She In There

This is what Sophie looks like when I take away even the tiniest bit of Onfi, the benzo that we've been trying to wean her from for four years. I'm still weaning the damn drug, a tiny, tiny bit at a time. I tinker each time, as well, with the various cannabis medicine products, and good things happen. Every day is different, though, and we continue to live this life as an experiment in progress.

Like my dear Dr. Jin said, so many years ago, She in there, she know.

I am sorry that I've left you readers high and dry, an occasional post once or twice a week. I haven't visited blogs or left comments, have been deleting newspapers and articles from my Inbox and have just generally avoided -- well -- everything. I've been down and blue and struggling a bit with I don't know what, but I feel it lifting a bit and hope that I will soon be back in writing daily order. I'm engaged in the world as I've always been, but man oh man every single day we wake up to that vile emperor with no clothes and his persistent presidency. It's a freak show and a clusterfuck, and like we say in the writing biz, you just can't make that shit up. I'm not underestimating its effect on my psyche -- nor should you if you're of the same persuasion. If it doesn't bother you or you're one of his supporters, well, I'd bless your heart if I felt any respect for you at all. May it all be over soon and not because some bomb is dropped on us for being such idiots. The thing is, though, that what's rent is rent, right? The veil has been pulled back. The core is rotten, isn't it? So much work to do and most of it is about coming to terms with our privilege and our whiteness.

I've been reading a lot lately -- have been able to dig in deep and get through to the end of novels and bask there glad and filled up. I recommend Lisa Halliday's Asymmetry, Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing, Terese Mailhot's Heartberries: A Memoir, Claire Dederer's Love and Trouble and An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. I had ordered a book from the library that finally came in, so many months after the request that I forgot where I'd read about it, but I really liked it -- a novel called Elbowing the Seducer by T. Gertler.

Oh, and then there's Fire Sermon by Jaime Quattro. I'm obsessed with her and her writing, her brain and mine.

What else?

I've tried to wander into museums, too --saw a beautiful David Hockney show at LACMA over the weekend and an amazing exhibit that included a multi-media show by Kara Walker at the Hammer last week. I'm so grateful for the sustenance of art -- of words and painting wrought, especially, from great struggle and suffering. Our lives are enriched even as our own troubles recede and perspectives enlarge.

and she shouted, "Bravo!"

Girl on the Flying Trapeze, 1936 Julia Thecla

her ethereal and sensuous portrayal of dreams, fairytales, and planetary realms were extraordinary explorations of alternative social orders.

DePaul University Art Museum, describing Julia Thecla 

I watched Wings of Desire the other night on a bed in a dark hotel room for the thousandth time, had forgotten the black and white film turning to color every now and then. We are black and white yet both see color, now and then, but this was after and one of us dreamt (him) and the other knew every word (her). Now and then. The German faces, the wide smile, the tilted head, the closed eyes. There's something spiritual in the library's murmurs, the way the angels walk among books, heads bowed over them. Wings on a bronze statue, a wall that divides Berlin. An angel lays his head on the man's shoulder, yet the man jumps over anyway and the angel screams. The desire for life. The woman on the flying trapeze, how later she shrugs out of her robe, her back, sinuous. The desire for love, to love. Even before I swung above the crowd myself, then, I was told you've an amazing back. I've a memory like a trap. I remember every word. You've an amazing back, he said. Now. Twice I've been told, then and now.

This morning Sophie groaned in her sleep before dawn, and I ran into her while she seized. It was a violent one and I was smacked in the face by one of her arms. I bent over her, gathering the limbs, what flies. I've walked the rope and swung on the trapeze, so many little people below. My back is strong. It never hurts. I don't feel gentle toward the situation in some moments. I don't feel gentle toward her. It's where I leave off and she begins and there's a space there filled with nothing. When I gathered her in my arms, limp now (then), a pieta, I did cry. And cry. And cry. And cry. She was spent and it cost me tears which are, in comparison, nothing.

The dog barked once and a package was thrown through the slot of the front door, made a thump. I left Sophie to go and pick it up, a small but heavy box from Seattle. Inside, a heavy book, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer. A pink Post-it over the crook of the poet's nose:

Dearest Adorable --
Reach for this
volume when
you most need
to counteract
the crazy.

❤️️  Leslie  xo

Yes, I took it as sign.
The signified and the signifier.

I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body. (Anna Akhmatova)

Several hours later, with no prompt from me, I received a picture of a painting on my phone, a girl on a trapeze, awkward yet strong.

I am thinking of you, she said (Tanya, my friend, not the girl). I asked her (Tanya, not the girl), Who painted this? 

Julia Thecla, Tanya said, I love her. 

Thecla is a forgotten Chicago painter of the 1930s and 1940s, in the school of magical realism. I did not know her.

Magical realism, a literary genre to which I have been drawn (then) -- Marquez, Borgia, Allende -- is also a genre of art, I learn (now). There are details (Sophie's groan, her bed, the seizure, her arms, my back, my tears, her limp body) that are real and then something strange, unbelievable  (the thump, the package, the Akhmatova, the note, the painting, the girl on the trapeze, ), through a hole in the door, via air.

I fly through the air with the greatest of ease

Chocolate and Dirty Martinis

Jean-Étienne Liotard: La Chocolatiere, 1743-1745

I could stare at that portrait all night long. The pink of her cap and cheeks, the folds in her apron, the tray with the cup of chocolate and clear water. How do people paint like that? I read about Jean-Etienne Liotard in this article and wish I could go to Scotland and look at the other portraits. I've never been to Scotland. Have you? Actually, the exhibit is now in London. I've never been to London, either. Have you? Liotard, the painter, is Swiss-French. I've been to the French part of Switzerland, and I've been to France. Have you?

Reader, what's new?


This is what I'm reading:

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse is the book that we're discussing this Friday at my Books & Bakes literary salon. I've got a friend who's just finished a nine-month stint at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris helping to cook the meal. It's going to be a good one!

Fighting God by David Silverman is a non-fiction book that some publicist asked me to read and perhaps review on the old blog. It's sub-titled An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World. I don't think I've ever read an atheist manifesto, so I'm curious. Stay tuned.


I saw the new James Bond movie on Friday night. It was the usual fun with one too many weird dystopian torture scenes. Missing more fun and  wishing for less dark and weird dystopian torture scenes makes me seem old, no? But Daniel Craig in his tight suits that hearken back to the 1960s makes me feel young, yes. I love Daniel Craig. Dirty vodka martini this time, still shaken, not stirred. I love a dirty martini, too.

I'd put on a pink cap and rouge up my cheeks, bring Daniel Craig as Bond some chocolat on a tray, too. You?

Silence in Talk

Le Silence, 1900
Odilon Redon

to J.

I first saw the Symbolist painter Odilon Redon's work Le Silence at a museum somewhere on the coast of France during the summer of 1985 when I was backpacking through by myself. Yes, by myself for three weeks. I don't think I spoke ten words during that time, and it was glorious. The painting knocked me flat. I've called upon the peace of it, in my mind, hundreds of times since and most recently today after an exchange with a beautiful human being.

Thank you, J. And yes:

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Pablo Picasso

Stand in front of the mirror naked and admire what you see. Whatever you see. This flesh that curves and rolls like the earth. This decorated canvas upon which the world has painted the story of your life. 

from Sing Your Body by Brittany Tuttle 

The other evening when I sat and talked for hours with Brittany of Vesuvius at Home, at some point I lamented my lost girlhood, my aged-over beauty, the weight I'd gained, something dull and self-absorbed to that effect. Brittany was quick to chastise me for denigrating my body, and then we spoke of the brilliant piece she wrote a while back on her blog called Sing Your Body. Go read it now if you haven't, yet, and then come back. Brittany told me that I reminded her of a Bouguereau female. Bouguereau is a late nineteenth/early twentieth century realist painter of whom I knew nothing. Tonight, I remembered Brittany's comment and looked him up, found a series of beautiful paintings -- lush women, lovely children, portraits of great serenity and sometimes amusement. The first painting that I pulled up was this one:

What struck me was not my resemblance to the woman pictured (there isn't much) but the title of the painting which is Pleasant Burden. I thought, of course, of Sophie and my life with her, the paradox of burden and honor in the carrying of it. I then noticed this painting and thought of Sophie again:

When I saw the following painting, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I might have been a Bouguereau in another life, when flesh was exalted and burdens honored. This year I might just possibly exalt my own flesh, and at the very least, be amused by it. I will also honor my burdens more, recognize and reaffirm the dignity of carrying them lightly.

On financial anxiety, freedom, socialism, Denmark and the senator from Vermont

Vilhelm Hammershoi, 1864-1916

In Denmark, there is a very different understanding of what "freedom" means. In that country, they have gone a long way to ending the enormous anxieties that come with economic insecurity. Instead of promoting a system which allows a few to have enormous wealth, they have developed a system which guarantees a strong minimal standard of living to all -- including the children, the elderly and the disabled.

Senator Bernie Sanders 

Read the rest of the article here. 

Blue is the color of the sky

and my hallway. And in case you thought I was just an incredible Do-it-Yourselfer, well think again. A friend of a friend is painting for me.

I don't do paint.

This might be the lamest blog post I ever wrote and is perhaps a scary harbinger for when my boys leave home and I walk the hallways, blue, and a moon, worn as if it had been a shell becomes a design blog and Sophie just hums from her room that I keep painting over and over, or have painted over and over and I sip wine and wheat beer and nibble on chocolate covered pretzels and jellybeans of old.

Our Lady of the Dry Tree

This was the image on my desk calendar yesterday morning:

It was painted in 1462 by the Belgian Petrus Christus and is titled Our Lady of the Dry Tree. I was struck by the name and when I ripped it off the calendar and peered closely, I wondered at the weird little things hanging from the thorns that look like letters and admired the jewel-like red and blue of the madonna's robes. As usual, the face of the baby Jesus is creepy (why is this always so?), but if you enlarge the painting on the computer, the beauty of Mary's face is astonishing. There's an interesting story behind Our Lady of the Dry Tree, which was the name of a confraternity, typical during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. These were groups of friends and members, often secret, that engaged in cultural and charitable activities, and Our Lady of the Dry Tree holds particular symbolism and mystery. It presented the message of the Redemption unique to any other painting in art history.  Here's what a fascinating website, called The Secret History of Art says:


The iconography is inspired by the Book of Ezekiel, wherein the Prophet Ezekiel says, “I the Lord have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish.”  Theologians interpret this as a reference to Original Sin, with Mary replacing Eve as the “mother of the world.”  Eve, in the Garden of Eden, was once the “green tree,” flowering and flourishing.  But God made her wither and instead granted favor to the dry tree (Mary as a childless woman), allowing her to bring forth fruit from her womb. 


If you're interested, you can read more about it here. I'm not sure why I was so struck by this little painting (it's tiny -- only five inches or so) -- I think, though, that it made me wonder why we have to listen to so much warped and twisted ugliness when we talk about religion nowadays. I know that there was some serious warped and twisted ugliness surrounding religion in the Middle Ages, but the art and beauty and mystery that sprang from belief gives me solace, in a way. There is much relief, at least for me, in the contemplation of so much mystery and awe. 


I think I must do more turning away from the obscene spokespersons of faith today and fall into art and free expression to really experience the divine.