Two Things and Final Call

Federico Fellini directing a film

I've got two things for you this morning:

First, please send me your photos of yourself for my Video Project. Please send them to me as soon as possible as I'd like to put the video together by the middle of next week. Here are the instructions or you can click on the link above:

1. Write down on a piece of white paper or poster-board advice that you would give to yourself, that long ago self, when your child was diagnosed.
2. Have someone take a picture of you holding the poster
3. Email me the picture at elsophie AT gmail DOT com
4. If you want to send more than one, feel free. I'll use them all.
5. Spread the word to your friends. MEN, please participate!
6. I'm setting a goal of finishing this by May 15th, so please help me and send yours in (if you haven't already!) as soon as possible.

Second, have you seen this beautiful video? Set aside your distractions, turn up the volume and be happy:

A Silence That Hums

A steady stream of hums and starts and stops, the goddess of non-verbal communication spoke of oceans and too-large moons, of tides and weariness and the swaying of trees, of dust motes that settle in lavender carpet dots and how light plays on window blinds through trees. I told Sophie, if you could talk this morning you would be positively chatty.

Sustenance

I've made yet another wonderful connection through blogging, and this morning, right when I posted my crotchety thoughts for the day, I clicked on this video that she sent my way, along with the words that it reminded her of Sophie and me.

Thank you, dear ajax. Thank you.



Oh you crawled out of the sea,
Straight into my arms,
Straight into my arms

Monday grumps

It's Monday, my favorite day of the week, usually, but perhaps the great moon event (that I missed) has subtly altered the tilt of the universe out of my favor and instead of standing in the tide with cool water lapping over my feet, I'm buried in the sand popping out tiny bubbles of breath. Snap, snap, this morning to each in turn and when I dropped Sophie off at school, I waited behind a car in the driveway as a boy literally dressed for school, pulling his jeans up and positioning them right under his ass, cinching his belt and ignoring my plea to please move and when I honked the horn, lightly, he sidled off and the driver, was it a friend, was it his mother -- purposely inched along and left me to fantasize about gunning the engine and then perhaps sailing up and over that piece of shit and into the sky, west.

When I googled image of old Italian peasant woman to express my mood, I got Sophia Loren which lends credence to that altered tilt in the universe.

Big Sunday

Thousands of people fanned out all over Los Angeles today for the annual Big Sunday -- a massive city volunteer effort where neighborhoods are spruced up, schools are painted and refurbished, beaches are picked up and other needy organizations are helped out in whatever they need. Oliver and I participated at our middle school, cleaning up and creating a rooftop garden. It was hard, physical work -- carrying bags of dirt, weeding old planters and removing dirt, stapling liners to the beds and re-filling with dirt. We then dragged in all the plants -- tomatoes, corn, herbs, flowers, citrus, vegetables, and California perennials -- and planted them in the beds for the schools' science and Edible Garden projects. It was very satisfying work and wonderful to see so many people working together to make our school -- and our city -- a better one.

Day Bits

Baseball season also means the jacaranda trees are in bloom.

Here's Oliver in his catcher uniform:

Here's Henry, post game and happy because they broke their recent losing streak with a 6-1 win over a really good team from Santa Monica!

While the boys were playing basketball, Sophie was ministered to by Mirtha, sitter and friend extraordinaire. She's also an amazing hairdresser, and Sophie is sporting straightened locks:

Finally, not to rub it in, but here's a picture of the roses grown effortlessly in my backyard garden. When I say effortless, I mean it. They get no fertilizer, no sprays, no weeding, minimal water (from the dry California skies) and only adoration from me.

Dear You,

Dante in the Dark Wood, William Blake (1757-1827)

It's hard not to read reproach in your eyes after they've stopped twitching, and you lie, pale and spent, under the lavender quilt. Even as I tuck it around you, the quilt is small recompense for what you've endured, again. I had just sat down in the bathroom with a cookbook, of all things, when I heard the tell-tale sounds, a suffocating dog, so I placed the book on the floor, stood up and assembled myself as I walked to your room. Relieved to see you on the bed, this time, I lay my hand on your forehead and wiped the side of your mouth, and when you had finished I tucked the quilt around you, read reproach in your eyes before the lids closed and color pinked your cheeks.

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.

An Intelligence Debate

I've made no bones about my dwindling faith in the Catholic Church (note that it's not a dwindling faith but a dwindling faith in the Catholic Church). I'd say it's taking years of mulling over conflicting emotions and deep bred to the bone traditions, and I'm not finished, yet. When I watch things like this, though, I shudder in recognition and perhaps even a bit of the nausea that the existentialists wrote about so many years ago.


The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry (Unedited) by Xrunner17

Priorities

Our Calendar:

Count-down to Summer:

David Sedaris made my stomach hurt last night.

This is the book Sedaris recommended this year -- a tradition  on his tour

Yes. I laughed so hard that not only my stomach ached, but my face muscles did, too. In fact, for a second I thought that I'd dislocated my jaw. He read a few new essays, the recent dentist/medical system/socialism essay from The New Yorker, told very dirty jokes, read from his diary and otherwise charmed the audience of thousands at UCLA last night. He dissed animals, particularly dogs (you would have howled, Ms. Moon), and spoke a lot about taxidermy and owls. He is just about the weirdest, sweetest humorist in the world, I think, and I love him. He's definitely the only person who can tell the foulest of jokes and get me to laugh so hard I spit saliva. I've seen him now at least six  times, and each time I'm convinced that if he only knew I was out there in the audience, he'd be one of my best friends.

Here's an excerpt from the recent essay in The New Yorker, titled Dentists Without Borders:

One thing that puzzled me during the American health-care debate was all the talk about socialized medicine and how ineffective it’s supposed to be. The Canadian plan was likened to genocide, but even worse were the ones in Europe, where patients languished on filthy cots, waiting for aspirin to be invented. I don’t know where these people get their ideas, but my experiences in France, where I’ve lived off and on for the past thirteen years, have all been good. A house call in Paris will run you around fifty dollars. I was tempted to arrange one the last time I had a kidney stone, but waiting even ten minutes seemed out of the question, so instead I took the subway to the nearest hospital. In the center of town, where we’re lucky enough to have an apartment, most of my needs are within arm’s reach. There’s a pharmacy right around the corner, and two blocks further is the office of my physician, Dr. Médioni. Twice I’ve called on a Saturday morning, and, after answering the phone himself, he has told me to come on over. These visits, too, cost around fifty dollars. The last time I went, I had a red thunderbolt bisecting my left eyeball.
The doctor looked at it for a moment, and then took a seat behind his desk. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” he said. “A thing like that, it should be gone in a day or two.”
“Well, where did it come from?” I asked. “How did I get it?”
“How do we get most things?” he answered.
“We buy them?”
The time before that, I was lying in bed and found a lump on my right side, just below my rib cage. It was like a devilled egg tucked beneath my skin. Cancer, I thought. A phone call and twenty minutes later, I was stretched out on the examining table with my shirt raised.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” the doctor said. “A little fatty tumor. Dogs get them all the time.”
I thought of other things dogs have that I don’t want: Dewclaws, for example. Hookworms. “Can I have it removed?”
“I guess you could, but why would you want to?”
He made me feel vain and frivolous for even thinking about it. “You’re right,” I told him. “I’ll just pull my bathing suit up a little higher.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/02/120402fa_fact_sedaris#ixzz1tpKc9cAi

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.

The Exorcist, The Rich and Stephen King

This was the only scene in the movie that REALLY freaked me out

I saw The Exorcist last night at the movie theater. I had never seen it, other than a clip here and there since it came out forty years ago. I went to see it with my friend D, and I had a gin martini with lime and simple syrup, straight up beforehand, along with some moules frites. The drink made me just this shy of buzzed, so I felt no anxiety -- I hate scary movies and never watch them -- when I sat down to watch in the sold-out theater. I have to say that the movie didn't hold up all that well, even on a big screen. I don't know if this is because we've become so accustomed to slick productions that the technical "wizardry" of 1972 seemed really lame or because the movie is such a part of our cultural lexicon that it didn't surprise me. I enjoyed Ellen Burstyn and her fantastic clothes, and the priest with the sad, dark eyes was wonderful as were the interior shots and some of the foggy Georgetown exteriors. Man Von Sydow was amazing as usual, but he was old in the movie and that was forty years ago! I think he's still alive now, so that sort of distracted me. The director and various others related to the film were there to answer questions afterward, but it was an earnest, fawning crowd, so we left. I think my favorite part of the evening, actually, was that gin martini. It was so perfectly tart.

Anyway.

Speaking of demons, have you read Stephen King's fantastic piece in The Daily Beast? It's called Tax Me for F@%&'s Sake, and it'll make your head spin around a whole lot faster than Linda Blair's. Read it here.

What people survive

Portrait of Bearded Lady and Her Husband

I lowered my needing-to-lose-weight body to the floor this morning, cradling Sophie's head in my lap as she had a seizure and sat there, Indian-style, until it was over. The Husband then carried her to her room, and when she woke up a bit later, I fed her the breakfast interrupted and then dressed her and took her to school. This is a normal morning in our household, and I'm aware, at once, of how fucked-up (apologies to those who hate the cursing) it is and how mundane. A bit later, I read an email from a friend of mine, the beautiful Missy B., who had included an excerpt from a New York Times article about the artist Cindy Sherman and her vintage note-card collection.  Sherman found this particular note-card in a junk store in upstate New York, and it appeared to be nearly one hundred years old. It spoke to me this morning in all its sadness yet utter and hilarious absurdity:

"Fair Deceiver: I did not know until last night that you had a glass eye. Woman you have deceived me and our engagement is off! If I had married you, perhaps I would have found out that you had a cork leg, wore a wig and chewed your gum with false teeth — Anyway, I don’t think you could boil water without burning it. I want a girl that can do several things besides rubbing lip rouge on my cheek. Chase around girlie and get another guy.”