happy late birthday sister

sister came to visit me for her birthday. very nice sister, giving me a such a spiff present for your birthday. (thanks squinty-eyed dinky, too.)

sister and i forgot to take pictures while we were escapading. i got a few. like this one in muir woods.

sister is kind of like mother except that she can handle sleeping in on vacay. sister is kind of like mother because she takes care of me. i love sister.

sister has been kind of like mother since i was born. she used to drive me all over tarnation for lessons and so on (with frequent stops at wendy's and taco bell), she helped me with my homework (ie taught me the art of b.s.), and she let me tag along with her cool friends. sometimes sister had to make me do things that were good for me that i didn't want to do. the dishes. piano practicing. dedicated horseback riding. sometimes i got angry at sister just like i got angry at mother. i feel bad about getting mad at both of them.

i did a lot of things because sister did them first. extended trips to countries i was scared to visit. summers in wyoming. taping pictures to my wall. pressing wildflowers in books. strange the things you remember.

sister used to take me out of school for ski outings in the ruby sue. we would sit on the back bumper with the trunk popped up into the air while we ate pb and j and oranges that sister packed. i always count on sister to carry a little food for me.

i loved having sister all to myself again. it's been a really long time, perhaps even pre-wedding. i loved hearing her talk to her babes on the phone and realize that she is not just kind of like mother, she is mother. she sees the colored carrots in the berkeley bowl with six eyes instead of two, making mental images of everything cool to report back to the little people. mother did that too. her thrill and delight at life did not diminish in retelling, and neither does sister's.

love you sister. wish ya happyappyappyappyappy.

inspired.

janie my dear. you have not lost your style.

Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d'Hiver, August 1955

and neither has richard avedon. how awesome is this pic?

Personal

I have been thinking a lot lately about the purpose of my blog, thanks to the prodding of Mr. B. I don't really know what I want it to do or be or say, but I do hope that it is Authentic. Honest. Me. It's never that simple, though, is it? My favorite illusion is that reality is easy to portray just because it is; that I should be able to express myself in writing as seamlessly as a painter captures a scene; that the artist is merely a translator of immutable truth rather than a creator of perception, possibility, plausibility. I want there to be a right answer. I want there to be a right me.

Things have turned wompscoop these past few years. Up is down is a hundred miles of wind in my face till my eyes are stuck shut and my mouth tastes like cotton balls. I have found my way into a place where I apologize for still holding on to my mom's death, and I question every thought that ends up at her as being too personal. I suspect my feelings of self-pity, of over-indulgence. I second-guess my tears. I stick with topics that don't make anybody cringe or ask. I do not like this place I have found.

I learned something today from the following number from So You Think You Can Dance: life is personal. It's nothing but personal. We all mirror and allude to the existence of each other. Even the pockmarked, grizzled face with raging blond beard that belongs to the goth get-up. Even the man with an open flannel shirt shrouding his bronzed potbelly. We see each other. We see ourselves.

So I'm not going to ignore the fact that this dance depicting a woman with breast cancer meant something big to me.



I hold on to this:

"People learn from the truth even though the truth is a mess."
--Peter Elbow

tonight i left the music home.

i just rode rode rode my bike next to the bay with salt in my ears and a setting sun in my mouth and dreams blowing into my face and hair. do you ever feel like your senses get all mixed up so that you can't distinguish the smells from the tastes from the memories from the touches? i do. (i do know that memory isn't REALLY a sense, but i'm making it one in my life.)

i'm in love with the ocean. i understand i have no claim on it's loveliness, having chosen mountains all my life, but doth not the appetite alter? a man loves the landscape in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. (i felt the truthfulness of this last saturday as i trailed my family to the summit of timpanogas. thank heavens for beautiful flat ground to welcome me into age.)

i'm frustrated with myself. why does it take leaving to realize what i've got? why can't i sustain the urgency and passion i feel for PLACE without uprooting and replanting every so often? why do i thrive in crisis and become dull in routine? and how does crisis become routine so quickly?

there's something i need to know, if anyone's listening. is my blog boringly impersonal?

fair summer evening

a note on the value of cliches. they continue to say exactly what they've always said. what's not to love about a few reliable, straight forward phrases? like this one: when it rains, it pours. lately, this blog has been pouring pictures. count your many blessings. if not pictures, than words--a picture says a thousand words--and all i've got inside of me is cliches, and one can only handle so many cliches right? i've been reading cliches online, just to see how many i can handle, in case handling cliches is a special gift i have, and i haven't gotten sick of them yet. i like the combinations that come up--the one i'm including here is especially awesome for how it starts and how it ends. choice.

He's a few balloons short of a parade.
you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
let's cross that bridge when we come to it
hard as nails
kid-glove treatment
no great shakes
smoke-filled room
go haywire
the cow jumped over the moon
peter out
as the crow flies
hell has no fury like a woman scorned
beyond the pale
the butt of a joke
it's a guessing game
duffing off
hanging fire
turn the other cheek
beg the question
Be careful or you'll poke your eye out!

maybe now that those are out of my system, i'll have something to say. i'm actually feeling a little chatty, so look out!

today's feature has everything to do with county fairs, and yes, there will be a lot of pictures. i know everyone and their dog (seriously, animal facebook pages and websites and twitter feeds and home photo studios are probably right around the corner) thinks that the advent of digital photography and editing software has made them a pro photographer. i know i think that, which is why i keep taking all these predictable pics and posting them on my blog. i'm just trying to stay current with my generation: living to blog, planning my day to give me something to write about, snapping pictures that make boring events look WAY funnerer than they actually were. (props to the people i know who are legit photographers, by the way.)

this county fair was incredibly lame. let's get that straight before i try to persuade you differently with my pics. all i need at a fair is about ten minutes to eat something fried, see a few rednecks, smell the livestock, feel like vomiting, and skedaddle. only the fair costs too much to justify a ten minute in-and-out operation (even though i remember econ 110 and the myth of "Getting your money's worth:" you spend money on a county fair and decide that you don't actually want to go (or stay), but you've paid! so you stay to get your money's worth. at the end of the visit, you're out your money AND the time you spent in the fair when you could have been doing something you really wanted to be doing like watching Hello Dolly! online. actually, getting your money's worth is NOT going to the fair. but whatever. what do economists know anyway?)

a ticket booth inside the fair is the first indication that things are gonna get more expensive before they get less.

man announcing that the circus was t-5 to showtime. "circus"=two-man juggling act haranguing the audience for applause.

sure did like that ferris wheel.

and the post-rain clouds.

swings are always a favorite.

sure did like that ferris wheel.

yup. pigs racing. WAY lamer than it looks.

if only i could turn this pic into a scratch and sniff.... yuckarama.

check out that denim on denim tube top number. 'nuff said.

hazy lazy summer dayshorse race. post finish line. who knew they didn't even race a complete lap, making our position placed after the finish and before the start totally ridiculous?

this guy is bugged too. he may have lost some money too on "All I Can Say is Wow." They name horses the darndest things.

even that kid in the back is starting to catch on to the lameness of fairs.

that's all ya'll. me at the fair, gettin' 'er done.

more pics of san fran--

and the home of the brave

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

I absolutely love the Ray Charles version of "America the Beautiful." It makes me feel patriotic and summertimey. It makes me want to roll up my jeans and dip my toes in the pool and slurp a melting popsicle and wave a sparkler and a small American flag and if I had more hands I'd be holding a hot dog AND a hamburger (because who can ever really choose) and a box of cracker jacks and a piece of apple pie and one of those giant foam fingers people wear at sporting events and one of my hands would be over my heart. Heart is where the home is, and home is America the Beautiful, God shed his grace on thee.

I had a lovely lovely fourth of July (fourth of July is the antithesis of New Year's Eve--it always exceeds my expectations and thus continues to move up on my favorite holiday list) and I watched fireworks from a distance while a small radio played old jazzy songs. I also got to wait through dusk on a picnic blanket on grass (that sentence is awkwardly prepositional cause I tried to avoid using the word lie or lay or laid since I never quite got that lesson in school), and nothing says fourth of july like a picnic blanket on grass.