Au Revoir

I'm saying good-bye to this blog. I've enjoyed writing it and I've loved the fact that people read and respond to what I've written, but I'm on to other projects. Thank you, readers and friends, for being my audience. I've really appreciated the privilege of sharing my daily thoughts and experiences with you. Au Revoir for now -- Nolastra.

Too Hot to Blog

Another heat spell heat hit, as it is wont to do this time of year. It was much too hot to blog. Needless to say, I had to remove the winter comforter from my bed. One night it was so hot I couldn't stay in my room, just laid on the couch in the living room in a state of miserable semi-wakefulness while I listened to the dog howling next door and the occasional truck rumbling by.

I had one bearable afternoon working on my art journal at my friend Christina's house. Her living room wasn't air-conditioned, but she had the blinds pulled down and the curtains closed, which protected the room from the punishing sun, and she had a powerful fan going. She was in a cheery mood because she'd spent the weekend in Monterey where it was cool and foggy. Sigh.

I got through the rest of the week by reading. I started out at the bottom with romances, read two by Amanda Quick. Hers are light-hearted in tone and involve psychic abilities. I then proceeded a step up the literary ladder to Robert Barnard, an excellent mystery writer that I highly recommend. As The New York Times Book Review put it: "One of the deftest stylists in the field...goes about it with a quietly malicious sense of humor." Finally I crossed the line into literature by reading The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer though when I say "crossing the line," I am not being entirely accurate as he likes to blur the lines between fact, fiction and personal memoir. He's written books in all three genres and he enjoys mixing them up so he's hard to classify. Novelist, diarist, journalist, historian, critic, comic, travel writer?

Rooms and Altars

Autumn is my favorite time of year. When the Equinox arrives, I perform my quarterly ritual of moving the furniture around in my small bedroom, taking down old pictures and hanging up new ones more appropriate to the season. I also put my heavier comforter on the bed, a beautiful Japanese quilt with a pale blue and gold design. Unfortunately, the weather has turned warm again so that action is premature.

Bob and I watched Inspector Lewis last night while I munched on Concord grapes. Mmm, my favorite -- only available for a short time in the fall.  (The grapes, not Lewis, though in a recent episode he kept going on about retirement so I wonder if there's a secret plot to ax the series.)


Inspector Lewis is an offshoot of Inspector Morse. I like the pairing of Lewis and his assistant Hathaway so I enjoy the program even though the plots are absurd. The story line invariably features an insane person as the murderer who has a secret room/ altar/ notebook filled with photos and clippings of the object of his obsession. The room, altar or notebook is discovered at the last minute by the detective team who then race to the rescue of the final victim. (There are usually at least 3 victims. The murderer saves his favorite for last.)

Detective Dee and the Phantom Flame

Happy Autumn Equinox! Looking back on my postings for August and September, I see that they've gradually dwindled away to nothing. Chalk that up to heat and fatigue, but it's cooled down a bit and the tang of autumn is in the air so I'm back to blogging.

Yesterday Bob and I visited our friends Chris and Ingrid in San Francisco. We all went to see Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame because Bob and Ingrid like Chinese films and Chris is up for anything. Besides, Ingrid and I had memories of the Judge Dee books by Van Gulik  We hoped this movie was based on them. It was not. It was a Chinese blockbuster with a plethora of special effects featuring martial arts encounters, the kind where people swirl through trees and leap up and down steep canyons and off rooftops into the sky or undergrowth. There were lethal red beetles whose poison caused the various victims to crumple up in flames and turn to black ash -- just like Halloween Jack O'Lanterns whose insides have melted and collapsed from too much heat.

It was fun. Lots of costumes, continuous action and never a dull moment. Shallow, though. Very shallow. Another in the puffed-up sequence of ancient empire sagas that the Chinese like to make now that they have a lot of national pride, professionalism and money at their disposal -- and government watchdogs.

Truthfully,  I remember the old Judge Dee books as rather dull so I guess this is an improvement. As far as martial arts movies go, though, I'd much rather watch the old Hong Kong cheapies starring Jackie Chan. Charlie Chaplin is preferable to Cecil B. DeMille.

Slipping and Sliding

I spent another enjoyable afternoon with Christina working on my art journal. Mindless gluing is restful, which is what we did to the pages of our new notebooks during our last session. This time we painted. I'm usually quite careful when I paint, but on this occasion I let myself go. I squeezed globs of acrylic onto the pristine page and then scraped it across the surface with a credit card. (Sample credit cards that come in the mail turn out to be very useful for applying glue and paint.) Then I dripped a different color on top of the first and slipped and slid the card across the page again in whatever way that took my fancy: broad strokes, short chops, undulating ripples, rhythmic waves or sharp scratches. Some pages came out looking good; others not so, but it didn't matter because I was having so much fun. When I got home, I tore out the pages I didn't like and pasted a few collage images onto the ones I did.

Mitzvah

In Judaic tradition, the word mitzvah has a rich array of meanings, but it has come generally to be known as a worthy deed or an act of kindness. After a week of non-stop media coverage of the tenth anniversary of 911, the mere mention of the event made me sick. When the actual day arrived, I was not full of the milk of human kindness, but as it happened, we were due to visit a friend in the hospital -- so we went. I told Bob, "This is how it should be. Instead of all this over-the-top sentimentality, each American should do two mitzvahs -- one for a friend, neighbor or family member -- and one for someone whose country we have harmed in our never-ending "War on Terror."

Our mitzvah was our expedition across the Bay Bridge to visit our friend in San Francisco, who was recovering from a serious surgery. This turned out to be an act of kindness for us as well as for her since the visit was so pleasurable.  She entertained us rather formally by sitting up in a chair across from her empty hospital bed. She had a regal gracious air about her so that I felt like I was an emissary from a foreign country (the outside world) visiting Queen Victoria. We were delighted to see her recovering so rapidly.

I never performed my second mitzvah, the one about doing a kindness to someone in a country where we are waging war.

Complaints from Utopia

So far our September days have been beautiful, but I'm miserable because of the breezy weather. It wreaks havoc on my sinuses. I'm not sure we have traditional seasons on the West Coast in the same way they do back east. (I feel lucky that we haven't had their extreme weather patterns, at least not so far) but we do have our own sorts of seasons. This is fire season, when the weather is hot and dry and the winds create the danger of spreading forest fires. If there's a rainstorm and lightning sets fire to a tree, that's also dangerous. I worry about the danger even more since our governor Jerry Brown has closed down some of the state parks because of budget constraints. Unsupervised wilderness is a disaster just waiting to happen, be it a wildfire or a haven for wild folk.

Well, I hate to be gloomy, but these last days of summer do habitually fill me with gloom. My allergies metaphorically run as wild as forest fires. I stagger through the days with runny or dried up nose and swollen eyes, feeling so spacey that it's hard to focus on anything, be it work or play. There's nothing to do but burrow down in my misery and wait it out until the weather changes, which hopefully will be soon -- though past experience tells me that this woeful state of affairs (perfect blue skies and sunny days, diabolically hiding nasty pollen and dust mites) could last through October and even up to Thanksgiving.

George

I feel sad because my former film teacher George Kuchar died yesterday. He died of prostrate cancer at age 69. I was hoping we'd have him around for a lot longer than that. George was indescribable, but I'll try. He was both fun and funny yet serious and committed to his art. He was earthy yet alien, passionate yet detached, worldly yet innocent. That's not a very good description, but he was one of the most unpretentious people I ever met and one of the nicest. He was originally from the Bronx where he and his twin brother Mike made a name for themselves in NYC's underground film scene with their kooky campy kitschy hilarious yet poignant "pictures" -- as George used to call them.

It was fun and exciting to take a class from him at the San Francisco Art Institute. You never knew what you'd end up doing. You'd find yourself behind a camera, improvising dramatic lighting effects, putting together bizarre costumes, designing makeshift scenery or performing in front of the camera in outrageous scenes with ridiculous over-the-top dialogue. I learned a lot from him, but mostly I learned not to take myself too seriously and how to work creatively in the moment with found materials. He made the classes come to life with his contagious enthusiasm. I'll miss him.

Clear & Cool

I wish I were "Clear & Cool." Instead, I'm unfocused and hot. We've had an unusually cool summer in the Bay Area, but today was warm. The heat usually arrives in full force in September so we're right on schedule -- though the forecasters claim that the temperature will go down soon.

Today, though, it was VERY hot. I spent the afternoon with my friend Christina gluing together pages of my next art journal. It's a good idea to glue them together for sturdiness unless the notebook's pages are thick to begin with. This can be a tedious process. It goes a lot faster when you have a friend to work alongside. Her house was dark and fairly cool. Closed off from the glaring sun and with the fan going full blast, it was quite bearable.

We had our art to comfort us and the dog muses, Nina and Gigi, to poke their noses into our hands for encouragement-- or dog treats -- so it was a pleasant day. When I arrived home, I found Bob glued to the new TV in the living room, eating ice cream while he watched an old Jackie Chan movie -- also a good way to spend the day.

A Little Bit of Americana

Yesterday I finished my second art journal. It has an American theme so that seemed a fitting way to celebrate Labor Day. Some of the collages I pasted in it were old, some new. The old ones I made back in 2002, one year after 911. I was still working out my feelings about that event. It also seems fitting that I've finished my little book prior to the tenth anniversary of the tragedy. I honor the dead and feel for bereaved, but one decade later, I wish we could move on.

"An Injury to One is an Injury to All"

Our old television set finally broke down so in celebration of Labor Day we bought a new one. It's a flat screen, our first, so it took some getting used to. We discovered that in sunlight the dark scenes aren't visible, but at night the content on the the screen is visible and highly defined. I guess that cuts out daylight viewing, at least in the summer, but that's OK. We don't watch much TV except for British mysteries, the BBC and the Lehrer News Hour.

Of course, I did indulge when we first unveiled our flat-faced friend. I watched for hours, mostly mediocre mysteries, except for one show about Harry Bridges, the famous union leader who organized the longshoremen of San Francisco. The program showed footage of the 1934 maritime strike. The governor of California sent in the National Guard to oppose the strikers and the San Francisco police gassed them and beat them up. They also murdered two men by shooting them in the back.

Until then, the city's sympathies had been divided, but when the longshoremen marched down Market Street in a funeral cortege to honor their dead, thousands silently lined the pavements to watch. It was then that public sentiment went over to their side. Later, there was a general strike and the city shut down for four days. At the end of that time, the workers' every demand was met.

Workers, Unite!

Auld Lang Syne

Recently life got so busy that I didn't have time to blog, but at last I'm back. For the last few days we've been hosting our British visitors, Margaret and Pete, and that's been really fun. I met Margaret in 1967 when we were sixteen years old. We met through a student exchange program with The English Speaking Union. She was assigned to stay with my family in Louisville, Kentucky; then I stayed with her family in Aberdeen, Scotland. Luckily, we took to each other instantly and kept up a lifelong friendship, only interrupted by a few decades or so.

In 1976 I visited her in Redding, England where she had moved with her husband Pete and their two little boys. When I moved to California, we lost touch for many years. I found her and her husband again (through Google) when Bob and I were planning to make a trip to the UK in 2002.

"Are you the same Pete who lived in Redding with Margaret and your two little sons?" I enquired via e-mail. He replied that he was indeed the same person, but the two little boys were now over 6 feet tall. So we visited them, this time in the north of England where they'd moved. We had a great time.

We had just as much fun this time. More than forty years have passed since Margaret and I first met. Our lives have taken very different paths since then, but we still get along well. Fortunately, Bob and Pete get along with each other, too. There was much chatting and drinking of black tea, interspersed with visits to the redwoods, the Pacific Ocean, and a Mexican tacqueria for burritos, which they'd never eaten before. Nobody wanted to try sushi, though. "Raw fish??" Margaret asked dubiously whenever I suggested it.

The Black Cat Rant

I haven't read any Martha Grimes mysteries in years. She's an American writer who sets her mysteries in England. Her Richard Jury series are titled after and centered around various British pubs. I liked the first few I read, which was twenty years ago, but then I got tired of them. I picked up the latest one at the library yesterday for lack of anything better to read. I did find it readable, even charming. The Black Cat, it's called, after a pub. She dedicated the book to her recently deceased cat.

OK, people, remember back in the day when you prefaced your critical remarks of a gender, religion, or ethnicity with "It's not that I have anything against --" (Fill in the blank) followed by "Some of my best friends are --" Again, fill in the blank. Well, these days, it's come around to animals, a touchy subject for besotted pet-owners who are sensitive to any criticism of the animal kingdom so I'll just repeat, "It's not that I have anything against dogs or cats, but really, a mystery written from their point of view? Isn't that a little absurd, not to mention too sickeningly cute?" And yet that has become a popular subgenre of the mystery genre, if you can believe it. Never has the form sunk so low. Literally low, a dog or cat's point of view coming from ground-level.

Well, Martha Grimes has sunk that low. Most of the book is written from a human point of view, but a couple of sections are written in the voice of a dog, Mungo, who engages in dialogue and shenanigans with (you guessed it) a black cat named Morris. After my rant, here's my humiliating confession: I actually enjoyed reading those bits. I liked the animals' personalities, their antics and their conversations.

An American Theme

After 911, I made a series of collages having to do with flag and country. I scanned them and then did nothing with them so they've been sitting on my computer for the last decade. Yesterday, Bob printed them for me so that I could glue them in the pages of my new notebook. I'm toying with the idea of leaving blank pages in between so that I could write something. But what? That is the question.

Summer Feasts

I love the Focaccia pizza shells made by The Breadwork Shop in Berkeley. For the last three days, I've been making small pizzas with them. I brush some olive oil on the shell, spread thin slices of Mozzarella over it and then scatter ripe, juicy Heirloom tomato slices over the top. I bake the pizza for about eight minutes. When it emerges from the oven, I scatter fresh basil leaves over it and we eat. Nothing could be more simple and delicious.

Last night Bob excelled himself with a wonderful dinner. It was both wonderful to taste and to look at. He poached some cod with fruit, celery and onions and made an elaborately beautiful lettuce salad decorated with fruit, cheese and various crunchy vegetables. There was also a side of steamed asparagus. Voila! A beautiful meal. Before dinner, I made myself an appetizer of Trader Joe's raisin rosemary crisps. I spread them with eggplant dip and goat cheese. I munched on fresh cherries and dried apricots while I crunched on the crisps and sipped some chilled white wine. It was a hedonistic high.

Good-night, all.

I completed my art journal a few days ago. Time to start another.

Memoirs of a Humdrum Life

When my life becomes boring, I read memoirs of other peoples' lives. E.M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady (published in 1930) purports to be the diary of a British housewife's humdrum life. In reality, E.M. Delafield is a highly educated lady of the British upper class whose life compared to mine seems far from humdrum. I enjoy her entertaining satires of family life, village characters, and in a subsequent diary, London literary and fashionable society. Her accounts of scraping by with not enough new evening gowns for dinner parties and her constant overdrafts at the bank, of unruly children, ill-behaved pets and a monosyllabic husband tucked behind the Times amuse me, but I also note with astonishment that though she worries constantly about money, she employs several housemaids, a cook, a gardener, a French nanny and sends her son to boarding school.

In her second diary, The Provincial Lady Goes Further, the family takes a vacation in France. As a matter of course, they bring along their son's tutor. When they return to England, the provincial lady rents a London flat. There she leads a life filled with literary luncheons and nightly cocktail parties as opposed to her quiet life in the country. I am fascinated with all these details of her privileged lifestyle, much of it having to do with keeping up appearances, the servant problem and the weight of familial and societal obligations.

Poi

Bob and I took a walk by Lake Merritt. As we turned the curve, we saw a young man perched on a ledge who was whirling balls on strings. The balls were encased in socks.

"What is he doing?" asked Bob.

"Looks like juggling."

"Looks like, but isn't."

"Baton twirling?" I suggested.

"No."

So when we got within speaking range, I asked the twirler. "Poi," he replied.

"What's poi?"

"It's a tribal thing.  New Zealand. The Maoris do it."

"Really? " We watched with admiration as he whizzed the balls in intricate patterns with his wrists. "That's cool."

"Yeah, " he said. "Maori women practice it to increase their strength and flexibility for weaving. Maori men learn it as part of their warrior training."

"Really? How did you learn the skill? Did someone teach you?"

"Naw. I just picked it up on my own."

As we walked away, he yelled out,"You can light them on fire, too. I have some that are designed for that. Poi looks really cool in the dark."

The Front Porch Salon

Bob held his Front Porch Salon yesterday, a discussion group that's been going on for over twenty years. Our conversation wandered from topic to topic, but finally settled on the cultural differences in food. We all agreed that the diet you grow up eating is what you prefer when you're an adult, but Marty and Carol said that in their cases, the generalization didn't apply. Carol is an American married to Wu who grew up in China during Mao's Cultural Revolution and Marty is married to Eugenie who is Chinese-American. Their diet has changed 80% since their respective Chinese spouses cook for them. They were quite happy with the change.

Bob and I eat quite a bit of Asian food when we're out since that's what's available and affordable in the Bay Area, except for Mexican. Sometimes we miss the food we ate as children, but that kind of food is hard to find here unless you're willing to pay the price. Even then, you don't get the food you grew up with (which, in some cases, might be just as well.) You get hand-crafted pasta and the latest food fad, like pork belly with organic greens.

Marty told us about the great Chinese restaurants he frequents in his San Francisco neighborhood. There are all varieties, including one Halal. That abundance of choice made us homesick for the City. Oakland is full of new stylish restaurants, but they're too expensive for us. Besides, most of them feature bars with trendy cocktails and we don't drink. We all sighed with longing at Marty's culinary descriptions so he promised to invite the entire group across the Bay for a Chinese meal. I hope it really happens!

Excursion to Emeryville

Bob and I love office supplies so we made a trip to Office Max in Emeryville. We're both very happy when surrounded by aisles of notebooks and folders. He has a weakness for the folders while I surrender to the allure of the notebooks, but this time I managed to resist them. Bob succumbed to a few folders, but all in all, we were remarkably restrained.

Afterwards, we had tacos at the Emeryville Public Market. The Market used to be a farmer's market, but was converted some years ago to a hall filled with ethnic food stands. I remember when it was all bright and shiny, newly opened and getting lots of foot traffic from the Borders next door. We used to go to the Market for Korean or Mexican food, then wander through the bookstore on our way back to the car.

Now that there's a gaping presence where Borders used to be, the Market has a run-down look. The customers were distinctly odd. One middle-aged woman with bleached blonde hair stood out. She wore thigh-high black suede boots with impossibly high heels and a frou-frou mini-skirt beneath a black blouse studded with metal. One boob hung out. Her companion was a quiet looking older man. Go figure.

On the way out of the Mall, a boozy street guy (on a bicycle, no less) asked us if we knew where a liquor store was. When we said no, he yelled out, "What's the matter? Are you tourists?"

Ridiculous Rabbits

We had our monthly collage party yesterday. One of our longtime members dropped out and Katherine couldn't come so we were in flux. I invited my friend Robert to take her place, but he got the day wrong and didn't show up. That left Bob, Christina, Chris and me so at the last minute I invited Joy-Lily. Fortunately, she showed up. With her book on quilting about to be published, naturally enough she played with quilt patterns. I urged her to try something more collage-like. She replied that quilts were collages.

Bob constructed several small books featuring Ralph's Rabbit Tarot. Ralph McNeill was a dear friend of mine and a talented painter. I used to model for him at his Saturday afternoon life drawing sessions. One day I talked him into designing a Tarot deck for me. Though he knew nothing about the Tarot, he agreed. I'd give him the barest of outlines as to the deck's structure and the cards' meanings and he'd go home and make some. Each week he'd return with a few until at last we had an entire deck -- an entire deck of ridiculous rabbit cards, that is.

Rosy Crisp

Bob and I made a nectarine and raspberry crisp last night. He sliced the nectarines while I made the topping, a mixture of rolled oats, walnuts, whole wheat flour, brown sugar and sinful butter. We baked it for a half hour and then out of the oven it came in all its succulent glory. I loved the sight of our confection, the rosy blush that the burst raspberries gave to the nectarines' fragrant white flesh, but I loved eating it even more.

Safe Landing

I started out drenching my art journal in somber black paint. I intended it to have a fatalistic tone. The imagery was mostly of fire, dangerous blazes against a dark background. As the book progressed, water imagery began to douse the fire. The orange blazes faded into velvety red against purple and gray; then the grays melted into liquid silver. Aquatic creatures began to swim through the pages. They dove under water for a while. Submerged in this new element, it looked like they were going to drown, but then they unexpectedly came up for air. They started to swim toward the beach. As you can see, they made a safe landing.

A Sensuous Summer

Forgive the break. I needed to take one, a vacation away from home, at home. How does one do that without actually going away? In one's head, of course, and in the body, too. I've been enjoying the weather: cool and foggy in the mornings, warm and sunny in the afternoons and cool again at night. Perfect!

Of course, Bob and I have taken a few trips away from the house, but we haven't ventured far. One day we went to the beach in Alameda with our friend Deborah. The three of us sat on a bench and let the gentle wind and sun play over our skins as we took in the seascape. The cloudless blue sky above the bay lulled us into a companionable silence.

Another day I had a massage at my gym. I've been having trouble sleeping, but Hilda's magic hands lulled me into drowsiness as her voice floated over me, recommending Chamomile tea and Melatonin for my insomnia. That night I slept.

A couple of times, Bob and I visited our gym for water-walking. We moved through the water serenely, limbs floating almost weightless as we passed others who were walking in the opposite direction, old folks steady and determined in spite of their hip and knee replacements. In the middle lane, swimmers did their laps. Some noisily splashed as they swam, others were smooth and soundless. This morning parents stood in a circle in the far lane as they sang a lullaby to their infants. Later, one of the instructors led a train of toddlers in a line behind him. The row of little bodies encased in plastic inner tubes reminded me of rubber ducks.

One day, I lived inside a book: Shakespeare, World as Stage by Bill Bryson. It's worth reading. That evening I watched the third episode of the Aurelio Zen series on Masterpiece Mystery. I savored the characters' stylish clothes as much as the plot -- what I could make of it, that is. Rufus Sewell as Zen still mutters his lines and Caterina Murino has such a heavy Italian accent that she might as well be speaking in Italian. No matter. It's all good.

Aurelio Zen

Bob and I have been enjoying the latest Masterpiece Mystery series starring Rufus Sewell as the Italian detective Aurelio Zen. As an American, I find it difficult to understand his British accent, especially as he tends to mumble his lines in a low husky voice. It's sexy, but I find myself translating his speech as he speaks even though we supposedly share a common tongue. It's also hard to understand the Italian accent of Caterina Murino, his romantic interest -- but I intend to overcome this obstacle as I like the series a lot.

The stories move fast with many interesting twists and turns. Their theme is corruption: everything turns on who (including Zen) is trustworthy and what the reality is behind the facade. There are layers of facade and shifting realities, which is always fun, at least in fiction. I enjoy the complexity of the plot twists and I enjoy Zen's dark sense of humor as he plays a game of wits with the forces attempting to defeat him.

Michael Dibdin wrote the original Aurelio Zen novels. I never really got into them though I enjoyed his earlier books. He was one of the rare writers of detective fiction who didn't settle immediately into a series featuring one detective. His earlier books were very different from each other in terms of setting, characters and plot. I found them strikingly original. Eventually he settled into the Aurelio Zen series, which became hugely successful. I don't know why I never followed the series since I really enjoyed Dibdin's earlier books. I think the Zen books were a bit too convoluted for me, which, paradoxically, is just what I do enjoy about the Masterpiece Mystery adaptations.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Bob and I met our friends Deb and Joan for a lazy afternoon in Dimond Park. (That name is spelled correctly, by the way. The park is called "Dimond," not "Diamond" as you might suppose.) We unfolded our lounge chairs under a shade tree to watch Woman's Will's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Woman's Will is an all-female troupe that mostly performs Shakespeare (hence the pun.) It's a small group without much money, but they've been around for a few years. They did a spirited rendition of The Dream, updating it to the seventies and substituting some Bay Area references for Elizabethan ones. They sang a lot of well-known golden oldies. Fortunately, they all had marvelous voices. The play ended with a rousing chorus of "Let the Sun Shine In."

At first it seems strange to watch women play male roles, but after a while it seems entirely natural. After all, men used to perform all the female roles back in Shakespeare's day. The troupe did a good job. They were lively and funny with a lot of horseplay though the poetry of Shakespeare's language didn't really come through. Since they're not professionally trained Shakespearian actors, I was willing to forgive them for that. Besides, they were competing with loud picnics on either side of the stage filled with screaming kids and water balloon fights.

Iridescent Wings

Bob and I drove up to Inverness to visit our friend Barbara, which is always a treat. Barbara lives in a gorgeous house at the top of a steep hill "at the end of nowhere" as one of her grandchildren put it. The house is surrounded by wooden decks that look out over a spectacular view of forest and gardens. The forests are provided by nature, the gardens by Barbara. On one side of the house, she's planted her vegetable garden and what she calls her "Latino garden," a bright array of scarlet and orange flowers. On the other side of the house, she has her more demure English garden filled with old-fashioned roses and flowers in hues of lavender, blue and white.

Surrounded by this blaze of color, Barbara herself dresses quietly, but well. "Casual elegance" is the appropriate term. When I first met her, she was a wardrobe consultant and I was a Tarot-tossing bohemian. She endeared herself to me by telling me that "Clothes are luminescent with memory, like Tarot cards." Sadly, I have no fashion sense, as most of you know. My daily uniform consists of a Tee shirt and a pair of corduroy pants, but that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate clothes. I haven't the knack for dressing well, but I admire those who do and I love costumes so I loved hearing about Barbara's latest project, which was to design the costumes for a community theater production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe.

"It's full of fairies, you know," she told us over a salad she'd picked from her garden, "But the director didn't want wings and I agreed. So I came up with the idea of feathers. I found an easy way to attach them so I put them in the fairies' hair and adorned their costumes with feathers. We had feathers everywhere. The men were dressed soberly in suits and ties as businessmen. At the end of the play, the fairies marry the businessmen so we had them fasten feathers on the men to symbolize the union. It was lots of fun, feathers flying everywhere, in their hair and on their suit lapels."

Later, when we were sitting out on the deck, she demonstrated the effect with a tuft of brightly colored feathers in her blonde-brown hair. The talk of theatrical costumes made me think of Ellen Terry's famous costume for Macbeth. John Singer Sargent painted a portrait of her in it: "a green gown shimmering with the iridescent wings of 1,000 beetles."

Les Mots

It was a hot day two days ago. Fortunately, I spent it at Christina's house doing artwork at her dining room table. It was an ideal place to work. The air conditioner hummed comfortingly on one side of us and Nina and Gigi, her two dogs, stretched out on the other side of us taking an afternoon snooze.

We worked on our art journals. She has more than one going at a time, but the one she worked on is called "Les Mots." Appropriately, it is full of cutup words and phrases that sometimes fall accidentally or not so accidentally into poems. She made a page of pictures this time, though, with cool translucent blues to sooth our overheated souls. I made a page of cool greens, which I later altered with an upside down woman kneeling on a beach.

It's soothing to work with another person, each of us sorting and pasting our images onto the page or sometimes tossing them across the table to each other. I gave her a glowing brown seashell and she gave me a deep green page that I used later as a background for the image you see above.

Horoscopes for the Dead

I got out the latest book of Billy Collins' poems from the library yesterday, Horoscopes for the Dead. Happily, it more than lived up to my expectations. He is one my favorite living poets. I liked the poem he wrote about a dead poet's poem:

Memorizing "The Sun Rising" by John Donne


Every reader likes the way he tells off
the sun, shouting busy old fool
into the English skies even though they
were likely cloudy on that seventeenth century morning.


And it's a pleasure to spend this sunny day
pacing the carpet and repeating the words,
feeling the syllables lock into rows
until I can stand and declare,
the book held closed by my side,
that hours, days, and months are but the rags of time.


But after a few steps into stanza number two,
wherein the sun is blinded by his mistress's eyes,
I can feel the first one begin to fade
like sky-written letters on a windy day.


And by the time I have taken in the third,
the second is likewise gone, a blown-out candle now, 
a wavering line of acrid smoke.


So it's not until I leave the house
and walk three times around this hidden lake
that the poem begins to show
any interest in walking by my side.


Then, after my circling,
better than courteous dominion
of her being all the states and him all princes,


better than love's power to shrink
the wide world to the size of a bedchamber,


and better even than the compression
of all that into the rooms of these three stanzas


is how, after hours stepping up and down the poem,
testing the plank of every line,
it goes with me now, contracted into a little spot within.

According to Type

I hesitate to get into national stereotypes, but it's hard not to after you watch enough International Mystery series. The Nordic ones are by far the bloodiest. They usually feature rape, child kidnapping, sexual abuse, religious fanaticism or various violent crimes against women involving all of the above. There is often some psychological component to the criminal's make-up that explains his gruesome behavior. The plots tend to revolve around societal problems or else are based on passion and revenge. I don't know about those Norsemen. Too many long alcoholic winters, I guess, combined with their Viking heritage.

The British are into cleverness, charm and eccentricity. They've got two types of mysteries going: the quaint village murder or big city crime. In the quaint village programs, you never see anyone who isn't white. The characters bicycle around town, sing in church choirs or potter about in their gardens. The bad guys invariably turn out to be members of the upper class: ruthless aristocratic bitches with family secrets or weak-willed nobility involved in mercenary real estate deals that will ruin the rustic scene. In the big city crime stories urban grime, immigrants, political scandals and the corrupt police force abound. (Not so different from what's happening in London now, apparently).

The Germans solve their murders in teams. The plots are often about immigration problems (actually, this is a recurring plot line in all European countries) or else they're about about Neo-Nazi groups: secret societies, duelling scars, and Swaztikas. The stories are dark, but they're not as dark as the Swedish ones and there's some humor in them.

I have to judge the French by Maigret because that's the only French series I've seen, but it runs true to form in that it's a vintage brand with Maigret as the most famous detective of them all, excepting Sherlock Holmes. Set in the past, the stories are straightforward police procedurals: setting, suspects, clues and alibis all methodically in place. The characters are studies in "types"; the themes are usually adultery or greed.

Italian mysteries are more light-hearted except for the ones written by Brits or Americans about Italians, which tend to be moralistic. But the Italians themselves produce amusing, fast-paced mysteries centered on love, romance and flirtation. Since Family reigns supreme in Italy (either as a sacred institution or in its opposite form as the satanic Mafia), there is usually some sentimental reference to motherhood in the story or a scene of a happy family gathering.

A Sinking Ship

I've been working on my art journal. I've only got a few more pages to go until I'm finished. Well, more than a few, actually, but at least the end is in sight.  I like to think that my book is tastefully morbid in tone, somewhat like the art of Edward Gorey, though I'm not nearly as morbid as Gorey. But then I'm not as talented as he is, either, nor as funny. In fact, I'm not funny at all, at least not on purpose. Sigh.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, Etc.

We went to the nursery and bought plants: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme plus lavender, marigolds, rosemary, jade and ruby chard. Bob planted half of them in the vegetable garden. We're going to plant the other half in front of our house.

Our neighbors have already planted lettuce, peppers, cherry tomatoes, squash and zinnias in the communal garden. The lettuce will be ready to pick in a week. The zinnias are blooming and the peppers are pick-able so I picked a few. Our oregano has been there for over a year. Bob cut it back, but there are new shoots already growing up and we've got mint growing wild in the backyard. Next I'll put in some French tarragon and chives. I want sunflowers alongside the back fence and some miniature Meyer lemon bushes in container pots on the slab of cement by the rose bushes. Arugula would be nice, too, but the last time we tried that, it didn't really thrive.

The thing is, we're not dedicated gardeners; in fact, we're terrible at it. I have the vision, but not the knees. Bob ends up doing a lot of the physical labor, but his legs are giving out, too. Between the two of us, it's a miracle that anything grows -- but somehow it does.

Shop Local

I really enjoyed my visit to Berkeley Bowl this morning. Practically everything is in season. The tomatoes aren't quite there yet, but the berries, peaches, cherries, nectarines,  figs,  plums and mangoes are ripe. It was hard to choose among all this glorious profusion. I settled for a bag of cherries and a bag of figs. I'm about to put a foccacia in the oven fresh from a Berkeley bakery, smeared with lemon olive oil from St. Helena, covered with Black Mission figs and topped with Point Reyes blue cheese.

Summer Days

After the hot spell a couple of weeks ago, cooler weather moved in. The temperature is in the low sixties and skies are gray. Maybe that's why I continue to make pages in my art journal in pewter or silver tones. The grocery stores are overflowing with summer foods: artichokes, corn on the cob, ripe peaches, bright nectarines and dark burnished plums, but it's cool enough that I put on a sweater before I go out to shop. At night, I sleep under a comforter and blanket. In spite of the cool weather, it still feels like summer. The days are growing shorter, but imperceptibly. The idyll has not yet ended.

A Mind of Its Own

I've been working on my art journal. When I first started it, I was worried that it wouldn't turn out well. I've been making collage series for years, but the stakes don't seem as high if I mess up one card in the series. After all, I can always throw it away and make another. Working in a book format is another matter. If I mess up a page, there's more at stake -- or so it seems to me. Christina, my art journal mentor, has another view: just go on to the next page; then return to your flawed page when you're in the mood to work on it some more. She claims that eventually you will transform it into something you like. So far, that hasn't been my experience.

When I messed up the pages in my first art journal, I just tore them out. After a while, there wasn't much left. This time round, I've made it a policy not to tear out my pages no matter how much I dislike them. OK, I confess, I have torn out two, but all in all, I'm learning to relax and enjoy the process. Christina claims "The book will be what it wants to be." Yes, it definitely seems to have a mind of its own.

Marple Syrup

I watched the latest BBC production of "Miss Marple" last night. It wasn't great, but when International Mystery shows something I've already seen, I'll switch over to Masterpiece Theater. 

My introduction to Miss Marple on screen was the movies made in the early sixties starring Margaret Rutherford. I loved those movies, not so much because they were accurate portrayals of the Agatha Christie books, but because they seemed so "veddy British" and because Margaret Rutherford was wonderful in the part. Her Miss Marple was a hardy and stalwart figure played for broad comedy. I'd never been exposed to that sort of absurd English humor before and I loved it. I remember sitting in the almost empty theater loudly cracking up at her antics.

The quintessential Miss Marple was Joan Hickson from the 1984-1992 BBC series. She didn't look the way I pictured Miss Marple when I was reading the books (so far none of the actresses do), but she acted like Miss Marple: demurely meek on the outside, but intelligent and shrewd underneath her little old lady exterior.

There have been two BBC Miss Marples since then: Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie (see above photo). Neither of them are as good as Joan Hickson. Geraldine McEwan was growing on me, but then she disappeared from the series and Julia McKenzie took over. She's entirely too saccharine for the role. The original Miss Marple had an edge to her; this latest incarnation is insipidly sweet.

Bill Cunningham New York

On Saturday I went to an afternoon matinee of Bill Cunningham New York at the Elmwood Theater on College Avenue. It's a nice little theater that shows second run and low budget films. I went alone and sat happily in the back row to enjoy the show.

The film is a documentary about Bill Cunningham who is a street and fashion photographer for The New York Times. I recommend the film whether you are interested in fashion or not. Cunningham is an 80 year old man who has been documenting fashion for decades and who is passionate about his work. He lives a spartan life and bicycles all over the city snapping spontaneous pictures of people on the street whose sense of style appeals to him. He also attends gala events where he photographs high society with an equal amount of spontaneity and non-pretension. As he says in the film, he doesn't care about "celebrities and their free dresses"; it's only the clothes that matter.

He seems to be a kind man who loves his work and doesn't care about money or being famous -- though he's become famous throughout the years. He has moral principles about the do's and don'ts of his profession and has high standards about his work. I find this refreshingly old-fashioned in our Rupert Murdoch age.

Dutch Baby

One of my sins is buying cookbooks. I'm trying to restrain myself by checking them out of the library instead. Last week I checked out The Best American Recipes 2005-2006 from the Alameda Library. When I found an easy-looking recipe for a pancake baked in a skillet, I decided to try it. It was easy, besides being rich, delicious and decadent, especially when covered with strawberries, maple syrup, and Brown Cow yogurt. The recipe was supposed to serve four, but Bob and I had two helpings so it's all gone. Bye, Bye, Dutch Baby.

Hanging in There

I've been trying to hang in here with the blog, but lately my allergies have been so bad that it's hard to concentrate. Most of my day was an allergy-ridden blur. I drifted through a bookstore and the library, but I didn't buy or borrow any books. I felt too out of it. Still, if I'm going to be out of it, it's nice to be surrounded by books.

Puzzle Art

Our monthly collage party was as fun and boisterous as usual. Chris constructed small sculptures of fantasy animals in athletic poses while Katherine and Bob worked on collages. They both made two. Katherine finished hers (see above).  Bob's is still in process. I handed everyone jigsaw puzzles made of blank white pieces. (I bought them at Artist Craftsman and Supply in Berkeley.) There were only twenty pieces to a puzzle so they were easy to take apart and work on. Christina took hers home, muttering something about trying to print on it. Chris quickly painted a picture on his while I deconstructed mine and carefully painted each piece in green and purple hues. As simple as the puzzle was, I had a hard time putting it back together. Bob and Chris did that for me. It was fun to see the end result since I hadn't planned the color scheme beforehand. I like working in that way, ordered yet open-ended.

Coffee Ice Cream

Christina has almost finished painting our dining room. I'm pleased to say that it looks great: serene and formal yet warm and friendly. It was difficult to pick a neutral color that wouldn't be blah yet didn't clash with the living room (pale yellow) and my study (light green). We ended up with something that we both thought was flat beige, but turned out to be creamier than that. In fact, once the paint was on the walls, it reminded us of coffee ice cream -- which is a good thing. Coffee is her favorite flavor and I'm very fond of it, too. There's only a little more left for her to do: some white trim and a few touch-ups; then the inevitable coffee ice cream celebration.

An Independence Day of Many Colors

We skipped the traditional Fourth of July stuff to visit our friends Chris, Ingrid and Joy-Lily in San Francisco. Ingrid was feeling poorly so she stayed in her room while Chris and I went out for sushi and Joy-Lily and Bob dyed T shirts. Joy is a fabric artist who had just finished teaching a workshop so she had leftover dye to share. She and Bob used a technique she calls "jar dyeing" which is kind of like tie-die without the tying. Basically, you stuff the T shirts in glass bottles or anything big enough to hold them and then squirt dye in the bottles. The dye falls randomly on whatever parts of the fabric are accessible. Later, there are some follow-up steps involving putting the jars out in the sun for hours and then rinsing them out in the washing machine -- and voila, you end up with T Shirt Surprise!

I say T shirts, but while they were at it, Joy also dyed a tablecloth and various other items. The bathrooms in their house feature multi-colored wash clothes and towels, Joy's bedroom curtains are printed in marbled swirls and huge silk paintings stretched on canvas adorn her walls. Some of room-mates' pants and even tennis shoes are dyed with bright splashes of color. I hesitate to speculate about their underwear.

Mysteries without Borders

Bob and I watched International Mystery last night. International Mystery features made-for-television mysteries produced in European countries. Needless to say, the programs have subtitles. They used to be hard to read or dubiously translated, but lately their quality has improved; however, the policy of blurring out ALL nudity -- even classical statues -- is still there to annoy the viewer. Other than that, I have no gripes; in fact, International Mystery is my favorite program. I happily watch Swedish, Norwegian, French, German and Italian detectives solve crimes in their various countries.

Recently, they've introduced two new series that transcend borders in rather peculiar ways. One is the Van Veeteran programs, based on books by the Swedish author Hakan Nesser. These mysteries take place in a mythical unnamed country that is a pastiche of Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. The detective seems slow-paced and folksy, a perfect Dutch stereotype, but the stories are bloody and melodramatic in true Nordic fashion. I must confess that they don't really do it for me. I like my mysteries to be rooted in an actual time and place.

The other series is Italian, at least on the face of it. The books feature Guido Brunnetti, a Venetian police inspector, but they're written by Donna Leon, who is American though she's lived in Italy for years. The television series, however, is a German production -- so we see the characters living in Venice, but talking in guttural German. Leon chose to sell her series to the Germans because she wanted to preserve her anonymity in Italy; however, the characters look and act German rather than Italian, which detracts from the credibility of the locale. Still, it's a good series.

Summer in the City

It's the third night of fireworks and barking dogs (especially the non-stop one next door), but it's also the third night of hot weather so it's necessary to keep all our windows open. And it's not even officially the Fourth yet. Our next door neighbors like to party in the summer. Unfortunately, their house is so close to ours that it's like they're having their party in our house and our yard, only we're not invited.

Loud voices, loud music, shrill barking dog, fireworks going off in the night, basketballs banging against the fence -- also the delicious smell of barbecue. Bob thinks my complaints stem from jealousy. Well, maybe he's right, at least as far as the barbecue goes. Good barbecue is one thing I miss from my home state of Kentucky. None of the restaurants here know how to make it properly.

After the party is long over and the neighbors' lights are out -- and when all is still at last (which is about 4:30 in the morning) suddenly a loud low-pitched bang explodes outside -- or a volley of them, followed by the sharp anxious barking of the dog. This being Oakland, it's hard to tell whether it's fireworks or gunfire, but the follow-up sound of a police siren or an ambulance usually clarifies that.

Besides the police, perhaps the dog and I are the only listeners since we seem to be the only ones awake at that hour. I've been awake for the last three nights, as you can probably tell.

A Leisurely Lunch

Chris, Bob and I went to Champa Gardens for lunch. Champa Gardens is a Laotian restaurant in our neighborhood. Though it's nearby, Bob and I never think of eating there unless we're taking a guest. For some reason, I always think of it as a summer place. Well, it's certainly summer. Our warm weather is back. Usually we have a day or two of high temperatures followed by cooler weather, but this time there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

I associate Champa Gardens with hot weather because it's a small corner restaurant at the end of a non-commercial street. Its door is usually wide open and inside is a bar where Laotians hang out drinking beer. It has a friendly, local feel even though the spot has been 'discovered' so there are usually a lot of people there from all parts of Oakland. The summer feel is intensified by the hot food they serve, but this time I tried to avoid the spicier stuff. We shared shrimp and avocado rolls and I had a grilled salmon salad with a green sauce -- cilantro, probably. Bob had Pad Thai and Chris ordered Larb with Tofu.

It was fun to eat and talk at a leisurely pace. We started off with the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, circled around Greek philosophers and Aesop's Fables, took a dip into ancient Briton, hung out for quite a while in the early Christian/late Roman Empire and ended up at Gobekli Tepe.

Summertime

My blog was down yesterday. I don't know why, but it's working again. Such are the mysterious ways of servers.  Anyhow, during the break I took the opportunity to change the color scheme to green.

I have a friend who objects to my seasonal color changes. He prefers the original background and says I'm confusing my audience by switching my brand. He also strenuously objects to employing any color for the text except black. As a concession to him, I've employed black text this time round; however, I'm assuming that you're not really confused by my new color scheme. It's to celebrate summer -- just like the summer collage I've put up on my bedroom wall to replace the spring one.

Bird Exorcism

Today Christina started painting our dining room. She painted out the hideous birds that had blotted the corners of the molding, but they still lingered there in spirit. Then the horrifying Bird Exorcism occurred. It was pouring down rain when it happened, but since I needed to buy more paint I had go outside. That's when I spied the dead baby bird on our sidewalk. It was as bare of feathers as if it had been plucked, but there were no marks or blood on it; therefore I deduced that it had not been mauled by a cat. I couldn't deal with the sight so I left the body there. On my way back to the house, I detoured around it, feeling upset enough to tell Christina and Bob.

Before the paint job began, we had removed the curtains from our picture window -- so when Christina took a break we all sat down at the table to stare out at the newly revealed stormy gray horizon. Suddenly two black birds alighted on the neighbor's roof. "Those are big birds," we observed. "Like really really large birds." Just then the largest bird swooped down, grabbed the tiny corpse in his mouth and flew away. This was disturbing to witness, but Christina comforted me by saying, "Maybe their baby died in your yard and they've come to get it." Well, that's a morbid scenario, but it's better than thinking they had murdered the poor thing. At any rate, the actual birds disappeared from the roof just a short time after our painted birds vanished from the walls.

A Cup of Stars

Bob is an archaeologist of his own past. He likes to dig things out of our downstairs garage. Today he excavated a bunch of free-writing exercises that he'd written in the mid-eighties. Free-writing as a way of breaking through creative blocks became popular when it was promoted by Natalie Goldberg in her book Writing Down the Bones.You think up a topic, then write a timed exercise using it as your starting point. However, you don't have to stick to topic. You may write about anything that comes to mind.

This method works pretty well for letting your uncensored self run free. In my case, it worked too well. I loved the spontaneity of free-writing, but rarely went back to finish my pieces. After a while my freedom became a prison. To accumulate vast quantities of notebooks filled with indecipherable handwriting is not satisfying. Maybe it was for a number of years or I wouldn't have kept doing it, but in the end what did I have but a bunch of notebooks full of sometimes interesting thoughts and digressions?

Free-writing does have value. It's fun to do with a group. When people share what they've written, the similarities can seem astounding, giving credence to the concept of "group mind." And everyone has something worthwhile to say. But "saying" is the relevant word. The spoken pieces glitter in their spontaneity, but when you look at them later, they often fall apart. Still, there are poetic gems that stand out against the ramblings. I found a couple of brilliant ones when I wandered through Bob's pieces:


What is the sky but a cup of stars overturned above us, 
and the skull but a cup holding the life of our minds overturned? 
The Lord drinks us like wine and we flow through time in this vineyard world.

The Garden of Good Intentions

The temperature has cooled down to a beautiful sunny 70 degrees and I've finally caught up on my sleep. What with all the rain, our yard had gotten out of hand so we hired someone to work on it. He and his brother spent all day working. When they finished, we could see parts of the lawn that we had forgotten existed. Our yard -- such as it is -- consists of the area behind and to each side of the house. In front of the house is an incline filled with boulders. The boulders are covered with ice plants and jade bushes with California poppies popping up in between. There's a flat bit of dirt on top with what's left of our sadly bedraggled rose bushes. There used to be a bunch of unruly Canna plants there, but they were taking over so we had our guy rip them out. Now there's a nice empty area ready for planting. I want to put in loads of lavender and other drought resistant plants because the ground is very dry and it's hard to get in there to water it.

The bedroom side of our house is a no man's land. It's too narrow to plant anything in the space between the houses so we've learned to ignore it. The other side of the house is where the communal garden is supposed to be, but isn't. It's a 'virtual' communal garden, meaning an oblong wooden frame heaped with dirt. During the rainy season, it was overgrown with weeds. Every so often, Bob went out there and cleared it, but then it rained again and within a week the whole mini-jungle was back.

The last time he cleared it, the weeds didn't grow back, but we didn't plant anything and neither did our neighbors. Linda kept talking about the cherry tomatoes that she would plant there 'someday'. She talked about this for months so today I was astounded to see ACTUAL cherry tomato plants lined up in pots against the side of their house. Then Jack started spreading mulch over our so-called garden. He told us that Larry two doors down would be planting lettuce soon. "It's time this started being a communal garden again," he announced. We were thrilled because over the last two years, Bob was the only one doing any work. My knees had given out, Linda and Jack were busy with their kids and Larry has been quite ill. Oh, well, we all had good intentions. (When we first came up with the idea of a communal garden, we were a little looped on wine. That's when we decided to call it "The Garden of Good Intentions.") How apt that title turned out to be, though we're excited by our neighbors' renewed participation. Now we're thinking about what we might plant. I want herbs: parsley, thyme, chives, basil, and tarragon -- and marigolds for a spot of color.

More Art

I spent the afternoon at Cafe Leila in Berkeley with Christina and her art group. They used to meet there to do art, but now they meet there to socialize -- though an art discussion usually enters the conversation at some point. This time the art part was about printmaking. For the last few months, Christina has been making block prints so Cheryl offered to lend her some printmaking equipment.

As I listened to them talk, I found myself wanting to try printmaking, too. I took several silk screening classes when I was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute (we're talking late seventies here), but I wasn't particularly good at it. Silk screening requires patience because you have to do it in careful, planned-out steps. It also requires precision. The ability to measure accurately is a must and I'm terrible at measuring. I'm also not so good at 'neat and precise.'

When I was in school, what I really enjoyed was making mono-prints because it's a one-time deal with instant gratification. If you have a particular effect in mind, you have to be careful because you have only one chance to get it right, but if you're working spontaneously, there's a lot more freedom to play around and this I liked.

Ah, regrets! When I was young, I was always worried about doing it right. Now I wish I'd used the time to let loose with what I enjoyed and see where it took me. Of course, I could do that now.