Carried by Great Winds

There I am with what I called 2/3rds of the circus that I run. The work of my heart. Mother's Day came and went. The College Boy is home for the summer. The Brothers are back at it. Sophie had a rough weekend but is better today. I'm going through loads of paperwork and hustling for freelance jobs. I'm baking cakes. I'm answering calls and emails and appeals for help regarding medical cannabis. I'm working on an exciting caregiver project that I'll tell ya'll about soon. I'm reading novels and excited to start watching the Patrick Melrose mini-series. I read those brutal and beautiful books years ago and so look forward to seeing Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lead.

Here's a poem that my friend Noan sent me the day before Mother's Day. It's by Alison Luterman, and I think it's perfect:

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces fro dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.There is no other art. 

Allison Luterman



A long time ago one of my relatives, from whom I am now estranged, wrote a caustic comment on this blog, imploring me to get my head out of my ass and quit reciting poetry. Something like that. It stung then because there was a bit of truth in my head being up my ass. I felt a bit of the old shame and embarrassment at being bookish, having my head in the clouds, being book smart as opposed to street smart, pretentious instead of easy-going. 

Whatevs, as they say. The thing about being more than half a century old combined with living in the Trump era, is that you can shed all that shame and run for the hills with your poetry, bringing anyone willing along with you.

What else? I went to see an incredible interpretive theater thing called the theater is a blank page by Ann Hamilton and Siti Company at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus this past Saturday. I might as well have been raptured up right there, as it was a wild interactive theater performance of Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse, hands-down probably my favorite novel ever.* I don't even know how to describe the experience that my friend Tanya, Chris and I had attending this show, but it was restorative and mesmerizing, and we all left feeling -- again -- like we'd been raptured into a writer/reader/lover of words heaven. Check it out if it comes to your town. Here's a video that I found on the internets of part of the performance in another city:




Also, if you're not one of the more than 115 MILLION people who've already watched Childish Gambino's incredible performance piece This is America, you should. I've said it before, but in these messed-up, clusterfuckery times, art and corporeal politics can save us.













* My Top Ten Favorite Novels

1. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
4. Middlemarch by George Eliot
5. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
6. Beloved by Toni Morrison
7. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
8. Love in the Name of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. Machine Dreams by Jayne Ann Phillips
10. Possession by A.S. Byatt

Who am I kidding? I didn't even list the children's books that should rank up there. It's virtually impossible for me to narrow down my favorite novels to ten, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind. What are yours, Reader?

Waiting for the Dishwasher to Drain

I'm waiting in my bedroom. There's a man from Armenia in my kitchen, crouched down by my dishwasher. He's waiting for the Quick cycle to complete so that he can determine why it's not draining.  I only mention that he's Armenian because he looked at me strangely when I asked whether he was checking out the Dodgers schedule, a large magnet attached to the refrigerator door and at his eye level. In my country, we don't watch baseball, he said, I love soccer. I asked him what country although I had already guessed by his accent, but unlike The Donald, I veer toward the politically correct and didn't want to profile him in any way. Capische? my father would say. That's you, I'm asking, not the dishwasher repairman. I'm fascinated these days by the collision of language and culture, a collision that seems inevitable for all but those who've taken vows of silence. It seems like there's always someone or something to offend, whether you're being completely rude and calling someone a fucker, let's say, or mincing your words while wearing the yoke of politically correct intentions.  There's rape culture and microaggression and ableism and racism and sexism and what means yes and what means no, good intentions and bad ones, consciousness and unconsciousness and subconsciousness. And then there's the law and the interpretation of the law and the protection of the law and the rebuffing of the law.  It's a weird sort of tyranny, I think, but I haven't thought deeply enough about it to make sense here. Did you participate in the Armenian 100 year celebration? I asked him, looking for something to share. Oliver and I had walked to the end of our street during the parade and watched the tens of thousands of Armenians walking toward the Turkish embassy. The dishwasher repairman said, Yes, but my grandfather had waited all of his life for it and was waiting to go back and visit his home that he'd fled. He died right before. I told him that I was sorry to hear that, to hear that his wait had been for nought, and the dishwasher repairman shook his head and replied that at least they could acknowledge this waiting, this crime. Then we both looked at the dishwasher, like it was waiting for us. I came back here, to my bedroom, to wait. Capische?

Futbol: The Beautiful Game

Henry, his friend Noah, Sophie and I walked over to LACMA to see the exhibit Futbol: The Beautiful Game. I don't have much interest in soccer, to tell you the truth, but the exhibit was thrilling. Here's how the museum described it:

The exhibition examines football—nicknamed "the beautiful game" by one sports commentator—and its significance in societies around the world. As a subject, football touches on issues of nationalism and identity, globalism and mass spectacle, as well as the common human experience shared by spectators from many cultures.

It's also intensely masculine, and the concept of machismo was explored as well -- no female athletes represented, here -- and I have to admit that a series of black and white photos of some Italian stars "looking vulnerable despite victory" were very easy on the eyes. I'm sorry that I don't have the artists' names -- there was one Andy Warhol print of Pele, but the more than thirty other artists weren't familiar to me.

This was my favorite piece:

And I loved this one, too:

You can read more about it here.

Raindrops keep falling on my head

Oliver and I went downtown today to catch the Urs Fischer exhibit before it left. I'm not an art critic, know nothing of Urs Fischer, am not interested in art criticism but am either moved by something, entertained or stimulated. I was moved by the exhibit, entertained and stimulated.

I'll save the photo of the bed, collapsing from a pile of cement on it for later, as that inspired me.

The Week of Culture -- Last Day

Helen Lundeberg, Self-Portrait, 1944

I know ya'll must think me a self-indulgent, high falutin' kind of gal who gallivants around the city doing all sorts of things while her husband and children toil at work and school.

Well, this week I was a self-indulgent, high falutin' kind of gal and satisfied nearly every impulse I have toward viewing art, hearing poetry, laughing my ass off and eating good food.

And I have no regrets.

Yesterday, I finally made it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's exhibit of American and Mexican female surrealists. The show is called Wonderland, and it's spectacular. I stood right up close to many of Frida Kahlo's most famous paintings, like this:

The Two Fridas, 1939

I saw it out of the corner of my eye when I was standing across the room, and I could hardly bear to walk over to it. When I did stand in front of it, though, it brought tears to my eyes. It's hard to see it in the above copy, but the Frida on the right holds a picture of Diego Rivera, her husband. The Frida on the left has cut the vessel that leads from that photo and through the two hearts.

I also saw this:

Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940

I learned that for the female artists, surrealism was a path toward the "marvelous," a surrealist concept about the disruption of identity and the disorientation of reality in pursuit of the revelatory. The art displayed was about fragmentation of identity, the oppression of patriarchal systems, sexuality, the body and motherhood or lack thereof. In addition to paintings, there were sculptures, photographs, installations and short films. I wandered through the exhibit for nearly two hours, thrilled to see and feel so much intelligence, emotion, beauty and rawness in one space.

This is the only photo that I took because I hate when people photograph in museums -- it looked like male anatomy, but on closer inspection was a kind of bone. I think. And I forgot to write down the artist, so I apologize for that, too.

One of my favorite paintings was by the artist Sylvia Fein, titled Lady with her Baby. I found it disconcerting -- the crossed arms of the mother and her seeming dis-attachment from the baby perched on top of her head. The green of her jacket was gorgeous.

Francesca Woodman's photos were disturbing and beautiful. She committed suicide at the age of 22 by jumping out of a window in New York City. I stood in front of this one for a long time:

It Must Be Time for Lunch Now, 1979

Despite the enormity of their work, many of the surrealist artists were overlooked and dismissed as irrelevant. However, many of them considered camouflage necessary, in order to create decoys and to keep secret their magic, alchemical explorations (from the collection's book Wonder, The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States).


Afterward, I wandered outside on Wilshire Blvd. where twenty or so food trucks were lined up, hawking their wares. This guy played some music, right there on the sidewalk:

I settled on Maine Lobster:

and ate this very simple, traditional lobster roll while listening to some ragtime in the California sunshine. At 3:00, I stood up, got back in my car and was back on duty, fortified.

The culture vulture's incessant barking

Dah-lings, tonight I'm going to see David Sedaris at UCLA. Every year I buy one ticket to a Writers Word series. I've splurged like this for at least seven or so years, and my seat is third row, center, right end. I know -- it's weird to do this by yourself, but I don't have many real-life friends who love the poetry and the literature like me, and The Husband is from Switzerland, prone to falling asleep at events like these given the workout he gets from The Mistress. Besides, from my high-falutin' seat, I can literally see the writers' pores if I squint, and when I heard John Updike several years ago, I nearly jumped in his lap I fell so in love. Sedaris comes every year, and with the possible exception of one year when he was more caustic than funny, I have rocked in my seat with laughter, holding my stomach, nearly in tears every time. After The Exorcist, a lot of laughter will be a good thing.

Sometimes, there's an empty seat right next to me on the aisle. If you're in the area, come sit and laugh with me.

Meditations on the Disabled Body

"Physically and psychologically disabled people still aren’t very well accepted in society,” says photographer Denis Darzacq. “And this is a situation that artists have to take care of."

You can read more about this exhibition HERE.


My blogger friend Chrissy of Silver Fin of Hope sent me the link to this article, and when I scrolled through the photographs I was both drawn in by their intent and beauty and then repelled by an intimation of exploitation. I still haven't parsed out that intimation -- was it because I wondered if the souls that were photographed were truly aware of themselves or were, rather, revealed by the photographer? 


What do you think?

Culture Vulture Again

I went to Royce Hall again, tonight, to hear Edward Albee. I bought a series of tickets to The Writer's Word, and this was the second (the first was John Updike, whom I wrote about here). I have a fantastic seat in the middle section of the third row, so I can really see the writers' faces. And I love this. I happen to sit between two other "single" women, and both of them bring hefty books to read while they're waiting for the show to begin. I find this curious and while I'm not exactly self-conscious about attending a literary event by myself, I wonder if I look like them to other people. Middle-aged, that is, alone in an auditorium on a Saturday night. The best thing is that it's relaxing; I'm me, the girl with her nose buried in a book, scribbling periodically on pieces of paper, unaware or at least comfortable in my solitude and nerdiness. I'm not the wife of someone or even a mother with three children. I'm not even strong. I'm just me.

The woman on my left read a book titled Ceremonial Violence which is either really interesting or just plain weird. I couldn't read the title of the other woman's book, but she had a small pile of cough drops on her lap along with a pocket pack of tissues. She kept falling asleep, but I tried not to look her way. I didn't want to embarrass her.

Edward Albee is a small man and tonight he came on stage jauntily. The first thing I noticed was bright green socks and construction type shoes. His shirt was of an indeterminate color but his tie was really wide and striped a sort of pinkish red and green. He wore a jacket that was either leather or plastic. I couldn't tell. His face was tan and lined and hawkish, broken by a bristly white mustache. He was interviewed for over an hour by a very pompous, funny Englishman (don't remember his name) and almost all of his answers were long and funny and to the point. "Art should be useful," I think he said at one point or many times, emphasizing how much he dislikes entertainment that is "frivolous and mindless." He talked a lot about The Theatre, a subject that I confidently know nothing about, but everything he said was interesting and informative. His characters tell him how to write and he thinks about them for a long time before he actually sits down to write. A really long time, I think he said. When someone asked what he did when he got "stuck," he said that he doesn't get stuck because he doesn't "start too soon." I found that really interesting, something to mull over, as we writers generally feel some sort of obligation to be constantly writing, practicing the craft, exercising the muscle, etc.

I love these old writers. I love their process and the fact of their work. I love to sit in an audience with like-minded people of all ages who chuckle unselfconsciously. Whenever I feel my slick, modern, deprecating self popping its nasty head in to say this is all so pretentious or who are we all kidding, thinking that art matters?, it is stifled by its gentle counterpart. It's the only thing that does matter that thin, wispy, wiry voice says. My reverence for The Writer is perhaps too romantic, but I left the hall with Edward Albee's voice in my head and it felt clear and true.