thesarahscope

Your Nighttime Mechanic

Mon, 17 May 2021 01:36:16 GMT

In the evening on our patio, K. and I sit drinking our summer drinks. I have been sober for a bit so instead of the frothy beer that I conjure so quickly in my passing thoughts, we are drinking frozen cokes as big as my head. The cokes are pretty good, but summer is a hard time for sobriety, I think to myself. The honeysuckle is in bloom all along the creek behind our house. I like to think of myself sniffing sweetly at the heady scent. Instead, I huff and puff like my pug reverse sneezing. The air compressor’s snort makes its way across the yard to me, and I am afraid that I sound much more like it. I’m inhaling the soft scent until I almost wheeze. And it is Summer.

Fortunately, a friend arrives with the sweetest strawberries from my favorite local farm that she introduced to me. I am beside myself, and she whispers that she’s talking on the phone to her Grandpa about the Cardinals. I’m not much for baseball, but it makes me happy that they share it. She mentions my new haircut, and I proudly rub my hand over the shaved patches. Anything that makes me feel fierce is something I seek. I am surprised at almost forty that I still want to look cool and be a badass. I think I’ll never tire. I bought a deep green swimsuit today because, as my husband points out, “Everyone says that green is your color.” Last night I had a nightmare of faucets flowing with ticks, and I’m hesitant to go to bed this evening. And it is Summer.

It is later in the evening, and I go outside to find K. with his car jacked up. The blown tire is soon to come off, but he is covered in dirt and wiped out from working on the car in the heat. I come out with enough time to finish raising the SUV, tell him what he should be doing, and high five on completing our work together. My work, all of five minutes. I end, admonishing him to get in a cold shower. And it is Summer.

I am typing this at the dining room table while listening to Van Morrison, and my feet are dirty and rough. I need to wash my makeup off my face, but I’m afraid of streams of ticks. And it is Summer.

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By the Salad Dressings

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 16:59:39 GMT

There are times when I have lost it in the mirage of day to day contentment, and I can almost believe that I’m healed. There are days when I dance in the mornings, and I make up songs to sing to my husband. He pronounces, “Somebody’s having a good day,” and I shake my head wildly in denial for the hell of it. There are hours that belong to me, and I can focus enough to read a book in a day without my lithium making it hard to concentrate. There are minutes when my eyeliner goes on thin and smooth, and my hands don’t shake, a side effect of the drugs. There are days, hours, and moments when my mind, when my life belong to me. In those moments, I wonder if I’m really mentally ill, or if it was all a dream.

I slopped my sandaled summer feet down an aisle in the grocery last night when I ran into her. By my reaction, you would have thought a knife wielding woman rounded the corner. I jumped back and forced out a courtesy greeting. It was someone I worked with from my old job, an advisor of one of the groups I had worked with often. She asked me how I was doing, and I started to try to lie, and man, was it heavy. It felt like I was suddenly in the heat of day, dragging a suitcase behind me. I felt like it did for all those days that job sucked my soul, and I grinned on command, laughed like I belonged there, was all cheer while internally I screamed and fought and tried not to drown. I couldn’t lie anymore. I told her the truth--that it wasn’t a fit for me, that I didn’t agree with the direction they were going, and I hadn’t in some time, and that I had been diagnosed with a mental illness and had a nervous breakdown several months after that. I told her I missed the students, but I didn’t miss the university or the administration. I told her my life was pretty much a wreck at present, and I’d recently been diagnosed with a personality disorder in addition to my mental illness. I tried to tell her I was happy, and things were fine but I couldn’t get the words to out. I had lied for so long to protect myself, and now, I couldn’t even pass one over in a five minute grocery store conversation.

She interrupted me, and told me that they had all missed me, and that I had made a difference in their group and lives. She said they had worried about me as I had just disappeared, and I told her truthfully I hadn’t felt safe in that space anymore. She told me she loved me, and she wanted me to know that I was a bright spot on campus, and she understood I needed to move on but many were sad to see me go. I tried not to cry. It is hard when you know the cost to present that ridiculous glowing happy girl when inside you were grasping in the dark. Sometimes, I would head to the bathroom, seek out a stall, stand there, staring at the ceiling with tears rolling down your face, mouthing silently like a mantra, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore.”

There have been many to reach out to you, and tell you about this stranger. They tell you she was helpful, cheery, exceptional at her job, and that she was kind. Your eyes well up because you didn’t know that girl. While going through books this week and reorganizing your shelves you find a letter from the administrator you always liked the most. I stood reading it through tears, and after I wondered where that girl went to, sobbed over how I’d ever find her again.

"Sarah,

You are a very special lady. I can’t remember a moment when seeing you and you did not have your award winning smile on. You brighten everyone’s world when they come in contact with you. It is always a high point for me. Your zest for life is infectious. Don’t ever change! If Shakespeare had known you, he would have written another sonnet or perhaps he was a visionary and knew of your coming when he wrote Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s Day.” You give us something to look forward to when we know we will see you. You bring such joy to our world. Thank you for that and all you do as a colleague and friend!

—Lonnie Williams"

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So Done

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 15:46:48 GMT

In the summer, our home looks like the vacation house of a family of six even through there are only we two and no kids. Random swimsuits of mine hang over the shower. Shoes that I left in front of the wash machine that K. washed dangle from the doorknobs where they are drying. An aimless, solitary flip flop has been in the hallway for days, and I continue to step over it. In the hot of the southern summer afternoons, animals are to be found in strategic locations on the wooden floor, free from carpet and cool. Judging from how they place themselves each day, I suspect I could determine the way the wind patterns flow in our house. There are many, sticky half-empty bottles of sunscreen stacked in front of the books on the shelves. K. has brought home a bag of figs for me, and I force him to eat one. He gives a piece of it to the dog before I can stop him, and the absurdity of we who live in a house where dogs dine on figs strikes me as funny. He tells me he wants her explore the world of tastes. “She’s a dog,” I remind him.

In the afternoons, I take Mearl outside because she is a good companion. We stumble like fat pollen-drunk bumble bees through the crunchy summer grass. People drive by, but for some reason, I can’t be bothered. The sun feels so good on me, inside of me, and I toss my head back with my eyes closed and stand there, relishing the blinding brightness. There is a red color that grows beneath my eyelids. I imagine I’m Saul on the road to Damascus. I wonder if in the presence of God, who blinded him, felt both terrifying but also similar to this feeling. The perfect searing blades of light beaming all over him as he grasped about the dusty road. I can imagine he must’ve felt the perfection of God in the heavenly light in the midst of his confusion. I cast my arms and legs wide like a star fish, and I imagine that every spot on my body is covered in light. I think of the sunlight pouring into the seashell crevasses within my ears, and I imagine it slipping underneath my fingernails, and it pools in the dent under my nose. I grin up toward the sky, and it’s a grin for no one but myself, and it feels like life could never be better than this. I pick up warm round stones and roll them in my palms. My hands get gritty, but I feel I have dissolved into the Earth with my little black dog silhouetted near, her mushed muppet face, her panting smile. I know she can feel the promise of positivity in this moment, and I know, like me, she knows it will not remain. After we get sun drunk, we head toward the house, dragging every part with dejection. The birds and squirrels caw and bark at us, ready to get back to the feeders. Mearl snorts her indignation, and I promise her a treat.

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The Perfect Home

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 23:39:22 GMT

Above: My Mom took a screenshot of one of my posts and sent it to me. I look at it and remind myself that I have felt this way, that I will feel this way again.

I am uncomfortable around people frequently, though I try to hide it. I am never one to invite people to my house. I am fiercely protective of my space, and if you have seen it, it means I trust you completely. I have flat out stopped people at my door from entering, and I have peered out the door and refused to answer faces that I know. I stalk around at night making sure the overhead lights are off, that only lamps are lit, so no one can see inside. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep at night, and I go to the kitchen for something to snack on, I catch my reflection in the window and think it’s someone else. I freeze in terror in those moments, knowing the end has finally come. When I realize it’s my own reflection, I go hunt up my meds, and I take them, relieved that no one had to find me with a spoon in the peanut butter jar and no bra on, slumped over in the unmopped floor with cat fur tumbleweeds hiding in the corners. My house is nothing like C.’s house.

Mom and I stop by to visit on Saturday, and we enter after a brief knock. Her house is often busy, and everyone is always congregated in the kitchen. It feels like coming to your parent’s house. You enter, and I don’t know how she does it, but you feel welcome deep down. There is no discomfort, on the contrary you eyeball the stove or island to see what she’s cooking. We slide on the barstools, and the conversation is funny, interesting, and I think if C. lived ages ago she could host the best salon in town. She has the ability to mix different people, different ages, different interests, and everyone gets along. There is much laughter, and she is at the center. She is always off on something new, and you love that about her. Last time you visited, she told you about the cooking class she was taking online with an Italian Grandma. She learned to make homemade pasta with a small group of people from around the world. She hosted Mom’s retirement party, and it was the best party I’ve been to in my life.

I love her house. We always overstay our welcome, though she doesn’t seem to mind. I never want to go home when I visit her, and this is something rare for me. As we head out the door this visit, she shows us her new Schwinn she got that was an advertisement for Pinnacle Vodka. It is right that she bike around on such a quirky bike, Pinnacle Vodka running along between the wheels. I love her for it. I love her zest for life. I love that she shares her best makeup samples with us sometimes. I believe she would literally peel off her shirt if someone needed it. I will forever picture her, all beauty, smiling and chattering in her flower bed and yanking mint with frenzy, shoving it in a bag for me to plant at my house. I always feel like she is a bubbling spring that people come and gather around, watching and enjoying, and they leave replenished. She is a well of happy, and I have no idea how you do that, but I’m so damn glad that someone does.

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To Runaway With

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 16:13:52 GMT

I am Alice, and I have gone down the hole. It’s amazing how a diagnosis is a little pill you swallow, and you now have a brief moment of clarity to observe clearly how ridiculous your hobbies are to the impartial observer. Alice grew taller and taller, and all I got was an eye to the peephole to see a mass grave of sacrificial time. Medicine helps, but there are several symptoms in the stall it hasn’t broken, yet. They are your prizewinning, frothy and kicking at the sides of the stable, bizarre purebred quirks, and they are notoriously hard to break.

I have currently offered up three days and counting to adding songs to playlists. Let me help you unpack that—I have a Spotify account, and it has playlists that became traps that snapped and caught my unstable mind. The playlists somewhere along the way ceased to be playlists. They have wonderfully inspired titles like “Nights Like Jazz”, “G-Spot Wild” (what, you don’t have a playlist to work one out to?), and “Sad Bastard.” I rabbit holed from one artist to another through the button “Similar Artists”, and now, I listen to songs for a minute a piece, and if they sound promising, I add them to all my playlists. I don’t mind the titles that much, or at all, so that you may one day be having a helluva good cry over the murder of a bird in your back yard by a feral cat while listening to “Sad Bastard”, and all of a sudden, you’ll hear The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”. It’s even more alarming when you’ve almost reached orgasm, and a gospel hymn pours into the room at that moment, helping you reach immediate post climax disgust with yourself.

You realize that friends following you have, perhaps, too intimate a view into your life, but you’ve always lived your life this way. You don’t have it in you to change, and besides, you’re too busy concentrating on homework to help improve your listening skills and tidal wave anger. Anyway, it is now day 3 of cataloging music, and you don’t know how to stop. If you are still working on your “project” as they are known to yourself, your family, and your doctors on August 11th, you will ask her if she has any tips. Is there a patch you can wear or a gum you can chew?

People tell you that they love your characteristic of blatant honesty, brashness. You are aware that they really love that your train wrecks are circus like affairs that usher in rubberneckers with the promise of not blurring out any of the gore. There are no nets under your trapezes, and the lions haven’t been fed for weeks. They don’t know that it doesn’t matter to you because you won’t remember any of it in a couple of days. Your medicine coupled with your frenzied anxiety in the moment will have you looking back and having a vague recollection of the conversation.

There are moments of terror sitting in your every day wherein you lied to be able to slide under the radar. You don't lie about important things, but there are multiple hairdressers who think you’re a Republican. It’s just easier some days. You’re not going to talk politics while getting a shampoo. Who knew that the beauty school churned out an abundance of conservatives who are experts at a razored pixie cut? While they mixed dye in handheld bowls did they discuss the layabouts on welfare? Did they graduate with a certificate to be placed on their mirrors and a penchant for Fox News?

Well, I’ll end this now because it’s jazz hour, and I’ve got a couple hundred songs to add to a playlist.

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Sat, 01 Aug 2020 15:16:26 GMT

"She was saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze."--Paul Bowles

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"Every cloud is a passing thought. They weigh me down in what I'm not."

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 14:40:35 GMT

Happy August! How is that possible? Well, we're officially one month from my thirty-ninth birthday so I thought I'd post a "Perfect World" birthday. Well, a perfect world would be spending it in New Mexico, but since that is out, here's what I'd sub. I usually do this at Christmas, but I thought it'd be fun to try it for this occasion, too.

I'd wake up to these Outer Space Orchids. I don't know who the hell thought these were "Ocean Breeze" Orchids, but get a clue?

Next, I'd eat a tray of succulent (or rainbow swirl) cupcakes.

I will be wearing an amazing blue outfit that I just bought!!! I can tell you it's a classy, sassy romper which is pretty much the only thing I wear lately besides sleeveless shirts. It's referred to as a "Harem" such and such. So I feel like I'd be both a part of a harem and/or the 80s. It's pretty 80s-esque which I love. Kelly always ends up buying me a series of 2-4 birthday outfits (not by his choice), and I settle with one finally. Eeee!! I know, it's awful.

I'd get a tattoo by my amazing tattoo artist Shannon at Black Arrow (locals) that was inspired by one of my favorite artists and muralists, Ana Maria Ortiz (see below)...It wouldn't be this fish, but it'd be something similar she's done with the huge eyeballs.

Ana Maria Ortiz

OR this one below (artist for credit?)

I'd eat Watermelon Feta Salad for lunch. Anyone else eating watermelon all damn summer? Like, it's a part of every meal. I just bulk it up for dinner and make the salad version. I'd watch Malle's Black Moon (trailer below). Kelly walked in the first time I was watching this, and he said, "What is that???" His mouth wide open. I responded nonchalantly, "She's breastfeeding a unicorn." I'm tempted to make him watch it. Our pug will bark her head off at the stuff I watch on tv (a la David Lynch with his soundscapes with the recent Twin Peaks on Showtime). Kelly will soothe her and say shit like, "Oh, is Mama's experimental film upsetting you again, Mearl?" I'm gonna make those two live in the shed. Heh.

I'd go swimming all afternoon. For lunch/dinner, I'd have cheap whiskey and Rose flavored Turkish Delights (see below). Maybe I'd do my makeup like I wore it to PrideFest just for the hell of it.

I'd finish the day with an over the top bubble bath and sex. It's already August. FFS, I'll be dead in a few weeks.

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Warmth You Could Hold in Your Hand

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 21:14:43 GMT

Summer is everything to me.

To keep myself from starting down the emotional rapids, I do things like search Etsy for the word “holographic" and dream about what I’d buy if I were wealthy.

I went to my parents' house a week or so ago, and I sat in their backyard, empty of everything but the vivid, soft Bermuda grass. Everyone who visits mentions this grass, and when I pulled a chair to the center of the yard, angled it, and sat down, it felt like sucking up the Earth through my feet. It is thick underfoot how you imagine grass should be in every dream you’ve had. I felt almost see through in the sun. I had become holographic. I stared down and watched the dragonflies shadows under my feet.

I didn’t wear my hoodie that day, but I often do. Yes, even in the summer as you’ll point out. It feels soft, but for some reason it has become a protective armor to me. I wear it on the days I feel like an untethered plant, and it’s like securing me to a stake. Finally, a pseudo backbone. I had found that recently my spine had melted and was piled at the top of my tailbone, but with my hoodie I could take on anyone. More often, it’s just there for comfort, though. It is there that growth feels safe even when challenging. It is also there for easy summer days. I laze out in my own yard and enjoy the sun. When I come in, I run around in it, unzipped. No pants, no drawers, no bra, no shirt, no service. Just an open hoodie lending a feeling of summer freedom and a deeper embrace into nudity in my life.

I have been drinking Strawberry Milk and watching a ton of Jean-Luc Godard (his later stuff), and also a ton of Czechoslovak New Wave films. I am really enjoying those. Motorcycle races become a ballet of sorts in Pearls of the Deep, and the third part, which is House of Joy has bunnies hopping around the art of the town’s outsider artist. The film stills themselves are like paintings.

Evald Schorm’s Return of the Prodigal Son is something beautifully crafted. When the lovers leaned in, they held each other’s heads like heavy texts—total support and the confidence in that support. At the end of Ivan Passer’s Intimate Lighting, the miming drinking from the glasses. Superb! I am delving into how the bodies of women are such an important part of almost all of these movies and how fat babes are appreciated more visibly and vocally in many of them. I’m going to write a paper on it for the hell of it. Maybe I can freelance it somewhere online.

We had a discussion on recalling words, and we both agreed on the beauty and feeling in that moment. Some word you’d read a hundred times, and one day, you’re just gabbing and there is the word. You pull it up, wriggling like a fish, and you wonder if you’re right about it? You look it up, and yes, there’s the word. You throw it back but relish that feeling. You want to keep that moment, like pulling out the thread of the honeysuckle when you were young for that precious bead of sweet dew that slid onto your tongue, summer Communion. Someone else understood that, and that was important to me.

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Birds and Stones

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 14:23:30 GMT

What a strange year it is? What a strange summer? Yet aren’t all summers the same when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it? That’s what I thought a week ago. We believed a couple of months ago that things were starting to look up, but it was stacked carefully as porcelain plates and too tall. I think we all knew within ourselves that this wasn’t it, yet. This had all been the smaller tropical storm before the hurricane that would go on record.

It all started to fall apart that day in the backyard when I watched one of my bluejays slain right before my eyes. K. says it was two months prior to that, but I first became aware that morning. It happened steps away from me, and I couldn’t stop crying all day…all week…all month. I was taken with the bluejays because they raucously ruled the backyard with their loud caws, flying down the creek every night like some bird gang. All the smaller birds made room on the feeders and got on the ground to eat the overflow when the bully bluejays came to feed.

That particular morning, I was sitting in a chair and a blue jay was eating from the ground, I’d say two wide steps in front of me. I started up a video to capture him. As I watched him through the camera, a black cloud eclipsed him, and I realized that the bluejay and I had been caught unaware by the neighborhood feral cat. I covered my mouth, the surprise of it at all as I sobbed and the bluejay sang his last few chirps from inside the cat’s mouth who was carrying him down to the creek. What I didn’t tell anyone when talking about it, is that my neural pathway to the night my cat Dimitri died lit up like Vegas’ neon. I wanted to scream that night and the morning of the bluejay. I am fortunate enough to have had little grief in my life. I only know that when I saw those soft, slumped heavy bodies, it felt like fire coursing through my veins. It made me want to scream up to the ceiling, right through my roof, to a galaxy so far from here that when it arrived, my voice would have been stripped raw and silent, merely an idea left. That’s how it felt the night Dimitri died, and I fell to my knees and my forehead on the ground and trying to push it all back to before. Then, comes the echoing ache when you realize you can’t push it back, and you are now to try to figure out how to live with it. I felt sick to my stomach over the bluejay, though, because he had let his guard down because of me. His guard was on me with my stupid fucking phone videoing him, and in that second, I had sentenced him to die. If only I hadn’t distracted him. If only. Maybe I wouldn’t be this way. Maybe things would’ve turned out differently. If only. When I told my psychiatrist, she responded the same way my emotionless father had, “That’s nature.” I wanted to flip her desk in front of me, destroy everything in my sight including her ostentatious framed degrees, and turn around and shrug, “That’s nature.” She would also be moving soon, and I’d have a different psychiatrist, and I really wanted to say, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” but I just stared blankly at her as I always did.

I feel very dark here in this moment—the lack of support for Kanye, the anniversary of Amy Winehouse and Robin Williams’ death. No one gives two shits until you’re dead really, but boy, will they give lip service to mental health when it’s convenient and trending. When your illness causes you to trip, and it’s ugly and you’re grasping at air and screaming and haven’t showered in days, they will be nowhere to be found. It is then that they look at you with disdain—when you are ugly crying on the floor and you tell them, “I tried to warn you.” Then, you are the pathetic kind of crazy. The kind of crazy of Kanye when Christians keep hearkening back to “He said he was God.” What is it you think mania is? Hallucinations! Grandeur! Religious delusions! Open a fucking book!

But enough about that, right? Instead, you are proud of your efforts of making Blueberry Lavender Kombucha. You go around puffing proclamations like a dragon, lavender breathed truths or ramblings. Does anyone really care? You channel the deepest ennui, the lot of you lazing on the bed. You are in one space and at arm’s length is your curled up pug. Next to her, bundled like a shrimp on the bed is your Russian Blue senior cat named Nickel, and finally, on your other side is a chewed up squeaker chicken toy with a long neck your mother bought your pug. The fan is spinning in the God awful humidity of the south, and you all have brought forth a boredom so thick that you all just stare at the popcorn ceiling and you eat an entire bag of Lindt Lindor Stracciatella truffles, one right after another in a row until they’re gone. You think you most relish the texture. You all relish the Miles Davis’ “Prayer” from Porgy & Bess. Well, you think they do judging from their animal facial expressions you’re familiar with.

Film Still from Godard's Une femme mariée

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"Do You Ever Touch the Night?"

Sun, 04 Mar 2018 00:21:31 GMT

I found a note that I jotted down when K. was out of town. I'll call it a poem, but it was just scribbles to remember for later.

It is good for women to be ugly sometimes,
but everyone forgot that I know how to be pretty, too.
I just don't care as much.
I have had sushi twice, and you're off sampling exotic fairs in the cursed state of Wisconsin.
My throat hurts.
I've been drinking all the beer.
The rain hasn't stopped.

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From a Recent Junking Trip: July 16, 1950

Wed, 02 Aug 2017 18:44:50 GMT

Dear Eddie,

Can't believe it yet, but I'm en-route. It's simply wonderful--just about sunset now. Say hello to all-and take care of the hungry wolves at luncheon.

Claire

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Trichinosis Paranoia

Fri, 28 Jul 2017 20:45:05 GMT

Old photo of youth. Eternal shaggy bangs and chubby cheeks.

My friend's family didn't eat pork because of their religion. Her Mom told me once that Yul Brynner got trichinosis from eating bacon. I incorrectly remembered it as he had died of it. I ominously warned everyone of this who had the misfortune to eat breakfast with me for the next 17 years, nervously chewing and wondering if it would eventually lead to my end, too. I didn't really even know who Yul Brynner was, but he didn't die and it was spare ribs, not bacon. He sued the restaurant, and his wife joined in the suit claiming it irrevocably altered their marriage. I was always fascinated by my friend's family. Her parents were both photographers, and they lived in a house on stilts right next to the river. Sometimes, when the river got up, they had to row a boat to their house. There had been a tragic car accident claiming the lives of two of their four children, and I would stare at the portrait of the entire family and wonder what those two who had died would have been like. I observed her family as if they were my private Tenenbaums or Glass family. They had a pottery wheel under their house in an outdoor room where the older of the two sisters threw pottery. If she wasn't throwing pottery, she would be in the living room, watching British comedy. My friend's father refused to turn the air conditioner on in the dead humidity of the south until July. They were fine financially, but my friend would roll her eyes and attribute it to him being cheap. She would spend most of her time over the summer at my house, soaking in the AC and Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. Her mom would turn on their oven, heating the house up to an even more unbearable level, and make homemade Yucca chips that she'd offer us. This was before the Whole Foods Movement and Kourtney Kardashian's Wheatgrass shots made the Top 40. I loved her hippie food, but my friend longed for the weekly spaghetti my Mom cooked. She introduced me to Tony Bennett's music. We where on a trip with her family to Europe once, and they almost didn't make the flight in time. They got stuck in customs with their cases of vitamins and herbs and film. When a college girl got tanked on the trip, they offered her ginger the next morning for her hangover. I had a blister completely encircle my right baby toe, and they offered up mole skin. The girls were allowed to paint their bathroom wild colors, and they were both effortlessly artistic and intelligent. They both were in Gifted and Talented, so named as if the rest of us where some mediocre trolls that crossed the school doorways every day. They'd often laugh at inside jokes, not bothering to explain the meaning to outsiders. Their unique family sense of humor that seemed as hereditary as their freckles.

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Tue, 28 Feb 2017 22:31:11 GMT

“It’s just a silly fairy tale that says hotel chambermaids spy through keyholes. Hotel chambermaids have no interest whatsoever in the people behind the keyholes. Hotel chambermaids have a lot to do and are tired out, and they are all a little disillusioned, and besides, they are entirely occupied with their own affairs. Nobody bothers about anyone else in a big hotel. Everybody is alone with himself in this great pub that Doctor Otternschlag not inaptly compared with life in general. Everyone lives behind double doors and has no companion but his own reflection in the mirror or his shadow on the wall. People brush past one another in the passages, say good morning or good evening in the Lounge, sometimes even enter into a brief conversation painfully raked together out of the barren topics of the day. A glance at another doesn’t go up as far as the eyes. It stops at his clothes. Perhaps it happens that a dance in the Yellow Pavilion brings two bodies into contact. Perhaps someone steals out of his room into another’s. That is all. Behind it lies an abyss of loneliness. Each in his own room is alone with his own ego and is little concerned with another’s. Even the honeymoon couple in Room No. 134 are separated by a vacancy of unspoken words as they lie in bed. Some wedded pairs of boots and shoes that stand outside the doors at night wear a distinct expression of mutual hatred on their leather visages, and some have a jaunty air though they are desperate and floppy eared. The valet who collects them suffers terribly from chronic indigestion, but who cares?”-Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel

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Anyone Speak French?

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 21:54:42 GMT

Larger image here

While we were on our trip, I bought three postcards from 410 Vintage Market in Fayetteville. There were a huge stack of these with a ton of babies in each photo, and I found them both strange and comical. I desperately wish I knew what they said. Anyway, I managed to not buy them all, and I narrowed it down to these three. If you speak French, please enlighten me. I've been doing Google Research, but I haven't found much about these. I'm going to mat and frame them together, but now, I'm obsessed with searching for more. I wanted them all, but I'm embarrassed to admit I paid 4 bucks each for these. Kelly put his foot down at three.

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From the Weekend

Tue, 21 Feb 2017 20:18:09 GMT

Sun coming up and fog and damp

Francis in the sunshine

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Land of Enchantment

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 22:59:20 GMT

For a second time, just like that, a trip is born out of my deepest daydream desire. I can't get enough of sobbing lately about how New Mexico was magic, and it's the only place in the world that's magic--besides maybe the desert where I haven't been, yet. I have taken off all of spring break and, we're going back to Santa Fe, Taos, Los Alamos...and adding Albuquerque! I won't pout at all when we're there this time because last time K. never knew how much I loved it because I was anxious and snippy. When I got back I told everyone, "It's like an art museum exploded into a city." It made me sad that he never knew how much I adored it. I have generalized anxiety disorder, and unfortunately, it will manifest as anger when I'm all nerves. I know what to expect now though so I don't think it will be nearly as trying. I have been working on lists of things to see and do and places to revisit.

I can't wait to see the mountains. We live in the rice country which is all flat lands for ages. I think it's horribly boring, and I'm usually stunned by the beauty of mountains. I don't like the curvy, scary drop offs, but it's worth it. In New Mexico, there are mountains with different personalities, too. The ones outside of Taos are pine covered and snowy and soft and inviting, but on the way to Los Alamos they are a barren and devastating and fierce--those are my favorites. In the canyons, it looks like the Earth is yawning or maybe getting ready to swallow us all--jagged teeth mountains and secretive Georgia O'Keeffe shadows everywhere. In fact, I never really got O'Keeffe until I visited New Mexico.

On the way to Taos

Just a small part of the mountains on the way to Los Alamos. They are huge here, and this photo can't capture it. No photo ever could.

Rio Grande

There is a church that existed in the 1600s and has a staircase that some believe St. Joseph himself designed--a miraculous staircase with seemingly no central support. There is a church with holy dirt to to touch, and you may take some home for your afflictions if you wish. There is a church that the community comes together once a year to pat with their wet palms, caking thick layers of a mud and straw mixture.

Loretto Chapel Staircase

Loretto Chapel

El Santuario de Chimayo

San Francisco de Asis Mission Church

In Los Alamos, I finally was able to quench some of my insatiable thirst for all things bomb related. I am mad about atomic history, and it all sounded so glamorous with cocktails and banding together for a common goal. I get it, I know it's oversimplified and naive and the subject they were working on was a blight on American history. I just like the idea of carving their way through the treacherous terrain, and babies born with a post office box as their birthplace. I most like the idea of fresh flowers at the commissary and the canyon stream becoming a skating rink in winter. There were parties at dance halls and community theater in this secret universe that the world didn't know existed. When the world finally found out, there were cakes and earrings and perfumes all celebrating the accomplishments of the brilliant men of "The Hill."

New Mexico is also the land of liquid chocolate elixirs and foil wrapped sweets. If the rich taste weren't heavenly enough, they sculpt them into dainty little mushrooms and gooshy swirly 6th grade hearts. This door leads into a place more romantic than Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, I promise. I'm going back. It's on my list of places to return.

Todos Santos Chocolates

The teeny mushroom and heart are my favorite to look at, but my favorite to taste is the peanut butter cone.

These are darling, and I wasn't sure what they were the first time I went but now, I'm almost certain they're surprise balls! I'm going to check when I go back, and if so, I'm picking one up.

Things I won't see next time, but I appreciated last time include--

Horseface man and horseface horse

Dali-esque clock in front of the perfect blue sky

I won't go back to see this piece of art, but I do hope to see a duck with boobs. It is all magic, I swear. EVERYTHING THERE.

I'll make a list tomorrow of things I want to see on this upcoming trip, but I'll sign off for now because this is another longest post known to man.

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