you only hurt the ones you love

One of my mother's favorite things to do whenever we were together was to go 'antiquing'. In Mom's case it was less about the antiques themselves than it was searching for the lost items of her memories ~ tiny porcelain dolls; delicate embroidery and tablecloths, dusty wooden washboards; irons made of, well, iron.

Often the items that caught her fancy were kitchen tools; often they were tools that her own mother might have used. And almost always she'd want to buy me something. Always, I declined. I am not entirely certain why.

Part of me wanted her to save her money, although for what, now, I cannot say. Thriftiness was a habit she had so deeply instilled in me that I couldn't let it go, even when it ceased to have purpose for her.

Part of me didn't want her to think that I took her shopping just to get gifts, something she would have been justified in suspecting given her experience of my youthful self. I am sorry to say that a more spoiled, selfish and acquisitive young woman would have been difficult to find. In fact, had cultural mores been then what they are today, I probably would have warranted my own reality show.

Long ago, Mom and I were out shopping when she found a large, cast-iron pot in a local shop. "Oh, it's a STEAL at $30!" exclaimed the proprietress, going in for the hard sell rather quickly, I thought. "It's an excellent deal!"

Well, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I only know that moments before, I had been examining some Spode "collectible" plates which the woman had priced at $29 that I had, just days before, spotted at TJ Maxx for $7.99. This sort of thing irritates me; I understand that there's a sucker born every minute, but it angers me when people blatantly attempt to take advantage of this sad fact. And it infuriates me when they seem to be insinuating that, by my very presence in such an establishment, I might just be one them.

So when my dear little mother said, "I want to buy it for you!" I could barely conceal my disdain.

"No Ma, I don't WANT it," I said, with little grace. Absolutely no grace, in truth. "Do not buy it," I sniffed coldly, as if I were doing her a favor by depriving her of the pleasure of giving something she valued to her graceless, boorish daughter. I can still see the disappointed sadness in her eyes. It breaks my heart to remember it. I do not know how people forgive themselves for the myriad small cruelties we inflict upon those who deserve it least. I can't. We can only learn from our mistakes, I tell myself, that we may go forth and injure no more. This may be true. But it remains that there are countless such moments I would give my life to take back. If only I could.

Of course, I cannot go antiquing without thinking of my mother and fortunately, the overwhelming majority of my memories of our outings together are happy ones. But it was this moment that came immediately to mind when I spotted a large enameled cast iron pot in one tidy little stall.

"A dutch oven!" I exclaimed excitedly to my shopping companion, Robbie. "Do you know how much these things are worth? This is an excellent buy! It's practically a STEAL!"

"You should buy it," she said, nodding agreeably. "You never buy anything."

It's true. And I did. In my mind, I finally let Mom buy it for me. Her birthday was April 30th, and she would have been 97 years old. This weekend I made a 6.5 pound garlic and fennel pork in my new vintage Dru Holland dutch oven, slow-roasted over a period of 10 hours, during which the house filled with the aromas of cooking and the sweet melancholy of memory. The results were delectable. Mom would have been happy, I think.

Miss you still.

it's my party and I'll cry if I want to

I consider myself a cheerful person, in a restrained, melancholic sort of way. I am happy, with reservations. Life is hard and then you die, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy yourself while you're here. Really, it's the best you can do.

Unfettered joy, on the other hand, is an unsustainable and entirely irrational state of being for adult humans, suitable only for Sufi mystics and Labrador retrievers. I'm not even sure it's wise. Sadness is a condition of life, not a side effect that can and should be avoided at all costs with the proper combination of drugs, exercise and frequent applications of anti-fungal cream. To love is to lose. To live is to mourn. I think, therefore I'm mildly bummed.

In an interview I cannot now find but which I heard recently on NPR and am pretty sure I did not make up, a noted professional of some sort discussed at great length the benefits of sadness, which included improved attention to detail, complete focus on working through grief or difficulty; heightened awareness and acceptance of others and an increased tendency toward self-reflection resulting, in some cases, in greater creative self-expression. Without misery, there would be less art. No blues, no 'blue period'. No blues, no Blues. Period.

And yet pop culture is awash lately with perky enablers on this wanton quest for unrelenting gladness. In A Lot of Happy Talk, Times columnist Meghan Daum considers the hordes of people who are so clearly anxious to tell the rest of us how to be happy. Because they are. No really, they are! Dammit.

"I don't mean fleeting moments of happiness, the kind that can waft by as you dance at your wedding or watch your child lead his soccer team to victory. I'm talking about people who are always announcing how happy they are: The friend who meets you for lunch once a year and spends the whole time evangelizing about her constant self-actualized joy. The person on Facebook who reports on the bliss rendered by his most recent meal of wood-fired flatbread and organic litchis. These people are exactly what Gertrude meant when she said to Hamlet: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Amen, sister.

Daum cites "The Nine Rooms of Happiness" by Danziger and Birndorf and "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin as prime examples of this stridently cheerful crowd. According to Rubin, making your bed every morning is key, although as Daum points out, as the wife of a hedge-fund manager living in a 3 story Manhattan townhouse, it's a little hard to imagine the author having to make her own bed in the morning in an effort to try and positively motivate her day. But I'm sure her maid is ecstatic.

I've no studies to prove it and have yet to write a book on the subject (although lack of evidence need not hinder any quest for self-help tome authorship) but it has been my experience that, barring neurological or chemical imbalances creating chronic and treatable dissonance, most people are about as happy as they choose to be.

Naturally, there are those who take a good thing too far.

For these people, there is Despondex.

sunday, painting Dad

I've been meaning to do a painting of my Dad ever since I finished the one of Mom several months ago. As a couple they were inseparable, and I just know that somewhere out there in the vastness of an uncomprehending universe they are sitting around, drinking coffee, enjoying a nice piece of Entenmann's crumb cake or maybe a honey bun or two and wondering why their daughter hasn't yet made them a matched set. The truth is, I wasn't sure if I could catch a likeness. My father was a handsome, funny, charming man, and a Sunday painter like me. His portrait has to be just-so. So I keep putting it off.

But the rains and my own lack of ambition have kept me from painting outdoors for the last couple of weekends, outdoors being the only place I can deal with the smell and mess of the oils, and yesterday was still a little too cool. So I dragged the watercolors down from the guestroom closet and tried a tiny (4x4") sketch at the dining room table, based on a photo I took on a long-ago trip back home. The plan is to make a 12 X12" canvas to compliment Mom's in style and intent. I'm pretty awful with watercolor, always using too much water and mushing up the color, but I'm actually pretty pleased with this first attempt.

It's not perfect, and I need to adapt on the canvas in order to show his casually crossed arms and the WWII era tattoo that was such a part of who he was. But it looks like him. It feels like him. I may be able to come up with a matched set after all.

Oh, and the New Orleans Saints came marching in too ~ Laissez les bon temps roulez! Hip hip hooray!

A very happy Sunday overall.

optimism

According to all the experts and Jillian Michaels, an individual must take at least 10,000 steps a day in order to maintain a healthy body weight, a statistic I find breathtaking in its optimism. I know this to be a rather difficult thing to do. In fact, I have long suspected the cardio machines at my own gym of flat-out lying to me about the number of miles and calories I was logging per session; of padding the numbers in a blatant attempt to bolster my faltering ego, to assure me that yes, I was still cute and no, pink sweat pants with Juicy emblazoned across the bottom (in a suspiciously large font) do not make my butt look bigger. Only, you know, perkier. And possibly age-inappropriate. But good for me!

To my everlasting credit and intrinsic paranoia, I did not take these disingenuous exercise machines at their word. In a move not unlike that of hiring a private detective to check up on a dubious lover, about a week or so ago I went out and bought myself a pedometer. Because I simply had to know the truth.

So far, other than the discovery that sitting at a computer while wearing a pedometer and expecting the numbers to increase is the height of magical thinking, the results are inconclusive. But it hardly matters. I needn't have bothered. Because who needs to walk when you can just get one of these?

Enjoy. I laughed so hard my pedometer fell off. And I logged 673 more steps.

oo la la LA Art Show

*Editor's note : editor speaks only Pidgin French and takes no responsibility for poorly spelled words, misuse of grammar or improperly applied art historical concepts. Please direct all complaints to: Monsieur J. O'Donnell, 7th grade French, Spring Field Jr High School.**

**Name changed to protect editor's Alma Mater

inspiration

It has finally come to pass. My second life avatar is more creative than I am.

In his review of the recently published "You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto" by Jaron Lanier for the LA Times, Ben Ehrenreich writes:

Despite the binary nature of his own neural wiring, each synapse an on/off switch, passing electrochemical messages from axon to dendrite, Jaron Lanier will be the first to tell you that the mind is not a digital device. We are analog creatures, staticky and mysterious, resistant to the normalizing containment of code. Lanier's mind has few apparent boundaries. It grapples with zombies and "gray goo," "inner trolls" and the "lords of the computing clouds," with "cephalopod envy" and "songles" -- with "the mystery of Bengalese finch musicality" and the bucket containing all red things.

This is heady stuff. I have never heard of Mr. Lanier before, but am awed by the apparently limitless scope of his mind. An enthusiastic fan of the virtual reality experience, I understand little to none of the technology which enables it, believing myself to be disappearing into it's fantastical realms by virtue of my childlike sense of wonderment, a smattering of pixel dust and an added gig of memory.

But I am intrigued by his stated original intention to create "something that would take the extreme possibilities of internal experience and bring them into a realm where they're shared with people instead of being sources of isolation." This, as Ehrenreich states, is essentially the definition of art, going on to describe Lanier's "fundamentally humanist faith in technology, a belief that wisely designed machines can bring us closer together by expanding the possibilities of creative self-expression."

The early days were filled with promise as "Individuals created free-form home pages, posting poems, theories, rants, pictures of their cats and, importantly, links to the pages of like-minded kooks. Lonely eccentricities quickly spawned communities. People behaved not as passive consumers but as active creators of their own culture."

Sound familiar? I miss those giddy, unselfconsciously idiosyncratic pages ~ everyone a poet, an artist, a writer, a pundit, a star. I've often wondered whatever happened to them.

According to Lanier, commercialization led to the devolvement of such free-wheeling creativity into what he describes as 'cybernetic totalism.'

"The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring," asserts Lanier. "Why pay attention to it?" Why, indeed. Social networking sites like Facebook "confine creativity to preestablished fields, reducing our oceanic complexities to 'multiple-choice identities' that can be sold to marketing databases."

I am sorely tempted to buy this book, but as fascinating as all this is I confess I only understood about half of what was discussed in the review; I am certain I could not wrap my brain around anything as weighty as a manifesto. Still, I am motivated again to use the tools at my disposal in a freer, more imaginative, individualistic manner. Can't let my avatar have all the fun.

And to all a Cheery Night!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

everybody was ho-ho fighting

I loved it from the first time I saw it: catchy, flashy, fresh and joyous. A bunch of pretty kids energetically tossing themselves around a stylized white log cabin cheering in rhythmic upbeat:

2, 4, 6, 8..T'is the time to liberate!
Go Christmas, go Hanukkah, go Kwanzaa, go Solstice!
Go classic tree, go plastic tree, go plant a tree, go without a tree!

It just made me smile. How clever! How delightful! How inclusive! How...

Oh. Of course. How offensive.

The Mississippi-based American Family Association has launched a call for a "two- month boycott (of Gap Inc.) over the company's failure to use the word 'Christmas' in its advertising to Christmas shoppers." On it's website, the AFA asserts that:

The Gap is censoring the word Christmas, pure and simple. Yet the company wants all the people who celebrate Christmas to do their shopping at its stores? Until Gap proves it recognizes Christmas by using it in their newspaper, radio, television advertising or in-store signage, the boycott will be promoted.

And yet there it is, right up front. Go Christmas! Right before Hanukkha, Kwanzaa and Solstice. Which is, one must assume, the real problem for the AFA; Christmas doesn't get sole billing but must share equally with it's brethren (and sistren) holidays.

Almost like, you know, in the spirit of Christmas.

In fact, Gap INC., with this year's Go Ho Ho advertising campaign, has taken the past complaints of the AFA and similar fundamentalist groups (as fueled by the opportunistic flames of all of Fox TV's rabblerousers ad nauseam) protesting an imagined War on Christmas and turned it on it's head.

Yes, sing the happy Gap cherubs, t'is Christmas. T'is also Hanukkha, Kwanzaa and Solstice. And who knows what else? (Festivus comes to mind. Surely someone is out there celebrating Festivus.)

The point is, AFA, that you do not get to determine the message of my holiday. I won't tell you how to phrase your celebratory sentiments, and you won't dictate mine. Or anyone else's. The fact remains that until you achieve the theocracy that you so ardently desire, it's still a free country.

And if I have to go buy an overpriced, inappropriately youthful sweater and/or matching scarf to prove it, well, rock on.

You 86 the rules
You do what just feels right
Happy do Whatever You Wannukkah
and to all
a cheery night!

bird flu, or much a-twitter about nothing

I've been down for the count for the last few days with some sort of bug. I don't think it's the Minnesotan Swine Flu or the Chinese Chicken Flu or anything with a ready-made vaccination and health care debate talking points attached, but it is almost certainly an animal-transported virus of foreign origin. Maybe a Peruvian Nutria Infection or the Brazilian Wax Flu, or something equally debilitating.

Or it could just be a cold. In any case, I will no doubt be dead by sundown.

In the meantime, I've been filling my TheraFlu and NyQuil-fueled haze with all manner of facsinating endeavor. I read six back issues of the La Times Travel sections and planned an imaginary trip to Germany for next month. I emptied my spam folder of 167 emails entreating 'Gloria' to get back in touch with 'Brian', 'William' and 'Mrs Charles Lowenhart'. I played with my Blogger template and lost my favorite 'Simpsonized' profile pic. I spent a half a day attending a virtual pagan ceremony with some passing rogues and bards, tracked a couple of vampires to their lair (only to run in panicked fear when the fight turned ugly) and joined a motley crew of Rangers attempting to guard it's borders against...well, I'm not sure what, exactly, to be honest. But our weapons are totally cool! And I finally signed up for Twitter.

I have absolutely nothing to say on Twitter, just as I have nothing to say on FaceBook, Wordpress or here, for that matter. And I know very few people who subscribe, or admit to subscribing to the site. But when I heard that Paris Hilton and Demi Moore were bitchslapping each other over the relative sluttiness of Moore's 15 year-old daughter's attire, I knew I had to be in on that conversation. Which is frankly hilarious.

I signed up, tossed out a single tweet (I forgot to include the obigatory exclamation point!) and started following anyone who showed up on the first list that appeared. I chose on the basis of those whom I thought would amuse, intentionally or otherwise ~ Wil Wheaton, Stephen Fry, Eddie Izzard among the former; Demi Moore, of course, who is 'Feeling a deep need to clean my closets out!' among the latter. Heidi Montag, whose bio reads 'I love Jesus!' next to a picture of herself onstage in some sort of gold see-through underwear is 'Getting ready for church!' Kirstie Alley cannot shut up about, well, anything: Airports: Hello Denver.. Only passing through.. Prettiest airport ive ever seen. Boyfriends: Jonny Boy didnt dump me... That made me happy... Lol Haters: Wow.. The idiots are out in full force today.... Will have to name them so that u can bop them twittet style..

It is endless, pointless and just the thing to penetrate a fever-induced haze. I may never leave the house again. Oh, I know I'll get bored with it soon ~ okay, I'm already a little bored with it: Heidi Montag cant wait to talk to you all on#SayNow at 310-220-0244 later today! (Pimping? On Twitter? How dare you!!??) ~ but in the meantime I have learned two things.

One) That Paris Hilton, beautiful, vacuous, inexcusable bimbo that she is, is living a truly, miraculously, fabulous life: Oct 23 :The U2 Concert was incredible!!! Bono rocks! Such a talent, inspiration and total Rock Star! Love him! Oct 24: We just had lunch with Pete Rose, the baseball legend. He's such a nice guy and such a character. Later Oct 24: Had such an amazing day today! Back at The Hard Rock Hotel, going to take a lil disco nap before the night starts :) To her credit, she seems to be enjoying this incredible life, even if not entirely understanding it.

Two) I do not need to feel bad about never having anything to say. As Mark Twain so aptly put it, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Now there's a guy who would have given good Tweet.

d'oh!

I lost my Simpson-me profile toon. I cannot for the life of me remember what I named it and Vista, contrarian evil that it is, will simply not help me find it. Which is why I never play at changing things in here. Change is bad. Me no likey change.

D'oh, oh d'oh is me.

Universal Health Care: SVU

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

last of the summer tomatoes

There's a group of Daily Painters whose widget appears somewhere on this page and whose work ethic I much admire. It's astounding to me how quickly and effectively they can produce such lively small scale paintings in such a short amount of time.

Me, I tend to plod, over-think and obsess with even the simplest subjects, resulting in canvases of overwrought mushiness and confusion. Much of this is no doubt due to a lack of training on my part, since I have no idea what I'm doing and am making it up as I go along. But quite a bit is probably due to essential personality flaws as well, as I tend to plod and over-think and obsess about everything, resulting in a brain and life of overwrought mushiness and confusion. Maybe because I'm still making that up as I go along, too. Funny, you'd think I'd have it down by now.

So when my husband came home and plopped some tomatoes down in the basket on the counter, I popped some blue hydrangeas in a vase and thought, hmn, I bet I could do this in a few hours(!) and quickly set out to try, you know, to loosen up my brain a little. When, to the surprise of no one I didn't finish that day, the canvas sat for a week, the tomatoes were eaten and the hydrangeas started turning green.

Hmn, I thought, I like that much better! More color, better contrast. Turk was promptly dispensed to the farmers' market for more fruit and I added some green to the blue.

Later that afternoon, as I noted that the flowers had started turning brown around the edges and imagined the tomatoes in a nice insalata calabrese for dinner that night, I threw a little sienna into the petals and finally called it a day. Before my bright little Still Life with Tomatoes turned into a picture of an empty basket and a couple of dry sticks in fetid water: Stilled Life: Study of a Too Literal Mind.

And I wonder why no one wants to sit for my portraits.

summer reading

To all the slack-jawed yokels and Yosemite Sam wannabes proudly strangling free-speech and the democratic process in town hall meetings across the land, as well as to their media handlers and other mad prophets of the coming Apocalypse I would like to recommend picking up a copy of T.R. Reid's new book, The Healing of America.

I would further recommend that, rather than using said book as you normally would, say as a beer coaster or something to burn at the next Birther bash, that you actually look at the pages in a genuine attempt to discern their meaning. And if that's proves to be too difficult, perhaps a kindly visiting child could interpret them for you. That's why we make you send them to public schools. So they can help you to help yourselves.

In the meantime and for the rest of us, Reid has laid out the Five Myths About Health Care Around the World in a sensible, comprehensive and thoughtful fashion. I first heard Reid speaking this morning on NPR and was so impressed with his broad knowledge and reasoned compassion that I immediately went online in search of the book. I'd like to send one to each of my Congressmen and women as well ~ can a constituent give their legislators required reading lists? I very much doubt it. But I'm sure as hell gonna try.

Health Care: We all get it. We all pay. What could be fairer than that? Or more democratic? It's the American way. Dammit.

why I love Barney Frank

Finally. A congressman with the cajones to speak Truth to Idiots. And obnoxious dining room furniture. Because the Nazis ~ well, they were all about the health care.

Those who cannot read history books are doomed to make complete asses of themselves in public forums.

who will give me Xanax when you're gone? a thoughtful debate in free rant form

One of the advantages of having a blog that nobody reads is having a blog that nobody has to write. This has been a pleasantly liberating experience for me, and I have appreciated the time spent cleaning, cooking, and writing cranky letters to my reps, many of which begin with the phrase, "Dear Lame Duck Governor Schwarzenegger; I am writing to urge you to follow the courageous example of fellow LD Gov Sarah Palin and quit while you are still a viable entertainer..."

Another benefit of having a de facto private page is being able to write whatever you please without concern for diplomacy. Therefore, if you are offended by poorly written postings of a political nature that fly in the face of your considered beliefs in UFO's, the integrity of Dick Cheney or the wisdom of Elizabeth Hasselbeck, be forewarned: this is not the place for you. You will not like what you read. And if you are a member of the anti-Obama Birther movement, you will not understand it.

At long last we elected a president ready, willing and able to take on the enormous task of reforming the massively dysfunctional health care system in this country, only to see what is a truly heroic effort of monumental proportions being once again derailed by the health care industry itself. In a manufactured 'grassroots lobby', funded by the insurance industry and Big Pharma and whipped into a frenzy by a conscious-less right-wing media, pitchfork wielding citizens are showing up at town hall meetings screaming spontaneously memorized Republican talking points about roving death panels prowling the country eager to toss Granny down the shoot and faceless, uncaring federal bureaucrats replacing the compassionate and caring corporate bureaucrats currently coddling you, your family and that $200 bottle of Viagra.

Holding up copies of their own birth certificates, carefully preserved in Ziploc baggies these informed consumers of the best of American punditry demand to know why no one has looked into the fact that Barack Hussein Obama was almost certainly born on a UFO somewhere off the Beta Quadrant, the product of a human woman and an alien race of beings committed to bringing health care and gun control to a struggling populace.

As Peter Sagal of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me put it ~ the government wants to give the American people health care. And they don't want anyone to give them health care. Motto: Give us Liberty And give us Death!

I am sick and tired of the will of the majority of the American people as expressed by the electoral process being subverted by corporate behemoths and their Republican operatives in the legislature and media. I am sick and tired of bullies taking over the democratic process. I am sick and tired of self-righteous, misinformed, hotheaded zealots shouting down any voice raised against them. Just because you're loud doesn't mean you're right ~ my god, didn't your mother teach you anything? Don't make me come back there and euthanize you.

I am sick and tired of a propaganda machine so efficient in it's systematic demonization of intellectualism, education and indeed of any knowledge based on actual proof of fact that there are people out there who honestly believe that the government of the United States of America is coming to euthanize its citizenry.

Seriously, people. Get a grip. The administration is trying...to bring you...health care. Don't let the bullies scare you. We can do it. We voted for this. Change. It's a good thing.

And I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. Of people.

Where's a roving death panel when you need one?

a long and winding road

I actually, finally finished a painting today.

I'd been working on this particular canvas on and off for, quite literally, years now. I've posted pieces of it over the centuries, I think. But it just never seemed to be finished; there was always some element, some signifier that would be missing and would not let me put it to rest, as I probably should have long ago. Until today, when I picked it up, added that which I suddenly knew it needed and voila! C'est complet. I regret that I cannot get a decent picture of it no matter how hard I try, mostly because it was, at one point in it's travels, poorly and unevenly varnished by its creator in a hurried fashion before it was ready, causing it to pick up light and reflection in unappealing ways. And then again, perhaps it won't photograph prettily because it is, in fact, unlovely, an idea which does not displease me overmuch. It always was an unruly child ~ errant, frustrating, even, dare I say it? ~ ill-conceived. But what the hell. It's mine.

I call the picture "Journey," and in the course of those long and winding years it has been on one of it's own. It has undergone considerable revision, both in content and intent, it's direction and execution meandering far and wide, gathering paint, dust and ephemera along its way. Until it emerged to become the thing that it is; dark, dense, and not at all what it imagined it would be when first conceived. Like life, and most of our journeys. Or so I imagine. This one's mine, for what it's worth. Because I made it so. And no one chooses my path but me.

smile

I love those ad spots for Hulu, the ones starring Alec Baldwin and Dennis Leary claiming to be aliens providing us with mindless entertainment so they can suck our mushy brains dry. "Because we're aliens, and that's how we roll." This never fails to crack me up. My mushy brain responds to humor, and the truth of the jest.

The very cool image above is of a postcard collage created by my very talented pal Robbie, and which she sent me for my birthday. Very clearly on the surface is the message, "Honor Time," while invisibly, beneath several layers, are buried the words, "Life is Messy."

I've been thinking a lot about time lately; about how I've spent it, how much of it is lost, how much I might have left. That it was once my friend, and now very clearly is no longer. And I am forced to acknowledge that I have not always honored time, thinking, as one does, it to be in endless supply. I know, of course, that it is not. It is precious, finite in unpredictable ways and I have not been giving it it's due, spending far too much of it, in the words of my favorite aliens, in my bliggity blogs and facey spaces, cyber worlds and tweety places. I revel in a lot of pointless nonsense.

That life is messy is true as well, although I cannot in truth say mine has been. As lives go, mine has been a lucky one ~ full of love and affection, comfort and ease, often in spite of my best efforts to the contrary. This fact surprises me still, and I am grateful for it. But life is sorrow as well, and the passage of time highlights this inevitability.

I was looking for something in some old journals the other day and came across an unattributed quote (for I am not scrupulous in private diaries) "Accept sadness as a condition of life, not a transitory effect to be obliterated in a fourth act blizzard of good feelings, but something that can only be kept at bay..."

I've no idea where the passage came from, but I have always known the sentiment to be true. The older I get, the more I feel the wisdom of it. Perhaps that's what all the mindless, noisy, candy-coated entertainment is about ~ keeping the sadness at bay. This too has it's place.

I've just been listening to Brooke Shields speaking at the memorial for Michael Jackson, whose early death is a testament to the importance of honoring time if ever there was one. In memorializing her friend Brooke introduced the song Smile, written in 1936 by Charlie Chaplin with lyrics added later by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons. I've always loved the song ~ it is happiness steeped in melancholy, given depth when sung with the wisdom of one who knows.

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That’s the time you must keep on trying

Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

silly birthday stuff

Every year on my birthday my mother would call and read my horoscope to me from the daily paper. Even when she got quite elderly and could no longer manage it on her own, my brother would dial the phone and put her on. I can still hear her sweet, clear little voice, with its faint traces of New York and ever-so-slight hint of a lisp, carefully imparting my fate for the coming year. I thought it was loving, cute and funny. I will never stop missing it.

I know I haven't been nurturing my happy little corner of Bughouse Square here lately ~ the Real World has been demanding more of my time than I generally like to give it, and the myriad domestic emergencies and annoyances have not been of the even mildly interesting kind (although I did get my first speeding ticket in 23 years - good for me!) So I thought I'd throw together a cheerful, quickie collage made up of silly birthday stuff made entirely online. You know, just something to say hi to my friends and possibly kick start my lagging creative energies. For the background I photographed the darling blouse my husband had given me as a gift ~ a frothy, filmy, girly thing, so pretty and youthful I nearly wept with delight, both at the gift and what it said about his illusions about me. I didn't even mind that it was a size too small and had to be exchanged. I combined it with textures taken from collage materials a friend had given me (thanks Robbie!) and a mountain of miscellaneous doodling, noodling, cutting and pasting in Photoshop, most of which got appropriately, but painfully, tossed.

I will not embarass myself by telling you how long it took me to come up with this bit of fluff. Suffice it to say that I could have baked the cake, drunk the martinis, sewn the blouse and woven the matted background. Then probably gone off and painted a massive oil. But I do like it. It's a collage of sorts. I wish I'd done the real, tactile thing though ~ for the life of me I don't know why I thought this would be quicker. Or easier. At least at the last moment I did think to get 'Mom's' horoscope in, which makes me happy.

I suppose I will always think of my mother on my birthday, not because it is the day she gave birth to me; she did not. That was done by another woman, a stranger to me now, and on this night I look up into the black sky and wonder if she is still alive ~ if she ever remembers the day, and thinks of me. And it doesn't really matter and never has, because as soon as I see that first shining star, I know that little Ruthie does. And always will.

the cove

My husband regarded me with a skeptical eye. "So in your view," he was saying, "the primary purpose of a day at the beach is to avoid the sun at any cost."

I nodded. "Yes, that is the goal. Actually, if it's at all possible I would like to emerge even whiter than before. Bleaching would be ideal." I waved my sunscreen lotion at him, laughing. "Look ~ SPF Clorox!"

We had donned our bathing suits for the second time this century and, armed with an orange striped umbrella, a wide brimmed straw hat and enough Banana Boat SPF 50 sunscreen to protect us from harmful UV rays even in the face of a nuclear explosion had headed for the pristine sands of Crystal Cove State Park.

"You're already whiter than an Irish albino," said my husband. He was sprawled recklessly beyond the comforting shade of the orange striped umbrella, cap pulled low upon his brow, eyes scanning the horizon for signs of dolphin or whale. Or maybe Spanish galleon. Like an old pirate.

"Yes, well, I've done enough damage to my skin over the years to horrify many a Clinique salesgirl as it is," I replied. I thought of all the years I spent slathering my body with baby oil and going up on the roof of my Long Island home, the better to be closer to the sun. I would fry up there for hours. I had sun poisoning more than once.

"You do understand that you are still going to age," he said, grinning.

"I know," I lied. "But you can't blame a girl for trying."



We had come to the Historic District of Crystal Cove to celebrate my husband's birthday, something we'd been wanting but unable to do for years; the cottages fill up within minutes of opening reservations, which book online 7 months in advance. After weeks of trying to snag a cancellation, we scored ~ first one, then two consecutive nights at Cottage #2, the Shell Shack. I am certain it is only due to Turk's most excellent karma. And he never doubted we would succeed for a minute.

Built in 1926, the cottage was a step back in time, a chance to experience the California beach style of a bygone, golden era. This was a community of artists and surfers, middle-class bohos and wealthy ne'er-do-wells. I've always felt I was born in the wrong time and place ~ as if, waiting in the wings to make my entrance on the universal stage I had stepped out for a cigarette and missed my cue to appear, stumbling out in some much later, less interesting Act 21. This is the scene I was meant to play in. This is the era in which I was meant to live.





Our front porch overlooked the cheerfully retro Beachcomber Restaurant, where they hoist and salute the martini flag every evening at 5:00, not so sharp, and ring the bell at the frequent dolphin sitings. The playful mammals cavort a mere 10 yards or so from shore. A waitress told us of a visiting seal pup as pelicans flew in formation over our heads. At night a chorus of frogs living in the nearby creek sang us to sleep.


And of course, there is nothing quite so wonderful, so soothingly powerful as the pounding of the surf outside your wide-open windows at night. It is, simply, bliss. From the oceans have we come and to the oceans we must return. I should live like this. We should all live like this. And if we're very, very lucky, thanks to the Crystal Cove Alliance, for a night or two we can.







Somewhere the martini flag is flying, and a very pale woman and her long-suffering, sun burnished pirate husband are making their way back up from the beach. Happy birthday, Turk. Cheers!

starry feets and lorakeets

"The time has come," my friend had said
"to talk of many things.
Of men and love and bikini wax:
Why some are just for flings.
Why some are charming, and some are not
And whether fish have wings".


So off we went to the Beach that's Long
In the land of sun so fair
Where stars have feets and lorakeets
Fly straight into your hair
Where the seal pups play as the dragons sway
And sharks cruise deep within their lair.



When the sun went down, the thought profound;
"It's time to quench our thirst!"
So off we went to the Mai Tai Lounge
"We'll start with Mai Tais first.
Then a place with a view and a martini or two!"
And if I must say so as weekends go it really could have been worst.