Halloweens Past

If You're Looking For Literary Content - Go Away

I'm awash in a sea of flashing insights and downright idiocy. I think that's why I blog. Some of the things going through my mind:

How much I love my Aunt June.

I went to visit her with my mother the other day and she had some lovely peaches,

...and these lovely ladies have nice new scarves.

(without a sense of humor, we are nothing, right?)
{emailed to me today by fun friend, Linda}

...and as soon as I dared post this slightly provocative photo,
I thought, 'but you might offend someone.'
.....and then I thought,

"where no offense is intended, it is foolish to take any -

where offense IS intended, it is foolish to take any."

Does anyone know who said that?
It's quoted all over the place around here

(Salt Lake City, Utah).

...and then I thought about Amanda Palmer,
the daughter of a friend in Massachusetts.

She is an Indie Pop Star. She sang with Keith Lockhart
and the Boston Pops Orchestra

last New Year's Eve and is going to do it again this year.

She is 'OUT THERE'.....and I love her.

When she was a little girl, I accidentally shut her fingers in the sliding door of my VW bus. I'm so glad she can still play the piano and the ukulele. There is nothing more sickening than the wail of an innocent who has been hurt and you are the one responsible. She has a fabulous mother who comes from a very proper background (she was somewhat of a rebel herself so I'm sure she supported Amanda in all her artistic expressions). Amanda's  sister, Alyson, was my son, Todd's first girlfriend.

I alternate between the image I have of myself as a responsible mother/grandmother and someone who is also 'OUT THERE.' I think the real issue is - I have no impulse control. I have done things in performance that were spontaneous and funny and then I went home afterwards and thought, 'what the....?'  I wish I could totally have the confidence of Amanda Palmer, who knows who she is and is undeterred by what ANYONE thinks....but I have these voices in me....especially now that I'm old and supposedly demure and wise.

...and then I click John Ettorre's post and look up Frederick Seidel and find this poem:

...and then I remember the woman on Broadway with the beaming face, who was probably my age, but I thought of her as old back then in the '70's. She was more beautiful than terrible and obviously loved Manhattan and eating in that diner and I vowed I would be an old woman like her.


...and this reminds me of the 'old' woman I saw skiing who was also beaming and exclaiming, "Whee!" every time she made one of her slow not-so-great Stem Christy turns, ...and I vowed I would also be an old lady like her - though I admit I go around smiling a lot merely because I've seen pictures of me lately where I'm not smiling and I see the turkey neck and dangling jowls and I think, 'maybe that wiggle-waggle would tighten up if you smiled.'


...and then I think, 'you're too self-absorbed...you should adopt a refugee,'....but then I realize my limitations and decide to blog all of this instead, because blogging slows down my thoughts that rush around as fast as photons.

Seagulls

From "Day Full of Gulls"

Day full of gulls, a storm of gulls,

wheel within wheel of caw and sweep,

never seeing enough of them,

how they tilt the air, and glide, and ebb.

Barry Spacks

What I Saw From The Hot Tub This Morning

What I Saw On My Walk With Mary Ann and Lola

Consider This...

Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America
By Barbara Ehrenreich

review:
"This utterly original take on the American positive frame of mind traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. With the myth-busting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America's penchant for positive thinking: on a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out "negative" thoughts; on a national level, it's brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster."

"Unless you keep on saying that you believe in fairies, Tinker Bell will check out, and what's more, her sad demise will be your fault! Barbara Ehrenreich scores again for the independent-minded in resisting this drool and all those who wallow in it."
~Christopher Hitchens
complete review here

Art

"When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, 'you mean they forget?'" - Howard Ikemoto

granddaughter, Sandra's painting, age 4

Sunday, After Dinner

"In the beginning came the secret word - but I digress. The word actually was no secret. It was laughter..." - Groucho Marx

"Paint as you like and die happy." Henry Miller

I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."
Walt Whitman,  "Song of Myself"

Bonneville Shoreline Hike

This we know.

all things are connected

like the blood

which unites one family....

Whatever befalls the earth,

befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.

Man did not weave the web of life;

he is merely a strand in it.

Whatever he does to the web,

he does to himself.

     -Ted Perry, inspired by Chief Seattle