major chord," to see if we were in tune to prevent any future dissonance.

FREX: This cake is more like the way dissonance resolves in music.

MARZ: It felt really dissonant to plop the pineapples in the skillet with the sugar and butter.

FREX: It's really satisfying to have something that sets your nerves on edge...

MARZ:... as long as it resolves.

FREX: It makes you feel all worried and then, sigh... everything's all right with the world.
Even if that's an illusion, it's an incredibly comforting one.

MARZ: All the waves are in synch. Which is right and makes sense.

FREX: Even though it's not how things really are.
Well, sometimes they are.
As in this cake.

MARZ: The people who are going to eat this cake won't experience it as dissonant because they weren't involved in the process of creation.
Like making the burrito at Taco Bell--
--if you're making it you know that everything barely comes together. It's very messy, very unsatisfying, actually, to make one of those burritos, but it's all folded up so the people on the receiving end aren't aware of that.

FREX: Maybe that's what art does for us. What artists do for us. They wade into the dissonance and wrestle it to the floor. Speaking of mixed metaphors...
Wait, maybe that works---it's like wading into a swamp and wrestling an alligator.
Which is a little dramatic for the act of baking.
Tho the way our kitchen looked at the end, maybe not.

MARZ: You did throw an egg, Frexipan.

MARZ: Let's fold this post up like a dissonant burrito. Can we charge people money too? Ninety-eight cents?

FREX: Yeah. Everyone: please send 98 cents and we will send you a piece of nondissonant cake. If there's any left. Which there won't be.

MARZ: So, in parentheses, that's (no).
_______________________

To resolve this satisfactorily, here's the recipe for
PINEAPPLE UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE

Melt in cast-iron skillet
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 c(1 stick) or 1/4 c butter

Drain can of pineapple. Set pineapple on top of the melted butter and sugar.

Mix in small bowl:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Cream 1/2 cup butter with 1 c. sugar
add 2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla

Add flour mix, alternating with 1 cup milk, to creamed mixture.

Beat 2 egg whites stiff and add to batter at end.

Bake 350 degrees, 40 minutes or so

(from my mother, Lytton V. Davis)

2011-09-02T09:13:00.002-05:00

Damp air.
Damp brain.

I am going to post something here this morning, no matter how sodden.

I don't know why I'm not writing, and it's the not-knowingness that bugs me.

Though it's surely obvious?

How to Buy Forks, and Other Unpremeditated Thoughts on How to Be a Grup

2011-08-16T10:45:00.011-05:00

Grup: In the Star Trek episode "Miri", the people who are dying because they have passed the age of puberty.

For our purposes, let's assume you don't DIE of the condition, but you do find yourself in the weird position Marz finds herself in:
reaching a life stage where, for the first time, you have to buy your own FORKS!

So, in an unpremeditated sort of way, we decided to outline how to find forks.

1. Buy food that requires forks, to push you into taking this step.
Pizza and cereal won't do it.

2. So, um, buy some, like... meat!
[Fresca says this will also require a knife, but Marz says, No! just think of one thing at a time!
If you get thinking about knives, you will get silverware paralysis.

If you find you have bought meat, such as steak, that turns out to require a knife to eat, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THAT YET. You can borrow one from a neighbor.
We are just concentrating on forks now.]

Fresca suggests cooking the meat.
Marz says, No! That's a different problem. Don't think about that yet.
So...

3. Don't think about knives or cooking.

4. Do something that has symbolic power.
This step will depend on the individual, but, off the top of our heads, we think something along the lines of a little dance, perhaps? {F's idea}
Or, Marz had in mind throwing something off the porch.

5. Get up and leave the house, in search of forks.
Though you might accidentally find them, it helps to set your intention.

6. Also--it helps to have more than one approach--use your social network.
Post on Facebook, for instance, that you need forks. Someone might give them to you!

7. You may encounter some resistance within yourself at this point, when you are on the verge of becoming a fork owner.
You may think, "I'm going to have to become the sort of person who people will expect to have multiple forks at any time."

8. If the resistance is too intense, back off.
Go back to your spoon (which you have so you can eat cold cereal). The forks can wait until another day.

9. Don't despair. You will get forks, eventually, or forks will come to you.
Or, if you don't, remember, people have lived without forks before. For much of history, in fact.

10. If you do find yourself despairing, think of other people in history who have managed to do this Grup fork thing. Rocky, for instance. If Rocky can somehow procure and own forks, so can you.

[Oh, wait. Did he have forks, Frex wonders? Well, I don't know, but he had a glass, which is symbolically equivalent.]

10. That's about it, then. Yep. That's all we can think of right now.

Good luck!
P.S. Marz has not yet procured her forks.

P.P.S. Frex is approaching job hunting similarly.

P.P.P.S. This just in: Art Sparker's "Free and Street Legal" take on forks!

Let the Job Search Commence!

2011-08-04T20:21:00.004-05:00

I've been home from Camino for a month. It is time to get cracking on finding a job!
And Marz too.
We have officially enrolled in the C-Kape Plan:
job hunt by day, watch movies by night.

"a tensile promise of experience tempered with barely restrained passion"

2011-07-29T19:21:00.005-05:00

"James' lips are a tensile promise of experience tempered with barely restrained passion."
--Bianca Castafiore?, comment on the previous post

I see it in this lip curl, a more worried expression than the related smirk.

Unpremeditated Blogging

2011-07-24T20:51:00.007-05:00

Now that Marz lives here (on my couch, in fact), I really miss her blogging--especially, today being Sunday, her Sunday Macros (which didn't always happen on Sundays).
She is sitting RIGHT HERE and I said to her, "Blog. Blog now."

And she replied, "I can't just blog NOW. It has to be premeditated."

("That's not exactly what I said," she said, reading over my shoulder. "I'm being misquoted," she continued. "Misrepresented," she muttered.)

"Fine," I said. "Then I will blog unpremeditatively."

And here is what I have to say.
Justin Bieber is Baby Captain Kirk.

Look:

[Pictures not unpremeditated. They were sitting on my desktop.]

Unpremeditatively I would say they share...
a similar softness--if they were horses, you'd say they had soft mouths; a lack of self-awareness (and hence semi-imperviousness to ridicule); the same prankish affectionate nature; an ability---as yet unrealized by JB--to sing "Rocket Man"; Canadian citizenship (well, that's Shatner, not Kirk, but close enough).

Marz interjects, through a mouthful of Corn Pops cereal (exudes a cloud of sweet odor... like honey),
"Tell them about your Justin Bieber notebook and my Justin Bieber watch! Would you be comfortable sharing that?"

Uh, yes, I guess I would.
See, I told Marz I saw Justin Bieber notebooks at K-Mart but buying one embarrassed me to myself too much, so I didn't. But she went and BOUGHT ONE FOR ME!
This is why I let her stay on my couch.
This evening she came home with a Bieber watch for herself.

And that concludes the Unpremeditated Adventures of Marz and Frex, for now.

What is this blogging thing?

2011-07-16T17:51:00.011-05:00

I miss blogging but haven't been able to get traction to really get started again. I came out to Bob's today at noon intending to blog then did everything but for six hours.
Including posting some Camino pics (post below)--which, while fun, doesn't count as blogging for me.

Also watched for the nth time Justin Bieber's catchy pop tune "U Smile". His performance fascinates me--what IS it?(Song starts at 1:03.)

I shall try blogging again tomorrow. Hm. Or maybe not, since tomorrow is the Women's World Cup final. USA v. Japan.
Starring the amazing goalkeeper Hope Solo. (Yes, she is related to Han).
photo from Nike's "Make Yourself" series, by Annie Liebovitz

What there is to do on Camino in Spain when you're not walking.

2011-07-16T17:12:00.012-05:00

1. Play catch with an orange. (That's me and Marz--you can see the orange by the 2nd story window.)

2. Pause while sheep make their way home,

3. ... followed by their shepherd.

Photos by Eeva.

Good Speed Is Your Speed

2011-07-07T08:21:00.026-05:00

You can't do the Camino wrong.

It doesn't matter how fast you walk...

___________________
[Above: Graffiti along the Camino de Santiago, and me, dozing at Cee, Spain, on the next-to-last day of the pilgrimage (photo by Annika)]

...if you carry the "wrong" backpack
[Pamplona: Me sewing a Star Trek patch (made by Art Sparker) onto my external-frame backpack---which a Spanish guy later declared only fit for Boy Scouts--and Marz tossing grapes to catch in her mouth, waiting for the bus to the beginning of the trail in Roncesvalles]

...what you eat [Fried egg sandwich and beer, here.]

...or if your bed is comfortable.
[Not.]

If you keep going, you'll get somewhere.
Maybe to where you thought you were going.

You'll probably be happy, ABOVE: bink (who took most of the pix here), me, and Marz at the fishing port of Finisterre, Spain.

...but maybe you'll also be sad that you can't walk any farther.

ABOVE: Me (can you see me?) at the End of the World, handing to the ocean-going winds the ashes of the words I'd carried across Spain. Photo by Eeva.

Not to worry. The Camino never really ends.
____________________

Today is a happy day.
Marz (below, left) is arriving on the Greyhound bus, to visit or maybe even move here.

Yesterday I took my old backpack to Steeple People Thrift Store. The Spanish guy was right to be dubious--it was far less comfortable than everyone else's modern internal frame packs. Further, a strap broke and I walked with a lopsided pack the last couple weeks.

Nevertheless I felt sad to part with it,
but as I was dropping it off, I overheard workers in the back pricing a bicycle at $25. Marz will need transportation, so I ducked into the workers' area and nabbed it for her.
It's just an old 3-speed, but it'll do for this flat terrain.

Now I have to go finish putting away my stuff so Marz has a place to put hers.

Hi, there! I'm back...

2011-07-03T19:36:00.017-05:00

...from walking across Spain, where I dragged a chair from a café/bar at O Cebreiro (elevation about 1300 meters/4000 feet) to the edge of the road to wave at Manfred, who said he would stand on a chair in Paris and wave at me (did you?)...
but I am pressing it into double duty, to serve as a general hello!

I've felt overwhelmed, even thinking about trying to start to write about the trip.
Here.
I'll just jump in, with some pictures (from bink, who had a camera--I regret I didn't bring mine):

It was 7 weeks.
Here's bink at the beginning, at Roncesvalles.

It rained some. Not too badly or too long, but enough to make a muddy road.

I got some blisters, also not too badly.
I figured out the best way to deal with them was TO NOT STOP WALKING.
Not stopping seems to be very important in many realms.

On the meseta (plateau), week 3, my brain finally unfurled.
I realized that what I want in myself is SPACIOUSNESS. (I can get very crowded inside.)

People were great. Kindness won out even over snoring and a diet of white bread.
Here I am with Fred (from Holland) and Audrey (South Africa).

Remember I'd invited Marz, of smoothable, to come along, even tho we'd never met f2f?
She was even better in person.

Here we are dancing on the road, the night before we walked into Santiago. (I miss her. But she's coming to visit--or relocate?--in a couple weeks.)

We walked all the way up to the edge of the continent, until we couldn't walk any further unless we could walk on water.
There, beyond the lighthouse at Finisterre, I got out the baggie of words some of you sent along with me.
I read the words out loud (unless they were private), then I set them on fire.
I took the ashes and handed them to the wind blowing out over the Atlantic.

Barrett had sent along her dream. She is living with the final stages of lung cancer.
I superimposed her words onto Eeva's photo of the sunset at Finisterre.

[click to embiggen]

leaving...

2011-05-08T06:36:00.005-05:00

... in a couple hours to walk the Camino de Santiago.

Be back June 28.

Love to all!

P.S. We'll be meeting up with a red shirt (Annika! [below]) in Santiago who will escort us on the last leg of the journey, to Finisterre, and protect us from marauding bird life and suchlike.

Counting Down

2011-05-07T08:47:00.009-05:00

___________________________
[E-mail]
Hi, Annika!

BUSY writing out all the details of airplane/metro/train and hotel info, so just a quick hello to say we leave tomorrow, Sunday, morning (it's 11 pm now)!

We will e-mail you along the way and are looking forward to seeing you (!!!) on June 19th. Amazing.

Oh--I got my hair cut for the trip. Here are some pix of bink and me in downtown Mpls. (reflected in a mirrored wall), the other day.

Funny little thing---Lucinda (bink) and I were putting our gym membership on hold the other day. I pulled out my little mesh wallet I carry ID in, and Lucinda asked if I was taking it to Spain. I said maybe, but I was also thinking of taking the lightweight little Star Trek wallet, with Kirk and Spock on it, which my friend Annette gave me for my birthday.

The chic young woman who was helping us surprised me by saying, "Oh, definitely take the Star Trek wallet!"

So, I am. I am always willing to listen to the advice of strangers. (Especially when it matches what I secretly want anyway.)

'Bye!

Love,
Francesca

"Nothing is ever too hard for a dog..."

2011-05-06T09:23:00.013-05:00

We leave in two days.
Fr. Joe blessed bink's and my pilgrim feet last night at Merlins Rest. (Cathy's feet are going on a different trip and got a blessing too.)

This poem feels perfect for the Camino, a big dumb happy effort.

Fetch

by Ruth L. Schwartz

Nothing is ever too hard for a dog,
all big dumb happiness and effort.
This one keeps swimming out into the
icy water for a stick,
he'd do it all day and all night
if you'd throw it that long,
he'd do it till it killed him, then he'd die
dripping and shining, a black waterfall,
the soggy broken stick still clenched
in his doggy teeth,

and watching him you want to cry
for all the wanting you've forsworn,
and how, when he hits deeper water,
his body surges suddenly, as if to say
Nothing could stop me now --
while you're still thinking everything
you've ever loved
meant giving up some other thing you loved,
your hand, the stick stuck in the air,
in the shining air.

from Ruth L. Schwartz, Edgewater, New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2002.

I found this poem in an essay about RLS, "Calling Out God and America" on Alan W. King's Blog.

[You might also like Schwartz's poem "Oh God, Fuck Me".]

The Shirt I'm Not Wearing on Camino

2011-04-27T10:22:00.005-05:00

Saw this at Target yesterday. Pondered buying it. Didn't.
After all, do I really want to wear a picture of Picard for 6 weeks?

My favorite line, "Kirk would never sing to children in a crisis."

Even though, actually, I can imagine (painfully) that he would, indeed, do just that.
"Kids, have you ever heard 'Rocket Man'?"

Send Me Your Words to Walk to the Sea

2011-04-20T09:17:00.014-05:00

I invite you to handwrite on a small and LIGHTWEIGHT scrap of paper a word or hope/prayer/dream or name or any message you'd like to send on Camino, and mail (or hand) it to me.

I will take these with with me--in this little plastic baggie (boy would medieval pilgrims ever love ziplocks & plastic)--from the foothills of the Pyrenees to Finisterre, the end of the world, and there burn them at the seashore. We hope to arrive there shortly after summer solstice.

If you want to, give or send me your scraps of paper before I leave on May 8.
Those of you who don't have my address, can write me at frescadp at gmail and I'll send it to you.
_____
This reflects some pondering I've done about what a spiritual pilgrimage means to me this time round.
Some people approach the Camino as they might the Appalachian Trail, purely as a physical undertaking. But it's been a pilgrimage for hundreds of years, and that's important to me. But how?

My sense of what religion/gGod is all about has changed. Ten years ago, spiritual meant "metaphysical" to me--something wispy and ethereal, like the silvery strands in the pensieve in Harry Potter.
Now it is physical... embodied in the solid, living bodies of me and other people on Earth, connected in person or through shared Story, and--through memory--also to people who once were here.
Carrying people's words on foot, like a messenger, fits the way I feel now.

Tips to Prevent Blisters

2011-04-18T10:40:00.017-05:00

The probability of developing blisters while walking 800 km is quite high; while the likelihood of rescue by Mr. Spock is, sad to say, infinitesimally low.

["Way to Eden," trekcore.com]

Tip for free: don't walk barefoot.

When I set out to walk the Camino in 2001, I expected blisters to be a mild annoyance. Instead, after walking about 100 km with nothing but band-aid protection, it felt like my feet were being flayed. Because they were.
[The Flaying of Marsyas, by Jusepe de Ribera]

So, this time I'm trying out all possible blister-prevention aids. Here's what I've gathered in items and advice, so far.

1. Replace your boot's insoles to add support and stability. (Even expensive boots come with flimsy insoles.) Superfeet insoles may feel weird at first because they support your arch where it begins, closer to your heel, rather than in the center. Wear every other day at first, to break them in. (about $35)

2. Gel toe spacer for big toe, if that's your hot spot. It's not mine, but I tried it out. ($4.99, Walgreens gel spacers).

3. Medical tape to help prevent blisters forming. The premium brand is made of rubber; Walgreen's is latex-free and costs less.

4. My hot spot: my little toes tuck under and get squished and rubbed. These corn cushions work as spacers. Adhesive, but the adhesive only holds a day. ($2.99 for 18 Walgreens corn cushions)

5. Toe liner socks (Injiji liners, $10). I haven't worn these yet, but they're designed to wear under your hiking socks to reduce friction between toes.

6. Hiking socks with loopy-loops on the inside. Supposedly eliminate the need for sock liners. I like Wigwam best, or Thorlo (both about $15). Coolmax or Smartwool.
Tip: To fluff up lining, turn socks inside-out to wash and dry.

7. bodyGLIDE original anti-chafe formula. My marathoner friend Maura swears by this---not just for feet but any body parts that rub. (I paid $12.99 for 2.5 oz. at REI outfitters.)

8. Not pictured: moleskin. The cotton flannel, not the notebook. I'm taking a big pile of it for my heels, which rubbed raw last time.

9. Keep your feet dry. Switch out your socks during the day--let your spare pair dry.

10. MY FAVORITE PIECE OF ADVICE:

To avoid blisters, "Walk in a relaxed manner."

(This is surprisingly hard to do, even on pilgrimage.)

--From Joyce Rupp, Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons from the Camino, about Rupp's experience as a pilgrim (at 60, which encourages this 50 year old).

11. ...or, in the words of John Wayne, "Whoa! Take 'er easy there, Pilgrim!"
(Thanks for this tip, Crow!)

12. Finally, since no matter what we do, we will probably get some blisters, a sense of humor.

If you have any tips, please let me know!

Camino Packing

2011-04-15T11:36:00.013-05:00

We leave on Camino three weeks from this Sunday.
I'm doing a trial packing run, wishing I'd kept a list of what I took last time. I think I have pretty much everything I need...
I'll make a list once I've got it all set.

____________
Indispensables: something warm (sleeping bag) for albergues; something to carry water (Platypus water pouch with drinking tube); sun hat.
Optional: hiking pole (last time I used a stick I found, but since I got a generous REI gift card for my birthday, I splurged).

I'm pondering if I should cut my hair. It'll be a pain to wash in the sometimes-cold trickling shower water, but it'll keep me warm if it gets cold at night in the mountains.
Decisions, decisions.
I have a little Swiss Army knife--could always cut it on the road.

Fuck Me, Rocket Man

2011-04-12T08:03:00.009-05:00

For my 50th birthday party this year, I made up a Sixties quiz questions game (with prizes). No one of the 31 guests could "Name the first Russian cosmonaut in space in 1961, the year I was born?"
...except the 17-year-old Russian exchange student staying with friends of mine.

She said her mother had a crush on him. Seems to me he was airbrushed to be more of a rock star than the US astronauts.

Today is the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's flight, April 12, 1961. I was 6 weeks old.

This mosaic image of Gagarin in Budapest, Hungary, is made from 470,016 LEGO pieces to celebrate the anniversary.

Speaking of crushes and space flight, since half my answers to the name 10 fictional characters you'd have sex with meme were the characters' creators themselves in disguise, Marz pointed me to this cute song about author lust, "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury." (Thanks, M.)
This version is "censored" uh huh, "for the guys who say that Bradbury is not a Sc*-F* Writer."

Actually, you have to sign in and promise you're at least 18 to watch the original version--it's been flagged as containing material "that may be inappropriate for some users." So bizarre, considering what the average pop video is like.

Can space flight be mentioned without posting Shatner's rendition of "Rocket Man"?
Yes! It can!
I can't bear Bill's musical interpretations---they gives me the "bamboo shoots under the fingernails" shudders.

Instead, here is Stewie from Family Guy doing his Shatner impression:

If Sofia Coppola Made Ferris Bueller's Day Off

2011-04-11T08:54:00.005-05:00

This is so good: Ferris as one of those lost-in-space young wanderers of contemporary flicks, like the guy Zach Braff plays in Garden State.
This remix is right up there with the re-do of The Shining trailer. Editing and music make the movie.

The vidder says,"My aim was to make it look more like an indie coming of age film; perhaps the kind of film Sofia Coppola or Godard might make.
...The music is A Slight Return Home by Woodpigeon."

The "Name Ten Fictional Characters You Would Have Sex With" Meme

2011-04-10T14:09:00.014-05:00

I've been meaning to do this meme ever since Mrs. Conclusion compiled her list and 6 out of 10 of her choices were Captain Kirk.

On my completely honest list, 10 out of 10 of my choices would be Kirk, but I decided to dredge up 9 others, since I think you all already know that.

Still, he has to be no. 1.
Jim Kirk is the only fictional character for whom I feel plain old animal lust I can imagine acting on IRL. (But not Shatner, it would really have to be the captain.) I wouldn't even want to have a relationship other than physical with him. Talk to each other? Why bother.

2. Not really lust, but I've always been a bit in love with David Copperfield, despite his priggishness. But in film, I think the adult David has always been miscast.
Jeremy Northam (left, in the ridiculous Possession) would make a fine Copperfield (based on the author, Charles Dickens, right)._____________________
_________________________

3. An intelligent investigative reporter is often a turn on, in fiction anyway. Lili Taylor, whose intelligence is always attractive to me, has never been sexier than in Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear when her (lesbian) journalist character repies to some fashionista's complaint that journalists always ask fluffy questions by asking [paraphrase],
"OK, then. What do you think about the fact that textile production for the fashion industry is responsible for two-thirds of water pollution in the developing world?"This picture doesn't do the character justice, but it's the only one I could find.

4. Handsome, dashing, wryly funny, and able to cook you a nice piece of fish: Robert Donat as Richard Hannay, in The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935, A. Hitchcock). Implicated in a dastardly plot by soon-to-be-murdered spy Lucie Mannheim (below, top), he ends up running around Scotland handcuffed to Madeleine Carroll (below, bottom).

5. Oh, wait... for animal lust, how could I forget Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing? I love that this sensual scene where he's teaching Jennifer Grey to dance is silly (she keeps laughing when he strokes her side) as well as steamy.

6. Fludd, the mysterious, seductive and liberating character in Hilary Mantel's novel of the same name. Is he a priest, the devil, a reincarnation of the real 17th cent. mystical cosmologist Robert Fludd?
None of the other characters can quite recall his face when he's not there. Or even, really, when he is.
Images, The Great Darkness and The Appearance of Light from Robert Fludd's The Macrocosm, 1617 & 1618, from here.

7. I went looking for a picture of Alan Tudyk as Wash, the lovely, doofy pilot on Firefly (the blond guy in the Hawaiian shirt; he plays with toy dinosaurs), but when I came across the entire cast of characters, I thought, aw, come on, how can I discriminate against the others? I'm sure they'd all be fun in bed, except uptight Simon and his fractured sister River (the two on the far right).

8. Well, Augustine was a real person, of course, but his autobiographical Confessions reads like a novel, and surely is reconstituted reality with a spin, like Dickens's David Copperfield or Stephen Colbert's "Stephen Colbert," so I'm claiming "Augustine" as a fictional character I would sleep with (before he went too, too overboard with religion). Super smart, funny, intense, and we know he liked sex. And, being from Algeria, had ample access to olive oil and figs...
The Conversion of Saint Augustine, by Fra Angelico.

9. Philip Seymour Hoffman as the brave, tender hospice nurse in Magnolia. He even looks after the dogs of the dying.

10. I see that some of my choices are the alter egos of an artist or writer. In 8½, sexy Guido (Marcello Mastroianni, center) is the onscreen personna of director Federico Fellini (left). Creative power is sexy, whatever the creators look like. (I don't know what film is being filmed here, but probably not 8½--Sophia Loren wasn't in that.)

Reading for Fun!

2011-04-09T10:28:00.020-05:00

After a decade of wanting to read nonfiction almost entirely, I've been reading novels. And nonfiction storybooks. Some of them are serious, but it's still such a delight, like nibbling on marzipan.

Hm. I guess what's most delightful about reading "even the serious ones"
is that I DON'T HAVE TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT THEM!!!
*levitates briefly*

Serious, like Damon Galgut's The Impostor. According to the Guardian's review:
"In one sense, it is a conventional crime caper, the story of an innocent man who gets sucked into a world that he doesn't understand. In another, it is a critique of contemporary South Africa, a country that, as Galgut depicts it, is beset by cruelty and a spirit of brutish materialism."

Speaking of brutish materialism, not pictured (because it's lying on the floor by my bed) is the novel I'm currently reading: The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope. With a only a little bit of adaptation, it could easily be updated as a story about our recent economic and other -ic charlatans.

Networking Images, 3

2011-04-08T11:53:00.008-05:00

I mean "networking" in the broad sense, as you can see, including communication technologies (practical tools) and design that connect people and ideas.

See also Networking Images 1, and Networking Images 2

Below, top: 1794, The Great Chain, Covenant, or George Washington Belt, wampum, 1794, presented by Washington to the Haudenosaunee [Iroquois]"; ganondagan.org/wampum.html

Below, bottom: 1974, The Arecibo Message, radio signal (of 1679 binary digits) sent into space; wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

______________

BELOW: Reproduction of the "Belt Representing the Union of the Four Eastern Tribes";
nativetech.org/wampum/wamphist.htm
"…with a dark background denoting former or potential hostility among the tribes, lightened on the margins with white borders denoting the bonds of friendship that now surround them. The alternating panels of blue and white at the ends are evidently a convention imitated from the Iroquois. The four white triangles are tribal "wigwams," the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Malecite, and Micmac. In the center is the pipe which is the symbol of peace by which the allies re joined" (Leavitt & Francis 1990: 17-18).
BELOW: Drawer of lead type at Em-Space Books Arts Center; bangback.com/print-matters/portland-letterpress-printers-fair
BELOW: The Game of Life, penny-cheap broadside (printed paper) version for American colonies; history.org/foundation/journal/spring08/pop.cfm
BELOW: Three versions of Morse Code (mid-1800s). The dots and dashes are digital technology (on-and-off, not continuous); en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code
BELOW: Catholic rosary (prayer beads); sacredheartpinellaspark.com/faith-formation/the-rosary
BELOW: House of Cards, by Charles and Ray Eames, 1954; interlocking slotted cards depict objects from the animal, mineral, or vegetable kingdoms.
BELOW: The City Plate Collection from Rios Clementi Hale Studios (2010?); vertigohome.us/collections/notneutral
BELOW: Illustration of DNA binary code (Shutterstock)
BELOW: Smartphone-readable QR (Quick Readable) code; billboard ad for restaurant in Minneapolis, MN
BELOW: DNA binary code as a tattoo; hubpages.com/hub/Tattoo_Ideas_Geeks_Video_Games_Math_DNA
BELOW: "Mark Miller vs Astrophysicists," 2006. Nerves in brain on left - Universe on right; mangrovevens.blogspot.com/2009/03/charles-and-ray-eames-powers-of-ten.html

Chit Chat

2011-04-07T10:44:00.009-05:00

What's up. Let's see...

1. Yesterday I turned in to my editor the newly revised ms of the communications book I've been working on, off and on, for ten months.

I would complain that that means I earned about $450 a month (you wouldn't believe how poorly children's publishing pays), but I am still (still!) in the artist-mode of being amazed to be paid ANYTHING for creative work I do.

Not that this was super creative.
It was, like my geography books, mostly a matter of compiling and arranging huge (HUGE) amounts of material. There was more creativity to it though, since I could shape this book any way I wanted, unlike the geography books, which had to fit into a very tight mold.

I was amazed that after a break of two months, when I reread the whole thing in one sitting, it's really good!
I don't know why I was amazed. I guess because writing it was such a long, hard stretch of solitary confinement, it didn't feel like anything very good was coming out of it.

Anyway, I felt that old familiar mix of euphoria and emptiness after sending it off.
For the first time in almost a year, it's not the undercurrent of my everyday life, whether actively working on it or not.

I feel like an animal that's been let out of a cage... still crouching on the ground outside, wondering if I'm really free to make a break for the hills, or if this is a trick and I'll be yanked back.

But I do know I'm free because yesterday I asked the managing editor at which stage was I free to say, "I'm done with this book; if you want any more changes, do them yourself"?
And the M.E. said, "That would be now."

I am willing to do, and no doubt will do, more work on the book, but knowing I'm free *not* to makes all the difference.

2. And anyway, yes, I do believe I am free to head for the hills
...because I have The Right Socks!

Cushy coolmax overdesigned hiking socks, for walking the Camino. One month from tomorrow!
(I took this photo to send to Marz--the pair I'm holding is my birthday present to her.)
These socks are ridiculously expensive. With the money I earned on my ms, I could only buy 300 pairs of them.

[OK. I see here I am broiling up a brew of resentment about the time/pay ratio. I must stop and remind myself that the publisher doesn't expect their authors to spend much time on their books.
It was entirely MY CHOICE to make it into a long haul, in-depth job.
And, in truth, I am proud of my work, and I wouldn't have been if I'd whipped it out in a month or two.
So. I will try to simmer down now.]

Yesterday afternoon I went for a five-hour walk. Today, socks notwithstanding, my feet feel a bit pulpy, and I am staying off them.
My plan is to push hard with exercise, then rest. And repeat. On Camino, the rest part won't be there much. It'll be day after day of walking for five hours or so.

I'm really looking forward to it. Even older and fatter as I am, I think I might suffer less this time round than I did in 2001.

Long-distance events like walking 800+ kilometers are as much a mind-game as a body game. And I'm beginning to believe (from experience) that age is actually an advantage in the mind-game department.
I like this a lot.
I wonder if I might apply it to writing long-haul projects too. Or if I simply Never Want to Do One Again, which is rather what I feel today.

3. Checking my blog stats this morning, I saw 3 searches for "фреди меркури."
I had to call on my very dim and very distant classical Greek to figure out that this spells "Freddie Mercury."
Once I'd got past "ph-r-e..." it was easy, because searches for "Freddie Mercury" in all its various spellings have waaaaaaay overtaken searches for "puppies in a box." Today, 134 to 14.
Plus 3 for фреди.

When I first noticed that lots of people were looking at my Freddie post, I went back and beefed it up a bit. Which made more people look at it, though there's nothing you can't find a hundred other places.
Anyway, I like the idea that strangers pop in and hopefully get a little kick from a shared love.

And now I'm off to walk a few blocks to meet a friend for coffee.
Tootle-oo, all!

Cake on Camino, a Recipe

2011-04-05T09:01:00.014-05:00

Speaking of cake, I found Spanish baked goods to be pretty unimpressive, especially compared to the amazing wine. (Totally unfair competition: the Camino winds through the Rioja region, where wine is as cheap as bottled water).

Exception: the dense almond cake we ate in Santiago. It's named in honor of Santiago (St. James), the patron saint of Spain.

I put together steps from 2 recipes here, for a recipe that looks pretty easy, though I haven't tried it yet.

Or, here's the link to a gluten-free FLOURLESS ALMOND CAKE, from Domestic Daddy.net. This is also where I got the 2 photos of the ingredients and the finished cake.

Tarta de Santiago, Saint James's Cake

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup sugar
8 tablespoons butter (1 stick), room temperature

4 eggs
1/2 cup water
zest (finely grated outer peel) of 1 lemon

1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 2/3 cups ground almonds
3/4 cup flour

powdered sugar to decorate

Notes:
To zest a lemon, use a tool called a lemon zester (right), or grate on the fine teeth of a grater. Try not to get any of the pulpy white pith underneath.

You can buy ground almonds, which should be coarse like granulated sugar. They go rancid pretty quickly if you don't use them up. *Instructions on grinding almonds follow this recipe.

Preparation:

1. Heat the oven to 350 F degrees.

2. In a large mixing bowl, cream the sugar butter together. Add beaten eggs, water, and lemon zest to the sugar-butter mix, and beat well.

3. Stir the baking powder into the ground almonds and regular flour. Add to batter, and mix well.

4. Grease a round 8-inch spring-form pan. Pour batter into pan.

5. Bake in oven on the middle shelf at 350 F degrees for approximately 45-50 minutes.

6. Cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Set on rack to cool.

7. Make a paper cutout of a design you like, lay on cooled cake, sprinkle powdered sugar over it.
(Traditionally the design on top is a cross or sword of St. James. There're lots of horrific militaristic images all along the Camino about Christians driving out the Moors (Muslims) and Jews.)

*How to Toast and Grind Almonds

Option: instead of toasting the almonds, you can blanch them (boil to remove skins, here's how).

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F

2. Place the almonds on cookie sheet into the preheated oven, and bake until they just begin to color (about 8 minutes). Remove and set onto a cooling rack to cool completely before preceding to next step.

3. Once the almonds have cooled completely (they must not be warm or they will turn to a paste in the food processor), place the almonds, 1/4 c. sugar, and 1 Tbsp flour in a food processor.

4. Grind the almonds, sugar, and flour together until to a coarse flour, about the consistency of granulated sugar. Do not grind the nuts too long or the oils will separate and cause the mixture to become paste-like.

5. Remove ground almond flour from the food processor and set aside for making the batter.

Cake on Camino; A Birsdey Macro from Marz

2011-04-04T09:17:00.010-05:00

OMG. I AM DYING OF TEH LAUGHTER.
Marz's computer went commando and so this birthday macro just now got posted on smoothable. Marz, as you may know, is some kind of wondrous inventor of wackiness, and this is just more proof.

Here's an abridged sample of her story:

So, does Fresca ever come along? Get any cake?
To find this out, read the whole shebang here.

Btw, Marz turns twenty (20!) today, so go wish her a happy birthday.
I do!

Countdown to Camino: Five Weeks

2011-04-03T08:41:00.026-05:00

We (bink, Marz, and I) leave to walk the Camino de Santiago across Spain on Sunday, May 8, five weeks from today!
[article in yesterday's Guardian about Camino highlights]

I've lost muscle strength and gained 20 lbs. in the past few years, so 7 weeks ago, I began working on getting in shape again.

This morning I tried on these hiking pants I wore on Camino ten years ago, when I turned 40, and am relieved that they fit again. Still a wee bit snug, but at least I won't have to buy new ones.

I've been feeling pretty buff, so yesterday I walked 8+ miles around the lakes (flat, easy). Then I spent half an hour going up and down, up and down a steep hill. (Minneapolis doesn't have a lot of hills, so you have to use the ones you find.) I was so tired when I got home, I went to bed at 8:30.
Good thing I still have five weeks to get my climbing muscles up to speed.

The Camino isn't terribly mountainous, for the most part, but we'll face some hills right out of the gate, because we're starting in Roncevalles, in the foothills of the Pyrenees on the French border. (Hiking downhill is just as hard as uphill.)

Besides body weight, I'm carrying more years, of course, than in 2001, but we're also giving ourselves an extra week:
instead of walking almost 500 miles in five weeks, like bink and I did last time, we have six... plus a few days traveling time on either end.

I'm hoping that if all goes well, we can use the extra time walk out to Finisterre, on the Atlantic Ocean, which we didn't do last time. Technically the medieval pilgrimage route ends 50 miles inland, at the cathedral in the city of Santiago where lie the supposed remains of Saint James, Sant'Iago.

But I love the idea of walking border to border. Finisterre means "Land's End," or "the end of the world"; you can't go any further than its lighthouse.

(The scallop shell on this "0 km" marker is the traditional sign of the pilgrim. The Camino is marked all along the way with yellow arrows and shells, so it's very easy to follow. Last time we didn't even have a map and we only got lost once, briefly.)

Traditionally pilgrims burn their walking clothes at Finisterre, plunge into the sea, then don new clothes. I'm loathe to carry anything I won't need regularly, but maybe I'll bring something small and symbolic, like a new pair of undies.

One reason I haven't been blogging is because getting in shape is the main thing I've been thinking about, and I expect it's boring to read about. But I also regret that I didn't keep track of the logistics of the walk last time, so I want to record physical details this time.
After all, I might want to do this again when I turn sixty, in 2021 (inshallah).

Like, I can't remember--did I bother bringing an extra bra, or did I just wash the one out all the time?
The weight of a bra may seem piddling, but I DO remember that on about day 4 or 5 last time, when blister pain was making my eyes spin, I went through my backpack and threw out all unnecessary items,
and that included a single piece of paper with the train schedule from Santiago back to Madrid on it.
So I want to go as light as possible.

One thing I'm carrying MORE of, though, is moleskin!
I hope I won't get such bad blisters this time, being better prepared. "Blister" is an insufficient word to describe how my feet were flayed last time.
Brutal.
So, walking up and down hills is not just to toughen up my muscles but my feet.

Men Standing on the Edge of Light

2011-03-26T09:30:00.005-05:00

I took these photos at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, for the Phillips + Whittier 365 photoblog I'm part of. It wasn't until I uploaded my dozens of photos of people at the museum that I saw the connection between these two, which pleased me a lot.

"Exit, pursued by a bear."

2011-03-19T12:09:00.009-05:00

Yes, I do. (Need to update my blog.)

Briefly:
A friend is picking me up in ten minutes to go see Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale on stage. It's supposed to be a beautiful day, and I'm not all that keen on live theater, so I was feeling grumbly about having agreed to go, even though it's a free ticket.

But just now I looked up the play online and discovered it is the one with the famous stage direction, "Exit, pursued by bear," and now I have something to look forward to:
What will the bear look like?

And afterward I will go for a long walk.
Seven weeks to go until the Camino. I've been exercising indoors--it's been too icy to walk outside much--but now it's warm and the sidewalk is fairly clear--so I can begin to build up some callouses on my feet. In case I have to run away from bears.

From bink

2011-03-05T10:53:00.000-06:00

I have work to do in my next 50 years...

2011-03-05T09:06:00.009-06:00

It's funny. Most of my life I've looked to the past to understand who I am; but at this 50th birthday, I feel the past as a drag that must be cut loose in order to move into the future.
I don't, of course, mean denying the past, but simply letting it stream away, like water streams off a swimming otter.

And now, for the future...
I must write something worthy of the praise in this macro.
THANK YOU, Mortmere!!!
Not just for this insanely flattering birthday message but for reminding me I'm not alone in feeling low about a midlife birthday. I was carrying some load of rubbish about how I should display perfect equanimity about it, but now I'm reminded Kirk didn't (how did I ever forget this???), I have cosmic permission to mope.

Actually, I woke up happy today, but this made me waaaay happier. It sorta even kinda feels like the best of times...

[In case you don't know, the original scene is Spock giving an antique copy of A Tale of Two Cities to Kirk for his unspecified (shall we say 50th?) midlife birthday, in ST II: The Wrath of Khan.]

Who Would Play You in a Biopic? Why?

2011-03-04T09:40:00.004-06:00

VL asked me this perfect birthday question.
I couldn't narrow it down--my biopic would have to be like that Bob Dylan one, where several actors would portray me. Including...

1. Philip Seymour Hoffman (below, right in Flawless, and that's him left, of course, too)
For my smart yet slovenly, dark yet goofy, brilliant but lazy self.

______________________

2. Drew Barrymore
I always thought she looks a little like me... at least her chin does. She would show my adorable, cute, and vulnerable yet buoyant, effervescent, and resilient self.

______________

3, 4. Sophia Loren and Joan Cusack

Sophia, for my slutty (yet potentially maternal) Italian self;
and Joan for my whacky, flummoxed and funny yet supremely capable Midwestern self

_____________________

And how about you? Who would you choose to portray yourself?

I'm taking off my West Wing pin.

2011-03-03T13:00:00.001-06:00

Art Sparker made this Star Trek badge for my 50th birthday.
________________________________

"Did I miss something in the thirty years I've known you?" Stefalala asked me on the phone last night. "Did you ever want to be president?"

Right.
No, I didn't. My political ambitions are pretty much met by walking down the street to cast my vote every couple years or so.

I felt like a failure after watching 8 episodes of The West Wing (in three days) not because I want to be a success in its story world but because I'd wandered into the wrong story.

We're all living out some story or another, running several story lines at once, really.
The "politics is the only game that matters" story line is not mine. It's my father's, the political scientist, the guy who told me he was disappointed in me.
Well, duh.
No wonder I felt like a failure, entering into a story that shares that pov.

I run a little test sometimes, to see how stories intersect:
I google "_______ + Star Trek."

The only match that showed up when I plugged in "West Wing" was this clip from WW where Josh tells a new White House staffer she can't wear her Star Trek pin to work because Trekkies are not fans, they're fetishists. Aaron Sorkin even manages to insult her gender.

I think he's onto something: The two story worlds don't play well together.

When I watch Star Trek, I feel like engaging in the pursuit of excellence.
When I watch The West Wing, I feel like going into protective hedgehog mode.

The way I see it, it's important to create or claim stories that help us become the heroes of our own real lives, and that help us to listen to one another's stories, without needing to take them on as our own.

So, I feel enfeebled watching WW?
Easy solution: don't watch it.

Yes, but...

2011-03-02T11:41:00.002-06:00

OTOH, re glum post below, no one is a failure who has friends who make her a Sputnik replica filled with potato chips for her 50th birthday.

Midlife Crisis

2011-03-02T11:02:00.002-06:00

I turn fifty this Saturday.
I'm watching the first season of The West Wing, which I've never seen before.

This combination has kicked me in the gut.
I guess the message "Anybody can grow up to be president of the United States" must have lodged in my data banks, crosslisted under "Personal Potential" and "Later."

At fifty, words like "potential" and "later" have become "now."
And there is no doubt about whether or not I am now the president.

Then I got my AARP card. No matter what perky spin they put on it--
"Go SCUBA diving at 80!"--
this is the modern manifestation of the Grim Reaper's scythe whistling through the air.

I didn't expect to feel anything about this birthday.
Instead, I feel like a failure.

Falling at Fifty

2011-02-27T17:47:00.004-06:00

Playing Twister at my birthday party. (I'm the one on the ground.)

When I was young, I wanted to be dark and mysterious, but I like the silly person I am in this photo and choose it as a portrait of Fresca at Fifty.

State of the Blog E-mail

2011-02-15T08:43:00.006-06:00

PART OF A PERSONAL E-MAIL I WROTE YESTERDAY

Thanks for this personal note from a couple weeks back. I've not been in a very communicative mode, oddly for me, but of course I LOVE (love love) hearing from others.

I can't blame being busy with The Book, as I've not been working on revisions, though I need to: right now it's too much research, too little writing.
I'm a bit disheartened because to make it excellent, I'd need another year or so to spin each chapter into a story, to find more people's stories to flesh out the facts.

I do have a couple more months, in fact, but I'm not highly motivated. Besides general laziness, I wish I could melt my resentment (my old bugbear) about the George Washington book, but that resentment sits and glowers.

I expect every writer finds something external to blame for Not Writing, at some onerous point in the process, when the whole thing has ground to a halt and inertia has set in. I mean, there's always something to hand, eh? And not a little irrelevant something, either, and not imaginary. I mean real, important reasons.
You either write through those, or you don't.
At the moment, I'm not.

Some do, though, as I'm reminded by Wilkie Collins.
I'm on a novel reading kick for the first time in a decade, and last night I started Collins' The Moonstone, which I'd loved when I was a kid.
In the preface, he says that as he was writing it, he suffered the worst crises of his life--his mother was dying and he was in terrible pain.

He suffered from "rheumatic gout", and, he doesn't mention this, but he became addicted to huge doses of opium for the pain.
But, he says, he didn't want to disappoint his readers--the book was being published serially--so he wrote through it.

I'm glad he did, for my sake: it kept me reading until 2 a.m.

Maybe I'll get my writing wind back. I don't actually have much else I need to be doing until I go to Spain ... except get in some kind of physical shape to go to Spain!
Pain is a good motivator.

Motivated by that, bink and I've signed up for a 6 week "get in shape" program at the YWCA. It starts today--we go and get measured by some fancy machine that I expect will discern, correctly, that I spent all weekend eating Oreos and oranges and reading novels.

The Camino. I don't really know what to expect. You're right it could be good, open time to think about life and writing. But I have so much open time in my life, I don't really need that.

Probably I'm most motivated with the desire to get in touch with my BODY again.
It's been quite a while---the turning point was my gallbladder surgery two years ago, which gave me an excuse to not exercise. Right, you're not suppose to exercise much for 6 weeks, but I stretched that out into two years. No exercise, not even sex, just rolling out of bed, walking the 6 inches to the computer, and sitting there blogging, vidding, FBing, e-mailing, surfing, writing for work...

I've loved that! If inactivity didn't cause the body to start to decay, I'd be fine with it, actually. But the ol' bod used its Red Alert system--pain--to remind me that it doesn't really want to decay before it's time.
So, off I go.

I'm really excited about another aspect too:
Did I tell you I (and bink, of course) invited my blog friend Marz (Margaret, of smoothable blog), and she's coming too?
I've enjoyed her brain so much in blog form, I hope we enjoy each other in person too.
Of course it's a bit of a risk, walking for 6 weeks with someone you've never met face to face, but the Camino is incredibly flexible: if any one of us wants a break, however long or short, it's easily arranged---we just walk at different paces until one of us has disappeared over the horizon, and we meet up at the end of the day, or in the next big city, or the airport going home.

I hope you don't mind but I'm going to recycle some of this e-mail on my blog. See, I've been feeling I should write something about NOT blogging but haven't been able to.
When I look back at the 3+ years I spent blogging, I'm AMAZED at how much love and energy I poured into it. Amazed and thrilled. What a great thing to do!
I don't know why I don't want to right now, but I don't.
Maybe next week I will. Or not.
You've been through this, I think---I think many (most?) bloggers eventually hit a lull.

I just want to read novels. Maybe even try my hand at fiction, which I've never been good at.

Well, we shall see.
Love,
Fresca

My Mother's Gun

2011-02-09T11:55:00.013-06:00

After I mentioned a couple posts back that my mother shot herself (in 2002), I got wondering what kind of gun she'd used. I asked my sister, who kept the police records.

Smith & Wesson .38

Turns out there are lots of models of this gun, so I'm not sure it's this one, but my sister told me it was a silver revolver with a light wood handle, so I suppose it was something like it.

The police said we could have the gun back--it was our property. My mother bought it legally, along with a box of hollow tip bullets. She'd even kept the receipt.

I said I wanted it.
I don't know why, really. I pictured some kind of cool tool, something she loved. My inheritance, uh huh.

My sister, who was handling the police side of things, went to get it. She called me from the police station and said I didn't want it. It was covered in brains and stuff. Blowback.
I hadn't thought of that. I didn't even know that word.

So I said OK, I'd pass, because her constricted voice told me I shouldn't burden her. I'm kind of sorry I did. On the other hand, I've got it anyway.

Here's a piece of the police report I find comforting:
there was a bullet hole in the wall.
The bullet that killed her never exited her skull, so my mother must have fired a practice shot first.

I like knowing that she fully understood what she was doing. Not that I doubted she wanted to die, not at all, but that she felt in her hand the physical violence she was perpetrating... well, I like having proof her action was premeditated.

I read an article in the New Yorker years ago about people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. [Here's the link.]
Almost everyone dies, of course--the impact turns a body's insides into scrambled eggs--but a few survive. One survivor said that after he stepped off the bridge, all his problems suddenly seemed solvable, except one: stepping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
There's no practice leap, but there can be a practice shot.

Sometimes I think about the clerk who sold my mother the gun. I can see him handing the gun across a counter. While I consider the people who designed, made, and sold the gun to be murderers--just my irrational take on the matter, you understand--I also imagine a my mother doing her best Blanche DuBois on the clerk, acting the fluttering lady who needs protection. Or she might just as well have been in her Dirty Harry mode, wearing sunglasses, coldly confident of her legal rights to this machine. She could be a chameleon that way.

I knew she'd bought a gun that fall. She told me on the phone. It wasn't her first one, and when she mentioned it, I think I said something like, "Oh."
I imagine it's hard for people who aren't intimate with a suicidal person to realize how normal the idea becomes. It's like, chicken for dinner again?

She'd first sat me down and told me she might kill herself when I was fourteen or fifteen. After 25 years of hearing about it, I was bored and resentful.
Once I even told her to go ahead and get it over with. That sounds bad, doesn't it? I should explain that before it came to that, I'd opened my veins to save her over and over again.

Gun or no gun, I expect my mother was going to kill herself anyway.
She had enough lethal medication, godknows, all prescribed by those kind strangers, medical professionals.
When we kids cleaned out her two-room apartment, I gathered all her meds together. She'd tucked them in every conceivable part of the place, lots of them packaged in sheets of foil-backed individual pockets. It took me a while to push each one out. I filled a soup bowl with them and dumped the pretty colors down the toilet.

I had figured I'd get a call saying she'd died of an overdose and I'd never know if it was an accident or not. I prefer knowing she meant it.

Sometimes I think I'm just fine after all this time, free and clear, lucky to have such a resilient personality. Sometimes I think I'm not fine at all, I just closed off a room in the house of life, love, and hope and walked away.

Happy New Year! Neighborhood 365 Project

2011-02-03T08:45:00.009-06:00

Happy New Year!
It's Lunar New Year, ushering in the year of the rabbit.

The nearby Vietnamese shops are closed, like this one with its lucky peach blossoms I photo'd last night.
I shot it as part of a new project I launched last night with my neighbor Esther and a guy named Joe we just met:
a collective effort to post one photo a day, for a year, of the neighborhood.

It's a mix of photojournalism and blogging.
Ideally we'll have 7 people, one to cover every day of the week, but I figured if we just launched the project, they'll show up...

Joe is from neighboring Phillips, so the blog is called
Phillips + Whittier 365

We met at a meeting hosted by the photographers who have been doing Powderhorn 365 for a couple years now. A show of their 2010 project (their 2nd year) is up at Vine Arts, which got written up in Star Tribune article.
A friend of mine is part of that group, and that's what inspired me.

I'd like to write more about it, but I've got to write an index, so adieu for now.
May showers of lucky blossoms carpet your path this year!

Friendly Rap

2011-02-02T09:36:00.009-06:00

A couple friends have asked me for some examples of friendly rap.

I'm new to this, but here's one I love, the friendliest, upbeatest, sugar-poppiest, peace-loving rap imaginable: the incredibly catchy World Cup 2010 anthem by Somali-Canadian rapper K'Naan.
It's a remix of his Wavin' Flag.

K'Naan usually looks pretty dapper, but I chose this picture of him in Minnesota's goofy unofficial state hat (we're on the border of Canada, of course, so he's close).

Here's the official Arabic version of K'Naan's song, featuring Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram. (Sponsored by Coke, as you will see.)

I wish we could replace political violence with sport competitions.
K'Naan said of the World Cup, "It's about the one time that we all get together and the world forgets its conflict and its problems and we focus on this unity and celebration."

And here's the original version of Wavin' Flag, which has a slightly darker, more political cast (but also shows him in his ear-flap hat).
As of today, it has 11,581,805 views on youTube.

Then, Fismo raised the question of the B-word in rap. Here's Queen Latifah on it: U.N.I.T.Y.
The lyrics go:
"Who you calling a bitch?"
You gotta let 'em know,
you ain't a bitch or a ho."

Now I have to don my hat with ear flaps and go out in the cold. It's -3°F (-19°C).

Everbody Loves Rhyme, Man

2011-01-31T12:36:00.010-06:00

Image: The March Hare and Dodo, one of the Alice in Wonderland stained-glass windows in the All Saints' Church, Daresbury, England, via Vitreosity (cool blog about stained glass)

i. My First Lines

Rx for stiff writing brain: rhythm and rhyme.

I want to write some rap based on my geography books. I loved working on them, but the end results had to be dry. I want to juice them up, for fun.

bink can rhyme a million times faster than me (makes me mad). Trouble is, I don't hear words as sound, I hear them as ideas.
So when I sat down to rhyme "gross domestic product"--admittedly not an easy first rhyme--I kept thinking about millet or steel.

I had to chant the phrase out loud to myself over and over to HEAR it.
It took me hours to come up with three rhymes.
Here they are.

gross domestic product
pope's fantastic Prada

gross domestic product
nose don't lick a poor fuck

gross domestic product
dodo's nest tick prodder [this is my favorite]

Not sure where I'd go from there, but rhyme can be an end in itself, like this fun nonsense rap "Alphabet Aerobics" by Blackalicious.

ii. R.A.P. "Rhythm And Poetry"

Everybody loves rhyme (maybe), but not everybody loves rap.

I ran into my pal Terry at the library, where I was checking out How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip Hop MC, by Paul Edwards (2009) (links to the book's site, which has about 100 links to tracks on youTube--what a find for a beginner like me).

I told him I want to learn how to rap.

He looked at me, shocked, and this generous, generally open-minded guy said,
"When do you have to get back to the home, for your meds?"

I told him rap wasn't all nasty; lots of it is crazy inventive word play expressing a joyous life force or honestly calling out the hard stuff.

Well, he said, he'd heard two little boys rapping on the sidewalk,
"I'm gonna have some fun,
shoot you in the face with a B.B. gun."

Yeah, it can be like that, but that's not its necessary nature. Tish Jones says its fundamentals are Rhythm And Poetry.
"I mean, let's rewrite that," I said, "I'm gonna have some fun..."

He finished, "Go to Jamaica, sit in the sun..."

"Drink some rum," I added. "Well, that doesn't really rhyme..."

"It doesn't have to!" he said, instantly getting into it. And he admitted he didn't really know rap.
Neither do I, but rhythm and rhyme... it's like the brain's breathing deep, pushing out against its limits.
I love that.

iii. art in the dark
Terry's response is pretty typical, in my experience.
The last time I got such horrified reactions to a pursuit of mine is when I joined the Catholic Church.

In both cases, those reactions aren't altogether wrong--the Church and rap have misogynistic and violent histories. But they're also thrumming with life force and creative energy out the whazoo.
You aren't going to find any worthwhile human endeavor that doesn't have its dark side because that's who we humans are.

I like art from the dark, anyway, because I've been there. Haven't we all, to some extent?
Like gun violence...
My mother shot herself in the head with a gun, so I get that, I welcome raw poetry about that kind of thing.
Life can be that bad, it can be that ugly. That's not unusual.

There're all kinds of ghettos we make for ourselves and each other, and all kinds of ways to break out of them.

Avocados & Grapefruit Make Me Feel That Way

2011-01-30T11:59:00.005-06:00

My father sent me a box of fat Texan avocados and ruby grapefruit around C'mas. I ate the avocado with tostadas and the grapefruit with a serrated spoon.

It never occurred to me to eat them together.

Then I came across a recipe combining them, in Bryant Terry's
Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine (De Capo Press, 2009)
(recommended by a Facebook friend; I got it at the library).

The "vegan" label does the book a disservice--sounds like preachy cardboard, but Terry's no moralist; he just remixed some standards to freshen them up.

You'll find sample recipes at Bryant Terry's site, but not this one, so here it is. (I abridged the instructions tho, cause they're long).

Carmelized Grapefruit, Avocado, and Watercress Salad, with Grapefruit Vinaigrette

VINAIGRETTE
Blend in blender:

juice of 2 grapefruits, cooked down to 3 T (simmmer 8-10 min.)
2 t red wine vinegar
1/2 t Dijon mustard
1 sm. clove garlic, minced
1 T minced fresh mint
coarse sea salt
7 T extra-virgin olive oil
fresh ground white pepper

2 large ripe but firm Hass avocados, pitted, peeled, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes.
2 bunches watercress, trimmed of tough stems
2 large grapefruits
1/2 c. organic raw cane sugar

Slice the 2 grapefruits horizontally (across the sections). Dredge with sugar, and pan fry. [I think it's easier to broil.]

Gently toss all in vinaigrette & serve immediately.

________________
Actually, I think recipe has too much going on--avocado is easily overwhelmed.
I simply broiled the sugared grapefruit slices in my toaster oven, then ate them with room-temp avocado.
Sweet and creamy and zingy.

Bryant provides soundtrack recommendations for each recipe, and this one's is "Sweet Thing," by Rufus with Chaka Khan.

But I choose "Make You Feel That Way," by Blackalicious.
If The Sound of Music had been Hip Hop, Julie Andrews would've sung something like this instead of "My Favorite Things."

"Times I feel I wanna shout, man it's real that way,
Wanna think of things that make you feel that way."

P.T. for the Brain

2011-01-29T13:33:00.014-06:00

i. The Stiff

I thought I wouldn't care if my physical therapist was a man or a woman, but the other day when the p.t. turned me over on the table, climbed on top of me, and thrust full-weight onto my spine, I was glad she was a she.
I don't want any resistance, any impulse toward self-protection on my part to get in the way of the work.

P.T. is the best therapy I've ever had.
Everything my therapist says applies to my emotional and writing life as well as my body.

Like, "You need to practice breathing." My rib cage is so stiff, she says, it's as if I underwent some trauma, like a car accident.

"How 'bout grief?" I ask.
"Yeah, that'd do it too," she said.

And, she says, "Stiffness is compensation for weakness."
You sustain an injury and instead of strengthening and stretching it, a tendency is to not move or to favor it, use other parts. They're not as well designed for the work and can tighten up in a knot.

My writing is as stiff as my muscles. It feels like an engine block to me.

Yesterday I got my author's copies of the Frindian War book from the publisher.
[This picture isn't in it, but close...]

I knew the marketing department had turned into a book about George W., but actually seeing him on the cover was like tearing a muscle. My original title was "Who Fired First?" and GW was one of several characters. Now the title focuses on GW and he's front and center, the hero.
In truth, the war was important to him, but he was not important to the war.

By changing the emphasis--mostly through title and picture choices––it's like history got castrated.

ii. The Cypher

By incredible luck, I couldn't stay home and stew. I had arranged to interview the amazing Tish Jones at the Spoken Word open mic she hosts, for the communications book.

Turned out we didn't get much time to talk, but in the few minutes we had, she gave me what I didn't even know I needed:
she told me about Hip Hop cyphers: performance circles of rappers and dancers and beatboxers.

I stayed for the open mic--second time I have. There's always an accomplished featured artist, which is wonderful, but I almost get more out of the high schoolers who get up and read their stuff. Their body (of work) is so new, the wounds are fresh, and there's so much bravery and honesty in how the kids get up and show them and just outright say, "This hurts!"
Or they come on strong with defiant celebration.

They're still limber, and if they keep writing, they might stay that way.

I went home and watched The Freshest Kids: The History of the B-Boy a doc about the history of break dancing and Hip Hop culture. (Streaming on Netflix, or it's also on youtube.)

I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading about writing rap.
How to Freestyle Rap [free-flowing it off the top of your head] says:
First step. start easy.
Write silly stupid easy stuff. Like, the bunny is funny.

This morning I called bink and got talking about how we used to do this, though we didn't think of it as rap. We just used to make up silly rhymes, and she is especially good at fresh rhymes.
Let's do it now, I said.

Here's what we came up with.

Pancakes
with Baby Flakes
ease my aches.
Then, melon cakes.

This is a true story:
Maura was making pancakes for bink,
"Baby Flakes," a rhyme bink pulled out of the air, must be Joop, whose doggie brain is sadly getting flaky from Alzheimer's or something;
and later today bink & I are going to a Chinese bakery for melon cakes.

I can feel my brain expanding like my ribs.

Knitting Report

2011-01-27T08:55:00.005-06:00

Third try.
I gave up on knitting wrist warmers because I'm not up for adding and dropping stitches (on purpose). I unraveled the straight tube I'd made and began making a little scarf. It's a bit bumpy, but I don't need it to be perfect.
I'm liking knitting pretty well. I like spending time with the wool.

I hope to be done with the first round of ms revisions on February 1.
So, back at it.

"I'd Kiss Shatner."

2011-01-26T11:30:00.007-06:00

Captain Kirk and Princess Leia kiss.

From Live for Films.
liveforfilms.wordpress.com/tag/william-shatner/page/2

I'm revising my ms (first round) this week, so it's back to the Dance of Procrastination.
Good thing I don't know photoshop or I would spend my life making this sort of thing.

"I'd Fight Shatner."

2011-01-24T12:41:00.011-06:00

Brilliant Fight Club-inspired T-shirt design, by midgerock. The original has the quote "Shatner. I'd fight William Shatner." on it.

Any my own macro---I figure if anyone would/should fight Shatner, it would be Nichelle Nichols. (Yeah, George Takei is the more obvious choice, but I think the presence of some glimmer of affection would make a Uhura-Kirk fight better.)

Photo from the 2010 celebrity roast of Shatner.
___________

See also Fight Club rules set to Star Trek.

Star Trek Fight Club

2011-01-23T21:06:00.026-06:00

I always thought I'd like Fight Club (1999), but for some reason never got around to seeing it until last night.
I did like it and found it incredibly funny and smart and bluntly honest about how attractive fascism can be, especially to people who feel adrift, bereft of meaning. (Tricky to show the attractive side without also celebrating it, but I thought the director, David Fincher, did a good job. People who think the movie's a celebration are scary.)

I'd heard about the movie over the years, so there weren't many surprises except one huge one:
How come nobody ever told me it has The Best Shatner Reference ever?

Narrator (Ed Norton): If you could fight any celebrity, who would you fight?
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt): Alive or dead?
Narrator: Doesn't matter. Who'd be tough?
Tyler: Hemingway. You?
Narrator: Shatner. I'd fight William Shatner.

I howled.

I'm surprised I've found little online linking Star Trek and Fight Club.
Do you think it's because they have different fan bases? Still, it's not such a stretch. Fight Club is a variation on the episodes "The Enemy Within" and "Naked Time," which ask, What's your inner secret self?
And Kirk loves getting beat up.

So, I set Fight Club's rules to Star Trek screencaps (from Trekcore). I put a little Spock in for fun too.
Can you name the episodes?

_________
Curious connection: David Fincher directed both Fight Club and The Social Network (2010).

If they two movies met, would one say to the other, "we're the same person?"

Fincher said of The Social Network in an interview:
"I wanted to make the 'Citizen Kane' of John Hughes movies. That’s not to say we’re making 'Citizen Kane.' But specifically, the 'Citizen Kane' of John Hughes movies. So, yes, it is a coming of age movie. They are kind of dorky teens figuring this shit out between them. And there’s no real intervention on behalf of adult society, you know? It’s kind of like they’re forced to figure it out for themselves."
from Fight Club screencaps

There is no average reader, but there is curly green in Uruguay.

2011-01-20T10:32:00.010-06:00

i. There is no average reader.

I'm amending David Simon's quote I posted yesterday, "fuck the average reader."
I love it because it feels liberating, but it's misleading.
There is no average reader.

It's not the audience that makes writing good or bad, it's the writer. It is the idea of a reader in the writer's head that either expands or constricts her imagination.

Fuck the average editor, I would say instead, meaning (mostly) my own internal strangulation device.

ii. Uruguay Green

Poodletail, who is anything but average, gave me a knitting lesson yesterday. She brought wooden needles for me, and a skein of kettle-dyed "lettuce"-colored wool.
The wool is from the Malabrigo collective in Uruguay.

Malabrigo posted this picture of merino rams on their website. Their curliness reminded me of Uruguayan soccer player Diego Forlan's mop, which I'd admired in this past summer's World Cup. The final curl of green is from Uruguayan blogger and photographer Aleph.

Here I am casting on, at Bob's Java Hut. (For Rachel, because she asked.)

Loose and Tight

2011-01-19T11:57:00.012-06:00

LEFT: "Spina," serigraph by Jeffery Sax

I've been seeing a physical therapist for back/hip pain.
Turns out my lower spine had stiffened up into block. Mostly from not moving.
I couldn't bend forward past waist-height.

After the therapist more or less beat me up a couple times, my spine bends again.
This morning I could fold all the way forward again.

Parts of my writing feel frozen stiff like my spine was.
I wonder what might loosen it up.

I mean loose as in flexible, not sloppy.
Loose, but also tight, like Tiger Woods's swing.

[Lordy. Who wouldn't want to go to bed with that? Makes me ponder (again) how much mob morality is jealousy in disguise.]

Some of my stiffness comes from the fear David Simon (creator/writer of The Wire) talked about in an interview with Nick Hornsby (which I blogged about):
the fear of being exposed as writing out of "lame half-assed assumptions."

That's a good fear. It keeps a writer on the lookout for flabby thinking and ignore-ance.

The years I spent writing about world geography for kids knocked a lot of assumptions out of me.
Turns out...
•New Zealand wasn't colonized by convicts.
•All folktales don't have morals.
•People in chaotic situations often welcome dictatorships.
•Entire lives are lived without thought for the United States. (This was the most humbling realization. I didn't think I'd assumed otherwise. But at a deep-muscle layer, I had, and it had to be pummeled out of me.)
•Tapirs are related to horses. [Baby tapir image from Zooborns]

So that was great. But the work also stiffened up my personal writing.
I got in the habit of explaining everything. I mention Camus in a post, say, and find myself adding a tag: "French philosopher."
For God's sake!
I'm not writing for kids here.

So, again, I connect with David Simon, who says:

"My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader.
I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life.
The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden.
Fuck him. Fuck him to hell."

Yeah. Well, I don't think "fuck him," exactly, but as long as the average reader in my head is a twelve-year-old researching a report in the library, I'm going to keep explaining stuff.

After I finish revising my ms, I need some kind of p.t. to get that kid out of my writer's brain.

Space Tweet

2011-01-18T12:35:00.003-06:00

Astronaut TJ Creamer sent the first direct tweet from the International Space Station, in January 2010:

@Astro_TJ, Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station -- the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s.

Should I send my question? "Does your training prepare you for a simultaneous seduction and attack by fun-fur-clad aliens?"
_________
Still from Star Trek episode "A Private Little War" from Trekcore.com.

The Wire, Green Card, and Unclogging the Channels of Thought

2011-01-16T16:21:00.003-06:00

I. "lame, half-assed assumptions"

I reread my ms front to back yesterday, after a good break from it, and had to laugh:
it reads like my geography books:
facts dry enough to choke you, all wedged tightly together.

I laughed instead of cried because, while it badly needs lube, I do--first and foremost--want to get the facts right, and I trust I did. Doing the rewrite won't be so bad.

One reason I find writing nonfiction so nerve wracking is I'm terrified I'll say something wrong about some other culture's or person's reality.

I felt validated reading an interview with David Simon, creator/writer of The Wire, in which he talked about having this same fear:

"Like many writers, I live every day with the vague nightmare that at some point, someone more knowledgeable than myself is going to sit up and pen a massive screed indicating exactly where my work is shallow and fraudulent and rooted in lame, half-assed assumptions."

[Illustration from a different piece, by Austin Kleon]

Yeah.
And we're right to be afraid.
Assumptions are cholesterol that stiffen and clog the channels of thought.
Like cholesterol, they go down smooth.
We don't even know we've got them if we ingest the same ones our friends friends and media do.
But what are you going to do? The only way to be sure you're not speaking or writing out of those lame-ass assumptions is to stay silent. Of course we also seek out ways to mix it up, get aware, clear the channels.
I guess nothing does that like the annoyance of someone, up close and personal, with a storyline that runs counter to ours.

II. "All your ideas come from one place."

Green Card (dir. Peter Weir, 1990) is not a great movie, but it does tell a nice story of two people who annoy each other into seeing their own assumptions.

The movie's premise is that a Frenchman from the mean streets, played by Gerard Depardieu (right), marries privileged American Andie McDowell, to get a green card.
She holds the traditional liberal line about everything, while his scope is limited by personal bitterness.
She gardens with ghetto kids, he tells her it's a waste of time. Like that.

They don't like each other, naturally, and at one point, she accuses him of being right wing.
He counters,
"I'm not right wing! You are the one with the wing. All your ideas come from one place!"

All your ideas come from one place.
I love that line.

But, yeah, his ideas also come from one place, and he comes to see that too. Predictably (for a movie), they fall in love, and sadly the movie stiffens up into one of those that all come from one place.
And McDowell's stiff acting never looked worse, next to Depardieu's.
Still, it's worth watching, I think, once.

III. The Wire

Oh, yeah, so... The Wire.

The two scariest characters, LEFT, Felicia "Snoop" Pearson and Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector ), from an article about the actress/character Snoop in the Guardian, "When Pretend Is Real".

I watched all five seasons in the past few weeks and liked it a lot.
It's one, long, interconnected story, and its makers reward the careful viewer, so watching it was satisfying, like it's satisfying to read a well-crafted mammoth novel, such as Middlemarch, that follows a dozen storylines and resolves them all fittingly at the end.

I don't really have a lot to say about it. It pretty much matched my worldview:

•The race does not go to the swift, but to the lucky (Randy has lots of heart but bad luck, Namond has less heart and more luck)

•Goodness, too, is more a matter of chance than virtue (I'd say we love Omar partly because he's a good soul so we can enjoy without moral compunction the panache with which he does evil)

•Those who survive best are those who adapt best (Michael can adapt, Dukie can't)

•Humans are puny beings in the maw of our own history (as D'Angelo says about Gatsby)

•But the individual does matter, maybe, ultimately, is all that does (which Bubbles's story exemplifies... in the affirmative, for a nice change).

Probably I like it because, as David Simon said, The Wire is a Greek tragedy:

"The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no decent reason."

[D. S. interview (same as quoted up top)]

The character Bubbles reads a quote from Kafka (on youTube):

"You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps the holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided."

[found on a nice blog write-up, Kafka and the Wire.]

But I think a better quote to sum up the series comes from Aeschylus's Agamemnon, which does not give permission to hold back from suffering:

"He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despite, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."

["Omar Little," one of Blake Hicks's Wire illustrations]

One of These Things Is Just Like the Other

2011-01-09T17:01:00.006-06:00

Too funny.
"Firefly and Mad Men are the same show."
Does this mean I'd love Mad Men, which I've never seen?

via Gerry Cannavan (tagged with "Look what I found on the Internet")

My Father Is Eighty

2011-01-08T11:07:00.005-06:00

My father was born in 1931: Today is his 80th birthday.

My father is a retired professor of political science.
The most important lesson I learned from him was the importance of checks and balances on power (same as you need to ground electricity).
This might seem simple, but it extends like crazy.

Here are a few photos from his life, so far.
ABOVE: at far left, with sister Vi and brother Tony, in Milwaukee (1939?)
ABOVE: 1961, with my mother, who is pregnant with me
ABOVE: 1970s, with a sketch of himself, in his office
ABOVE: 2007, at Mount Vernon

On his 78th birthday, I wrote a Mosaic of Memories of him from my childhood.

Signoret: To Show Yourself as You Really Are

2011-01-06T10:08:00.005-06:00

"Does one act better after one has aged?

"Well, one doesn't act better: one doesn't act anymore. One is.
The compliments you get from people who speak about 'the courage to show oneself in an unflattering aspect' are just pious remarks.
It isn't courage; it's a form of pride, possibly vanity,
to show yourself as you really are in order
to better serve the character that has been offered you as a gift."

--Simone Signoret, Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be, (NY: Harper & Row, 1978), 324.

This reminds me of the work of any creative act, including blogging.

Top image: Signoret, with Laurence Harvey, in Room At the Top (1959), 38 years old
Review, at the film's 50th birthday in 2009, in the Guardian.

Bottom image: If found it undated, but I imagine Signoret's signing her memoirs, released in France in 1976, when she was fifty-five

Two Months 'Til Fifty

2011-01-05T12:54:00.011-06:00

Yesterday I celebrated;
today I'm suffering post-completion tristesse,
the way I always do after finishing a big project.
(You too?)

Nonetheless, I'm still glad I have some time to start thinking and writing about my upcoming fiftieth birthday, in exactly 2 months (March 5). I'm amazed and curious to find myself at this juncture.
What is it? Who and where am I at fifty?

I got wondering what some of my favorite people were doing at fifty.

You know I'm crazy for Simone Signoret?
She was both sexy and serious. And she was a woman.
I like that.
I wouldn't mind aging like she did. (I mean, with dignity, not smoking oneself to death.) They say she got fat and let her looks go.
So what?
To my eye, she just got more interesting and ... well, to borrow from Neruda, she had the weight of a golden vegetable.

From cinetom

When she was fifty, in 1971, she played The Widow Couderc, with Alain Delon. (I just ordered it on Netflix.)

I don't know much about her, as a person. (According to her Wipipedia entry, she never cared about glamor.)
It's not always good to learn too much about an actor (Manfred made many people unhappy by reporting that Colin Firth is not a sweet potato); but for my birthday, I would like to have dinner with Simone. (Here, with her husband Yves Montand.)
Of course, she's dead (at only 64) but there you have it.

Hey! The sun just peeped through the clouds.
I think I'll go to the library and get Signoret's memoirs, Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be (La nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était). Yes. Then I'll go back to bed with hot milk, and read.
Good for sadness.

Good morning, pigeons!

2011-01-04T09:09:00.009-06:00

Hello, darlings!

I am so happy (SO happy) to be back!
Yup, I turned the rough draft in yesterday.
I've got a bunch of work yet to smoothe it out, but everything is in place.

Even the backmatter (bibliography etc.) is in shape,
because I used what I learned––the hard way––in college:
KEEP TRACK OF YOUR SOURCES.

It's in shape, but I'm not.
I'm going to the gym this morning for the first time in ages ...and I'm going to step on their scale.
I have a gruesome curiosity to see what the damage is--cd almost be a badge of honor.

There's another lesson:
IF YOU SIT IN A CHAIR FOR 4 MONTHS, YOU WILL TURN INTO A PUDDING.

The thing is, 4 months from now, me and my body are going to hit the Camino in Spain, and it sure will be easier to walk 500 miles if I've moved a bit beforehand.
Just to remind myself how it's done.

I used Facebook while I was writing The Book.
I liked it. For a while.
It was nice to take a break and chat, now and again.
But it began to feel like empty calories. I really missed you, my fellow bloggers, who dish up something more substantive.

Anyway, all these calories and all this inactivity lead me to ask,
"Will My Star Trek Uniform Still Fit?"from The Hostess

Now to bundle up and go outside. My jeans are so tight, I can barely squeeze them on over my long underwear.

Brain Ain't Gonna Think Anymore

2011-01-02T18:16:00.003-06:00

I AM ALMOST DONE!!!
But I need to think, not just transcribe, to do the last bit, and my brain has declared it is done for the day, so I'm heading home.

Before I go, I'd wanted to get a shot of the Starbucks baristas in their distinctive green aprons, but everytime the iCamera went off, they had moved out of sight. (Hence the final duck face.)
Its 14°F outside, and chilly in here.

K/S: "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve"?

2010-12-31T15:56:00.008-06:00

I WISH I could say I made this myself, but it's Margaret's (of smoothable). (MarZ advises it's best to let the whole video load before playing, for maximum smoothability.)

Kirk/Spock - "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" from Margaret Haney on Vimeo.

Margaret writes:
"Spock wants to know what Jim's doing for New Year's Eve but is - understandably - having trouble spitting it out.
The song is a Verve Remix of Ella Fitzgerald's 'What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?'"

(I, Fresca, love this song, especially Rufus Wainwright's cover.)

Ah, I find I do have the time to compose a brief answer on Kirk's behalf.

Tchotchkes Piled Up Like the Musicians of Bremen Say, Si, Se Puede!

2010-12-31T15:18:00.009-06:00

Laura Borealis gave me the porcelain fish planter from Japan, weirdly & wonderfully decorated like a jewelry box, for Christmas.

I have been writing about Cesar Chavez––not really related to communications, but I'm managing to wedge him in, at least in this rough draft––who, I was surprised to read, was NOT a good public speaker (like King George VI, not that he stuttered).

In 1974 Dorothy Rensenbrink said,
“I have heard César Chávez speak many times... this time, as always, I am puzzled by the power of such an uncommanding person to command so much loyalty from so many.
...I am finally caught by recognition. It is hard to describe why. It is not self-recognition, just a kind of kindred recognition;
as it is with thee, so it is with me.”

--The Words of César Chávez,
(links to Google Books edition, http://books.google.com/books?id=QSJF8JJLePUC&pg

One of favorite things in 2010 is Google Books. They've made available, right here on this screen, old books from the 1700s and 1800s I'd have had to wait days or weeks to get through Interlibrary Loan, *if* they even circulate.

And on we go, into 2011. We can do it!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Join, Or Die (Networking Images, 2)

2010-12-29T23:30:00.000-06:00

See also Networking Images, 1 and Networking Images 3 .
"Networking" here is meant in a broad sense, including communication technologies (practical tools) and design that connect people and ideas.

Like, here's some of the technology I'm using for research.

I keep collecting these interconnecting images as I go along. I'm crazy for the recurring patterns. Things look like other things, I'm always saying.

ABOVE: George Washington Treaty Wampum Belt
www.tuscaroras.com/jtlc/Wampum/six_nations_GW.html
The original of this belt is the record of a Treaty with George Washington in 1789. The house in the center is the longhouse of the Six Nations (Iroquois Confederacy).

ABOVE: Handwritten sermon by Puritan minister Cotton Mather (1663-1728). From LOC exhibit "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic", www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html

ABOVE: Portable Field Pulpit (Same LOC exhibit, www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html)
Preacher George Whitefield, of the colonial religious revival called the Great Awakening (ca. 1725–1740) used this for open-air preaching.

Benjamin Franklin's political cartoon, "Join, or Die," 1754. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join,_or_Die

ABOVE: Eames's diagram "Friends and Acquaintances" for the 1976 U.S. bicentennial exhibition The World of Franklin and Jefferson. Ben and Jeff in the middle, and the names around them are J. Adams, T. Paine, Lafayette, Washington, etc.

Chart of Methodist hierarchical organizational structure, Broadside, 1810-11. LOC exhibit, www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html.

ABOVE: 1864 Shape Notes, musical notation system invented in the United States, ca. early 1800s. Each symbol represents a different note (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti). From The Young Campaigner.
http://www.theyoungcampaigner.com/2008/01/the-shape-of-mu.html

Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, 1894, www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr018.html

ABOVE: Recording cotton stock prices, off ticker tape: Dallas News, 1951, www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/125th/newsevents/stories/043010dnmetcotton125.269625e.html

Inter-departmental Envelope, Nodes and Links, www.nodesandlinks.tumblr.com/page/2

Library check-out cards, www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=70113

ABOVE: ISBN, www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/barcodeFAQ.asp

Fake BlackBerry ad, re newly elected president Barack Obama's comment, "I'm still clinging to my Blackberry. They're going to have to pry it out of my hands."From the New York Daily News, Jan. 2009, www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/01/10/2009-01-10_vote_on_your_favorite_bamberry_ad.html

Sci-Fi raygun decal, 2010. I want. Tragically, it's sold out on Etsy. (Star Trek "Jesus Fish" take-off here.)

Visualizing Friendship, Map of Facebook,[facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000814253560#!/note.php?note_id=469716398919&id=9445547199].

50 more data visualizations: www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/50-great-examples-of-data-visualization

Another clever visual pun: "Slytherin Revised," from Marci and Deth. (Everyone knows Slytherin is Snape's school, in Harry Potter, right?) marcianddeth.blogspot.com/2010/11/slytherin-revised.html

Oh, I mentioned Snape. According to The Rule, that means I must post an image of him.
*runs to nets, rummages in drawers*
OK, this one made me laugh. "I haven't got all day, you know." Snort. From here.

Fun Bug (More Networking Images)

2010-12-29T23:20:00.000-06:00

I. Computer Bug
Here's another fun networking image:
The first recorded computer bug.

From wikipedia: computer bug

"ABOVE: The First "Computer Bug"
Date: 9 September 1947
Source: U.S. Naval Historical Center Online Library Photograph NH 96566-KN
Author Courtesy of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA., 1988.

"Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1947. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found.'"

II. The Mails

Rural Delivery (Where the Mail Goes, 'Cream of Wheat' Goes)
by Newell Convers Wyeth, 1906, at the Minneapolis Inst. of Arts
_______________
III. Radio Free America

I hadn't known that radio was free (no commercial broadcasts) and unregulated for the first couple decades of its existence.

Are we living in a Golden Age of Internet freedom? Will we look back and be amazed at the lack of regulation, the amount of free expression?

I was surprised how much debates over every new technology sound like our debates about the Internet. Is it--the telegraph/telephone/television––the door to a bright new future, or an invention to suck our brains dry?

Every new communications invention--from writing [1] to the printing press to the radio-- has been met with cries of Too Much Information, Too Fast, and warnings about how it would destroy society.
(And of course, they always did destroy society as it was, or transform it.)

Then, there're the questions, should it be regulated? By whom? The government? Commercial interests? The great unwashed?
_____________
Another fun thing: Wikipedia just raised $16 million dollars during its fun(d) drive: 500,000 people contributed, and the average contribution was $22.
(I sent $20.)

When I think technology could be the door to a better world, I think of the model of Wikipedia. You know? It shouldn't work--it should be a total mess. But it does work.
_________
[1] Plato warns against writing:

[Writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own.

"You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have came to know much while for the most part they will know nothing.

And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”
(Phaedrus 275a-b)

_____
We're still saying this about our communication tools, and it's still true... and not.

And now I am going to FINISH the rough draft that will, if I'm lucky, impart the illusion of wisdom.

Man Up

2010-12-28T10:50:00.024-06:00

In the midst of the slog to finish writing The Book, I am grateful I went to see The King's Speech, which lauds the virtue of perseverance.

Colin Firth (below, how good to see him acting outside of formulaic romantic comedies again) plays Bertie, the duke of York, unknowingly soon to become, upon his brother's abdication, King George VI, father of our Elizabeth (I call her "ours"; we Americans have to borrow our royalty, and we do). Bertie valiantly struggles to overcome his stammer, over and over again accepting humiliation as he obeys his father's wishes that he speak in public.

If grade school oral reports panicked you to the point of nausea, like they did me, you may well relate to the sick look on Firth's face here. (The talk is, Oscar, and I agree.)
Eventually Bertie's wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter, who dials down her usual keyed-upness), the future Queen Mum, finds him an Australian speech coach, Lionel (the wonderful Geoffrey Rush, below, right).
Lionel operates out of squalid basement rooms, which the camera convinces you are uncomfortable (damp and moldy) yet shows to be beautiful. (The photo here doesn't do them justice. The peeling wall deserves an Oscar in itself.)

The good man comes to the rescue as Bertie, now George VI, is heading toward a stutterer's worst nightmare: his duty, as the king, to speak to the nation and the empire on the radio, at the dawn of Word War II.
And he does it.
Cue Beethoven. (Really. 7th symphony, 2nd movement---it's perfect.)

Virtue comes from vir, Latin for "man," as in "male," not "human."
As a young feminist, I resented that, but I've come to appreciate the special qualities of the male man in some circumstances, such as in the term man up, which I like the way I like original sin: with reservations.

The two are a sort of tag team that name some home truths.
At their best, they comfort and encourage.
This being-human gig is bigger than us, Original Sin says, and we have a tendency to fuck it up. Let us face up to that, Man Up responds, and carry on as best we can.
At their worst, they cudgel and diminish.

The King's Speech comforts.
We, in 2010/2011, are at war, the economy is bad: the times are right for many of us to welcome such comforting reminders of the virtue of the long slog, done well.
(Have you noticed the recent popularity of the British wartime slogan--it was to be used in case of German occupation--Stay Calm and Carry On?)

Best of all, the film is generous in its embrace: it shows the Queen Mum, the little princesses, and the working class Australians all man up too.
Graciously, it doesn't do it at the expense of the man who doesn't man up to his kingly duties: Bertie's older brother David, crowned Edward. I'm glad of that, because I'd definitely run screaming, as he does, from the ridiculous restrictions of Duty to King and Country (not less restrictive if one is the king, though a terrific scene of Bertie blowing up at Lionel, when the speech coach sits in the wrong chair during the coronation rehearsal, demonstrates that a belief in the divine right of kings helps to bear it).

When Edward breaks down at his father's deathbed, because, he confesses to his brother, "now I'm trapped," he has our sympathy.
"Manning up" is like "staying the course": unless you have faith it's a good course, it's best not to.

Bertie, at least according to this movie, was a lucky man: his temperament, if not his tongue, matched his destiny.
Would we were all so lucky.
__________________
The real George VI (right) and Queen Elizabeth, meeting air raid victims in London's East End, April 1941.

_______________
Oh, did I write, just yesterday, that I couldn't blog because my book is due in 6 days?
Call me Edward.
(I'm not abdicating, just dawdling with my mistress, the movies.)

Book Countdown, from the Trenches

2010-12-27T20:38:00.009-06:00

The Book is due one week from today--that'll be Monday, January 3, 2011.

It's been sort of awful (on top of fascinatingly wonderful, tracking 600 years of communication in the USA).
The awful part is the slog of writing the damn thing because, I don't know how other writers do it, but I pretty much can't do anything when I'm supposed to be writing except write or else I won't write at all.

I mean, if I do anything but sit at my desk first thing in the morning, my brain declares it's a holiday and I don't have to write at all that day. If I take a midday break to go to the YW, my brain declares I am done for the day. If I write anything of substance except The Book, say, a blog post, it totally throws my book-writing brain off track.
Also, I can't write much once the sun goes down (about 5 these days).

So I sit here and sometimes I write pretty well and sometimes I don't.

Off and on I feel bad, lazy, insane, stupid, pathetic, misguided, and/or hopeless for not being able to toss words out lightly, like doves at a wedding, instead of tracking them through muddy trenches.

I have the sort of dreams you have when you're feeling you're bad, lazy, etc.

Also, I feel fatter and droopier than I was when I started, and physical evidence confirms this is not a neurotic illusion.

I know I am not, in fact, any of those things (except fatter & droopier):
these unpleasant feelings are just the by-products of writing, for now. Writing for work, anyway.

Yes, of course I know I could [fill in the blank with sensible advice here, like "go to the gym in the evening"].
More power to those who manage such things.

Alas, Jan. 3 is not the end, it's just the date the ms goes to the editor. I'll have to do rewrites, possibly substantial, (a dreadful prospect, of course).

The nice thing is, I'm pretty sure the book will be fine, in the end.
The material is great, anyway--I've dug through lots of amazing primary sources, and they provide fun lumps of quotes. I just have to provide the mortar that holds them together, which I'm actually not that great at. Some people can pour forth that stuff with ease, but I can't.

I have this feeling that if I keep doing this work--turning muddy history into tidy bricks--I'll get good at it.
I don't know that I want to get good at it.
Secretly, underneath the feelings of being bad, I feel it is the work that is dim, not me. That this is not how I want to use my brain.

I'm not sure if I just feel this way because this is such a long slog. Possibly this is exactly the sort of thing I need to be sharper.

I can't see clearly right now, but I feel a lot better, having said so.

Have you seen Sebastiao Salgado's photo essay, Serra Pelada Gold Mines, Brazil? It bugs me when people try to dismiss their pain by saying it's not as bad as X, because, you know, our pain is our own and it's worth paying attention to;
but I've gotta say, when I was writing about what a slog this is, I thought how lucky I am I'm not literally hauling mud uphill.

A few more, here: Fotonix.

Merry Christmas, Puppies!

2010-12-25T09:38:00.002-06:00

FOX TERRIER PUPPIES!!! IN A BOX [picnic basket?]!!!

I AM SURFEITED.

17" of Snow

2010-12-12T13:14:00.008-06:00

Between blizzards & bishops, I've written nothing on my book...

Walked/bused over to bink's house, during the BIG blizzard yesterday. Helped push a couple stuck cars along the way. On the street, people were (mostly) in the jolly "we're all in this together" mood. This neighbor was shoveling his car out with what I thought was a snowboard, but he told me is a snow-skate.

A couple hours later, the buses stopped running. So I stayed at bink's and helped shovel out.

__________________________
Home again now, about to cover my windows with plastic. Wind-chill is well below zero.