June 30, 2005
What's New at the Beach?
This is taken on Sunday morning on the stairway in front of the hotel. I inadvertently attended two weddings, sadly, sans camera, simply by sitting on the beach at 4PM (avoiding the ultraviolent while basking in the breeze, which was considerable. The hairdressers for these au naturalle events must use spray of steel to keep the bridal party intact.) I must remember to wear something a little more sweeping next weekend.
Weddings have moved to the hotel from the inn at the Point. I heard that neighbors (perhaps the owners of the Santorino shack) complained about loud music.
And Kenny's Saltwater Taffy is for sale. Not that it is a building of great classical beauty, but there's something to be said for its perfectly preserved 30's decor (and menu), as well as the survival of the original automatic taffy pullers from 1895. I do hope that preservationists purchase it. Currently it's owned by two school teachers who operate it in the summer -- one is 74, and wants to keep going, but her partner is running out of steam. Even if you don't pull the taffy by hand, there's all that twisting little pieces in waxed paper for at least 75 flavors. They have teaberry taffy, (remember teaberry?), as well as the more contemporary pina colada.
The gypsy moths are munching at the greenery -- must get some pheromonial bobbers to lure them away from my trellis.
And finally, there is yet another memorial bench with picturesque view on the front beach. Soon it will be wall-to-wall granite benches upon which to cool ones thighs in the summer, and chill oneself to the bone in all other seasons. I wonder if the bereaved had taken the time to ride the Arthur Jones before deciding on the slab model?
And so the years go by, the scene changes, the paint peels, and the age spots multiply. As you can tell , I am rather without inspiration today, but feeling the need to toss a few electrons into cyberspace anyway
June 29, 2005
Nailing it down
Something was different about NPR at 5 AM this morning. There was an actual analysis (rather than simple "unbiased reporting") of George W.'s speech on Iraq last night. The listener was told the number of times he invoked 9/11 as justification for this war. In addition we were reminded that 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq had no connection, AND that the administration had actually admitted that fact sometime ago. Something has changed, what's up?
Since Ken Tomlinson has taken the lead at PBS and is, as far as I'm concerned, going about the neocon mission of stomping out the last vestiges of truth in the media, I have been generally disappointed by news analysis on NPR. In an effort be unbiased, they have avoided the kind of broadcast that I heard this morning.
Are folks over at NPR taking unusual risks, going for broke before they are put out to pasture by classical music programming? Have they been inspired by Bill Moyers? Have W's ratings dropped so far that it is finally not considered an act of treason to notice the flaws in his statements, the delusions in his thinking, his lies?
Sniff sniff. Is that fresh air I'm smelling? If this continues, I'll be able to listen to an entire broadcast without spitting toothpaste on my radio.
Photo note: This is the cartridge from a nail gun retrieved from the roof by a loved one who knows my penchant for the photogenic object. The ominous black shadow in the lower left hand corner, obscured by the black background, is my stuck shutter, which fortunately corrected itself after some ginger jostling.
June 27, 2005
Karma
The problem with getting old and doing "important" work is that if you don't write it down immediately, it slips your mind, perhaps not your core , but your mind.
On Friday, my nutritionist got permission from the Mariel Angels, Gabriel, Uriel and a few other celestrial beings to enter my Akashic Records and clean up my karma.
In this case, we were dealing with the karma between my mother and me, which I (and I assume she) have been trying to resolve over twelve lives. All I can say is that what we had together in Life #12 wasn't easy, so I'm assuming that there were quite a few yuckie wads involved.
Do I believe in this? Enough to think that it's better to have a tidy karma than not, so I participated wholeheartedly. My feet are considerably better, as a result.
My nutritionist told me that she would not have been granted permission to do this, if I hadn't been able to find some compassion for my mother in this life. I must say that I had a lot of help from dementia that eradicated the anxiety that caused her to be so controlling, and left her with a pure sweet spirit.
Photo note: This is a shot of my windshield turned sideways for reasons of past and future -- shadows and green extending both ways.
June 24, 2005
Best Garbage Shot
Garbage shot
grand finale
forms
unlit
out to pasture
out of season
grazing
by the side
of the road
waiting
to be tossed
into the maw
twisted
crushed
compacted
recycled
for next
season's
tasteless
fad
Miscellany:
Off to the seaside for the weekend -- it's supposed to be 100 degrees tomorrow, but it's always breezy on a bike
Are you interested in participating in an MIT blog survey ?
Do you have your Tamiflu yet?
June 23, 2005
Gargoyle
Just when you think
that gargoyles
are completely
out of stock
or that you
are miles
and miles
away from
a decent
gargoyle shot
a form appears
from nowhere
nothing
that will do
nicely
for a
gargoyle,
that is
Photo note: I realize that I have inadvertently taken a series of garbage photographs to which this belongs. Notice the small triangle on the upper left which I didn't adoberase for spiritual reasons.
June 21, 2005
Structure Number Twenty Four
Report from Psychomotor City. The Pessos have moved into their breathtaking new quarters. We met in a glorious workspace, with double storied glass walled views of the forest and the lake. Al was more stationary than usual, eagerly awaiting a hip replacement on the day after our group met. (I just talked to him-- the surgery went swimmingly, no general anesthesia. I asked him about the noise, but he said he had interesting conversations with the Indian anesthesiologist during the sawing and grinding, which distracted him pleasantly -- something about coconut openers. Everyone has been impressed by his perkiness. He is very pleased indeed)
So yesterday, sitting in front of the huge window with cane and headset, Al spotted, rather early in my structure, the emergence of what he fondly calls the "entity" . One of the ways (and I'm sure there are several, but, to my shame, I have never read Psychomotor Theory) to recognize an entity is by the smile on a person's face when they are describing something quite dreadful.
I had begun my structure by talking about my seized feet and my inconsolable child, who will not let anyone comfort her, because it's just too damn late. The one that's up on the ledge of a building, and can only be reached with a ladder truck and spoken to via megaphone. This is the part of me that is girded and causes my feet fascial seizures.
With this description, Al, champion of the language of the unconscious, concluded that my entity was probably a gargoyle, given its chosen habitat. How's this for woowoo ?
Al has a theory (very loosely stated by an abject amateur) of how an entity develops, just in case you're interested. When a child feels compassion before he or she has had sufficient nurturing, that compassion bulges out from the self, herniated, as twere, and then gets stragulated. Once strangulated, the hernia of compassion can no longer receive input, nurturance, and, as a result, begins to think of itself as omnipotent (probably has something to do with the developmental stage at which the entity pops, since omnipotence is very popular among small children). In any case, what started out as compassion from the child, turns into quite the little monster .
Given my gargoyle, we began to search my childhood experience for premature compassion, so that we could fill the "holes in roles". which requires that all the deprived caretakers in our personal history symbolically get ideal parents who would have cared for them with sensitivity. Once that's taken care of, the gargoyle can relax and become receptive to comfort and nurturing once again.
Well folks, let me tell you, finding someone for whom I felt compassion as a child was lean pickings. Frankly, I felt fear, and only fear. We started with my family, wayyyyy too much fear for compassion, and then Al thought I might have developed some premature compassion from stories I had heard. We looked through all the piteous children in Struwwelpeter -- complete terror --and then all the poor, kids in those wonderful family books, "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew", "The Boxcar Children", "Little Women" -- mild compassion, sans viscera. The animal books, however, were such compassion sink holes that I read "Black Beauty" and stopped there. And then there were all the children starving in China, who would be grateful for the rejected food on my plate, as well as the children of war torn Europe.
We symbolically gave everyone in my family, in every story, in every impoverished country ideal parents, siblings, husbands, you name it, as well as a happy ending. Honestly, I had the whole damn floor covered in pillows, kleenex, shells, dishes. I almost ran out of stuff. The endless, mostly affectless, search for strangled compassion was really pissing off the gargoyle.
I can't remember when I chose to enroll ideal parents for myself, but my buddies accomodated, sat on the couch next to me, and then I was able to connect with the gargoyle. My ideal parents provided limits for my anger, holding my hands and my head, while I vigorously roared and clawed, assuring me that I could have my feelings but that they wouldn't let me hurt myself, or anyone else. I did experience some shame about then, but they assured me, coached expertly by Al, that they had gargoyles inside of them too, and that their parents had helped them handle theirs. I can't remember the details, because I was preoccupied with the clawing business, but it did feel great. I must say that it was a little hard to get quite enough traction on the new leather couches for a full tantrum. I was finally able to relax. Then my feet felt quite a bit better.
I realized that the seizing in my fascia serves a double purpose. One, to keep unwanted intrusion out, and two, to contain my own, rather impressive, anger. Believe it or not, I like to think of myself as a nice person, oh well.
Because we had to leave shortly after my structure, I didn't have enough time to process my structure with others. My commuting companion said that he felt gargoylian vibes coming from me all weekend. I guess I just wasn't my usual sweet, compliant, subserviant self. What an improvement.
I am left with a slight aura of pissiness. But if you're gonna be a goddess , I suppose righteous anger comes in handy. It's probably a good idea to wait until next week to invite me out for lunch.
Photo note: What's a girl to do when she only has gargoyle feet in her archives and the nearest one to shoot is downtown? -- publish the next best thing, even if it's for the second time.
Fence with Flowers
I am just publishing this photo because I really don't have the will to write about my structure this weekend at Pesso's, and there's nothing like posting yet another flower photo to appease the Big Baby .
I did the last structure in the group this year, (certainly my turn to do so), and I am left with alot of unprocessed anger which could get quite displaced. I will switch to WordPad for the time being, rather than spewing vicious little electrons and burning small holes all over this corner of virtuality.
I will try to follow the next best thought until I'm out of my FOUL humor. It might take awhile, because there's a part of me that is most tempted to wallow.
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Photo note: The Big Baby says she cannot be appeased by some stupid flower photo -- and that it's perfectly fine with her if I want to be seen as some goopey sentimentalist a thousand miles from the cutting edge.
June 18, 2005
Time Out for a Tune Up
Off to see Al Pesso
for a psychomotor weekend
with my beloved group
after twenty three years
of his exquisite attention
my inner child
is looking good
even if she's
still
a little stiff
June 16, 2005
Disheartening
Just called with my pledge to our local National Public Radio station. Couldn't get through for about ten minutes, which was heartening, though I may have missed my bonus gift from Ira Glass about disappearing Chicago architecture. NPR will lose 100 million dollars in government funding and, if Ken Tomlinson has anything to say about it, will soon go back a classical music format. You can be sure that Ken is not advocating program change in order to deepen our appreciation for the arts.
Soon we will have to use our crystal sets to tune into the Voice of Europe or the BBC in order to hear the real news, just like folks under fascist regimes around the world. I personally am carving out a secret place under the stairs in which to hide my receiver. But, then, again, I'm just a suspicious liberal, err..rr , I mean a spiritual progressive.
As long as we're wallowing, the avian flu has made the leap to humans. When Dr. Michael Osterholm , director of The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy was asked what we could do if a bird flu pandemic hit today, he said "I don't know what we could do about it except to say 'We're screwed'". Eloquent.
Dear ones, have you ordered your Tamiflu yet? While you're at it get yourself a short wave radio .
Photo note: Dying on the vine. Need I say more?
June 15, 2005
Hat shop
if you're ever
in the market
for a little
something Mayan
perhaps in blue
with seashell fringe
to match your eyes
or a pillbox
with earmuffs
for the
cooler weather
I know
just the place
June 14, 2005
Peonies
Perspiring
in perpetual heat
the peonies popped
and promptly
plopped
their petals
on the pavement
passing prolific
profusion
precipitously
poof
June 10, 2005
Trucking
Originally, I meant to write about a nearby suburban community that was invaded by fundamentalist Christians for use of a children's book in the classroom that mentioned a child with two mothers -- and we know what THAT means. Taking to heart advice from George Lakoff, and the spiritual progressives , activists in town organized the community, and trained citizens to use new language when speaking out against the crusaders . Within two weeks, the fundamentalists were quoted in the news using the new phrases (which included making the classroom safe for all children and not tolerating hate) as they pulled up stakes and left town. It worked beautifully. Let's get busy.
Instead, the mouse on my home computer jammed in a way that makes me afraid I'll erase my photo archives if I turn it on again, I lost the crown on my molar, and have to have it reglued this morning or I'll certainly eat it for breakfast, and I got an impossible haircut which must be tweeked before Big Baby goes bananas . (She's okay so far, which speaks to my improved mental health). My astrological friends will probably check to see if Mercury is in retrograde, but I think the universe is trying to tell me something. Don't blog, don't bite and don't complain?
Photo note: Perhaps this photo has something to do with this entry -- you are left to extrapolate on your own.
June 08, 2005
Mutation
I think it is worth mentioning, even though Esther Hicks, channeling Abraham, would tell me, in no uncertain terms, to get out of this vibration, (which I will in a minute), that there is a bit of a pandemic brewing, and it has created some strange bedfellows.
The avian flu is of such concern that a special issue of "Nature" has been devoted to it. It's worth a peek, not to scare yourself half to death, but to know that there are preventative measures you can take to modify it's effect, should this flu come your way.
Tamiflu, a fairly effective antiviral, is available, should you want to keep some on hand. It's proported to have a shelf life of five years.
I ordered the recommended 30 pills last week for myself, (on line without a prescription, but you could probably get a prescription from your doctor). It was expensive, $275, but, thank god, it's for sale -- so far. I am having difficulty convincing those near and dear to me that this is, in fact, a sensible precaution, not just "internet stuff". So, if you have any doubts about spending the money, I urge you to read the clickies carefully.
It was pointed out to me that if there is a rush for Tamiflu by privileged individuals, such as myself, it might not be available to use where it's needed, when it's needed -- good point. Of course, if I thought the Bush administration was making any kind of a plan to deal with this, I might not have stocked up. They're busy fighting for freedom and protecting us from terrorists, not viri-- and they have enough Tamiflu to take care of themselves, you can be sure. If the Revelation comes, at least there will be one liberal, I mean, progressive democrat , left.
Photo note: This is the the best I can do for mutating viri until I figure out how to use the macro on my new camera. It's a metaphoraphoto
June 07, 2005
Coming up for Air
resurfacing from
immersion in
the gene pool
of in laws
great grandma was deaf
and tiny
great grandpa was deaf
and albino
an arranged and
unhappy marriage
that produced
three beautiful redheads
who knew how to sign
the surviving matriarchs
ninety and ninety two
still disagree
about everything
except their
difficult childhood
in the tenements
of the lower east side,
the benefit of vitamins
and line dancing
Photo note: This is the swimming pool in the hotel where many of the out of town wedding guests stayed. You would think I would have had the good sense to shoot the matriarchs, rather than the pool, but I didn't - though they are captured, in conflict, on video for posterity
June 03, 2005
Brief Hiatus
Off to a wedding
at the Vanderbilt Estate
not a Vanderbilt Wedding,
however
a marvelous excuse
to publish
spring flowers
in white, of course
lovely, if a bit
past their prime
as are the bride and groom,
making the beauty
all the more poignant
June 01, 2005
In the stream
this is what it feels like
when the muse drops you
like a hot potato
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and you become
a plastic chicken
heading beak first
into an orange throw rug
Oh lord
I hope that
never
happens to me
then again
it wouldn't be
without
creative potential
Photo note: the window of a pediatric clinic, there were a few goldfish too.