binky's brain's birthday: Life is bad... Life Is an Adventure!

Today is bink's birthday: Happy Birthday bink!

It's a Celebration!

I sketched her (left) and Marz, out for birthday coffee yesterday.
(Those are Adidas stripes on Marz's shoulder, from the thrift-rescue T-shirt.)

bink sketched me too--below--with her eyes closed. Hilarious!
Not hilarious: bink's still too concussed to focus her eyes for long.
Marz added the words.

"And that's actually the point, right?! Life *IS* bad, and that's why we should buy Christmas trees for Godssake!"

I was telling them both what I'd already told Marz:
that I'd stopped to ask advice from a young woman sitting on the sidewalk with a sign:

"ADVICE
good advice $1
bad advice $2
Irrelevant advice free"

I'd biked past her and then actually (I guess I do say "actually" a lot) turned around to go ask for advice on what to say in my Best Bridesmaid Speech at bink's wedding.

(I've never been in a wedding, and not attended many either.
When I was young, I was an ardent Lesbian-Feminist, and my people didn't do weddings. The L-F line at the time was, marriage was a vestige of the oppression of the Patriarchy.
Also, it was illegal.) 

This young woman--who looked pretty rough--said,
"Life is bad. It's good to find someone to walk with."

I gave her five dollars.  When I'd told Marz, she'd said, "You cannot say that. Weddings are celebratory."

"What if I changed bad to hard: 'Life is hard...'?"

"No!" Marz said. "Wedding are celebratory, and ONLY celebratory."

Oh, yeah. Okay. I actually agree, when I think about it.
Saying grim stuff at a wedding would be like HouseMate not buying an Xmas tree because people are suffering, which had infuriated me!
People are always suffering--life is hard--
giving up your joy just adds to the overall sum of misery.

I wrote a different Best Bunny speech, a celebratory one, and pretty good, too, I think. (I'll share it here after the wedding on Oct 1.)

Be like this:

_______________

Close Your Eyes

Yesterday bink was feeling miserable about her brain-injured life, now heading into its SIXTH month...
She hasn't been making art, when normally she'd do every day, even if just a doodle.

"You are like a bat without its sonar," I said to her, "so you are lost in space. Maybe it'd help to draw an Eyes-Closed Sketchbook, to record the final weeks [months?] of your recovery?"

And this morning, she did!
She just sent me a couple quick sketches. She always renders things accurately--I like these differences:
"Mistakes" can make even breakfast bakery amusing.

 
A dog, even more so.

Linda Sue did a bunch of closed-eye drawings--some here--and they were so funny! I also told bink about Linda Sue's artist friend with Parkinson's, who'd made art by blowing paint through a straw and using his thumb.
_______________________

"You are on an adventure. Pay attention."

Marz has been feeling kinda like a bat without sonar too.
Her job at the bakery café is pleasant (spot the Adidas T-shirt, below?).

It's a clean, well lighted place; the owner is an amazing baker who studied in France--she does most of the baking herself--works all night.

Maybe best of all, there is no political mission.
It's just a place to enjoy a cider and a pain aux raisins in which the raisins float, moist but not sodden, in flaky pastry. That's a mission I can get behind: perfect pasty.  So good.

But what to do next? Marz is looking into things...
We talked for a couple hours about various options the other evening.

At the end of the night, I said,
"You are on an adventure. Pay attention."

"That's maybe the best thing you've ever said to me," she said.

Okay, then.
______________

Take an Imprint

It must be cider season. (Of course it's cider season.) I had one yesterday on my day off.
See, I look just like bink's drawing.

I'm liking Paul Collins's Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books very much--for a time, he works in a used bookstore.

I'm thinking about how I want to record my BOOK's Store Diary.
The other day I was ranting/analyzing the management here on the blog.
I don't want to do that. Writing it helps me make sense of the workplace, so that's fine, but that's not what I want to keep on record. (I deleted the rant.)

I want the diary to be more like a brass rubbing--- an imprint, not an analysis. (The old "show, don't tell.")

Like, instead of writing about how Big Boss is overly critical of Ass't Man, I can show you an image:

Last week, Ass't Man spent a couple hours making a rack for hanging up Hallowe'en costumes.  (We rarely have the right custom-built retail displays.)

He cleverly turned a bike's water-bottle cage upside down, to make a sturdy hook. He hung a wire rack on it, and mounted the contraption on the end of some shelves.
It's not perfect, but, hey! it works--and there's no other place to display costumes.

All Big Boss said was, "It's wobbly."

(I wonder if or how much Shaun Bythell edited his daily journals to publish Diary/Confessions of a Bookseller.
His third year of diaries––the wonderfully titled Remainders of the Day––comes out in the US in December.)
__________

Robinson Update

Mr. Smokey Robinson the Cat now comes inside and expects to be rubbed in the mornings, when I feed him and the other cats.

Robinson is smart: he trusts me to rub him, but he keeps himself in-between me and the door I prop open every morning, so I can't shut the door and trap him inside.

In fact, I wouldn't do that to him again--it was just the once, to reassure the owner. Since then, the owner is happy--he just needed to know (fair enough) that Robinson still sees this as his home. Which he does!