Shiny Things

I'm trying to find a way to express what I have been feeling since I learned of Carrie Fisher's death. Pardon me while I wax philosophic about mass media space epics ... Yesterday, I went to see  Rogue One.  I had avoided reviews and other spoilers, and yet I understood from early on that everyone would die. How could they not? It was harrowing to watch, and it was right. I was touched by Jyn's line, "Someone's out there," as the transmission of the Death Star plans was beamed out into the chaos. That felt like a summary of the whole film, and a message I want to receive in this era of resistance. Each of us does what we can and can only trust that someone else will be in position to make the next move. None of us can solve any of this on our own, and it is best we lay down our overweening sense of guilt that we cannot. Just do what you can and trust that someone's out there. And yet, at the same time, I was thinking, "Anyone can use this to justify t...

Driving across town for the final installment of Christmas with my in-laws in Lakewood, we were all impressed with the appearance of the lake. The sky was a bright, milky mix of white and blue, but the water was a great expanse of shivering green. Grey-green, sage-green, sea-green, the green of lichen edging into moss on the dark side of a tree in a damp, cool forest. You might like to have a lover with eyes this color of green. The green was topped with a million tiny cuts of white as the cold swirled in from the northwest.  Here is a picture of an Irish phone box that has nothing  to do with anything, except the color is sort of right.* On a side note, one of my great joys is that my kids have such big, varied families. My parents are so much different than David's, and yet both are terrific grandparents to have, especially in combination. When we got to Lakewood, O gave me a big hug and whispered to me, "You know why I like to come here? Because whenever I walk in this hous...

Grocery shopping has a lot of emotional highs and lows for me. As the food-oriented individual that I am I wish I could say "marketing." I wish I went to farmer's markets more (I go approximately once a year), but I've never quite gotten my system of time to gibe with it. Someday perhaps I will. (I do, during the growing season, actively do City Fresh , a social-justice minded CSA. More on that when growing season begins again.) But grocery shopping, in a modern American supermarket. What an historical anomaly. Sometimes it completely overwhelms me. I can lose time in a supermarket. Sometimes I text David for help, like holding a string in the minotaur's labyrinth. I have been known to cry. Once I stood in line at a Giant Eagle late at night and watched someone buy tomatoes and ground beef both package on black styrofoam trays and wrapped tight in plastic and I saw the doom of our civilization. Once I met a yogi from Australia (where they apparently have different...

Also not my moon. The moon is not full tonight. But it did sort of look like this at dusk. (moon from here .) The day was spent doing more appropriately beginning of the year things like cracking the whip while the children cleaned the (900-years-overdue-for-a-good-wipe-down) fridge and trudging through this pile of grading. Trudge is a word I like for its sound. If it weren't so onomatopoetic I would wish it meant something else to fit my enthusiasm. In the afternoon, I went out to do an hour's worth of erranding that took two hours, when I returned home the kids were out stalking around the house with Nerf weapons and their favorite college-aged x-babysitter. When I finally exhorted them to come in to finish the refrigerator project, Z's hands were bright red with cold, O was happy in his gym shorts, and the moon glowed with a huge orange penumbra. Overall the day was a moderate success in the slow down project. Tea was made, children were conversed with, gifts were putte...

I will meditate on this image to further my aims ( photo thanks to Make:  http://makezine.com/craft/giant_kitty_couch/ ) 2015, what will you be? Over the past week of lounging and lolling at my mother's house I have thought about what intentions I would like to set for the new year. I have been dissatisfied with the options I present for myself. They are all so unmanageable. More, more, more. How can I do more of 10 different things when I can't even do enough of what I am already doing? Ok, then less. Less, less, less. I still feel tired. Less, as they say, is just another kind of more. Last year , my intentions were about daily routines (this, I think was a kinder way of trying for the more, more, more). Over the course of 12 months I have done better and worse at them. And yoga. I am still straying off the path there. All I can say is I trust that yoga will still be there to receive me lovingly when I manage to return. Yesterday, I caught a friend's Facebook post about c...

I've reached the point where it feels like I do nothing but process things (paper, assignments, grades, words, ideas, references, editing marks, aesthetic philosophies, fears, egos, and dreams of the future, to name a few) for students. I may not actually be a human being myself. David does most of the cooking, I have a cursory relationship to my own children, I do not exercise, and I do not write. I do however watch the morning sky. That is something I do. More than a week ago, I drove to school a bit late. It was nearly 7:30 and dawn was in full gear. Something about the post-rainstorm atmosphere made the sky a vibrant coral pink in every direction. I have never seen a sky like this before. The whole of the world glowed with this strange liquid light. It was like being inside a shell, the nacre alight with the filtered fire of the sun. When I got to school, swim practice was in full gear, the pool enclosure a glass cube of freakish aqua green within the orangey-pink air. The next...

Just a little check in to let you know I still live and there are still pretty objects. These are my new kicks, purchased today with *last year's* birthday money from my mama, along with new bras, tights, and undies! I know how to live. Thanks, Ma! I went last night to see preview night of the chamber-sized production of Les Mis at a certain local theater. I've never seen this show before but I am familiar with the music. I spent a week or two in the summer of 1988 in between living in Atlanta and New York, hanging out at my friend Andrea's apartment listening and sometimes crazily dancing to songs from the cast album, along with my other bestie Brian. It was a funny soundtrack for us to have, not something I would have guessed this trio to gravitate toward. Brian and I were both theater geeks, but not so much musicals. I'm not sure what else I was listening to then. Varieties of punk & new wave, with some Patsy Cline and Billie Holiday thrown in. Andrea had been on...