A book by Sara Ryan
I came home for lunch today. There was a car, parked but still running, across the street, and the stereo was cranked.
Cranked, specifically, with the soothing sounds of Mr. Al Green. It was so nice to hear unexpectedly that I felt compelled to share.
Earlier this evening I identified a Pieter Brueghel painting that was in service to swank up a wine label. I was vaguely displeased with myself for not remembering the name of the painting, and also surprised that I was the only one at the table who recognized it as Brueghel. I forget that not everyone is all up in the Northern Renaissance. A search reveals that it was Peasant Dance.
And the same search revealed that there is also a Brueghel painting available as a table lamp.
I am now sort of tempted to buy both the wine and the lamp, and juxtapose them. I wonder what else you can get Brueghel paintings on?
The Internet was out at our house all weekend. I could have gone to one of the many fine wireless access points provided by Personal Telco, but instead I sorted, straightened, read, did laundry, took things to Goodwill and Rerun, and spent Sunday painting a bookshelf the same orange as the front door. (Yes, I used leftover exterior paint for something that will be placed indoors. Fear me!)
I’ve been enjoying Thomas Hine’s The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, enough that I’ve put two of his other books on hold, too. Here’s a quote:
Our beliefs about teenagers are deeply contradictory: They should be free to become themselves. They need many years of training and study. They know more about the future than adults do. They know hardly anything at all. They ought to know the value of a dollar. They should be protected from the world of work. They are frail, vulnerable creatures. They are children. They are sex fiends. They are the death of culture. They are the hope of us all.
1. Chris Beckett interviewed Steve and I about “Me and Edith Head” at The Pulse.
2. Cynthia Leitich Smith interviewed me about The Rules for Hearts at Cynsations.
3. If you’ve got a link to Periscope Studio’s blog, please please please update the address to periscopestudio.blogspot.com. The former address, mercurystudio dot blogspot dot com — a relic of the old studio name — has been taken over by spammers. Spread the word!
The law of unintended consequences: now that the super new website design is up, I feel like my posts need to be somehow worthy of it. This does not, of course, guarantee that they will be. Of course, a bunch of you read me on LiveJournal anyway and do not see the website design — and as of yesterday, you can read me on Facebook too, since I figured out how to import Notes. Or you can sign up for email updates. I know! Enough already, I seem to hear you say.
Gosh, it’s good to be home. Right now I’m listening to a fantastic mix created by signifier. One of the tracks — “Reviewing the Situation” by Sandie Shaw — unexpectedly reminded me of my parents. That phrase was part of our family language. I knew it was from a song, but I’d heard Mom and Dad sing-quote it long before I heard the actual song.
I didn’t write anything on the Katrina anniversary, but New Orleans has been on my mind a lot lately. I just read Heart Like Water: surviving Katrina and life in the disaster zone by Joshua Clark. What’s struck me about the book most are two things: the incredible black humor that many folks used as a survival strategy (I’m very sympathetic to this, as it is one of my strategies of choice in times of devastation as well), and Clark’s willingness to show the ways in which he was an asshole as well as the times when he comes off heroic. Here’s a passage:
The horror that falls through my fingers. The screams a few blocks away you cannot hear. We spend most of our waking hours grasping what is out of reach, on the news, in books, on the phone. Yet it takes an explosion lighting and shaking the night sky to give us a hint of what is happening beside us. But then true fright comes not with explosions and screams but with their silence, when the things and people around us cannot scream, when even the insects do not call, when we must cry into the night instead.
And when civilization returned to our neighborhood, when the insects sang again, I went to those areas that tragedy did not miss, and groped at their experience, wanting to suffer it.
I still think a lot about the time I helped gut a house, when I met Matt. I didn’t write much, I only posted photos. But I remember standing in the back bedroom, where clothes, furniture, and household goods were piled high enough that it was hard to find a steady place to stand, finally getting the closet door open and realizing how much more was there, everything waterlogged, everything ruined. Breathing through the mask we had to wear. Not thinking about what else might be inside until I saw the rat.
Yeah. Anyway.
How’s your September so far?
It is not a great photo, but it illustrates Snag’s latest personality quirk, which is that now, when he eats, he prefers it if you are also petting him.
All the travel, it’s catching up with me.
Which is not to say I regret any of it. This summer I’ve been in Columbus (and The Usual Undisclosed Location), D.C., San Diego, Chicago (well, outside of Chicago), Boring (which wasn’t), Ashland, and last weekend, Seattle.
I’m very glad I went up. There’s no substitute for spending real, face-to-face time with friends who are mostly present in my life as phone voices, emails and blog posts. We went to some of my favorite places, and added some new ones to the list, notably the Kingfish Cafe. I love having favorite places in multiple cities. Little pockets of places I don’t live end up feeling like home.
But, as is clear from the second paragraph above, I’ve been away from home a lot, lately. And right now, I just want to hunker down and hide in my house and fight off the crud I am trying not to incubate. (No thanks to the lady on the train back to Portland who announced “I’m so sick…I’m totally getting strep throat…unless it’s the partying” in between coughing fits.)
Yesterday I walked a little over five and a half miles. Half that distance was a pleasant perambulation around Green Lake Park with dirtylibrarian. The other half was unplanned and occurred at night, with luggage. We were probably just too impatient, but when the third cab in a row arrived at Union Station, then turned around and drove away without picking up any passengers, it seemed more efficient to walk home. It was a beautiful night for a walk.
So now it’s September, and I’m not leaving town again for a couple of months. I’m trying to focus. To knuckle down without knuckling under. To stop worrying about things I can’t control. To keep the plates spinning, the i’s dotted, the t’s crossed. To close multiple tabs. We’ll see how it goes.
Y’all: what are some of your favorite places in cities where you don’t live?
