Stemming the Tide With Lapins

Channel Islands, Pacific Ocean, Planet Earth

to Moye

I don't know about ya'll, but there's a distinct panic in the air this morning. Out here on the edge of the continent, it's a combination of the goings-on in England (how quickly new words like Brexit appear), Drumpf's latest grotesque shenanigans, the fires raging in Kern County, the rumblings about The Big One striking Los Angeles and causing widespread catastrophe, and the fact that it's nearly impossible with the 24/7 news cycle not to be aware, however inadequately, of all the world's troubles. Oh, and the irony of blogging is not lost on me.

This morning I lay in bed stemming panic about everything in general and some things in particular. I tried to be mindful of this -- the prick of tears, the roiling in the stomach, the paradox of feeling both charged and anxious and paralyzed. Sometimes it takes literal will to gain perspective, a sort of coaxing now, now, come on, come on. I thought of the tide and how it creeps up on the shore, creeps up and retreats, creeps up a tiny bit more and retreats, again and again and so on. That's what it felt like this morning, my bed a boat, the usual boat, the rocking and drifting but the tide was pushing me in not letting me out. I felt like I might be swallowed.

I remember seeing an old black and white Super-8 movie that my father took in the sixties. I was not even five years old, we were at the beach -- somewhere on Long Island -- and I had on only the bottoms of a bikini, my small, thin body brown as a nut. I was skipping into and out of the tide as it moved in and out, and I don't know if it was the combination of the silence broken only by the tick of the film advancing and my innocent joy, or the wonder that something as ephemeral as childhood could be captured forever, but I was mesmerized and moved by the intimacy of my dancing with the tide. I am struck by that memory today and by how I seem to have lost that ability to dance or, at least, the ability to do it so easily.

If you read The Writer's Almanac, you might have seen the wonderful yet freaky story of today being the anniversary of an outbreak of dancing plague or dancing mania that first appeared in Aachen, Germany in 1374. Known as St. Vitus' Dance, it spread across the European continent, and people danced for days and even months in a sort of mass hysteria to, for some, their literal deaths. Good Lord. I've known about St. Vitus Dance for many years because epileptics were sometimes diagnosed with it, but I can't help today to wonder if we're all involved in something similar. We need a visit to the Bunny Planet, my brilliant friend Moye texted me this morning, referring to a sweet book by Rosemary Wells that we read to our children when they were little. In the story, after a particularly bad day where everything is going wrong, a young rabbit girl gets a visit from the Bunny Queen.

Far beyond the moon and stars, Twenty light-years south of Mars, 
Spins the gentle Bunny Planet 
And the Bunny Queen is Janet.
"Here's the day that should have been"

and so on to the happy ending of sun-warmed summer tomato soup and love, always love.

I know this post is going on, and you're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about, but Moye sent this text to me next which we both agreed was an act of stunning synchronicity:

It is the first duty of a flagging spirit to see renewal in the latitudes of whimsy. I, for one, dream on beyond the five planets to a world without wickedness; verdant, mild, and populated by amiable lapins."

Benjamin Franklin, letter to his nephew, 1771.

 In case some of you don't know, lapin is the French word for rabbit or bunnies.

So there you go -- my willful stemming the tide of panic.

Now, now, come on, come on.

Jane Hirshfield and Moye

My friend Moye and I went out to dinner last night to celebrate her birthday and listen to the poet Jane Hirshfield at the Grand Central Library. We ate outdoors at a fancy restaurant that sits in the courtyard of the library. The night was beautiful and breezy. We ate French onion soup and kale salad and some kind of lamb dish with papardelle that I couldn't finish because I was full. We laughed, as always, and shared our lives. Moye is easily the kindest, most gentle woman I know who is also staggeringly talented and funny. Honestly, she might be perfect. Later, we sat next to each other in the small auditorium, our shoulders touching in the small seats, and I wondered at the beauty of the nearly forty years that have passed since we first met and the many times we sat together in English classes throughout middle and high school, listening to poems and teachers. We've gray-streaked hair and crows' feet now, yet we share a raucous sense of humor and love for what's beautiful.

I don't know Jane Hirshfield's poetry well, but I have read a few of her spare and beautiful poems over the years and recently savored an interview with her in Tricyle Magazine. In addition to being a poet, Hirshfield is also an ordained practitioner of Soto Zen Buddhism. Here's an excerpt from the Tricycle interview:

At any moment in a life, a person has this choice: presented with suffering, do we try to escape or to enter it further? Art’s gate is deciding to move toward entrance and not absence, and that choice has been a fundamental and shaping force in my life. We can’t sleepwalk through suffering: by its own definition, suffering is insufferable, unbearable, and so must be worked with. Since childhood, the way I’ve worked with it is by turning toward the gate of entrance: by writing poems.

Here's a poem:

As a Hammer Speaks to a Nail

When all else fails,
fail boldly,
fail with conviction,
as a hammer speaks to a nail,
or a lamp left on in daylight.

Say one.
If two does not follow,
say three, if that fails, say life,
say future.

Lacking future,
try bucket,
lacking iron, try shadow.

If shadow too fails,
if your voice falls and falls and keeps falling,
meets only air and silence,

say one again,
but say it with greater conviction,

as a nail speaks to a picture,
as a hammer left on in daylight.

Jane Hirshfield

Here's what she wrote in my copy of her new book, The Beauty:

How We Do It: Part Part XLIX

All day long, here and there, I've felt like crying. I don't really know why nor do I think we have to attribute something to everything. Is Mercury in retrograde? Are there solar flares? Are half the animal species of the earth truly gone forever? Sophie has had several days of increased seizures. Last night, I heard the telltale cry as Carmen was bathing her. I burst into the bathroom to help. Sophie lay naked, fully exposed and jerking. Carmen was crouched down in the tub, holding her under the arms, protecting her head. Her legs were banging into the sides of the tub, her toes twisted. I reached down under her knees, and together Carmen and I lifted her up and out of the tub, lay her down on the tile floor, grabbed towels to cover her. There's not much worse for me in Seizure Land than the naked bathtub seizure. Even today, as Oliver and I filled one of Moye's beautiful bowls with cactus blend, carefully placed a few little cacti in, sprinkled tiny pebbles and sparkly stones around them, and placed an air plant in the hole at the top of the vintage baby, I saw Sophie's eyes in my head, dark and implacable. Is she ok? one of the boys called out from the kitchen last night, and I said, Yes. Go ahead and start dinner. We ate Korean-style beef on skewers and rice and broccoli slaw. Carmen brought Sophie into the kitchen and fed her while the boys and I finished up. Contrary to what you might think, I never, ever get used to it.  The fit, the flare, the start, the life goes on.

The Landlocked Life

Weeki Wachi Springs

This morning I met Moye at a neighborhood pastry place for a belated birthday breakfast. She stuck a candle in the bunch of hair that I had pinned to the top of my head, and then we lit it and I burst into flames and disappeared. Just kidding. Well, that wasn't funny, really. We actually sat down and drank delicious coffee, ate this incredible concoction of bread, exotic sauteed mushrooms and eggs and shared some divine confection -- a cannelle, I think it was, all crispy caramelized on the outside and eggy soft in the center. We talked about our children and shared some memories of our high school years (we grew up together in Atlanta!) and we laughed together like we always do. She gave me a beautiful bracelet/necklace that I promptly wrapped around my wrist and a wonderful little book of poetry called Poems of the American South from the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series. She wrote a beautiful inscription inside in her inimitable gorgeous handwriting, drawing my attention to the poems inside that include mermaids, Tar Heels and tender mercies. Thank you, Moye, for your years of friendship, for your sense of humor, your support, your beauty and your inspired art.


September 11th is always a sombre day -- isn't it? Our minds inevitably go back to where we were and how we heard and how we led our lives in those days following. There's a tyranny to sorrow, isn't there? What we are almost required to feel or remember? I'm always struck, on this day, by the strange paradox of the Never Forget communal imperative juxtaposed with the get over it mentality we place on individual loss. It's something I think about, particularly in regard to my friends who've lost a child or suffered some other big loss. There's a tyranny to sorrow, isn't there -- or at least a manufactured order to it.

I was going to post a poem on this somber day of Adam Zagajewski's -- a poem that I've posted before that I think is entirely appropriate, but instead I'll give you the link and post the mermaid poem from the book that Moye gave me.

It's all we can do, really.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski



My First Mermaid

I
In Florida, where these things happen,
we stopped at the last roadside attraction.

In a small theater decorated with mold,
behind a curtain sagging like seaweed,

a wall of glass held back a wall of water.
And there, in the springs, a woman in a bikini top

and Lycra fish tail held an air hose to her lips
like a microphone. What was she waiting for?

Into the great open bowl of the springs
a few fish drifted. They looked at the two of us.

They shook their heads and their bodies rippled.
Air bubbles shimmered in the filtered sun,

each a silver O racing to the surface to break.
We'd missed the day an unscripted underwater blimp

of a manatee wobbled into view. The gray, whiskered lard
of a sea cow or the young woman who sang --

lip-synched, rather -- some forgettable song,
her lipstick waterproof: which was the real mermaid?

II.
Given the weight of the water, nothing happens fast
to a mermaid, whether it's love or loss.

Not like the landlocked life, I wanted to warn her.
But here came a prince in street clothes,

trying to think thoughts that were heavy enough
to make himself sink to her level. His shirt ballooned,

a man turned not to a merman but a manatee.
Yet, in the small eternity it took for him

to grasp her greasy flipper, for her to find
his more awkward human ankle, and then

for them to turn, head over each other's heels --
a ring rolling away, too beautiful to catch --

they lived happily ever after.
Until one of them had to stop for breath.

Debora Greger (1949-)

Birthday Number 51

My first birthday
August 27, 1964

Good lord. Evidently my love of cake began at an early age. Look how young my parents were, how adorable! That was fifty years ago!

I guess there was another party which meant more cake for me:

Doesn't Sophie sort of resemble my darling mother in that photo?

Oh, here I am eating cake on my sweet sixteenth birthday with one of my oldest friends, Audrey.  She lives in New York City but usually calls me a day or so after to wish me happy birthday. We've made a ritual out of that, and I would never want her to call me on the actual day. I'll pick up the phone and she'll say, Happy Birthday! and I'll say It was the 27th! and she'll say I thought it was the 29th! and then she'll tell me that the only reason I remember her birthday is because she was born on the exact day that my parents were married, which was in October of 1962, ten months and several weeks BEFORE I was born, my mother is quick to remind me. You know, just in case I thought less of her. In any case, this silly ritual has amused Audrey and me for decades.

Sometime this week I'll probably eat cake with my other oldest friend, Moye, and we'll laugh together and I'll realize how much I love her and am grateful for our long friendship. Later today, I'll eat cake with my children, open presents from my sisters and my parents, be grateful for a body that is strong and healthy, and a  life that is blessed with beautiful children, family and friends.

I hope to live another fifty years on this wonderful planet, particularly if I morph into my southern Italian peasant grandmother and live in Bora Bora in one of those huts over the cerulean sea.

The Dilemma of Finishing Novels in Middle Age, My Friend Moye and Life After Life

My old friend Moye and I, in a library in another life after life

So, I stayed up until after 1:00 in the morning last night, reading. I haven't done that, literally, in years. I haven't read a book, literally, in years that was worth staying up until 1:00 in the morning (except for the books of my friends Tanya, Carrie, and Karen, of course). Recently, my old friend Moye and I discussed our slight anxiety about the fact that we were having a difficult time getting through novels. I discarded The Goldfinch about 300 pages in, bored and distracted to tears. I got to around page 400 of The Luminaries before calling it a day, realizing that I had no idea of who was whom and what had been happening. Now, let me tell you that my friend Moye is brilliant. She's an artist and a writer and physically beautiful and just about perfect in every single way, so if she's having difficulty getting through novels, well, I feel a teensy tinesy bit better. Like maybe it's not just me. We batted around theories, one of which included our age (this is the one that causes the bit of anxiety because what will life be like if we can't read novels until we die?), another that maybe, just maybe, these gigantic tomes that get so much literary acclaim are actually not that great after all (this is the one where we rest on our secret collective brilliance) and then there's the very real fact that both of us find reading on an e-reader might be part of the problem (this is arguable, though, as I bought the hard copy of The Goldfinch). Moye's very brilliant, artistic and good-looking architect husband suggested, apparently, that there's something to the heft of a book, the literal tactile sense of it, that aids in the reading. We exclaimed as true book nerds might, about how much we love the look of fonts and how lacking an e-reader is in that regard.

This is the sort of thing that Moye and I can talk about, endlessly, on the phone. We've known each other since seventh grade, through boyfriends and husbands and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. We're godmothers to each other's daughters. We share the same sense of humor and brown eyes. Moye is quieter than I and certainly more talented. She listens to books on tape at a startling speed (not my forte, at all) and she's a hell of a lot thinner than I, but she'll tell you that my skin is enviable, and that I sleep much better than she does (not because of anything we've done or not done -- I just don't suffer from The Insomnia) -- and well -- I adore her.

What about this book that I read until bleary-eyed? It's Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. Reader, I can't stop reading it. I honestly carried it with me today and read snatches of it whenever I had to stop the car, wait in the carpool line, wait for Oliver to finish some assignment I'd given him. Hell, I even propped it open on the bed and read while I folded clothes. I don't even know how to describe it to you, other than to exclaim over the story -- a real, romantic, convoluted story whose characters are real, romantic, convoluted and terribly interesting. The story is a web woven by a wickedly funny spider who might just be a descendant of the queen bee of spiders, Virginia Woolf. Not really. That's just a lame metaphor, and I felt like I had to get Virginia Woolf in there as much of the writing takes me to the same joyous spot I've been in reading To the Lighthouse or The Waves or Orlando. You know: when you're in the writer's subconscious. There's a dream life running throughout the pages of Life After Life, there is drama and mystery and sex and rape and World War I and abuse and love and early psychotherapy, babies and beautiful men and women -- hell, you need to take my word. Buy a copy, the hefty hardback and read it.

I'm halfway through and believe I just might finish it in record speed. Not bad for a fifty year old gal, right Moye?

Delirious Sex, Intense Happiness, Tiffany Box Cakes, and Beautiful Moye

I've got a red velvet cake in the oven and nothing of import to report (im and re), except that I'm tired of inspiration and putting one foot in front of the other and gratitude and sayings like Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss the stars. The cake is an order that will be assembled with cream cheese frosting tomorrow and then made to look like it's a Tiffany box. There will be pictures, although this is the first cake I've made in a few months and I'm praying that the old hands won't be stiff and rusty. Sophie is home, sitting in her wheelchair and lethargically playing with beads and an old hairbrush. She had a number of seizures today, so I landed up giving her Diastat (rectal valium) and kept her home from school. This meant that I had to cancel my other plans which included a job interview and a visit to The Woman in the Quiet Room, but I have a babysitter coming soon who will relieve me so that I can go on my Californian rounds and pick up my sons from their schools. The photo above is of a charming piece of art, created by my Oldest Not In Years But In Time Known Friend, Moye Thompson, whose work I've featured before. She is a remarkable ceramist, and yesterday, when I visited her new show, I was once again struck dumb by her beauty and the beauty of her creations and her, herself. The show is called Shelter, and if you're in the area, you should stop by Bergamot Station in Santa Monica and check it out. Here are some more pictures, and then I'll put a copy of the poem that you see above (a poem that I've posted many a time on the old blog that always makes me laugh). And just so you have an idea of her ingenuity, she carved those tiny little letters into clay and then fired the cylinder that you turn with a tiny little twig so that you can read the whole thing. Over the top, Moye.

The poem:

Success Story

My clothes are perfectly contoured
to my body. my shoes & socks
fit just right. My cat is a delightful
intelligent animal. My apartment
is great. The right location,
cheap rent. I eat the best food.
My friends love me. I adore them.
My lover is terrific & beautiful.
The sun is shining. There are trees
even in the slums in Washington.
I have tons of money & a gorgeous 
air conditioner. Great art hangs
on my wall. I live a spine-tingling life
of delirious sex & intense happiness.

Terence Winch

My friend Moye

is an extraordinary artist.

That's a wall of ceramic vessels, each in its own tiny cigar case. It was part of Moye's first solo show, and the opening was in Santa Monica on Saturday night. I gasped when I saw what she had created over the last six months -- never has clay and chicken wire and color and simple, utilitarian objects been created and arranged with such startling beauty.

Moye is one of my oldest friends. We went to junior high school together in Atlanta and then high school. She has always been one of the most talented people I've ever known, and also the sweetest. Be on the look-out for her work as she'll soon be designing art pieces for Crate and Barrel!

Bravo, Moye. I am so proud to know you!

Your long hair

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

Optimism

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!"

Cupcakes and Cotillion

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.

Heavenly Cakes

Victorian cake poster

is officially open for business.

My friend Moye, one of the most beautiful women in the world, voted the "most likely to succeed" AND "most artistic" in our high school class, the mother of my godchild, the godmother of Sophie and a spectacular potter (see her work HERE) designed a business logo for me many years ago. I still love it.

As synchronicity goes, the company Tiny Prints recently offered free printed cards to me in exchange for a written review. I received my cards in the mail this weekend and am very pleased. Tiny Prints came through in every way -- the card looks as if it were letter-pressed and the colors are perfect. I have used Tiny Prints in the past for Christmas and even Valentine's Day. Now I'll be ordering reprints of my business card:

front and back of my new business card

Moye's gift

to me is so beautiful that it's worthy of a post all its own. Moye (pronounced like toy but with an m) is one of my oldest friends -- and that's not because she is old but because I've known her and been friends with her for almost 35 years (O.K., so maybe we're old, too).  Moye played Scrabble with me as I sat in a hospital bed, having contractions. She was the first person whom I loved other than The Husband to see Sophie when she was born. She is Sophie's godmother, and when she gave birth to her daughter Claire, I received the honor of being her godmother. Moye is one of the most beautiful, talented women I've ever known -- a gifted writer, incredibly funny and sweet, sweet, sweet. She is also an extraordinary ceramist and potter. Her beautiful pottery graces every nook and cranny in my house; I eat cereal from her bowls, place flowers in her vases and otherwise live and look at her gorgeous art every day. You can see it HERE.


A while back I shared a poem with Moye that I'd read somewhere and that I knew she would love.

Here's the poem:

The Patience of Ordinary Things


It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

--Pat Schneider


Here's what Moye made me:

Thank you, Moye! I love you --