pomegranatesandpaper

Thanks to Moleskinerie and to Word Shadows for featuring some of my images. Both are very cool sites, worth a long look around.

Latest Quizilla

You are Phlegmatic. You have a peace-loving
nature, and make a good listener and a faithful
friend. You do have a tendency to be selfish
and stubborn in your worst moments, and your
worrying can lean towards paranoia. Phlegmatics
should consider careers as accountants,
diplomats, engineers, and administrators. You
are a somewhat reluctant leader, but your
practicality and steady nerve under pressure
makes you a natural choice for leadership
roles.


Which of the Humours are you?
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Winter Warm-Up

Winter warm-uo, February thaw, March coming in like a lamb instead of a lion, whatever you wish to term it, we are having unprecedented warm weather here in the Northeast. temps in the high-50's. The sounds of basketball and swings are heard all over my neighborhood. Bikes and skateboards litter the lawn. I am outside, picking up winter-blown trash, then off for an exploration of the city. From Upper West Side to the Bowery,, over to the Fulton Fish Market, across to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, we are driving, singing, eating over-stuffed Noo Yawk deli sandwiches, picniking on Italian pastries, and blowing off all errands and chores this wonderful weekend.

I am off today with a sister to sketch. We are going to attempt to go to City Island, a small enclave of ship-building and fried-clam restaurants, old cemeteries, weathered gables, etc. More later!

Blank Book Slut

I have shelves that are loaded with books on art, writing, and creativity. They are all inspiring, beautiful, and little chunks of an artists lives that I can hold in the palm of my hand. The rest of the shelves are filled with notebooks and journals.

There is a series of 7 spiral bound, lined notebooks like the kind my kids use for school. They were the earliest journals I used. Then came the wonderful new world of "blank books" - remember those? I remember swooping upon a carousel display rack of them in Walton books and shivering with delight at the idea of "making my own book". It was a heady time!

Then in Carmel, California, I ran across a simple spiral bound sketch book covered in red marbleized Italian paper. I even remember the price - $14.00 - and very quickly and guiltily bought it. I savored it for months, finally having the nerve to write it and use it as my garden journal in Memphis.

After that I was hooked on blank books and searched them out everywhere. A Borders opened in Memphis and I almost swooned when I found their journal section. There were leather books, cloth-covered journals, journals with metal covers, and big thick chunky spiral bound journals with plastic colors in pulsating shades of magenta, fuschia and school bus yellow.

Then one day I purchased my first Rag and Bone journal. Handmade in a small bindery in Rhode Island, the pages took any media beautifully. Casebound, with a gorgeous deckle to the pages, the book lays flat for easy use. They come in graduated sizes from tiny to large, and are covered with papers so beautiful that even I, the collage queen, hesitate to cover them up.

The most dangerous place I've found for looking at journals is on ebay. I've fallen in love with little vintage photograph albums, the kinds that have cardboard cut-outs to hold photos, perfect for photo transfers and collage inserts. I purchased a huge, leather-bound antique photo album with a tooled cover and heavy metal clasp from Australia, and a thick, broad 1920's photo album with a green celluloid cover. Alas, I had to stop this particular fascination because I was helpless to control my click of the "bid" button and was in serious danger of busting our bank account.

I have a nice backlong of choices at the moment. I have an oversized, old ledger with leather corners and "Cash" scrolled across the front. (If I can just figure out how to get rid of the dusty odor, I could use it without getting a headache.) And I've learned some simple bookbinding techniques and made a tri-fold journal which I used for an art book, and some other simply bound journals with beaded covers. I don't like to make them too precious, or I never feel the urge to use them for fear I'll mess them up.

But I'm not one of those who doesn't use her journals. There are too many paint-encrusted, collage-layered, stuffed and bulging spines of journals sitting smugly on the shelves for me to ever be accused of that. And like the Velveteen rabbit, they know they were the best-loved.

They all reside in the oak armoire that sits to my left. The doors are permanently open and on display are the creativity books, the journals, blank or otherwise, a tottering stack of CDs, a few art books I've made, some deck cards, and the blank journals all jumbled together, waiting for me to reach in and grab one and fall in love all over again.

Right now I am beginning a tentative romance with my Moleskine sketch journal. It's navy blue faux leather cover is professional-looking and I can whip it out in court or the office without attracting too much attention from left-brain types. And the huge, orange Rhoda notebook is sitting on my nighttable waiting for me to play with it.

Let's face it, I'm a Journal Slut.

Pink Spring

Ash Wednesday

Most Christians observe Ash Wednesday as the first day of Lent, the six week period preceeding Easter. It is a day of fasting and prayer, the day that Catholics receive ashes on their foreheads and walk around rather self-consciously proclaiming our faith.

Days of fasting and abstinence mean eating only one big meal and abstaining from meat (not sure if abstaining from sex is included, but hey, its a weeknight so little chance of that anyway!) Fastting and abstinence are so linked in my mind with dieting that I often fail to carry through on the ritual, succumbing to temptation somewhere around 4:00 p.m. when I get that midafternoon slump, but I hope to do better this year. My body and soul would benefit from a cleansing ritual.

Of course, when we were growing up, Lent stood for "what are you going to give up?" I always made great promises to refrain from candy, TV, cake, etc (I'm always so food-oriented). I know I never made it through the six weeks without failing and made reparation by adding more coins into the "pagan baby mite boxes" that the school gave us so we could collect for the missionaries each year.

These days, contemporary religion stresses that Lent is a time to become more spiritually away, to make sacrifices, but to also do good deeds, spend more time in prayer, and become more attuned to the role of faith and God in our everyday lives.

My adult spirituality is very connected to pen and paper, paint and brush. Journaling connects me to the everyday ordinary simple acts for which I am grateful. Breakfast with my Mom, as recorded in my journal page above, eating at her dining room table, using the brown pottery sugar and creamer that she bought long ago in Vermont with my Dad. Spreading butter from the same dish that graced our kitchen table since I was a kid, and knowing that she will have cream cheese, butter, and grape jelly for my English muffin represent her unabiding love for her family and her long life of providing and nurturing her husband and five children.

Journals record these simple, very elemental events in our daily lives and the recording, the putting down as it were, transforms them into Sacred Ordinaries. As my black pen scrolls across the white page and I outline the plates, cups, and napkins that we use every day, I am meditating on the simple food I am about to eat and I am also thinking ahead to the day before me, and remembering all the other simple days of grace and breaking bread that I've shared with my family. When I add the watercolor wash to the pages, I am coloring in the shapes that are so familiar to my hand and eye. The simple feel of the brush across the page revives a memory of coloring books and the sharp, waxy aroma of a new box of Crayolas and I relax into the simple posture of a child coloring away.

My Lenten intention is to observe and record my Sacred Ordinaries and remain in touch by hand and eye with the simple shapes of love that filter through my day.

I don't post twice a day, but I have to say this: George W. Bush is a pandering, dangerous idiot. With all the violence and poverty in the world, we are worried about people wanting their love to be recognized in a legal institution?

Impressionism

My favorite genre of art is the Impressionists. The journal pages above are from my a visit to the Met with my kids when we all sketched paintings in pastels. I turned around at one point to find Julia, and saw a small knot of people looking down at the floor at Julia while she obliviously sketched Van Gogh's "Sunflowers". Whatever city I am in, I try to visit an art museum and find their Impressionist gallery. In Chicago, I had the pleasure of seeing the wall-sized Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte". It is a transcendent piece of art, a depiction of life both real and unreal, and the temptation is to walk into the painting and never look back.

When I visit the Metropolitan, my pilgrimage is always first to Renoir's Madame Georges, always resplendent in her lace-ruffled black silk dressing gown, her happy and beautiful children next to her, her well-groomed dog at her dainty feet. The picture centers me and entices me both as an artist and as a mother.

Mothering is all the art of Impressionism. Mothers have to learn to see through the lens of their children, and interpret their often clouded view of reality. I spend so much time dealing with black and white - rules, regulations, codes, statutes, - that I often arrive home with little patience for the subtle gradients of form. When I walk in the door at night, I intend to bestow love and affection - instead I am still in hyper-drive, racing through the house, mentally noting who left the newspapers all over the floor, the bowls of cereal on the coffee table, the coats strewn about instead of in the closet. I am all fury, signifying nothing more than my own futile attempt to impose order and control over family life, which at best, is messy and spilling out the doors and windows like so many helium balloons let loose at a party.

The children cower in their rooms, and adopt that insouciant voice in response to my loud calling of their names: "Wha-a-a-t?" They know that I am home and they are about to be given the list of petty grievances as I stumble over their dirty socks on the stairs and pick up the sodden towels from the bathroom floor. In the back of my head I hear my mother's voice, harried, exhausted, and exploding into tears as she came home once again to find the house a mess and five girls blithely ignoring it, playing loud music behind closed doors.

Now I understand why my father had a martini every night before we were allowed to ask him anything. Problem is, if I have a martini, no one will be able to ask me anything because I'll be passed out...Besides, with both parents working, or single, who is the parent being allowed time to decompress, and who is the parent scurrying around to neaten the house before the spouse comes home? Nowadays it is one and the same - neither.

I want to be a Mary Cassatt mother, full of tender laps and warm arms, my hands ready to drop the needlepoint at a moment's notice and brush silky hair before the dance, tie a bowtie before a recital, and sit in my dressing gown and pen the menu for dinner. Right.

But these images haunt me and tease me and fill me with longing for a time when I could tarry over breakfast, drive the kids to school, putter in the garden, run the vacuum, and take a quick trip to sketch by the beach before they come home. They deserve a more well-rested and calm mother. They deserve Renoir's Madame Georges, with her beautiful dressing gown, dog at her feet, tea at her elbow, and shiny-haired happy children snuggled next to her on the divan.

But for now they have me, and a slapped-together weeknight dinner, a blurry-eyed review of homework, early morning post-shower reminders to talk to guidance counselors, notes stuck on mirrors about assignments, and a bedtime snuggle under the covers as we both lie in silence and look at the day-glo stars shining on her ceiling.

I wouldn't trade a minute of it, but I'd like the time to savor it.

Monday Morning

Oh, where did the weekend go? I have a fairly easy assignment this morning, my usual courtroom coverage on motions and orders to show cause. My desk is fairly clear, just a few knots to untangle. Our wonderful, new paralegal gave her notice last week - she's going to an even bigger corporation for better benefits. Sigh. We can never keep the good ones.

So my personal quests this week are:

1. recover from feeling crappy for the last month
2. get my eating under control - no junk and NO candy
3. continue painting at night, pages and pages of color and texture, stamps, collage, and embellishment
4. a drawing a day in my moleskine (I'm having trouble warming up to it - perhaps it's the very sedate and masculine dark blue cover? I feel a need to collage it and paint some of the pages too....)

Whatever the week brings, keep a little spark of your inner self alive by doing one nurturing thing for yourself each day - hit Starbucks, pick up a silly magazine featuring outrageous and expensive spring clothes, or take a walk at lunch., Put some time aside for yourself to do what brings you contentment, whether yoga, painting, knitting, meditating, cooking, reading, bubble baths, or morning runs. It's your life and only you can make it a whole life and not just a reaction to the events of a day.

Surfacing

I 'd like to tell you that I've been in the Bahamas where, according to the 12-year old, everyone went but she for winter break, but no, I've been slogging through the week with another sinus infection. I'm on my second round of antibiotics. I've decided that today I just have to spend the day in the house, trying to replenish my energy.

All the kids are home this weekend. Chris went up to Jess's college for a few days and they came home together. The youngest went to the Hamptons for a long weekend with her aunt. Above is a photo of her lounging around with her new skateboard helmet.

Since everyone was home, I made a Big Family Dinner of chicken cutlets, roasted potatoes, carrots, and asparagus, and we had a family dinner, but the time 8:00 came, I was exhausted and went to bed at 9:30!

When I'm low energy, I read voraciously instead of trying to create anything. I picked up Revenge of the Middle Aged Woman on Friday night and finished it last night. It's a fun, nicely written , quick read in the my-husbnd-left-me-now-my-life-sucks-no-wait-I-lose-weight-and-an-old-love-comes-back-and-
so-does-my-husband-whose-young-mistress-is-driving-him-crazy genre. Fun.

Yesterday, Stan and I did our tour of the shoreline. The ice is breaking up in the marina and is almost gone on the larger beaches. It was in the 50's and many people were walking around the park - okay two people were walking around. But signs of Spring were in the air and my spirits lifted. Go to Wave Fitzsimmon's website to check in with people from around the country as they report in on signs of Spring in their areas.

I'm going off to write on the novel today. I have a new chapter in my head and I have to get it down on paper. I bought a big, fat orange Rhodia lined notebook to use to organize the chapters of this novel. I have about 8 chapters and they are on diskettes and in a jumble. So I am back to pen and paper for keeping track of where this novel is going. (It also allows me to buy new notebooks and journals, like I need an excuse!)

Playtime

Here's another art journal site, John Copeland.His journals have a raw power that exude energy and a very masculine point of view.

I am still painting journal pages, content with doing layered backgrounds in acrylics without worrying about what I'm going to put on the pages later. I'm up to elbows in paint,. The nightstand is littered with brushes and pots of water and the bed is neatly organized with boxes of paint bottles and tubes. (No matter how well-equipped the studio, I end up working on the bed.)

This all began when I was trying to recreate the beautiful paintings I saw at my favorite boutique over the weekend. In the same misguided notion that leads people to say: "I could write that!", I said:" I could paint that!" Granted, I have a passing familiarity with art techniques, but let's face it, I'm no figurative painter.

But what came out of this misguided attempt? I am starting with the basics, learnings to mix colors, refine my palette, try out different brushes, and discover what I can and cannot do with paints. I am into contrasting hues at the moment. My page spread may be mango opposite paprika, and iris blue opposite cadmium yellow. Over both pages I am writing in teal green, creating a background of marks and squiggles that will give texture to my journal pages, or stand alone as experiments.

Working art journals, pure experiments in process and technique. I'd forgotten about that part of art. I'd become some result-driven: What can I hang on the wall? What can I I submit for publication? What can I scan in for the new weblog?

Instead I am spraying pages with bursting pink segments of grapefruit, dribbling the crimson of blood oranges, waving the green of Palm Sunday fronds, and cracking open colors of Easter egs. I am tumbling stones of amethyst purple, writing in icy sheens of platinum, and playing marbles with rubies and opals that glint and glimmer across the walls on my room.

Spring in my step, spring in my soul.

Color My World

How many times did my husband and I listen to Chicago, playing Color My World on his 8-track tape deck installed in the dashboard of his VW? We made out in his car parked down by the water and only went home when we were frozen, or the police banged on the steamed up car windows.

Okay, it's just as cold now and we have a house to snuggle in. But the only Color My World I'm involved in today is playing with my paints. Last night's experiments with watercolors in the new journal left me with wanting more. I poked around the shelves in my art room to see what I could play with tonight. I had the new acrylics I'd bought on Sunday, but I they weren't the colors I was looking for. They are wonderful paints, made by Goldens, and I was lucky to stock up while they were 40% off the manufacturer's list price at A. I Friedman's. Goldens is a great brand. Spend some time at their website and you'll be impressed by all the info they generously give. They are also very generous with artists, providing sample sets of paints to teachers to use in their classes and give to students.

But I don't have a broad palette in Golden's because they are expensive. When I first started playing with paint a few years ago, I had a Michael's nearby. They have hundreds of craft-grade paints that are very cheap and, frankly, did the job I wanted them to. As I became more versed in art and took classes, I put them away because they are not professional grade paints. But tonight I began pulling Clementine boxes off the shelves and found a whole box of "Plaid Decorator Glaze Vernis". (Unfortunately I cannot find a link to these online. I hope they are not discontinued!!!) I collected these little two ounce bottle for a long time and used them in tons of craft projects. They were just what I needed tonight to pull some more color into this dreary February.

Listen to the colors:
Geranium Red (Rouge geranium),
Paprika (Rojo vivo),
New Leaf Green (Vert feiulles nouvelles)
Blue Bell (Campanule)
Lilac (Lilas)
Italian Sage (Vert cendre italien) ( have an 8 oz. tub of this baby)
Mango (mangue)
Patina (Patine) (incredibly soft and lovely over copper, bronze, etc.)
Apricot (Abricot)
Malachite Green (Vert malachite) (multiple bottles)
Soft teal ( Sarcelle douce)

Acrylics take longer to dry than watercolors, and the glazes take even longer because they are designed to remain wet so you can drag them, comb them, and create other faux finishes. Also, acrylics stick a bit, so be prepared to listen to your journal pages "zip" apart when you open them.

Right now I am loving the look of Paprika over the Hansa Medium Yellow watercolor, and the creamy strokes of New Leaf Green over Alizarin Crimson. I am using the hair dryer to speed up drying time, and I am also painting pages in another journal while the other dries.

So what are you waiting for? Get out your paints and play!

Watercolor Magic

This weekend, I was thirsting for color. We had a little reprieve from the cold, and a lot of the snow melted, leaving our browned, naked lawns to stare at. Then Sunday the arctic blast came through and we huddled once more around the fire.

I wore my red velvet blouse for dinner at Maria's, but it wasn't enough to slake my thirst for something bright and beautiful. I hauled out the acrylics and some canvases and began a painting of one of my journal pages from our vacation last summer on the Cape. I had to pick up some more acrylics and new brushes and then I spent the afternoon at my studio desk. I am an okay painter on a large scale and suck on a small scale. This painting is sort of a mosaic or grid, kind of painted quilt. It's not turning out well. I need a lot of instruction in using acrylics it seems.

While I was at the art store, I found some new watercolor journals by Cachet. They are linen-covered in beautiful colors like lime and Tuscan yellow. Last night as I watched mindless sitcoms, I started one and painted each page a different color. I started with the blues and greens of spring and worked my way through my palette into the summer brights of red, magenta, and bright yellow. The pages are pretty backgrounds for a pen and ink journal. It was a relaxing way to spend a few hours and play with colors with a minumum of fuss and exertion for a work night.

I am sick again, this time with a heavy cold caught from Stan, or Tony, or Fernando - not lovers, no, just office workers! Tomorrow I took off to spend with my kids who are on mid-winter break. Now I hear it's supposed to snow. I would switch to Friday but this cold has my energy so low that I need a day off. With any luck, we'll go to a museum and I'll sketch while they discover dinosaurs and gems.

More on Journaling

Check out "The Power of the Pen" for an interesting perspective on the therapeutic power of journaling. Too bad the author didn't include online journals in the discussions.

Here are some links to other art journals, famous or otherwise:

Aisling's Art Journals - an accomplished artist in many fields, Aisling's journals are very accessible to the beginning art journaler. She uses magazine images and daily entries with simple illustrations.

Sabrina Ward Harrison is a published artist whose journals reflect a quirky, spontaneous, and colorful approach to journaling. Her site is very cool also.

Teesha and Tracy Moore are highly evolved artists who live in the Seattle area. They may well be responsible for the current art journaling craze . They are the founders of Artfest, a four day art retreat at Port Washington, a retreat that changed my life and my approach to art. They are very generous artists and their web sites are stuffed with art.

Sisters on Sojourn are two sisters who are artists (one is a lawyer, bet you know how jealous I am of her website and workshops!). They journal in the most interesting ways: on shoes, hangars, bras, etc.

I adore Karen Michel's work. It has an immediacy and simplicity that shines right off the page.

This is a link to some images from the 1000 journals project. These are journals sent out into the world from a sign-up list. When you are finished, you send it to the next person on the list and then they go back to the original project when done. My sister, Maria, signed up for it and I got the chance to do a page in her's before she sent it back.

I will post more links as I run across them. All my favorites are bookmarked on my desktop, and I've never had the time to transfer them onto my laptop. But I will cull my fave favorites and post them here.

Enjoy some art on this wintry Sunday morning!

Pan & Scan

I watched a program about film editing. Directors, such as Copolla, were interviewed regarding the technique of "Pan and Scn" where a piece of a scene is blown up to fit a wide-screen format, such as a TV. The directors showed how it is possible to pan and scan a particular part of the scene and leave out everything else that is going on. When that happens, part of the cinematic story is left outside the viewer's screen and the viewer is deprived of the integrity of the story in the artful scope of the scene.

It was intriguing to watch the process of pan and scan and see how easily one can forget about what is happening outside the field of vision and lose the integrity of the art form. The proportions of the set go out of whack and the faces of the actors become fuzzy when they are blown up.

Pan and scan. This is what we do in life. We have so much rushing around us, that we can only focus on a small slice of it. We scan the room for who to talk to, what to notice, how to react. We focus on that one person withholding approbation from us and obsess about it . We turn a blind eye to the rest of the room filled with people waiting to speak to us, smiling across the room at us. Instead of One Enchanted Evening, we sit in the corner and grow maudlin over the scene we are viewing through the crack in the wall.

Pan and scan. What to write about in this blog, for example, comes to mind. My life has a hundreds of moments in the course of a day, in the flow of the week, in the scope of the year that I want to write about, draw, collage, make an artist book, an assemblage, write a poem. How to choose from the cinema verite I am starring in, more importantly, how do I keep the integrity of the scope of my life intact when I pan and scan scenes each day to present a well-ordered, interesting, creative 5-paragraph essay to publish here?

Pan and scan. Point and shoot. It's the root of my problem. I can't stop seeing everything that is outside the frame. My mind is filming in panavision and I am capturing on film the start of a story about the closet under my grandmother's stairs, the grid of the streets and the giant irrigation canals overlaid on the desert that is the City of Fresno, the blood red of the carpeting in my aunt and uncle's back bedroom, and the packs of construction paper arranged by thick chunks of primary colors in my third grade teacher's classroom.

I have to pan and scan to make sense out of any of it. My mind doesn't accomodate letterboxing. Perhaps that's where genuis lies.

Valentines

It is not an auspicious beginning to Valentine's Day when you wake up with your little girl in your bed and your husband in her bed because he was snoring so much.

It is not an auspicious beginning to Valentine's Day when the phone rings - twice - at 6:30 a.m. (You dropped it and disconnected it the first time) and it is your husband's work with a problem and now he is off to the office for the day.

It is not an auspicious beginning to Valentine's Day when you realize that you ate several of the small heart boxes of chocolates you bought for nieces and nephews and now there is not enough.

It is not an auspicious beginning to Valentine's Day when you still haven't bought the hubby or the son a gift, and you just remembered that you bought the little one a heart of Reese's Peanut Butter cups but she asked for coconut creams.

Sigh. Holidays. Blech!

Now this is MY idea of Valentine's Day: Hubby and I have brunch in the Village, then take a taxi uptown and spend the day wandering through the Met. We soak up all the light and color in the Impressionists Gallery, then go for lattes in the coffee bar where I sketch for about an hour. Later we stroll through al the Decorative Arts rooms and head for the rooftop garden to drink some more coffee and sketch. We have a room at the Plaza where we nap before dinner, then have a drink at the Oak Bar and go back downtown to Balthazar for dinner. In the morning we have brunch at the Plaza, walk around the petting zoo, and then slowly ride home along the Hudson.

zOh, who am I kidding? I'd be thrilled to do just ONE of those things! Next year I will actually plan Valentine's Day! (Probably not but it will keep me going for another year)

Today I will content myself by having my hair cut and maybe I'll get it colored a cherry chocolate. Then I shall reread a 1000 Days in Venice and prepare a supper of rack of lamb and tiny new potatoes with mint, along with ice cream sundaes over brownies (must hide brownies before kids eat them all day!)

so to all: HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY AND REMEMBER - LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH!

Soul Place

My friend, Betsy, wrote a beautiful post on our email list about the power of place for her in her mountain home in the Carolinas. She is drawn to the mountains the way I am drawn to the ocean, finding peace and serenity in the nature that the mountains hold in their rugged embrace.

I am a water girl, a true Aquarian. I was raised in a city on Long Island Sound and from the earliest days, I found solace and release in the water, swimming in the gentle waves, diving down deep and doing somersaults, jumping off the float and seeing how far I could swim before scalding lungs made me surface.

When I wasn't in the water, I was smoothing my beach towel on the pier, pulling out yet another book, and propping my head up on my beach bag. Sometimes I just applied my Bain de Soleil and lay on my stomach and smelled the clean laundry smell of the towel, felt the grit of sand on my cheek and heard the buzz of people and noise fade out and the sound of the ocean and gulls crying take over.

The highlight of each summer was our family trip to Jones Beach. We were five kids and my parents had no money for vacations. But once a summer we went to Jones Beach. I'd wake up at 5:00, scanning the sky for troublesome clouds. My mother packed the enormous aluminum coler with sandwiches, grapes, and brownies, and Dad gassed up the Plymouth the night before. We always left insanely early at 7:00 a.m. because of the traffic.

Gong to Jones Beach, a long, state park created by Robert Moses on the south shore of Long Island, was physically taxing to all. Dad had to battle the traffic and overheated cars, and we all had to drag the cooler, chairs, umbrellas, and other sundries across what seemed like miles of hot sand. But the water, oh, the water! It was so different from our back water cove on the Sound. This was the Ocean! It had waves and undertow and huge breakers. It took nerves of steel to rush into the frigid water, get past the point where the waves could crash and drag you under into a green world of foaming confusion, and out to the calm, bobbing waters where you could float and ride the swells like a ride at Playland.

It was always over too soon as Dad would want to get home Before The Traffic. One time we had to leave as soon as we arrived because he burned his hand lighting his pipe and had to go to the emergency room. As I sat in the hot car on the way home, pressed against my sisters in their wet and sandy suits, my hair sticky and itchy, I would ask if we couldn't go back again this year. "We"ll see" was always the response, but we never did.

Later at night, I finally had my turn in the bathtub, and Solarcaine was applied to the sunburns we all had. I felt clean and totally exhausted and as I pressed my face into my white pillow, I could still feel the waves lifting me up and slowly letting me down. Up and down, up and down, I rode the waves in my bed feeling the ocean in my veins.

My husband and I are both ocean lovers now. We satisfy our longing for water and sand by our summer vacations on the Cape. But in between, we go to the beach. We rarely go to Jones Beach now, preferring to drive another twenty minutes to a less crowded park. My husband likes to go insanely early also. Only he likes to stop and make breakfast on a camper stove. We scramble eggs and perk coffee, and sit in the early morning quiet, watching the white herons gracefully picking their way through sea grass like Egyptian priests. My kids eat quickly, begging us to pack up and move to the beach side. Their boogie boards sit at out feet and they are anxious to conquer the waves and they've had enough of this quiet contemplation on morning. Soon we are setting up the umbrellas, applying lotion to small backs, and watching as they are lured out past the waves.

I have a nice camp chair I use now instead of a towel, but I still find a time in the day to shut my eyes, pull my cap over my face and drift off from the day, and feel the swells lift me up and into the ocean. Soon enough my husband announces it is time to go Before The Traffic.

12th p.m.

My birthday was a simple, satisfying day. My morning deposition busted, so I got back to the office early. My staff warned me not to have lunch before I got back. They gave me flowers and balloons, including a "cake" made of flowers which was delightful. We couldn't do a big out to lunch day because we are all so swamped, but we had take out in the conference room and shared a big slice of mud pie.

I came home to our dining room all decorated with streamers and balloons, courtesy of my little one. I passed my husband on the road; he was headed to the store and had changed the menu to steaks and baked potatoes since he got out early. Chris was home on time, and Jess called from college. My little one surprised me with the video of "Under the Tuscan Sun" (she is the most thoughtful child) and my son gave me a new case for my CD's. My sister, Mar, gave me the new Nora Jones CD, and my sister, Maria, gave me a brand new shiny, fire engine red, old-fashioned watering can. I can't wait to use it this spring!

We had my birthday cake in front of the fire. I relaxed and watched Oprah's "Most Romantic Men"

Life is sweet and I am surrounded by love.

The 12th

So it's my birthday. Big whoop. Really, I'm in a very good mood considering:

1. it's grey and cold
2. I have a deposition for half the day, then have to prep for a trial for tomorrow
3. my husband is bringing home "take-out chicken" as a treat for dinner since he gets home too late to cook.
4. it's the last year before a significant milestone

I guess I should have taken the day off, but my theory was that I would save the day and take it off in spring. I want to be home on one of those riotous spring days when I can fling open the doors, hose off the porch, take out the cushions, run to the nursery and buy geraniums, pot them up, then sit on the porch with a frozen Margarita. Nothing is more beautiful than spring in the Northeast. (Unless it's spring in the South. Or blossom time in the Central Valley of California. )The difference is that spring in the Northeast could be any time from late April to late June. It wasn't spring here last year until the 4th of July.

I am planning my spring fling day for just when all the azaleas are in bloom, when the grass is tender rabbit-nibbling green, with a breeze bringing the sweet salty smell of the Sound as a cleansing wash across the grime of late winter. I remember a day like that the first spring we moved here. After I drove the kids to school, I just rode around streets lined with cherry trees in bloom, with rippling wands of forsythia waving hello, and dogs and cats rolling deliciously on their backs.

That's the day I'm planning to take off for my brthday. I'll pack up a watercolor journal, my palette, the Winsor Newton travel kit of paints, and bottle of water. I'll go down to the park on the Sound and see if I can find the remnants of the Shakespeare Garden I remember from my youth. And I'll open my camp chair and paint.

Right now it's hard to imagine the rebirth of spring. All the streets are lined with black, grimy snow that lingers like calcified foam from a polluted stream. There's just enough crusty rime of snow to hide all the grass, whatever its color. The sky is the same color as the dirty snow, so if someone picked us up and flipped us over like a giant snow globe, no one would notice.

Really. Hope. That. Day. Comes. Soon.

Learning to See

I am reading "Outside Lies Magic" by John R. Stilgoes (the link is below in my book list). The subtitle of the book is "Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places." Stilgoe writes:

"The whole concatenatin of wild and artifical things, the natural ecosystem
as modified by people over the centuries, the built environment
layered over layers, the eerie mix of sounds and smells and
glimpses neither natural nor craft - all of it is free
for the taking, for the taking in.
* * *
Outside lies utterly ordinary space open to any casual explorer
willing to find the extraordinary. Outsides lies unprogrammed
awarenss that at times becomes direct serendipity.
Outside lies magic."

Stilgoe's words are a mission statement for artists. especially those whose passion is journaling. We record the everyday nuances of our lives, and in doing so, transform the details into art. The great journal keepers, May Sarton, Samuel Pepys, Woolf, Nin, de Tocqueville, understand that God is in the details, whether they believed in God or not.

Modern day masters of journaling as an art form are Candy Jernigan, Peter Beard, Dan Eldon, and lesser-known but genuis artists like Roz Stendal, Dan Price, Danny Gregory who I've linked to before, and others whose passion is art journaling and sketching.

Walk around your house and notice the things that you lay your hand on a hundred times of day. The speckled jug that holds my teabags; the small Willoware saucers on which I place my teacup; the patina of the oak table that holds my grandparents' cranberry glass lamp; the pile of sport magazines jumbled on my husband's nightstand; the votive candles and bunches of dried corsages on my daughter's bookcase; my son's little nests of projects, bits of bolts and nuts, clips of electrical wires, ticket stubs, crumpled assignments; and Julia's collection of sport trophies on the top of her dresser as bright as any movie marquee. These are the things that stand as altars of devotion in my house, the things I see but don't see unless I leaves myself open to the magic of our lives. Unless I learn to see, over and over again each day.

Stilgoe concentrates on the magic of what lies outside to the observant eye. Manhole covers with dates are links to the iron foundries of Pennsylvania. The size of the sun motes that dance through leaves reflect the distance of the sun to the earth. Smoke rises one way on a cold day and another on a warm one.

Learning to see - whether we are inside or out - is the key to feeling connected with our personal and natural worlds. It feeds the artist's imagination and fleshes out the artist's voice. What is yours is that which you allow yourself to see. It is the click that grounds us and the spring that sets us free. Who can be bored when the rich vein of the world is revealed in a sideways glance around your room or a step outside your door?

Bring in Da Funk

For one of the few times in the last ten years, I actually knew most of the performers at the Grammys. This is one of the benefits of having two teens and pre-teen. I did miss hearing Norah Jones perform, but her new CD is out tomorrow and I"ll be at Borders to buy it this week. She was a presenter and came out wearing a simple tux jacket, black pants and pink shell. She looked like a little kid next to all the hip hoppers, jammers, and over-the-top funk artists. It was great!

But the highlight of the evening was da funk. (If my kids are reading this, they are cringing - too bad!) Black Eyed Peas performed Where Is the Love with Earth, Wind, and Fire and Outkast - too cool. But where was Sly and Kool and the Gang?

Beyonce took home five Grammys for her album, Dangerously In Love. Her number was way, way, over-the-top and I loved her stage set - she appeared to be performing inside a huge, ornately carved, gold frame. That girl can sing and she appears to be having a great time doing it.

My favorite bluegrass crossover artist, Alison Krauss, won five Grammys. The most moving part of the evening was the tribute to Waron Zeon, especially his son saying he should get an award for being the greatest Dad. I also was surprised at how emotional Yoko Ono was and I was touched by it. Why didn't Ringo and Paul show up? I mean,come on, it would have been the highlight of the evening! Also touching was Cash's son accepting the award for his mother and saying she was singing and dancing somewhere.

So I went to bed rockin', and wondering why we never go to concerts anymore! Remember that incredibly almost-out-of-control feeling when the bass is driving you up and out of your seat, and the sweat is pouring off your entire body and you are singing, well screaming, along?

My motto for this week is: BRING IN DA FUNK, GET ME THE FUNK!

Can a Non Fiction Writer Find Love in the Material World?

Interesting discussion taking place on Fragments from Floyd as to whether non-fiction writers can learn to write fiction and learn to love it, especially if they don't ever read fiction. I agree with most of the comments - you have to read fiction to write it well.

I go through long periods where I only read fiction, then swing around and read non-fiction for a year or more. The non-fiction I read, though, is generally "creative non-fiction". You'll find me over at the memoir/naturalist/slice of life section of the bookstore. I have shelves of books that all have the theme "we cashed it all in and moved to the farm/coast/on a boat/city/country/artist's garret/restaurant, etc.

Floyd was looking for direction on where his proposed book about his life would be shelved. ( can tell from his description that I would be first in line to read his book. ) Marketing is all, isn't it in terms of getting published? It is an interesting viewpoint for me and also dovetails with the post on Everyday Matters today where Danny posts copies of a few of the rejection letters he received before his book was published.

It may help me clarify the book I am trying to write which presently is creative non-fiction (speak to me in two weeks and I'll be back at work on the magica novel or the Big Southern Novel.) Thanks for the link, Floyd, to the Barnes and Noble online courses.

I began writing in grade school. My writing came to the attention of teachers in ninth grade. I remember Mr Breen, the very young English teadcher at our Catholic high school asking me to stay after school so he could talk to me about my writing. Of course, I was in a flop sweat because the only time teachers asked me to stay after school was for detention. But no, he told me that my writing was special, but - and OMG, what a BUT, "I was a lazy writer". I had turned in an essay on the different cliques in school, a sort of Nora Ephron-esque satirical slant on the layers of bonding and class in a small all-girls, Catholic school. But Mr. Breen wanted "Writing" with a capital W, not this fluff.

So for at least twenty years, I wore that label around my neck with a heavy, thick chain of remorse: my scarlet "L" - Lazy Writer.

(He was also gorgeous in that tousled hair, patches on the elbows of his curduroy jacket, early 70's sort of look, but then he married the French teacher, an Irish Catholic redhead from a family of 12 who lived around the corner of the school and he lost all his luster.)

His words of "praise" pretty much froze me up all through the rest of high school and most of college. When I began to tentatively move back into writing, in a small tutorial in college, mentored by a gifted and loving professor, I was slammed back into my cave again by a student who referred to my tender piece about young love as "The Fuck Story" and, worse, the lowered eyes and total muteness of another student when another story of mine was critiqued. He Never Looked Up. Not Once. And I've always remembered this, in my writer's long, long memory of editorial hurts and slights.

(It doesn't help that this fellow student has gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Really. No kidding. At least when I am dissed, I am dissed by royalty.)

But that's all fodder for my therapist, not for here. Who doesn't have their stories of rejection and writer's block.

As you can see, I've gotten over it.

Rules of Blogging

Artsjournal has an interesting list of 15 Notes on Blogging. I agree with all of them, and of course, IC will be gleeful that #14 is 'If you want to be noticed, you have to blog every day. '

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Then again, some of us have a life.

Church

Fran led me to two new blogs today, ChurchHouse and TallSkinnyKiwi:Emerging Church Definitions. Bothw ere discussing where they find "church" in their lives. I posted a comment that “church” to me included sitting on the beach at Cape Cod, my family scattered around me, the gulls wheeling overhead, and a book in my hand.

Where else has church appeared in my life in the last year? And can church “appear” or must you consciously seek these moments of grace? Church can appear with surprise and delight, but you can’t rely on these splendid moments to pop up with regularity if you keep your back turned to it and your head sunk down watching the path of your feet on the sidewalk of life.

In other words, if you watch to watch sunsets, get outside. Place yourself in the crosscurrents of your life and look for where the eddies pool. Where do you find yourself returning for satisfaction? What are the moments in your week that sustain you, that keep you turning back the covers each morning and placing you feet on the cold floor ?. What enables you to punch the clock, buy the groceries, clean the toilet bowl, and not lose your mind year after year?

Moments of church illuminate my pedestrian life with clarity and joy.

I dance to the tune of summer in my head, reading a book about living in a shack on the crooked neck of Cape Cod and painting landscapes of sand and sea.

I rip open a battered manila mailer and out tumbles a book about finding the magic that lies outside in the parks, streams, and even the telephone lines that criss cross the cities, lines that we can trace back to the Industrial Revolution and forward to the Internet.

A member of my artist’s email lists posts that she is ill, and a church of posts appears, with recipes for chicken soup, suggestions for homeopathic remedies, and just the plain words of we are here and we care.

One night before my daughter goes back to college, she plops in the middle of our bed like she did when she was five. Soon her little sister appears and finds a spot against her father’s knees. Then the cat bounces on the bed and curls up between my legs and my daughter’s. Our son comes in and snorts that no one left him any room but he is appeased with the offer of a chair pulled up next to us and we watch something silly on TV, shutting the lights and lowering the sound when their father’s snores begin.

Finding church in these moments is more important than ever for me because we’ve never found a spiritual home here. We’ve sampled several churches, there’s a Catholic church on every corner in this area of the Northeast. But we’ve never found a spiritual home that offers us the fellowship and ministry that we hd before. Maybe we will never will. Going to Mass has become a duty, like adding extra quarters in the meter so we don’t get a ticket. Some Sundays we risk the chance.

I try to make Sunday a more intention-directed day, so that I may see the pattern of our church appearing outside the four walls of the stone edifice we frequent.

This Sunday, church begins with the feel of warmth of the sun through the French doors in my bedroom - the sun is out! Today will NOT be gray and overcast for the first time in weeks!

The redolence of coffee fills the house and my husband appears bedside with freshly brewed coffee, a warm bagel, and crisp Sunday papers. I know it is Sunday and we will scan the papers and watch Sunday Morning on TV.

Later we will go to Mass, visiting the church where we were married, where I received the sacraments, from where my father was buried. We will sit behind my mother and her life-long friends, exchanging the handshake of peace with them later in the Mass. Afterwards we sit together at the diner, ordering eggs and grilled cheese, toast and juice, lingering over coffee, knowing errands must be done, footballs games need to be watched, but for a moment we are joined together in a little nest of food and fellowship.

And in a grace-filled day, I will find the time to sit at my laptop, feeling the warmth of the motor under my wrists, enjoying the clacking of the sleek, black laptop, and run down the list of my blogroll, checking in with friends all over the world. Their posts will inspire me to write my own, giving me the place and time to express myself and add to the rich vein or prose and poetry that spreads across the cyber ocean like buoys bobbling gracefully in the sea.

I am aware, I am grateful, I honor and offer praise and thanksgiving from That from whom all this flows and I ask simply that it continues.

Saturday Blogger

The phone rang late last night, after 11:00. I was still up, reading a book that had arrived in the mail. It was IC (my dear Inner Critic). She sounded depressed, though I could hear pounding music in the background.

"Where are you?"

"At a club, downtown."

"What's the matter?"

"Nuthin."

I knew she'd had a few apple martinis by her lack of precise King's English diction as she liked to refer to her speaking voice.

"IC, you usually don't call me after 11:00 from a club for "nuthin".

"Why haven't you posted a blog entry all week?"

This took me aback. I closed my book and got out of bed, stretching the cord into my studio so as not to wake my husband by the call.

"I've been sick. And since when do you read my blog that religiously?"
-
" I read it, I read it."

This whole conversation was taking a turn for the bizarre. I could hear voices in the background and someone's wicked laugh followed by snorting - a choking snort, not a drug snort.

"Who's with you?"

"Friends of Paolos. He picked them up at JFK, they've got a layover before they fly to Japan for a shoot. Paolo's going with them. Thank God."

I settled myself on the floor with a pillow I grabbed from the bed. I could just shut the door to the studio and have enough slack on the phone line not to pull it out of the wall.

"What's up with you and Paolo?"

"Nothing! We're fine. Except he's very thirty-something this week and I may kill him. What did you do tonight?"

I was absurdly pleased to have something to report - I had actually done something!

"All the kids were out so Stan and I went to a new restaurant. Remember that weird old building that was painted purple and had a plastic factory in it for years? Someone gutted it and turned it into a restuarant and cooking school. Very cool - three stories, bar and cooking school on the first floor and restaurant on top."

"Hmm".

I could hear the music getting softer in the background.

"I moved into the ladies room. Christ you should see this place. I swear there's still blood on the floor from when it as a meat factory.And some idiot's blowing coke right off the filthy sink. "

"That's funny - I was in a plastic factory and you're in a meat factory."

"Is that a life statement, Loretta?".

Ah, now this was the IC I knew and hated as much as I loved.

"How's that, IC?"

"You're living a nice sanitized safe life and I'm perpetually hanging by the tenterhooks, my ass up for grabs by anybody with a full head of hair and nowhere to go on a Saturday night."

"I need to go to bed, IC, call me when you sober up."

"No, no, listen, I'm sorry, it's just fucking February, and I have all new classes of obnoxious rich kids to teach and my period's disappeared for three months - and I'm NOT pregnant- and I so want to just go home and get in bed and watch Letterman and I'm stuck with this Eurotrash while Paolo gets his rocks off. "

We were both silent while we absorbed the fact of her sudden frankness.

"Tell me about dinner - what was the best?"

We'd always asked each other that from when we were kids: What was the best? Skip the bullshit parts and cut to the chase.

"I had this divine souffle - I don't think I've had a souffle in ten years. And after a miserable week of being nauseaus and exhausted, I was delirious at just sitting and having a drink with Stan."

"What was the worst?"

That's how we played the game - what was the best and what was the worst.

"I practically forced Stan to switch his order from lobster risotto to the special, Lobster Fra Diavolo. It sounded incredible and he loves spicy food and lobster. But it sucked. Overcooked lobster and bad sauce."

"Did you talk?"

Trust IC to go right to the chase - not what did you talk about, but did you talk.

"Yeah, pretty much. We were both tired. We managed, we're not that old and married y'know."

IC lit a cigarette.

"Ask me again what was the best," I asked her.

"What was the best, little wifey?"

"At some point during dinner, when we were looking around at the place - it's wide open floor plan, you can see the kitchen behind a frosted glass panel at one end and there's a gorgeous bar at the other - Stan remembered that we had been in the building years ago when it was a plastics factory. They had a store and we bought some pretty pink plastic boxes and plastic box frames, remember the ones that we all used to make photo collages in college? It was strange to think we'd been there as much as thirty years ago. "

"You two certainly have a history, for Christ's sake, it practically goes back to the Magna Carta."

I ignored the jibe and kept talking. She'd gotten me out of bed.

"Somehow we got talking about our wedding and Stan said that he thought that out of all my sisters' weddings that Dad had had the best time at our wedding, because he danced the tarantella with a handkerchief and wore a cowboy hat that the photographer had on. It was strange that he brought that up because all through dinner I'd been thinking about Dad and the fact that he at one time lived right around the corner from this restaurant.

"And I said that it was a great wedding because everyone was still alive, except my grandfather. And Stan remembered that he used to call Stan "The Chocolate Kid" from when Stan worked at Hershey. "Y'know, Stan said, 'the only major event I wasn't at was your oldest sister's wedding.' Right, I said, I was only in ninth grade and hadn't met you.

"Anyway, after he said that, that he'd been to every event, wedding, wake, and funeral we'd had over thirty years, a physical pull came up from the soles of my feet, through the chair I was sitting on, up from the very ground on which the building was situated. I felt like I was sitting with Stan in a bubble in the middle of the city, completely grounded into our life, our past, our youth, our history, our family, our old age, everything together in a perfectly balanced continuum of time and place. It was as if I was meant to be there, at that table, in that restaurant, in the almost exact center of the city, on that rainy, cold February night.

IC said nothing.

"Maybe it was a power spot - remember Castaneda - and I was placed at the epicenter of my life, bathed in my past, my present and my future. And everything fell into place and I knew that I was living the life I was meant to live. And it all was all right. You know that phrase - All will be well, all will be well, and all things shall be well."

I stopped, feeling like I was babbling and acutely aware that IC had not made a sound during my blathering. Then I heard a small, squeaking sound coming through the phone and nothing else. My God, she was crying.

"IC??"

"I'm here, dammit, I'm here," she said, her voice raspy. "Listen, I can't stay on this long. I just called to tell you to get off your ass and do some entries during the week. Who the hell is going to read you if they have to wait a friggin' week between entries. Look, I gotta go before Paolo forgets I'm here and leaves for Japan while I'm in this slimey bathroom."

The phone clicked dead in my ear. I sat on the floor for a minute, now feeling the chill since the heat had turned off for the night. Stan was snoring like a chainsaw, even through the closed door. It was time for bed.

Stuck at Home

Still sick, relapsed even. Pain in ear and jaw. Called in sick for only the third day in 18 months and still felt guilty about it. Told I basically have to come in tomorrow because we are so low on manpower and court parts have to be covered. Icy rain falling now into tomorrow.

Problem is I really feel worse. Can't enjoy a day at home. Dear sister took pity on me and dropped off a chicken so I could make chicken soup (who else is going to do it for me??)

Mail brought letter encouraging son to apply to Honor Program at a college we hoped he would get into. Reading between the lines, I think that means he's going to get in! He already got into his "safe" school, even without putting in the second half of the application. I realize that the kid could get into an Ivy League, but for the lack of funds. Oh well, life hands you lemons and you make lemonade. We could be living in an apartment on the wrong side of Memphis and hoping we could afford to send him to U of M.

The mail also brought Real Simple magazine. It's only my second issue so the jury's still out on whether it's worth the bucks. It's very "how=to" and sort of verges on being a directory for Those Too Stupid to Know How to Use the Yellow Pages and Whose Parents Never Taught Them Why You Need a Plumber or Electrician. At least to me.

I'm going to take a nap and dream about a beach in Mexico, with a hammock, sun, waves, sweet rum drink, long cigarette, and a body that fits into a bikini.

Super Blog

Super Boring Bowl on. We've eaten the ribs, chicken wings, chips and salsa, cheese dip, and chocolate Riesen. My work here is done. I will now go upstairs and read a book. I will however admit that I will be watching All-Star Survivor later.

Why?

I am SO BORED.

Under self-imposed house arrest trying to kick sinus infection's butt.

Husband doing taxes because son's financial aid applications due TODAY.

We owe a frigging fortune in taxes for some ungodly reason .

(husband and wife dialogue: your withholding is too low; wife: withholding? I called you about that when I redid it for 2003. Husband: No way, I would have told you to up it. Wife: Yes, way! Husband: doesn't matter now, just declare zero exemptions. Wife: I already do." Husband shuts door to computer room to end conversation. (Note: computer room is also art room, so no art being done, nor scanning in of artwork. Harummph!)

I spent the morning reading the sequel to Bridget Jones' Diary, while feeling guilty that I am skipping Mass yet again, but am sick. Book is boring, but helped to read dialogue with Renee Zellwegger's voice in my head, but now am writing blog entry in Helen Fielding style, am sorry, Helen, durr!

Sister with bronchitis kindly suggests I do some sketching but I've sketched everything in this house twice.
Sister with head cold suggests I install Mozilla to block pop-ups.
Husband suggests I make wings and ribs.
Son suggests I make wings, ribs, and 7-layer dip.
Daughter suggests I order owl pellets for her to dissect.

I ignore all and surf blogs all day.

Note to self- do not attempt to eat chocolate Riesen on side of mouth with crown. Ouch!

Note to other typepaders: how do I install buttons as typelists without having to name the typelist and having the annoying typelist title appear over the button? Very amateur, I'm sure, durr!