Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
My friend Ms. Massf sent this to me today, and I'm passing it on. If you want to grin and feel happy for a couple of minutes, click HERE.
This is a revision of a piece I wrote a little over a year ago. I had to take SOMETHING to my writing group last night, and since I haven't written anything new in quite a while (focusing on photography instead, right now), I found this:
The Delicacies
Standing in the kitchen, Lenore turned her back for all of three seconds, and Olivia stole one of the carrots off the kitchen counter and raced with it out to the yard, so happy. This made Lenore smile. She could never stay mad at the dog. Who could she be mad at, then? She felt determined to be mad at someone as she bit into her toast, licked the butter off her fingers, and scowled at her fate.
Then she took a disposable syringe out of the kitchen drawer where she kept her medications, and prepared to inject the mysterious mistletoe extract into her abdomen. She unwrapped the syringe, broke the glass top off the vial, stuck the needle into the vial, filled the syringe, pushed the needle into her skin, and pulled it out.
Then she swallowed the last of her toast, swigged down the final inch of dark French roast, and was, quite suddenly, surprised by the entirely unexpected arrival of The Delicacies. This was how she referred to her teeming battalion of waking dreams and imagined images, conversations, scenarios, surprises, disasters, ecstasies and possibilities.
Another ridiculously melancholy mood swept over her. She wanted to live. She couldn't help it. A particular memory of green brought tears to her eyes. This was followed by ripples of piano riffs, then the patter of rain on the skylight as it washed away several decades’ worth of self-deceptions. Nobody is in here with me, she thought. I'm alone. Locked in the center of a massive rock that no one else can enter.
She put on her stylish lime green Capri pants that were woven with the texture of leaves, and rallied onward. Her eyelids felt heavy, her brain hurt from all the commotion. Birds thundered by outside the window.
Any minute another sorrow bomb could drop. Any second she might drown in memories that were only that, nothing more. Last night she had dreamed she was sitting in a straight back chair, flying along at an altitude of approximately fifteen feet above the Valencia Street shopping corridor. She had known where she was going and why. But then she woke up to find herself on the couch where she had fallen asleep, and where gravity had resumed its hold.
In the bathroom when she leaned over the sink to spit out her own special mix of cinnamon toothpaste and blood, felt that special, private pain that had been designed for her and her alone, and remembered that yesterday she'd forgotten to check her breasts for lumps – again.
After flossing, she recalled that she'd also forgotten to take her pills, pills that were meant to keep the wolf, with his cancer-ridden fangs, away from the door. Too many people had been making demands, causing her adrenalin to flash in gaudy neon. Clients and co-workers ached inside her neck. She'd had enough of them. Her arms itched. Her chin tingled with a bursting garden of tiny black angers. She wanted to sip a slug of whiskey out of a coral colored trumpet flower.
When Paul sauntered in through her third chakra, she ran a bath and immersed herself in a time when time had stopped again and again, when the woodcutter had held his ax suspended in midair as bees hovered half way between nectar and hive, and she —– Paul's princess, his queen — had held her breath on the verge of bliss.
How fine it felt to once again be falling under the spell of The Delicacies. One by one, the second, third and fourth in a stream of magnificently inappropriate ex-lovers arrived to cast their spells of temptation. Inflamed and on edge, she absorbed their familiar voices. She had no choice but to listen.
"Just receive me," said Paul, cupping both her cheeks in his hands. "That's right, Lenore. Open yourself up and let me in.” She crooned a rainy day ballad to the passing hours. As the cat commenced to snore on the fuzzy bath mat, she was overcome by a bevy of desires.
After her bath, she went back to the kitchen because she wanted to stuff her mouth with a dozen cinnamon donuts, one after another, washed down with gulps of ice-cold milk. She had to find a way to get back all that sugar, the thrill of carbs. Warm, just out of the oven, soft, melt-in-your-mouth donuts, infinitely wrong, infinitely desirable. She had to get something wild back, and she had to be mad at something.
Maybe she could be mad at Jack. Sweet Jack. Maybe that would work. Oh what a despicable thought! Thank goodness he wasn't at home. Thank goodness he had gone to see a man about a truck.
The joints in her ankles and knees were killing her. What did that signify? A side effect from one of the too many medications? Or another sign of her demise creeping far too close, too fast?
She spent whole nights listening to mysterious creakings and groans, or wandering lost and un-enrolled on college campuses, or running from nasty tidal waves. At the crack of every dawn she struggled to swim up from the murky depths, to get herself back into the light of morning coffee. Who knew what? Death and disease had the whole world stumped. Her breast continued to twinkle with migratory twinges and aches, unidentifiable prickles, stinging sensations that randomly came and went.
All the stress had jammed itself inside her feet today, and she had no idea what to do. Too many conflicting opinions on diagnosis and treatment equaled chaos. She wished for some kind of holiness to heal her misbehaving joints and bones, anointing them with the strength they'd once enjoyed, the strength of youth and innocence, heightened states of emotion and passion, no rust, no mold, no dead-end cul de sacs.
Once upon a time she'd had waist-length hair that flowed down and around her head like a waterfall made of Caribbean sand. Heads had turned when she walked down the street, her hair cascading to her hourglass waist. One admirer had called her "an incongruous collage of cool blue sky and rich, fertile soil." Hah! Those had been the days.
The orthotics she'd bought at the drugstore made her hobble and weep a stream of invisible tears that dribbled onto every uphill slant. Whenever she stretched her legs or raised her knees, she grew rapidly older and was forced to claw at the air in an attempt to drag herself back toward the adorable A-frame house where she now lived complete with a lawn, a sprinkling system, a dog and a man with whom she exchanged sweet little everyday kisses. On the top of their toilet tank sat one predictable philodendron. Last Sunday they had spent the afternoon buying a swirly green shower curtain. Their refrigerator contained homemade chicken soup. There were bananas and grapefruits and apples coloring up the kitchen counter with yellows and reds and greens. She hated her hair and the hideous new skirt that made her look as if she were on her way to an Iowa square dance.
A flock of inflammatory memories emerged from behind the arc of an imaginary rainbow. They flew in a great circle above her head and came to roost in the eaves of her discontent. A buzzing vibration nestled loudly into her forehead until finally it was muffled by the thump of heartbeats coming from her neighbors' houses.
She wanted to smack the face of the faceless enemy, but what would be the point of that? She turned on the tiny TV that sat on the kitchen counter, between the olive oil and the blender. This was where she lived too much of her life these days, here in a world that had once smelled of steamy sex but now reeked of Dr. Phil and Oprah.
What was she so anxiously pining for, really? A vacation? A poem by Emily Dickenson? No. She needed more, a hammer or a flood or an out-of-control fire. Or maybe she required a bolt of lightning that would blaze down to strike the mystical soul of her pineal gland. Maybe it was time to force the thundering birds to come tumbling out of the sky, falling every which way until they slammed into their final epiphanies.
Outside the window, red rain-wet leaves were plastered onto the asphalt. She stared at them until flashes of heat blazed into her peachiest, most luscious core, and some weird god smeared her mascara with a chatoyant blur.
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
“You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ...
Your entire life ...
Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart.
Not just your bank account, but your soul."
~ Anna Quindlen”
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
Well, the Writing Salon summer session is off to a start, albeit not as rousing a start as one would have hoped. I do indeed think that our economy sucks right now, to the point that it really is affecting business. If you have to choose between basic transportation and food versus fiction and poetry, many do indeed choose to spend their moola on meat, potatoes and gas.
In the last two sessions, my Round Robin class had 32 people signed up. So far this session, I have eight. It doesn't start until July 25, so I'm sure I'll get few more, but 32? Seems doubtful.
So I've been drowning my money worries and woes by focusing on taking pictures of the netting that painters use to drape over their scaffolding.
That's all, folks.
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver, from The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press, 2008.
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
What can I say? You already know everything: I'm sitting on my couch with the laptop on my lap, Olivia on my left, Reecy on my right, Jack at work, Will off somewhere in the world doing hoop diving, unsatisfactory hair, cold feet, work worries, money worries, computer worries, too long of a to-do list, solitary, peaceful despite the various worries, anticipating chocolate that awaits me in the cupboard, looking forward to my friend Toby's b-day party tonight (although I wish the invite hadn't said "dress up"), smog certification required at a test-only station, gums ache and need laser surgery, pleasurably immersed in photography, got my $600 "economic stimulus" bullshit check (wahoo) and have spent it on 17 things thus far, including a fancy new camera, Smart Car, aforementioned gum surgery, whiter teeth, new wardrobe, computer repairs, vacation, massage, Reiki, osteopathic treatments, etc.).
But life is good, really. I'm glad Jack is back from his five-day trip; it's nice to like the person you live with. Nice to miss them and to be happy when they return after being gone. This coming December, Jack and I will have been "together" for seven years. Wow. That's about how long, too, that Will has been living away from home. You blink your eye and....whoosh. Seven years gone by.
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
Jack picked the flower and put it in water. Later on, I took a picture of the stem (fourteen pics, actually). But that was a few days ago, and Jack has since flown the coop in order to attend his nephew's wedding yesterday on Martha's Vineyard.
I stayed here in the Animal House, working on re-doing Writing Salon flyers that I was unable to transfer to my new laptop. Software issues. What fun. Not only do I have to re-do them, I have to re-do them using a program called InDesign, which is the replacement for the Quark program that I can no longer use. I'm trying to give myself a crash course in InDesign. My instruction manual is: Trial & Error. That's why I'm still up at 12:30 a.m. working.
Jack will be back on Tuesday, thank goodness. We all miss him here at the Animal House.
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
Feast your eyes, again, upon the most incredible wonderful adorable pupsy wupsy in my Galaxy (in case you somehow missed this crucial bit of information in the last five thousands posts about her).
She is sharing the couch with me now. Actually, Reecy is too. Reecy's on my right, Olivia's on my let. They are both asleep, and there is not all that much room left for me here. I'm feeling kind of squished. I can't stretch my legs out. Olivia can stretch HERS out, though. It's half the couch for Livvy B., a third for Reecy, and a sliver for me.
What else? I recolored my gray roots today and got more black'ish purple dye on my white cotton sauna robe and a good towel.
I ate a stick of celery with chicken salad in it.
I ate some chocolate with cinnamon and salt and nuts and various Aztec-y spices. It was amazing.
I didn't clean any room in the house, even though every room is a huge dirty mess.
I worked all day and then took Olivia for a long long walk up Elsie Street from Cortland to Coso and back, taking photos as I went.
Now I'm watching Kate and John Plus Eight, a reality show that I am obsessed with. A set of twins and a set of septuplets. The twins are six now and the seps are four. Five girls, three boys.
Later I'll go to bed and read a few more pages of Tender to the Bone, which is a delightful memoir, perfect for a cookbook-loving, food-memoir admiring, non-cooking woman like me.
That's about it. Jack is upstairs working at his desk. Will is diving through hoops in Barcelona. That's pretty much it. I leave all the socializing to my friends, with whom I almost never socialize. I just read about all their dinners and lunches out with each other, and about the plays and poetry readings and dance performances that they attend together, in chatty friendly groups. And the museum exhibits and weddings that they go to. And the baseball games they go to. And the outings to Napa restaurants and wineries.
Oh look! Kate is taking the girls (the twins plus three of the seps) on an outing to the grocery store! Now they are making animal cookies!
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
The most incredible wonderful adorable pupsy wupsy in my Galaxy (in case you somehow missed this crucial bit of information).
She is sharing the couch with me now. Actually, Reecy is too. Reecy's on my right, Olivia's on my let. They are both asleep, and there is not all that much room left for me here. I'm feeling kind of squished. I can't stretch my legs out. Olivia can stretch HER legs out, though.
It's half the couch for Livvy B., a third for Reecy, and a sliver for me.
What else? I recolored my roots today and got more black'ish purple dye on my white cotton sauna robe.
I ate a stick of celery with chicken salad in it.
I ate some chocolate with cinnamon and salt and nuts and various Aztec-y spices. It was amazing.
I didn't clean any room in the house, even though every room is a huge dirty mess.
Instead I worked and then took Olivia for a long long walk up Elsie Street from Cortland to Coso and back, taking photos as we went.
Now I'm watching Kate and John Plus Eight, a reality show that I am obsessed with. A set of twins and a set of septuplets. The twins are six now and the seps are four. Five girls, three boys.
Later I'll go to bed and read a few more pages of Tender to the Bone, which is a delightful memoir, perfect for a cookbook-loving, food memoir admiring non-cooking woman like me.
That's about it. Jack is upstairs working at his desk. Will is performing in Barcelona. That's pretty much my life. I leave all the socializing to my friends, with whom I almost never socialize. I just read about all their dinners and lunches out with each other, and about the plays and poetry readings and dance performances that they attend together, in chatty friendly groups. And the museum exhibits and weddings that they go to. And the baseball games they go to. And the outings to Napa restaurants and wineries.
Oh look! Kate is taking the girls (the twins plus three of the seps) on an outing to the grocery store! Now they are making animal cookies!
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
This time on Murray Street between Holly Park Circle and Crescent. Succulents are so photogenic!
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
This is the path that Olivia and I walk on as we are returning home from the dog park at the bottom of St. Mary's rec center. To the left is the rec field where kids were playing soccer yesterday.
This path always makes me feel like I'm out in the country, even though, off in the not-too-far distance to the right, is the freeway. . . complete with whir buzz of traffic. But that's okay. The city is the city. You find idyllic slices of nature wedged between soccer fields and freeways, and you rejoice.
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye
A couple of days ago Olivia and I ventured out of Bernal and over to Noe Valley. We walked up and down Church, Chattanooga and Vicksburg streets, between 24th and 20th.
At one point Olivia tugged me over to this man who was sitting by himself on the curb where the streetcar tracks curved toward Church from 20th and Chattanooga (or Vicksburg, I forget...). She doesn't ever tug me toward just anybody; some people are clearly more appealing to her than others, as was this guy.
He had a kind demeanor, which made me brave enough to ask if I could take his picture. I'm trying to branch out to including human beings in my photos, and it's not at all easy to do. In addition to having to ask people's permission, I'm finding that the limitations of my cheesy little point and shoot camera are more obvious when I attempt such shots. Why that is, I have no idea because I understand next to nothing about the technical stuff.
It's probably a good thing, though, that the "portraits" look like nothing more than snapshots, because it'll push me to get a DSLR camera. I'm in danger of becoming stuck in a technically stagnant rut with the point and shoot, afraid to venture beyond f2.8, auto, landscape or macro settings. How dumb is THAT?
I'm writing this as I eat granola from Three Stone Hearth, with raw milk from Claravale Dairy. So yummy and healthy.
Now it's time to trek upstairs to the home office to begin the gargantuan task of dealing with the mountains of backlogged paperwork, bills, accounting, Writing Salon registrations, Writing Salon marketing and PR chores, and probably even moldy food on my out-of-control desk (as well as the entire area around my desk, within a six-foot radius).
The only reason I'm finally going UP THERE to No Woman's Land is that Jack's accountant is coming over this afternoon to work for him for a few hours, in said shared office, and it would be too embarrassing to let her see my half of the space. Ta ta!
Thank you
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