Sending Pages Out to Dry

2012 New project "Rowing Boat" artist book

2012-02-04T10:53:00.000-05:00

Rowing Boat

So far, I’ve “researched” rowing boats, discovering that the simple row boat is not the only option: I’ve got kayakes, canoes, dinghies, skulls and probably even more. Or not. I see that most of those just mentioned depend on paddling, not rowing.

At the beginning of every project, I am at my most literal. Abstractions grow later. In my sketch book, I’m teaching myself to draw rowboats, borrowing heavily from photographs and instructional drawing books. With the Art Institute’s library within easy reach, that’s a lot of instruction.

The writing component is trickier for me just now because I don’t have a text of any relevance handy, which means writing one. I trust this will emerge from the freewriting and “coincidences” bound to reach me as I ponder the project. In fact, I recently took a workshop in developing intuition through imagination (see www.lynnwilloughby.com) and one of the exercises involved describing, in great detail, a boat. This exercise alone could be a small artist book. It well may be.

When I’m not pondering the images or the text, I’m playing with the structure. If the boat is in movement, I want a book that moves. One of my favorite structures is a “meander” book, a folded sheet that yields 32 pages. There are pivotal pages that literally turn the book around. I’ve always wanted to focus movement on those pages.

Finally, there’s an idea/practice I’m committed to which involves using, as material, pages from the many many journals I’ve kept since 1967. I want to re-use, recycle and re-invent these pages before I die or have to throw them away because they won’t fit into my cell at the old folk’s home. They are, mercifully, no longer precious. They have become the sea upon which my little boat floats.

Here are some pages from my sketchbook.

Alicia

Group 7 “Rowing Boat”

I must be doing something right

2012-02-03T14:54:00.000-05:00

Up until this ferocious Winter Quarter, I would have said a successful class was one without friction. After this week's temper tantrum and foot stamping (all the way to Dean's office), essentially the fifth (counting my own) in less than a month, I am left grinning. With so much passion about, I must be doing something right. After all, the goal this time is for me to teach my students how to think. Given the wails of protest and confusion, I might as well be midwifing 25 individual births.

But yesterday, as I headed in with a "stomach," I was shocked to be greeted by several smiling faces and possibly sincere greetings. Had they all gotten laid the night before?

Thursday is Right Brain Day, which is always fun. We did an intuitive exercise and then, again to my surprise, they all wanted to discuss it as a group and share their writing and insights. Many had taken the descriptive part of the exercise to a different level by creating poems. The temper girl, her defenses rivaling the US Dept. of Defense, provided great insight into nearly everyone's readings. The students at this school have a remarkable ability to support each other. It's a bit of grace that seems to glow from within. No one seems to mention it or brag about it; I hope the larger administration never notices it, because it's truly lovely just the way it is.

Maybe temper flameouts, confrontations and anger is not a recipe for failure. Maybe, like pepper, it's a simple ingredient.

Let the Quarter Begin

2012-01-09T17:43:00.000-05:00

I'm teaching full-time this first quarter of 2012 (and then some.) A fullish load at the Art Institute, a monthly course at the online school and a weekly look-in at GPC. In between classes today, I interviewed an engineer for my foreign biz client. I have neglected my local biz client. Artomats are taking a hit as well. I know some people seem to thrive on schedules like this. In fact, if I'd worked this hard in my 20s or even 30s, it probably wouldn't seem like such a challenge now. Still, despite how slowly I seem to get on, the working day is a darn sight better nowadays without the anxiety of youth.

Am currently investigating the phrase "Rowing Boats." It's the title I selected for my contribution to Book Arts Object. First step is often to free-associate for what comes from within. I didn't do this to any degree yet; instead, I checked for the symbolism of the rowboat. Hard work on your own terms and in your own time. Such a coincedence!

Book plan: small meander (2x3'' or 4x5" closed)
character: the boat itself if I can draw one with a personality and its oars.
Setting(s): in the hands of its creator, afloat, struggling in waves, beached, rocks, turned over

This sounds like a children's picture book. Also sounds like the Sisyphus book and text. We'll see.
This morning a student used the phrase "Whatever floats your boat." Maybe something there.
I'll ponder this as I work out my skills in drawing a traveling boat.
More as it happens!

New Years Resolution: Book Art Object

2012-01-03T18:24:00.000-05:00

The key to a happy New Year's Eve Resolution is to get it over with the first week of the year.
One of my "resolutions" (aka suggestions) is to contribute to at least four book arts shows or events. Happily, the Book Arts Listserve keeps me supplied with Calls for Submissions. 2012's first is a kind of round robin of limited editions between members of the Book Art Object community. (BAO is a blog community in Australia. Click link for more info)

It seems a bit complicated but isn't. I don't think. The drill for this year's editioning was to pick a title from one of 100 short story titles in a book project by Sarah Bodman entitled An Exercise for Kurt Johannessen.

As instructed, I selected three titles and was assigned my second choice, "Rowing Boats."
Not sure why I chose this title, but I delight in word combinations and especially enjoy playing with verbs as nouns, etc. I haven't been near a rowboat in decades so I doubt my interpretation will be literal but who knows? It's good to have something to play with.

What Inhabits the Sky- the first edition

2011-12-30T12:39:00.002-05:00

What Inhabits the Sky

Birds, of course

And kites

The ambitious leaves of tall trees.

Ideas masquerading as loose feathers

The inevitable wishes of young girls

The prayers of a multitude

Stray bullets

Arrows on a mission

Chimney smoke

Jet stream flashing

Neon darkness

My eyes, my eyes

Your finger point north

Go home. Go home.

Lillie 's first Christmas

2011-12-25T17:11:00.000-05:00

Her first Christmas with me. A year ago she may well have been lost. From the records I was given by the Pet Shelter, she was picked up in January in Valdosta.
She's very happy now!

How's Your Semester Going?

2011-08-19T10:27:00.001-04:00

Oh, To Be a Teacher

You look at me and see an official nag

Someone whose job it is

To catch and lock away your every opinion

Evaluation

Your decisions

Your changes of heart and mind

You look at me and see an ear the size

Of a woman

But not a woman.

You see an outstretched hand

A demand

You see the mask of the crown.

You do not see me.

Heat Waves and Reasons to Love the South Anyway

2011-07-23T22:49:00.000-04:00

As hot as it gets, and of course, no one can complain this summer with any originality, there is something always cooling about the magnolia in bloom. Even on a sunny street, the scent of this large and stately blossom drops the temperatures for the length of a inhalation.

oh, well

2011-04-26T12:51:00.000-04:00

i refuse to apologize for not blogging. I'm sorry, I just can't.

What's interesting. The new (and curiously chubby) homeless guy who arrives at the Harris-Piedmont pocket park at dusk each evening when the light is just enough for him to unroll his bedding, sit cross legged and snug between his over-stuffed gym bags, pull out his journal and write.

I've been watching him at this for three weeks now. He's punctual and regular and doesn't show up just often enough to make me worry and often enough to make me want to wave hello.

He leaves each morning around 7:30.

Something about this one makes me feel as if i'm participating in a fictional event. I think it's his big butt.

Sisyphean Labor

2011-03-31T14:56:00.000-04:00

Sisyphean Labor

Those tasks we pick because they seem small

enough to hold in the palms of our hands

or even pocket are those that grow to full size

and must be hoisted shoulder high and carried.

Pick carefully and for love and old age.

Rather than a single rock, I discover

some days I maneuver several odd-shaped

stones bound together slip shod

and my day is a juggler’s holiday.

Ruining Work

2011-03-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

Lately, I take whole pieces of paste paper apart and put them back together, so they are both different and the same. They are done to, violated, experienced. Then I rather sadistically try to restore the piece’s beauty with red thread sutures, reminiscent of bloody little bows. The piece has been restored and lives with the beauty of the surgical survivor, the heart torn, the face undone. But alive.

I tore apart a nice paste painting done on a cheap drawing paper…a kind of happy accident, a kind of weed.

But once reconstructed (with difficulty, cheap paper is non-responsive) the individual pieces needed texture, perhaps a media gloss, wax, a spray of some sort. Pretty little sutures were not enough. In fact, they caused more pain.

I love leaving clues behind, evidence of a former wholeness. I think the cheap paper piece still longs to be its original whole and not the two columns originally, carelessly envisioned by me. I moved into my idea too fast and with the kind of assumption that always yields a typo, a misspelling. Here, a misstep and a waste of a potentially nice book cover.

Every piece of art must be breathed into being carefully and with complete presence. In this piece, because I never looked at its parts or what “deconstructing” it would mean, I destroyed. It’s sad…like bad plastic surgery.

Run it through the sewing machine?

Sisyphus Hill

2011-02-27T09:09:00.001-05:00

Pushing the rock up the hill is

not temporary,

It’s everyday. Some artists

think of the rock as the

sun rising, arcing and setting.

We push it with our labor —

those parts of life we push,

pull, carry, shoulder

day after day — those bits

are contained in the rock.

Night time or bust.

Lillie Day 10 - Crating Miss Lillie

2011-02-17T14:21:00.000-05:00

Gosh, I'm busy! With very little time to call my own (by my standards, anyway; readers with children and husbands need not respond) the fact that I've got a stack of papers to grade is the only thing motivating me to post today. Or is it?

Why no. No pun intended, but today marks the first day Lillie spent in her crate without either peeing, pooping or both.

She did both the first day, so I placed the spare "wall" thus shrinking the crate to her size.
She just peed on the second day, so I washed out the towel and replaced it with another and left her less water.
She just peed on the third day, but took down the wall, so I replaced the wall, washed out the towel and replaced it with another.
Then I did a laundry.
She just peed on the fourth, fifth, six and seventh days.
On the eighth day I took the trainer's advice and removed the towel.
On the ninth day she peed and pooped. I flushed the poop and washed the plastic tray with the new spray bottle of urine stain and odor remover.
On the 10th day I took the advice of my chiropractor, who welcomes dogs to her office and her life, and added a T-shirt of my own. Not a clean one.
On the afternoon of the 10th day I arrived home to a dry crate and a dry dog.

Tomorrow we try this again for a longer stint. Good luck, Lillie.

Lillie Day 3

2011-02-10T09:45:00.000-05:00

Ha!
There's been some discussion in my family (remaining sister and her in-laws, thank you Facebook) about a middle name for Lillie. I'm not a sentimental dog owner and think the middle name idea is pretty silly. To humanize a dog, or any pet, or even a child, is to ask for trouble and disappointment. From what I can see and have heard from real dog owners (and read from new copy of The Dog Whisperer by Paul Owens) dogs are dogs and people are people.

Lillie Marlene. Lillie Pulitzer. Lillie Beth. Lillie Vidalia. Lillie Croquet. Lillie Pad. Lillie Belle. No no no. Lillie No? Better not.

But then I wrote today's post title. Lillie Day. This has a reasoned beauty to it for a couple of reasons: I'm looking for a project blog, and as my days as a dog owner have just begun and I'll be learning something new on every one of those days, why not title the Lillie posts with their day?

Today, we walked for an hour, came home, she ate her new dog food with relish (I replaced the Red Bandana kibble with Wellness, which smells much better. Hope this will clear the air in here, so to speak.)

In The Dog Whisperer, Paul Owens says to work with the dog on each trick and behavior for a short time, about a minute or two. I've always wondered about this. It's very helpful. We're making good strides with "Sit" primarily because she already can sit, though she seems to do it on her own terms (classic terrier, I think). I'd like her to respond to "Down." when she jumps up on my leg and I'd like her to fetch the duck (her big toy) when I say "Fetch." Lots of other things but those first.

I realize I have a lot to learn about play, so this morning I played "soccer" with her favorite chew, a disgusting but obvious pleasure dome of a cow hoof. She got into the chase but didn't catch on to the hide and seek part. Too complicated?
Listen, random and faithful reader, any advice, input, etc., about living with a scrappy little terrier is welcome.

I Take a Leap

2011-02-08T14:48:00.000-05:00

Unlike my last huge commitment, today's leap of faith was not an impulse. I've been playing with the idea, checking the sites and running the numbers for several months now. I've also collected input from friends, all pet owners, some of whom played serious games of Devil's Advocate. Last Saturday, I cajoled DP, a woman with more strings than a harp, to help me not adopt a dog at the Atlanta Pet Rescue. She, currently down to one dog, four (or is it five?) cats, two horses, patient husband, live-in elderly parents, three grown kids, and 1.5 grandchildren, was to be curbed as well.

It was my intention to look the prospects over: small dogs who wouldn't get bored in a high-rise condo, could power walk up to five miles, spend at least six hours waiting for me to get home, and, oh, yes, provide blog fodder.

Fergie, Dixie and Laurel made the first cut. I liked Fergie's scrappy looks. She reminded me of a drummer I'd had a painful crush on about ten years ago. Dixie was sleek, mellow and seemed above the kennel fray, but she was, and is, a Jack Russell with possibly Cairn mix and would need a lot of exercise. Still, she could do five miles easily and was clearly a smart little thing. Laurel was a Yorkie mixed with something bigger and did not show to advantage. He needed a bit of filling up and some high-end grooming. Still, he seemed mellow as well, would love a small condo and behaved very well. But he felt bony, and I was pretty sure he'd never make two miles, much less five, or even the three I actually walk.

After chatting with the counselors, I eliminated Fergie. He's got serious attachment issues. After ten minutes with Dixie, I didn't like the fragility of Laurel. But I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to a terrier.
Oye. Go to lunch. The one thing I didn't want to do was act impulsively, so I was pretty glad I left the shelter empty-handed.

Only I went to bed thinking of Dixie. And woke up to a call from DP. "I miss her!" So did I.
If she's meant to be my dog, she'll be at the rescue on Tuesday.

I could barely start the quiz I still have to write for tomorrow's "Big, Fat Quiz" at AID. I could barely read the websites for the prospective client who called yesterday. Yes! I'll take that job. I have another mouth to feed!

Here I sit with what must be the perfect dog for me. Dixie, or Lily, or Portia (not sure) has been home for an hour, has had some water, turned her nose up at the dry food (tuff titties, kid), chewed her cow rind, made friends with her new stuffed duck and is now lying comfortably at my feet.

Someone must miss her very much. This is a nice, well-trained, solid little dog. As DP said, she is my gift.

Dangerous Book Episode 46

2011-01-14T16:28:00.001-05:00

June 5 - Veronica’s funeral. Sunny and too warm to be standing in a cemetery

Peter and Lura very much the couple in matching black suits, guided carefully by the Mr. Stripland (“Thanks for Stopping By!”) and for a bit I felt as if I were at a big party or reception. When I feel unable to cope socially, I hang out near the bar and talk to the bartenders. My options today were to link arms with Professor Sargent, who hugged the fringe and showed more interest in Snowe plot where am amazing row of peonies persisted.

Kept my eyes peeled for Veronica’s “effective legislator” and was surprised to see instead quite a few familiar faces, political and academic. The mayor. The dean of our Arts and Sciences. Betty and Dr. Rumpel. Ed (Eddie) Dowling, former state senator, according to Professor Sargent.

“Really?”

“Don’t you vote?” Sargent hissed, motioning me to put away my notebook. “Who raised you?”

“You do it,” I snapped, but slipped the list in my purse and sulked until my imagination drifted again to the body in the box and the ranks of friends and aquaintences surrounding it.

Secrets reveal themselves by working to the surface without effort. Like archaeological finds, some are dug up, other simply rise to the surface. Edward Dowling’s been to jail. Maybe. Been in trouble. Is not a success story. Was he one of Veronica’s good ‘ol boys who acted first and repented later? Is he still vulnerable? Did he owe her? Does he frighten?

After an awkward march through the older (and shadier) part of Evergreen, we fetched up in Calvary’s over-crowded and clearly well-loved church hall. The assemblage regrouped and I found myself hovering near Betty.

“The coffee’s weak and the iced tea is tepid,” she said. “Let’s hope someone’s spiked the lemonade.”

“Can I get you a Diet Coke?”

“Not unless you’ve got a bottle of rum in that bag.”

…to be continued

The Sound of Whirring Tires

2011-01-11T09:05:00.001-05:00

There are no cars in view but I do hear them occasionally whirring their slow way up Piedmont Ave. You never know how hilly Atlanta is until you try to walk a familiar street in August or drive it over ice. The intersection of Piedmont and Baker-Highland, just above, is almost pure snow still, because no one's had the nerve (thank God) to attempt the even steeper climb west toward Peachtree or the east slide.

Yet there are patches of ground and, for some, the need to move. The sight of a bundled man and his balanced bags of groceries (evidently Publix on Piedmont/North is open) sliding down against this feather weight of a runner heading up as if he knew where each slip was and could avoid it so surely did he advance moved me from mockery to poetry. Well, it moved me to the keyboard.

Here I sit, plenty of work to do, few cookies to eat, no butter in the freezer for more. I really didn't take this freeze warning as seriously as I should have, not if I wanted uninterrupted carbohydrates and fresh fruit, which, now that I can't have them, I really really do.

Time to work! Finishing up a website project that has taken many hours longer than I thought it would and debating over changing my syllabus or waiting to see if we have classes tomorrow.

Found a good one

2010-12-30T10:24:00.003-05:00

Check out this literary blog site!

http://zintaaistars.blogspot.com/

Behind the Concession Stand - for teachers

How to Feel Your Own Bones

2010-12-29T14:35:00.000-05:00

How to Feel Your Own Bones

Somewhere below the surface of a January grave,

My history rests just fine until a man returned to lure me

from the wood only to find he could not find my heart.

Finding bones instead, he laughed,

gathered them into the night ---

a filtered green tradition.

Think poets and their everlasting labels.

The river man,

Earthen, viney and tough, he

stole the bones of my history,

but he did not steal my heart.

How filtered you are, he whispered.

No one can reconstruct a heart

from its history. Go and find my heart.

When you return --- well, go and find

what you will find.

Like time and bad weather, fear passes.

Oranges are gathered. A hypnotic roll of tickets

distributed and taken, tear themselves in half

and flutter to the ground.

Rained upon, snowed under, bleached and buried.

Graves turn. Blue stones erupt into gardens

new laid. My heart lies somewhere.

Here. On a page I cannot read.

He is a poet and has resurrected me

in words cleverly edited to bones

and a twinkle.

See, the problem is he found my heart

between sheets of white and has fallen in love

with it there. Why not? It’s so clean

and he can rest, as once I could rest.

No more. I haunt myself with itching

and burials as scattered as the tickets

the trees leave. No passage here.

Far away by now, he remembers fondly,

profitably, everything love taught him.

The bastard.

And So, This Is Christmas

2010-12-24T18:24:00.000-05:00

I love these little earrings. A cousin, who used to send the Knuckle generous Christmas boxes over the years, has shifted her tradition to my sister (J) and myself. These glossy little snow guys came a couple of years ago and have not been bettered since. Subtle aquamarines, shiny glass pearls. Humor with a twist of sweet glam.

I certainly have no words of either wisdom or joy for this Christmas. I've been sort of slammed up against it, happy enough to be in town with some interesting work to do between quarters and a couple of shifts at the Hang 'n Fold. Phipps Plaza is d.e.a.d. You know things are still bad when those who are shopping are cheering about the elbow room and great parking. That's not how it should be! (That said, the quiet shift did give me time to "check the sizing" on several items and head home with a new outfit.)

I'm frankly too dazed from the quarter to feel particularly artful. In fact, I've been working on the same batch of artomats for three weeks. They'll be over to Chapel Hill by New Year's but wow. One good thing about taking so much time though is that I'm too tired (burned out) to rush them, so I'm sort of lovingly painting up the sponge stamp and shellacing the text so that it's translucent. The pieces will be worth waiting for.

Roasted a big chicken tonight with success! The recipe is from GlutonfreedomAtlanta.com. I loved the lemon garlic herb stuffing (that's it, no bread). Lemon juices, garlic all mixed with the oil used to coat the root veggies. Nice.

Ok, well, Merry Christmas everyone. Get out those great earrings and socks.
Much love,
AG

Another place to drink coffee and tea

2010-12-21T16:37:00.001-05:00

Condessa Coffee opened this week at the Tribute loftominium on Boulevard. It's on the path I walk along daily! I'm so happy. Not as good as being, say, across the street, but good. It's every urbanites wish to live within easy (five minutes) walking distance of a cafe or quart of milk. Condessa, though light on the eats, pours a nice cup and has plans for itself. Hopefully, that will include something interestingly Mexican in the pastry or sandwich department. The cafe looks out on Boulevard where a parade of sauntering homeless mix with area walker/runners. It also has a full view of the architect's widow's house on Blvd. and Cain. It's a house of mystery and speculation.

I'm Not Alone Here, Either

2010-12-15T12:53:00.001-05:00

During the last weeks of the semester/quarter, I give practice essay exams. This is especially important for the GPC students because they have to pass a Regents exam. To get a bead on the timing and to keep my own hand in (now that I'm "allowed" to write any way I want, I have to force myself to write as they must) I will occasionally write along with them.

Following the Regent's approved list of topics, I chose one about "a time you should have complained but did not."

   Sometimes I worry that I've become the invisible middle-aged woman --- neither attractive enough to capture attention or dangerous enough to set off warnings. My invisibility is making me neurotic. Instead of being annoyed and energized by it, I'm humbled to silence. Instead of complaining about poor customer service at a Phipps Plaza jewelry store (Ross-Simon), I was reduced to passive-aggression and, a week later, am still smarting. Had I complained I might have shrunk my neurosis, learned something of how the store operates and even awakened the sales clerk to their power.
   Do I look poor? My I dress up like a hooker's mother to shop at Phipps Plaza? Were my arty earrings too small? Had I forgotten to wear them at all? Was I wearing both?
   Last week I stood at the Pandora counter in Ross-Simons trying to see onto the stacked trays of silver and gold charms. I was there to shop for Christmas gifts for my sister and sister-in-law. To the side, about two feet from the counter, stood two sales associates discussing the previous day's crowd. "It was dead," said one. It was dead today, I thought. No one was at the Pandora counter with me. In fact, throughout the store there was more sales help than customers.
   I don't know why, but when the two associates continued to chat and ignore my obvious efforts to see the display, I grew irate. Rather than catch their attention, I played the counting game. How many seconds would pass before one of them sauntered over? One, two, three, four. The woman clerk left her co-worker, an older man in a suit who stared ahead as if captaining a ship---or a dining room. Eight, nine, ten, eleven. I ticked the seconds off wondering if I was being fair and simultaneously growing more angry. At one point I may have hoped no one would help me. Then I would be justified in this feeling. Twenty-one, 22, 23, 24, 25...How long a minute takes to pass.
   I looked at the gold, the silver, the braided leather. Oh, they have earrings and rings. Is this some version of Brighton after all? (that chased silver collectable I detest?) Is the whole Pandora idea hopelessly suburban?
   Sixty, 61, 62. A minute. How much longer will this take? By now I could not look up. I do not need to buy charms today and certainly not at Ross-Simons.
   At 90 seconds I gave it up. A minute and a half. Should I complain? Should I ask for help? I felt so irritated but with it embarrassed. It's only a minute and a half for Chrissake. Wondering why I hadn't simply looked up and captured attention (something I knew well enough how to do) I simply left.
   At the store where I work, (also at Phipps) we are required to engage a customer immediately and then again twice more. Sometimes this just doesn't happen. If a woman is short, hard to see, we might miss her until she's penetrated the store. If both clerks are busy with others, we'll miss a greeting. But this is reasonably rare. Sometimes we're confronted by women after they've left. These return to complain, having clearly bubbled with the same sense of irritation and shame I described above. We are always shocked when this happens. We never mean to offend. We're nice people who believe it's more fun to help (and sell) than ignore customers.
   Is it possible the clerks at Ross-Simon just didn't see me? Or weren't responsible for Pandora sales? I could wonder why one didn't just let me know this or fetched the appropriate clerk, but having ignored customers myself for unavoidable reasons, it's likely I simply fell between the cracks of one clerk's attention span. Had I complained, they may have looked t me with the same wary sympathy we give our more neurotic shoppers.
   At the same time, whenever a customer does complain about how she's been treated (or feels she's been treated) I am alerted to my own power. Like any good recovering Catholic, I rake my conscience for how I could have offended and usually double my efforts to please. I may spend more times at the front of the store or put down the endless folding and walk around rooting out the petites. At the register, I'll scan the entrance and wave or smile. Had I complained at Ross-Simon, could the same "wake up" have occurred? I'll never know.

For my next trick, I'll get this down to five paragraphs....or not.

Everyone's a foodie blogger on Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T12:41:00.002-05:00

A roll call of gratitude:

30-year fixed-interest mortgage
ability to pay it so far
good neighbors and friends, Faye and Bill. Here's to another year of early morning walks. Thanks for your patience when I just have to take another photo.
Donna and her family
Linda and the restoration of miracles
Sarah and the endurance of love
Evy, Bill, Clay and Johnny, Serey and Mike
Jean, Pat, the Soupers
Janeann and Steve, Deborah and David's ghost
AID and my newest career. Living proof that if I can't be a good example, there's value to being a horrible warning.
GPC and its hard-working student body. Thanks for holding those doors open, ladies and gentlemen.
Our neurotic customers at the Hanger and Fold - there are plenty of people with money to burn. Thanks for burning it with us. Now, go get yourself some real therapy.
Art and the way you make me feel...alive and in the moment.
The Particulars
Atlanta Printmakers
The birds in the trees, the wind, the roof over my head
my health
my Lexapro.
my trust Toyota.
...I could keep going.

Kid in Candy Store

2010-11-19T16:06:00.000-05:00

A shot captured in Belly, in Virginia-Highland. Great scones and olive-oil bagels that satisfy despite being as unlike a real bagel as possible and still be terrifically tasty. I hadn't been in since joining the ranks of the mighty 9%. The nice, worn communal table remains but the store has turned teenager (to paraphrase from a favorite poem) in an old-fashioned way. Maybe it's the luck of the light or ghosts of Fleeman's Drugstore, but this little patch of intown Atlanta has a sweetness not related to its goods sold.

A few weeks ago, after lunch at Super Pan Latino (disappointing, but I have only myself to blame for risking a "pig's head" sandwich)

pal Jen and I strolled back to her house and were caught by Belly's facade. Jen's got a thing for those Maryjane candies while I recall the giant orange circus peanuts with fondness. What else? Boston baked beans, chikstiks, those peanut butter and slivered sugar candies. Oh, it was worth the stop and nothing like a jawbreaker to wipe the taste of pig head off the tongue.

These huge jars filled with candy sit mid-store. There are more on benches in front and behind and even more ranged along waist height and in the shabby chic cabinets. In fact, I had to look hard for any gourmet savories before spotting some oils and coffees.

Still, it's a friendly place for sitting and who doesn't miss penny candy?

Life Off the Grid - Angleslide

2010-10-17T10:54:00.000-04:00

Independent contract worker
Adjunct instructor
Not exactly starving artist
Good example
Horrible warning

I used to call a change in point of view "angleslide"

I will again.

Off the Grid - so much work, so few jobs

2010-09-15T10:03:00.000-04:00

Am now fairly well convinced that there's plenty of work out there, even for rapidly aging boomers, but there are no jobs. Jobs, after all, come with expenses. Employers must pay insurance, workers comp, overhead, attaboys, training, all that Xeroxing. Work is free!

I'll be teaching a full load this Fall. Three classes at the Art Institute in Decatur and one (I hope) at Georgia Perimeter. It's amazing how we come full circle. In fact, I wonder why I ever left home. I started my college career at a community college about as unprepared for the collegiate experience as anyone else who had drifted through high school with little focus beyond the desire to "be cool."

Like the people I'll be working with, I made my share of inadvertent bad choices, went for the easy path, got distracted by emotions I couldn't put names to and sucked into the role of daughter of an anxious narcissist. But I wrote my way through it and while I wasn't much of a writer and kept just a small diary, the daily exercise kept me grounded in myself. It wasn't much, but it was something.

What I hope to share with the GPC students is that community college is as good a start as any. We all start somewhere after all. Like those at Ashford and even AIA-D, these students come with burdens that won't be shucked off just because they've completed the paperwork, bought themselves new pens and managed to find the right building. Nothing leaves our head for long. The point is to make use of what we've done and learn how to think without letting emotions get in the way. To learn how to distinguish between an opinion and a heartfelt belief.

All of which is to say I'm going to be hugely busy this fall. Not sure I'll have the time I'd like for this forum, or the time to finish posting Dangerous Book. I'll do my best.

See you on the other side.

Off the Grid - 3, 4...how many jobs now?

2010-09-02T19:57:00.000-04:00

For a person with no job, I've been very busy working at my assorted part-time jobs this summer.
The good news is my new (ish) respect for the working poor and everyone else who pushes a rock up a hill every day. I guess I didn't need those illusions after all.

As the Knuckle used to say, "Be glad you're not working in a factory." True enough, though grading papers for the online college can often feel that way. With any piece-work kind of job, the urge to get the work done quickly and so earn more money, must be balanced against the artist's desire to do the job well, i.e., to make each piece unique. I do feel that compulsion while reading the majority of the autobiographies I'm paid to read. But I also feel the impulse to get the job done and so have at times turned my own office into a factory where I am strapped to a chair for ten hours, fingers on the keyboard and mouse, cutting and pasting comments with my heart and mind elsewhere. I rise from this dizzy and subdued, but I rise earlier than on the days when I know what I've written to every student...and this, of course, is the reason.

How often do we turn ourselves into slaves? The antidote for me, as far as this particular gig goes, is to pay attention to the lives I'm privileged to read. True, most people are not very articulate about their histories, but given the limited number of stories, there are plenty who tell the half dozen variations well enough to give a clear picture. For the rest, I rely on sheer volume. Our online schools are filled with people who don't know where the commas go, couldn't identify a conjunction and have more use but less reason for the conditional tense than is necessary. A year ago I didn't know why this was so. Now I do. They were absent the day those lessons were taught. In the essays I read, I discovered what they were doing.

stay tuned.

Mission Accomplished: The Hand to Hand Project

2010-08-24T15:56:00.000-04:00

I was a much younger woman when the Iraq War started. I had a mother, a brother, a job. I didn't like my job so I moved on and on and on again. I bought a new car. My brother died. My mother died. I began walking. I walked 60 miles. Twice. I developed my art. I wrote a novel. Students I teach now at the Art Institute and in Ashford U's online writing center were children. Now they are veterans. The war continued. The war continues.

In 2003, Atlanta artist Cecelia Kane began her response to the war in a very deliberate, meditative way. Like the beads she'd grown up counting, she counted days, marking each one with a drawing and an inscription on a white glove. Gloves, she'd learned from a day clearing and packing away her late mother's handbags and gloves, retain the shape of their inhabitant.

In 2006, with the war showing no signs of ending but reaching a breaking point, Cecelia opened her counting to include other artists. A project, Hand to Hand, began and continued. And continues.

With the removal of combat troops in Iraq, the project is now coming to an end. Mission accomplished? Well, the title was always facetious.

The project, along with two others, is on exhibit in Athens at ATHICA. It is, in the words of one participant, "stunning and humbling." See here:

Statement for the catalog

June 28-July 4, 2009

I was both flattered and intimidated when Cecilia invited me to participate in this project. Like most Americans, my early, more emotional reaction to the war in Iraq has been dulled by time and more immediate and personal events. In a way, the news stories published during the week I was assigned to follow, which included Independence Day, had a similar jaded quality. Stories of an Iraqi man’s evolution from poor worker to very wealthy entrepreneur (thanks to US government contracts) and VP Biden’s July 4^th visit seemed quite dry. Because I’m a book artist, I stitched the gloves (which I’d imprinted with green vines and then dyed red) together in a kind of Coptic stitch, added a cover and proceeded to embellish with: a rabies vaccination tag from the VietNam era, the key to an American Tourister suitcase and several other bits. I smoothed lace-edged handkerchiefs given to me by my mother around the book’s cover. I simply needed to keep adding. Because I am also a writer, I printed most of each day’s headline on the front of the glove but added an ellipsis and forced the reader to turn the “page” to get the “last word” which I inscribed on the back.

Dangerous Book - Episode 45

2010-08-19T17:19:00.005-04:00

May 31 Monday continued

It’s been a long day. I’m here to say I spent a good bit of it with the Phoebe and Mrs. Moth. We stood outside Veronica’s hospital room, where she held to her life for a lot longer than the nurses seemed to think she would. Dr. Frobisher is a never-say-die kind of guy, as most physicians are, I suppose. Nurses are more pragmatic and not expected to save lives in the same way doctors are...like a football.

“She stuck to her guns, I’ll give her that,” said Phoebe as I escorted her to my car. Her remark struck me as callous, though absolutely true, but I was too tired to do more than nod and grin in the dark parking lot.
“Please don't think me rude, said Mrs. Moth, "But I’m so hungry. And I could use a little something from the bar."

“I could make us some eggs,” I said.

“Oh, let’s get Chinese," said Phoebe. "Chang's has a bar.”

At the restaurant they both ordered saki martinis. Feeling like a fraud, I ordered a pot of hot tea which I fiddled with until Phoebe placed her hand on my arm.

“I guess Peter’s ok,” I said. “Will you call him?”

“I called Eddie. He’ll take care of things.”

“Eddie? Eddie Dowling?”

“He’s very close to Veronica. He’s a good man.”

Veronica, if I hadn’t shared this before, had been a social worker with the state. She had once told me, almost in passing, that crimes are always committed under passion. Some are committed by people who would never think to commit one. “They react to a single situation,” she said. “They react badly and are sorry ever after.” I remembered this while waving for the waiter: She had been speaking of Eddie Dowling.

Off the Grid - Into Each Life Some Sun Must Shine

2010-08-03T09:24:00.000-04:00

Nothing will pull you out of despair than the friendly handshake of a sale! Even better, a one-on-a-kind book I made from a pantoum written long ago when teaching creative writing has been purchased by The University of Denver's Penrose Library.

I'd sent the piece, in its little box, to my favorite book arts gallery, Abecedarian Gallery in Denver, for a show called "Interior Markings." A few days ago, Alicia Bailey, curator and owner, emailed me with the news!

That this news came during a time when I'd been feeling quite jerked around by a potential employer is just icing on the cake. The candles on the cake, I can share now, is the fact that the drawings in the book were done during a three-day series of tedious meetings. As a teacher of artists, I learned never to stop students from doodling in class. It is often their way of listening. To remove the pens from their hands or insist they take down my words was kin to hiding the windows.

Many thanks for John Thigpen for his wonderful photography.

Off the Grid - Avoid the Self Indulgence of Despair

2010-07-25T09:39:00.000-04:00

When I hear nothing, I despair. When I hear the kind word from a random reader, I am grateful and embarrassed. When a friend calls wanting to buy art, and she's bought so much already, I am heart held.

I will miss Daniel Schorr, and I am not alone in that. Who will make sense of the week's disasters? He was the old professor, the parent who could and would explain. The voice of earnest sanity. Who can take his place? Losing him is like losing a parent; there's no replacement. But we still need to hear a weekly analysis for without it, without rational thinking, we may well despair.

After voicing my small despair last week, I must follow it up with what always follows darkness: light. Cloudy, perhaps, but light nonetheless.

No, there is no rescue, but maybe that's for the best.
There is no reversal, no going back.

What is there?
Gratitude
For what?
Oh, for the ability to look around and see the arms of friends
outstretched. Their waving flutters, their high signs,
the communal hug. We are all so worried
all so busy lugging our individual baskets of fret.
But see, we can each, when shifting the load, free up one hand
and waving speak:
Wait for me. Hold on. Kick a little harder. Walk a little longer.
Home is just around the corner.

Off the Grid - Week 65

2010-07-20T10:56:00.000-04:00

With no full-time job, no benefits, a few weeks remaining on COBRA, an extension for unemployment I can't use because I now have three part-time jobs, I'm not sure if I'm off the grid or squashed against it like an unsuspecting insect.

Not an insect. A pin ball. We are all pin balls in a rough game played by a mindless child with a bad temper. I cower in the corner when no matter how hard the little wretch shakes the table, I don't shift. Not until his hand has slid from the lever, then, quiet and forlorn, I slide straight past and into the hole only to be jerked back into play the following Monday.

Like a thief sorry only that she's been caught, I want now the benefits of having had my own family without the eye-opening distress of actually having ripped my hips clear open and living with the results.

This year, when I've turned angry and emotions, spun like the arrow in a cheap board game, have landed on old friends and family, I've been silent here and in that silence seen my cowardice.

I am condemned. But I must not be silent.

Dangerous Book - Episode 44

2010-07-15T15:28:00.000-04:00

Things found in books:

* date due slips

* other slips of paper

* homework assignments

* sheets of toilet paper (clean, thank goodness)

* Kleenex (clean and used)

* library cards (we scan these into the computer to check out materials and the patrons are supposed to keep them!)

* actual bookmarks

* a surgical clamp

* HAIR!

* a bobby pin

* a notification that someone had received a raise

* an assortment of bills and letters

* a season pass to Worlds and Oceans of Fun in Kansas City

* a band-aid

* a leaf

* wedding pictures

* other photos

* the receipt from a visit for psychoanalysis

* thank you cards

* drivers licenses

* a packet of tropical punch flavored Kool-Aid

* a yellow 3-inch rubber snake

* bird poop

* raisins

* creepy crawlies

* a dry flower

What’s in the cookbook?

Dangerous Book - Episode 43

2010-07-04T11:38:00.001-04:00

Episode 43

Later, same Monday, May 31 -

I unlocked the door and the three of us, still knocking and calling entered the apartment and into the bedroom, following, I have to say, our noses. We stopped calling when we saw her in the bed. She was doubled over as if she’d been retching. Closer examination showed that she had. Right near her face almost as if she was drowning in it a little pool of brown vomit rested. Some of it had soaked into the sheets, but most had not. The whole thing was gross and sad and disgustingly human.

We stood around wringing our hands. I’d actually never done that before, but it almost seemed instinctive before we all jumped into 911 mode and called from the bedroom. Mrs. Moth made the call, holding the receiver with both hands and turning her back on the bed, as if not wanting Veronica to hear her. Phoebe fastened herself to Veronica and kept her hands chaffed. Was she dead? She was not.

“Get me a damp cloth,” said Phoebe. “We can’t let her choke.” I managed to comply. “Then do something with the bathroom,” she snapped as if I’d messed the room myself.

When I finished, I joined Mrs. Moth in the kitchen. She was busy pulling lime wedges from the sink basket, holding a high ball glass in her hand.

“Was anyone here last night?” she asked.

“Not after we left,” I said. “At least, I didn’t hear anyone, but when I finally came in I went right to bed.”

The sink was littered with slices of lime. Mrs. Moth threw them into a kitchen waste bin. A fishy smell arose. Probably unwashed tuna cans.

On the counter I spied an open canister of tea and a tin box of brownies, still open. This explained the look of her vomit. These Mrs. Moth was brushing up and putting away. It is at these times that you take a mental inventory of your underwear. Is it good enough for the ambulance? Will you be embarrassed when you wake up in a hospital bed?

“Phew” she said, lifting out the trash bag. Veronica used paper grocery bags to line her trash basket and this one was soggy. “I don’t suppose you’d bring this down stairs for me,” she said.

I opened the back door leaving it propped open so it wouldn’t lock behind me, ran down stairs to the dumpster. By the time I returned the EMTs had arrived. The guys bustled around Veronica, working her over, trying, with more good will than delicacy, to slap some life into her, or so it seemed to me I think it was just the rush that made them seem so rough.

They strapped her on the gurney and carried her down the stairs. Mrs. Moth, Phoebe and I followed behind in my car.

I remember

2010-06-30T13:23:00.000-04:00

A very long time ago, I sat on the floor of a little house in Brookwood trying to impress my boyfriend's buddy that I was somehow smarter, prettier, more grounded, less rough around the edges than I was.

The boyfriend helped by having me leave my eyeglasses in the car and enjoy the evening playing Monopoly by instinct. This was a man I instinctively knew was not right for me. No, that's not how I thought it. What I thought, when he questioned me on my background as if I were filing a job application or used the word irregardless, which is not really a word, was that had I known him in college, when I still had a backbone, I wouldn't have given him the time of day. It was instinct and I ignored it.

I have no idea if his friend was impressed. Nothing that might have changed did change. The relationship, such as it was, ended with the sigh of a vacuum pulling from some small space the last of our complications. What did remain was the friend's quizzing eyes. These young alert men with their quizzing eyes and tallying ways...to understand them would be to give them power. I would not. But I cannot forget the look. Such a long time later I painted these eyes though until the little picture was finished I did not recognize them.

Here is the picture. Here is the memory. You really can't know which detail will stick, can you? Or how it will manifest.

Dangerous Book - Episode 42

2010-06-25T13:17:00.002-04:00

Monday May 31 - continued

Detective Robin wasn’t a large man, but he seemed to fill my living room. When invited, he took a seat on the couch, accepted the sweaty glass of tea and downed it in three healthy swallows. Fascinated, I watched his throat at work. When he finished he handed it to me and grinned.

“I needed that.”

“You sure did,” I said and tripped from the room to bring him a refill. When I returned he was busy playing with Juniper. I set the glass on a coaster and sat nervously at the end of the couch.

“Juniper, come here,” I said, but my faithless mutt ignored me for the next half hour preferring, as usual, the company of a male.

“Can you tell me if you heard anything unusual this morning?”

“No. I mean, I can tell you I heard nothing unusual. In fact, it was pretty quiet. But it’s a holiday and I slept late.”

“When did you wake up?”

“Around 7, which is usual. On a work day, I’ll walk Juniper a bit, but this morning I just let her pee.”

“Did you hear your neighbors?”

“Professor Sergeant lives across the hall. I heard him leave around 8. Oh, and Noah, upstairs, went out around 7.”

“When you were waking? Did he wake you up?”

“I don’t think so, though he might have woken Juniper. She jumped on my bed at 7.”

“I take it you looked at the clock?”

“I did. Oh! That clock is set 10 minutes fast. So she woke me earlier. Then I went to the bathroom, then the kitchen to start my coffee and let Juniper out the back door. I heard Noah’s kitchen door open and his footsteps on the back stairs.”

Robin rose and walked to the kitchen. I followed, showing him through the small screened porch. We listened to the sounds of police footsteps on the stairs.

“It’s pretty audible,” I said.

“Did you see your neighbor?”

“No. I was busy with the coffee pot, but it sounded like him.”

“Did you hear anything from Veronica’s apartment?”
“No. But I usually don’t. She’s up earlier than me and leaves the front way when she goes out. But she wouldn’t be going to work today, either. It’s a holiday.”

He nodded.

“I’m not sure when I took Juniper out for a walk but when we got home Phoebe and Elizabeth were outside Veronica’s apartment, knocking and calling for her to open the door.

“When I came in they leaned over and asked me if I’d seen her leave, which I hadn’t.”

We walked back to the living room and I opened the door to my hall, showing Robin where I’d stood.

“What did they say?”

“They said they all had appointments at DCH (Druid City Hospital) and were supposed to go to the mall and where was she. Of course, I didn’t know but I looked under the radiator for her spare key, found it and went up and unlocked her front door.”

We are not fiction

2010-06-22T14:36:00.001-04:00

Are we all living our own romance? Our own hero's journey?
On which hot afternoon, perhaps while stepping off a broken curb, does my fortune change and doom shift roles with fate or, dare I say it, destiny?

At night the helpful gnome enters stage left with the brilliant observation
I've been waiting for and I reply yes.
I say YES and proceed to make my fortune
with tools honed subconsciously all these years.

Rip van Winkle never lay beneath a tree
but worked instead in a grey felt cubicle
until the day he woke ready
for a new haircut and an eyeful
of change.

A shift in point of view is all the waking I require.

Words, like oil, spread across our ether seas. Are we hearing it yet?

2010-06-16T08:44:00.000-04:00

Behold our dark, magnificent horror

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, June 4, 2010

There is, you have to admit, a sort of savage grace, a tragic and terrible beauty, to the BP oil spill.
Like any good apocalyptic vision of self-wrought hell, the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history has its inherent poetry. You see that creeping ooze of black, that ungodly wall of unstoppable darkness as it slowly, inexorably invades the relatively healthy, pristine waters adjacent, and you can't help but appreciate the brutal majesty, the fantastic, reeking horror of this new manifestation of black death we have brought upon ourselves, as it spreads like a fast cancer into the liquid womb of Mother Nature herself.
Really, it's not just the incredible photographs of the spill that are, in turns, heartbreaking, stunning, otherworldly and downright Satanic in their abject revulsion. It's not just the statistics that tell us how many millions of gallons might ultimately be spilled, or the stunned scientists who can only hypothesize how this unprecedented catastrophe might affect the fragile food chain and distress the ocean's ecosystems at the very root level.
It's not even the endless, heartrending tales of livelihoods lost, industries destroyed, coastlines ravaged or wildlife killed. The fact is, any one of these aspects alone is enough to poison your soul for as long as you wish to wallow in that murky state of fatalism and doom. It is nothing but bleak.
I think the most disturbingly satisfying thrill of this entire event -- and it is, in a way, a perverse thrill -- comes from understanding, at a very core level, our shared responsibility, our co-creation of the foul demon currently unleashed.
What a thing we have created. What an extraordinary horror our rapacious need for cheap, endless energy hath unleashed; it's a monster of a scale and proportion we can barely even fathom.
Because if you're honest, no matter where you stand, no matter your politics, religion, income or mode of transport, you see this beast of creeping death and you understand: That is us. The spill may be many things, but more than anything else it is a giant, horrifying mirror.
Do you wish to try and deflect it? Lay responsibility elsewhere? Really? We can't quite blame an "act of God," as we would for some sort of hurricane or tsunami inflicted upon meager humankind by an angry deity, punishing us all for being too war-like, violent or perhaps naïve enough to want to enjoy the sunshine for five goddamn minutes before He decided He'd better kill some people lest we forget who's in charge.
We cannot blame evil terrorists, some cluster of swarthy foreigners who hate our shopping malls and secretly envy our Porsche Cayenne's. Nor can we blame the spill on some sort of nefarious conspiracy, a secret act wrought by devious agents in black helicopters designed to destabilize the U.N. and induce universal mind control -- unless, of course, you're getting a little desperate and don't get outside much, in which case, you absolutely can.
Finally (and a bit shockingly), I'm not hearing Pat Robertson or any of his cretinous cult of apocalypticans blame the gays, or voodoo, or anal sex, or reality TV for what's happening in the Gulf. Oil is, after all, completely non-denominational. It mocks all religions equally -- except, of course, the only one that really matters: capitalism.
This is how you know this is one of the more universally damning disasters of our time: No one really seems to know how to process it, much less react. The GOP is backpeddling like terrified hyenas from Sarah "Queen of Duh" Palin's "drill baby, drill" mantra/ass tattoo, as suddenly the incessant Republican wail for more oil exploration, more drilling, more tax cuts for oil conglomerates don't just reek of the usual inbred cronyism; they reek of death and destruction the likes of which the country has never seen.
On the other hand, hardcore lefties are going mad with desire that the disaster will lead to the immediate imprisonment of every BP employee worldwide, as if BP is somehow any different than any other oil titan raping the planet right now (hi, Alberta's oilsands). Hardcore lefties would also appreciate it if Obama would use the disaster as a surefire excuse to instantly change the entire course of energy history by immediately shutting down all 48,000 oil wells in the Gulf and hand every American a bicycle and a solar panel. See? All better.
Sure. As if oil wasn't woven like oxygen into every single aspect of American life, as if fully 30 percent of domestic transportation fuel didn't come from the gulf, as if shutting down a fraction of those wells wouldn't re-devastate the economy, as if petroleum and coal weren't powering the very energy plants that deliver the electricity that charges the iPhones that allows everyone to Tweet their angry complaints through all the various energy-sucking server farms the size of a small country.
Truly, BP is behaving no better or worse than any other corporate spawn of Satan would in a similar situation. What's more, if you don't think every oil company on earth is right now kneeling before Beelzebub in gratitude that it wasn't one of their own wells that exploded, you haven't been paying attention.
That said, after all is said and done, it's gloomily nice to think our darkest disaster in a generation could somehow ultimately improve our attitudes, change our behavior, lighten our violent treatment of the planet. As someone recently noted, the BP spill isn't Obama's Katrina, it's actually Big Oil's Chernobyl. Meaning: a disaster so appalling and devastating it might very well alter the industry and change the course of our energy policy forever.
Is it possible? Or, more accurately, are we even capable of such a shift? Is there any silver lining to be found in that black and greasy gloom? This is, perhaps, the most imperative question of all: If we can produce a demon of such extraordinary scale and devastation, can we not also somehow create its exact opposite? Let us pray.

Fighting Invaders

2010-06-15T17:40:00.000-04:00

F. fights the weed, the invader that, fast as a virus, wrapped its tentacles through one well-propped fledgling forsythia. We don't know its name but it has insinuated itself, taken over the clever teepee and become entangled with its host. F. would not leave the plant to struggle, losing breath or ground. Instead, she bent and fingered loose the encroaching vine, tearing it, demolishing it, refusing it a single inch.

Art at the Beginning - The Beltline Begins

2010-06-08T18:05:00.000-04:00

The Atlanta Beltline is about the coolest project since the '96 Olympics. Cooler because it reuses abandoned railroad tracks, linking neighborhoods around the city in a way the ever-hideous 285 could never do. Since its conception (Ga. Tech architectural student's thesis), I've looking forward to its coming, and like most people fretted that its completion would take so long, I'd be an old lady before I could enjoy it or the benefits we're all greedily sure it will bring our properties.

But last week, the beginnings of the first trails, rough as they are, were opened, marked with art installations. My walking buddy and I visited a section in Old Fourth Ward.

The Incredible Edible Mile

2010-06-03T17:27:00.000-04:00

So far this season, we have spotted a gorgeous fig tree on Krog, a hawthorn and mulberry on JW Dobbs and this week a half dozen squash plants growing strong behind the metal DOT fencing along Baker-Highland. It's this spot where said DOT has also planted a series of jasmine plants, which F and I are trying feebly to coax toward the chain link fence behind them. We seem to adopted our own patch in downtown.

I do hope no one swipes or destroys the squash until I can pick one!

Foraging on the freedom trail

2010-05-27T12:46:00.000-04:00

What we thought was a crabapple tree on the yard surrounding the J.W. Dobbs house turns out to be a hawthorn.

These are delicious! I released a handful and ate them (because F. had spoken earlier to an urban forager who assured her they were fine. This didn't convince her to eat them, but i have no allergies or qualms, or brains.)

Scent Must Be Described in Metaphor

2010-05-22T10:50:00.001-04:00

We pass a pair of juicy gardenias while walking to and fro on the morning walk. They've grown to crowd the small enclosure between an unused front door and its railing fence in a townhouse complex where the community life, and I'm only assuming there is one, exists within. The gardenia's scent is strongest as its flower dies. Sweet and rot mingled.

The sense of smell, I understand, is the one that must be shared with metaphor. We can't describe a scent, smell, odor, fragrance any other way. This has to do with the ephemeral or abstract, even subjective nature of scent.

So when I share the close-up image of a gardenia, all I can really offer is this:
June
evening anticipation mingled with dread
and the hours before sweat, vomit and
unplanned pregnancy.

Possible nostalgia?
As if that long-dead grandmother
watched with a smile
slid her still slender fingers
up and down the curtain's pleats.
The sheers, not the drapes.
The drapes smell of dust.

Illustrated Journal Workshop

2010-05-15T16:15:00.000-04:00

Last week I took a much needed workshop in composing and simplifying plein air sketches taught by Marilyn Brandenburger at the Spruill Arts Center. We started with simple sketches of a radish (one each) then moved on to packing our outdoor kits and roaming the area immediately outside the art center. On Sunday we worked from photographs. I'm always taking pictures of things and places I think would make nice pages but ... then I post them here!

Following Marilyn's simple instructions, I learned how to break the view into it large shapes, sketch them out and then fill in with ink and watercolor. Here are a couple of the books on sketchbooks and journals I like. There are more and more out everyday.

and here are some of the sketches I did. So hard to be need when I'm used to being a wild child.

Weathervane: Four Artist, Four Directions

2010-05-10T16:13:00.000-04:00

One of the important promises I made to myself last year was that, if nothing else, I would say yes to art. What this meant was simple: say yes to requests for work from the organizations I'm in, from the ones I want to be in, from ads sent by friends and from those found stumbling on the web. It's how I got one big piece finished and sent off to now four shows and a website. It's the same piece found (like a story in a slush pile) and included in a book on innovative printmaking.

I also decided to get my work into shows in Atlanta, even if that meant putting on the show myself, which I did. Not a solo show, but one shared with three friends and fellow artists. But I was the point girl, the one who got the space and the time and who brought it all together. I had a blast. This was helped by the fact that my fellow artists, Serey Andree, Ande Cook (see Chickory under Inspired By) and Ralph Barnes, were all equally eager to create new work and present it without a lot of ego nonsense and fuss.

Thanks to Chera Baugh at the Atlanta Public Library and Ande's good reputation in organizing an earlier show in 2007, we got a month on the calendar and an opening reception that coincided with downtown's First Thursdays.

Despite my need and desire for a full-time job, putting together this show was a perfect example of doing real work I love. Hopefully, the money will follow. I did sell one piece (Thanks, Casey) and maybe more. We take down the show on the 27th. If you're in Atlanta, please visit the central branch of the Atlanta Public Library. The gallery space is really interesting (in a good way.)

Dangerous Book - Episode 41

2010-05-10T12:15:00.000-04:00

And now there are lots of cops, most polite. That’s not what I mean. Most are like real people with families that I would know. The large one is an in-law to a secretary in the department. Another I recognize as a member of the church next door, on whose property we sit. Unlike what might have been my imaginings, these men and the one woman humping up and down our stairs have not appeared from another planet. The woman, in fact, I’ve seen on my walks with Juniper. She has family at Evergreen.

All day, up and down in their heavy shoes, asking, once, to use my phone. The lady copy even used my bathroom and cadged a tampon. I find this sort of breach very disarming. I moved the phone from my bedroom to the hall and let the cops stand there with nothing to write on but the wall. I hovered, lowering the radio to hear them, but they mumbled into the mouthpiece.

Peter is upstairs with more detectives right now. I have given statements but will soon give another to yet another detective, a man about my age who would appear to be in charge. Guess you’d like to know what happened. Veronica is dead.

The detective (lieutenant?) is of medium height, trim and faintly square, green eyes, black lashes, and thick brows that threaten to grow together above a small, elegant nose. A lovely neck. His name is Wake Robin and he does not fit in with the other cops who are, despite their familiarity, are far more rigid and tightly uniformed. Detective Robin stood at the entrance to my apartment in clothes and a haircut he didn’t get in Tuscaloosa, shook my hand without leaving a scar and escorted me upstairs.

Dangerous Book - Episode 40

2010-05-03T08:58:00.000-04:00

Tuscaloosa

Sunday, May 30 continued

We all in our various degrees leaned or ran or stretched a hapless arm toward the three women but only Peter’s legs actually moved and them so fast it was as if he flew. Almost before the mallet shattered inches from her, he was at Lura’s side covering her with a gesture of such protective love I think it took us all, them most of all, by surprise, for when Peter finally released her, Lura looked straight at me and shook her head. Her eyes were sad above her smiling mouth.

I looked to Peter, to Kate, to Jacob but no one saw me. Suddenly, Professor Sargeant’s arm was around me. But I’ve never had the capacity for accepting sympathy. My way is to petrify into a stoicism unbreakable, untouchable, oh, until much later. You can read these words as tears, but I’m not crying yet. Still, I was grateful to my neighbor.

So, he loved her after all. So, no one told me. So. Well. Is there a law that says they must. “We wanted to,” said Kate, much much later, for the evening did not end with Peter and Lura. “We tried to. I wish I had.” Yeah, now.

Monday, May 31

I thought I had a boyfriend and I thought I had friends, new friends. Maybe I didn’t know everything there was to know about them, but what I didn’t see was that through this brief season another drama was playing out, and that all these people were living it—Billie and Allen and Kate and especially Jacob, who was so angry at Peter.

Peter’s friends were seeing him and Lura and his behavior toward her and how his behavior toward me. That’s why Jacob was so angry and that’s why he threw the croquet mallet. He meant to hit Peter, he almost hit Lura. Instead, his mallet crashing woke us all.

Peter doesn’t love me. And maybe I don’t love him, but right up to that minute I was living another life. I was thinking…well, you know what I was thinking.

How quiet the complex is, the way Tuscaloosa feels after a home game when the Winnabagos and SUVs have gone, before the litter has been shoveled into a landfill and the bourbon-scented vomit washed from the bleachers.

I'm Impressed

2010-05-02T10:04:00.001-04:00

Quite a few months ago I received an email from a stranger in Berlin who said he admired my work. He (or maybe she) wanted to see some jpgs for inclusion in a book. Frankly, I thought it was spam and ignored it. But Hennig persisted and, after checking out the Gestalen website, I complied with some wonderful images shot by John Thigpen, a friend and meticulous set designer. The images were accepted and I forgot about the book. What a thrill to receive another email from Henni requesting my street address so he could mail me the finished book.

I'll be getting mine in the mail soon. You can get yours on Amazon.com!
The images selected were all from How to Distinguish Scents, a labor of love that has proved to me that what you put your whole heart and focus (might that be soul?) into, will be worthy. Of course, Johnny's images are, I believe, equally responsible for this particular book's success. I've used the jpgs for Scents and several other books we photographed for inclusion into at least three other shows. Lesson two, therefore, do the best afterwork for your art lest it languish. This includes the best photography you can afford and then sending the piece out into the world to the galleries and shows that will appreciate it.

My Gallery

2010-04-29T09:08:00.000-04:00

Dangerous Book - Episode 39

2010-04-27T13:37:00.001-04:00

Wednesday

We set up a drinks table near Billie and Allan’s and put out chairs and sofa pillows. Even Phoebe and Veronica were invited to join, which they did, from lawn chairs near the stairs.

When it was all over, Kate and I pieced the evening together me pretending to her that I do not feel like a total fool just because all my friends had known what I did not and had watched, curious, worried, entertained?

There were about nine or ten of us playing two games at once. Players with primary colors (red, blue, yellow) headed north. Secondary colors (orange, green, black) went south. Each team took its own turns, meeting in the middle. Once the teams intersected, one could croquet and send the other team’s balls as well as our own. We could poison players on both teams, as well. Peter, on the primary team reached the end pole first and was itching for poison. He had two free shots to reach it. Jacob and the rest of us were out to stop him. When Jacob took turn, he interrupted Peter’s free shots, which enabled him to croquet Peter before he could move safely away. The mix-up arose, according to Kate, because Peter took so long between his two free shots that Jacob could be forgiven for thinking his own turn had come. What I saw from my angle, about three feet behind Peter and facing Jacob, was Jacob hurrying to croquet Peter. But what Kate saw, from a distance than included both men, was Peter stalling and letting Jacob think his turn was up. One cheats because the other eggs him to do it. They’d muttered words several times this summer but never came to shouting. When Peter accused him of cheating, Jacob got right in his face.

“Don’t fuck with me.” Very dirty Harry.

“Play the ball,” said Peter, shaking his head in disgust. As if he were the better sport. “Just play the ball.”

“Don’t fuck with me.”

“Play the ball.”

Back and forth back and forth. But Jacob, and this may tell us something, played his shot very badly, as he does when he’s being dubious about play and got so mad he threw the mallet towards the verandah where it rolled head over heels --- a pretty sight--- until it hit the steps where Phoebe, Veronica and Lura were sitting in a group.

Just finished reading...

2010-04-24T13:38:00.000-04:00

Isn't the best thing when you discover a new-to-you writer who has been publishing for years? It means you've three, four, a dozen books to anticipate reading.

I've been reading Laurie King's Mary Russell novels and was all caught up when I discovered her Kate Martinelli series, starting with The Art of Detection or maybe, To Play the Fool. I'm not sure of the order, and it doesn't matter. I like filling in a character's timeline in a random order.

More recently, King's stand-alone suspense novels have found me. Last week, I started Folly and for a day or so was unsure I'd "get into it." Fortunately, I realized the problem was my own distracted, shallowness of attention.

Folly turns out to be a synchronous gift to me...one of the sub-stories is about a WWI soldier suffering from shell shock. As it happens, an artist book I'm working on contains the ephemera of a young man's disappearance and his stepmother's search for him between 1922 and 1927. King's story has inspired my own appropriation. Thanks!

Salome Dawn

2010-04-21T09:05:00.001-04:00

After a nice couple of rain showers yesterday and some lingering moisture, this morning's dawn didn't so much rise as gather itself from behind many veils, as if waking were a secret.

A cool silky hour with a sun masquerading as moon:

And the Peachtree Plaza annointed by same (and about an hour later.)

Dangerous Book - Episode 38

2010-04-19T09:41:00.000-04:00

Sunday, May 30 - hot

This morning I helped Veronica hang curtains. She’d bought a set of lined cotton panels (beige and Wedgwood blue) from Prof. S. and was trying to hang them in the living room where they worked well enough with her brown braided rug but fought against the rest of her color scheme, if scheme was what it was. She owns a Crayola green couch, which she’d spiffed up with cherry red and lemon pillows; behind it hangs a Grandma Moses print. A maple wood side chair under a reading lamp would have held its own but was hampered by maroon plush seat and back. Its arms were wide enough to hold the generations of water circles and cigarette burns that marked it as someone else’s cast-off. Veronica, I suspect, is a dumpster diver.

“Well,” I said, “They’re lovely curtains.”

“Uh huh.”

She was determined to hang them in the living room no matter what the effect. At first I thought I’d been invited up to convince her they would look good, but of course they wouldn’t and no amount of discussion would make them. Yet, she craved discussion.

And that was it, of course. I was going to be here indefinitely, dancing with her through a faux discussion of where to hang these stupid drapes.

Finally, she called a friend and told her to come over; she needed a third opinion. Then she produced a cup of lukewarm instant coffee and a burnt muffin from a Christmas tin suggesting we settle in to read the paper until Betty arrived. Half a long hour later Betty Sheffield appeared holding a shopping bag and they embraced.

According to Betty and Veronica, they haven’t seen each other in four years, ever since Betty moved from Monnish Court. It took Betty slightly less than thirty seconds to agree on the bedroom for the beige curtains and even less to dissuade V. from trying to hang them right now. V. murmured something about Noah Williams across the hall.

“I always think jobs involving hammers are for men,” said Betty.

So all three of us moved to the green couch where they talked about men and I drank more lukewarm coffee. I would have left, but Betty gave me the eye, so I stayed. And stayed.

Betty has just ended a relationship and feels ambivalent. “Too many sleepless nights,” she said. “He was aging me.”

“Too much sex?” I wondered.

“He was a boozer! I was tired of worrying about him.”

“Well, you can’t miss that,” said Veronica, but Betty sighed and smiled.

“He made me laugh,” she said. “He was funny.”

And then I knew this was the thing that kept her up at nights, for to be kept laughing by a man, even one who drinks too much, is not something relinquished easily.

Veronica shared a story about a man named Martin Frobisher she dumped last year. He gave her a lot of presents she still has, pointing vaguely around the room.

“But they were so practical,” she said, slapping her bare knees. And oh, how he had nursed her when she had the diarrhea. But in the end he just wouldn’t leave her alone.

“I like my own space,” she said.

Finally, she introduced him to a widow friend and they’ve been married four months. I liked this part. It’s clever, yet smacks of good intentions and economy.

“Yes,” she said. But why, she wanted to know, did she follow it up with a two-week depression.

“Maybe because he shouldn’t have been so easy to unload,” I suggested.

“Perhaps.”

We warmed the couch for another half-hour. Pleasant enough but still confusing. Veronica clearly wanted some attention from the girls. Wanted to sit between us on the couch and giggle. Wanted her mind made up for her, to share in her re-nesting. But why invite me? I’ve snubbed her regularly for six months. And Betty, who hasn’t been here in four years, yet evidently dropped her Sunday morning ritual to help her.

Before we escaped, Veronica asked if she wanted a linen jacket. Betty works part-time in a boutique and had, also at Veronica’s request, brought one over.

She strutted across the living room in a violent pink, which suited her, thrusting her hands in the jacket’s deep pockets, removing a white bandana handkerchief from one.

“That’s from me,” said Betty. “I don’t think a girl can have too many bandanas.” Agreeing, Veronica walked the handkerchief into the dining room where she left it on the table there. Turning back, she stood with her legs stick straight and looked so much as she must have fifty years earlier, eager and open, that we both smiled.

“You haven’t aged a minute,” said Betty with real fondness in her voice.

“Linen wrinkles just looking at it, I said, suggesting raw silk. Veronica, disappointed, finally handed the jacket back to Betty.

“I’ve got something for you, too,” she said and handed me an old cookbook published by the Tuscaloosa Junior League in 1959. “You can use my recipes if you like. And Elizabeth and Phoebe have several in there as well.”

The cookbook was well worn and liberally stained. Other recipes, cut from newspapers and magazines threatened to spill out. I took it in both hands. I love old books and diaries. Who knows what I’d find inside?

Georgia Writers Association workshop with Jeff Stepakoff

2010-04-13T15:19:00.002-04:00

Before the crust settles on my notes, I wanted to blog on a workshop I took last weekend up at Kennesaw State. The Georgia Writer's Association holds its monthly meetings and workshops in the student center there. I'd come across the group while stumbling back to an old favorite association (Sisters in Crime) a few months back, intended to attend their February meeting with Philip DePoy talking about mystery writing but like everyone else was deterred by the weather. (It snowed.)

So, because the meeting's title "Publishing your first novel" had me at "your," I was expecting the Cinderella story we all hope for: passive writer's anonymous fan forwards her work to immediately interested New Yorker editor, publication and movie deal to follow. The literature lottery win we all secretly believe will be ours.

Not the case here. For starters, Jeff Stepakoff, whose first novel Fireworks Over Taccoa is just out and garnering quite a lot of buzz, is no beginning writer. First does not mean amateur. He's a veteran screen and television writer and so understands how to write a story. Emphasis on story.

Throughout Jeff's talk, during which he dropped screenwriter catchphrases like "process for development" "raising the stakes," "story design" "blocking," "the cute-meet scene" and "platform," I had the feeling that these were the things he really wanted to tell us. (This was confirmed when one of his students rose and called out "If you write a good outline, you'll write a good story.")

So, yes, Jeff interviewed New York agents, who were no doubt more interested in talking to someone with a 10-year+ resume as a writer, and chose one who was happy to work with him. As he pointed out, however, agents are looking for good writers just as avidly as good writers are looking for them.

When asked how he found his agent, his answer was an unequivocal variation on "do your homework."

Read the trade pubs, look at the deals. Go to the agent your favorite writers use. That's as good a way to zero in on a prospect as any I know. I don't speak as a published author but as a job searcher, apartment hunter and erstwhile SW seeks SM. Go where you want to be.

My takeaway by far was this: The story is more important than the writing. As an erstwhile literary mag editor, I KNOW this is true. As a struggling literary writer wishing for a plot line of my own, I'm afraid it's true. In fact, the book I serialized here began with a good outline. It's really a relief to plot your book (your life?) with an outline.

My other takeaway, and Jeff was very open about this, is how much marketing an author has to do on his own. If you click on his website, you'll see events, bookclubs, life history, etc. All devoted to this one little book that, frankly, is just a nice romance, written, he admits, because that's what women like to read. (Yet another takeaway: Find out what they want and how they want it, and give it to them just that way.)

So now I want to enroll in Jeff's classes. Maybe. He's recommended Story, which I've linked here and listed on my Amazon Associates favorites list (maybe that's how I'll pay the mortgage.)

Dangerous Book - Episode 37

2010-04-12T13:44:00.005-04:00

Monday, May 24

But Professor S. did not want to play with us. Instead, he skirted our party, entered his apartment and shut the blinds. Nice try, Billie.

Late this morning I strolled into Betty’s office for the recipes she’s collected so far and found her in a glow of self-importance. Something was up. Fortunately, she’s not one to keep a juicy bit of gossip to her self. Generous woman. It seems that Dr. Ruppel had moved the artifacts to his office for the interview with the Tuscaloosa Times, but, Betty whispered, one eye on his partly closed door, when he’d arrived to work this morning, intending to return all the pieces to their display cabinets in Smith Hall, the doll’s leg was gone.

“Who?” I mouthed.

Betty smiled and offered me a folder marked “recipes”.

“Nobody knows,” she said innocently but nodding her head in the direction of the student workroom.

“One of the students?” I asked.

She leaned toward me, flipped open the folder and pointed to the top recipe, Alpha Gams: Chicken in Bourbon Sauce.

“Eleanor?” I knew that Eleanor, the girl who had been working with Kate when the leg was found, was a member of Alpha Gamma.

“No, Cecile.” Cecile Bruner, another work-study student, had been sleeping in on the fateful day and was, according to Betty, pea green with envy and regret. Apparently, she’d been sleeping with Cecile’s boyfriend.

“Now, that’s what I call gossip,” I said, my voice rising uncontrollably with excitement. “You think she’ll give it up?”

“We don’t know that she’s got it,” said Betty, closing the folder and handing it to me. “I’ll talk to you later,” she promised.

As I walked back to my own department, I wondered about the theft. If I had the leg I would use it as an amulet or talisman. It is always good, in the sense of having a kind of magical power, to own a secret. Owning a secret is as dangerous as owning another’s heart, or a child, possibly even property, I don’t know. It is both valuable and vulnerable and passes those qualities onto the holder. I suppose it’s magical because, unlike a child or a heart (or wealth), the value is invisible, imperceptible, yet strong. Why else do people covet and steal objects and knowledge? I knew a woman in Atlanta who just loved collecting information on other people. She didn’t use it, she just liked having it.

Lessons in Writing and Publishing

2010-04-11T10:32:00.000-04:00

First quarter 2010. I've joined two associations for/of writers: Freelance Forum, a live group that meets once a month at the Portfolio Center. We meet 'n mingle 'n munch for an hour or so and then settle in for a listen to that night's speaker. Recently, we had a LinkedIn expert take us through the basics of networking via that site. FF has a group site on LinkedIn where meeting news and other discussions are carried on throughout the month. In fact, one discussion, on using Wordpress as a website, has led to an off-calendar event at Ignition Alley, a tutorial led by the LinkedIn expert (Carol Shepherd). I'm looking forward to this as I'd like to turn my currently incubated Wordpress site (Sending Pages) into a space for completed creative projects and teaching blogs. Haven't earned back any of my investment (a modest $85/year) yet, but feel it's been worth the price in actual human contact. If I could focus on freelancing and business writing, I'd likely get some work through these good folks...but that's a big if.

I also joined an online freelance association, www.freelancesuccess.com and it's been great in providing market openings, marketing advice, query samples, etc. Again, this quarter, for me, has been given over to maintaining the online teaching gig (time management), working on up-coming art show at the APA (May 2-27 at downtown library, more info to come), job search (because I'd just be safer) and overall anxiety. Oh, yes and the retail gig, personal relationships, etc.
I am enrolled in an online query writing class but have blown the opportunity sky high. This must have been an impulse buy. People have five minutes unaccounted for and sign up (and pay for) a class, manage the first two meetings and then disappear. I could never understand this. Until this year. While it's important to invest in one's career and job search, it's critical to understand one's ability and the extra psychic weight involved in any one of life's crises: unemployment, divorce, breakups, death. Well, I'm saving the notes and handouts for a better time.

I've also joined www.litopia.com and spent a good bit of February able to participate on the online discussion boards. The novel I posted here, "I Want to Live Here" is being posted now (in revision) to www.authonomy.com. But March took all my attention for its own uses and both memberships (and projects) have languished.

So, yesterday I spent two hours with the Georgia Writers Association at their monthly meeting in Kennesaw. A great group with an interesting speaker, Jeff Stepakoff. I'll devote a separate blog to that event and to his message: story is more important than writing, at another time.

And then there's the Atlanta Printmakers Studio, where I spent a delicious week working, hands on, on two pieces for the upcoming library show. This group is also beautifully organized, reasonably priced and generous with opportunities for shows, print exchanges and other ways to show work.

I realize, as I list these various groups, both real and virtual, that I'm filling in for no greater purpose than to make real what I say I want to do. And what I do. But it's too much.

Finding a new poem on Facebook

2010-04-08T12:56:00.001-04:00

I keep hearing people dismiss Facebook as boring and full of the sorts of yawning remarks we make to each other while scratching. "I don't want to hear you just fed the cat." The people I'm connected with may sometimes reveal their dinner plans or refer to an evening out I don't care about, but like all other elevator remarks, I just don't listen to them.
Today, an old friend from Tuscaloosa days shared a link to Poetry Daily and, in particular, a lovely poem by Andrew Hudgins called "The Hereafter." Clicking over, I read with growing delight this simple, direct and detailed piece of loveliness. You read too.
"The Hereafter" on Poetry Daily. (http://poems.com) (and if the link doesn't work, please let me know.)

The Hereafter

Some people as they die grow fierce, afraid.
They see a bright light, offer frantic prayers,
and try to climb them, like Jacob's ladder, up
to heaven. Others, never wavering,
inhabit heaven years before they die,
so certain of their grace they can describe,
down to the gingerbread around the eaves,
the cottage God has saved for them. For hours
they'll talk of how the willow will not weep,
the flowering Judas not betray. They'll talk
of how they'll finally learn to play the flute
and speak good French.
Still others know they'll rot
and their flesh turn to earth, which will become
live oaks, spreading their leaves in August light.
The green cathedral glow that shines through them
will light grandchildren playing hide-and-seek
inside the grove. My next-door neighbor says
he's glad the buzzards will at last give wings
to those of us who've envied swifts as they
swoop, twist, and race through tight mosquito runs.
And some—my brother's one—anticipate
the grave as if it were a chair pulled up
before a fire on winter nights. His ghost,
he thinks, will slouch into the velvet cushion,
a bourbon and branch water in its hand.
I've even met a man who says the soul
will come back in another skin—the way
a renter moves from house to house. Myself,
I'd like to come back as my father's hound.
Or something fast: a deer, a rust-red fox.
For so long I have thought of us as nails
God drives into the oak floor of this world,
it's hard to comprehend the hammer turned
to claw me out. I'm joking, mostly. I love
the possibilities—not one or two
but all of them. So if I had to choose,
pick only one and let the others go,
my death would be less strange, less rich, less like
a dizzying swig of fine rotgut. I roll
the busthead, slow, across my tongue and taste
the copper coils, the mockingbird that died
from fumes and plunged, wings spread, into the mash.
And underneath it all, just barely there,
I find the scorched-nut hint of corn that grew
in fields I walked, flourished beneath a sun
that warmed my skin, swaying in a changing wind
that tousled, stung, caressed, and toppled me.
ANDREW HUDGINS
American Rendering: New and Selected Poems
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Before the Sky Grows Ordinary

2010-04-07T09:04:00.002-04:00

Awake at 5 am dutifully chastising myself for the misspent life, the poor choices, the addiction to self-delusion, by 6:30 I've done enough "morning pages" to feel some compassion for my walking companion. What is it like for her to walk every morning next to this quivering ectoplasm of regret? She is always so cheerful. She has led a well-intentioned life of steady work (don't disabuse me) and is rewarded now with freedom, a pension and really good health coverage. She's a good example. I am a horrible warning.
Together, at dawn, we face the same sky and receive the same gift.

Early morning walks

2010-04-06T11:16:00.001-04:00

My neighbor and I take an hour's walk most mornings. This month, I've been bringing along my camera.

Maybe it was the hour and the sun's direction, but I don't think I've ever seen baby pine cones in just this early stage of growth. They glowed like stars and seemed so alien we had to stop and deliberate about they were. Of course, the parent tree told us but it took a second to realize what we were looking at.

Is this Spring really as spectacular as we think or, like food tasting best when you're hungry, is it an illusion based on how long and cold this Winter was?

Gotta love this little patch of jasmine. It's so fragrant. There's plenty more growing along the Highland-Baker Connector.

And it wouldn't be Spring without the dogwood, now would it?

Dangerous Book - Episode 36

2010-04-05T13:08:00.000-04:00

Sunday night May 23

“Here’s to Kate and her fifteen minutes of fame!” Peter raised his gin and tonic and bowed. We were celebrating the almost instant success of Kate’s archaeological find and subsequent fame in this morning’s Tuscaloosa Times.

“Longer than that,” snapped Jacob, waving the newspaper where a full page spread had been dedicated to the Gorgas Library archeological dig and, in particular, Kate’s curious discovery. “Once she writes this up, her career is made.”

“It’ll be made when I publish,” Kate laughed. “If I publish. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Will you have to share with Eleanor?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, she was right there with me.”

The dig is Dr. Ruppel’s baby, funded through the department and the museum. Students worked three hours a day (8-11) and submitted a journal for their grade. What the dig revealed was the site of a dormitory used for cadets during the war and burned down by Union troops in 1865. A cornerstone that has remained visible ever since is the focal point for the site. Two weeks into the dig, Kate, and an undergrad named Eleanor Moser, uncovered the doll’s leg, which ultimately became the prize find (and the only one discovered by a student.)

The archaelogy department displayed the leg in a glass case in Smith Hall along with a glass doorknob, three bone buttons and the inevitable bit of unidentifiable pottery. The Tuscaloosa News ran a story and picture. The class ended last Friday, but the site would remain as is through Homecoming.

“Makes you wonder why we’re here, doesn’t it?” I said, drifting toward the croquet mallets. I selected green.

“No! It lets us know why we’re here,” she said, taking the blue mallet and ball. “We’re here to find each other. And know each other. That’s how we’ll know ourselves.”

“That’s all? That’s all we’re supposed to do?” She made life seem to simple.

“Know and love. And love, anyway. Hey! Here’s Professor Sargeant. Do you think he’d like to play?”

Happy Easter Happy Spring Happy Claritin

2010-04-04T08:58:00.000-04:00

The joys of sleeping with windows wide open (air chilled as champagne, the warm and cool crumple of fresh sheets) are countered by the sinus-heavy awakening.

I used the above photo as my Easter card this year primarily because I love the little action between me and my Irish twin. There's another photo, now lost, that shows the seconds immediately before this one. I wonder what we were squabbling over? Surely, at 4 and 3, we were too young for the name calling that was to come? This is also one of the few photos where my poor sister, burdened with orders to keep peace, is smiling...and even here she looks leery. Like it won't last. It won't my dear, it won't.

Here is the alternate, taken years later when we'd formed our alliances against the shrill and anxious wave that was the Knuckle.

Passing Bloom

2010-03-31T10:16:00.000-04:00

Just a quick update on the Japanese magnolia we greet each day. This one is up near the Carter Center and marks the halfway, or turnaround, point of the morning walk.

Dangerous Book - Episode 35

2010-03-30T11:48:00.000-04:00

May 16 Wednesday

Nap time. The game started after a dinner hour during which Billie and Allen ate salad and a tuna casserole she made from a 1965 copy of The Northport Ladies Auxiliary Cookbook. I ate, what? A tuna sandwich.

Thinking about the break-in was making me restless. Unlike Professor Sergeant, I had not stolen anything that required my attention, and my head was a whirl. I wanted more and I wanted to talk. But I needed to think. After letting Juniper out for a brief spell, I took out my bike, an old Rollins I’d liberated from the garage of a previous apartment, I started up 12^th Street. At University Avenue, I turned left, heading downtown with some notion of edging the river at the bridge to Northport. I had an idea I could get there and back, maybe stop midpoint on the bridge and watch the Black Warrior River slug by. Instead, I turned right onto the Historic District.

Tuscaloosa is riddled with historic districts that are each about a block long. Actually, everything from Caplewood to the river is lovely and ample. The streets are wide, the trees tall and the houses built for the tire and paper manufacturers and the university leaders. Department chairs, ancient professors and widows live in them now. Lawyers and a banker or two. Real estate queens and their moms. The young money is in Northport or on the way to Birmingham.

And there is a condominium or two close to the river where Peter lives. I wanted to see if he was home. I wanted to surprise him. But I didn’t see him.

I did see Lura coming out of a unit on the ground floor near his address. I waved to her, she waved back. At Peter’s door I knocked and knocked, but he did not answer.

Today's blossom

2010-03-24T10:06:00.000-04:00

I've been photographing just one of several Japanese magnolias we pass each morning.
Here is today's shot. She would appear to be molting, making room for the green to come.

Dangerous Book - Episode 34

2010-03-22T11:37:00.001-04:00

May 14 Monday evening

This evening Billie and I sat on her slip of a porch drinking iced white wine and teasing her new black kitten with slips of paper on which were scrawled old recipes. Perhaps they retained the scent of butter and vanilla. Instead of dangling these over little Ink’s head, we were supposed to be sorting and culling for the cookbook project. I’d collected my own and hers.

“We’re going to need twice as many recipes as we can actually use,” said Billie, thumbing through a dog-eared copy of Ramblin’ Chefs from Georgia Tech. “If everyone sends in just their favorite recipe, we’ll wind up with desserts, casseroles and a five-bean salad.”

“I think we’re going to have to use everyone we get,” I said. “If we get too particular, we won’t sell as many.” And the project will spiral out of control. “Once we see what we can gather, we can go back to the best contributors and ask them to fill in. Or we can pull from these.”

“No, we can’t, these aren’t from the University.”

“Mmmnn. I bet Phoebe, Veronica and Mrs. Moth have cookbooks like these. It might be cool to pull from some of theirs,maybe update stuff, do some microwave and low-fat conversions…what do you think?”

“That’s fine. Plus, we can ask contributors for favorites from their own association cookbooks…”

“Sorority cookbooks…” I interrupted.

“Right and the alumni association. And the recipes tucked into cookbooks.”

“Veronica has a good collection,” I said.

“I never thought of her as a cook.”

I am an idiot! How am I supposed to know Veronica has a lot of cookbooks! I just remembered them because they were wedged on her bookshelf next to the Gone With the Wind first edition.

“Uh, well, she was a gardener once, she must have done some cooking as well.”

I sat back and waited for Billie to ask me how I knew about Veronica’s personal library. Was it silly to feel so guilty about my activities with Professor Sargeant? Would Billie think that I would break into her apartment as easily? I would not.

The cat Allan had christened Ink curled up on Billie’s lap and slept. I let the wine ease into my fraught mind. A few minutes of silences always seems longer when both sit back and let the heat and the green intrude, as one must in a garden or a hot climate. There’s no point in having a garden, in living under old trees, if you don’t let them distract you now and then with their whishing and their forecasts.

“Does John still think Veronica killed Astible?” asked Billie.

It took me a second to remember Professor Sargeant’s first name was John.

“How did you know that?”

“I was at the vet’s when he came by for the report.”

“You were just there?”

“Right. Friday, when I brought Ink in for her shots.”

“But, Astible died weeks ago. He got news then that said the death was from the brownies. From the chocolate.”

“The chocolate probably did kill her, but John found out two days ago that the brownies Astible ate were laced with digitalis.”

“With what?”

“Witch’s bells. Someone mixed up a batch of brownies with foxglove leaves and brought it to the game,” said Billie, looking grim. “I thought you knew. I thought you were helping him figure out if it was Veronica.”

“I thought I was helping him. But he seemed to take it for granted it was Veronica. She did bring those brownies,” I said, wondering if I should mention that Prof. S. had not told me about the foxglove. Digitalis, or foxglove, is a heart stimulant. It can keep you alive, or it can kill you.

“My father takes digitalis,” I said. “He started it in his sixties. When I was in high school I almost took some just for the hell of it.”

“You must have been a happy teen,” she said with the quiet sympathy I was beginning to find unnerving.

“Not particularly. I was just short of stupid; I know that. Something made me look it up in the dictionary.” The old blue Webster that lived on the floor of the hall closet. Our library.

“So you know what it can do.”

“I learned enough not to mess with it.”

“Actually, a lot of people drink foxglove tea with no bad effect,” said Billie. “But I think it’s very dangerous.”

This explained a good bit of the professor’s behavior in Veronica’s apartment. While I was supposed to be keeping an eye out the window (but was in fact trolling her books for first editions, he opened and closed every cabinet, rummaged through her spice rack, twisting jars and bottles of seasonings, offering me a sniff at a decorative jar labeled “Herbs de Province” that I could assure him was probably a souvenir of France.

In Veronica’s freezer---a fairly small space in need of defrosting---we found a stack of aluminum wrapped pans with no labels.

“They looked like leftovers,” I told Billie. “Or extras from the senior center or church.” Veronica often returned home clutching a bag or a styrofoam container.

“Did you leave it there or take it with you?”

“We were afraid to spend too much time so John took one packet and left the rest behind. He’s bringing it somewhere for analysis. Maybe back to the vet?”

Billie sighed and stood, stretching her arms, which held the kitten, high overhead. She tucked it under her arm. “Time for his pill,” she said and left me staring into space.

It Would Appear to Be Here, Spring that is

2010-03-19T10:33:00.003-04:00

monday's blossom and friday's blossom

Off the Grid - Week 46

2010-03-15T11:51:00.005-04:00

It's Monday. I don't know about the others (what shall we call each other? The uncubed?) but Mondays are potentially the deadliest days of the unemployed year. Because I'm working part time, for several months now, Monday's have been anxiety provoking but also artistically satisfying. I don't have to grade papers, I go to the Hang 'n Fold late in the afternoon for a short shift, so really, Monday's are kind of my day to just be.

I often have an art project, a blog update, chapters to revise and, of course, jobs to research. I try to stay off Linked In because it smells too obviously of fast-food breakfast and the gassy releases of an indulgent weekend. (In other words, it reminds me of my corporate days.) Too many shadows in black suits and electric blue shirts are vying on Linked In, for what, I don't know, but Mondays are busy there with silly updates.

I woke today, not once but many times, with the feeling that I have been treading water long enough and that I need to start swimming. At the 6 a.m. waking, thought I was directionless and therefore needed a map. I imagined the map and realized I would need several maps because I had several "journeys" ongoing and one set of instructions wasn't going to do it.

Art journey. Next stop is a show due to open May 6. Plenty of direction available for this life. There's a list of pieces to be finished and experiments and mockups needed. Time in the APS to be scheduled. Supplies checked. Designs constructed. I could spend all available spare time on this journey. I should.

Novel journey. Ah. Until very recently, I spent Mondays happily revising "I Want to Live Here" a mystery novel originally posted on this site. Revisions of chapters 1-19 are on www.authonomy.com and I am, or had been, posting one or two chapters a week. But not too many days ago, I crept into bed with the idea that I'm not a very good writer after all. The book is shallow and bare and I probably don't have either the heart or the skill to make much of it. It will not be the answer to my father's question: have you made any money lately? (He died in 1994 but his question persists.) Today's work was half-hearted at best. My writer hands are cold and my imagination clogged with fear and a kudzu of cliches.

Freelance journey. Three promising emails in the last month but no work. If looking for a full-time job is like trying to date on match.com, or fit in with the sons of my mother's church friends, flirtations with editorial directors on the prowl for freelancers is like sleeping with the ones you want on the first date and then wondering when the next call's going to come. (And I hope none of you fabulous people are reading this now, but if you are, hey, I'm available. Call me. Any time. I know you're busy and having a job is actually harder than not having one. Don't feel guilty. Not about me. I'm fine. Have a cookie.)

Full-time job. Yeah. Like who's going to hire a girl in her subprime? And hand over all that health insurance to someone who, statistically speaking, is going to need all of it in the next five minutes? Look, my mother died of natural causes at 91 and I am likely to do the same. I'm a bargain.

Hope this didn't seem like a rant. Readers never comment on rants.

Happy Monday to all of us.

Dangerous Book - Episode 33

2010-03-13T11:07:00.003-05:00

Sunday night, a few days later (May 13)

Our gardens are established. Rain last night made weeding easy this morning. When I wandered out early this morning, coffee cup in hand, I found Prof. S.

“The weeds are quick,” he said, showing me a handful of tiny growth.

I bent to my own packed plot.

“I’ve got too much good stuff for weeds to find any room,” I said.

“Don’t you believe it,” he said, pointing at what I thought was the penny royal beginning to spread.

As we stood there arguing about it, watching Juniper follow her nose, Veronica emerged in a cloud of Chanel No. 5, dressed for church. It’s a comforting sight, say what you will, to see an elderly lady dressed up in hydrangea blue on a Sunday morning. Even if she is jangling a silver bracelet with one small charm.

Across the courtyard, Mrs. Moth emerged, slightly less crisp, but in a soft dress and matching bag and shoes.

As they walked off together, the professor and I exchanged glances.

“How long is their service?” I asked.

“Including donuts? Hour and a half.”

“Plenty of time.”

But the key, which Prof. S. had replaced under the hall radiator, was no longer there.

I turned to him. “Didn’t you return it?”

“Of course I did.” He looked frustrated and angry. Sitting next to him on the steps as close as we were I could feel a buzzing energy emanating from him. His heels tapped, his right knee jiggered annoyingly and he was starting to rub his hands together as if conjuring up images of Veronica plotting to kill his beloved dog. But even as the frown deepened across his face, he did not look defeated. He looked grim and determined.

“Do you think she knew we used it?”

“Looks like it,” he snapped.

“She might have used it and left it in a pocket.”

Or she might have lent it out or had the locks changed. She might have switched hiding places. I had a shrink once tell me there were a hundred reasons for anyone to do something. The one we’re so sure about is rarely it.

But the professor was sure Veronica had killed his little dog.

“Why are you so sure about this?”

But he just shook his head. “I can’t get it out of my head that she brought Dowling and Reverend Garland over the day I buried Astible and made such a fuss about our planting gardens. About my garden.”

“Well, it did throw the whole look of the place out of whack. But when she told me about the sale, she said that was why the gardens didn’t matter.”

“No body’s cared what this place has looked like for thirty years.”

In a way this was true. The church has kept up with maintenance and very very basic lawn care, but no investment has been made. I’d found my apartment through a referral, subletting it from a graduating design major in a hurry to get to New York. When I went for the key, walking down 12th street from the university strip, I almost missed it. Yet, the property is quite sizable.

“There’s something almost invisible about this place,” I said.

“It’s the institutional brick,” he said. “It looks like part of Bryce or the U.”

We sat on the steps like a couple of ten year olds at the end of a dull summer. Church- goers parked along 12th Street seemed to look at us askance. Prof. S. didn’t seem to notice, but I always feel a childish guilt. I do not go to church anymore. I don’t know why. I might have pondered this for the rest of the afternoon, but another thought intruded.

“So, why do you think that bracelet is so important?” I asked, when at exactly the same time, Prof. S said,

“Let’s check the back door.”

And we rose in unity, refreshed by the thoughtful interlude. You gotta let yourself dither now and again.

Juniper, locked in my apartment and annoyed at being left out, set up a racket at the kitchen door, which Prof. S. quelled with a word. He has the gift.

The common entry to the upstairs apartment was unlocked.

The stairs were clean and free of clutter. Veronica’s neighbor, a law student named Scott Hermosa, kept this back area for his bicycle, but it was not hanging in its usual space high on the landing. Scott usually left for the weekends, driving home to Mobile with his fiancée.

“He’s the perfect neighbor,” I said. “I never hear him.”

Prof. S. just grunted.

“I’ll bet he hears you.”

I wasn’t sure how to take this and did not reply. With an almost choreographed motion we both reached for the mat in front of Veronica’s kitchen door.

Nothing.

Prof. S. tried the door, but Veronica had been careful. Then he ran a hand over the top of the door jamb. Also nothing.

I ran a hand over Scot’s doorjamb. Ah ha! I was beginning to understand how Veronica thought. Though I didn’t know why she made the decisions she did.

When it did not fit Scott’s door, we looked at each other. Prof. S.’s narrow chest moved visibly. As his grin dawned, a kind of veil melted and I saw him 30 years younger. When the key slid into the lock and turned, a chuckle escaped him, its breath on my neck. He practically pushed me into the room.

Searching Veronica’s apartment was turning into an addictive pleasure. Like searching your parents’ room when they’re not around. You do it once to look for a birthday present and find an old photo. You don’t get caught and the thrill of unchartered territory in your own house compels you to return. You go back and uncover a letter, a spent bullet, a bankbook. You start to dream about the creases in the house; the blue and white suitcase in the crawl space behind your closet that one day isn’t there anymore. Had it ever been there?

This morning inside a Junior League of Tuscaloosa cookbook, I found the deed to this property. In the kitchen Prof. S. stared into the open freezer from which he pulled two trays of frozen brownies and cried, “Bonanza!”

Seducing Cats

2010-03-06T10:47:00.008-05:00

More photos of seducing a cat with ham and cheese on many-grain bread.

Like most, I take far more pictures than I post (and should probably be thanked for that), but last week's sketch crawl yielded a series I'm calling "Seducing Abba." I used ham.

Dangerous Book - Episode 32

2010-03-05T08:10:00.003-05:00

Thursday May 10

“Have you been sitting in for the receptionist again?” Billie asked.

I flashed her a look full of frustration.

“How do you know?”

“Because it always seems to put you in a bad mood,” she said.

We were lolling on the verandah steps tickling Juniper’s belly and watching Jacob and Allen set up the court. They had decided to stretch the official boundaries, which would mean playing across the whole of our scruffy lawn.

“We don’t know each other well enough for you to know that,” I cracked, then bit my lip. We don’t know each other well enough for me to snap at her like that. “I’m sorry,” I said. “And you’re right. I’m not even supposed to be doing it.”

“She’s martyrs herself,” said Kate.

“I do not!”

“You do, too. You get lonely in your office, so you wander out and start gossiping with Betty Sheffield —

— the office mom,” I explained to Billie.

“— and she manipulates you into working for her.”

“Maxine was out all day.”

“Of course she was, and old Betty’s not about to sit in for her. So she sees you and knows you’ll do it. Admit it.”

Instead of admitting anything I changed the subject.

“You can’t just ask a group of people to stop talking about food without having another topic.”

“Why do you want them to talk about?”

“Oh, anything interesting,” I said. “Me.”

We all laughed.

“It’s just that every morning they talk about what they made for dinner the night before or what they’re looking forward to tonight. They always seem to be eating or talking about food.”

“Well, think about it. It’s safe. Everyone eats. It’s not political until you walk in the room.”

A scary thought, but true. Whenever I join an office group I turn out to be the token tacky bitch.

“You’re bored,” said Kate. “If you were engrossed in your job, then office conversation wouldn’t bother you. You wouldn’t even hear it.”

“I wouldn’t be a secretary again if my life depended on it,” said Billie.

“You’re in a tough situation,” said Kate. “You’re not faculty and you’re not really staff. You have to keep yourself separate.”

“I know, but it does get lonely.”

“Maybe there’s a way to get together with some other publications people and faculty,” said Billie.

“At Tech we had a women’s forum,” I said. “We had a different speakers each month and raised funds for a scholarship.”

“How?”

“Quick and dirty bake sales, raffles. Then we put together a cookbook and made a ton of money.”

“That’s an idea!” said Billie. “You could put together a cookbook for the college.”

“Benefiting whom?”

“Who do you want to benefit?”

We thought about this.

“More digs?”

“Who were the scholarships at Tech for?” asked Kate.

“Female working their way through. You had to have a certain GPA. Above a 3.0, I think. And you had to be paying your own way.”

“But how did you choose from there?”

“They had a cook-off,” laughed Kate.

“No. The girls wrote essays describing how wonderful they were. Hardly anyone read the assignment.”

“Oh, there’s a shock,” said Kate.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Finally, I got to one that wasn’t even typed, but written in a notebook as if she’d just dashed it off. But it wasn’t. She just spilled it all out. Her four waitress jobs, her studies, her upcoming wedding. She wanted the money to rent a wedding dress and give a big reception. She couldn’t believe it when I picked her.”

“What was she studying?” asked Billie, reaching for her mallet.

“Astrophysics!”

“You’re saying you have to be a rocket scientist to win an essay contest,” joked Kate. We all stood, ready to play.

“Yeah, that dime didn’t drop until the interview.”

“Let’s do it,” said Billie. “Let’s make a cookbook.”

“It would mean talking about food,” said Kate.

“True, but there would be a point,” I said. I imagined the new conversations in the office that would end with nods and determined steps instead of the sighing drifts as the women floated back to their desks.

“That’s the important thing,” said Billie.

“Kate! You’re slowing the game,” called Jacob. I wondered again how such a pleasant woman could be married to such a miserable crab. But Kate seems always to take him in stride, accepting his bad temper, which tonight seemed directed, once again, at Peter.

“So which of you is going to organize this?” she asked, swallowing the last of her gin and tonic.

Simultaneously, Billie and I pointed to each other.

“She is!”

One of us will. By the end of the evening, Billie had outlined the categories of food. I had remembered the need to keep the entries balanced and we’d both begun a list of women we knew on campus who could provide the core of our network. Like all cooperative ventures this one would center around a handful of women who knew the most people, who had the most time or energy to spare and who enjoyed the bustle of involvement.

And I would have a way of connecting to the people around me. I could almost feel the threads, like a spider’s web, issuing from my fingertips. Only this time, the image didn’t feel like a trap. This time, on this fine clear evening, free of the cloying heat and scents that would descend within the month, the threads of all the possible connections—interest, commitment, effort—inspired me.

26th Sketchcrawl

2010-02-27T20:38:00.004-05:00

The year's first International Sketchcrawl (#26) held today all over the world.

Check out the link under "Cool Sites" on the right.

We met at the Atlanta Water Gardens on Cheshire Bridge Road. This is a great venue for sketching: free, friendly, three cats, lots of sculpture, moving water, giant meaty koi with dangerous gleams in their eyes...and it's indoors!

I wish I'd been able to spend more time at the AWG. My sketches are lamentably rushed. "Organic" as one kind person said.

Dangerous Book - Episode 31

2010-02-25T13:53:00.002-05:00

Episode 31

Wednesday, May 9

Several days later, as I was on my knees in the garden, Professor S. lowered himself to the ground beside me.

“She’s just left,” he whispered.

“What are you talking about?”

“Veronica. She’s gone over to the church with Elizabeth. I just saw them.”

“I didn’t.”

“They went out the back,” said. “Come on. I want to search her place.”

“No way.”

“Don’t be weak. I’ve got the key. I just want you to watch from the back window so we can see when they leave the church.”

“Where did you get her key?”

“She leaves it under the radiator in the hall.”

So he’d found it, too.

If Veronica’s apartment could speak, I think it would croak with irritation. A grass green couch sat too close to a cherry red upholstered chair. A brown braid rug swam like a dusty boat, too small to reach either piece. Her walls were a harsh rental white and nothing—no paintings, posters or shelves—had been added to soften them. Next to a maple rocker stood a low bookshelf upon which sat some cheap ornaments, too small for the bony lamp next to them. I honed in on the books.

Professor S. headed for the kitchen, but stopped at the dining room table, distracted. He picked something up and turned to me.

“Isn’t this yours?”

I glanced up from my examination of a copy of Gone with the Wind, which to my amazement, proved to be a first edition. She and Phoebe might have bought them together. Very little could have distracted me from this find, but what dangled from Professor Sargeant’s hand certainly did. My new charm bracelet.

“How on earth did it get here?”

“I’d say someone brought it. Didn’t you miss it?” He handed it to me.

“Sort of. I was looking for it last night, but got distracted. I hadn’t started searching for it. It must have been Veronica’s,” I said, taking it from him.

“Yeah, if she’s the one who took it from your apartment.”

“But she hasn’t been in my apartment.”

“How do you know?”

“Good question. God, she could have keys to everyone’s apartments.”

“Not mine. I installed new locks when I moved in. I take it you didn’t?”

I shrugged. I was careful about changing locks in the big city, but here? It hadn’t occurred to me. What had Veronica done? In searching for her bracelet, what else did she discover? This diary. My TV Guide? Did she pet the dog? Or simply dislodge the air? I counted the charms; there was nothing missing.

“Do you think Peter might have taken it?”

“That’s possible.”

Peter, as we know, has spent many hours in my apartment. Or has he? I thought about the time he and I have spent together. Most of the concentrated hours, if you will, have been spent in his place. He’s never spent the night or even had a meal. I said this. Professor S. nodded.

“It doesn’t take much time to put a small object in your pocket,” he said.

That was true. There were times when I’d been in the kitchen or bathroom. Last night I got a call from my mother, and she’d kept me talking for almost fifteen minutes. During that time, I’d wandered into my office leaving Peter alone on the couch, but he could have gone into the bathroom, just two steps from my bedroom. I generally left the jewelry I wore regularly on top of a bureau. The rest was in various boxes in the top drawer. I’m almost certain he’d seen me search for earrings.

“He was over last night. We had drinks and hung out.” Actually, he’d come to see Jacob and had swung by my place when Juniper barked her greetings from an open window. Seducing him to stay had been a bit of a challenge, but I’d succeeded and was still feeling very full of myself.

I pictured us on the living room sofa, snuggling low. The lights were on and the blinds open when I’d kissed him. He had pulled away, not quickly, and walked to the windows, closing the blinds with a movement that had been, in retrospect, very quick.

“I joked about his aunt passing by and seeing us,” I said, relating some of this to Prof. S.

“How did he take that?”

“Take what?”

“Joking about his aunt seeing you.”

A flip remark rose to my lips as I considered how to answer him.

“I think he was more interested in Billie or Allan not seeing us,” I said, restoring Veronica’s copy of Gone With the Wind to its place next to a cookbook. She did not appear to have any other first editions.

“Don’t you wonder why?” he demanded.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “Why shouldn’t he want some privacy? I would like some.” This wasn’t true. I wanted everyone to see us together.

“Privacy is one thing. Secrecy is something else. Keeping your relationship —”

We were just turning toward the small kitchen when Juniper started barking. We froze, looking at each other. Was it Veronica and Mrs. Moth back from Calvary already? Juniper continued her noise.

“Back door?” I hissed.

Prof. S. tried the doorknob but of course the dead bolt was thrown and the door would not open. It was the kind that required a key on both sides. Most people would have left a spare either in the deadbolt or close by. There was no key in sight. How were we to get out? I pivoted and crept as fast as I could to the front windows, trying to see if she and Mrs. Moth were standing out front. They were studying the professor’s garden, pointing to and examining its growth, or so it appeared. We might have some time if the light held or the plants fascinated. Juniper’s bark subsided. I opened the front door.

“Come on,” I whispered.

“Wait.”

He’d been trying to open the deadbolt with keys from the set we’d found downstairs and had finally managed it.

“Meet you later,” I hissed, making a bold, if potentially stupid, run for the front door. My aim was to get out and at least be on the descent in case Veronica walked in. That way I could distract her and give Professor S. a chance to escape the back way.

It worked. Veronica was still engaged with Mrs. M. when I reached my own apartment. Juniper’s barking stopped abruptly as I scooped her into my arms. Whispering “Good dog” I realized I was still clutching the charm bracelet. I managed to hide it by sliding the hand that held it under Juniper, switching her to my right hand and cradling her under that arm. But I am not sure. Surely she could see how dilated my eyes were and hear how breathlessly I lied.

“I was just looking for you,” I said. “But now I can’t remember why.”

“Oh, you girls always want to borrow something.”

She insisted I follow her, which I readily did, and with every intention of returning the bracelet to its place. But where had Prof. S. found it?

Veronica led the way through the living room and into her kitchen.

“I’ll make us some tea,” she said. “Or coffee? I have instant.”

“Tea is great,” I said from the dining room. I bent down to release Juniper and, standing straight, dropped the bracelet on the dining room table. Chances are if it wasn’t where Professor S. had found it, Veronica would not remember moving it. Then I made a rash decision.

“How did this get up here?” I asked, rather ostentatiously walking into the kitchen with the bracelet dangling from two fingers. On my face, I’d slapped a quizzical look, half innocent, half conspiratorial. “This is the bracelet I dug up.”

Veronica, turning from the open refrigerator, one hand on the door, the other grasping a glass pitcher, blushed to the roots of her iron gray hair. For a second we stood as combatants, then, as she began to lose her grip on the tea, I reached forward and caught it. Together we placed it safely on the counter and my attempt at confrontation aborted. Or so I thought.

“Where did you get that?” She was stuttering with anger and confusion.

“On the dining room table,” I said.

“How dare you go through my things?”

“It was right there,” I snapped. “And I believe it’s mine.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said. “Give it to me right now.”

But I held it fast. “Veronica, I found it.”

“Finders keepers? That doesn’t matter. Do you think everything you find belongs to you?”

Actually I do, but clearly that wasn’t an appropriate or even a fair response. In the second it took me to think twice before answering her, I drew a breath. Taking a breath, counting to ten before speaking is wise advice. In those seconds much can be revealed. But only if you use the time to look around.

Veronica’s red face paled, her blue eyes watered. She too, breathed, and I could see the effort it took for her not to reach out and grab the trinket from my hand. Suddenly I felt very ashamed of myself and my actions. What kind of adventure did I think I was on? At my feet, Juniper snuffled. She had dragged a dingy white sock from somewhere and was toying with it. Wasn’t I doing the same with Veronica’s emotions? But looking at Juniper reminded me of Astible. If Veronica had poisoned the little dog, she deserved no consideration from me. (But what if she hadn’t?)

“Are you saying this is your bracelet?” I asked. My anger, rooted in fear, had dissipated. Hers had not.

“It…yes, it is mine. It was mine. It will be mine again, if you have any manners.”

Of course I had manners. But I also had a brain.

“If this is yours, why didn’t you say so when I dug it up? It was sitting right there.”

“I didn’t notice it until you wore it. By then you’d added your own charms, but when you told the other girls where you’d found it, I realized it was the one I lost.”

“When? When did you lose it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. When Beau… it must have been when he planted the azaleas. I just know it’s mine.”

When she reached out again I released it. The spell, such as it was, had been broken. As if to emphasize our return to normalcy, I heard Professor S.’s steps on the stairs.

“Nora? Are you up there? Someone here to see you.”

I almost laughed. Our Nancy Drew adventure had ended for the day. We still don’t know if Veronica poisoned Astible, either by accident (this seems improbable) or for reason of her own (also improbable) but at least I’d learned who owned the bracelet I’d uncovered.

How long had it lain there? Did the bead?

I stood looking at Veronica rubbing the baby head charm with her thumb, her lips moving slightly, as if in prayer, and then I turned and left. If she knew who owned the blue bead, I’d find out soon enough.

As I walked downstairs, not looking forward to reporting this scene to Professor S., she called to me.

“Here,” she said, handing me an envelope. Inside was the bracelet with my own charms still attached but not the baby head. Sadly, I cupped my new jewelry. I wanted the baby charm.

“Why did you take it from me?” I asked. “How did you even get it?”

“The locks haven’t been changed on that apartment in thirty years,” she said with a certain grimness. “I used to come and go every day. Here.”

When I held out my hand again, she placed in it the key to my apartment.

Dangerous Book - Episode 30

2010-02-20T10:47:00.001-05:00

Sat. May 6 continued

I was on the verandah brushing Juniper when Veronica returned. She took Ed Dowling’s message with a sly smile.

“Are you buying a house?” I asked.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“If you ask me to,” I said, then thought better of it. “I guess it depends on the secret. Is something happening?”

“The church is buying this complex,” she said.

“I thought it already owned it.”

“No, we just manage the property.” She is on one of the boards, I understood that. “We want to own the land.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to build a parking lot on this apartment complex!” The thought made me sick. There’s plenty of Sunday parking all over the streets. Why churchgoers can’t walk a few blocks to sit for an hour is beyond me, but they all seem to have to crowd each other for spots.

“No. Well, maybe a little. We need to build a family center.”

“But what about us?”

She shrugged, tempering it with an encompassing sigh. “Oh, you’ll be moving on. Most people only live here for a few years. It’s just the old ladies who stay forever. And even we are sometimes capable of change.”

“But what will happen to Phoebe and Mrs. Moth. And you? Where will you go?”

“We’ll find places. We’ll be fine.”

“Does Phoebe know?”

“Oh, yes.” But her eyes flickered when she said this, and I knew she was lying.

If Phoebe knows about this, she doesn’t like it.

“Is that why you didn’t want us putting in a new garden?”

“Actually, it was one reason it didn’t matter that you did.”

I guess she’s right about most of us only living here a few years. That’s the way of it in a college town, but I’d been loving my time here and making tentative plans for a long stay. I’m attracted by the courtyard’s past and its emerging artifacts. And the garden! A garden is a bid for the future. When you plant one you can’t help but think of the years ahead. That’s just the way they are. Half of what you do and think is rooted, literally, in what will happen in the weeks and months ahead. I’ve heard gardeners say it takes twenty years to grow a good garden and that no one can call himself a gardener until he’s moved the same plant three times.

Professor Sergeant’s expensive investment in shrubs spoke to his future plans. He had no intention of going anywhere when he put in the kind of planting that would take years just to get settled. He hadn’t been told of this. That I knew. I wondered how he would take the news. And I wondered if I’ll be the one to tell him.

Dangerous Book - Episode 29

2010-02-13T16:50:00.001-05:00

One thing I loved about owning a dog, and Juniper in particular, was the way she always knew just when to perch herself on the back of the big chair by the window. So that after I’d parked my car and walked past the building and up the verandah steps what I saw first was her goofy little head with its curly ears that look more like accessories. She was waiting for me. And I loved it. I loved the feeling of being welcomed home. That’s a dog for you. That’s why people have dogs. They are the welcome to your own home.

But this afternoon, Juniper was watching the dark-haired man who stood in front of my garden, as if pondering its growth. He was Eddie Dowling, the church member who wanted Professor S. to dig his garden elsewhere. Snatches of the resume Veronica and Phoebe had released adjusted themselves in my mind: 40-something, lawyer, state representative, father (deceased) a former Monnish Court resident.

When I was close enough I saw he was rolling a bit of rosemary between his thumb and forefinger.

“Pot roast, right?” I said, indicating the rosemary.

“Pot roast and Sunday afternoons,” he smiled. Behind him Juniper set off what sounded like another round of barking. There was impatience and interrogation in her voice.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I have to let her out.”

Eddie Dowling was a dog lover. I could tell and so could Juniper. She was fairly cat-like in her ways, tending to pursue people who’d rather have nothing to do with her, rolling on her back on the sidewalk at the touch of a practiced hand, but with Eddie she sat to doggy attention, alert and ready to carry a newspaper or fetch a toy. When he tucked her under one arm, she rested her chin on his wrist as if she knew him well. That was her special charm.

When he tickled her chin, I saw that in his left hand he held the blue bead I had dug up that first day. I’d taken the bracelet for my own and wore it most days. I was wearing it then, camouflaged by my own charms. The bead was another matter. After placing it in various spots around my apartment, I concluded that it would only get lost in the effluvia of my own stuff. And the fact was, charms and fetishes have jobs to do.

Turkish donkey beads are supposed to be worn for good luck, but this bead had its own luck. Or fate. The hole that should have been drilled all the way through it had not been. Instead it carried a kind of belly button, a tiny concave. It wanted to be carried in a pocket, or even a purse. Just not mine. For some reason I knew this, and for some other reason I decided to put it back in the garden and let it find its own way. Or let the forces of nature, God and man, decide its fate.

“I’d forgotten all about this,” he said. “My father brought it back from Turkey with a lot of other stuff. The beads are strung and looped around animals to keep them safe.”

“It was one of the things I excavated when I dug the patch,” I said.

He rolled it around in the palm of his large hand. The last time he’d held it, that palm had been much smaller. I wondered if he was thinking that. Had the bead kept him safe? Had losing the bead coincided with the death of his father?

“It was easy to lose,” he said. “I used to keep it in a pocket of my chinos. Sometimes it would disappear for a few days, get lost in the wash or I’d find it in my underwear drawer or my dad would toss it to me or mail it to me.” He laughed.

“I didn’t live with him.” He pointed across the street to the houses on University Circle. “I lived with my grandparents over there,” he said. “But I was over here all the time. I just loved it when he’d mail me stuff.”

“He had a sense of humor,” I said. I was starting to build up a picture of this mysterious man, who might not have been, but whose picture and activities were gaining a hold in my imagination.

Robert Dowling. Gardener. Friend. Traveler. Bringer of lucky charms. Restorer of lost objects. Bachelor father. An attractive man surrounded by single women. I had an image of the people in Phoebe’s photograph superimposed over a similar photo, not taken, of me and Peter; Billie and Allen; Kate and Jacob, and I wondered if that old crowed had played croquet. And which of the women had loved which of the men. Surely there had been other men?

“I haven’t seen this since he passed. I guess I must have lost it the day he died.”

“How? How old were you?”

“I was twelve. He had a heart attack.”

“I’ve seen his grave,” I said, nodding towards Evergreen.

“The man who died on his birthday.” He grimaced. “That was the headline. But I don’t think it’s so odd. They’d had a big party, everyone was drinking and dancing. Someone had brought a bottle of moonshine and they’d been into it. That night he died.”

He held the bead lightly, rolling it around on his open palm, as if undecided whether to let it drop again into the garden. Juniper’s nose, which seemed to have a life of its own, hovered over it. She licked it. The movement seemed to please him; he brought his cheek down and cuddled her.

“When I was little, I had a little necklace I used to let drop from a hole in my coat in the back yard and then look for,” I said.

“Why did you do that?”

“I was playing detective.”

“Do you still have it?”

“No. One afternoon I played the game, I don’t know, about ten times. Then I couldn’t find it. I dropped it too good, I guess. After that, I’d go out in the yard periodically and poke around, but I never found it. That summer my parents put up a swimming pool right where I’d been playing.”

“It’s long gone now.”

“Maybe. Who knows? Here’s your bead after all these years.”

“It’s yours now,” he said, offering it to me on the palm of his well-tended hand. I wouldn’t take it; in fact, I backed away.

“You keep it,” I said. I’d put out a hand as if warning him and his blue bead away. I shook my wrist. “Do you recognize this bracelet?”

He shook his head. I pointed to the baby’s head charm. “Does this look familiar to you?”

“I’ve seen charms like that, I think.” He looked at me, puzzled. “Why?”

“I found the bracelet when I dug the garden. When I found the bead. This charm was the only one on it. The rest are mine.”

He shook his head.

“If you see Veronica, would you tell I stopped by? Tell her I’ll call her with the closing date.”

“Closing?”

“That’s right. Will you do that?”

“Yes, if I see her. Is she buying a house?”

He inhaled the rosemary, tapping his lip with the sharp sprig. I couldn’t tell if he was avoiding my question or just meditating. All of his movements seemed slow and detached as if the scent of the herb, which can be strong and very lulling, had distracted him fully.

“It was nice talking to you,” he said. “Thank you for returning my bead.” He looked at me in a way I want to say was kind, but which had a kind of force behind it that I found myself willingly responding to, as a good lieutenant might to a captain, “I like what you’ve done to the garden. But don’t try to dig up everything.”

People who know what they want from a situation are always at an advantage. He did not answer my question but by the time I realized it, he was long gone.

Dangerous Book - Episode 28

2010-02-08T13:59:00.002-05:00

Next day May 3

Peter never joined me last night. After Billie disappeared, I took Juniper for a last walk around the block. In an attempted to work off some of my confusion about Peter and Lura’s relationship, Jacob’s anger with him and my own place in his world, I must have walked too fast. About halfway around the 12^th Avenue block, Juniper sat herself down on the sidewalk, cocked her head at me and wouldn’t budge. I wound up carrying her home.

“That’s not good discipline,” said Professor Sergeant when I reached the verandah. He was smoking a very academic-looking pipe and leaning back against the top step. Juniper found a spot for herself on his chest.

“I guess not,” I agreed, finding a seat for myself against a column. I faced his profile and, not far behind, Phoebe’s darkened windows. Upstairs, I could see Veronica’s lights were off, her windows shut. Professor Sergeant’s blinds were half closed; the lights behind them dim. Only my own three living room windows glared, the lights behind them bright as noise. Anyone passing by could see the mess on my desk, the titles of the books on my shelves.

“Did you see Peter leave?” I asked, removing the leash and choke chain from Juniper’s neck. She still wore her little red collar. Prof. S. took the leash from me and removed the choke chain.

“Just try without it for a while,” he said, attaching the leash to Juniper’s collar.

“Did they say when they’d be back?”

“He’ll be back.”

We sat for a few minutes inhaling the night. We couldn’t see the plants grow, but night is when they reach out and change.

“Somebody killed my dog,” he said.

“Your dog died,” I said. “It was an accident.”

“My dog was killed,” he said. “And I want you to help me figure it out.”

“But, why? I mean, why would anyone want to kill a dog?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe whoever did it wanted to get at me.”

“But who are you? I mean, to get at? Have you?” I faltered. “An enemy?”

“I’m not being paranoid,” he said. “Veronica never liked me. Never.”

“But Astible?”

“She’s a vindictive, silly woman.”

“You think she’s responsible?”

“I do. But I don’t know for sure. I’m going to find out.”

Guest Blog Post: How to Lose 100 Pounds

2010-02-06T09:56:00.001-05:00

A guest blog post by Cynthia Yancey Smith

When I was five, my parents bought new dining room furniture: table, six chairs and a china cabinet complete with dust-catching spindles, crevices, nooks, shelves and intricate moldings. Crafted from solid pecan in a pricey brand the neighbors could envy, every stick was built to outlive us all.

I can’t remember how my parents came to buy this set, but I know it was above their means, because I can recall at least one loud argument amid much regular bickering regarding the financial decisions involved in purchasing it long after we owned it.

Dusting the china cabinet became my job. I was told how important it was to take care of, and respect, fine expensive things, usually while being handed a rag and a can of Pledge.

I grew to hate this thing.

Fast forward to my first year of marriage. My parents came to visit, pulling along a trailer full of things they were certain every young married couple would want, including the damned china cabinet. I swallowed hard when they lugged it in, apologizing to my husband. But he thought it was great that we had scored a large piece of furniture for the mere price of two-day visit from his in-laws.

Over the years, while we moved from X to Y to Z, the cabinet dictated virtually every interior-design decision by its sheer bulk and style. It began to own me. Accommodating its bulk was like living with a constant smell.

Because I was never able to find dining room furniture that I liked, but that would still “go” with the monster, I turned it into a display case in the living room. At least the piece was large enough to fill the gaps in a large room and hold the trophies and souvenirs I was sure would fit nowhere else. And the fact was, we couldn’t afford to replace it.

But I hated it. I hated dusting it, I hated its old-fashioned bulbous style, I hated the restrictions it placed on my decorating ideas, I hated remembering the place it held in my childhood: the symbol of success. For all the ‘things’ our parents bought to prove they were no longer children of the depression, they were still angry and anxious about money. Still, every time I thought about removing the monster from my life, I hit the wall of familial guilt. I had no siblings to give it to, no basement to hide it in, my parents didn’t want it back, and I couldn’t just sell it in a yard sale or give it to the local thrift store! The monster was a fine, expensive thing that I had grown up with. An heirloom representing the very life my parents had aimed for beyond their own hardscrabble upbringing. How dare I not want it?

Finally, 21 years later and well into my 50s, the day came when I could dare not to want the monster in my living room. It was easy: a casual friend was over helping us move the cable connection , which involved moving the monster to another wall.

“I wish I could toss the thing in the trash,” I said.

“Put it on Craig’s List,” he said, in that off-handed way that people use when they don’t know they’ve just opened a vein in your psyche. “Be done with it.”

It wasn’t that I hadn’t ever thought of doing just that (I’m a champion e-Bay user), it was just that no one else had ever spoken the words to me: “Be done with it.” A practical stranger had me permission to get rid of something I really hated, something that had taken up and determined huge amount of space and power in my life.

A few weeks later, the day came when someone actually paid me money (I can’t breathe how much because it would be sacrilege) and took the thing away – joyful in their acquisition. They were buying a nice, pecan china cabinet. I was losing 25 years of guilty weight.

When my living room was finally clear, and the sky did not fall, nor the gods strike me down, that, most important, my mother did not appear at my door to accuse me of being bad daughter, I saw that I was free. I felt 100 pounds lighter.

My most treasured possession

2010-02-03T09:21:00.003-05:00

Many many years ago, my favorite and most influential English professor gave me a bootleg copy of J.D. Salinger's Uncollected Short Stories with the injunction to keep it safe. Somehow, through the last 36 years, 26 moves and half-dozen thieving roommates, light-fingered boyfriends and assorted "guests," I've managed to do just that. But then, books are the bricks in my safest walls, and Salinger's slender few are at the cornerstones.

It used to be that I read one of his books every year, possibly to maintain ties to my undergraduate years before the onus of living up to early promise became an onus and was still a kind of guarantee. In graduate school, I grabbed the opportunity to teach Franny and Zooey, doing so with a pleasure mixed with nostalgia for the semester I'd read it first and an amused understanding of the frustrations experienced by my old professor. Some students just didn't get it. Or like it. How could that be?

I'm not a Salinger scholar. I studied British Literature, not American. I read Salinger in order to steal his way of describing a person and a moment. For the rush of recognition whenever he honed in on an image of, say, Frannie's fingers trembling, the circle of light on the white tablecloth, the self-important clearing of Lane's throat. For the inclusive love I wished were mine in that Upper-West side apartment occupied by the Glass family.

When I feel the tears come, they're not for the famous writer/recluse, but for myself and the realization that I no longer know or am close to the girl I was when I read those books as if they were my Bible. He is gone and she is gone.

It may be that Salinger never stopped writing and so, like all good resurrection stories, that means we will soon have a posthumous outpouring of work. I hope so. In the meantime, I've begun another reading of Nine Stories. It's been too long.

Oh snail, climb Mt. Fuji. Slowly. Slowly.

I have.

Dangerous Book - Episode 27

2010-02-01T11:09:00.003-05:00

May 2, Wednesday

The game tonight felt more like tug-of-war than croquet. Peter’s back and it shows. He and Jacob bickered non-stop over rules and conduct. It was stupid too, because Lura had brought a box of restaurant candles and set them up next to each wicket. The effect was pretty and added to the silliness of the game. But the boys would not play a silly game. Have no idea what Jacob was mad about tonight, but he seems to keep a low boil going generally, and most of the time no one pays him any mind.

Lura’s candles were the squat red kind with plastic fishnet cozies. Jacob used them like bumpers with great luck, though that only seemed to make him more aggressive. At Peter’s example, we croqueted him every time he rearranged a candle to suit, but he wouldn’t admit he was cheating.

When someone has an interesting shot up, it is a good idea for the others to offer sincere, well considered, but unsolicited advice, seconds before one’s opponent makes the play. The boys do this so often, it’s become part of our ritual.

At one wicket, Jacob lined himself up, measuring the length between his ball and the wicket (about three feet), brushed some cut grass and a few twigs from the path his ball would need to take and bent slightly, only to stop, adjust his shorts and regain his stance. The second he went to take his shot, Allen coughed. Jake grinned, re-adjusted his shorts with some display and made his stoke. Just as his mallet made contact, Peter, standing next to Veronica, shook the ice in his glass and laughed, as if at something she’d said. Jake’s wrist wobbled and the ball, instead of receiving the confident thwack it required, was merely nudged along a scant foot.

“Cut it out,” said Jake, glaring at Peter.

“Huh?” he said.

“I wanted to make that shot.” He spoke with such loathing, we all looked at each other in surprise. He seemed to hear the anger in his voice after that. Or caught Kate’s look of alarm, because he skulked off the field and stood at the drinks table with his back to us.

I don’t know what would have happened next. Peter, a fresh gin and tonic gripped in his hand, seemed ready for a fight when Lura, instead of lining up her play, suddenly flung herself down on the ground near her ball, flipped her mallet and knocked her ball through the hoop as if she were playing pool. The distraction worked. She bounced to her feet and curtseyed. Even Jacob laughed.

But the evening ended early. Kate, with Jacob stalking next to her, left their casseroles behind. Peter followed Veronica upstairs with some plates we had borrowed, while Billie and I cleared the table. We worked quickly. Allan put away the croquet.

“What was that all about?” I asked Billie shrugged.

“Jacob’s…kind of judgmental.”

“About what? Peter?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Again she shrugged and looked so uncomfortable it was almost more than I could stand to persist.

“Does it have something to do with me?”

“No!” she said, glancing up at Veronica’s window. I looked too. I’d seen Peter follow his aunt, but I had not noticed Lura join them. I’d had the hazy idea that she’d taken trash out to the dumpster. Now Billie and I saw Lura and Peter at the window, looking down at us. I waved.

“Is he angry about Lura?” I asked. “What about Lura?” But when I turned, Billie had gone and the door to her apartment was shut.

The sky in traffic

2010-01-29T10:26:00.003-05:00

Got caught in the heart o' Buckhead the other night. It was fun yelling at the timid drivers who don't know how to make left-hand turns on Peachtree Street. Learn the secret! Also, what is the point of driving a giant car if you're going to wait for a $##$%^ invitation to make a turn?

I took this on West Paces Ferry when still in a mellow mood.

Sometimes the morning

2010-01-29T10:19:00.004-05:00

is worth the getting up.

When we were girls, my friend Donna used to try and rouse me at 5 to go the beach for sunrise. I never would, because I liked my sleep and my indulgence.

These days I get up because another friend and fellow walker is meeting me in the lobby.

I am always glad but never more so than on mornings like this:

Dangerous Book - Episode 26

2010-01-25T14:53:00.001-05:00

Sunday, April 29

This morning I roamed the house like a caged animal, driving Juniper, who really is a caged animal, a little crazy. She followed my anxiety as if it were some kind of Frisbee. I finally scooped her up for a long walk through Evergreen.

A cemetery is a huge garden where the dominant color changes with steady regularity. Those caretakers who were going to bind their daffodil stems into braided chignons had done so. Maintenance workers on riding mowers have sheared the remaining jonquils, daffodils and crocuses to the nub.

What I saw today were the iris tall and unfurling in many plots, yellow replaced by mauve and purple. In their turn, the iris will give way to gladioli and crepe myrtle. Roses will hold steady for months. The plot with the peonies will fade back. I make a note to search for gardenias by their smell.

I was hunting for Lura’s family when a man I took for a wealthy mental patient approached me. But when passed me without stopping, his biscuit-shaped face revealed a normal intelligence. Sloppily fat, wearing loose pink sweats that hung from his belly and then re-draped themselves among the cracks and creases of his body, he jingled an authoritative set of keys.

As I watched, he unlocked the gardener’s shack, a former mausoleum, and entered, returning with a roll of maps, which he laid out on the hood of an old white hearse. Within minutes he seemed to find what he was looking for, rolled up and restored the maps and headed over to the northwest corner, where a green-striped tent was being erected. Someone was moving in today.

Lura’s family plot was as lovely and as insulated from the road and hot sun as I’d feared. Surrounded by a lacy iron fence, her ancestors enjoyed shade and thorny roses. There was a tall, but not immovable jug poised on one slab---the kind I’d like to steal. Briefly, I wondered how to accomplish this.

As Juniper and I left through the south gate, we passed a pair of gravediggers in their blue pickup. Later, on the walk home (we’d gone up to campus and wandered around Kate’s dig) I saw that the new grave had been dug, and about a dozen chairs waited a discreet distance away. The fat man and his white hearse were gone.

That evening as I was taking out the trash, I was distracted by the sight of a man in a new truck with ropes and a mechanical lifting device driving out from Evergreen’s Bear Bryant Road exit. From where I stood, (our dumpster sits nearly against the cemetery’s west fence), I could see that the funeral has occurred and that I had missed the bulk of it, but not its last and most poignant moment.

Four workers carrying shovels, and one carrying nothing at all, were lined up watching as an old man in a dark Sunday suit patted the filled-in grave with the back of a long handled spade. When he finished, he paused, turned and returned the tool to the empty-handed worker, who received it respectfully. The gravediggers shuffled off then, leaving him alone in his suit and white handkerchief.

He must have promised to bury her with his own hands.

In the background another worker trundled a wheelbarrow, spreading the displaced earth elsewhere. A dog barked. A flock of black birds erupted from a wire. A car door opened and shut.

Dangerous Book - Episode 25

2010-01-15T11:14:00.002-05:00

Episode 25 January 15, 2010

Wednesday, April 24

My new boyfriend eats very slowly, as if counting every chew. He cooked me a dinner of curry and rice followed by a small key lime pie, which we polished off by taking alternate forkfuls.

“You have it,” I said. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”

“No, you’re the guest.”

This went back and forth until he licked his finger and pressed the remaining crumb with it. Then he held his finger to my mouth and I took the bit of crust from him, tasting his finger in the process. And so on and so on until my lips found friends with his.

Saturday April 27 evening

Croquet last night without Peter. In his place was a rounded and pretty woman named Lura, who arrived with Jacob and Kate. She seemed shy, at least, I found her so, but Jacob took care to teach her the rules we’ve been using and stuck with her. And the others seemed to take her appearance for granted, which reminded me again that I am the character recently introduced, not her. She simply hasn’t been seen for a chapter or two.

I found myself telling everyone that Peter had left a message on my home machine. “He has a job interview in Atlanta,” I said, hoping no one noticed the authority in my voice.

But it was Lura who knew which group he was visiting. She’d worked there herself all year and seemed responsible in some way for his opportunity now.

She mentioned her own family’s practice here, which she will soon join. I recognized the name from some of the more luxurious monuments at Evergreen as well as a curving road that cuts through the town’s small historic district. And so I felt diminished.

These women confuse me. Women like Lura born to a lifetime of belonging, who I know in my head will have plenty of troubles one way or another, but who to me are placed in my path as some kind of challenge.

So, I thought, Peter’s his career is underway. He will leave here. I had to know he would, didn’t I? Of course, I just hadn’t the time yet to think about it. Did I think I was going to fall in love and marry him?

The evening ended eventually. Professor S. slid past us at nearly midnight without greeting. I have not forgotten that he expected me to help him, but Veronica did not watch the game, no one brought any brownies. I didn’t know what he expected me to do or if I could confide his theories to Kate or Billie.

Hanger and Fold: Invisible Ice

2010-01-12T09:41:00.002-05:00

Here at the high-rise, we use the solar snow removal process. The snow is all but gone, but what remains are secretive bits of black ice that can, and will, bring you down if you're not careful. Ice, so thin it's the color of the pavement, can be invisible.

So I'll stay tucked up here in the early mornings instead of going out for usual (and much missed) 7 a.m. walk.

I've had to remove my blog posting regarding the store in which I work. I didn't realize there was a company policy about use of the store name (don't do it) and photographs of the store (don't do it). So, no more Hanger and Fold...unless it's fiction, I suppose.

It seems to me that even positive discussions of a personal experience are, when attached to a brand, unwelcome. Is it the control factor? Are we all so fearful and litigious and worried? Are we not human anymore?

Watching out for black ice on warming mornings.

Off the Grid - The Battle

2010-01-08T13:10:00.001-05:00

Anatomy of a Battle in the War Against Depression/Failure

An extended stint of unemployment can be challenging, especially for single people holed up in their homes or apartments with, seemingly, nothing more to do than check the same old job boards and struggle against the urge to crawl back to bed.

I know. I’ve been unemployed, semi-employed and underemployed since May, and it’s getting to me. Recently, some lucky freelance assignments have dried up, hours at J.Jill have shrunk, and a cold snap has put my regular, early morning walks on hiatus.

While I write in my journal every morning, creating project ideas and crafting careful to-do lists, I find it harder and harder to actually get out of bed and into my office/studio.

Today, for example, was to be a studio day. An email from a gallery owner with some semi-good news about a few of my artist books: they were being considered by a collector (good) but felt to be overpriced (bad). Would I consider re-pricing? Yes. I left this exchange primed to make more books. Indeed, I’m planning a show for May and need to be working. So what did I make this morning? Cookies!

As a freelance writer and book artist, my days are created from raw ingredients of ideas, equipment, supplies, skills and experience. But I need more. I need confidence and energy. I need a sense of purpose. Why am I floundering? Could it be fear?

As an unemployed editor and staff writer, my days are created from Internet searches, LinkedIn networking, resume tweaking and follow-ups on every and all meetings. I search the area colleges for openings in faculty, administration and management. I search the businesses closest to home because I really don’t want another 20-mile commute to cubeland. I do, however, want the “safety” net of insurance, steady pay, fellow sufferers. I want the identity I used to have. I want my friends to respect me.

Maybe I need to commit, either to getting a job or to being a freelance writer and book artist. It is 1 in the afternoon. I’ve checked the forums of the freelance networks I joined. I’ve perused the articles in Suite 101, a content mill that has accepted my application to write (at a rate I was earning in 1979). I’ve made another list. I’ve called my hair stylist. I’ve felt old. I’ve read sample query letters. I’ve eaten lunch. And now I sit down to do what I do best: ponder what to do next.

I feel better. But I still have not committed.

Dangerous Book - Episode 24

2010-01-06T11:49:00.003-05:00

Tuesday, April 23 Evening

Veronica caught me on my knees, my hands rummaging in the basil. Like most herbs, it smells best when bruised. Usually Juniper or I heard her coming, but she’d just been fitness walking in a pair of creeping sneakers and I was in a daze. The basil’s fragrance was as heady as a drug, as heady as the very fresh memory of Peter’s kisses. My lips, more bruised than the basil I brushed, were set in a permanent smile. The kind you can’t turn off. So Veronica got to think I was happy to see her, which I was. After all, we might be related some day.

“Aren’t you the sweetest thing,” she called. I assumed she was referring to the tin of cookies I’d left for her this morning. Happiness brings out the baker in me. She got some. Professor Sargeant and Phoebe got some. Even Mrs. Moth was eating sugar cookies tonight.

Sometimes I can’t bear looking at Veronica after she’s been on a power walk. She swathed her big smile in Vaseline, scrubbing her nose and forehead pink. Her hair, which was steel gray and cut in a nice little bob was squashed under a plastic hood, rain or shine.

“Be a neighbor,” she insisted. “Borrow something. Ask! Whatever you need. The boy before you borrowed the darnedest things. A telephone!” So I rose from my garden, brushing the dirt from my hands and asked to borrow a broom. She escorted me up stairs, first reaching under the radiator in our shared foyer and withdrawing a key. Why bother locking the door at all, I wondered but did not ask.

I want to say Veronica’s rooms appeared sterile because there was nothing stacked up. No projects nearing completion. Unlike Phoebe’s unit, or my own, there were very few books. A few paintings in uninspired frames seemed desolately small against the chalky white walls. Her dining room, too, was remarkably cheerless. She led me into her bedroom where I got the shock she evidently expected. Next to her bed stood a life-sized promotional cutout of Bartles and Jaymes, the screw top vintners, circa 1985. Spookily lifelike.

“Oh!” For a second thinking we were not alone.

“I didn’t have a man in my room, so one of the girls from the office gave me this!” She was vastly pleased. “Now I have two!”

Christmas Presents and the Thoughts that Count

2009-12-29T10:50:00.004-05:00

Every year I twist myself into a moral maze of ordinary human bitchiness that is eventually understood but never quite figured out, if you know what I mean.

I never seem to get what I want. And I persist in thinking I'm going to. I'm talking relatively stupid stuff here, not love, a place in the world or a reason to live. Not good health and no regrets, an end to the war, a fking job. I'm talking pedicure kits and Borders gift cards.

I used to cringe when my mother would groan upon opening another scarf, rose-shaped pin, stuffed animal or rosary. "What am I supposed to do with that?" I cringed because I grokked all too well the disappointment, anger and yes, hurt, that comes from not being understood. Of course, in my family, getting the wrong gift was equal to not being loved. "If you loved me, you'd know what I want. You would have heard me, seen me, listened to me. But you didn't, so you don't."

Really, sometimes the thought doesn't count at all. And that is because the thought was not for her. Or, now that she's dead and I have to claim my inheritance, me.

I could see her point. Old people are living on time and need time and should be given gifts of time. This includes experiences (being taken out of the home); stamps, ephemera: magazines that can be enjoyed and thrown away, for example; wine, food and flowers; massages, gift cards and light sweaters that button down and only if their existing sweaters are stained, which they probably are.

As if the people who love us are actually not people but fairy godmothers. Santa Clauses that read minds and have endless imagination.

Here's another thought I'm grateful to have had. What if we really do get what we give? That would mean I'm the one not reading your mind, not exercising imagination all year, day after day. Now there's a thought that counts.

The thought. Actually, the thought is starting to mean something to me. There's probably a decade coming of the thought being the important thing, maybe less as I'm not all that emotionally evolved, but we'll see. My sister is a good person who, despite our advanced years, continues to see herself as my protector. I'm convinced that this is why she does for me rather than with me. As in, "I'll paint your kitchen. Don't touch anything." Years ago, I'd have shrugged and left her to it. But this year, when she painted my kitchen (and this, I should add, is one hell of a Christmas present and exactly what I wanted AND needed, take back the purple satin pencil case and the pendant of an obscure Irish saint) I was quite desperate to get in there with her and learn all she had to pontificate on, I mean teach me about, the job. So I stayed put and did as I was told, when she told me to do it.

It is not the thought that someone had to throw you a gift you're only going to recycle, it's the thought that they had of you and of their hand stretched out, laden, in your direction. I know this because by the time Christmas, and the gift giving, getting, and worrying, was all over, I'd forgotten that I was ever as angry as I was. The irritation is gone, replaced by humor and a little spiteful but cleansing re-gifting.

Dangerous Book - Episode 23

2009-12-29T10:34:00.001-05:00

Episode 23

I like having Billie for a neighbor. She’s kind, responsive and never judgmental or out of sorts. She’s not the kind of person you think would have any problems of her own. Any neurotic worries. Wholesome people make me wholesome. I try to be like them and generally succeed.

Billie doesn’t gossip. I’ve been waiting for her to mention the tension between Kate and Jacob --- atleast bring up his drinking and how angry he gets during a croquet game when he’s losing. Especially when he’s losing to Peter. But she never says a word about other people’s personal lives, so I don’t. I can’t. I’m becoming their friend, but it’s only been a month. Less. I have no right to gossip about anybody.

But I sit with her on the verandah, caught between wanting to talk about Peter, insinuating his name into our conversation whenever possible, feeling embarrassed when I find her turning the talk away from him. He is becoming a delicious obsession. When I can no longer “be good” I go to bed. Love is a narcotic. It takes away the sins of the past. If I can wake up thinking of Peter, I will not think of Marshall or the abort. Funny things, memories. The images that come back over and over are not what you think they’d be. I would have thought the image of Marshall being hit by that yellow truck would be with me every morning. I would have thought the image of me lying with the legs in stirrups talking through the dim noise of the vacuum would be what greets me in the morning. But it’s not. What greets me is the memory from the evening after the abortion but before the afternoon of the yellow truck. Imagine a screen door. Him on one side. Me on the other. My finger tips pressing the dirty mesh... I will let Juniper sleep with me tonight.

Dangerous Book - Episode 22

2009-12-22T12:47:00.000-05:00

Sunday night

Back from visit to hospital. Phoebe’s on a tear, hates being cooped up in a cold room and did I bring any socks and why not, what is she supposed to do with brand new slippers?

“When else are you going to wear them?” I asked.

“Christmas!” she barked, glaring at me.

Feel her feet, she said. They’re blue with cold. I held them. I held the good one. The fractured foot had been wrapped, her long toes jutted out beyond the flexible cast. These I tried to warm by blowing on them, but this only irritated her. No, she was not angry with me but with her helplessness.

“I’ll bring you your socks,” I said.

“It won’t do any good,” she said, fractious as a thwarted baby.

We sat in silence for a while. I could tell she wanted to apologize for snapping but at the same time knew she couldn’t help herself. For my part, I just wanted to help her feel better but knew that hashing out her fears wasn’t the thing to do. So we sat in a fog until I asked her who Beau was.

“I didn’t ask you to go snooping around my apartment, did I?” she barked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think I was snooping. I saw the painting of the cemetery and couldn’t help myself.” I told her about the maps I’d made just that day. “I turned it over to see the date.”

“Dates not on it,” she grumbled.

“So I discovered. But the name Beau is.”

“It’s not a name,” she said. “It’s a relationship.”

“Oh.”

More silence. I watched her eyes revolve around the room, at the television screen, at the door to the hallway, the bathroom, every where but at me. Finally they seemed to rest on nothing, on the radiator, the windowsill, already crowded with flowers and cards.

“Beau Dowling,” she said.

“Dowling? The man who died on his birthday?”

She nodded. “Eddie’s father, Robert Dowling, was a friend of mine.”

“The Monnish Court gardener!”

“The gardener.”

“He painted, too. Wow.” And they called him Beau. Not Bo, a Southern nickname for little brother, but the French for beautiful. A word for boyfriend. Suitor. Swain.

“Why did you call him Beau? Was he your beau?”

“He was everyone’s beau. It was just who he was,” she said. “Ask Elizabeth to bring my socks when she comes tomorrow,” she said, dismissing me.

“And how did he come to die on his birthday?”

“He got sick,” she said. “At his party. They said he ate something he was allergic to and died before they could get him to the hospital.”

“That must have been awful.”

People have faces like fraying rope. All the things we hold tight, all the things we tie up and forget eventually loosen and slip free. There seemed to be this kind of an activity visible on Phoebe’s face in the minutes we spent discussing Robert Dowling.

“I wasn’t there,” she said, spitting out the words as if they tasted of bullion. “But of course it must have been.”

As if she had conjured him up, another visitor, Eddie Dowling, walked in. She welcomed him with open arms, literally. He hurried to her, reaching into her bony grasp with familiarity and affection.

I slid away, murmuring a goodbye only I could hear.

“Why do I watch her so carefully?” I asked Billie, much later. She’d brought over a bottle of cold Pinot Grigio and we were drinking it over ice.

“She’s in pain. She’s probably frightened of losing her independence,” she said. “It’s natural to worry about someone you care about.”

“But I hardly know Phoebe. How can I care about her?”

From the Butts of Babes

2009-12-17T11:17:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Chickory for the cute little eggs from her cute little chickens. Fresh eggs are richer, deeper, more yellow and more flavorful. The difference between these little gems and the big white objects at the supermarket is instantly obvious. Eggy Eggy Eggy. Yum, thanks Chick.

Best Part of the Day - The Beginning

2009-12-17T10:51:00.002-05:00

Sometimes the best part of the day is the beginning. Perhaps it's the pink innocence viewed only by looking up or a glimpse of the morning's original intention, which, like most, are well-meant.

An hour later and this sky is gray as a gun and just as menacing. When I was a little girl I asked my father what our souls looked like, and he used the white sheet metaphor: starts clean, sins are the spots that dirty it. Confession was a spiritual laundry day back then. Speak your sins, say your Act of Contrition, your 2o Hail Marys and come out clean all over again. I'm beginning to use these morning skies as evidence of the day's soul---clean and clear and open, if not ready, for what comes.

I try to remind myself, in these moments (all fifteen of them), that whatever worries I went to bed with, or rolled over and nudged awake in the night, do not need to be resurrected for the day. What purpose do they serve? How does putting another nail into my head help me create a new life?

News about a job I really thought I had a chance of getting came yesterday after a relatively brief but obnoxious game of phone tag lasting two days (that's a week in applicant world). I didn't get it, obviously. Added to the weight of what's been a pretty trying year (and I know there are people close to me who have had an even worse year), I felt for a while that I should just let the bilge rise in my throat and cry it all out. But I am not much of a cryer and so switched to some good, old-fashioned self pity. But self pity is passe, isn't it? I was left with getting back on the job boards and the Linkedin and the cookie jar and the busy work and so filled in the rest of the day. A sympathetic email from a good friend almost made me cry.

Just like rain is not far from the silvery pink dawn, tears are not far from my throat.

And again, the dawn comes, blue this time with tinges of green, and I decide that one day was enough to mourn that lost opportunity. Today is for housework and preparation: my sister and brother-in-law are coming. Christmas will be here tonight.