a moon, worn as if it had been a shell

Side of the Road

2012-01-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

The Husband and I went to hear Lucinda Williams last night at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. Her craggy, strong voice sounded exactly the same as it had years before, and we were both stunned and thrilled when she opened with Side of the Road, a more obscure one that happens to be our favorite. We had just wondered what she might sing when she walkd out and began singing it. Afterward, The Husband said I could really just leave now.

You wait in the car on the side of the road
Lemme go and stand awhile, I wanna know you're there but I wanna be alone
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs
I just stood and looked out at the open space and a farmhouse out a ways
And I wondered about the people who lived in it
And I wondered if they were happy and content
Were there children and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?

If I stray away too far from you, don't go and try to find me
It doesn't mean I don't love you, it doesn't mean I won't come back and
stay beside you
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line
To a place where the wild things grow
To a place where I used to always go

La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
La la la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

Surfing Friday - Things I Like

2012-01-27T15:00:00.000-08:00

Moms are Solutionary Revolutionaries

Piano Music

What I Mean by Fake Work
What I Mean by Cheerful Pretending

What do you like? I'd love a discussion about the last two, if you're so inclined. Oh, and I've started my old food blog up, again. Here's the link: How To Eat

Why I love Irish blessings (and poetry)

2012-01-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

Beannacht

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

John O'Donohue

Listen to O'Donohue reading this poem here.

Listen to an interview with him here.

Pink Sheets

2012-01-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

The worst one can do in Beverly Hills traffic is to let down your window and simultaneously scream at yet another BMW that has nearly side-swiped you in its urgency to get somewhere, where? and shake a fist and perhaps reach in to the glove compartment for the gun that you have stored there in case, and the best one can do is close one's eyes for a moment, but only a moment, and remember the bell from the app on the meditation timer that you recently installed on your phone and that worked quite beautifully that morning, the first time you used it. Bong, it sounds, deep in your recesses and you still remember it, feel it, from hours before when you woke up, still dark out, your foot had ripped a tear out of the sheet and you'd only noticed it the day before, but this morning it was a hole, a huge hole, the softened edges frayed, the shiny mattress underneath exposed. Bong the bell went when twenty minutes were up and you opened your eyes, not realizing that the sound would bury itself just enough to make coffee and lunches and kiss good-bye but still be available hours later as your car wound up the endless driveway of a parking garage unable to park for the behemoths in compact spaces. A voice on the radio would declare that one candidate, (the one with white hair and many wives, the one who blows hard and long) would say of the other candidate, (the one who is ramrod straight with five sons and a fortune) that he is out of touch with ordinary Americans. And you would wonder what an ordinary American really is because surely that candidate is not ordinary with his two ex-wives and his open marriage and his new-found catholicism and his wife with the booya! eyes. Bong the bell goes, in your dark belly and up and out of your mouth as you turn the candidate's voice off and think to yourself that today I will buy myself rosewater linen sheets.

** guns in glove compartments are a figment of your imagination

Disconcerting

2012-01-26T10:07:00.001-08:00

Highland Avenue, heading north

Love for this world,

2012-01-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

of which I am a small part:

The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) from R Smittenaar on Vimeo.

Turn your volume up and watch full screen!

Perhaps an explanation for Sophie's increased seizures this week?

2012-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

The sun is bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption.

The solar flare occurred at about 11 p.m. EST Sunday and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times. The biggest issue is radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.

-- Huffington Post

The only thing to do after fifth grade math, giant seizures and a tomato soup recipe that is abysmal

2012-01-24T17:46:00.000-08:00

(otherwise, it was a fine day)

Love letters to friends

2012-01-24T10:14:00.000-08:00

A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious

daring starts from within.

Eudora Welty

We ate shrimp and grits at a small round table, and we drank a lot of wine. We drank so much wine that I drew stick figures on a napkin proving that I wasn't a prude, and you leaned so far back in your chair (you might have been laughing) that it tipped over. We might have been screaming with laughter, as far as I know, the rest of the people in the restaurant receding, their mouths open, silent. Years later, I picked you up from a Greyhound bus station in Nashville, Tennessee, trailing an enormous suitcase. You fixed my air-conditioner and swept out my apartment, and when I came home from my shift, I lay on the bed and you on a sleeping bag beside me and we talked in the darkness, and we talked through the years on the phone and in letters and now over polenta and eggs and no one makes me laugh harder.

During and after the rain

2012-01-23T16:13:00.000-08:00

We made cookies and ate them for both breakfast and lunch. We watched True Grit, and I was taken by surprise given all the gun-shooting, western stuff. Can we talk about this movie? I know I'm late to the game, but was that the most incredible and incredibly weird and wonderful stilted and formal writing and speech you've ever heard in a movie? I loved it. Jeff Bridges? I love him. That girl? I loved her. Matt Damon? I loved him and his silly Texas ways. Iris Dement singing at the end? I loved it. That last shot? Gorgeous.

Snow Day

2012-01-23T08:38:00.000-08:00

Amden, Switzerland, 2007

I'm surprising the boys this morning and not waking them up for school. It's raining here in Los Angeles and since we never have snow days, I'm calling one. We need a mental health day -- I think chocolate chip cookie-making is in order, perhaps a viewing of True Grit, and pajamas all day.

And maybe we'll listen to this:

Two Small Stones

2012-01-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

Polk Place, 1935, Wilson library in background: William Waters, IV

We stoodon the steps of the old library at UNC-Chapel Hill, the fall of mysophomore year. We were on the top step, having emerged from thestacks blinking, blinded in the day's light. My backpack was heavy onmy back. I was wearing a Mexican-inspired red ruffled skirt withdesert boots, an ensemble that I imagined bohemian in otherwisepreppy 1982. He put a hand on my shoulder, and I felt his dry palmthrough the thin cotton of my shirt. The same bumps on my skin roseat his touch as do when I step into sunlight. The bare skin receiveswarmth and then, shocked, feels a chill, the goosebumps, then thewarmth spreads to the tips of the fingers. A sun sneeze. His hand laythere, on my shoulder, so that I couldn't move. I heardhis voice, low, in my ear, a whisper. If welived in Cro-Magnon times, he said, you would never havesurvived. I would be the wild cat that ate you up. Thesteps under my feet were hard, wide and shallow. I was stuck underhis hand and couldn't open my mouth. I felt his fingers on my throat,cool and dry. Blinded, I saw spots, little black dots and at thebottom of the steps, the world, bare and primitive, stripped.

Small Stone 21 and 22

Things I Learned This Week

2012-01-22T13:06:00.000-08:00

netsuke, LACMA

about netsuke: I'm reading a riveting memoir called The Hare with Amber Eyes, written by Edmund De Waal. Mr. De Waal is a ceramicist and writes beautifully about how the inheritance of a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, led him to discover the history of his family, the Ephrussis, a 19th century banking dynasty. When my bookstore friend Liz recommended this book, I confess that I had no inclination to read it. Netsuke? The Japanese? Proust? Vienna during the Second World War? These are not things I'm even remotely interested in. Well, I'm glad that I did because I can hardly put it down.

about how amazing this blog community is: The people who read my blog and leave comments are astounding. The whole conflagration that was my and others' exchange with The Girl Who Espouses To Be a Bioethics Expert burned all the brighter as the comments poured in. I'd urge you to read those comments -- I'm certain you'll learn as much as I did. Thank you. This photo reminds me a bit of what it feels like to be part of such a vocal, strong and confident community:

that my son Oliver responds really well to lists, even those whose number one item is Say Good Morning. He not only did that every day this past week, but he made his bed, fed the dog on his designated day, picked up his mess in the bathroom after his shower each night and did his homework with a minimum of complaint. Who knew that a black Sharpie and a piece of computer paper would trump yelling?

the inventions of the Chinese (paper, gunpowder, and I can't remember what else) as described in my son Henry's seventh grade paper. Amazing what one forgets over the years --

that Anne Carson the poet is very weird and very wonderful. I heard her last night at the Masonic Lodge in the Hollywood Forever cemetery. In lieu of describing the whole scene, I'll just say that we parked our car in the graveyard, noted the graves of Issac and Anna, both born in the late 1800s and both dead within a year of each other in the 1950s, and walked down a long, very dark road to the Lodge that was filled with very young and glamorous literary types, an odd sight in Los Angeles and somehow heartening. As for the cemetery, Johnny Ramone is buried there, along with Jayne Mansfield and Bugsy Siegel. The list is long and again, it's a strange and wonderful place.

Saturday

2012-01-21T10:57:00.000-08:00

It began to rain in the early hours last night, and I woke abruptly at the drip, drip, drip from the metal awning over the steps that lie at my back door. I sat up, completely awake, got out of bed and grabbed the flashlight that I keep by the side of my bed in case there's an earthquake. I put on my clogs and opened the door, walked outside through the drips and to the timer for the sprinkler system. I shut it off, thinking about possums, whether they stay away when it's raining and where they stay if they do. I also thought about the water saved and the money saved by my vigilance in turning it off and then rolled my eyes at myself for thinking these thoughts at four am. When I went inside, I forgot to dash through the drip and was soaked so I pulled off my pajama top and put on another and got back into bed wondering how it was possible to wake so suddenly and think about so many trivial things. It sort of scared me and sort of disgusted me, too. So much for remembering convoluted dreams or feeling hazy and sexy and stretching contentedly. I wonder whether all the stress and thinking works to dull down the subconscious. I think of the days when I waited tables, and my nights were filled with weird and wonderful dreams of minutia -- tables filled with red wine glasses, only a tiny bit in each one, all needing to be cleared in that instant, fish that coiled up off of plates and into customers' laps, endless back and forths with undercooked steaks, yapping mouths and tiny plastic ketchup containers. Now when I wake it's wondering whether they'll play lacrosse in the rain (yes) and how much, exactly, is saved when the sprinklers don't come on.

An End

2012-01-20T18:04:00.000-08:00

The week after Christmas, and the skies had reverted to gun-metal. It was cold, and when I said good-bye, he turned into a crowd of people and I watched his back and then his head, and then the crowd closed around him and he disappeared.

Small Stone 20

Too Much Information

2012-01-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

Virgo the Virgin

I'm generally not a blogger that reveals anything about sex (I'm a virgin), marriage (I've had two) or incontinence. Yesterday, though, in a torrent of words, if not creativity, I revealed that I had wet my pants -- a tiny bit -- two times in one day in the parking lot of the Grove, our large Disneyfied outdoor mall. I want to assure my more decorous readers that I've not jumped a line and will now start writing about my private parts with any regularity. But I wanted to clarify several things.

I've had three cesarean sections (immaculate conception, since I'm a virgin, see above), so I can't blame my incontinence on that (in fact, given my virginity, things are -- well -- as tight as a drum)
I have a tendency to idiotically not go to the bathroom when I need to go. There's that moment when you absolutely have to go, but if you can steel yourself and hold on (and you're still a virgin), that moment passes. The trouble with this technique is that it doesn't account for one hour of wandering around a large parking lot. The moment passed yesterday, and then it came again -- in other words.
Given the above (the three cesareans, the fact that I'm a virgin and things are intact, and that sometimes I idiotically think myself a camel), I'd say that I don't really need the Poise pads. What I might consider, though, is wearing some Maximum Absorbency Garments (MAGS), a la astronaut style.

Consider that the only too much information post you'll get for quite some time. Now I'm back to my regular programming.

Let's call it a day

2012-01-19T12:05:00.000-08:00

Henry, Me and Sophie, 2001

The reason why I posted this photo is that it makes me happy. It's been a wildly interesting week, albeit draining. Not only did I get engaged in a discussion with a twenty-five year old on Huffpost over cognitively disabled individuals and whether or not they are persons, human or non-person humans, but on Facebook I also fell into the Trap That Leads Nowhere of debating the traditional western scientific model versus integrative care that has worked for our family. The latter discussion was actually good-natured (although it pained me to have to interact at one point with Vaccination Militant Paul Offitt) -- and I learned something, too, given another physician's sensitive responses. The one with the Woman Whose Only Credentials for Debate on Disabled Individuals Are An Undergraduate Degree in Philosophy/Bioethics and Being the Mother of One Two Year Old was almost nauseating at first and when all is said and done, I've relegated her comments to the dustbin, coming from someone either truly evil (superstition) or sociopathic in the vein of Nazis, racists and the like. The Facebook discussion and the Huffpost back and forth were neatly tied up by the doctor I was talking to on Facebook when I told him that I'd been engaged in a far more upsetting discussion about humans, persons, and nonhuman persons or nonperson humans. His response was Tell her you need to read her thesis in the original 1930s German before you can comment further. I checked LIKE on that and moved on. Gretchen, my real-life friend and fellow blogger commented on one of my posts with a quote of Elizabeth Taylor's character in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: I'm sorry. I could never keep my fingers off a sore. Don't you love that? I'm always going to be one who fingers the sores, opens my mouth and types furiously. But I'm also going to be one who says, you're right, I'm sorry or Thank you for opening my tiny, little mind. It makes me want to post a photo of the inimitable Liz as Maggie:

So, yes -- back to the interesting albeit draining week. On Tuesday night, I drained my car's battery at the lacrosse field where I idiotically kept the ignition on for over two hours, charging my phone and reading while both boys practiced. On Wednesday, I went to our huge local outdoor mall to return some jeans that I'd bought for Oliver that he had determined were "uncool," and since I was talking on the phone (speaker) while looking for a parking space, parking and then walking to the Gap, I had absolutely NO IDEA where my car was parked. I walked up and down the aisles of three different levels of the lot, pressing my automatic lock thingamajig. Did you know that they beep through several floors? I finally found my car, but not before I had shed a few tears and wet my pants a tiny bit. I'm not kidding. And then, on the way out, when I fed my parking ticket into the little machine, followed by my credit card to pay the $3.00 charge, the machine spit my card out and it fell onto the floor. I was in one of those unattended lines, people were honking in line behind me, and I couldn't open the car door to retrieve my car because I was so close to the machine. Eventually, an attendant came to my rescue and while kind, he couldn't speak English so didn't understand that my card was under my car, had fallen and couldn't get up. He eventually understood, gave me my card and I scratched off, but I wet my pants a tiny bit more. I am not kidding.

So, the photo makes me happy because I love how happy I look. I am pregnant with Oliver in the shot; our family would soon become complete; I had no knowledge of the internet and still wore a beeper, carried cash and had no friends on Facebook.

Hello

2012-01-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

I like this:

Hello from ant1mat3rie on Vimeo.

2012-01-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

I walked down the hallway this morning, guiding Sophie to the front door and out, her feet splayed toes touching the walls, and when we got too near one of them I reached up to right a tilted photo hanging there and noticed that nearly every photo was tilted ever so slightly this way and that and when Sophie's head veered toward the right as it is wont to do I wondered whether the universe had turned or tilted on its axis and the frames hadn't followed suit.

Small Stone 18

Parsley

2012-01-17T18:00:00.000-08:00

I wish that parsley fresh plucked from a kitchen garden and placed in a blue vase would take me to the Italian countryside. But when I pinch a leaf and roll it between my fingers, the whiff of green and bits that stain is just parsley.

Small Stone 17

Here's a big old door, some shit and a fly

2012-01-17T11:45:00.000-08:00

Dutch art nouveau drawing, 1901

I've been making comments over at Huffpost in response to a recent article about the child who was denied a kidney transplant based on "mental retardation." You can read more about that here on my blog, but I won't post a link to the Huffpost chain because it's so maddening, and I don't feel like going over there and getting any more involved.

What I do want to show you, though, is one person's reply to one of my comments.

Her comment:

Assuming the family can cover the costs and are a match, yes they should be allowed to donate to their daughter, although I'm not convinced that it would be in her best interest as far as quality of life and being able to understand what and why the procedure is being done to her. It's possible she may be put through more suffering, not less by being given a transplant.

As far as the broader discussion about rules relating to transplant recipient registries, I couldn't agree with you more. It's not first come, first serve; in a world with a shortage of organs, comparative health and quality of life must be taken into consideration, and that does include mental capacity. One of my very dear friends lost her 13-year-old daughter, while she was awaiting a double lung transplant. Frankly, I would be heartbroken if I were to learn that lungs Jena could have received were given to someone with significantly less of an ability to live life or with a degenerative condition like this.

My response (because I'm like a fly drawn to shit):

Your comments are exactly the reason why families with children with special healthcare needs often despair and grow angry. I would urge you to read some of the material written by those who do have children with disabilities and by adults who are disabled. You need to educate yourself about issues like "quality of life" and "an ability to live life" before you make such statements. Robert Rummel Hudson's article "Quality" would be a good place to start.http://supportforspecialneeds.com/2012/01/16/quality/

Her reply:

My goodness, when I say "quality of life," I'm not referencing the ability to ice skate or not, or even the ability to hold down a job, let alone something as trivial as looks, as is referenced in first link you shared (which incorrectly lists Amelia's age, by the way). That's one slippery slope argument that is just downright silly.

When I'm referencing quality of life, I'm talking about the individual's overall well-being as a function of pain and symptom management, spiritual, social, psychological, and emotional well being. It is very possible that receiving a transplant could further diminish Amelia's quality and even length of life. Sometimes the kindest thing is doing nothing at all, as people often chose to do for terminally ill family members

Further, there is a distinct difference between a "human" and a "person," a distinction which may or may not be relevant here, but certainly is relevant in discussion of the right of significantly mentally disabled or incapacitated humans (like those in commas) to receive care, and the moral duty of others to provide it. Philosopher Mary Anne Warren provides one of the most cited criteria for personhood, or humanity in the moral sense:

1. Consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain;
2. Reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems);
3. Self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control);
4. The capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics;
5. The presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both. source

These traits combined comprises a "full" person, but Warren doesn't believe that all attributes must be present to consider someone a person in some sense. "(1) and (2) alone may well be sufficient for personhood," she claims, and neither does she insist that any one of the criteria is necessary, although she seems to believe that reasoning is both a necessary and sufficient condition for personhood.

If we had infinite organs and resources to provide transplants for those organs, then yes all human should have them. However, we don't live in that world, and that does mean that persons have more of a right to an organ transplant than do non-person humans.

http://www.amber-hinds.com

My goodness, did you hear the sound of that door, slamming? I'm looking through the peephole, now. Is that you, Single Dad? Help! Is that you Lisa? Help! Is that you, Claire? Help!

I've been busy slamming them

2012-01-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

photo via artsytime

Bless those who challenge us

for they remind us of doors we have closed

and doors we have yet to open.

Native American prayer

The sound of the springs

2012-01-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

The sound of the springs on the new trampoline rise above even the screams. I don't like jumping, my stomach flies up, I lose the sense that my arms are connected to my shoulders, proprioception gone backward, and when the world appears at the top of the safety net it feels like only an edge. I prefer the ground going down deep and forever.

Small Stone 16

This is my MLK post

2012-01-16T09:15:00.000-08:00

I, too, have a dream.

I have a grand dream about persons with disabilities, persons like my daughter Sophie and the many children and adults that I have met here and in person, being fully accepted and included in all aspects of our culture, with all the rights and dignities accorded to all humans from birth until death.

That's my simple dream.

My more complicated dream is that my daughter Sophie will stop having seizures and live a long and happy life.

video via my friend LP

The Hum

2012-01-15T17:34:00.000-08:00

Sophie, March 2006

Paying attention, it would crack me into a million pieces. Just for a moment, though, it hurts my lips, numbs my throat, catches my breath. Does she hum to shut out or to invite in? Raise a joyful noise unto the Lord runs through my head but there is no joy in the steady hum through years and years. Try it sometime, the vibration that makes one think of skull not head, a grate not tune, the constant reminder of I am here and I am not.

Small Stone 15

Shower Caps

2012-01-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

This is the back of Oliver's sweet neck. He got a haircut yesterday at the salon where I go. He grinned the entire time and asked Andie to put gel in his hair and make it spiky. Last night, when I insisted he take a shower, he asked whether he could put on a plastic shower cap so that the spikes would stay. I told him that we didn't have any shower caps and then he reminded me that I had bought these weird plastic covers for leftovers and that I called them shower caps. So he went to the kitchen and put on this "shower cap," all the time chattering about it and laughing and asking me to look at him and then he got into the shower and since our house is so small, I could hear the water hitting the shower cap and splattering off of it and this went on for quite some time until he got out of the shower and came into my bedroom with a towel wrapped around him and the shower cap still on his head. He took it off carefully and felt his hair even more carefully and then exclaimed Cool! It's still dry, Mom! And he was still smiling and so light and buoyant I believe he might have sailed up and out of the room or even the back door and into the night.

Love Letter

2012-01-14T20:05:00.000-08:00

Lackawanna Steel Plant Complex, 1908

Elizabeth, Could I sing you a song if it was unpracticed. Could my heart weave its strands? The paper is thin, the shadow of my hand behind it, the letters pecked, back space and typed over in some previous lifetime, a woman by the well fetching water and not in the least concerned that it was a brutish day. Folded, unfolded, thirty years ago, the creases cut through words indolent and stupid licking its greasy ear the fear of industry the fear of the moral life the fear that all the dalliances were just that and placed at the end of the small spiral notebook that was closed and we both vanished for a moment from each others' sights which we thought took so long yet back again we were.

Small Stone 14

Let's Talk Some More - Part 2

2012-01-14T06:59:00.000-08:00

Defendants, Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, 1945

1. Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedge-in lever from which that entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the nonrehabilitable sick.

-- Leo Alexander, American psychiatrist, neurologist and key medical advisor at The Nuremberg Trials. Dr. Alexander wrote part of the Nuremberg Code which provides legal and ethical principles for scientific experiments on humans.

2. Ontology, the study of the
being, holds that life is a supreme good that cannot be
measured and consequently cannot be graded. On the opposite,
health can be assessed and graded. Physicians are
constantly establishing whether the health of their patient
is improving or declining. However, the value of human life
cannot be measured, and is not determined by the quality
of an individual’s life at a particular time point (23).

-- from a paper titled Transplantation and Mental Retardation: What is the Meaning of a Discrimination

3. UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Article 25 - Health: States Parties recognize that persons with disabilities have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health without discrimination on the basis of disability. Article 10- Right to Life: States Parties reaffirm that every human being has the inherent right to life and shall take all necessary measures to ensure its effective enjoyment by persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others.

United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2007

If you're interested in helping out Amelia, sign the petition at Change.org HERE.

Let's Talk - Part One

Let's Talk

2012-01-13T17:13:00.000-08:00

about this.

Now, pour yourself a drink, a stiff one.

Your comments, please.

Let's Talk - Part Two

Glasses instead of Contacts

2012-01-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

My eyes ache at the sharpness of the word on the page, the face coming toward me, the sign up ahead. There's a hollow behind the burning eyelid that looks only inward. When they fall down the soft slope of my nose and I look over them, I rest in blur.

Small Stone 13

Small Stone Memory

2012-01-12T16:52:00.000-08:00

scene from Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire

We met at someone's house on Lake Placid later that summer, you from Canada and me from Rhode Island. Lying in someone else's big bed, you noticed that my thighs were slightly bigger. You're generally too scrawny, you said, I like it this way. I held onto the spindles, scratched a mosquito bite, made a cross with my nail to stop the itch.

Small Stone 12

This is not about politics.

2012-01-12T10:01:00.000-08:00

one of my favorite cartoons, via The New Yorker

Last night, I couldn't make it down the hallway when Sophie started seizing at the dinner table. It was almost a mental lassitude that made me stop halfway and place her on the floor. The hallway is narrow, and when Henry ran to get a pillow from the sofa for under her head, I knelt beside her and grabbed her hand as it hit the wall. Oliver stood in the doorway with an expression that I would call the expression a ten year old child has when he's used to watching his older sister seize during dinner since she has done so his entire life. We were eating chicken and green chili tamales, pinto beans and tomatillo salsa. They were excellent, and everyone was happy. There were even enough to have in lunchboxes the next day, a welcome deviance from the usual turkey and cheese, peanut butter and jelly. Oliver stood in the doorway and said How come we can't just have a normal dinner? How come all my friends get to have normal dinners? This doesn't happen at Nick's house. We just eat our dinner and nothing happens. I nodded my head and agreed. Sophie's seizure stopped and she sat up, seemingly impervious. We went back in the kitchen, sat down and finished our tamales.

Bless Their Hearts

2012-01-11T16:35:00.000-08:00

photo: Charles Dharapak

The man is dull to me. He might as well be a corporation in bodily form. Corporation: A company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity (legally a person) and recognized as such in law. In bodily form, corporeal. The photo is, at first glance, dull, too, but if I pay attention and really look, I see the man, his hair so like hair, embrace his wife, so like his wife. I see the backs of the heads of five sons, FIVE SONS! and I don't know what archetype that might be -- FIVE SONS! hair so like hair, dullness in corporeal form.

Small Stone 11

The Beast in the Backyard

2012-01-10T20:51:00.000-08:00

Take it, take it, take it now, he said, jumping, grinning, a blur.
The beast in the backyard didn't slouch toward us
but stood tall
and round
and high
You only have one childhood, she said.

Small Stone 10

I was raised a Roman Catholic,

2012-01-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

via flickrhivemind

but every year that goes by, every day perhaps, I grow further and further away from those roots. Today I read that the Pope of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, has declared to nearly 180 diplomats from various countries that pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman, and then this is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself. As you might guess, this was the Pope's statement against gay marriage.

Gay marriage is a threat to humanity itself, he said.

I want to type that again for all of us Catholics, perhaps in a bigger type.

Gay marriage is a threat to humanity itself.

Here's my question -- and this is directed at those of you who still call yourself Catholic -- how do you not struggle being a part of a Church whose leader makes statements like these, a Church whose official dogma condemns a significant number of people to a position other than human? I have heard all the explanations of reveling in the beautiful traditions of the Catholic faith, of the spirituality that lies at the core, of the profound communities that center around the faith. I recognize and respect those explanations but really, really wonder if that's enough. I don't think it is enough. Of course, if you truly believe that homosexuality sets a person apart from the rest of humanity and that the very existence of the homosexual is a threat to humanity itself, then I understand but don't necessarily respect your position as Catholic. You clearly don't need to answer my question.

But if you struggle with this or have reached a place of peace and acceptance about this, please let me know.

I am no longer a Roman Catholic, and I struggle to understand how anyone who believes in the sanctity of humanity, in love, in the primacy of the divine in all of us would remain one.

Musing on a recent blogger quarrel --

2012-01-09T16:00:00.000-08:00

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene II

Small Stone 9

Let me refer you to

2012-01-09T10:55:00.000-08:00

via Moon to Moon

a wild, cosmic photo posted every day by NASA:

something to eat while you're watching Season 2 of Downton Abbey

something that might make you throw up a little but perhaps also be re-activated to do something

something to make you feel better:

the two back to back articles in the January 2nd New Yorker (disregard the hideous cartoon of Newt on the front in diapers or even rip the cover off) titled The Jersey Game by Ben McGrath and No Remorse by Rachel Aviv. The first is about a high school football team in New Jersey, and while I despise football, I couldn't put this down. The second is a powerful article about a young teenager who shot his grandfather, was tried as an adult and given life in prison.

the fourth season of Breaking Bad, which I caved and bought the other day for $20.00 because I couldn't wait for it to be free on Netflix. I stayed up until 2:45 am watching it, and I have ONE MORE EPISODE TO GO.

my The Marriage Plot audiobook giveaway, ending TODAY AT 6:00 Pacific Time

Your long hair

2012-01-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

This is the view at the curve of your street and when I jumped out of the car and snapped it, I wondered if you noticed it at all having lived here for so long. In the same moment I knew that you did having just exclaimed over a raspberry red fruit hanging low from a tree. You reached up and plucked it off, gave me a taste and then I exclaimed over your long brown hair.

Small Stone 8

What southern Californians do on January weekends

2012-01-08T14:31:00.000-08:00

Eat home-made Three Kings Cake

(the tradition is to bake a challah-like egg bread and put a small king's crown into one of the side rolls. The person who pulls it off and finds the crown is the King for the day. We used a Lego helmet)

Put Up Trampolines Under Orange-Laden Trees

Swing under Tangerine-Laden Tree

Watch Squirrels Demolish Oranges

Idling

2012-01-07T16:30:00.000-08:00

I can hear the rumble through glass, legs covered in black leather, seam-splitting sides. Even in traffic, idling, that time we almost got caught in the park, the thin skin of my inner thigh burning, your fault.

Small Stone 7

Two Winter Poems

2012-01-07T08:57:00.000-08:00

The Snowshoe Hare

The fox

is so quiet --

he moves like a red rain --

even when his

shoulders tense and then

snuggle down for an instant

against the ground

and the perfect

gate of his teeth

slams shut

there is nothing

you can hear

but the cold creek moving

over the dark pebbles

and across the field

and into the rest of the world --

and even when you find

in the morning

the feathery

scuffs of fur

of the vanished

snowshoe hare

tangled

on the pale spires

of the lost summer -

fluttering a little

but only

like the lapping

threads

of the wind itself -

there is still

nothing that you can hear

but the cold creek moving

over the old pebbles

and across the field and into

another year.

Mary Oliver, 1992

via The Writer's Almanac

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens, 1954

Epiphany

2012-01-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

Chink chink chink. I am sitting in the alley, car idling and reading a snippet of Stevens as a janitor carefully taps the glass of an old window. Complacencies of the peignoir from Saturday Morning, quoted by another, through glass I watch the man break glass. When the cars start up, I turn on the engine, the sound of flapping wings, dappled sun on bougainvillea, dead branches on cement, blue sky.

Small Stone 6

The Marriage Plot, finished, and a Giveaway

2012-01-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

So, I wrote about Jeffrey Eugenides' new novel The Marriage Plot, here. I was excited at first because I love his writing and had so looked forward to the book; the story of an English major at a university in the early eighties, in love with a genius man -- well, it resonated with me in more than one way. In any case, I liked the early chapters and then slowly got bored. The middle of the book was a slog, and that was when I wrote about it. I was advised to drop it by some -- there's no time for the slog, I thought, but I did continue, and I have to admit that it picked up considerably toward the end. Not enough for me to say that this is a great book, but it certainly turned out to be a decent read, and I even felt moved at the way things turned out.

Weirdly enough, a publicist from Macmillan Audio contacted me just the other day and asked whether I'd like to include a clip of the audio version of the book on my blog, alongside the review. She even offered a free audiobook to one of my loyal readers!

So, dear Loyal Readers! Listen to this clip and leave a comment here telling me whether you've read the book or not and whether you'd like to listen to the book or not. I will pick a winner randomly on Monday, January 9th.

Here's the CLIP

Cosmic Swirls

2012-01-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

Galactic Spiral

via PostHumanBlues

Henry walked up to me this morning after he opened a new tube of toothpaste with the cap in his hand and said, Look at this, mom. I looked in the palm of his hand, just inside the white cap the tiniest swirl of pink and white that wound around and ended with a perfect tip. It's cool, right? he said, awed by the perfection and I, awed by the sense, the time, the mind to note it.

Small Stone 5

The Mermaid

2012-01-05T08:49:00.000-08:00

I drove Sophie to the beach yesterday, partly out of guilt because I haven't done so in months, and partly due to the extraordinary weather we've been having in southern California. Really spectacular days, people -- the kind where I wish that I were a surfer, a lag-about, a stoner, a -- well, never mind.

Here are some photos (I put my sunglasses on her for a moment to see if she noticed, and she did) -- Sophie, as usual, felt the pull of the ocean, her apparent home. It's difficult to walk with her, so strong is the pull toward the water, and when we did, she didn't seem to even feel how frigid the water was on our feet, the whoosh of it sparkling over and over.

And here's a poem from a book called The Fifty Minute Mermaid by the Irish poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and translated by Paul Muldoon:

The Mermaid in the Hospital

She awoke
to find her fishtail
clean gone
but in the bed with her
were two long, cold thingammies.
You'd have though they were tangles of kelp
or collops of ham.

'They're no doubt
taking the piss,
it being New Year's Eve.
Half the staff legless
with drink
and the other half
playing pranks.
Still, this is taking it
a bit far.'
And with that she hurled
the two thingammies out of the room.

But here's the thing
she still doesn't get -
why she tumbled out after them
arse-over tip...
How she was connected
to those two thingammies
and how they were connected
to her.

It was the sister who gave her the wink
and let her know what was what.
'You have one leg attached to you there
and another one underneath that.
One leg, two legs...
A-one and a-two...
Now you have to learn
what they can do.'

In the long months
that followed
I wonder if her heart fell
the way her arches fell
her instep arches.

You Never Sit in the Front Seat

2012-01-04T18:10:00.000-08:00

You never sit in the front seat because you like to throw your head to the right, and you'd bang it, over and over. But today, you rode in the front, and the world turned around. You saw the sky and the trees with their last, dripping leaves, and when I came out of the bank, you followed me and smiled.

Small Stone 4

Oliver through the Moon Roof, A Series

2012-01-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

Allowance

2012-01-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

I spoon black-eyed peas of the new year into Sophie's mouth outside under the sun, and while she is perhaps too old, too big for spooning, the yin/yang curve of the bean allows me to hear a leaf drop next to her.

Small Stone 3

Optimism

2012-01-03T08:53:00.000-08:00

Here's a joke that never fails to make me laugh. I first heard it from my best and oldest friend. Thank you, dear Moye.

Two twins were identical in every way physically, but there was one major difference -- one was an optimist; the other a pessimist. For one the glass was always half full, for the other half empty. If the temperature was just right for the one, it was just wrong for the other. One found every day beautiful, the other oppressive. Clothes fit “perfectly” on one, too tight or too loose on the other.
On the girls’ birthday one year, the father of the twins decided to try an experiment. While his daughters were at school, he filled the room of the pessimist with toys and games, and filled the optimist’s room with horse manure. When the girls came home, they went to their respective rooms and found their “birthday presents.” After a few minutes, the father stopped in to visit each. He found the pessimist sulking amid the heap of toys and games. “What’s wrong?,” he asked. “There are so many directions, so many pieces to assemble, and so much trash to throw away” she moaned. “And all my friends are going to hate me with jealousy.” When he went to the optimist’s room, he found his daughter happily digging and kicking her way through the manure. “Why do you look so happy?” he asked. She answered, “There’s got to be a pony around here somewhere!"

What's left

2012-01-02T17:32:00.000-08:00

The leaves were raked up not down, Jesus Christ you said, too early and angry I thought, too dry, too old, what's left.

Small Stone 2

The River of Stones

2012-01-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

Yosemite, 2009

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite

William Blake

To begin this new year, I am joining A River of Stones for the month of January. Each day I will post my own small stone, a very short piece of writing that precisely captures a fully engaged moment.

January 1 - Small Stone

From the corner chair this morning, the light streamed through glass, the back of the chair and down the table, illuminating porcelain, the curve of his cheek.

Have One

2011-12-31T17:34:00.000-08:00

I hope the last day of the year is a perfect one for you. I have no resolutions or wise words to offer, only gratitude for your community.

Perfect Day

Just a Perfect Day,

Drink Sangria in the Park,

And then later, when it gets dark,

We go home.

Just a perfect day,

Feed animals in the zoo

Then later, a movie, too,

And then home.

Oh, it's such a perfect day,

I'm glad I spent it with you.

Oh such a perfect day,

You just keep me hanging on,

You just keep me hanging on.

Just a perfect day,

Problems left all alone

Weekenders on our own.

It's such fun.

Just a perfect day

You made me forget myself.

I thought I was someone else,

Someone good.

Oh, it's such a perfect day

I'm glad I spent it with you

Oh such a perfect day

You just keep me hanging on,

You just keep me hanging on.

You're going to reap just what you sow.

You're going to reap just what you sow,

You're going to reap just what you sow.

-- Lou Reed

God forbid

2011-12-30T20:54:00.001-08:00

The Mother should ask The Brothers to emerge from the Video Playing Den and vacuum the living room floor. One boy was jabbed by the vacuum by accident so he screamed in "pain," only to have the other boy laugh aloud instead of apologizing. Adele wailed in the background, over the vacuum and the crying and yelling, so The Mother had to raise her voice to even higher decibels and inform The Brothers that they were acting like jerks to each other and spoiled brats to The Mother. The Mother's voice crescendoed and then stopped. She took The Silent Girl out of her wheelchair and walked out the front door. Her neighbor, Tom The Father of Four Children, was across the street, and when The Mother asked him whether he had heard her screaming at The Brothers, he nodded and said I was cheering you on.

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails

2011-12-29T19:59:00.000-08:00

Are you starting to think that I'm being driven to drink as my post yesterday and now, today, is about alcohol? A few comments yesterday expressed concern; I believe there were even subtle suggestions that alcohol isn't the answer.

I want to allay your fears. I'd make the point that I've never been a drinker and can't imagine becoming an alcoholic at the age of 48. I guess you never know, but like I explained yesterday, drinking doesn't make me do anything other than feel sleepy, and I don't really enjoy the sleepy feeling. I'd also add that I'm a very social person, and when I drink I become increasingly not-so-social (again, the sleepiness) and would rather disappear -- to bed, preferably. Alone.

So. If you're new to the blog (and I have gotten some new readers who are very welcome!), you might also think that The Husband has a Mistress. I have gotten comments expressing wonder, astonishment and even admiration that my tolerance is such that I can joke about The Mistress. I'll allay your fears here as well. The Mistress is my husband's Job. He is a chef and literally works 12-20 hours a day six days and sometimes seven days a week. The Mistress is demanding and The Husband has little to any sway over those demands.

So, we've cleared those things up.

What about the title of this post? It's the title of a book that my son Henry gave me for Christmas. It's very cool, and he was very proud that he got it for me from my favorite bookstore, helped by my favorite bookstore maven, Liz. Here's a little excerpt from the book:

Cocktails were morning drinks. Drinking in the morning often means getting over what you were drinking last night, and that kind of behavior is what they used to call dissipated. If that wasn't sufficiently nefarious, cocktails contained bitters. Bitters may sound benign to modern ears, but at the dawn of the nineteenth century, they were medicine. Adding them to cocktails was the equivalent of dousing one's beer with Nyquil. No one knows for sure how the cocktail got its name, but I am certain it was because these were your wake-up call -- like a rooster heralding the early morning light. And the plumage? Those spicy bitters... If you drank a cocktail, you were a little dangerous, and therein lay the seeds of its fame.

I have to admit that I love both of these words, both as descriptors and for themselves:

dissipated and bitters.

Since I've talked about alcoholism and mistresses, dissipation, bitters and my own tolerance for all of them, including a bit of Tolstoy love yesterday, I think I'll also include a recipe from the book for a drink that might really rock your world. Here it is:

Shake the following otherwise bourgeois ingredients in a cocktail shaker, and strain into a cocktail glass:

1 ounce gin
1 ounce orange juice
1/2 ounce cherry brandy (Cherry Heering is recommended)
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice

What about the photo at the top of the post? Well, that's my paternal grandfather, an Italian immigrant who owned a bar and grill in Harlem. That photo is one of my favorites and causes the most ruckus when I ask the viewer to pick out my grandfather in the bunch. While you might be tempted to think otherwise, there is no alcoholism that I know of in my family.

Drinking and Anna Karenina

2011-12-28T11:04:00.000-08:00

Tolstoy

I've been drinking more lately. I'm one of those people who has never been a drinker, despite the pleadings of some of my friends who insist that drinking a glass of wine a night would be good for me. When I took them up on the recommendation, I wanted to go to sleep at around 9:00 and therefore discovered the secret to why I am able to write and read into the wee hours of the morning, as opposed to my more "exhausted" friends. The other day, I bought a bottle of Kahlua at Trader Joe's because I remembered how good it tastes, but I haven't opened it up yet. Two nights ago, I had a pomegranate mojito before dinner, a glass of sauvignon blanc with my moules frites and a shot of vodka at my friend's house after dinner. Last night, I had a glass of wine with my dinner and contemplated a Blue Moon when I got home. I saw a movie, too, last night -- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I remember reading the book in my late teens when I was totally into Robert Ludlum and John Le Carre spy novels. I don't remember being confused when I read the novels, but last night I was completely befuddled by the movie and so was my really smart friend Shannon. We laughed about it over our wine and dinner, and I even looked up a plot summary online afterward.

Oh! Now I understand!

I'm reading Jeffrey Eugenides' book The Marriage Plot, and while I was so excited to open and read it, I'm now in that exasperated slog phase when I should just give up and put it down, bored to tears, but I feel obligated to finish it. This seems to be happening more and more lately -- I feel like I haven't read a novel in years that I connect to with joy and wonder. The last really great book I read was the memoir The Boy in the Moon. A fellow bookworm told me that I should re-read Anna Karenina, so that's what I'm going to do.

Remember the famous opening lines?

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Who is writing like this anymore?

Would it be too much to add a shot of Kahlua to my morning coffee? Or should I start reading Tolstoy with a shot of frozen vodka?

Mild with a tad of rue

2011-12-27T14:32:00.000-08:00

The bathroom's favorite time of day

I wondered this morning how early is too early to whisk away the Christmas things, freshen things up, tidy things up, as my Dad still says. Yesterday, I averted my eyes whenever I passed through the living room and went out the front door -- both because I can't stand the mess but also because I didn't want to chastise anyone for it. I thought I'd hold the boys' dirty clothes as ransom for cleaning up -- I'm not going to do any washing until the place is tidied up, I thought I'd say. When I spooned egg into Sophie's mouth this morning and she jerked in what seemed like the millionth small seizure of the morning, I left the egg on the floor in what we call a small test of change in the quality improvement arena (one of the jobs I juggle in healthcare). Will it drive me crazy, unduly so? Will the dog pick it up? Will the tween and the teen bend down and pick it up when they walk into the kitchen after rolling out of bed at 11:00 am? My intent is not to sound or even feel bitter -- in fact, I feel mild. Mild with a tad of rue.

Here's a poem:

Nocturne of the Poet Who Loved the Moon

I have grown tired of the moon, tired of its look of astonish-
ment, the blue ice of its gaze, its arrivals and departures, of
the way it gathers lovers and loners under its invisible wings,
failing to distinguish between them. I have grown tired of
so much that used to entrance me, tired of watching cloud
shadows pass over sunlit grass, of seeing swans glide back and
forth across the lake, of peering into the dark, hoping to find
an image of a self as yet unborn. Let plainness enter the eye,
plainness like the table on which nothing is set, like a table that
is not yet even a table.

-- Mark Strand, from Almost Invisible

It was a good Christmas,

2011-12-26T15:37:00.000-08:00

and there was much to wish were different, but there was also much to be grateful for. I walked slowly with Sophie right behind an old woman and saw the similarities in their steps, their fragility and labour, but Sophie's curls lay softly on her shoulders where they had been so beautifully arranged by Mirtha an hour before. The Husband spent all of Christmas Eve with The Mistress, but my children were with me, oblivious to anything but excitement and anticipation. Sophie had a huge seizure as we walked out of the doorway of my friend's house, and she lay on the floor jerking with me kneeling beside her, but two knights in shining armor picked her up and carried her, gently, to the car. It's a Wonderful Life seemed a little too long for the boys and a little darker than it ever had before to me, but it was interrupted by a group of carolers, neighbors whose voices rose in the air clear and harmonized. The morning came much too early, but there was much joy as presents were unwrapped and coffee was sipped, chocolates from stocking consumed before breakfast. It's the day after, now, the house is a mess, the candles melted down to clumps of wax, and leftovers crowd the refrigerator, but the sky outside is clear blue, twisted branches with clinging yellow leaves and what seems like a hundred tiny birds in the pots outside my bedroom, sitting among the lemons.

Merry Christmas to All of You!

2011-12-25T17:35:00.000-08:00

A thrill of hope,

The weary soul rejoicing!

Christmas Eve...The Rest of It

2011-12-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

Chocolate Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Buttercream

Paris-Brest

Paris-Brest and Wreaths

These Three Kings

From Orient Are

What Christmas Eve Looks Like So Far

2011-12-24T09:44:00.000-08:00

Caramel Sauce with Sea Salt

Peppermint Hot Fudge Sauce

Pecan Puffs Recipe from old Joy of Cooking

Still Life with Clutter

Christmas Tree

Village Under Christmas Tree

Outdoor Vintage Santa, sort of creepy but classic

Our Front Door

Silly Hat with Saint

Saint

Blurry Saint,

but it made me realize how people assign Jesus and the Virgin Mary to a slice of toast and such

Excessive Video Game Playing

Choux Pastry for Paris-Brest Order

Toe-Soak in Epsom Salts

Sunshine Girl in Purple Boudoir

Carol of the Day - Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

I went to high school in Atlanta, Georgia and sang alto in the school's choir. Every year at Christmas, the choir participated in the traditional Episcopal Lessons and Carols service. I loved this service, particularly the beginning when a soprano stood at the back of the darkened chapel and sang the first verse of Once in Royal David's City. The choir joined in soon after and then proceeded into the chapel with candles. It was so beautiful and still gives me chills.

What my kids aren't too old to hear:

2011-12-23T11:19:00.000-08:00

I see you when you're sleeping.
I know when you're awake.
I know when you've been bad or good
So be good, for goodness sake.

Carol of the Day

2011-12-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

Weird video, great song --

I've been honored

2011-12-22T19:38:00.000-08:00

over at my friend Gretchen's blog Second Blooming. I'm a tad embarrassed, but not enough to not direct you over to Gretchen, because she's a terrific blogger and writer -- warm and funny and full of southern charm and awesome family stories. There are not too many people who will praise me and then call me to task on my more -- ahem -- colorful characteristics, but Gretchen has done it very well.

Now I'm off to sharpen my tongue.

Carol of the Day

2011-12-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

This so reminds me of my childhood -- my mom and dad -- the piles of Christmas presents under our tree, my Christmas long dress, the parties my parents had, taking the guests' coats and bringing them to my parents' room, jumping on the piles of furs with my sister. My father worked through much of Christmas -- he was a retailer for a very high-end department store -- but he was always home on Christmas day, and he'd play Perry Como and Andy Williams, all the songs that now pipe out of elevators and into malls over and over but they weren't cheap then. I'm so grateful for these memories --

Solstice

2011-12-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

Toward the Winter Solstice

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;   
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.

And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.

Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

-- Timothy Steele

Raindrops like Stars

2011-12-21T08:28:00.000-08:00

I sat here this morning as the light fell in slanted and shadowed with a cup of coffee and silence. Everyone else was sleeping. I pulled a book off the shelf and started reading it -- a book that someone sent me long ago that I would say falls into the Christian literature genre -- maybe even Christian self-help. It's by Rob Bell and called Drops Like Stars. I had shelved the book when I got it, after a quick and cursory look-through, lots of pain and suffering, the man on the cross, the agony, etc. Lots of inspiration. But this morning, I opened it halfway through and started reading it, only a few words on a page.

So in the end of every major disaster, every tiny error,every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat and tears -- everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me. (the character Harriet March, a sculptor in a novel by Susan Howatch)

My coffee steamed in my face as I read on, illuminated by chance.

Carol of the Day

2011-12-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

Swoon.

Snow in Los Angeles

2011-12-20T18:45:00.000-08:00

We don't get snow in Los Angeles, although last year Burbank saw some and both of my boys have undying hope that it'll happen here. You can see snow on a clear day, on the mountain tops that surround this palm-swayed city, and that's the way I like it. We always satisfy the snow-urge, at least for one night, by going to The Grove, a sort of Disneyland-esque outdoor mall down the street from our house that goes wild at Christmas. Mock us if you'd like, but when it snows at the Grove, it's awesome.

Carol of the Day

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

I know I'm stretching the word "carol" here -- and have done so a few other times, but this song is one of my favorite Christmas tunes. It makes me think of my other life -- the one where I lived in Tennessee in an old church with a boy who wrote novels in a room with carpeted walls, smelled Laotian food through cinder block walls, got up in the morning, wore hose and pumps to work and then came home and watched Star Trek reruns and ate spinach out of a can with a bit of melted cheese. Sounds like a stretch -- but it was good times. Wait awhile, eternity, old mother nature's got nothin' on me, come to me, come to me now, we're rolling, my sweetheart, we're flowing, by god!

Down the street and around the corner - an Update

2011-12-19T20:38:00.000-08:00

corner of La Brea and 4th, Los Angeles

This huge Vladimir Lenin popped up overnight this past weekend at La Brea and Fourth St., outside a building owned by Ace Gallery (a Banksy appeared on and was removed from a wall there in 2010). The piece is "Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin's Head" by the Chinese artist brothers Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang and it caused an uproar at the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale in late 2009. Blog Fairfax By Night first spotted the sculpture and explains "With a vivid chrome finish, the metal sculpture is constructed from horizontal sections that were purposefully staggered...As such a well known person, the artists' decision to give his face a chrome finish takes the focus away from Lenin, and to the sculpture's context by allowing the reflections to highlight the immediate surroundings instead of Lenin..." In this case, of course, that's a slightly blighty intersection on a drive-through section of La Brea.

Mothering, Disability and Race

2011-12-19T11:00:00.000-08:00

Lisa sent me the link to this video this morning, and I urge those of you interested to watch the whole thing. It's about mothering, race, disability and where and how they intersect. It's funny and moving and sobering.

Carol of the Day

2011-12-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

Oh, Otis, Otis, Otis -- you make me think about an old boyfriend and trying a little tenderness even when you sing Christmas songs --

The serious sort

2011-12-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

Christmas morning, 1964? 1965?

Holiday Baking, Part 1

2011-12-18T09:39:00.000-08:00

Carol of the Day

2011-12-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

Consolation in lieu of Resentment

2011-12-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

Several times a year, when vacation times roll around, I post the following poem by Billy Collins in lieu of serving up a giant platter of resentment. As friends and family pack their bags for Cabo, Texas, New York City, skiing in Whistler, the sands of Fiji and Veranasi, India, I recite these words and head off to a day of lacrosse scrimmages in Mar Vista. And thanks to the ineffable beauty of poetry with humor thrown in, I am consoled.

Consolation

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

In stead of slouching in a cafe, ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.

It is enough to climb back into the car
as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.

-- Billy Collins

A Break from Carol of the Day

2011-12-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

My Brightest Diamond | I Have Never Loved Someone | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

I have never loved someone the way I love you
I have never seen a smile like yours
And if you grow to be a king or clown or pauper
I will say you are my favorite one in town

I have never held a hand so soft and sacred
When I hear your laugh I know heaven’s key
And when I grow to be a poppy in the graveyard
I will send you all my love upon the breeze

And if the breeze won’t blow your way, I will be the sun
And if the sun won’t shine your way, I will be the rain
And if the rain won’t wash away all your aches and pains
I will find some other way to tell you you’re okay

-- My Brightest Diamond

via OnBeing

Holiday Concerts, Mariah Carey, Flourishes, Morality and Handicapped Placards

2011-12-16T13:16:00.000-08:00

So, last night I attended Henry's winter wonderland music concert. The performances were outstanding, and the musical talent at our little charter middle school is so great as to make one's mouth hang open in admiration. Henry, though, is not a boy of musical talent or even persuasion. He only "performed" as part of the chorus, and that was mandatory. What I didn't know is that a quartet of provocative and seriously talented chanteuses in the seventh grade had enticed him into a small role in their performance of "All I Want for Christmas is You."
Remember that song?

Help me Rhonda for posting a Mariah Carey video -- not my favorite (let's just say you won't see this video posted as a Carol of the Day, either), but it goes with the story, so humor me. And Mariah.

Anyhoo. Guess who the YOU was in the song?

Henry, my very handsome, effortlessly self-possessed and sweet boy, gave the singing chanteuse a little swagger (as part of the act) when she reached out her operatic arms toward him in the final line and walked off the stage. Everyone chuckled in the audience and then clapped wildly at the talent of the girls' voices -- which were amazing. I have to say that it's both thrilling and bewildering to have this beautiful son who, apparently, is a bit of a chick magnet and is also at ease with being one -- so at ease that he can perform in a musical performance without opening his mouth to sing. As one of my friends noted, Henry was the exploited and objectified male beefcake in the performance. It's thrilling and bewildering because in the seventh grade I was outrageously awkward -- let's say even ugly. I was painfully skinny (those were the days), wore big metal braces on my teeth and goggle glasses with rose-tinted lenses. My hair was short and curling-ironed into hideous "wings" that made me look more like Chachi from Happy Days than Farrah Fawcett. I was a brainy, non-athletic, Carpenters and John Denver-loving geek. And as those of you who know, this is something that one never forgets or gets over. So, when I look at Henry I feel at once thrilled and bewildered. Where did he come from? Who made this kid? Certainly not me or my efforts!

Anywho. On to the next concert, which was Oliver's, this morning.

We had a rough morning here -- the usual and the not so usual. I was alone with all three kiddos and not at my best. I still can't really talk, so I can't yell, and everyone was running late and no one seemed appreciative of the fact that I'd made approximately twenty loaves of pumpkin chocolate chip bread and wrapped each one individually for teachers and aides and I'd also put hundreds of chocolate kisses into little cellophane bags for teachers and aides and therapists (O.K., I wasn't expecting Sophie to be appreciative); I'd toasted some bagels for breakfast and was marshaling lunches and so forth and then somewhere in the chaos, I fell apart (maybe it was when Oliver appeared twenty minutes after I'd woken him in an outfit that made him look like a homeless person). Reader, I broke down and croaked out my displeasure and then I cried.

I'll skip forward to dropping Sophie off at school and then racing to Oliver's school to make the concert on time and his performance. I circled and circled his school, looking for a parking spot. I drove through the school parking lot and gazed longingly at the handicapped space, empty. I told myself that no, I wouldn't exploit the placard and use it. I did this for fifteen minutes. I did not use the handicapped placard and eventually found a spot for my car and ran into the school yard.

I missed Oliver's performance.

Lest you believe me to be a highly moral person, I will tell you that in the melee of the elementary school winter wonderland concert, Oliver had no idea that I wasn't there. I asked his teacher what he'd done, and she told me that he recited something and had a nice flourish at the end. When I finally saw Oliver in the crowd, I leaned over and told him how proud I was of him, how well he had done, and how much I had enjoyed his flourish at the end.

Reader, I didn't use my handicapped placard but I lied to my son.

When I told my friend S this story this morning, herself the mother of a child with disabilities, she told me that if she had the placard and she was me she would be sunbathing on the roof of the car in that handicapped space with chocolate and wine in her hand.

I'm going to think about that for next time.

Carol of the Day

2011-12-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

Listen to this. It will surprise you.

Rejoice.

via my musicologist cousin, Chris

Fondue and Frogs

2011-12-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

We ate fondue from Trader Joe's last night (thank you, Jesus, for Trader Joe's!) with crusty bread and a green salad. I wish I could say the conversation was interesting, but it consisted of both boys telling some inane joke using the word sausage so many times in you can imagine gross ways, that I finally croaked out STOP! And I mean croaked, because my voice is completely gone. The webinar I moderated the other day took the last audible sound out of me, so now I croak. I'd say it sounds husky and sexy, but it doesn't. And I can't yell at my kids. I guess I'll have to start spanking them. :)

Here's a poem that my dear friend Tanya sent me the other day. It's a perfect one for the season:

In Dark December

~ Ralph Murre

Whatever you believe,
whatever you do not,
there are sacred rites
you must perform
in dark December.
Do this for me:
Pull together
the kitchen table,
the folding table,
and that odd half-oval
usually covered
with bills and broken pencils
and red ink.
Pull together family and friends,
cool cats and stray dogs alike.
Turn off everything
except colored lights,
the roaster,
the toaster, the stove.
Cook. Bake. Eat.
Yes, even the fruitcake.
Eat, crowded around
those assembled tables
with mismatched chairs.
Reach so far
in your sharing
that you hold the sun
in one hand,
the stars in the other,
and no one between is hungry.
Now walk together,
talk together,
be together
on these darkest nights.
Give and forgive.
Light candles and ring bells.
Sing the old songs.
Tell the old stories
one more time,
leaving nothing out,
leaving no one out
in the long night,
leaving nothing wrong
that you can make right.

I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life

2011-12-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

So said George Whitman, the owner of Shakespeare and Company, the famous Parisian English-language bookstore. Whitman died this week, at the age of 98. You can read his obituary here. I visited Shakespeare and Co. nearly thirty years ago and still remember it like a dream.

Thanks to T. Clear, I watched this fascinating video about Whitman and his bookstore -- if you're interested in literature and Paris and strange casts of characters, watch it -- the end is particularly wild.

Carol of the Day (for my dad, of course)

2011-12-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

I'm posting it again and saying it again: Mario Lanza makes me glad to be Italian.

(It might tell you to go to YouTube to listen -- click on it anyway and listen!)

The Perfect Poem as a Response to One of My Posts

2011-12-14T17:19:00.000-08:00

I posted about a typical day in the life the other day -- the kind of day that calls up my prodigious sense of balance but that also calls for my prodigiously sharp tongue. I wrote in teensy tinesy letters that certain sayings -- those well-meant but maddeningly cliched phrases -- do not help me to balance further. I think I also added that those who use them are either insane or brain-addled. And as things go, it was that teensy-tinesy sentence that provoked the most comments.

One of the responses included a poem forwarded by one of my very favorite blog friends, and while I'm a nerdy lover of George Herbert's poetry, I had never read this one. Mr. Herbert was a great metaphysical poet of the 17th century -- when I first read his poem The Collar in a college poetry class, I nearly swooned (had to use that word). You can read it at the end of this post from a couple of years ago.

The poem sent to me today is from Herbert's larger work The Temple. Sacred Poems, and private ejaculations, published in 1633. Reader, you couldn't ask for a more fantastic title for a book of poetry, could you?

How terrific is this alongside my vastly less eloquent and far more petulant ejaculations?

Bitter-sweet

AH my deare angrie Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.
   
I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve:
And all my sowre-sweet dayes
I will lament, and love.

Words to Live By

2011-12-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

Skyline, Normandie Avenue, Los Angeles on March 13th, 2011

If you have fear of pain and suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.

the Dalai Lama

Carol of the Day

2011-12-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

Is there anything better than those mouths open, faces lifted up to the snowing sky?

Carol of the Day

2011-12-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

I don't care how many times I've heard it. I still love this man's voice and this song.

It doesn't look like it, but that's me

2011-12-12T21:50:00.000-08:00

on the end. I'm good, right? A friend remarked that it's been a bit quiet around here on a moon, worn as if it had been a shell. Other than the carols I've posted daily and a few photos here and there, I haven't had much to say. But, as you can imagine, life goes on and it's a tad insane right now. From Friday to Monday, I made three cakes and four dozen cupcakes (each one decorated). I decorated the house and a Christmas tree; I spent time with my mother who was visiting from Atlanta; I finished up my slides for tomorrow's webinar on Epilepsy and Adolescence (have you registered? it's not too late!); I helped both sons with school projects and went to the grocery store about five times; I took Henry to his final baseball game on Sunday and sat through the pizza party afterward; I drove everyone to school because the carpool guy was sick; I went to acupuncture, thank God, and visited The Husband and The Mistress for lunch with my mother; I picked up one child and waited for the other to get off the bus and then picked up the third from his after-school post-season flag football party; I massaged olive oil into one son's head after reading online that the white patches and scabs were probably dermatitis seborrhea or something like that, and then I combed through the flakes and scabs and instructed him to go take a shower and wash it all out; I made Trader Joe's chicken chow mein for dinner (thank you Trader Joe's); lowered Sophie to the kitchen floor while she had a huge seizure and then picked her up and sat with her on the couch until she felt better. I baked some more cupcakes -- vanilla with vanilla frosting, white sparkly sprinkles and Hanukkah stars -- and cleaned up the kitchen, including mopping the floor. Oh, and I've still got a gruesome cold and sound as husky as a starlet -- tomorrow should be interesting. I think I did a fairly good job on nearly everything except eating properly, but if you peer at the photo above, you can see that I'm as fit as a fiddle, counting my blessings and acknowledging my hardships as the good Lord above would want me to. After all, you're never given what you can't handle, right? For those who don't know me and are perhaps visiting here for the first time, those last two cliches are my absolute least favorite and I'd go so far as to say that they're bullshit, and generally only uttered by people of immense privilege or addled brains.

Beds I Love

2011-12-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

Other than a bed in a hut that sits on a sandy beach in Bora Bora, I'd like to settle down into this bohemian one.

via Moon to Moon

Shhhhhhh. Don't wake me up.

Carol of the Day - Reggae

2011-12-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

Really, who can resist? My memory of Marley is a concert I went to in Atlanta, shortly before he died, I think. I was dating a very cool senior in high school who introduced me to all sorts of music and concerts in big venues. I remember Bob swinging his head around like a wild man. Merry Christmas, mon. Doobey, oobey.

Weekend Cake Number Three and a Good-looking Elf

2011-12-11T14:00:00.000-08:00

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Carol of the Day

2011-12-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

O.K. It's not exactly a carol, but it's got Christmas in it. And there's nothing like the sound of Chrissy Hynde's voice in the opening line.

Weekend Cake Number Two

2011-12-10T14:30:00.001-08:00

Winter Wonderland Red Velvet Cake

with Vanilla Frosting

Carol of the Day

2011-12-10T10:00:00.000-08:00

Ms. Moon, vocal disliker of all things Christmas, dared me to post this video for today's Carol of the Day. I admit that one of the Christmas carols that I actually despise is The Twelve Days of Christmas -- the piddly, repetitive melody and stupid words drive me nuts -- but my heart warms a bit with The Twelve Gays of Christmas. So, with apologies to those of you who agree with Bill O'Reilly (anybody?, anybody?) that Christmas is desecrated and dead, I give you:

The Boy in the Moon

2011-12-09T16:53:00.001-08:00

The beautiful memoir The Boy in the Moon, by Ian Brown, has won a place in the New York Times' annual 10 Best Books of 2011. I wrote about the book's effect on my life here, and I've also had the honor of a small exchange with the great writer himself. I am so happy that a small book of great literary import about a disabled child and his family has made its way to such an exclusive list.

Bravo, Mr. Brown! Thank you for your words, for their resonant power.

Weekend Cake Number One

2011-12-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

Yellow Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Buttercream

(for Angus, a boy dear to my heart for his loving behavior toward Sophie that goes well beyond his age)

Carol of the Day - Hallelujah Chorus - Alaska Style

2011-12-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

I watched this yesterday and adore it. I think my favorite part is the Bob Dylan-esque card-changing. You'll see it when it happens. It looks really cold there -- and really bare. Watch the whole poorly produced, glorious thing. Please.

I still love Alec Baldwin

2011-12-08T11:07:00.001-08:00

This might be one of the best things I've read in a long, long time.

Thanks, Maggie May.

Carol of the Day

2011-12-08T07:00:00.001-08:00

I remember a beautiful school holiday concert when Sophie was in the third grade or so. After a few rollicking holiday songs, the lights went out and the choral group on stage raised their white-gloved hands in the darkness, glowing. They proceeded to sign Silent Night in the total darkness, so quiet you could hear the air move between their fingers if you could hear, the white glow-in-the-dark voices --

Cupcakes and Cotillion

2011-12-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

The annual Mother/Son, Father/Daughter Cotillion made me feel very proud. I could barely walk after the dancing, though!

And the cupcakes? These were red velvet and chocolate, made for my dearest friend Moye's pottery show and sale. See her work and website here.