Thursday, September 9, 2010
Last call...
three, thanks to these lovely ladies.. I grieve, but I have to confess that I wouldn't even care except that I just ordered business cards for A Guided Tour so that I could feel more official when I asked if I could take photos. I'm going to get another set for Cooked Heads. It could be that I'm reading Jane Austen right now, and what is a business card if not a calling card for someone with an official purpose.
Until February... to deep love, to perpetual bliss, and to "drinking stars"
It's not Paris, but...
the very high pressure system that moves in and squats over the city all summer, every day between mid-March and late-October, which is why I'm going the first part of November. It also home.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The art of the "doodle"
A few weeks ago, I lost it. I mourned and moved on to the point that I'm on the lookout for another, but I hope somewhere, someone is enjoying that coffee stained book bound in caramel colored leather.
Maybe it will end up here:
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Just lovely
because I'm reading Emma for the first time and found C.E. Brock's watercolors from the late 19th two volume release of Austen's book.
In case you'd enjoy: The rest of them |
Friday, September 3, 2010
Beautiful things...
While ( bargain=true) Shop here; |
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Take off your shoes..
Malibu Hindu Temple 1600 Las Virgenes Canyon Rd. Calabasas, CA |
Friday, August 13, 2010
Lust
Monday, August 9, 2010
Seeing beyond the inner and outer
Saturday, July 24, 2010
“You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?”
It’s plagiarism and it’s expedient. The title of this entry was originally written in a book by Terry Pratchett, a great and odd writer of fantasy books as well as the creator an entire universe , and Discworld.
Every thing that has come in to being, was at one point, not, and thus could not have been true. A person, or a group of people began to believe in whatever great thing, or sadly whatever, evil thing there is and thus it became. I cannot think of a single better explanation for what I am trying to do, make something that is as yet not true, true merely by investing my belief in it.
Most moments, I feel tired, and unmoved to belief by my surroundings until I insist that my mind see more clearly. All the things that are true, because I have believed they are true haven’t changed, but new things are beginning to grow from mist and wish into sailboats and water fountains, pretty dresses and plastic kayaks on cool summer mornings. So, I grit the teeth of my consciousness and will another reality to manifest…
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Three Wines
I’m having a dinner party this Thursday and being lead by a guide on my own travels, I’m using what is to get me where I’d love to be. In this case, it’s three bottles of wine that sit in my kitchen, unfinished, only partially loved and in need of a purpose, thus coq almost vs. coq au vin.
Coq au vin is of course made with red wine, but the trinity of wines on hand are neither red nor are they French. Still, I can think of no better use for them than for them to be shared with friends after they’ve spent the day coaxing the flavor into a meal and the week coaxing me to imagine being in Paris by Being in southern California, where I happen to sit.
Three Wines Dinner
Shaved Saucisson with Grainy Mustard |
Brown Bread |
Radishes in Sea Salt with Butter |
Kronenbourg Beer |
Coq Almost |
Wilted Asparagus in Browned Butter |
with |
Balsamic Glazed Slab Bacon |
White Truffle Roasted Potatoes |
Baby Carrots with Lemon Thyme |
White Wine of a yet to be determined variety |
Berrys under “Brulee”d Crème Fraîche |
French Pressed Coffee |
Monday, May 17, 2010
The stone we throw..
This one is simple. What do you leave and what do the people you leave do with it. I'm certainly not certain about the cosmic plan, though I like, Einstein believe that deciding whether the benevolence of the universe is fact or fantasy is a driving question, perhaps as ol' Al said, THE driving question, which brings me to my grandmother. Not directly, today, on a social network, my family and I inadvertently stumbled onto a moment of her life that remains unexplained. A human skull…
We were cleaning out her barn after she died and my cousin Frank found it. It was a barn full of her grandchildren gathered together for the sad and joyous occasions when we all came together to the same place as adults where we’d played as children to divide the objects of her life between our parents but as these things do, some of the material objects trickled down to our own hands through our parents and I began to wonder what we all use them for, how we remember her with their use and how my own children will remember me if they use objects for which I acted as temporary care taker, because the objects we collect are a story of who we are, whether they’re functional or more closely aligned with form.
We still don’t know who the skull was or where my grandmother acquired it, but Frank uses it to delight and horrify his beautiful daughters and in that, my grandmother delights and horrifies them. She is still with them.
For me, it’s so many things, but what sent me here was a cut glass perfume bottle which I filled months ago with sandalwood oil after being horrified myself at the cost, and delighted with the sensual experience of it in the air when I wear it. It deserved a cut glass perfume bottle, and thus my grandmother lives each time I take a small portion of oil from that bottle and carry it with me through the day on my skin.
I’m not sure my grandmother would have said she lead a beautiful life, but I do know she left beauty in her wake, the same way a great ship does as it leaves the known of the port for the unknown of the openness. We'll all do that. Our lives are stones tossed carelessly into a still lake, rippling outward to tiny corners we’ll never see, but we leave souvenirs of our travels.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Fearless Sistahood
My sister is so much younger than me that there was a time when people would ask if she was my child, so, of course, I'm old enough to look like her children's grandmother. We are at very different stages in our lives. My children have all left to begin lives without me.(Hah-lur-lear-yer ) Hers need her every single day for thousands of things and yet, we're stilling doing the same dance with ourselves, cramming as much heaven as we can into our daily lives while keeping the people we love close to and nurtured by us. “Dancing with the Stars” has NOTHING on normal women going through their daily lives to the music of their own joy.
I'm reading Rumi right now and he actually uses the metaphor of music, or more specifically, a flute in talking about how we can best live our lives, where we, in this corporeal bag of bits, are the flute and the air that moves through us to create Music is God. Rumi was a Sufi mystic and I'm not religious, but I don't believe I made myself and I do feel guided in my life towards love and away from all the misery fear has brought me, thus the blog. My sister on the other hand is devoutly Christian, a model mother, a loving wife, delightfully silly and afraid much more than she wants to be, but there are thousands, billions of women just like us at their core, trying to make better lives for their children and grandchildren.
Ultimately fear is responsible for every shortage, failure, disagreement, attack and tear ever shed. This is my observation and I have yet to be convinced otherwise. (I'm willing to discuss btw ) And what this exercise is about if nothing else is to demonstrate that fear is the enemy. Not the guy in the expensive suit walking up Wall Street getting into a limo, not the beautiful woman hidden behind a black swath of “burqac” anonymity or the man who "made" her wear it. The enemy isn't malaria, wrinkles or trans fats. Nor are carbs, CO2, Islam, the morally bankrupt West, your abusive parents or your ex. The enemy is fear and I don’t believe in it any more. If it’s true that what an individual thinks alters the physical universe and according to Heisenberg, if not Buddha, that’s more factually than philosophically true, then what the world thinks, the world becomes. Not original, just observed and I’m making it a goal to do one thing a day that is based in love for something or someone but scares the hell out of me just to prove the powerlessness of fear when it’s met with love. Then again, that’s a lot of personal growth, so maybe I’ll start with just once every seven days, though this made me very nervous and I’m counting it because these are the girls that inspire me. Every day. For all my girls and any who wish to live their lives bravely in love against fear: (photo’s welcome)
Monday, March 22, 2010
Nurturing a peripatetic nature
My favorite way to travel is to wander. Deadlines, goals, lists of places I must see so I can tell other people I did et al stress me. Where after all do I really want to be? If you’ve ever given this any thought at all, you know you want to be where you are, otherwise you would be somewhere else. Yes it’s a mobius answer, but if you don’t like where you are, then you’d better start deciding where else you’d like to be, metaphysically speaking as well. For me, the first day of spring is spent as a day by the Pacific masquerading as one spent on the Irish Coastline which makes me think the weather and the universe are conspiring to gently move me in the direction of the Emerald Coast.
Not overly crazy about green beer and surfers in kilts who confuse Ireland with it’s neighbor across the North Channel, we went to our not so local pub last night to hear Trooper Thorn and belatedly honor St. Patrick over a few too many well poured pints. I say this having no empirical data as to what really makes up a well poured pint if you’re drinking them in Dublin but the ones I had last night in Long Beach, CA as well as the corned beef probably account for a lot of what I’m reading into the marine layer but I looked at it as atmospheric bones being thrown on to the blanket of the day.
Travel is as much a state of mind as it is an activity. Would I prefer to have a pint of Guinness poured in a pub in Dublin? Probably. Do I need to be in Ireland to enjoy some of the things that make me want to wander there? No. Not really.
“The great affair is to move.” R.L. Stevenson.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
b
the past few days i've been compiling my now list and when I held it up against the trip I want to take i was beginning to think my guide was telling me to scrap the whole project. go home. you're not ready for the big time. find a tour company that does trips for seniors. bingo night on the bay. indian casino day trip. the rose show weekend. then I realize that's not the Guide. it's the sack of story bits i call "my life" that i've collected over the years then made into a blow up bitch buddy who whines a lot, is scared shitless and likes pretend she's the boss. the envelope that lays out the now is thick and full of her complaints. I say this while feeling tired, aching and ..have i said tired? Tired. it's exhausting to take inventory and do it accurately, but i'm tired from years, not from days and if I get all the things I'm asking for, it will be more appropriate to give a thank you card to whatever powers sent it to me. Which leaves my birthday gift for myself. The card has one simple thing handwritten to myself under the preprinted greeting. b. That is the gift I give to myself.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Good-bye, feet!
I've never actually been on a treasure hunt before and I've been a little bitter about that until now. But I've forgiven my mother for teaching me the joy of warm chocolate pudding eaten right from the pan while you sit in the middle of your bed, WHICH I might add, is a really good time I don't recommend, so I don't see why I should hold a grudge over the treasure hunt thing. Besides, I have a feeling the ones she planned for my spoiled and evil younger brothers and sister would have paled in comparision. It's bad karma to say this, I'm sure, but I hope they would have paled because the loot at the end of them certainly would have, and for the record,my siblings are not evil,nor are they spoiled though I have no idea who pod peopled my parents by the time the younger two came along aaaand I happen to love them. Stuart, dude.. call me.
A program update seems in order for those of you keeping score, and well look! Oh my goodness, there are just none of you!! (Before, back when I wasn't taking the Guided tour, because I din't need no stinkin' guide and I'd also decided that maps, money, id, shoes and a clue were also unecessary overhead, you know, back when I was a crazy person, I would have never started until I'd done something goofy, as in "Hark! Now, I must plan me for the web server to handle the load of mine GIANORMOUS following that must surely become my adoring public." I'm better now. Now I listen more than plan.)
Er.. yes.. The program.
One truth in advertising declarations: the "now" as of the next post sealed in an envelope. Semper veritas.
One birthday present in the form of the treasure: A list of what would truly be a miracle should it manifest, given the starting point.
One treasure map that will document the path TO the treasure: This bit of binary benediction
Clue number one: The envelope that holds a description of my present reality as I see it, which I'm not sharing until I've found the treasure, but it's the only clue I won't share. I know all none of you are white knuckling your keyboard in frustration, but this card, into which I'm placing the description, pretty much says it all and I don't wanna talk about it...
Arnold Palmer, meet Ben Hogan
4 part Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon
8 parts sweet tea
juice of two lemons
1 part agave nectar
lemon twists
Add agave to tea and lemon juice until the agave is disolved. Pour tea mixture, crushed ice and bourbon into a shaker. Shake and pour into four martini glasses or one quart mason jar. Add a twist and enjoy.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
I feel it's only fair to blame all this on my husband.
"I'd hang myself."
I'm quoting.
Needless to say this was hyperbole, and he only felt that way about being married to a lawyer not a law student but I didn't have a such driving passion to practice law that I wanted to cause my husband to take up knot tying just in case, though the idea of arguing all day had appeal, no pun intended. Bottom line, the end result was that I was back to square one. At this point I figured I'd make a game of it and tell him what I really wanted. Serves him right. They ask. We tell. You almost feel bad for them.
To lay out the parameters, I am preparing a birthday card and a gift for myself. The card will contain a few pages of truth about my current life and photos to verify that I am in fact a mess who's very far from where I'd ideally like to be at this point. The gift will contain detail description of my desired destination, a prayer if you will or maybe a san serif pair of ruby slippers that will show me I did have it all along. I'll either open them on my milestone birthday or I'll cringe as I throw them both away someday and think of what I never was been able to bring myself to do. That sounds so fatalistic I might have just depressed my own damn self. I will tell you, I haven't even fleshed out point B and there's already a lot of ground to cover from point A. I just don't want any passenegers to jump off the train. (*hides the rope)
Monday, January 11, 2010
The story...
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Don't forget the story...
"Of course…"