A Book I Can't Put Down

"Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading,

his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind."

-- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

Octopus bathtub toy with its nose in a good book 1-31-14

"It is what you read when you don't have to 

that determines what you will be

when you can't help it."

-- Oscar Wilde

"You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read.

People that like to read are always a little fucked up."

-- Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

So, yesterday.

I was in my workroom, trying to think up a good thing for today's blog post. I was picking stuff up, and then putting it back down. Ideas weren't flowing. I was stymied.

Until I picked up this book that has been lying on my over-cluttered drafting table for a few weeks.

The book was a Christmas gift from my very good friend, Jill. It's something she read, loved, and felt compelled to pass along to me. When someone recommends a book they loved, that's one thing. But when someone bothers to buy you your very own copy of a book they loved, and then writes a personal and meaningful inscription inside the book's front cover, and then mails the book to you ... well, that's a whole other kettle of fish. 

Anyway, back to being stymied.

I opened the book and read the first section. It made me laugh. It was about a woman who dug up a letter that her 10-year-old self had written to her 25-year-old self, and there was a lot of very funny stuff about dogs.

I still didn't have an idea for today's blog, so I said to myself, "Self, you may read one more section of this book, and then you must buckle down and get back to business."

So I read another section, this time about a borderline-retarded dog. Just to clarify ... I am not a dog lover. I don't even like dogs all that much. I don't have one and don't plan to ever have one. But this "simple dog" reminded me so much of my mother's dog, that I couldn't stop reading, or laughing.

My knees were getting sore from standing and reading, and my chair had stuff stacked on it, so I took the book downstairs and sat in the recliner with an ice pack on my knees. And I said to myself, "Self, you must ice your knees, and instead of watching TV, you may read some more of this book, and then -- seriously this time -- you must buckle down and get back to business."

An hour later, the ice pack had gone all floppy and melted to room temperature, and I was still reading.

There was this section about depression that was so funny and so fucking honest and made so damn much sense. I have suffered with depression, which means I have read about depression, but this was the first time anyone had really described exactly what it feels like to have depression. It was brilliant. It wasn't getting my blog post done for me, but it was fucking brilliant.

It was almost time to pick up my child from school, so I said to myself "Self, you may read until it's time to pick up your child from school, and then you must stop this silly nonsense, buckle down and get back to business."

I know shit is getting real when I start talking to myself in italics.

Somehow I extracted the book from my hands and picked up my child from school. When I got home, I dove right back into the recliner, and back into the book. I didn't even take off my hat. And I said to myself, "Self, hats are a good thing. Maybe you could blog about hats. You may read one more section of this book, and then you must buckle down and get back to business. And hats."

And then I just binge-read until I got to the end of the book. All 369 pages. I couldn't stop myself. 

The book has pictures, so it moved along more quickly than a non-illustrated 369-page book. But still.

When I finally put the book down, after I had ingested all its contents, I felt satisfied and full and and happy and sad and known, and, well, good.

And I said to myself "Self, that certainly was a good book. But now you must buckle down and ..."

Wait just a gosh darn minute.

Sometimes I just need to shutthefuckup.

(If you want to read the book that did this to me, it's called Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. If, while reading it, you neglect your responsibilities and your family, it's Jill's fault.)

Freezing A Moment In Time

"There are no moments you have frozen in amber.

It's moving, it's changing,

so appreciate what's good about right now

and be ready for what's next."

-- Michael J. Fox

Self portrait 1-30-14

"That's why we seize the moment

try to freeze it and own it,

squeeze it and hold it

Cause we consider these minutes golden

And maybe they'll admit it when we're gone

Just let our spirits live on ..."

-- Eminem, "Sing For The Moment"

"Gradually she shaped into a more fluid, resilient woman,

coming to terms with the felt capacity to

fiercely defend herself when necessary,

and to surrender in quiet ecstasy."

-- Peter A Levine

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Welcome to the first ever One Good Thing Science Day!

For today's picture I did that thing where you fling a whole cup of boiling water into very cold air and watch the water turn instantly into vapor and ice.

Science fact 1:  If you toss cold water into the air, you will get wet.

Science fact 2:  If you toss any temperature water into the average air of a mild winter, you will also get wet. 

Science fact 3:  When the air is painfully cold, and the water is boiling-ly hot, you get magic.

I mean, it's science, but ... OK, look. If you don't believe me, next time the temperature dips below zero, instead of bitching about how goddamn cold it is and how if these kids don't go back to school soon you'll flip your shit, and just boil a kettle full of hot water. 

But don't make another fucking pot of pansy-ass tea with it. 

Instead, say "Yay, it's cold! Cold enough to do the hot water thing!" Then take your kids (or someone else's, or just yourself) out in the backyard or the parking lot or wherever. Pour some of the boiling water into a cup and fling it up as high as you can over your head, and watch the magic -- er, I mean the science -- happen. It's cool as fuck, and the kids will think you're also cool as fuck because you just let them throw boiling water into the air over right their heads, and nobody got burned because the water froze instantly, vaporized right before their eyes, before whooshing away on the winter wind. Kids love that shit.

Then, when you look back on the cold harsh winter of 2014, you won't just remember how long and cold and boring it was. You'll remember how it was cold enough just long enough for you to do that thing. 

And your kids (or someone else's) won't remember how much you bitched about the cold and the school cancellations. They'll remember that moment when you made magic happen with a cup of boiling water, and how you weren't a bitch at all.

You were cool as fuck.

Working Out My Kinks

"O time, thou must untangle this, not I.

It is too hard a knot for me t'untie."

-- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

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"I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand.

When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away."

-- Hedy Lamarr

dis-en-tan-gle

:   to separate (things that are twisted together or caught on one another)
:   to remove the twists or knots in (something) 

... particularly the twists and knots in my shoulders and back after an hour in the strong, soft, warm, oiled, magical hands of my massage therapist, Maria.

Somehow, she can even untie the kinks in my brain and in my guts. How she gets there through my feet is a mystery I'll never understand.

I don't ask questions. I just lay there and let the untangling happen.

In my wildest fantasies, I'd be keeping a massage-a-day blog.

A Surprise Visit From My Very Own Kid

"Well, hello there, Mother," Sebastian said in a voice like silk.

"Surprised to see me?"

-- Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls

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"There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved."

-- Charles Morgan

"Vernon! My dear, what a delightful surprise!"

-- Georgette Heyer, Frederica

Typically, when someone shows up on my doorstep uninvited and unannounced, my first thought is "Aw, shit."

But when it's my own kid, home for a couple of days because his college canceled classes at the last minute due to dangerously frigid temperatures, my first thought is "Aw-some!"

He didn't stay long, but while he was here I got to mother him a little bit. I cooked meatballs and spaghetti and we all sat down and ate dinner together. I cut his hair. I popped him popcorn (real popcorn on the stove). I rode along in my PJs for a late night drive through run. We went to the mall and didn't buy anything.

No big whoop. Just little stuff. 

Still, it was a really good surprise.

He could have done anything he wanted with his days off. He didn't even have to tell us he had days off. And whatever he chose to do, I would have been fine with it. He's a big kid living in a big kid world, doing big kid things.

But I have to admit, it did feel mighty good that, given the choice, he chose to come here. 

Antidepressants

"Be brave; be strong; take your pills."

-- Andrew Solomon,

  The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Self portrait, acrylic on wood panel 1-27-14

Playing In My Room

"Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe,

and the rest of the world is missing out."

-- Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

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"Some of my best childhood memories are of being alone in my room --

writing, reading books, listening to the Beatles, living in my mind.

It's always busy in there."

-- Renee Zellweger

"This is the real secret of life --

to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.

And instead of calling it work, realize it is play."

-- Alan Wilson Watts

I have a room where I go to to get lost, regularly, willingly and blissfully.

It's a room all my own, filled with my all my own art stuff, and costumes, and toys, and tools and supplies.

It's an extra upstairs bedroom that could have easily become a neglected "office," or a pretentious, little-used guest room for guests who rarely, if ever, stay the night. Instead, I have a big work surface in there where I can stand and work (if you can call it work). It can be as messy or as neat as I want it to be. It's OK to get paint on the table, and wood shavings on the floor. I'm allowed to shove push pins into the drywall, and stick stuff up with tape, and use spray paint, and take off all my clothes, and nobody tells me that I can't.

As with all of my previous 365 days projects, there are days when I go into my room with a specific idea, a strong intention, and I make it happen.

Other days, I  go in with an idea but something happens to it. It changes. It morphs. As I play and explore, it becomes another thing entirely. An unexpected thing. A better thing than I could have thought of.

Oftener, I go into my room without an agenda, with no idea or even the hint of one. My head is empty, but that's OK because my room is full. It is a space flooded with natural light, and also possibilities. All I have to do is trust it and go in there and begin. Pick up something. Start smushing this and that together. See what happens. Try something. Then try something else. Rip it up, then take pictures of it.

My room is a place where my grownup self goes to hang out with my inner child. There are no rules or age distinctions in there. Sometimes the grownup takes the lead. Sometimes the child runs wild. Very often it's a mashup of them both. Together they commune, and create. They explore. They discover. They laugh. They cry. They struggle. They fight.

But mostly they just play.

If you need us, we'll be in our room.

Shelter From The Storm

"Everybody needs a safe place."

-- Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

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"Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh, yeah, I'm gonna fade away."

-- The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"

As I sit here safe and sound in my cozy home sipping a hot cup of fresh-brewed cinnamon Starbucks coffee, it's easy to forget that there's a winter storm raging just outside my window. But every now and then the howl of a fierce, frigid wind reminds me that the weather outside is very, very frightful.

It is fascinating to watch the wind. (Yes, Christina Georgina Rossetti, I can see it.) I can actually see the drifts forming as the wind swirls and loops and whorls snow across open the spaces, then bucks and changes direction just before crashing against any solid thing standing in its way. 

It's elegant and graceful, in a way -- like a dance -- beautiful from the vantage point of my sturdy, warm, solid house, underscored by the accompaniment of the furnace's steady, comforting hum.

It may sound trite or obvious to say that shelter is a good thing. Most of the time, it's one of the good things that I guess I take for granted. 

Rather than complain about being antsy, or bored, or house-bound, today I am grateful that I have a house to be bound and bored and antsy in. I don't have to tell you that not everybody is so lucky. 

If you are safe and warm today, and if you have the means, think about donating blankets or coats or food or time or money to your local homeless shelter or soup kitchen.  Don't know of one? There's a really good one in my area called Victory Kitchen that accepts monetary donations online. Click on the link and you can help someone without even leaving the comfort of your safe, warm home.

And today, that's definitely a good thing.

Be safe and take care.

A Shoeshine

"By Golly! Dats Some Shine!"

-- Shinola advertisement

My  favorite shoes 1-24-14

"I am  standing like shoe polish on an overstocked shelf 

hoping that one day someone will pick me to make things better."

-- Buddy Wakefield, Living for a Living 

My favorite shoes with scuffs 1-24-14

"Dull shoes counteract polished resumes."

-- Kiwi shoe polish advertisement

The smell of shoe polish always reminds me of my Dad.

He used to pay me a quarter a pair to polish and shine all of his shoes.

It was a semi-lucrative gig for a little kid, since he had several pair of dress shoes -- wing tips were his favorite -- in black and cordovan. He kept them lined up on his closet floor with metal shoe trees locked down tight inside them like mechanical skeletons.

He kept the shoe polish on the top shelf of his closet in an oversized replica Kiwi shoe polish tin as big as a birthday cake. The tin originally came as a kit filled with little flat pucks of polish, brushes, daubers and soft, fuzzy shoe shine cloths. He just refilled it whenever he needed new supplies. (The tin was also right next to a not-so-well hidden stack of Playboy and Penthouse magazines that I'm pretty sure he didn't know I knew about. I knew.)

I'd set up shop by spreading out newspaper to protect the bedroom carpet. I'd unhinge the shoe trees, pull out each shoelace with a satisfying "snap," and line up the shoes according to color. He showed me how to rub the polish in careful little circles -- a thin film. Not too much. He taught me to let the polish fully dry before buffing it off. He showed me how to use the brush, demonstrating sharp, back and forth strokes.

Somehow, polishing my Dad's shoes made me feel close to him. There's something very personal and intimate (not in a weird way) about putting your hand into someone else's shoes and going over every inch of them to erase the scuffs and scratches they've collected while living in them. Those marks are like a mysterious map of who they are, and what they've done, and where they've been -- some of it with you, but much of it when you weren't anywhere around. And afterwards, when I'd see him heading off to work in his shiny shoes, I felt a sense of satisfaction and usefulness, like I'd done a good and necessary thing to help him on his way.

It felt good.

I don't pay my children to polish my shoes, not because I want to deny them the opportunity to feel useful, or close to me. I do it because I still really like doing it myself. 

Methodically working to transform shoes from dull and scuffed to gleaming like new is like giving yourself a fresh start -- like a re-charge to go and do it all some more. For me, a shoeshine fits into the same category as a haircut or a car wash or a pedicure or a crisply ironed shirt. Somehow, a fresh shoeshine just makes everything seem a little bit better. Also, it makes me feel taller.

The process is relaxing and meditative and I love the "before and after" satisfaction. Sometimes I do them a pair at a time, and sometimes I line them up and do them all.  

My favorite part, though, is twisting the little metal mechanism on the side of the shoe polish tin to pry up the lid. That familiar whiff of naphtha, turpentine, lanolin and Carnauba wax gets me every time. I prefer a waxy polish to a creamy one. And I learned from soldiers that to get that really shiny shine on the toes, you have to polish and buff the toes three times. Old laces look shabby on just-polished shoes. (Laces are cheap. Buy extras and keep them in your kit.) And use separate buffing brushes for browns, blacks and reds. Nothing screws up a cherry red finish like black polish residue trapped in the brush.

Come on, you know you have a pair or two that are looking pretty shabby.

Feel good. 

Shine your shoes.

Having The Whole Pool To Myself

"I don't want to be alone,

I want to be left alone."

-- Audrey Hepburn

Self portrait 1-23-14

"I ache to swim again. Walking's for mammals."

-- Shaun Hick, The Ghost and Its Shadow

During the non-tourist season, a hotel/resort near my home offers off-season swim passes to its swimming pool. From October to May, lots of people take advantage of the swim club membership, mostly older folks who like to float on pool noodles and socialize.

I go there to swim. I swim hard. I swim fast.

Sometimes it's tricky, because the old folks like to do this side-to-side walk thing, back and forth across the shallow end of the pool, right across my swim lane. It's like playing Frogger.

When there are a lot of them lolling around, it's like swimming through a tangled sea of arms and legs and pool noodles and underwater exercise floaty "weights." I feel like I'm in a scene out of that movie Cocoon. 

The worst is when actual hotel guests show up with their children, who have every right to use the pool, but who somehow feel like intruders. We regulars get pretty possessive. What are they doing here? Trespassing on our pool? Disrupting our routine?

I have the usual crowd trained pretty well by now. I swim at the same time every day, so they know when I'm coming and they know that when I show up I want the far lane, and I'm going to be there for a while, and I don't stop until I'm good and done, which is usually anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes.

Nobody talks to me, which is just how I like it. (Maybe it's the tattoos) But having other bodies in the pool is always a distraction. You just never know when somebody in the cross traffic is going to misjudge their timing and crash right into you.

But when I'm alone without interruptions, I can slip easily into my rhythm. The mechanical regularity of stroke, breathe, turn, becomes meditative, Zen-like. I lose track of time and an hour is gone before I know it. Sometimes I get the whole pool for a few minutes, and other times the Gods smile and the planets align just so, and I get it for my whole swim.

Which is exactly what happened yesterday.

It was one of those mornings where the air was just cool enough and the water just warm enough that a low lying mist floated just above the pool's undisturbed surface. The atmosphere felt mystical and magical -- like there was some kind of spell cast over the place. And there was nobody else, N-O-B-O-D-Y else in the pool but me for a whole hour. A couple of floaters came in eventually, but for that one hour, it was all mine.

I've been a swimmer my whole life. And I've pined and dreamed of having my own swimming pool since I was a little kid, so I can swim whenever I want to. I used to beg my Dad for a backyard pool so I didn't have to stand in my friends' driveways looking longingly at theirs, just waiting to be invited in -- so I didn't have to ride my bike 12 miles to the Y and back.

My dad always shot me down with the whole "Yeah? Well who's gonna clean it?" defense.

Now I get different arguments. But still ...

We have neighbors with pools that I can see over their fences. Perfectly lovely swimming pools that sit unused 90 percent of the summer. What a waste. And they never invite us in. I feel like that little kid in the driveway again.

So I do the best I can with what's available, which means I swim from October to May, in a shared pool, dodging noodles. Which is fine. It works out.

But every once in a while I get a taste of what it would be like to have a private pool all my own. And just like I always knew it would, it tastes really good.

Acupuncture

"Pins and needles, needles and pins.

A happy man is a man that grins."

-- Ralph Kramden, The Honeymooners

Hard boiled egg with pins 1-22-14

"There must be something to acupuncture --

you never see any sick porcupines."

-- Bob Goddard

Don't give me that "I don't like needles" crap.

Acupuncture is good for you.

It is my firm, non-professional-personal-experience-based opinion that there's pretty much nothing that acupuncture can't help. I'm not saying it can "fix" everything, but it can definitely make it easier to handle just about anything life throws at you. 

I'm not saying acupuncture can make your mother in law go away, but it can ease the migraine and fury she causes you. And a whole bunch of other stuff.

Any "stress," whether it's physical, emotional, psychological, or a combo of all three, is a good target for the acupuncturist's needles. I'm not going to try and list all of acupuncture's amazing benefits here, because you can just Google it and find everything you need to know. For starters, and a list of stuff acupuncture can help treat, click here: stuff acupuncture can help treat. For more information and to find a certified acupuncturist near you, click here: National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine

I'm living proof that this shit works. 

Suffice it to say, there have been days when I've lurched like Quasimodo into my acupuncturist's treatment room on the brink of physical disaster and emotional collapse, and strolled back out smiling blithely and wondering what the fuck everybody was so stressed about.

Like yesterday. My shoulder muscles were all fucked up because I've been working out too hard. Today, they're as supple as taffy.

And the needles are not scary. They're super, super tiny. Like, hair thin. And if you close your eyes and just listen to the music, you won't even see them. And they don't hurt. They actually feel amazingly good. If there is any pain, it only lasts for a second, and then all that tension and pent up stress and discomfort releases blissfully. 

So stop being such a big candy-ass baby. Stop whining about your problems and try it already.

Aaah-cupuncture.

Say "chi."  

The View Through A Kaleidoscope

"Dreams dress us carefully in the colors of power and faith."

-- Aberjhani, I Made My Boy Out of Poetry

Beach glass kaleidoscope 1-21-14

"Gratitude doesn't change the scenery.

It merely washes clean the glass you look through

so you can clearly see the colors."

-- Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway

Some people make their own cookies.

Some people make their own jam.

I make my own kaleidoscopes.

I taught myself how during my 2012 "No Day Without Art" 365 days challenge, and I never get tired of the million little miracles I can make from one cardboard tube and handful of ordinary junk held up to the light.

The "junk" in today's kaleidoscope is a few shards of beach glass. My son Leo loves collecting beach glass on the Lake Erie shore near our house. He'll stroll the shoreline for hours, in all kinds of weather, head bent down, scanning for bits of blue, green, white, brown, amber. He keeps in in Mason jars.

He shared a little of it with me for this kaleidoscope. It's the first time I used beach glass, and I loved the results. It refracted the light beautifully, softly, and it's irregular shapes and sizes made some lovely and surprising designs.

The beauty of a homemade kaleidoscope, like this one, is that no two looks through the eye-hole are ever the same. The glass, or beads, or marbles, or whatever I use, tumble in random, endlessly unrepeatable patterns. 

I won't bore you with a million of them here. But I will share a couple more:

Beach glass kaleidoscope (2) 1-21-14

Sometimes you see snowflakes.

Beach glass kaleidoscope (3) 1-21-14

Sometimes you see flowers.

Sometimes, like in the image at the top of the page, you see a stained glass cathedral window. 

Since I have all of my kaleidoscope-making stuff out, I think I'll make one or two more today. Sometimes I give them as gifts. Sometimes I keep them for myself. This one I'll keep, though. Leo worked too hard to collect the glass, so I can't just give it away. 

When the view from down here gets grim or depressing or sad or hateful or dark, a peek through one of my kaleidoscopes has the power to change how I see things, and then change it again, and again, and again, and again. 

An argument can't do that. Politics can't do that. A pill can't do that. A weapon can't do that. A war can't do that. Advertising can't do that. Religion can't do that. 

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., who said and did a lot of good things and who we celebrated yesterday,

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness;

only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate;

only love can do that."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A kaleidoscope is a good way see the light. And the colors. 

A Good Night's Rest

"Rest and be thankful."

-- William Wordsworth

Self portrait 1-20-14

"Everything needs a break."

-- Toby Beta, Master of Stupidity

Homemade Chicken Soup

"You can't eat this soup standing up, your knees buckle."

-- Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, "The Soup Nazi"

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"There's a sorrow and pain in everyone's life,

but every now and then there's a ray of light

that melts the loneliness in your heart and brings comfort

like hot soup and a soft bed."

-- Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

"Anyone who tells a lie has not pure heart,

and cannot make good soup."

-- Ludwig van Beethoven

When I was a kid, chicken soup came from a can. It was mostly mushy noodles and salty broth, with a couple of tiny bits of carrot and celery (I think) and maybe one grayish chunk of chickenish meat about the size and texture of a pencil eraser.

At our house, homemade soup happened once in a blue moon, usually made by my Dad, and was either bean (if there was a leftover ham bone from Easter) or turkey (if there was leftover turkey from Thanksgiving). His soup usually involved those foil-wrapped bouillon cubes, the first four ingredients of which are typically: salt, sugar, MSG and some kind of bad-for-you hydrogenated oil. Kind of takes the comfort out of comfort food, doesn't it?

My grandma, however, made delicious soup, with beef, and barley and colorful vegetables. She taught me how by letting me watch her do it. There was no written recipe, but her basic rules, I later learned, carried over to just about any soup I wanted to try:

1. Keep it simple. 
2. Start with good meat and homemade stock.
3. Let it cook long and slow so the flavors develop. 
4. Make extra and freeze it for those days when you don't have time to cook supper.

I make soup a lot. And I'm not too humble to admit that my soups are very delicious. I don't use recipes very often. Mostly I just wing it depending on what I have on hand. On a blustery day, a pot of soup bubbling away on the stove makes the whole house smell and feel warm and cozy. Add a loaf of crusty bread, a leafy green salad, and a bottle of wine, and, well, they don't call it comfort food for nothing.

"In January it's so nice

While slipping on the sliding ice

To sip hot chicken soup with rice

Sipping once, sipping twice

Sipping chicken soup with rice."

-- Carole King, "Chicken Soup With Rice"

A Double Feature

"People who LIKE movies have a favorite.

People who LOVE movies couldn't possibly choose."

--Nicole Yatsonsky

Looks Can Kill 3 movie poster with Lego Medusa and Lego clown, 1-18-14

"A good movie can take you out of your dull funk

and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theater ..."

-- Pauline Kael, For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies

Give them pleasure. 

The same pleasure they have 

when they wake up from a nightmare."

-- Alfred Hitchcock

If one movie is a good thing, two movies is one day is an even better thing.

And two movies wrapped around dinner at Chipotle is like a double-wrapped good thing burrito.

New fangled movie theaters don't do old fashioned double features anymore. So we had to create our own from the multiple offerings at our local cineplex.

We found two movies spaced just far enough apart to allow for a quick dinner in between films.

It felt super indulgent and extravagant, because it was. We didn't have to choose which movie we wanted to see. We just saw them both.

I was excited about it all week. It was our way of celebrating the end of Leo's final exams, and the perfect start to a long weekend. 

It was also the perfect excuse to create this pretend movie poster for a movie that doesn't exist, but which I hope someone will make some day so that I can go see it. 

Twice. 

Cuz I bet it's really good.

Saving A Life

"The measure of a life, after all,

is not its duration,

but its donation."

-- Corrie Ten Boom

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"You're somebody's type."

-- Blood drive slogan

Did you know that every two seconds, someone needs a blood transfusion?

Or that 5 million people in the United States need blood every year?

Or that one pint of blood can save up to three lives?

Or that within about 12 hours of donating, your blood is already helping somebody?

Less than 38 percent of the population is eligible to give blood.

Blood can only come from volunteer donors. It cannot be manufactured.

The American Red Cross holds more than 200,000 blood drives every year.

You can donate blood every 56 days.

So why don't you? I did.

It's an easy thing to do. It makes a difference. And even if you don't do anything else all day, at least maybe you saved a life, or three.

It costs you nothing but a little of your time.

Plus, you get cookies and juice.

Just go to redcrossblood.org, and enter your Zip code to find a blood drive near you.

Blood is meant to circulate, so pass it around.

Do a good thing. Give blood.

A True Friend

"The more you try to crush your true nature,

the more it will control you.

Be what you are.

No one who really loves you will stop."

-- Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

For Jill, on her birthday 1-16-14

"To be one's self, and unafraid whether right or wrong,

is more admirable than the easy cowardice

of surrender to conformity."

-- Irving Wallace

For the past couple of years, on her birthday, I have created special photographs for my friend Jill.

It's my way of saying, in the most personal and expressive way I can think of, how much I love this quirky, kinky, hilarious, courageous, intelligent, wry, adventurous, multi-talented, traveling, against-the-grain woman.

Jill came into my life 10 years ago, and sometimes I wonder how I survived all those years before we met. You know how there are some people who just "get" you? Who seem cut from the same cloth? Cast from the same die? Who don't make you feel stupid for crying at the end of Black Swan, but who cry along with you, and then sit with you in a coffee shop for hours afterwards talking about why it was so goddamned beautiful? Who will eat her weight in your homemade rhubarb crumble? Who'll travel all the way to Australia and buy you a Devil Bride Doll ("with Jellybeans!") in a creepy deserted candy shop because it made her think of you, and because she figures you might be able to "use her for some kind of art."

Which is exactly what I did. I used the doll Jill sent me (stripped of her sassy pink capris, but still wearing her red t-strap pumps), along with one I found at the thrift store (which came naked, except for the pink fetish boots), as well as a bunch of naked Barbies, to illustrate our friendship as I see it. (Note: Jill and I don't actually look like these dolls. I'm being figurative here, not literal. It's an illustration. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Jill has those boots.)

Anyway, Jill isn't like anybody else I know, which is an enormous part of her charm. She inspires me to be as fully and completely and unapologetically myself as I can possibly dare to be, because that's exactly what she does. And I wouldn't have her any other way.

Now maybe you can see why a Hallmark birthday card would be way too ordinary.

All I can say is, knowing Jill is not just a good thing, it's one of the best things. And if you're lucky enough to have a friend like her, then you're lucky enough.

How come whenever it's her birthday, I feel like I'm the one who got the gift?

Kelly

"A hatchling, that is what you are.

A hatchling struggling into the world ...

Do not worry about these things.

Find peace in where and what you are."

-- Christopher Paolini, Eragon

Cracked Barbie head with a raw egg 1-15-14

"I am not a dime a dozen!"

-- Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Barbies in an egg carton 1-15-14

Ever notice how the girl's dream job in every romantic comedy is to own a bakery?

Every pretty little girl with an Easy Bake Oven wants and to grow up and bake exquisite pastries all day.

I hate to break it to you, but bakery dreams are a dime a dozen. Achieving them is the fictional stuff of movies. Nobody ever really gets to do that for a living, do they? Only the really lucky ones, right?

Wrong.

My good friend Kelly gets to. And it has nothing to do with luck. She's baked her ass off to get where she's going. She's chased her dream from Ohio, to Rhode Island, back to Ohio, to Chicago, and back to Rhode Island again.

Kelly is a professionally trained pastry chef with the education, experience and moxie to actually be living the dream.

After plenty of years working for other people, in other people's bakeries, taking other people's shit and cleaning up other people's messes, Kelly is currently in the midst of a move from the shores of Lake Michigan to the Atlantic coast, where she'll finally be running her own place. She'll be calling the shots. She'll be the boss. She'll be the head bitch.

Except she isn't bossy or a bitch, at all. Which is what makes her so great.

She's beautifully lovely -- an adorably pretty, nerdy, non-blonde bookworm-in glasses who wears cute dresses as easily as she wears her tattoos (of cakes and cupcakes, of course!) She is the kind of friend who never forgets your birthday, always shows up with treats, and will stand in the Lego aisle in Target feeling up the Lego mini figures bags until she finds a Medusa, because she knows you really, really want the Medusa.

But she's also tough as hell. And brave. And courageous. And she doesn't take anybody's shit.

I've worked in a bakery with Kelly, and she makes it look effortless. But pursuing her dream hasn't been. She's made tough decisions and difficult sacrifices. She's had to leave behind jobs, and cities, and people and friends that she really loves.

As they say, you've gotta crack a few eggs to make meringues ... and cakes, and cookies, and pretty much all of the good things that Kelly makes.

So go get 'em, Kelly! Keep living your dream.

Break an egg! I mean a leg!

Really Weird Dreams

"Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer,

and each dreamer has his own folds to open

and knots to untie."

-- Siri Hustvedt, 

The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves

Self portrait 1-14-14

"... I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed

when I thought I was sitting this one out.

We never sit anything out.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.

The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over 

and let the beautiful stuff out."

-- Ray Bradbury

"Between living and dreaming there is a third thing.

Guess it."

-- Antonia Machado

Real Paper . Real Paint.

"In an age of infinite digital documentation,

paper was the last safe place for secrets."

-- Evan Angler, Swipe

Self portrait, spray paint and acrylic paint on newsprint, 1-13-14

"My life looked good on paper -- where, in fact,

almost all of it was being lived."

-- Martin Amis, Experience: A Memoir

"I am full of mistakes and imperfections 

and therefore I am real ..."

-- Shaun Hick, The Ghost And Its Shadow

Sometimes it feels really good to dust off the old-school art supplies.

Digital art has its place, but it can feel cold and unsatisfying.

Sometimes it feels revolutionary, even rebellious, to make something with my hands, something I can feel, something that gets up under my fingernails, smeared onto my clothes and dripped all over the floor. 

For this self portrait, I taped together a large stencil using real Scotch tape, then cut it out with a real X-acto knife. I laid out the stencil on a real sheet of poster-sized newsprint, held down with a spritz of real spray adhesive, then spray painted it graffiti-style with real spray paint. Then I painted over the spray painted image with real acrylics.

Then (gasp!) I had to wait for it to dry. 

I didn't sit at my desk all hunched over my laptop. I stood at my worktable, and knelt down on the garage floor. I wore my paint-spattered apron, shirt sleeves pushed up to my elbows. I breathed in fumes and made a mess.

My spirit relaxed and said "Aaah."

Instead of a digitized, computer-bound, deletable image, the result of my effort is a big, real, tactile, poster-sized self portrait that makes that same satisfying crinkly sound that my kindergarten paintings did. My scanner isn't big enough to accommodate it, so I did have to take a digital photograph so I could share it here. Alas. The digital part of art still got a piece of the action. But just a tiny piece.

It's also too big for the fridge, but I can hang it on my workroom wall if I want to. 

I think I just might. 

I think it'll look real good there.

Real. Good.

A Good Haircut

"I suppose at heart it was the haircut that did it;

that exploded the ordinary order of things 

and showed me the possibilities that had been there all along ..."

-- Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World

Self portrait 1-11-14

"You won't miss any of what's on the floor."

-- Heather Hoelzer

Getting It Right the Second Time

"Sometimes life gives you a second chance, or even two!

Not always, but sometimes.

It's what you do with those second chances that counts."

-- Dave Wilson, Masterly Batting: 100 Great Test Innings

Chocolate biscotti 1-11-14

"Although no one can go back and make a brand new start,

anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."

-- Carl Bard

Lemons into lemonade.
Caterpillars into butterflies.
Ugly ducklings into swans.

Brownies into biscotti.

I tried a recipe for gluten free brownies that the author promised would "melt-in-your-mouth" and be "swoon inducing."

I admit, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. Maybe I substituted a couple of ingredients because of what I had on hand. And maybe my batter was gloppy and thick, not "thin like cake batter" as the recipe said it would be. I just added another egg white and an extra big splash of 12-year-old Dewar's (the recipe called for bourbon vanilla, so this was one of my substitutions) until they were finally "smooth and glossy."

I baked them on the short end of the recommended time and they smelled delicious. But when we cut into them after supper, these brownies did not, in fact, melt in our mouths. The flavor was okay, but they were dense and chewy (not in a good dense chewy brownie kind of way), and they were pretty dry, which is never a good thing in a brownie.

We had to dunk them to choke them down.

And no one swooned.

Life is too short to eat dry brownies, so I put my thinking toque on, and decided to slice the brownies into strips, bake them again to really dry them out, and turn them into biscotti, which are supposed to be dry, and supposed to be dunked.

It worked.

They smelled even better during the second baking, and dunked in a hot mug of coffee (spiked with some more of that Dewar's) they actually did sort of melt in the mouth. Nobody swooned, but Sam ate two and said "these are really good." He doesn't typically heap on the praise, so the unexpected compliment did make me a little dizzy.

Eating gluten free makes it almost impossible to enjoy certain foods, especially baked goods that taste as good as the real thing. But these biscotti weren't just a good substitute. They were every bit as delicious and crunchy and chocolaty as the real deal. So good, in fact, that I plan to bake more of the "mistake" brownies (with walnuts, this time) just so I can turn them into biscotti, on purpose.

Biscotti means "twice baked." It makes me wonder if the Italian baker who first made them was just redeeming a mistake, like me, or maybe finding a frugal way to re-purpose a day-old something or other that had gone a little dry.

I may never know.

What I do know, however, is that a do-over is always a good thing.

And my signature Dark Chocolate Scotch Biscotti are even better.

A Starling in a Pear Tree

" ... even the smallest of the starlings' concerns grew in importance 

until it seemed equal to the worries of kings."

-- Christopher Paolini, Inheritance

Starling in flowering pear tree 1-10-14

"Man generally does not know enough about the cycle of life 

to mess with the biological diversity of a region without causing irreparable damage, 

the starling is an excellent case in point."

-- Nature Ali

When the cold  snap finally broke, Mother Nature released the starlings, and our front yard trees were full of them.

Starlings are not a good thing.

Starlings are nuisance birds. 

People hate starlings. 

There are entire how-to websites dedicated to eradicating as many starlings as possible. Starlings destroy crops, ruin vineyards, foul animal feed and spread diseases to livestock and other birds. They fly into jet engines and cause airplane crashes which kill people. They nest wherever they damn well please, they're noisy, they shit everywhere. They dominate other bird species. They are called "intelligent killers," the "avian menace," "ugly birds" and "vermin" whose population is growing unabated. 

There are hordes of starlings because some d-bag brought a few nesting pair to North America from Europe in 1880. 

Dipshit.

The experts say winter is the best time to rub out the starlings because that's when their populations are weakest, and it's before the spring nesting season when they git bizzy and multiply. Anything goes: traps, bb guns and other firearms, tainted bait, strangulation with your bare hands, biting off their heads. Whatever it takes to kill the little bastards.

I can think about cold-blooded murder another day. 

On this day, after a stretch of bitter cold that paralyzed the bare, frozen landscape and sent all the creatures running for cover, it was nice to see some signs of life, even if it was a bunch of goddamn starlings.  

I shot this guy with my camera from my son's bedroom window. According to the experts, I should have blown it's ugly head off. But I thought he looked pretty and peaceful perched in the flowering pear tree. So I didn't take his life. I took his picture. Which, I'll bet if you asked the starling, was a good thing.

Everybody is beautiful sometimes. 

Even goddamn fucking starlings.