24 April 09
Velvet Women
For Ivy and in memory of Bobette
They clung together through
the soft rocking:
the boat and the gin
while the men on deck
smoked and laughed and
coursed.
The tears and slobber
[o those violet eyes]
my baby, gone. my baby.
it was a night
to remember
[her name is was Liz]
and forget
[my unborn had no name]
The pain of it, the
misery
the shame
sloshing in the bilge
slapping the side
the hangover next day
and through it all
two women, adrift, bereft.
5 April 09
Spring
This weekend, I
a) listened to the last exhibition game of spring training. The Giants beat the Dodgers.
b) finished my first sweater in over 30 years. (Also my first top-down sweater ever, my first seamless sweater ever, my first i-cord bindoff ever. Photo soon added.)
c) led a bird walk in Cold Canyon whose focus was birdsong. We heard mostly orange-crowned warblers and wrentits, but on the way down the path heard then saw two gorgeous black-throated gray warblers.
d) met a bunch of Jacobs sheep and their lambs up close and personal.
e) bought a bit of Jacobs roving and a spindle.
f) planted six Japanese cucumber plants, a gift from the landlady. It’s too early to plant cukes, but six is too many, so if some don’t make it, oh well.
g) failed to clean the house.
h) failed to make a start on taxes. Numenius says he is.
i) am currently listening to the first real baseball game of the season. Atlanta is beating the Phillies, 4-0.
j) have somehow managed to get a bit of sunburned cheeks. It was a gorgeous weekend, much of it spent outside despite all the knitting.
22 January 09
It's Raining, Oh It's Raining...
The soil laughs, muddy.
But it must have irked the skunk
Under the bathroom.
30 December 08
A Festering
The endowed chairs come bearing expensive overcoats, a studied ennui, and a secret hope that at least ten people will point at them in a whisper, the way people do in supermarkets in Van Nuys or Palm Springs when the famous actor du jour stands eyeing the tortilla chips.
The tenured faculty come bearing overcrowded schedules, the nagging feeling that after eight years interviewing the brightest young things in the country they are never going to land the hottest one (or even the hemidemisemi hottest one), and the gnawing suspicion that they are no longer young enough to show up at the Marxist cash bar without making a spectacle of themselves.
The untenured faculty come bearing hastily finished manuscripts, a bad hangover, and the guilty knowledge that they’d be far happier curled up in a good armchair with a novel that has nothing — NOTHING — to do with their field of research.
The university publishers come bearing crates of their new offerings and many more crates of backlist, hoping like the tenured faculty for the hot new thing over whom so many are salivating, bracing themselves for the onslaught of hastily finished manuscripts that will all end up in one of the crates that may or may not make it back to their press (but that will certainly never make it back to their desks).
The graduate students come bearing slightly dishonest resumes, enough clothes to ponder interview garb over four hours, and a permanent rictus that results from the awareness of their being on display to potentially any of the above categories in any venue: in the cafeteria, in the bathroom, in the dismal hotel corridors, in the seminar rooms, in any one of a number of good or cheap or trendy restaurants within fifteen miles, and above all in the exhibition hall where the publishers await them with a mixture of terror and vague hope.
What they all bring—without exception, from the four corners of the globe and the many cities and via the many airlines and taxis and buses and subway trains, given what time of year it is and where they’ve just been—is viruses.
This post is dedicated to all those who had, for one reason or another, to go to San Francisco this past weekend for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, and even more so to those who were supposed to go but decided, wisely, against it. (Here’s looking at you, Liz.)
17 December 08
Drifting Toward Invisibility
Julie Zickefoose, a bird artist and writer whose blog I’ve been following closely for a while, just had a piece published on the NPR website on becoming invisible after 50.
I will turn 50 this next year. It is only over the past few months that I’ve been aware, as Julie puts so very coherently, that a) I’m no longer being noticed in casual in-the-street-type contexts, b) that I therefore must have been aware of having been noticed before, though this didn’t really ever register, c) this is not altogether an unpleasant experience once you get over the shock of a) and b).
It’s starting to become more clear to me why some women take such pains to appear younger than they are. I have dismissed this as vanity for a long time, but I don’t think it’s just that. I think they want to still be someone, a person, a noticed person—someone who walks into a cafe and more than one head is raised in their direction, which culturally has given them meaning. Julie raises the obvious example of the Red Hat brigade as a damn-the-torpedoes approach to the unnoticeability problem, one that neither she nor I is likely to adopt. But I am starting to understand it a little more.
One of the commenters on Julie’s NPR piece suggests that blogging is a powerful way for women to keep their voice and have it be noticed. I think we shouldn’t underestimate this.
I am just finding it so very odd to even remark upon it. And wonder whether wearing my hair long and defiantly gray is my own means of bucking the trend…. Others have written about this and I’d love to hear from my male and female readers of all ages about their experience of this phenomenon.
These blind contour self-portrait sketches were done this evening at Mishka’s in the reflection in the window onto the night of Second Street, in the company of Blue Bicicletta who had some wonderful “Ride a Bike” pins for me (let me know if you’d like one).
10 December 08
Done, Not Done
So very much is Not Done Yet in these weeks — hectic at work, lots of Audubon stuff, knitting is consuming me (current project, for instance, pictured at left; it’s not, in fact, a bra). I haven’t posted a bird for a week. Yet:
From Rana, by way of Pilgrim/Heretic:
Things I’ve done are in bold.
1. Started my own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea
14. Taught myself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice (No. I was asked to by a gondolier, but I declined on account of being “sola.” “Anch’io son’ solo!” he replied. “Si, però,” said I.)
29. Seen a total eclipse (Of the moon, not sun)
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors (Some of them…)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language Several, with limited success, including Irish, Morse Code, Classical Greek, and Hebrew. Only Hebrew can I read well enough to be able to follow prayers during Jewish services, but that’s because I have followed up the self-taught with paid-taught, or else I just learned the prayers… I have made it through 3/4 of the first Harry Potter book in Swedish which is enough to understand, as though I didn’t already know, that my formation in Germanic languages is lamentably lacking and ought to be remedied. It can get in line behind everything else, though. Maybe when I retire.
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
39. Gone rock climbing (Are you kidding? With my accident proneness? See #77, and that was just DANCING.)
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke (No, but I’ll confess I’ve been tempted, and I did sing in a blues bar in La Grande Motte in the South of France before karaoke was invented.)
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa (Does Morocco count?)
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted (No, but it’s been sketched many times, especially during Sketchcrawls)
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (No, but having just seen Ninotchka for the first time, I regret it)
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud (YEAH!)
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business (Nearly. Glad I avoided that one.)
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar (Ugh.)
72. Pieced a quilt (No, but crocheted a bedspread, thin cotton, which was enough of piecing thank you)
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades (If you’re a birder, you have no choice but to run the gauntlet of mosquitoes on Snake Bight Trail if you want to see the flamingoes out in the shimmer. Every North American lister I know who has been to Florida has done this. Each of them has their own “the mosquitoes were the size of B52s” story.)
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone (Nah, but ruptured my achilles tendon, which was quite as dramatic)
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book (Many, but none written by me. On the other hand, I’ve made lots of books, which I suppose counts as “publishing.”)
81. Visited the Vatican (School trip. We misbehaved.)
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had my picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life (No, but we apparently saved the feral kitten we trapped a couple of weeks ago)
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous (This was not all it’s cracked up to be.)
92. Joined a book club (Never, ever again.)
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby (No thanks)
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone (Don’t know the number, don’t really know how to get the messages off it, but it’s useful when I’m being picked up at an airport. I think.)
99. Been stung by a bee (Had a major allergic reaction back in the 70s. This ought to make me paranoid about living in a house surrounded by thousands of milling bees, but we’ve lived there for nearly ten years and so far, so good. They’re well-behaved.)
100. Ridden an elephant
21 November 08
Badge of the Trade
When I worked for an architect in Cambridge, Mass., many of my coworkers had a thin slice taken off their left forefinger, the result of a dull exacto blade during a late-night charrette (deadline). I went through graphic design school, went through countless Exacto blades. I always, somehow, avoided this injury.
Until today. I stuck my finger in my mouth so I wouldn’t a) swear b) see c) bleed my guts out, ran into the main office, whimpered, grabbed some paper towel, then fessed that I might need to go to the hospital. But for what? There’s nothing to stitch, it got sliced off. I got chastised, rightly, by our front desk gal, who accused me of using a razor to cut card (she’s Italian), then ran next door to the vets.
“Do I put anything on this before a bandaid?” said I, bravely, to the first wildlife vet I found — she works on lead intoxication in condors but she used to be an equine vet. “Let me see.” (They’re ghoulish, veterinarians.)
“No. You weren’t around any animals, right? Clean blade? OK, bandaid now, tight but not too tight the blood has to clot, wash it when you get home then antiseptics, another bandaid. It’s going to hurt, later.”
“You’re letting a horse doc touch your finger?” asks the biodiversity/avian flu guy who is not a vet but might as well be at this point. “Better that than most doctors,” I say, and head back to the stash of bandaids.
Badged.
Update, 11/22/08: The cats were either super solicitous or cold in our first real tule fog of the fall (they almost never come onto a lap together). My PT sister-in-law whose specialty is wound care has given sound advice and asked for progress photos (on their way.)
!
26 August 08
Lunchtime, Yesterday
My sketching buddy Claire’s partner’s had the twins so no Raptor Center for us today at lunch so I went home to load the solar cooker having run out of time before work but there in the field were about 200 white-faced ibis so I sat on the kitchen stool and peered through the scope and these outlandish schnozzes and wild colors pink green copper red blue and drew and drew and then it was time to leave so I got on my bike and heading north under the walnut tree a refuge from the heat for panting crows a plonk onto my helmet that oozed through the vents warm and slightly sticky and I said to the gals as I hosed myself and my helmet down back at work it could have been worse at least it wasn’t a condor — that could have killed me.
24 August 08
Take Me Out To The Wedding
Back just now from Karen and Chris’s wedding, a wonderful event ending a long day — Pica’s birthday — which we celebrated by going to San Francisco to take a course at the San Francisco Center for the Book on making the ideal sketchbook (patterned after a creation of Dorothy Wordsworth) taught by master bookbinder Dominic Riley. The drive back from SF took longer than usual because we got stuck in traffic from the Giants’ game but that was in keeping with there turning out to be a baseball motif in the wedding, the ceremony ending with a chorus of “Take me out to the ballgame”.
Congratulations, Chris and Karen!
