a bit sketchy

I was going through some of my old sketch books and my work from an art class. There are only three faces that I found. All the rest of the sketches are missing just the faces. Occasionally I left out the hands too, but usually they are drawn in very strategically. The faces are just obviously missing. The three that I did attempt to sketch are a) required for the class project to be considered complete, and b) one time I was feeling overly ambitious. At first I was thinking there was a link between myself being faceless in my dreams and the sketches (one of my BFF's probably doing the same thing and bringing a lot more educational information on the topic to the table)... Then I realized, maybe it's really the simple answer that's the right one. Faces are hard to draw.

memory associations: fitted sheets

Every time I fold a fitted bed sheet, I remember my cousin coming to my dorm to tell me how her first work study shift in the laundry went. She was glowing when she told me, "and [the boss] was so glad to have me there since I was the only one who actually knew how to fold a fitted sheet!" I didn't mention that I had no idea how to fold a fitted sheet, at the time...







curious? youtube link fitted sheet folding demo I found HERE

Dream: the one where i can only see the side of my face (don't ask me to make sense of this one)

Last night I dreamed:
   I was minding my own business, living in an old two-story farm house out in a sage covered desert, when I was pressed into service being undercover in a local women's detention/community service facility. Exactly. CONFUSING. Apparently it was just up the road from my place. As part of the agreement, they'd sneak in my degree and graduation picture I was expecting from completing my masters, as I would miss the graduation ceremony.
   Time jumps forward, I've been there a while, but haven't found whoever/whatever I was sent there for. However, I have become good friends with a small group and am struggling with guilt at not being who they think I am. There's some sort of event for the whole facility and we all are dressing up, doing hair and make-up. My graduation picture arrives with my degree and I notice that they've put me into the picture just like the picture from my BA, the only difference is the color is royal blue rather than back of my first cap and gown. In both pictures, it's a side shot, close up portrait style showing my left side.
   The pictures seem natural to me at the time, but then I go to put on some lipstick (a shimmery cinnamon that I had in RL when I was seventeen) and something is wrong with the mirror. I can only see the right side of my face and can't move myself to looking straight forward at the mirror. I try to look up at my eyes and the mirror is foggy there. Then I see the door opening behind me to the left and I realize I've left the pictures and documents out on my chair and I wake up.
Dream over.

SUMMER!

I just wanted to tell the world that it is SUNNY outside around here, nowadays... YES!!!!!!!

insert witty title here

Every once in a while I find myself in a slippery conversation and realize I'm not really getting my point across but can't help but to continue. Continue to what end... not sure. It's like having a Foot-in-Mouth Day. One of the days when you know you should attempt to say as little as at all possible for as much of the day as possible. Today was one of those days, and I had one of those conversations. Contemplating later all the other things I could have said, I realized that talking to some people is like looking through a glass, thinking it is a window and then realizing that it is really a two way mirror. Exactly like that.

fluctuation, perception

when contemplated too far... zooming in on something too far... the quicksands of life can drown you... perception... a constantly changing, constantly barraging, thought, belief. there are few pillars of belief that are not in a state of flux, or merely change in outer appearance while the same basic, steadfast point remains... glimmering, turning, watery beauty that a light shines out of - the light of unbending truth.

never never land?

I've climbed to the top of these stairs before. They are the same stairs, turning, cold stone stairs climbing a tower, ever climbing, clockwise, clockwise, upward, upward. Never reaching the top of the tower, the final step brings me to the top of a straight, regular staircase, alone, and a dark fogginess covering anything but the stairs ... I've seen this before, the same never getting anywhere feeling. Just when the hard part is done, it turns out that was the easy part. Finally, I know what I'm talking about - wait no, I know I don't. Read back to the childish journal entries of the past, five, ten, fifteen years... wait, it's the same voice, the same soul, the same newness and naivety. Am I trapped in an emotional never never land?

my own scarf full of hugs

Throughout the day lately, my daughter, seemingly out of the blue, will say to me, "I love you my mother." She says it cool, calm, serious, often while she's coloring or otherwise busy. But every time she says it, I feel like I just got a great big warm hug from her, and know that despite all the crazy hectic days and arguments over whether she'll eat her carrots or go to bed when it is bed time, there's a mother-daughter bond, love, that won't be broken, even when she thinks I'm a crazy old lady out of touch with "cool". I'm storing up all these hugs for remembering later... 

I used to send a scarf with her to kindergarten that was "full up with extra hugs for all day" while she was there and I was at work. I'm thinking I'll need my own scarf soon enough. There's an old song, about the uncertainties of the future, I don't remember all of it or if it's quoting something, but one line stays with me:  "I don't know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future." 

not as old as i thought it was

I distinctly remember being three and four years old and looking up at my mom and thinking she was a grown-up, but never that she was "old." In one memory in particular, I can still see where we were in my old hometown, the sunlight streaming into our blue Ford Tempo from the west. Mom was singing along with the radio, quietly, and I told her she sounded so pretty, like the singer. She was my mom, wonderful at a lot of things, and a grown-up. I thought I'd never be a grown-up since it would take forever to get there. 

Old wasn't really a concept I had a full understanding of at the time, though I've given it more thought since then. Mom was my current age at the time I'm thinking of. That's the weird thing, now I'm that age. I find myself looking at my daughter and wondering what she's thinking. She made the off handed comment the other day that I'm so old. Sure, old compared to FIVE. I've lived more than five times her lifetime. OUCH. Let's not do the math comparing to my two year old. 

This morning really solidified the fact that I'm a grown-up now. We were in the car, and an tune I used to love came on the radio. I turned it up and excitedly told my daughter, "This is a great song! It was so cool when I was in high school!" DOH. I just don't feel old, or like what I thought being a grown-up would feel like. I'm relieved that I don't feel like a teenager anymore (whew!). I guess being a grown-up doesn't feel old after all, though sometimes life can make us feel old, no mater what age we are. Here's to all cheesy high school songs they'll be playing in the grocery store in the mornings in a few more years. BRING IT ON.

     

      Harvey Danger - Flagpole Sitta - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

dunno what twenty ten crazy means...

me: please stop, you are making me crazy. 
daughter: ehhh mom, how crazy are you? 
me: like, twenty TEN crazy. 
daughter: oh [looking unsurprised] that's crazy.

frowny-face

it's not a dislike of fried eggs
it's not a spontaneous dance-off with a five year old
nor Mrs. Peacock, aghast

it's tearing up, watery eyes
traitorous lump in your throat
with a heartache stomach-burn
depressive writing, another page to turn   ...

flinchless

I keep thinking, that one day... - one day I'll be eighty, and I won't flinch any more. I won't cringe with embarrassment. I won't turn bright red, or have to leave, out of embarrassment for a character in a movie. I'll be able to read through dramatic irony without having to skip ahead to make sure that I will survive. one day, all this over conciousness will fade. One day those moments that flash back out of no where will be gone and won't make me flinch because I just turned pink in a room full of strangers for no apparent reason and perhaps made an audible squeak. 

back-up planning all the what ifs and when its

Do you ever have those moments when you try to imagine the future, and it's nothing but a thick rolling fog? Picture yourself at this job for the next twenty years....no, nothing, FOG. Yes, as a high energy manager making a difference and improving the product and company. Picture yourself expressing yourself through music, sitting at a piano, singing along with the radio.... yes, yes, no?
When we first moved into this home, I'd try to picture our future yet I couldn't see beyond a few years. Not in a pessimistic or concerned sort of way. More of an acceptance of there being a bend in the road that one can't see past the trees and beyond yet.  So different now, with our mobility and wealth, one can pack and move and up and go and then try to go back again if we really want. We're not the log cabin just one plot further up the road from town.
Other things are less foggy, even when my mind wanders to the pessimistic.
Lose my voice? I will play piano, even with my stiff wrists.
Lose my hair? I love scarves, hats and slouchy soft warm beanies.
Lose my sight? My books will still be there.
Lose my stomach? Did you know that the human body is a miracle and we can adjust to life without?
We have so much, yet always thinking, contemplating, marveling, worrying and back-up planning all the what ifs and when its.

asparagus

the word asparagus brings to mind a picture of the green edible, on a fancy white platter with expensive gold edging, on a fancy white clothed table and some older, prim, woman, (see Mrs. Peacock here), across from you, gasping, with her hand on her throat, shocked, and rather indignant, of what you have just done, as you feel a mischievous grin growing on your face and the sparkle in your eye getting brighter.



asparagus

Reposted ~ Explanation ~

hello there, you, reading this blog. i've decided to repost some of my old, perhaps cryptic, attempts at poetry that i had previously posted under another blog hoping that would help me gain poetic momentum. alas! no go. i've added them into this blog, keeping the original dates and adding "Reposted:" to the beginning of the title and tagging them with reposted also. if you would like (no judgement on my part whether you would or would not), use the tag reposted that i've included on this post as well to bring them up.

wyrd

I started reading  Beowulf again. This time, a translation by Seamus Heaney. AMAZING. So many translations to choose from, so many people are critics of the epic and ignore the translation, or are ignorant of the origins of this masterpiece. I am thoroughly enjoying Beowulf, partly due to it being something I decided to read again rather than be assigned, and partly due to the wonderful translation. If you have any desire to read this ancient poem, I would strongly recommend this version.

On a side note, reading Heaney's introduction to his translation of Beowulf also gave me a quite a bit more appreciation for Katharine Kerr's incredibly detailed Deverry series (fifteen books of interwoven lives and stories). Sometimes we just enjoy a work of art for it's beauty, not being able to fathom the effort and immensity of what the artist did to give us the final version. When we get a hint, it's a glimmer of something incomprehensible in our peripheral vision, so easily dismissed    ---  unless we have been there too, and recognize it in ourself as well.

musing

thought
       throwing rocks at roses

persuasion
       pearls before swine

completion
       crowns before a throne

infinity
       in a place beyond time