"The very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. So many of the things in our world lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it’s one of the affirming arts. A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act."

— Tobias Wolff

Happy New Year.
Though I'd like to question the wisdom of having the new year start in January. Whose idea was this? January is so grey. Depressing. The greyest most depressing month. I think I'd like for the new year to start April 1.

Nonetheless. I'm not in charge of the calendar. In fact, I don't feel that I'm in much control of anything, and therein lies the problem. I am a victim of myself. I have to make some serious, serious changes. Would you like to follow along with my bouncing ball?

You can't imagine how much I need these changes. My life is a mess. I hope one day to look back on these last few years the way alcoholics or drug addicts look back at their past, before they found sobriety in Jesus, perhaps, and sigh and marvel at how far gone they were and how far they've traveled since.

What frightens me is how easily it can all go the other way.
There really is no stasis, I think. No progress is negative. You think you're standing still, at least, only to one day realize you're miles downstream from where you started.

I need to get back.

a few words against the ego

Orson Welles famously used Chartres as a visual backdrop and inspiration for a montage sequence in his film F For Fake. Welles’ semi-autographical verse spoke to the power of art in culture and how the work itself may be more important than the identity of its creators. Feeling that the beauty of Chartres and its unknown artisans/architects epitomized this sentiment, Welles said:

"Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust; to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish. Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared, some of them for a few decades, or a millennium or two, but everything must fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash: the triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life… we’re going to die. ‘Be of good heart,’ cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced - but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much. "

BTW, all of this is from Wikipedia. For the record.

missing it all

Sometimes I play a little game. I pretend that I'm already dead and looking back on my life and wonder what I'll miss. I come up with the usual, of course:
beautiful spring days
the smell of coffee brewing in the morning
the sound of my husband and daughter talking and laughing in another room
holding a trusting purring cat
most music
et cetera

But then I think, if I were dead long enough, I'd eventually begin to miss even the annoyances of life. For instance, I just stepped outside on this very beautiful day, a day that bodes well for spring's eventual arrival, even with the calendar still declaring January and the weather station warning of temp's brief dip into the freeze-zone in a few hours. But ah, yes, the warmer weather has rooted my neighbors out of their burrows in full force, and they are seizing the opportunity to get a fix on: their pathological obsession with yard work. The air was abuzz and athrob with hammering, lawn mowing, leaf blowing, chain sawing.

But then I imagine, if I were dead, how I might even miss these sounds of life and other annoyances. Let's imagine I've been dead for a while but am given another chance to be alive for a while. Okay, it probably hasn't happened yet, but stay with me. I'll guess that upon my return from the dead that even the people who stop to chat in the middle of the grocery aisle might be infused with a certain beauty. They won't bother me! No way! Because I am ALIVE!

Well, it's a little appreciation exercise.

I think what I might miss most are the questions, the uncertainty and maybe even our stupid frailty.

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and...

... thanks also to George Frideric Handel, Itzhak Perlman, and Pinchas Zukerman.

it is not possible to improve upon this perfomance.

Julia Fischer and Gordan Nikolic record Mozart K364 part2

Sometimes. Do you ever feel the need to express your gratitude for the existence of great music and art and writing? But there's nowhere really to put the gratitude? I am often overwhelmed.

Anyway, right now, I'd like to thank Julia Fischer and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for just being born.

holy crap.

Russian Strangers

I got caught up in one of those genealogy web sites (not ancestry.com, I don't recall the name; it actually appears to be more international) and, while clicking links, found groups of photos people had posted of their families/ancestors. Something struck me about this group though I can't entirely explain. All the captions were in Russian (or at least used the Cyrillic alphabet), so I've no idea what info I might have culled from them.
There' a poignancy about them, though, that touches me.




Second world decor and fashion. A sort of innocence. A Westernized mishmash. Colors (to my mind) too bright, not quite matching, juxtaposed styles. Too over-the-top to be labeled eclectic even. And I think that's an actual rug they've put on the seat of the sofa. No lamps in sight, but I'll put ten dollars down they're still have the plastic covers.

This is one of those pictures that seem to have never been recent. She's at that stage in life at which we all have photographs. A look on our faces that we recognize later as a sort of expectancy. Captured between worlds of time, stepping out of one door and moving toward another. Right after graduation. Just before the war. Right before I got engaged. Just after I found I was pregnant with you. Right before I moved to Moscow to escape the strangling soot pouring from the countryside factories.

I have never known a cat I did not love on sight.

Trio de Brio

1.

Took this photo of this child in the Atlanta airport a couple of weeks ago.

She did not take her eyes off me for about ten minutes.

I don't think she even blinked.

Very crowded. I was honored she chose me.

2.

Ran to Publix tonight for a few things and right in the middle of the cereal aisle

about even with the Cheerios

was a big fat bag of pot.

I spent the rest of my shopping trip trying to guess which of my fellow shoppers had dropped their stash. Hilarious.

3.

Invention of the Day: UMBRELLA