A translucent curtain of light

It’s been one heck of a week, hasn’t it? Ups and downs galore, from the glass I dropped on my left pinky toe that has rendered me temporarily couch-bound and the postponing of the long-awaited vacation to OR to the glorious sunsets that have been outdoing themselves all week long and the comforting, beautiful words of friends both new and old. At the beginning of the week, things were so rough I thought that the whole week would be like that. When I took and posted “Glow,” that was not at all the way I felt, but today…today I feel exactly that radiant. All the good things about the week have caught up with me at last. I apologize for all the various city things that have gotten into some of these pictures; most of them were taken inside the car while we were driving back from dinner, or the grocery store, or wherever we happened to be at the time, and it was nearly impossible to get shots that didn’t have streetlights, cars, and buildings in them. Although I think you will agree that these sunsets are spectacular anyway. Every evening this week there has been a sunset that completely took my breath away, and every one has been utterly unique. Varying shades and intensities of color, even one that was fairly colorless, just a huge storm rolling in. But I adore clouds, and storm clouds are some of the most spectacular of all, so I couldn’t resist. This storm was absolutely incredible. As we drove home, we could see over the mountain where the rain was coming down, and the sun was setting just behind it, and the light turned the rain into this incredible golden mist in the sky, a translucent curtain of light above the city. I have never seen anything like it; it was so glorious. It seems that the world is throwing “Glow” back at me as a challenge–I was actually rather depressed when I took that picture, not glowing inside at all, but God has given me every reason and opportunity since then to find joy in what He has created and given to me. Sometimes, this doesn’t work. I can be very stubborn in my depression. But this week I have managed to work my way out of it, and I am so very grateful for that. Usually, I flounder for a long time before my heart allows itself to rest and be happy again. But today, I am full of ideas, plans to replace the ones that didn’t work out, gifts to give, things to create, ways to shine, to echo the beauty that has followed me all week long, teasing me out of my funk. Today, I am full of color, all the warm colors of a sunset, but perhaps most of all, the vibrant and daring shade of pink that glows from my basement bathroom every morning.

September Self Portrait Challenge, Part 3

Well, here it is…my last September self portrait. I’m almost sorry to see this month’s theme go–I’ve had an absolute blast, but I am out of ideas for more bathroom pictures, so perhaps it’s just as well. This is our downstairs bathroom, painted in 3 lurid and terrifyingly bright shades of pink by the previous tenants. I hate this bathroom, but on a sunny morning the sunlight through the window makes this room glow, quite literally and quite brightly. We’ve lived in this house for almost 2 years now, and on some mornings I walk down the stairs and am again completely stunned by the cherry-pink glow suffusing the hallway. The brightness of the paint magnifies and reflects the sunlight a thousandfold. And for that, and that alone, I can love this shamelessly effusive color that invades my home. Pink is generally a color I avoid in my clothing and decor, although I feel slightly more charitable about it in my art. In this picture, I am wearing 2 out of the 3 pink items that I own, although between the glow of the sun and the neon pink backdrop, my pastel shirt is rather washed out. I would also like to say that this picture has had very little touch-up–it really is that pink, and that really is all-natural sunlight creating that incredible glow. A little bit of the sunrise captured inside my house every morning…

September Self Portrait Challenge, Part 2

Well, I’m a little late this week, but the opportunity didn’t present itself until late Friday afternoon. Better late than never, right? These pictures were taken in the restroom of a grocery store…I locked myself into the handicapped stall, waited breathlessly for all the people to go away, and set the self-timer on my camera. Not quite as daring as I had hoped to be in my public restroom picture adventure, but frankly I’m proud enough that I got that much done. It hasn’t been a good week for self-portrait opportunities. Interesting and random things revealed about me in these pictures: I like my sunglasses. I forget to take them off–I practically wore them to bed a couple of nights ago. Also, you can see that I roll up the cuffs of my jeans because I am too short to wear any pair of store-bought pants, and I am too lazy to hem them. People tend to think this is a cute fashion thing I do on purpose; they seem amused that the cuffs are ridiculously wide. Also, in the second picture, there is evidence of my weird habit of twisting my wedding ring around on my finger–you can see the diamond all the way to the right of my finger instead of in the middle where it belongs. Also, I wear hideous but comfy shoes, when I wear shoes at all. And that, I believe, concludes today’s lesson in random facts about me that I’m sure you were all just dying to know.

The paradox of autumn

The weather’s finally turning cold here, and with it comes that strange mixture of excitement and dread that always assails me at this time of year since I moved north. You see, autumn is one of my favorite seasons–I love everything about it. I love the crisp tang in the air, the crunch of dried leaves beneath my shoes, cozying up with hot cocoa, a blanket, and a book on a gray day, the way my cats cuddle each other and me to keep warm. I love the fiery, vibrant colors the trees turn, the yearly trip to Greenbluff for pumpkins and homemade cider and squash, the sweet spiciness of pumpkin pie, even the occasional blustery day, because it seems like a blustery day can only truly happen in the fall. But since moving north, I have learned to dread that first chill in the air, because here autumn ushers in winter all too quickly, and my poor Texan blood has never adjusted to the winters here. It hits a certain point in November, and I spend the next 4 months huddled under three blankets on the couch and in bed, and not even that thick cocoon can keep me warm enough–I am always shivering and miserable. And winter lasts so long here…some years, it doesn’t truly warm up until late June. In Texas, I could go around in flipflops and short sleeves by my birthday in mid April, but every year that I’ve been here, the chill lingers long past Spring. I awoke today to feel that the house is actually slightly cold this morning–I have already resigned myself to sweats and a blanket–and had this sudden, panicked urge to do all the things that I can’t once winter hits. The first snow is more than a month away, and the in-between time will be absolutely beautiful, but I’m still panicking. Here is a list of things I feel an immediate need to do now that fall has hit:

• Go up to the South Hill for the last time before the Spring thaw to:
  • visit Larry & Diane
  • shop at the scrapbook store
  • eat Pedro’s Pizza
  • visit Ollie
  • spend 5 hours mooning over antique books at Second Look Books
  • stare at the gorgeous houses the rich people live in
  • just dillydally around….I love the South Hill
  • take pictures of tons of stuff up there
  • go to Manito and Cannon Hill to visit the ducks, revel in the lush vegetation, and take lots of pictures of course
• Go on long trips through the countryside and take a gaggle of pictures
• Go to Greenbluff about a dozen times
• Run around in flipflops frantically, in complete denial of the cold–at least until it gets cold enough that I might get frostbite
• Take pictures around town of all those spiffy things that everyone else ignores, like the doorway in the alley behind the huge read UStoreIt building near SMH
• Go outside in general. There’s no way I can avoid leaving the house for the entire winter, but I sure won’t enjoy it.
• Go to the mall before the holiday shoppers attack.
• Make lots of crafty artsy things (My craft room is in the basement, so in the winter I have the choice of do nothing artsy or freeze to death attempting to do something artsy. This is one of the most horrible things about winter.)
• Go downtown to look at the Spokane Falls
• And probably other things I am forgetting right now

And yet, even in the midst of my winter-is-coming panic, I am so eager about all those uniquely wonderful moments that autumn is preparing for me. The paradox is maddening. So today I am feeling odd and rather displaced. I think I will go curl up under a blanket upstairs and wait for my three cats to notice that I’m in cozy-cuddly mode.

Not-so-plain Vanilla

 Well, I must admit…the follwing poem is not completely honest. I do love vanilla ice cream, but it’s not my favorite flavor. Still, what the poem expresses is true–true to who I am, and true to life in general. Enjoy this scrumptious poem!

31 Flavors

Baskin Robbins and a rainbow
of flavors from cherry-red to candy bar
caramel and pistachio mint green.
I pick vanilla.
Every single time. No one gets it.
Vanilla? Boring!
Today’s challenger of my tastebuds
is my best friend,
digging into peanut-butter-chocolate-mint,
a flavor as impractical as she
Tries to be, like it’s the only flavor
in the world.
Yes, Vanilla. No, boring.
I can build anything I want onto its
sugar-white simplicity.
Chocolate, strawberry, butterscotch    syrup.
Sprinkles. Cookie bits.
Anything!
          It’s like life. Simplicity.
    Possibility.
Licking my fingers clean, I grin.
Then tell her:
It’s only a place to start.

24-Hour Madness

So I don’t know what in the world has gone wrong in my brain, but several times in the past week, I have experienced a bizarre and unprecedented phenomenon. It starts with an idea that is, to some degree, highly ridiculous and improbable. No problem, I have those all the time. But for some strange reason, in the last week my brain has actually pounced on those farfetched ideas with such vigor that the idea consumes practically my every waking thought and I devote a great deal of time and energy to trying to figure out how I might–just might–be able to make this wild idea possible. Then I go to bed at night, and wake up in the morning and *poof* I am normal again, and while the idea is still something I would like to do, it is not a completely obsessive need to do it immediately. For example, last week I got the extremely wild notion that I wanted to go to Argentina–not just for vacation, mind you, but for a whole month. I went so far as to scrounge online for airline tickets, short-term apartment rentals, and asking my husband if he thought he could get that much time off, or perhaps even work remote. I added up exactly how much money it would take to do this and started planning what to do with the kitties while we were gone. I blabbered about it almost ceaselessly to my poor husband with a rather terrifying level of enthusiasm. And when I woke up the next morning, I realized that it was pretty much financially impossible and I was okay with that. At least I had the presence of mind to not do anything so stupid as to actually purchase plane ticket for something that released my brain almost as quickly as it had seized it.

Meet my new 24-hour mad obsession. It is a lovely chunk of property out in the middle of nowhere Washington (well, maybe not quite nowhere, it’s probably only 1.5 hours from where I live now, but it’s nowhere near a city, that’s for sure)–10 acres and it’s going for such a reasonable price…I discovered it on Monday morning and immediately freaked out. I said to myself, “Oh my gosh, it’s such a good price that we actually almost have money for a downpayment!” And for the rest of the day, I stared at everything we had access to and tried to figure out how to squeeze an extra few hundred out of our paychecks every month, how much money it would take to build a house out there, everything I could think of. Sean was sick, and was awake only about 5 hours on Monday, but I babbled at him about it as much as possible. Went to bed, woke up realizing that although it was possible, it was not completely likely and perhaps not the wisest idea at this time. And I am handling it okay. The difference is, unlike going to Argentina for a month, this is something I’ve wanted to do for a very, very long time. I’d prefer acreage in Oregon, because it’s more temperate and even more beautiful and oh so very green, but I am also aware that I could be just as happy on any pretty chunk of land you stick me in, so long as it’s big enough to roam, has lots of trees, and is far enough away from civilization. Even more, I am aware that realistically we may never have the opportunity to leave this area. And so…the 24-hour madness has left me, and I am much calmer now, but this time we are actually considering what it would take to make it work. And if I ever get too excited again, Sean is amazingly level-headed and can talk me down. But honestly, until Monday, I hadn’t even realized that something like this could even be possible anytime within the next 5-10 years, and it’s so amazing to see that one of my dreams is actually attainable. Hurrah for dreaming and pretty little chunks of land.

September Self Portrait Challenge, Part 1

My very first portrait challenge participation…a week late, so I am on Part 1 while most people are into Round 2, but what the hey, I’m here. And despite my initial panic over this month’s theme, I think it’s actually turned out pretty well. All of these pictures were taken in my upstairs bathroom after midnight. The bathroom is utterly tiny, but it has this lovely three-piece mirror above the sink where you can move the side panels to different angles. My grandmother had mirrors like that in her bathroom, and every time we went to visit her I would spend so much time staring at those mirrors, fascinated by being able to see myself from nearly every side at once. These pictures are all about the hair. I have had long hair all my life, and I can’t fathom facing myself in the mirror with anything shorter than 3 inches below the bottom of my shoulder blade. I don’t think I have the face for short hair, and I can do so many spiffy and cute things with my long hair, and I love how it looks in a bandana or a scarf. But I have a condition called polycystic ovarian syndrome. PCOS is alot of things, but at its root it is a severe hormone imbalance. Among the many horrible things this has done to my body, I am losing my hair very rapidly. What you see in these pictures is all that’s left, and I know it looks like alot, but it’s only about a third of my natural amount and the rest is going fast. I designed these pictures around one last hurrah for my glorious hair, but I think I love them for more than just that. They have a dreamy quality that was completely unintentional, but I think I accidentally captured an angle of my soul. Perhaps I should have expected something like this to come out of a self-portrait project that forces me to be so creative, but I didn’t. I thought, ‘Oh, it’ll be fun to do this. I’ll end up taking a bunch of weird but cool pictures.’ I thought the pictures would perhaps in some way redefine me, rather than revealing a facet of my true self. Because I am at heart a dreamer, a romantic. I have never stopped reading and writing fairy tales. I love long drives across the country because I can stare out the window for hours and lose myself in a daydream. And yet, so many times, I feel overwhelmed by what my sickness has done to me. I feel that it has taken so much of myself away, and that I will never get better. I still write and create art, but my body is so limited and I can’t do everything I want to. And of course, with drastic shifts in my hormones has come nasty mood swings, changes in my personality (none of them for the better), depression and irrationality. I have watched myself in a downward spiral for 3 years now. This blog is my attempt to combat the emotional effects of PCOS, a reminder of what I love, and who I am at the core; this self-portrait is a Godsend, proof that that beautiful dreamer is still inside me.

More feet, plus Mexican food

Well, Feet Week is just about over, but I have a few last contributions to make. Not too amazing, but what the hey. We love feet, don’t we? Here we have driveway-just-about-to-get-in-the-car-and-go feet, and a close-up of my right foot. Sadly, the scar is still kind of hard to see. It’s on the left side of the my foot, running diagonal from several inches below the spot in between my big toe and my second toe, and even though you can’t see all of it in the picture, it runs down almost the full length of my foot. There are two other scars to the right of the main one from the same kitty-spaz incident, but they are very faint and don’t really show up. I expect them to eventually fade, but I think I’ll have the main one for keeps. Sean also has some pretty hefty scars on his right arm where the same kitty had another one of his spaz attacks and clawed him trying to get away. Which makes him sound like a horrible cat, but he’s really such a sweet boy. He just freaks out sometimes.

On another note, Sean & I went to this wonderful Mexican grocery store/deli/restaurant thingummy yesterday. It’s been open for…oh, a while now, and we’ve been wanting to go take a look, but never had the chance before. It was my first chance to really sneak around in public taking surreptitious pictures with my tiny tiny new camera (yes, I bought it! hurray for impulse buying! I adore it!), and of course that was just about 500 different kinds of fun. They had dried chili peppers and jalapeños in huge bins, thousands of tamale wrappers, piñatas hanging from the ceiling, and so much more. Of course the best things were the salsa, tortillas, and chips that they handmake right there in the store. They had…gosh, more than 5 types of salsa, and it was all amazing. We got dinner from their restaurant section: tamales and chicken enchiladas. Those tamales were amazing! The only tamales that top them are the ones I had in Reynosa on my second missions trip to Mexico in 11th grade. My youth pastor actually smuggled something like 4 dozen of those tamales back across the border…shhh! We will definitely be going back.

Happy feet!

Well, I’m a little late on this, but I have a rather serious foot fetish, so I absolutely can’t resist participating in Feet Week. It’s funny–my feet have given me trouble all my life, and in one way I hate them passionately because they have caused me alot of pain. Yet I am still fascinated by them, how long and skinny and unshapely they are. I have scars on my right foot from my cat, who accidently clawed me up very badly last year, and now that it doesn’t hurt anymore, I actually like those scars. The first thing I did when it healed up was doodle in henna on the top of my foot, right along the most prominent scar, to turn into something swirly and pretty. I have always loved doodling on my skin, and my feet are one of my favorite spots. Unfortunately, I am currently out of henna…

I also notice other people’s feet alot. I have observed feet that are perfectly shaped like the quintessential foot, feet where the second toe is actually shorter than the third toe (!) and lots and lots of weird feet, which has led me to the conclusion that the shape that most people think of as The Foot is actually rather rare.

In honor of Feet Week, I am posting pictures of my dirty feet after a day of running around barefoot on the sidewalk outside (I hate shoes, and go barefoot as much as possible), my summer and winter feet side by side (when I must wear shoes, I wear flipflops almost exclusively; the right foot is wearing my favorite pair of summer flipflops, and the left foot is wearing the rather startling combination of toe socks and flipflops that I wear in winter unless it’s snowy or too cold), a page out of one of my earliest altered books that features a lovely foot, thanks to my former sister-in-law Kelly who has perfectly shaped feet, and the following poem I wrote about my friend Kimbie. I will try to take more pictures of my feet today, hopefully something where the scars show up.

An Ode to Kimbie’s Feet
You wear size 5,
impossibly tiny for anyone our age;
you shop
in the children’s section of every single shoe store,
as if a size 5
could really fill the shoes
of someone who has always walked
tall and strong
in my life.

Happy thoughts of the day

 
A very simple, quick little post here…Just wanted to share the things that have served to inspire and uplift me recently. The picture I scanned off the back of my A Fine Frenzy CD, and I absolutely love it. My first thought was, It’s the Lady of Shalott…with a phonograph! The more I look at it, the less like the Lady of Shalott it seems to me, but it’s still got that wistful, romantic, mysteriously alluring atmosphere. It’s a portal to a dreamy world…
Well, really, that entire CD has captivated me. I can’t get it out of my head. Absolutely beautiful…

The other thing that has touched me deeply is something Joan said yesterday: “In the place where we think we are doing nothing , all sorts of things may be germinating and gestating.” I love this because it speaks to all those quiet moments in my life…a big theme here recently. Really, a big theme in my life in general. Someday, I’m going to bloom out of all those nothings…