flashback art

a friend made this for me for christmas in 1991 or 1992 (i can't quite remember which). she collaged together all kinds of clippings of my favorite (or in some cases least favorite) things from the news magazines of the era, then cut out my name a million times and laminated it all together (she knew me well).  included are the clintons, gorbachev, madonna, marilyn monroe, things russian and for a least favorite - a bit of dan quayle. remember when he was the scariest politician going? i think even to his running mate, bush the elder. he seems so harmless now with his inability to spell potato. maybe it all went downhill from there. he was the beginning of the end of people with a brain on the republican ticket.

i've carried it with me ever since, this very personal piece of art (art-icle?). i spent quite some time looking at it today - it's literally laden with meaning - meaning that's really only truly accessible to me.

could a gift be any better than that?

an encounter with madness

people should come with warning signs

do you think it's possible to tell whether someone is mentally ill just by talking to them on the telephone? i wouldn't have said so before today. but i experienced a telephone call with someone who was completely unbalanced - like in serious need of meds unbalanced. it became readily apparent rather quickly, but was like a big, flashing light of mentalness after she hung up on me when i asked to speak to her boss and then called me back 15 minutes later and calmly (and apparently seriously) accused me of hanging up on her and then proceeded to go mental on me again in all her glory. i mean like the kind of spouting incomprehensible statements in a shouty voice mental.

it's actually a really unnerving experience. i have to admit i was very shaken by it. and am still in a kind of state of shock hours later. i actually think she is dangerously, clinically psychotic. i'm actually grateful the conversation took place on the telephone and not in person. even on the telephone, i think i ended up a little bit scared.  even now, just writing about it, i get a shiver down my spine.

it was the kind of conversation that made me go out and check the bunnies when i got home, just to be sure she hadn't come by and pulled a glenn close. it was that bad. and i am more than a little afraid she knows where i live.

i think that somewhere at the base of us, our very instincts sense and fear someone who is truly off balance. i'm not sure i've experienced it so strongly before. and i can tell you that i hope never to experience it again.

noted.

i had a revelation today.  i was driving along and i saw the sun shining on a little pond and it was absolutely glorious. and i realized there, in the face of that beauty and light and stillness and the silhouettes of the trees, that i cannot take responsibility for fighting against all of the stupidity in the world. or even some of it. i cannot help it if people are petty and power-hungry and purposefully obstinate. i cannot help it if they lack creativity and vision and are unable to appreciate those things in others. i cannot make them open to new ideas if they are closed. i cannot make them other than who they are.

imagine if we took all of the energy we use trying to resist the stupidity of the world and directed it towards something positive. that thought, like this moment of sunlight on a little lake, takes my breath away.

vodka for every occasion

i saw this yesterday in germany and thought it was rather hilarious. and it's fitting for my mood this afternoon. just as i was headed in to teach my first class as part of a big new project, someone from the office called and nattered on about how pissed off these people were at "us" because she had been so incompetent in booking the actual classrooms. excuse me? you're sending me into a hornets' nest? and have made it seem like i'm also incompetent?  as you might imagine, this put me really right there where i needed to be to teach. i'm nervous enough, since it's teachers i'm teaching. i may have to pick up a bottle of this stuff next time i pop down to the border and put a big bow on it and give it to her.

speaking of vodka, there are a whole lot of new flavors of absolut - i'm not sure what i think about that and i didn't buy any. but i sure could use a shot a two before my evening meeting. it's one of those where we're usually on item 3 of a 10 item agenda at around 2.5 hours in. i actually thought about gnawing off my own arm to escape, like a fox caught in a trap, at the last one. i can tell you that i'm likely to go a bit postal (are we still allowed to say that?) if anyone makes fun of my accent this evening.  they're not likely to get out of that alive.

come to think of it, maybe a whole case of that fuck off vodka would be appropriate. gifts for all on my grudge list!

birds of a feather

i sometimes long for the days of intellectual salons, which is a little bit weird, because i don't think they've really happened within my lifetime.  but you know the kind -  where smart people dropped by to discuss the issues of the day and the things that were in the air (and possibly had a side conversation or two about swearing infixes - you know, like un-fucking-believable) . they discussed and possibly caused the movements - in art, in politics. and they smoked and drank cocktails and planned intrigues and probably went home and made paintings featuring stark black squares.

instead, i do daily battle with the well-intentioned but lesser gifted (that sounds so much better in danish - mindrebegavet), the rumor-mongers and those who are decidedly shy of conflict.

i sometimes long for a literary/political salon so much it aches. and i wish we still lived in such times. i wonder if it's possible to make it happen again?

how does one get birds of a feather to flock together?

husband the builder

husband has a habit of going slightly over-the-top when i ask him to build something. i mentioned one day that i needed a nice little rack for my thread, so i could see what colors i've got when i'm sewing. i imagined a little rack of 3-4 rows that would maybe hang on the wall, but husband made this instead. it's at least a head taller than i am, holds 104 spools of thread and features a turning base so i can turn and see what i've got. right now, it's completely unworthy of the old dining room where it's standing, and it leans thanks to an uneven floor, but it's just completely awesome. and it, along with an old-fashioned three-layer pot for extracting juice using steam that he picked up in a second-hand store, made for some of the best christmas presents he's ever given me.

he also recently built this over-dimensioned (and not quite finished) little shelter for our mailbox and trash can. they passed a law last year that the mailbox had to be out on the property line and accessible by vehicle (if you live out in the country) by the end of 2011. many people put theirs out earlier, but after our postwoman asked chastised sabin one day last summer in a most decidedly churly manner about how we had to move our post box, we decided to wait 'til the very last day.  i mean really, yelling at a child about the post box? please. the weather turned ugly before husband could finish painting it, but it's already passed the hurricane-force winds test, so it's a good one. those poles are sunk a good meter into the ground - husband doesn't build things halfway. what he doesn't know is that once he's painted it with that weather-proof paint, i'm going to dress it up with something a bit more colorful.

*  *  *

happy weekend one and all!

three things you know are true

i woke up at 2 a.m. with a splitting headache and it has been hanging out with me ever since. it actually hurts to think and don't even think about asking me to finish a sentence.  i was having a (probably only semi-coherent) skype chat with a bloggy friend. we were talking about my upcoming courses that start next week and she sent me a link to this lovely video. i've never tried spoken word poetry, but i think i'll use it with my students in the coming months. what a beautiful idea! of course, this is a TED talk - they have all the best stuff. if you have 20 minutes, do watch it, you won't regret it. and besides, if you don't watch it, you won't understand the title of this post.