Work of my hands

Tomorrow is the last class for the beginning drawing class I'm taking. I just finished my homework drawing, and I'm very proud of it, so here's me showing off. My scanner wasn't big enough, so the top and bottom curves are cropped, but you get the idea. I've posted other homework drawings here, and will probably post the other projects I've been working on inspired by this class later.

This last one, though, I think I'll frame.

But something makes paths.

I found a secret, hidden in plain sight.

The signs that say Stonewood Nature Trail lead to a gate in the fence around this place. The gate opens into a path down into the bed of the small stream that drains into the bayou. You can see it's mouth from my patio.

The steps are beginning to crumble. Two picnic tables are covered with last autumn's dry leaves. The debris of human traffic lies half buried in the dust, and it seems as probable that it was washed here by the last high water as that it was discarded directly by human hands. Beyond one forgotten table, surging mounds of green rustle knee deep on either side of a narrow crease, some lost path, studded with tricornered white flowers no bigger than dimes.

Carefully threading my steps into the void between the ground cover, I walk only ten or fifteen paces into a world that's almost natural forest. With my back to the chain-link fence on the other side of the stream, and to the power lines that run along the opposite ridge, I stare up into a fold of land pillared by tall trees and draped in greenery. Grape vines hang down from the branches, with younger tendrils winding their way up thicker, older vines. A house sparrow, one of the birds that looks ragged and sooty pecking motes out of the asphalt in a parking lot, flits by, and seems transformed from a tattered scavenger to a crisp, alert little wood spirit, eying me not with the skittish edginess it shows in people's world, but with a friendly, if aloof, sort of welcome.

You'd think that the fence and the power lines and the sudden click and whir of an air conditioning unit on the bank across the creek is more than enough to account for my "almost natural" bit above. But those are large, obvious things. And blatantly obvious things are the things that can sometimes be most easily ignored.

The reasons I say almost natural are the things that nag at my mind, that it takes me a moment to pin down. Those broad leaves on the other side of the pooled and trickling water, those aren't native. They're elephant ear plants run wild from some one's yard. The same goes for the huge clover leaves and purple flowers running at the edges of the white-flowered plant that seems to have taken over most of the cleared ground. I've seen them along manicured lawns, never in the wild. There's a smell in the air, pulsing through the earth and water and tree smells, warm on gusts of a high wind that does little more than gently breath down this gully. Then I have it. Rose bushes. From a neighboring yard.

And I wonder what makes the paths. They remind me most of deer trails, but there can't be any deer here. I suppose these could just be very old and almost overgrown man-made trails. Or maybe even water runoff. It's a bit of a mystery, here where people don't seem to have been for a long time. But perhaps the visitors come briefly like me, and leave little behind, not even bothering to sweep the debris from the tables.

I stand in stillness, move only my eyes towards any sound that doesn't seem wind-made. I watch a speck float in the pool below me, cradled in brown banks. I watch my speck speed up as it heads towards silent ripples over ivory colored gravel and fine brown sand. I watch it float into a broader pool. I turn slowly, soaking in sights and smells and sounds from all around.

Then I walk back, so intent on trying to see if any of those itchy little leaflets three are around that I almost walk face first into grapevines. I should come back down in late summer to see if there are any grapes. The idea of picking grapes from wild vines to make jelly takes me back years and miles to Momo's house outside of La Grange. Picking dewberries from the thorny brambles that hide rusting metal in an old scrap yard. Driving up and down the dirt roads, stopping by clumps of trees covered over in broad green leaves to search out the small, dark, sweet mustang grapes.

In spite of the exotic garden plants, in spite of the power lines and leaf-blanketed benches, suddenly this feels like home.

Pompei

A week ago I visited the Pompei exhibit at the HMFA. I promised Kerri I'd let her know what I thought, so I took a few notes while I was there, and I've let it settle for a while, so here's what I thought.

First, I probably would have enjoyed the experience a lot more if it had been less crowded, so Kerri, if you can go during the week, maybe a morning, and avoid any sort of school field trip, you might like it a lot more than I did. They also had free audio tour headsets, but I didn't want one, so I don't really know what I missed with that, but I'm kind of grumpy that I would need one. And it made me grumpy how people would talk to each other (somewhat loudly) about what they were hearing in their headsets. I guess I would have just liked a little more quiet to contemplate in.

So, what's in the exhibit? I mean, a chronicle of the explosion would seem more fitting for the HMNS, really, so why the art museum? Well, the feature pieces are the wall frescos, the statues, the amphorae and urns and jewelry. Not the people who were caught, or the architecture buried under the rubble, but the precious and beautiful possessions the wealthy returned to recover. Of these I was most caught by the rings that held polished precious stones carved with tiny pictures of hens and chicks, gods and godesses, and other tiny icons. They were lovely, intricate, meticulously and delicately carved.

Most of the labels and descriptions were well done. There would be a portion describing the piece itself, possibly where it was found or with whom, and then another paragraph describing the significans or prevalence of that form of art or object in general. Those paragraphs were somewhat redundantly scattered across the exhibit, but if you didn't read and retain it at one piece, I guess it needs to be with all of the applicable pieces. I just would have like a little more detail, but I guess that's what the headsets were for.

One inscription in particular was noticably poor. I mean, bracelets that were very obviously snakes were quite particularly labeled "realistic snake bracelet in gold" and huge gold necklaces from which a tiny crescent pendant dangled were inscribed with care to make sure you noticed the crescent. But one small object, about a half an inch long, was only labeled, "Silver pendant."

Well, it was a silver pendant of male genetalia. I would have liked to know what the significance might have been, or with what sort of person it had been found, but no cultural or anthropological insight here. I suppose it was too embarassing.

It seemed a strange sort of prudishness, though, in light of what I found most disturbing about the exhibit. In each room, as a sort of center piece drawing more people than the objets d'art, were single or grouped casted bodies. Most were the older plaster casts, one was a newer resin cast, showing both shape and, through the translucent medium, bone structure.

I suppose there was a gritty realism in the way they sprawled on the floor, trapped in death and clear protective walls like insects in amber. And I've seen mummies and such in museums. But this in some ways sickened me. On entry there's a sculpted replica of a group of skeletons huddled and slumped in death, as found, along the quay of a port where they tried to shelter and escape. It was powerful and moving, but it wasn't real. It was a re-creation. The casts, those are real. All that is left of people that died in terror and hopelessness. Covering their faces with veils. Children cringing into the sides of their parents. A child, laid down beside his family, tiny face almost like life, like sleep, full lips and the trembling shell-like eyelids that, even in plaster, seemed like they could blink and slowly, sleepily open. I stood by that child and wept.

It's different from mummies, from burial relics. No one but death closed these eyes. No friend or mourning loved-one arranged these limbs for the last sleep. These people are held in the moments of their greatest horror, fears, supplications, dispair, all fixed forever. No funeral, no parting, just the unceremonious, unfeeling dump of natural disaster. And now here they are on display. The false skeletons at the front are cast in false soil, with images around and behind them, giving them some semblance of archeological significance. They are placed in a setting of ruin and the slow decay of time, and partially unearthed by the artist in the same way they would have been gently uncovered by the scientist. But the bodies in the exhibit halls lie on the floor, against the deep red paint and carpet that so effectively sets off the gold and gems of their goods. One cast reveals a man crouched against a wall with his hands covering his face, the grief of catastrophic loss and the knowledge of inescapable death in every line. And something in me rebelled. No one should be looking at that, under brilliant lights and flamboyant paint, wearing our polo shirts and torn jeans and our informative little head sets. There was a twisted figure of a dog that the inscription said had tried to escape by climbing on top of his dog house. Now body wrapped around agony and mouth open, it lies on a slightly raised platform surrounded by bronze statues and golden jewelry, and the man beside me looked at it and laughed.

There were things I enjoyed about the exhibit. I did like that many of the objects were described in terms of the places and people they were recovered near. Goods from a goldsmith's shop. Lamps held up against the gathering midday gloom. Treasures of the rich and treasures of the workers. Small statuettes of the god Mercury in silver, intended to protect travelers. Places named by the finds within, like Alley of the Skeletons or House of the Gold Bracelet. The powerful reminder that we will be identified by those who come after us not by the people we are so much as the things we owned, because this will be the only thing that remains of who we are. And the things these people left behind paint a rich and fascinating picture.

Not only adopted Greek gods are given artistic significance. Egyptian gods and goddeses cover small shrines and cups. A lamp is carved with a face bearing features of deeper Africa. A picture of a people both sophisticated and cosmopolitan, yet still identifiably Roman emerges. Powerful women, who owned land in their own right and influenced the politics of their world. Gladiators once slaves fighting for the entertainment of the rich, but with such skill and bravery that they have been freed and given a place in the world that they were once only a spectacle for. Paintings from a tavern wall showing seduction, gambling, comeradery, conflict, and the publican evicting his rowdier clients. Doesn't sound very different from today's bars.

It was in some ways a fascinating, informative, and moving exhibit. It was in other ways lurid and, in my opinion, degrading. I watched the film on the way out, however, that described the destruction of Pompei as a moral for "careful, respectful use of the land." It was the last impression I took away from an exhibit I was already not sure I liked. The idea that by farming in rich volcanic soil, these people brought down this destruction upon themselves is untenable and gratuitously neo-eco-evangelistic without even being apt. I left the exhibit frustrated and angry.

My verdict on Pompei? It was okay, but it could have been so much more.

Good Balconies Make Good Neighbors

Today was moving day for the beans. Many hugs and thanks to Kevin for meeting me at Lowes after work and helping me haul dirt. I still need another bag, though. But I think I can handle it on my own, Kevin, don't worry.

Wrist deep, sometimes elbow deep in moist soil. Gently teasing apart the delicate root webs. Snugging the transplanted sprouts down into new beds and pulling and patting the soil around their new homes. Sweat beads rolling down my neck and dripping off of strands of my hair. Crumbling clods in my hands. Stooping. Standing. Stretching. Pushing hair off my forehead, smudging dirt on my nose. The smell, the feel, the rich brown and fresh green.

About half-way done, my new neighbor across the corridor came out onto her balcony and called out to me. We introduced ourselves and chatted about some problems she's having with the unit (due to poor housekeeping on the part of the previous tenants). She and her husband moved here from Ohio, and she's glad to be away from the snow.

Between the agriculture and the neighborly conversation, I felt like I was home again.

Streeeetchy Sprouts!

So, I took some photos of my brand new sprouts yesterday when I first met them. I've posted two below.
So I went out today, one day later, expecting a little progress. Well.... There's been... A little progress! Check it out!



I've uploaded more photos here.

I really need to thin them SOON. I didn't really expect them... ALL... to come up. But I don't want to lose any of them. Yes, yes, I've become attached to my bean plants. Sigh. I think I'll need more than two planters for decent cross pollination anyway, so I may bet two more planters on my way home tomorrow, and some more soil, and just transplant them.

Sprouts!

Sprouts Sprouts Sprouts!

Little green tubulets poking little arched necks out of the soil, about to lift their little green beany heads!

Sprouts!

Seeds

I have three packets of green bean seeds. I borrowed a nickel from my mother and paid for them in exact change. $0.65.

I bought a watering can and two long rectangular planters that are sitting by the door to my back porch.

I also bought two bags of organic potting soil specially for potted vegetables that are sitting in the trunk of my car because they’re heavyish and bulkyish, and I can only handle one of them at a time.

Eddie has a note to make sure I keep Easter Saturday clear, because on that day, I will plant my little seeds.

Then I will have green beans a plenty, and hopefully enough during the summer to eat fresh, and then some to freeze for the rest of the year.

Mostly I can’t wait to have tiny sprouts to tend.

A leeetle too close to home...

You've seen my wall of books. Or perhaps you can just imagine...

That's got to be one of the most common questions anyone who sees it asks. Have I read them all. Well, no, I haven't, but... most of them...

Oh well. As I told Willie yesterday. I can only be myself. And if that's off putting, so be it. Being what they want will make me unhappy until I stop, and at that point, being who I am will make them unhappy. Not going there. Ever again.

Oh, and still no word on the project that might lead me half-way around the world. When I do, be sure I'll let you know!

Au... Au... WHERE???

Subject line of the boss-lady's e-mail:

Australia

*Meep* Must read deeper...

As a remote possibility someone may be interested....this note is to extend a project invitation to one of the three of you. It would require being pulled off , obviously, for several months.

We're about to start a large desk procedure/process project for ...

As a separate project, asked if we could find a writer who would be willing to go to their HQ in Australia and then possibly to Costa Rica for a couple of weeks to help get the processes in place. This would take place probably midsummer after we've completed the desk procedures.

The overseas stuff is a bit open-ended: dates, locations, formal amount of travel have yet to be discussed.

Thought I'd check with you first - if there is any interest, please let me know.

Now, the other two folks aren't quite as portable as single little me, so...

Well, I'm interested. I have personal travel plans in September, though, that would need to be accommodated (i.e. I've already paid a bunch of money for the trip), so if that's a problem, I won't be able to do it. Aside from that, sounds like a good opportunity.

Additional boss-lady e-mails have been forthcoming...

Good! I had a feeling you might be interested.

Am not sure what Sept will be like but most probably can work around your vacation....

and...

It's actually, Melbourne (sp?; primarily), Santiago, and West Africa, based on my notes I re-read.

If this changes anything for you, let me know.

and finally, my response...

That only changes the immunizations I might have to get. I'll have to look into that. I checked my passport last night, and it's good through 2016.

So, um, THREE DIFFERENT CONTINENTS???

Wow.

Just...

Wow.

Makayla's 1, and Her Mom's a Genius

Edit: For those who were amused that all the pictures are of decorations, and not the birthday girl, all I can say is that *I* barely saw her, she was so popular and was being handed around so fast. :-) I’m sure someone got pictures.

My cousin Stephanie's little girl Makayla turned 1, and we all celebrated her birthday at Momo's this past weekend. Stephanie had food and decorations like you wouldn't believe!

I helped fill balloons with helium, and put together the arrangement below.

The kitchen was bestrewn with hors d'ouerves and hanging decorations.

The dining room was all done up, and that's where the desserts were.

Check out the dragonfly treats made from pretzels!

And of course, all the sugar cookies hand decorated by Stephanie herself. Geez.

And of course, a throne for the birthday princess. :-)

A birthday cake worthy of the food network...

And the birthday girl's own special birthday cake, all for her own. Ladybugs were the theme for the day. My invitation was a hand made ladybug whose wings spread open to show the invitation info.

The most *amazing* fruit bouquet. Not only was it gorgeous and full of color, it smelled amazing; filled the whole kitchen with the smell of fresh fruit.

Oh, and check out the strawberries. What did I tell you about ladybugs? This was perhaps the coolest thing, to me.

Uncle Steve made ribs, which I got to get a sneak preview of, because Ihad to leave before everything was ready to serve. But it was really great to get out there and see the family. My cousin Shane was there with his kids, and had some remote-controlled cars he and his boy Jeffrey were tinkering with. Abby ran around and barked at them, keeping a safe distance, of course. All in all, it's a bit of a long day when you drive out there and back all in one afternoon, but it was a gorgeous day yesterday, and a nice drive, and I'm glad I got to be there with everyone.

Happy birthday, Makayla!

Thou Art Beautiful

When I first learned of her, I couldn’t have been any older than seven years old. The book was part of an encyclopedia of science for young people. I forget what technical question sparked this gift from my parents, but there was a set of narrow books from A to Z and there were the extra, “bonus” books that truly fascinated me. Fish, Mammals, Birds… and Primates.

Somewhere in the lucid text and glossy photos there it was: an evolutionary tree showing the relationship between man and ape. In the pages around this chart I found and was enchanted by her story. The discovery of a few scattered bones fossilized in an African dessert valley. Their amazing scientific significance and the astounding depths of time my young mind now had to comprehend. My first lesson on evolution.

This wasn’t Eve. This was Lucy.

I had seen my family tree, with my name (appropriately, it seemed to me) at the apex of a branching sprawl of other names, some so old they belonged to people that died before I was even born, but still recognizably a part of myself. So I knew what I was looking at when I found this particular picture and poured over it, lying on my stomach on the living room floor. I was related to gorillas and chimpanzees? I was a part of a tree with roots going back more years than I could in any way comprehend? I came from beings with names Mom and Dad couldn’t even pronounce? I was confused.

I had already asked Mom about the dinosaurs. If God had created all the animals and then us in six days, and put us in Eden to live until we were foolish enough to get ourselves kicked out, well, how did dinosaurs fit in? How could they possibly have existed thousands of years before people (in spite of what the Flintstones would have you believe) the way my books said? This was science, but what about Genesis?

Mom put forward the theory that God created fossils to test our faith in His Word. I pondered this, but even then it didn’t sit well with me. My book spoke of “missing link” hoaxes since the days of Darwin, and the idea of God basically perpetrating the perfect hoax bothered me. No doubt He could if He wanted. He is all-powerful. I do think that this dichotomy of science and religion is a test, just nothing so simplistic. But dinosaurs were a mental exercise to me. Lucy was more personal. She made me question not just how God works, but what He might intend for me. I came up with my own theories and feelings, and I’ve worked on them all my life as I learn more from without and within about my world and myself. For me, God is still wondrous and mysterious and no matter how He created the earth, I feel that greatness in my heart. That doesn’t mean it’s easy for me as a rational and analytical person. Without limiting God’s power, without disputing the veracity of His Word in the Bible, and without discounting powerfully compelling scientific evidence, account for the universe. Ready, set, go.

And in my mother’s defense, she continued to buy me dinosaur books.

Ever since I first read about her, then, Lucy has had this incredible impact on me. Meeting her and learning of her connection with me began a personal spiritual and mental dialogue that has strengthened my faith even as it has challenged the views that I accepted freely in my childhood. When I learned that she would be coming to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, I was floored. I’ve seen pictures of her bones and artists’ renderings of her face, but I never thought I’d get the chance to see her remains myself, in person. This was an opportunity I just couldn’t miss.

I went to visit Lucy yesterday. In Ethiopia, her home, she’s known as Dinkenesh, which means, according to one of the educational videos, “Thou art beautiful,” or to another, “You are wonderful.” Either is perfectly appropriate.

She is wonderful. I wanted to approach her with reverence. I read carefully all the accounts of the prehistory she was a part of and the history in which she was rediscovered. I watched the videos about her country today and the video in which her discoverer was interviewed. I took all of these things into my heart, along with the child’s awe undimmed from my first acquaintance with her. I still can’t remember all the long Latinate names, but I tried hard to focus on the story of human evolution that was beautifully displayed in a mural around the walls of the room she lies in. A mural flanked by mirrors.

Then I approached the case that holds her bones.

I was moved nearly to tears. Her bones are so small, her remains so scant. Barely an outline of a form, and yet these few fossilized bones mean so much. They had an enormous scientific impact at the time she was found. For me they have had an enormous personal impact for years.

Her tiny hip joint is like ours in miniature in features that show that she walked like we do. Her pelvis is marked, they say, in ways that show she might have borne a child. Her tiny toe bone, so small and so perfect. A vein of minerals glistens in a bone of her foot, and the marrow of her thigh is fossilized in darker stone than the surrounding bone. Splinters at the end of her humerus, even in stone, make her arm look so fragile, so delicate, like a child’s bones, and this made her more real to me than I can really describe. She has gone from being an image in my head to being someone I feel like I know. Someone I’ve had the privilege to meet.

She makes me question my own place, not only in my world today, but in evolutionary history/God’s plan. We aren’t descendent from Lucy per se, but perhaps from a contemporary. This makes me wonder, if gorillas and chimps aren’t driven to extinction or to the brink, where their genetic pool no longer has enough depth, what might they evolve into alongside ourselves? Yes, I’ve seen Planet of the Apes, but I’m serious. What could they become? What could we become? How strange might we look to someone so distant from us as we are from Lucy? (Supposing, of course, that anyone was around that far into the future, which is, as it was when I was seven, more than I can really comprehend.)

I hope we are as beautiful, as meaningful, as wonderful to them as she is to me.

Happy New Year, 2008!

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' auld lang syne?

I need to go to bed soon, but first I wanted to share my pictures of my busy and fun filled New Year's Eve party.

I got my candles all burned, with only one minor setback. I got some great pictures. For those of you who know about my pyrophobia, you should be proud of me, though mostly my fingers never got anywhere near the fire, and I *was* pretty nervous. But I managed.

I watched my Mythbusters, chatted with Katy after she texted me at midnight her time, drank and ate my yummies, and had fun melting my candles. I wrote in a journal for the first time in a long time, and now I'm ready to call it a night. Tomorrow I start the new year in earnest. Happy New Year, my loves!

Shall Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?

New Years Eve is a celebration of “out with the old, in with the new!” At midnight the day, the month, and the year flip over to the next notch. In one discrete and infinitesimally small point in time, 2007 will be over and a new year will begin. But that’s just how we measure time. Time itself and how we live through it is a continuum that we simply tick off as it flows by, and one moment, in general, is very much like the one right after it, barring cataclysmic shocks of any sort.

People are also analog. I can make a decision at one point in time, but it’s not so much a particle as the peak of a wave, with a build up of thought and feeling and sensing and observing all going into informing the decision I’m about to make, then all the work I have to do to put that decision into action and achieve an actual change.

Psychologically, the end of the year seems like a perfect time to say good bye to the bad habits of mind or body that have kept me from progressing and growing this year. And I do feel like I’ve been kept from growing in many ways. I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve done a lot, but I don’t feel like I’ve achieved anything. I’m still in very much the same place I was at the beginning of the year, if not even farther behind. And I didn’t want to be there this long.

Blogs are a wonderful thing. I just looked back to see if there were any New Year’s Resolutions I’d made, and maybe forgotten. I don’t see any. But I see a sort of optimism about this year in some of my posts and I just don’t feel like 2007 was what I hoped it would be, and maybe it’s being sick right now, but I don’t feel great about next year. I’ve got such a long way to go, and I don’t feel like I got anywhere this year.

I’m doing a few little things that may seem silly. I washed all the dishes left in my sink and have started the dishwasher. I’ve done a lot of laundry lately. So I’ll start the New Year with lots of clean clothes and dishes. There are other things I need to do for spring-cleaning, but those will have to wait until I purchase some organizing equipment. I’m taking Kevin’s suggestion, to, and I plan to burn some candles and watch this year melt away.

More profoundly, I’ve made some decisions, and I’m hoping that the time that has passed this year, while it hasn’t propelled me onward and upward, has been the slow building of a wave in which I’ve finally come to the point that these decisions are ready to be made, and that this next year will be a year of hard work to carry them out.

It’s a process, a continuum of constant assessment and growing conviction and steady effort. It’s analog. And it’s hard. I have a lot of bad habits, and I’m not going to get rid of them all at once, all in one moment. I’ve picked a few very personal hang-ups to try to overcome. I wish it were as simple as turning the page of the calendar. I wish that the old ways that I’m so well acquainted with were that easy to leave behind. That the past could be completely separated from the future at that tiny point in time, instead of always being connected to it and coloring it.

This New Year’s Eve, my hopes for the next few weeks, even months, are pretty modest. I already see ways in which the things I wanted to leave behind back in this year are going to bleed over into the next. Hopefully, though, I’ll get past that quickly. My real hope is that some New Year’s Eve years from now, this will seem far away and time long since gone by. That I’ll be so far away that I’ll have to work to remember the things holding me back, instead of having to work so hard to get away.

My Christmas Vacation 2007

Was just drifting awake on the morning of Thursday, December 20 when my cell phone rang. It was Kid wishing me happy birthday.

"Are you at work?"

"No, I took the day off."

"Oh no! I woke you up, didn't I?"

She hadn't, really, and it was time to get going. Two hours of tossing stuff into bags and checking stuff off of impromptu packing lists, and I was on the road. Was eating lunch at Frank's in Schulenburg when Uncle John called to wish me happy birthday.

Got to Biscuit Hill Bed and Breakfast a little after 3pm. Was greeted by Deana, who runs the place. She showed me around, we settled my bill in advance, and she said I'd have the house to myself until the other couple got in the next day, and breakfast would be at 9:30. Seemed silly for her to expect me for breakfast, since I'd much rather sleep in at least the first day, and when I said this she said that was fine! And she sent me up to my room with these amazing cinnamon crumb muffins and apple juice. I ran out that night for crackers, cream cheese, salami, and wine for my dinner. I took a walk down the creek bed under the wary gaze of the four whitetail does had come up for the corn that I'd tossed out for them. The rest of the evening I spent curled up in my room or soaking in the huge jacuzzi tub, eating my crackers and cheese and such and reading. And reading. And reading.

The next day I went driving around the hills. I drove by my old home, but everything was changed. The trees had grown up and blocked the views I remember, and it didn't feel like home any more. But I saw Mrs. Schultze in her driveway as I drove by, so I pulled in and talked with her for a while, and it was great to see her.

Drove back up by the lake and stopped to take some pictures, then came back to the B&B. Was once again a lazy bum with a stack of good books. The next day I did go down for breakfast, chatted with Josh and Marlena from Katy, checked with Deana that I was good to leave when I was packed, then headed out just before 11am.

Got to Mom's and we finished cleaning and setting up the Christmas decor. That night we had Kid's boyfriend and his parents and younger sister over to join Mom and Kid and Grandma and me for dinner in honor of my birthday. It was fun. The next day Kid's boyfriend installed a new back door with a little doggie door for Abby, and I wrapped presents. Yes it took me most of the day to do that. We had the food network on, too, and then after dinner we opened Christmas presents by the tree. I don't know what's going to run out first... red kitchen gadgetry for Mom to buy me, or kitchen for me to put red gadgetry in. :-P

Christmas Eve Grandma headed on to Kerrville and we headed to La Grange. I left first, but I took my time, and I stopped to visit Dad's grave. A lot has been going on, and I miss him, but crying with my cheek against his headstone for a while felt as close as I'm ever going to come again to crying in his arms. I got tears all over the stone, and felt the way I would if it had been his shirt I'd soaked. I wish I could tell him everything, just to hear him say how proud he still was of me, and that of course I've never disappointed him. It's what I know he'd say, deep down, but never hearing it leaves me still doubting sometimes.

Kid and her boyfriend beat me to Momo's, and Mom got there a little afterwards. That evening, like always, we went to the Christmas pageant mass. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great for the kids to be the ones to celebrate the Word, but I think I need to find a new way to worship Christmas. It's too much spectacle. And choir is just horrible. No, really. And the congregation doesn't join in very loudly, even though everyone knows the words. So it just kind of hurts. I guess I shouldn't be such a snob; it's about worship, not performance. But kids reading through the scripture as fast as they can and a choir that never starts at the right time and parents snapping pictures... I needed something more this year. Something deeper. Oh well. I'm also going to start booking a hotel room. With all the kids and grandkids and spouses and great grandkids and significant owners, the house is getting kind of crowded. And kind of noisy.

We had Chinese Christmas that night like always. The Crown Royal was a popular item, and my cousin Shane and another cousin's boyfriend worked out a strategy where they both managed to get and freeze the two bottles up for grabs. It was highly amusing. And fairly brilliant. I'm ashamed to say the only miffed feelings this time were mine when Brooke stole the neat faux leather storage footstool I'd got, but most of that was for show. Still, Greg stole a tool set from Mom to freeze it for her, and then Mom stole the footstool back for me, and Brooke ended up with colored cordial glasses that she really likes, so it all turned out okay.

Anyway, today we had a big dinner, and I drove home, and so now I'm watching my new CSI Las Vegas videos. No more red wine in the apartment, though. I spilled my glass, which wouldn't be so bad, only then I mopped it up with a green wash cloth that bleeds. Red and green. Merry Christmas!

Weekend in Nawlins

I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home. I have a LOT of time here, owing to the fact that I couldn't check out much later than 1pm, my flight isn't until 3:40pm, and there was no traffic on the way to the airport. So I'll take this time to recount my adventures.

Saturday
December 15, 2007

I sleep in as late as I can. Why would you spend so much time sleeping when you're in NEW ORLEANS??? Because you need the sleep. Desperately.

Up and out and around the French Quarter before 1pm. Wonder where I can get a cheap lunch that isn't an absolute tourist hole. Wander up Royal Street. Wonder if I can find Croissant D'Or, a patisserie that Jonathan had recommended as we passed by on the Vampire Tour, and which I have a vague feeling is between Royal and the convent on Ursalines. Wander in that direction, resisting the temptation to look at my map. Find it right where instinct said it would be. I'm just that good. :-P

Eat a quiche Lorraine and a chocolate eclaire for lunch. I love this city. Read my book sitting at a counter in the window. Finish eating and meander down toward Jackson Square. Three weddings in the cathedral, so interior inspection has to wait until I attend mass on the morrow.

Wander down and across the windy streets to the riverfront. Sit in the sunshine as the barges slide by and read. Lock eyes with a young man walking slowly down the sidewalk, stopping now and then to gaze at the river. Watch him covertly over the pages of my book, turning my head to watch him watch the river, and every so often look my way. He knows I'm watching him and knows I know he's watching me as I sit still and he drifts past and we both gaze across to the other shore. It's a moment of human connection that dispenses with introductions and awkward courtesies, the connection of parallel sights and sounds, thoughts and feelings akin that would recognize each other at the first meeting. Then we turn away completely and I read.

And read.

And read.

Stop to watch the sunlight on the blue and brown ripples, and to watch a freighter pass under the highway bridge. Feel the rising wind and the dimming sun, and glance back west to see the gray clouds creeping over the city.

Get up and drift back into the Vieux Carré. Find my way to Pat O'Brien's and snag a Kier Royal and a Diet Coke just as the rain began. Wind my way upstairs to a quiet table and chairs outside of the ladies' powder room, and sip my drink and read my book, reading faster and faster as the rain falls and passes and the sky clears to darkening twilight, and the tale spins out in the last pages, cut off at the end like the Fates' thread.

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:-- Do I wake or sleep?
~Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"

This is how I always feel when I lift myself out of the pages of a good book at its finish. Floating, disoriented. Still drifting between the world around me and the world in the pages. My goal for the weekend is accomplished.

I decide to take a Haunted History ghost tour, now that the rain has stopped. My drinks finished with my book, I pop across the way to Reverend Zombie's Voodoo Shop, and for once see through the door someone I do actually know, not just a revenant wreathing a stranger in familiarity. I rush in to say hi to a friend as surprised to see me as I am to see him, who has met some friends of his from Florida at this best of half-way meeting places. We part ways after a few words. We'll meet again Wednesday at my birthday party.

The tour is fun and this time I have the cash to buy the book. Perfect timing, too, since now I need another book to read. I head to Fiorella's, because it wouldn't be a visit to New Orleans without fried chicken from Fiorella's. This has become more integral to me than Cafe du Monde. I suppose I do like fried chicken more than I like beignets.

I sit in the dim restaurant eating my chicken, absorbed in ghost tales, until I decide that this is VAMPIRE weekend, and I'll read the ghost stories later. I flip to the vampire section and begin working my way through that, until my meal is done. With chills running down my spine that have nothing to do with the cold north wind, I leave the restaurant resolved to get to my warm and well-lit hotel room as quickly as possible.

And I find myself in a deserted, if brightly-lit side street with no open shops heading towards the Ursaline convent, where they say vampires are boarded up in the attic. Lovely. I walk faster until, panting with my speed, and not a little self-induced terror, and relief at the people once again all around me, I turn into Royal Street and head to my hotel. But those two blocks have changed the color of the evening, and when I get back to my room, I can't shake the urge to look over my shoulder, or NOT look out my window, for fear of seeing a ghastly pale face hovering on the other side of the glass. Great.

Fortunately for my night's repose, there are friends on line to chat with, and LOLKatz at icanhazcheezburger.com I haven't creeped myself out that thoroughly since I watched X-Files by myself for the first time. Geez. Finally, sleep.

Sunday
December 16, 2007

Up before my alarm goes off and out on the streets before many of the shops open. Down to my new favorite place, the Croissant D'Or for breakfast. Eat my way through a delicious croissant filled with ham and cream cheese and an almost-as-delicious croissant filled with chocolate. Wander around a bit more, and find myself at 11am mass in St. Louis Cathedral.

Notes from the organ float amid the columns, drifting from one hymn to the next fluid and clear until voices begin singing "Wake, O wake and sleep no longer." Then "O come, O come Emmanuel" as the archbishop and his priests ascend the aisle. He welcomes us all, even, perhaps, some people from Arizona, come to support the Cardinals. He reminds them with sweet pastoral slyness that while we in the Roman Catholic church certainly have much respect for Cardinals, God considers it much better to be a Saint. It's a lovely mass in a beautiful church, not so grand or ornate as those in Europe, but full of light and richness and color. He ends his homily with words he treasures from a freeborn black woman who began to teach the coloreds and founded a religious house for them in the early part of the century.

"God, I believe in you. I hope in you. I love you. I want to live and die in you."

He calls these words his guide as he continues his ministry of 50 years, when his human weakness and failing strength would have him retire, but his church and his God call him to carry on where he's needed.

Only time to do some quick Christmas shopping in a shop I spotted earlier, then back to the hotel to check out. I hop a cab to the airport, and the Saint's game is on the radio. As we pass the Superdome, I'm struck by the thought that all that I'm listening to is going on just behind those curved walls. The commentators begin to gossip, as we exit I-10, about a large bird that just flew in front of them. "Was it a pigeon?" one asks. "No, those hang around your house," the other responds. "An albatross?" "No, those hang around your neck!"

I laugh out loud to hear a sports commentator referencing Coleridge.

Then it's the airport and paying the cabby and settling at a bistro table to fire up my laptop, and here we are!

I'll be home soon.

Interview with the Hair Stylist OR My Date with the Big Easy

This weekend’s theme is vampires. My whole reason for staying in New Orleans is to read Interview with the Vampire in its setting. That and I’m in love the French Quarter.

Got my hair dyed on the first floor of One Shell Square by a stylist who was once personal assistant to Anne Rice. He had several of her books at his station, and when he offered me a magazine while I waited for my hair to finish turning Warm Celtic Copper, I explained my weekend project and asked if instead I could... He took his copy from the shelf and said, “Do you know where you left off?” <3

I was the first patron for dinner at Petunia’s. I don’t recommend. The food, for the price, not so much. My waiter… Okay, a very few men may call me “Babe” and not raise my hackles. ONLY my father could ever call me “Baby” without incurring the icy glare of doom. A waiter who calls me “Baby” on multiple occasions, and continuously bugs me about what I’m reading while I’m very obviously… busy reading… does not win points. The finishing touch was when he brought the check and said, “I’d love to talk with you more, but that book must be really good.” Grrr.

Next, the Haunted History vampire tour of the French Quarter. VERY fun. Lots of spine tingles, and not just because of the cute tour guide. :-) I love a creepy story, even if it does make me walk really fast back to my hotel. And I love the history of this city, the lore and the legend. I love to lose myself in it. To stare, eyes wide, ears focused on the tales the guide is spinning, breathing in deeply and soaking up everything I can as it swirls around me. I’ve been happy with both my Haunted History tours through the French Quarter, and I highly recommend that company.

I’m more than halfway done with the book, so I expect I’ll finish tomorrow. I intend to buy the book of New Orleans ghost and vampire stories that Jonathan (the guide) recommended.

The witching hour has come. Back to my dreams.

Hi Dad, it’s Me

I tried to go to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. Then I was revisited by a thought I had shuffled away earlier. Earlier today, earlier this weekend, I can’t really remember when I had it, but it came back. When I think about my dad, I think of having him back that one last time, to pour out all of the things I wanted to say. Or I think of how I had him and never really… had him. Didn’t spend time with him the way I should have. Which is not to say we didn’t spend time together. But I’ve changed so much and grown so much, and I feel like I’m a different person, and this person, he didn’t know her the way I want him to.

I spend so much time thinking of having him back just one last time. But earlier, and now, I’m struck with the thought of having him back for life. Not one intense, emotional and meaning-packed capsule of time. For days. Months. Years. The years we could have had. I want to call home this weekend and hear him answer. To hear him say, “Hi, Lady!” with the warm every day sort of joy in his voice that says, “This isn’t a special occasion, but it’s special all the same, because I love you.” The next words would be, “You want to talk to Mom?” not because I didn’t want to talk to Dad, but because of course it was Mom I needed to talk to. She’d be the one to help hammer out logistics for my next trip home. She’d be the one to have all the family and neighborhood gossip. Dad would plunk himself back down in front of the television, secure in the knowledge that his baby girl had put in her weekly phone call, was alive and sounded happy, and would call again next week. Would be home a few weekends from now. And that was time enough for everything. I want that back.

But I do want more. I do want the chance to spend time getting to know him like I never did, and letting him get to know the person I’ve become. He loved to shock me with his profanity and his off-color jokes. How would he react if I spun some of it back to him? What would he think of this me who doesn’t mind admitting to being the most fabulous person in the room? Daddy and I, we had good banter. It would be even better now, now that I’ve found my feet, gotten a little cocky, and am no longer afraid to be unrestrainedly… myself. I feel like he’d see the woman he always knew I could be, and that as proud as he always was of me, he’d be even more proud, and happy in my happiness.

I want to feel like I belong again. Going to Momo’s for Thanksgiving Sunday, it was great to see them all, but I feel so out of place among them. The women, they’re all married, domestic, settled, except for my sister, and I actually spent the most time with her and her boyfriend. Different as they are from me, I felt most at home with them. And with my mom. The truth is, I know I belong, but I’m not sure where I fit, so I ended up following Mom and Brooke around a bit, and trying to hide my being awkward. At one point I even wandered into the room where the men were shooting the breeze, but I didn’t fit there either. But that’s where Daddy would have been. And if he’d been there, I would have fit where he was. I would have walked over and pulled up the chair next to his, and he would have said, “Hey, Baby-doll!” and put his arm across the back of my chair, and I could have sat and said nothing. Just listened to them talk, and not felt out of place. I would have felt more fit in than ever, with the new knowing myself and the old sitting at Daddy’s side. Because after all, knowing myself has been mostly realizing how much like him I am. Sure maybe I wouldn’t see him any more often than I did back then. But I want those every-so-oftens back. I want back not heart-wrenching moments of making the most of time, but the comfortable assumption that the time will always be there to be made the most of.

I so want to just spend that sort of time with him, slowly continuing to grow up and grow and grow old together as father and daughter, slowly sharing with him who I am now. But who I am now… When I look back, I know I am who I am now because he died. That his leaving us was the kick in the stomach that jolted me out of the self-defeating, self-effacing, self-denying rut I was in. I hate that it took that, but I have to admit I might not have gotten my act together without his death. And while I know that he would have given everything for my happiness, it sucks so bad that he would have been so thrilled to have stayed around and seen the gift he gave me by his leaving.

Perhaps that should have been my first clue that the Fates had begun to weave this tremendous, sticky, stifling web of irony that seems to have engulfed my life. Daddy helped me get it together, and would be so proud of the person I am now, only the only reason I’m this person I am now is because he died. I was married for four years and only wanted kids in the theoretical sense, and now that I’m divorced, the hormones have kicked over and make that far off wish a physical demand that I have no way of appeasing. I finally love myself completely, am thrilled about who I am, after years of trying to be someone I wasn’t, but thought I should be, and all those years it was easy to find guys interested in that person I was trying to be. Now that I’m someone I love completely, and I feel like I can give my heart more fully than ever before, I can’t for the life of me find a real relationship.

There are things I don’t want to go back to. I can say I wish my father hadn’t died, but I don’t have it in me to wish I was still the person I was before his death. I can only say I wish I’d learned it some other way, but would I have? Existential paradox aside, though, I want my father back. And for once I’m not asking for that “just one more day” crap. I can’t have him. I can’t. But if I’m going to beg for the impossible, I’m going to be unabashedly greedy. I don’t want one more day. I want years and years, wrinkles and gray hair, decades, the rest of a real, not-cut-off-short, long healthy life.

Not so I can squeeze every last drop out of every minute. But so I can let every minute ripen in its own time and fall into my hand like a blessing freely given, not clutched at and wrung dry. I want to call home this weekend for Mom, like I try to do every week, and hear his voice like it used to be. To say, just like I’d said it the week before, and would say it the next week, and for all the weeks of my life, the weeks I always thought I’d have…

“Hi, Dad! It’s me!”

First Frost

I looked in the mirror after washing my hands for dinner at Momo's, ran my fingers through my hair, then stopped, and looked closer. I leaned forward, lifted a hand, and gently sifted a single strand of silver out from the rest of my hair. I called Brooke to come with me into the bathroom light, and looked again, and asked, "Is that really...?"

"A gray hair? Do you have a gray hair?" she asked.

"I think I do!" I replied, and I laughed. I must be the first woman who noticed her first gray hair, and thought about *not* dying her hair any more. I probably will keep it up, because I do like being a red head. But honestly, I remember seeing the strands of silver at Michael's temples, and thinking how pretty they were against the dark of his hair. This one strand on my head shines against the rest and glitters in the light, and for all it might mean in terms of my surrendered youth and the inexorable march of time, it is beautiful to me, and precious in a way I don't really understand.

I laughed, and rushed out to tell my mother, and they probably all think I'm insane. How can I explain to anyone who clings to their own youth as a golden age that my twenties have been the hardest time of my life, and I can only hope to rise out of them into the rest of my life like a phoenix. I know in my soul that I have the strength and grace for this. That in fact this is what I do every day that I get up and greet the world with an open heart full of faith and hope and love. This is what I intend to do all my life, and I hope that life is a long one. Long enough for every hair on my head to turn.

So bring it on, gray hair! I'm ready!

New blog, new blog, lah lah lah lah laaaaah lah

I have a new blog at

lauraforpresident.blogspot.com

Give me some time, I'll start posting good stuff.

The List

I haven't ever had this sort of list before, and I didn't really think to sit down to make one, but slowly I've been thinking of things. The world is so big, and I'm so small. This year I'm going to travel, and hopefully see a lot of things I've never seen. Daddy was so alive, and then he was gone. I'm not sure when I'll reach the bottom of my glass, but I hope to drink deep and savor every drop. So here's my list of things I want to do before I die.

• See the Northern Lights
• Hear a nightingale
• See New England in the fall
• Write a novel
• See Times Square
• Visit the Grand Canyon
• Take the tour at Alcatraz
• Make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land
• Visit Gettysburg
• Go into the catacombs
• Visit Ellis Island
• Read every Agatha Christie mystery novel
• See the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam
• Eat Chicago deep dish in Chicago
• Visit the Guggenheim
• Relax on a black sand beach
• Stand in the middle of Stonehenge
• Visit Delphi
• Drink tea and eat fish and chips in London
• Ride a paddle boat on the Mississippi
• See the St. Louis Arch
• Visit Death Valley
• See the sun set over the Everglades
• Sing a solo on stage in Jones Hall (Done)
• See Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower (Done)
• Watch elephant seals on a beach in Big Sur (Done)
• Play the slots in Vegas (Done)
• Eat beignets in Cafe du Monde after drinks on Bourbon Street (Done)
• Pray in St. Peter's Basilica (Done)
• Listen to blues on Beale Street (Done)
• Wine tasting in Napa Valley (Done)
• Watch Old Faithful erupt (Done)
• Visit the Monterrey Bay Aquarium (Done)

Thankfully I've got some of them out of the way. I hope I have enough time for the rest...