Finding an old name and then the face to go with it.
The couple, married before me, before any of us, straight after college.
You think a couple is a good couple because of so many things, their combined physicality for instance. Their interests. They way they make each other laugh.
They were both tall and thin. I mean, really tall and really thin. Both hipsters, not artists themselves, on the periphery, but always the right choice in music and film and clothing.
Without looking for either of them, I found them both on Facebook.
So many people are still there, in Cleveland, the art scene still alive. If I had stayed in Kent, would I have begun to venture back to the east side? Would my poetry have cropped up again? Would my daughter have wanted to go to art school and really have accepted the acceptance at CIA?
I would not have found Sacred Harp singing, that’s for sure.
*
They were at my wedding with a new baby. How little I knew of babies then, but thought I did. Thought I knew so much.
(for the first time, I’ve figured out how to put a video directly from my Photo Booth to my blog without making it public on youtube. how could this have flummoxed me so in the past? does this date mean it’s from October or November? dang dates)
New Year’s is coming. I tried to write about being curled in the dark at the Solstice, but I left the post hanging in my draft file.
It’s raining, pouring. Now it rains in December, November, October. No doubt it will rain in January. There are lots of nights when the temps drop into the teens and single digits; and yes, there are snowstorms and cancellations and hazardous driving conditions. I’m curled in my cold house, layers of clothing as if I lived in a stone castle. When did I start to dress like an old person?
This should all be snow. I hate this rain every year now. We all know it’s wrong, at least those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s and remember a snowy winter and never saw rain from October ’til April.
Some of the curling inward this year is because I am still struggling with injury—sprains, strains, arthritis; an unknown and un-diagnosible protrusion on my L clavicle. I can’t move as well as I’d like so I curl up. I am not depressed though. I am cheerful and well-rested for the most part.
I’ve thought of writing a post chronicling all the cool things I was privileged to do this year and maybe I still will. The music, the dances, the museums. I am surrounded by art and culture and I get to go to the ocean a fair bit.
I am also thinking I will do a post about resolutions.
Here’s a Calder from the Cleveland Museum of Art which we visited on a rare Thanksgiving jaunt to Ohio.
Once when we were in New York, the kids were still very young, we saw a Calder in one of the rooms at whichever museum (MOMA? MMA?) and we blew on it. You are not allowed to make the Calder move by blowing on it and we were chided by the museum attendant. It was the definition of irony.
As I age, the legions of celebrities who shaped the popular culture into which I was born will continue to die. Their deaths will increase in number and rapidity.
I never had the slightest idea that Lou Reed would be on this list. Yes, not even a foggy notion.
♦
I probably came late to worship at the altar of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, but I don’t really remember. I don’t have any monumental story to tell you about the first time I heard the album Loaded or anything.
When I was in high school, I didn’t know about cross-dressing or what a transvestite was. Take a Walk on the Wild Side was a radio standby throughout those years, nothing radical about it.
I wasn’t raised Catholic where you dress up and attend funerals on a regular basis; in fact, I was purposely shielded from death by my parents who believed that it was appropriate to do so and it would keep me safe. I never saw a dead body until my own father died when I was 23. My first viewing of an open casket was several years later.
After John Lennon was shot (I was a mere 17), the possibility of any of the other Beatles’ dying became real. Lennon’s death was hard, but we had each other, we had the legions turning out in Central Park singing Imagine to help us through, and, like I say, I was 17, on the cusp of the wildness ahead of me and full of disdain for the adult world I was about to enter into in some small measure. I was woefully unaware of the process I now know as “aging.” Not only that, but the Beatles’ zeitgeist jumped generations and genres of music. There was so much to love about them—who even remembers that they pushed boundaries and people’s buttons? Their music’s universal appeal wiped out the shock of their long hair; the bed-in; the Jesus statement (which was willfully and ignorantly taken out-of-context anyway).
Lou Reed and the VU captured the sound that was still alive when I was a student at Kent State University in the early ’80s. Attending any art opening had the grit and recklessness the VU sang about in the ’60s. There were drugs, fags, lesbians, cross-dressers, punk bands, hair dye, glam, 1950s vintage; and we were all sexy, every last one of us; all of this before Grunge hit the scene. By the ’90s, I had gotten sober, bought a house, started to settle into my life with my man.
♦
I remember one particular thesis show where the artist had created huge, found-metal musical instruments and everyone who went through the exhibit spent the next 3 or 4 hours demolishing the sculptures by “playing” them with the flat, rusted metal strips left around on the floor next to each one.
I went to as many art openings as I could. I went for the free booze and the food and the scent of sex, but also to be on the edge of all of those real artists. I was an English major and didn’t have the stomach for that much radicalism or creativity. What I hear when I listen to the Velvet Underground is the sound of that time.
♦
I knew a guy, a friend of another guy, who said if you looked up the word cool in the dictionary, there would be a little picture of Lou Reed next to it. That’s how cool Lou Reed was. I always loved that.
♥
Lou Reed, your death belongs to my generation, too. Thanks for the trippy guitar, the sex and the drugs and the grit, the psychedelia, the poetry, your rich and soulful voice.
You were a light in the darkness because you didn’t deny the darkness and from that place you were one of its true voices.
Now if I could pick my favorite song, I’d post it for you right here. I’m dancing and singing along and you should be, too.
I’m not sure I have ever made a New Year’s resolution.
What I am NOT LIKELY to do in 2013:
Stop submitting my poetry for publication (though in 2012, this was my intention). I feel refreshed and excited right now and I look forward to sending out more poems. DANG it feels good to feel this way.
Change my blog to (the dreaded, overly-romantic-notion-of-oneself) white words on a black background. In order to spare other bloggers’ feelings, I don’t publicize this, but it is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. I really like to be able to read blogs I want to read, but funky fonts and funky colors preclude me from a. reading without getting massive after-image-y headaches and b. taking the blogger seriously.
Then again, what about that Neil Young lyric? Maybe that would be even harder to read! (Does anybody know what I’m talking about? This could be a real born-in-the-’60s test).
Give up swearing.
Give up putting funky colors in my hair.
Let me now try my hand at some real resolutions:
Give up the habit of slouching at my computer. In other words, stop forgetting myself as a psycho-physical whole when I am in front of a screen and bring my good thinking to bear on myself.
Use the same good thinking when I interact with or talk about my mother (ie, stop being so effing codependent!)
I think I have to go back to the beginning of my blog and remove all photos which do not belong to me. I do not want to get sued. I sort of look forward to asking permission for some of the images if I can find the sources, but I also dread this kind of tedious work. I did look over J, F, M of 2011 and I didn’t use ONE PHOTO at all! Then came April….
I miss my own photos, actually, as I have always loved to take photos. I stopped taking as many when I got so caught up in using google images. It’s so DAMN easy and so damn fun and some of the photos are so damn apropos. Oh fuck me.
I would like to give you a photo that belongs to me. I am not sure I have one.
Let me look.
Here. Here is some random crap.
Okay, it’s not crap. It’s really fun Lego sculptures from an exhibit we saw a few years ago at the Springfield Quadrangle. I cannot call it art, but I can call it fun. Sometimes art is not fun and especially artists are touchy grouches and their work sucks.
This could be a new regular feature on my blog. Random photos from my files. I don’t like it.
I do have more color in my face this week (HALLELUJAH!!!) so maybe I’ll take some quickie photos on my computer soon. Or record a song. I have a new phone, too. My first one with a keyboard and real photo capabilities. I am moving up in the world.
This is a photo of me on Tuesday morning. I was not thinking of jumping.
The world flies by. We forget.
I am glad, gladder than glad (Glatter than glad) that Obama will remain president for the next 4 years. But I am also almost as glad that the most cynical election in history is over. I think it speaks to a very sad time in our country. The money; the waste. Forgive us all our folly. Now let’s get Citizen’s United overturned. Power to the people.
(it is barely sunny out here. this image is bullshit, but the sentiment is not)
I’ve been having a bang-up time out here on the West Coast. Many good things. A friend we hadn’t yet met in-the-flesh came out to see us on Tuesday. Someone both Hubby and I have known only via blogging and the internet. This is the world in which we live, in which great things can happen, in which our best selves can come to light.
We did not take a photo of Katharine, as per her request, but you know she was here by the photo she took of us. We are in a cave; not an underground cave, a sea cave.
What else? Rock carvings in front of oceanfront mansions
I love this bird
it is a marbled godwit, not a whimbrel or a dowitcher, but I wonder what the birds would make of our names for them, our folly, our need
First, Hallelujah, we have wi-fi from an unprotected network. As long as I sit on the upper deck of our house rental (from which I can see the ocean of Cape Cod Bay, can see the sand peeking through the water at low tide—even without my glasses—can feel breeze on my bare skin), I get reception.
BUT WAIT! I have now adjourned to the bedroom, on the same side of the house as the deck, and I have connectivity! No mosquitoes, just the sound of the bullfrogs from the huge pond below! This Cape gets better every minute!
I made a mistake in my recent post, thinking that the puzzle-head sculpture was in front of PAAM; as I was walking in town later in the day, I realized it was in front of one of the many galleries on Commercial Street. You know how I like to be accurate if at all possible, so I thought I’d let you know.
Here are two more photos of sculptures of heads, both of these from the excellent sculpture park, deCordova in Concord, Mass:
I don’t really know why I am putting these here now except that they are extremely cool works of art….
I have much more to share. Provincetown; my poetry; my poetry workshop; the amazingly cool, inspiring, fun, beautiful, poetic, art installation at the Emily Dickinson Museum, “Dwell in Possibility,” which we managed to sneak in on Friday before we left town for the Cape. I’ll give you a peek:
You know, this exhibit has been up for weeks and weeks and although I’d driven by parts of it a number of times, the family waited to see it until the day before it was to be taken down. BUT, oh, how worthwhile. So much to tell, so many poems to post….where to begin?
Internet is sketchy unless I’m on the deck and tho the moon be full and lo I want to write and post, I will retire for now. I think the poems I have been working on in the last little while of my life are good. I am getting better at editing.
Just know that I can see the flat ocean in the distance; it is close, not even a quarter mile down the slope
On hiatus, possibly, from blogging for the week. I can probably do quickie updates, but nothing too involved.
I am in Truro, Cape Cod for the week, no wi-fi at our house rental (WTF?) but a fabulous pool and less than a block from the ocean (bayside).
I have my new point-and-shoot camera with me (you all know the saga of my older point-and-shoot camera with a water-stained lens, right? See any photo I’ve taken and put here on my blog in the last year-and-a-half and you will probably notice); my new commuter bike and paneer; Hubby; daughters; one of their friends; and my mother.
I will be doing a poetry writing workshop with Dorianne Laux each day this week at the Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. I am excited and slightly scared, though these words do not adequately describe the subtleties of my actual emotional state in regards to the upcoming workshop. In any case, wish me well….
Speaking of sex toys, I have forgotten all of mine at home. Fortunately, Provincetown is a den of sin and I think there are at least 3 “sex” shops. The most embarrassing (to me) being Toys of Eros, whose window is smack dab on the main strip (Commercial Street) and generally features its white-torsoed manikins in bondage gear. All these years, I have tried to stay in conversation with the kids face-to-face as we pass. I don’t know what my worry or discomfort is; they’ve been coming up here for 12 years, same as me, and they’ve seen more drag queens and leather boys than I ever did until I was in my 40s.
In the absence of having uploaded any current photos, I give you some from April 2011. Or you can visit a couple of old posts about Cape Cod, here, here, and here.
sculpture in front of PAAM, Provincetown’s excellent art museum
just a little house/building, not too interesting, but I liked it enough to take this photo
That’s all folks, I’m outta gas and outta a desire to sit in this internet cafe/coffee shop (The Wired Puppy)
A fact about me: I’ve never broken a bone in my body. I don’t think anything is broken, but I also don’t think it’s simple bruising.
I am right-handed and it’s my right side, but this (sitting, typing) isn’t bothering me at all. It’s more the cumulative overdoing. I think I can blog.
Happened Thursday and has gotten progressively more painful and limiting. But maybe it’s more painful because I still went to yoga class Thursday evening. I couldn’t do much cobra, but I did everything else. Friday, I can’t remember much of what I did.
Annie has been sick and awake in the middle of the night needing all sorts of things, so that doesn’t help. Two nights in-a-row so far. I’ve still been fighting off a weird virus myself, on-again, off-again. A mild cough, pathetic actually, it’s so small.
Ibuprofin and aspirin and ice packs. When I feel better, I do a lot. I hate to be too lazy. Okay, I used to hate to be lazy but that was before I started my blog.
Now will try to soak in those good Dead Sea salts I buy cheap from a company in Oregon. I have been buying my massage oils and essential oils and Dead Sea salts from them for over 20 years. I can’t say I’m crazy about their website, but I can say I’m crazy about their selection and prices.
I don’t have any birch oil, but birch oil is good for aches and pains. Now you know.
Above is a photo of some of the sheep at my daughter’s school. You can’t really tell, but behind them (and all around their enclosure) is wool embedded into the chicken wire fence. It is an installation by a local artist, Nancy Milliken, called Walling In. All the while it was going up onto the fence I thought, “hmmm…..now isn’t that interesting and not altogether attractive?” But I will tell you: I drive from the south side of Bay Rd (the road that used to take folks from points west to the Bay, in Boston) and as the road bends, the fence is fully visible as it spills down the hill. It’s beautiful. I love it.
You’ll find a better photo of the whole fence on Nancy Milliken’s website. You’ll also find a photo of a rooster from the school. This rooster. Isn’t he pretty?
Look at the chicken wire up close:
You know I don’t love wool. I used to not be able to wear it at all–the itching and coarseness. When we moved to the Pioneer Valley, it was almost sacrilege not to wear wool, let alone to not like it. Try taking that a step further from the bubble of the Pioneer Valley into the even smaller community that is our local Waldorf school. Wool in our Waldorf school is to clothing like manna is to food. It’s practically heaven-sent and good for anything that ails you. In fact, it is probably edible in some form or another, just ask the Handwork-slash-Ag Arts teacher. I used to hate wool. I sort of still do. Slowly, over the last 11 years, my body seems to have adjusted to it a little: I can wear some wool-blend socks, as long as the percent of wool isn’t too high. I can wear my wool coat because it has a thick polar-fleece lining. I cannot wear a wool scarf directly next to my skin, even the Smartwool kind. I do have a lovely pink and black polka-dot hat that is merino wool and I can wear that.
Maybe it doesn’t matter so much, all of this wool. It’s the Solstice, December 22, and it’s raining in New England. I am sure up in the hill towns and in the mountains there is some snow. Rain in December. What happened to our climate? You probably don’t need wool in New England until January nowadays.
Silk is the other natural fiber one must acquaint oneself with in New England. My initial reaction when told I must wear silks in the winters here was to turn my nose up. The nerve! Me, who was somewhat “tactile defensive” as a child (they just told you to behave or slapped you when I was a kid, no such thing as tactile defensive). I remember a particular episode when I had to wear tights and how I screamed my head off in protest. I did eventually learn to wear silk long underwear and I fell in love with the warmth and softness and the not-overwhelming level of heat that they keep in (unlike a lot of synthetics which can make me too warm unless I’m outside and not moving).
twinklysparkles 