colorful squares found

inside

the knit purse

i bought for $2

from a little girl

the day before we left Guatemala

the night i found a perfect poster for peter

no one showed

for the mindful artist class

which i didn't really mind

since there was a print making workshop

in the cool art space by the river!

by the time i walked there

the gallery was full of ladies 

in various stages of the printing process

and on the bar, next to a stack of cups

there were some open bottles of wine!

turns out the event wasn't open to the public

feeling too awkward to leave

i browsed through the rack of prints

and found this one for peter

On Being a Good Listener

While working on a presentation about how to be a better listener,

My husband tells me about his new and improved financial goals.  

But instead of "listening with an open heart and mind", as I recommend in the presentation, I plan how I'm going to tell him, "Yes, it's a great goal!" and then plan how to tell him how he needs to change in order to accomplish that goal and then hold myself back from interrupting him and patiently wait for him to finish while congratulating myself on what a good listener I'm being.  

At the Red Colored Pencil Cafe

The cars are rolling past.  A woman has on very tall boots.  A man with a case unzipped heads out the door.  Everyone looks at the dog chained to the post.  And I get a chill from the cold.

Everyone I recognize but no one I know.

Everyone's a stranger when you're all alone.

Cars rolling by, a woman rushes past with a coffee to her lips.  A group of friends laugh. Two boys with their arms around each other, an impossibly tall girl in leather boots, a balding man in an elegant coat, all see the dog chained to the post.

He sniffs the air, his nose moving back and forth, waiting, he knows.  He knows she will be back, and when she is, he will be so happy, his body will shake.  He will wag his tail.  A tall boy and his date give the dog a sad smile.

Gathering Supplies: Day of the Dead Grotto Installation

While gathering supplies for our Day of the Dead grotto installation,
I'm thinking about what Adam said,
that he feels I am concealing more than revealing,
and that he wishes things would be more like My First Garden,
and less like Listen to the Leaves Crunching.

For the installation, Elyse has gobs of cupcake papers.  

I have a box of clothespins recently purchased at an estate sale.  

Pouring them onto the carpet I wonder

Whose dust am I breathing in?

Elyse stops by with the perfect piece of tupperware for my Bride of Frankenstein costume.

It is my go-to costume.  Along with Frida Kahlo.

All I need is the wedding dress.  

When we were in college 

L. found it at a thrift shop and gave it to me.  

I wore it that Halloween 

a most transformative experience

when I dressed as my own ghost 

and spend the night jumping on the couch. 

I look for it and can not find it.  

I search in all the places it would be. 

I know I should drop it, but I can't help it.  I keep looking.  

I get frustrated.  I look places where it isn't likely to be.  

I can perfectly picture it in its plastic bag. 

I begin to think I must have given it away.

I berate myself for doing something so stupid.

Drop it!  I scold myself. 

I sit on the floor and wonder what question to write for the dead.  

Suddenly, the answer comes to me.

A Very Funny Story with a Very Sad Ending

I once wrote a very funny story.

Many people died laughing.

A Memorable Scene

A teenage boy and a teenage girl

on a date at the San Diego zoo,

the boy waiting for the girl

to be done doing whatever it is

she is doing on her phone

which she never is.

Anonymous Blogger

I come upon a blog, not a year old, only half a dozen entries, talking of places I know with a foul-mouthed anger inspired by the affair that the writer’s wife is having while the writer stays home with the kids.  Do I know these people?  He attacks his wife’s character and then asks us to empathize with his flawed one (some mental illness, perhaps?) which we do, because the writing is very good.  Names are named. Details given. I determine the identity of the anonymous blogger.  A true shock, my impression so different from this aggressively intelligent and angry writer.  How many different selves we each are, and here, the most manipulative and intimate, the literary self, whispering lines onto paper that whisper to a reader, images that enrapture our emotions.  The caressing bodies.  The rising action.  The falling action.  The denouement. 

Three Wife and Husband Stories

One woman freshly wed, brings a casserole to the dinner table.  "How is it?" she asks her husband.

"Not as good as my mother's," he says with a mouthful of food.  She raises an eyebrow at him, picks up the casserole and pitches it at the wall.

She smiles at her new husband and says, "Then don't eat it."

The husband never criticizes her cooking again.

*********************

Another newlywed goes to the shoe store and buys some wild looking heels she normally wouldn't even consider.  She puts them on when she gets home.  "What do you think?" she asks her husband.

"They're the ugliest shoes I've ever seen," he says.

She locks herself in the bathroom and cries.

The wife never buys another pair of wild looking shoes and the husband, without even looking, always says her shoes are beautiful.

*********************

A new wife makes her new husband his favorite meal, knish.  "How is it?" she asks.

"Not as good as my mother's," he says.  Every week, she makes knish for her husband, hoping to satisfy him.  And every week she asks, "How is it?"

And every week he answers, "Not as good as my mother's."

After years of this, the wife goes to her mother-in-law's house.  "Could you make me some knish?" she asks her mother-in-law.

The wife brings the knish home and puts them in her cooking pan.  That night she serves them to her husband.  "How is it?" she asks.

"Not as good as my mother's," he says.

"They are your mother's," she replies.

And never makes him knish again.

Profile #17V: Disease

Disease is one of those ageless men, his face the tan of an indiscernible race of hardy folk who build their own houses and do not laugh at fools.  No one knows where Disease comes from.  No one can predict when he will leave or where he will go.  Disease doesn't make friends easily, though there are those you meet who have gotten to know him so intimately, that when you mention his name, their faces reveal memories held deep in the bones.  Disease keeps his opinions to himself.  Most are frightened by his steady step and his indiscriminating way of viewing those he encounters.  He is unimpressed by wealth, and equally unimpressed by poverty.  Very rare is the fellow who regards Disease with the same equanimity that Disease regards him. Some who have never met Disease don't believe they ever will, others are convinced he is right around every corner.  Those who know him well, doubt he will ever leave.  He moves silently but makes certain he is never forgotten.

The Strange and True Failings of a Musical Education

Saul Steinberg's violinist

Here is a man who has played violin since he was a little boy, a man who practices everyday, who was first chair in the youth symphony, who graduated with a music degree from a prestigious university, who went on to get his PhD in violin performance.  This same man, who plays for audiences all over the world, is hired by a rock band to play some filler for an album, and panics, because despite all his years of training and practice and performance, he has never been asked to create a musical phrase of his own.

right-handed copy of Saul Steinberg's violinist

left-handed copy of Saul Steinberg's violinist

Factorial Story 5! Alternate Version

etcetera

Factorial Story 5!

etcetera

Basic Law of Human Nature #2

We are the stories we tell ourselves.