The Bluest of Blues

Planetarium, Griffith Observatory
Los Angeles

This has been a difficult week, so after an unbloggable morning meeting and in lieu of weeping while driving around the shitty, I drove up to Griffith Park Observatory and bought two $7.00 tickets to two planetarium shows. 

I lay back in my chair and listened to the program about water and the planets and the stars. We began at the bottom of the ocean, and when a blue whale's shadow swam over me, the tears leaked out of my eyes and then the stars came out, the constellations, the moon waxing and waning, the world spinning even as my body lay, stardust still --

During the second, Ptolemy's crystal sphere shattered into a bigger universe, 

more stars 

the galaxy, 

something beyond.

Despair After Sadness

Despair is still servant
to the violet and wild ongoings
of bone. You, remember, are 
that which must be made 
servant only to salt, only 
to the watery acre that is the body
of the beloved, only to the child
leaning forward into 
the exhibit of birches 
the forest has made of bronze light
and snow. Even as the day kneels 
forward, the oceans and strung garnets, too,
kneel, they are all kneeling, 
the city, the goat, the lime tree
and mother, the fearful doctor,
kneeling. Don’t say it’s the beautiful 
I praise. I praise the human, 
gutted and rising.

Katie Ford

Threads, Bits and Pieces of Gratitude and Exercise

Santa Cruz, CA

I'm reading a children's book called Cloth Lullaby The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois. I have a weakness for children's books, have quite a collection that I keep adding to, and this one complements a recent exhibit I saw downtown of Bourgeois' work. Really, it's so beautiful I could cry:

With the remaining fabric of her life, Louise wove together a cloth lullaby. She wove the river that raised her -- maternal pinks, blues in watery hues. She wove a mother sewing in the sun, a girl falling asleep beneath the stars and everything she'd ever loved.












Speaking of tears, last night I shed some. Unbloggable. Oliver came home late after a Dodgers game and brought in a package that had been left outside the house by the mailman. It was addressed to me in beautiful handwriting and wrapped in the prettiest paper, but I couldn't figure out who had sent it. Honestly, I was feeling not a little anxious and unsettled from the unbloggable, so when I opened the package up and found a pound of artisanal coffee, a mermaid sticker and a beautiful note written by a long-time reader of this blog, I really did start crying. I am moved to action and advocacy by your writing, she said. I won't "out" the kind and generous person who sent me this gift, but I am filled with gratitude for her and for this community and for -- let's face it -- the bountiful universe. As my friend Carrie says, There are no accidents.

Last weekend, I was in Santa Cruz with my dear friend Tanya Ward Goodman (whose book Leaving Tinkertown is a must read) and Kari O'Driscoll, whom some of you might know and all of you should know as the writer of The Writing Life. We rented a little house near the ocean and spent two and a half days walking, eating, writing and talking. Mostly writing. On one of our walks, Tanya and I discussed the tyranny of gratitude -- how there's a whole business dependent on the concept of gratitude and how it's unrealistic and often depressing to be or feel grateful. I compared it to the tyranny of exercise, but that's because I hate to do it and Tanya had pressured me to get out of bed, a place I vastly prefer, and go on these long walks along the coast. I think Tanya believes walking and writing go hand in hand, and given her output I guess I'm going to have to surrender to that tyranny. What did happen is that I began the reconfiguration of MGDB*, and I think I've finally found the key, the flow, the whole shebang.

I'm going to surrender to gratitude as well as exercise because it's filled me up to overflowing.

*MGDB stands for my goddamn book which I know is an ugly, ugly thing to say and hardly grateful, but it's good isn't it?