Writing a book is an all consuming journey. Research, plotting, writing, revising, editing. And then once you’ve labored through all that there’s still blurbs and marketing copy to write, covers to approves, book for format, and check and recheck for typos (they never go away, I think they magically generate in clean books). At some point it feels like nothing will ever happen, nothing with is at the end, you’ll just be looping around forever polishing cover copy. But eventually it all ends and a book is born!
I’m getting close on Star Quality, covers are coming so soon I can barely stand it! And we have achieved blurb!
Star Quality by Ajax Bell
On-screen passion and off-screen intrigues
Kevin Kaisho plays gay on the popular nighttime TV drama Shadow Lane. Kevin’s on-screen love interest is his long-time friend, the out and proud (and married) Nick Jantzen. After spending a press junket flirting with Nick to titillate fans, Kevin’s feelings become complicated: Nick’s husband Andrew shows up, making suggestive overtures. With unexpected desires invading his dreams, Kevin must discover what kind of starring role he really wants.
Andrew Walker is successful in his own right as a fashion designer, and he’s quite happy with his life, even if he and Nick are often kept apart by their work. But when he sees a picture of Nick and his new co-star Kevin cozied up for the camera, he’s intrigued. Can he coax Kevin–and Nick–into seeing that starring together in real life can be richer and more complex than a TV drama?
Star Quality is an erotica novella coming on June 1, 2015 to Amazon, and wide release in September 2015.
While travelling, when I should have been giving all my attention to my loved ones, I sat down for a bit and started reading That Door Is a Mischief by Alex Jeffers. I meant only to distract for an hour, to start something I could pick up before bed later, but instead I read the whole book, cover to cover, in a day, to the detriment of everything I should have been doing.
I don’t know if I can be objective about this book. Like all of Jeffers’ stories I was pulled in to a bubble universe that I never want to leave. The biggest tragedy is that I’m not reading this book anymore. It is not, like the fairyland in the story, a universe I can literally climb inside, through some magic door, and stay there forever. More’s the pity, I would happily live with Liam and his dads, Harry and their made family, in this beautiful bubble universe that Jeffers created.
The fairyness of this story is presented so matter-of-factly you think: yes of course there are fairies, no need to make a big deal about it. Not a delicate, sweet fantasy tale, the book is at times dark, dirty, and horrible, the way life is. The reality of fairy-Liam, particularly as a teenager is rough, uncomfortable, and awkward, yet I wouldn’t miss a minute of it.
TDIAM is a love story above all else. More than a romantic love story, it is a love-of-life story, love-of-family, made and chosen. The story’s presentation of family is spectacular, inclusive, the future we all hope for where sexuality is irrelevant to love, to family building, and everyone can make the choices they want.
How long will it take me to be ready to talk about the central love story in this book? I don’t know if I’ll ever be over it. I’m still tearing up with the enormity of it days later. It’s a gut-punch, but breathtakingly beautiful as well. It’ll just leave you entirely breathless, but it will feel like a that first glow of oxygen after you’ve had the wind knocked out of you–like the sun in your chest, huge, glowing, unfathomably sweet.
I have recently written my own book and the conclusion of that writing was emotionally devastating. Living in your own head, with your beloved characters, dreaming them, breathing them, but at some point you have to let them go, to be done. That end left me so lonely without them. Finishing reading TDIAM came close to that loneliness. Where will I be without these characters? There is a hole in my heart shaped like them. If I have any complaint about this book it is simply that it does not go on forever and that eventually I had to close it. I wondered if I would be able to handle the ending, the last chapter was intense and emotionally rough, but Jeffers came through, perfectly, so that now I can dream always that these boys are as happy as they made me.
I don’t know how to recommend this book. It is certainly supernatural fantasy, fairies, fairyland and all, but it felt so real. The characters come off the page, like people you know, fallible, damaged and exceptionally beautiful people, exposed and broken and still lovable just like your own friends. The sense of wonder Jeffers creates when people really see Liam, see the world around them differently, stuck with me. If you were going to read a fairy story anyway, read this one. If you only wanted a window into the lives of people so real you think you might pass them on the street, read this one. If you want to utterly lose yourself inside someone else’s massive world changing love, then read this book.
Let’s talk about Tom Daley coming out. For those of you who don’t know (I’m assuming a possibility that the media storm about it has only been in the kind of online circles I travel in) Tom Daley is an Olympic Diver from the UK who came out this week in a very sweet little video (link has a transcript if you don’t have patience for a video). I’m very proud of him for his brave act, but I’m more interested in the responses I’m seeing in the media and in comments I’m seeing on stories about this. Really I just want to address the common responses I’m seeing.
1) “It’s no one’s business who he loves.” While in an ideal world this is true. Tom says it himself in his video that in a perfect world he wouldn’t have to do this. I wish he didn’t. But he does because all over the world people are still persecuted, punished, stigmatized, shunned and even killed because of who they love. Coming out is the only way to combat that. When your family, friends, and public figures that you admire make public statements about who they love it makes the entire idea of queerness less threatening. It opens a conversation to help everyone understand that two women or two men getting married isn’t a threat to anyone’s way of life. Because, yes, who your partner is IS a private thing, but it can’t be a quiet thing until we’ve made society at large safe for every one in it. Visibility is key to safety and coming out is key to visibility. So, of course it’s no one’s business who Tom Daley spends time with but until he and everyone queer is 100% safe then public coming outs will stil matter, will still mean something. It’s fine if YOU don’t have a problem with it, but it is important to recognize that your support is much more meaningful than dismissing it as something that is “no one’s business.”
2. Tom Daley “still fancies girls.” This so important and so complicated. Headlines say, “Tom Daley comes out as gay!” People angrily respond that he obviously came out as bisexual since he made a point about liking girls. Headlines say, “Tom Daley comes out as bisexual!” People angrily respond that he did not label himself, so we should not label him, besides he’s young and this probably just his way of easing into gayness or not ostracizing part of his fanbase. This is such an important conversation and it’s important especially because it’s happening. Whether Tom is gay, bisexual or something else actually is no one’s business. He’s been clear that he is with a man, he is very happy and he feels safe and supported in the relationship. That’s all that matters. So why are we arguing about the label? Because bisexuality is a real thing and it is often ignored or erased. Erasure happens because if a person likes boys and girls they generally pair up with one or the other and immediately become identified as gay or straight. Bisexual men are frequently told that they are just not yet fully admitting that they are gay. Bisexual women are often told that they are attention seeking, confused, or just slutty. Homosexuals are as guilty of these responses as the straight majority is. So when Tom Daley says he fancies girls at a time when he does not need too (everyone is going to say he’s gay anyway, everyone knows he’s with a man, so why temper it with mentioning girls?) it matters because it opens to conversation about how sexuality isn’t binary. It isn’t just gay or straight. There’s a whole huge spectrum out there that goes beyond the Kinsey scale. What it boils down to is that it still shouldn’t matter who someone’s partner is, but it does matter that they feel supported in their lives. We’ve been making some strides with gay marriage. As a society we are becoming more comfortable with lesbians and gay men in public spaces. But the whole array of human sexuality, the bisexuals, transgendered, genderqueer, asexual and whole host of other possibilities are still invisible. So when Tom Daley says he’s fancies girls he’s allowing for public conversation, allowing for visibility for everyone who hasn’t yet been invited to the table of acceptance. No, it doesn’t matter how we label him as an individual, it isn’t our business, but it is our business to pay attention and to listen to our friends and family so we can better understand how they identify and make them feel safe as well.
So congratulations, Tom Daley, on your new found happiness, and thank you for making important conversations possible.
On a more shallow note, holy smokes, Tom Daley is beautiful and his boyfriend is so handsome! And they seem so smart and thoughtful. There haven’t been many present day celebrity romances that have me me all fluttery, but this feels very old school romancey to me, very Bogart and Bacall. I’ll be over here sighing, with cartoon hearts in my eyes, every time I see a picture of them.
Last summer I finally hit the wall of being so unhappy with my body that I had to take action. For years I’d gained weight and become more sedentary. I thought I ate pretty well and figured that genetics was against me and there was nothing I could do about my round little apple dumpling shape. And I didn’t care so much. I’ve never been terrifically concerned with beauty aesthetics and I am genuinely concerned with the way our society raises young women to starve themselves. I have a couple friends who underwent bariatric surgery to great (over 100lbs) weight loss and each of them told me that at the end of it, they were still who they’d been before and whatever demons they had still needed to be faced, skinnier or not. I knew none of my demons had to do with my weight so why fight a losing battle with my body?
But as I age my body becomes more my enemy. Aches, joint pains, longer recovery times, many new problems. Everywhere you look there’s a new study saying that exercise will cure everything. I got into physical therapy for my chronic, severe shoulder pain. I worked on my posture, I diligently did my recovery exercises twice a day and I decided to get fit. I mean if I was already doing some sort of exercise twice a day, why not add more? I determined the the optimum, most convenient exercise for me (indoor rowing) and set to it, with long series of staggered goals. The biggest one being “turn 40 being in the best shape of my life.” I rowed and rowed for weeks and the weight almost immediately started falling off. Exercise with a surprise benefit! I wasn’t just becoming healthier, I was visibly changing.
Fitness minded friends encouraged me to count calories and really look at my diet. I insisted I didn’t need to do that because I knew I ate pretty well: no gluten, mostly whole, fresh foods, very little packaged or pre-prepared food. But I caved pretty quickly and started using My Fitness Pal, initially to just track exercise but my use coincided with discovering my recent weight loss. I was encouraged so I started tracking what I was eating every day for a few weeks and yes, according to the general consensus, I was eating too many calories for my height & age. Sure they were “good” calories, but they were still too many.
Armed with numbers (weight and calories and energy expenditure) I didn’t quite understand, I read up on nutrition and on nutrition and sports medicine. There’s a mountain of information out there and lot of it is wrong. I sorted through message boards and essays of advice and I eventually made a standard for myself. Maybe some of it is wrong, it’s hard to tell, but for me it’s reasonable, practical and makes sense. I eat a low carb, high protein, high fat diet, still avoiding most processed foods. I spent months altering my diet slightly and recognizing what was making me feel better and what was making me feel worse. And the weight continued to come off, slowly but steadily.
In the last few months I’ve been pretty uneven about exercise. My consistent routine was upheaved by moving and the demands of the new house and my job, by not immediately creating a new routine when my circumstances changed. Days shy of turning 40 I’ve nearly met the weight loss goal I set when I started tracking calories and I feel great. I can’t stress enough how much pain I was in before and how much simple weight loss helped me feel better. But even when I was heavier I felt much, much better when I was exercising regularly. I’m small and relatively fine boned and extra weight was literally dragging me down, so yes, I feel better with out it. Exercise however has a threefold improvement: the satisfaction of accomplished a single task set out to do (row 30 mins, walk an hour), you get the immediate rush of improved blood flow, it’s calming and over time you physically feel stronger and more capable. It’s like this door to understanding has opened for me. Yes, of course we’ve all heard “it’s just diet and exercise” for ever. But I can’t state strongly enough how true that really is for me. It is hard work, not because it’s hard to do, but because it takes commitment and dedication and sometimes the returns are slow to show. But really unless you have a major medical problem, six weeks of dedication, to diet, exercise, or both should show you what’s possible.
Still I’m not nearly to where I want to be. Halfway there. I’ve got diet figured out, as long as I stick to it I should be fine (“it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change”). But exercise I’m still learning, it still feels forced some days and I don’t love it. Yet. I’m going to get there. That’s my goal for the next year. I know I need to work harder because just like my friends, here I am at goal weight for my height, age and build and I look in the mirror and I don’t see much that’s different than where I started (in fact I can only see the difference when I compare pictures side by side). Lumpy, poochy, misshapen belly, weak arms, shoulder pain that flares up when I’m too sedentary, aches that could otherwise be controlled. I am so much better than I was 11 months ago, but I’m not great yet and I want to age into greatness, into fitness and most importantly into strength. So I will keep working, keep striving and never set an end point, because I want to have a good relationship with this body and like all relationships, you have to keep at it, keep listening and keep trying.
And because no make over story is complete without pictures:
In past years I have always done a 30 day birthday countdown, giving myself a birthday month essentially. I didn’t do it this year, not by design, but because this year seems to have snuck up on me, like where did the last three months of my life go? How is it April already? How is it the end of April already? Ack ack ack! Rewind, I’m not ready!
But ready or not, here it is, a mere 6 days away, the big 4-0. I have no issues about turning 40. Or rather the issues I have are not the expected ones. Since I was 16 I’ve imagined 40 as being this magic barrier that I would cross and then suddenly be taken seriously as a woman. Surely no one is surprised that that magic barrier is both moveable and non-existent.
I’m pretty sure that what I see in the mirror is the reverse of this.
For many years I’ve attributed the way I’m treated in the workplace (and sometimes the wider world) as a factor of my youth or my youthful appearance. I have worked hard in sub-par professional jobs most of my adult life, been under employed continuously in relation to my intelligence, knowledge and skills. This, I believe, is a factor not just of my lack of ambition but the economic lows which have plagued my generation. But the longer I work the more barriers I run into that make me wonder how much my gender has also kept me pushed down. I’ve never felt like any employer has given me a chance to show what I can really do. I’ve felt a vague sense of being patted on the head told that I’m cute for working so hard, that it’s resented when I try to wield what power I have, that I’m valued much more for appearance than for my work (or not as valued when my appearance doesn’t meet some standard I’ll never understand). These are things that I’ve started to see as failings of my (mostly male) employers and of society as a whole, rather than my own shortcomings. I find myself in conflict with coworkers merely because I’ve politely asserted myself. I long ago let go of the false persona that tries to please everyone (as women are raised to do) and instead focus on the task at hand and the best way to get it done. I’m told that I’m too brusque and business-like, that I need to make myself sweeter and more likeable (ask my friends, I’m plenty sweet and likeable when it counts). No man has ever been asked to bake for clients to appease them (um, unless baking is his job). On the eve of 40 I can definitively say that it’s simply because I’m a woman that I am told to to be kinder, sweeter and less demanding of perfection at work.
This doesn’t empower me because I’m neither maiden, mother, nor hag and we revere none of these in our society.
At 16 I had imagined 40 as some marker where I’d be strong, capable and wise, and no longer recognized as a sexual object and therefore able to speak powerfully and be taken seriously. And there is a little truth to this. Very, very slowly it’s becoming more true (thank you, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and strong outspoken women everywhere) but it certainly isn’t cultural norm yet (why are we discussing these women’s hairstyle in the news and not their jobs and qualifications?). Women are still infantilized, particularly in my specific location (in the American South, working in construction, still a predominantly male industry). As a society we have not made the strides toward equality and justice that I expected to see in my lifetime. Growing up in the 70s we were all fed the “truths” that the world would keep changing at an expeditious rate and we could grow up to anything. Which I guess is almost true, assuming you have the right stack of privilege, luck and opportunity behind you. Yes, it’s been great to be alive to see all sexual orientations start to get their due, but what about the rest of us, the people of color, women, all the other marginalized groups? How long will we be stuck in some moderately polished up versions of the historical roles society forces on us?
I thought we were charging forward to change but we lost our way sometime around 1984.
I meant this to be personal not political, (but the personal is, oh you know…) but I can’t avoid it because at nearly 40 I know much more of the world than I did at 16 and now I can see that the problem isn’t small with only me as its isolated victim. It’s vast and keeping us all down and it’s shaped me over the years to dream of something better for anyone. Where once I wanted to be taken seriously as person, now I wish to be taken seriously as a gender. I want to live to see my sisters equally represented in positions of power. I want our governing bodies, the world over, to truly represent our whole society. Give me 51 female senators and 218 female representatives in my own country’s federal government. Give all my sisters equal pay and equal opportunities or rise to commercial positions of power. Bring us all up and punish those who strive to keep us down through sexual and physical violence, through words and actions, so that we may have justice with equality. For my next 40 years that is my fondest wish, to live to see a world in which women can see a reflection of their true selves.
More easily attainable is my fondest wish for the immediate future: time off to hang out with my friends and family, cute outfits to wear and feel confident in, trashy TV to watch, and maybe a little celebration. I will work on my ability to find ways to always fit those things into my life, because even as half of me always seems to be raging at the system, at the news, at the pit of ignorance our society has fallen into, I am still human and it is the small things that bring me joy. And isn’t joy (not love or money or happiness) what makes life worth living and gives us all the strength to keep fighting for a world where peace is easier to find for everyone? For my part I will continue to redefine beauty and style to be personal and not a mask of society’s creation. I will challenge everyone I meet to judge me for who I am and what I can do and not on my appearance. I will call out those who keep us down in speech and actions. I will volunteer where I am needed, help those who cannot help themselves and try as hard as I can to model the behavior I hope to see from everyone. I will relax sometimes, and enjoy the good still in the world. After all, I’m 40 now, it’s party time on the other side of that magic barrier.
I’d like to live a life of no regrets, but I don’t even know this guy and I regret that he got this tattoo.
Today in the Northern Hemisphere we round the corner on darkness. It is the Hibernal solstice when the sun is near its greatest distance from the equatorial plane, standing still as it were.
Today Marduk tamed the monsters of chaos and for one more year we are safe as we move back into the light.
Today we light candles and keep them lit. Though darkness is already on the run, we must continue to chase it away so spring can come faster.
Today the Oak King is apparently dead, his branches bare and cold. We thought the Holly King had won, as he remained green, but long live the Oak King as he returns to rule us into Midsummer! Go, hang the holly, let it catch bad spirits on it’s tiny horns, protecting us in the months of darkness when the border with the shadowlands is permeable.
Today is the Saturnalia where we eat and dance and decorate the evergreens with red berries. We will reverse all our roles, switch with our opposites and see the world from the other side, through other eyes.
Today and for the days to come, find joy in each other, celebrate, kiss beneath the mistletoe, feast in the light of candles. Celebrate the darkness and the joy we have as it washes away. Tonight we breathe and meditate on our lives. We breathe out the things we want gone, we breathe in our wishes for the coming year. Tomorrow life begins again.
Scrolling back through entries here I see I’ve often posted at length on the Winter Solstice, but not for the Summer.
Summer begins at 6:09pm. In Middle Tennessee, the sun today rose at 5:30am, then sets at 8:07pm, giving us 14.6 hours of sunlight. The longest day of the year.
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the Summer Solstice. Here in Tennessee I feel a little cheated, perhaps because of our latitude. If I was in Seattle today I’d have a full 16 hours of daylight, being so much further north. It is one of the glorious delights of the North, the drastic changes in the amount of light make you value the seasons. It somehow gives you more visible seasonal drama beyond mere temperature changes and plants returning to life. And yet, even in the Great North I always felt the Summer Solstice to be somewhat bittersweet.
The light diminishes after flaring it’s brightest on this day. In Tennessee it means less in than it does in the North, as it will never get as dark in winter, so there is less burden to bear on that end. Indeed, the longest days of summer are still ahead of us, if we are measuring by heat, laziness and availability of good food cooked outside on a grill. But the light passing has always felt like loss to me. A downward journey that eventually ends in the darkness of winter. The beauty of autumn is joy to behold. As is the desolation of winter in it’s own way. Still today feel like an ending, a turn we took, walking away from spring. Fortunately spring will return next year, no matter what we do, and on the Winter Solstice we can look longingly at the slow the return of the light, knowing that spring must come on the heels of the sun’s return.
I don’t know the origins of my dark view of midsummer. Perhaps growing up so far north, where the loss of the sun means so much darkness. Perhaps it’s burned in genetic memory from my Scandinavian and Scottish ancestors. It’s no mystery that the Scandinavian cultures, and for northern European ones, celebrate Midsummer as a massive festival. Because indeed today feels massive, like the most there is, the best you can have, ALL the sunlight. And yet it is only today, quickly fleeting, like everything in life.
Just read a line in a Sherman Alexie story about standing in line at Bartell’s and suddenly I’m so homesick I’m not sure I can live through the heartbreak of it. In my head I ask Sherman Alexie if he imagines how many of his throw away lines profoundly affect people? I think of every word I’ve put out there, every bit of fiction I’ve written, and no one has ever come back to me with the important words, with the phrases that I labored over, they only come to tell me about the how they were moved by my fast lines, the ones that drop out, that I don’t consider at all before I put them to paper.
Perhaps the lines I don’t labor over mean the most, come more truly from me? Perhaps there is no meaning in any of it and will just keeping spilling out words, looking for the turn of phrase that will free my soul and find it someday. Perhaps Sherman Alexie labored over that line and still will never know will never know how his two sentences made me break my own heart. I could write him a letter and tell him, but I would labor too hard over the words, I would lose the importance of sharing what he gave me. I have always been writing this letter to him in my head, through out the years, every time I read his stories and poems. A letter that never makes it to paper, to computer screen, never achieves more than some small form of therapy for me.
I am talking to Sherman in my head (can I call you, Sherman, I feel we are close enough now) about my homesickness, about how I cannot ever really understand where he is from and he cannot understand how I am from where he is now. I tell him it is a continuum that no one but me can see, a story that can’t quite be told, but is important all the same. And the The Butchies pop up on shuffle on the old mp3 player and I start to cry because this is more homesickness than a soul can bear. But this makes me get up and start to cook dinner: fettuccine alfredo with smoked salmon (real, PNW smoked salmon), peas and caramelized onions. Because I am homesick and if I lived close enough that I could call my mom and ask if I could come over she would walk to me to a restaurant near her house (one Sherman Alexie has surely been too) and I would order some variation of this dish because you don’t really find it anywhere else in the world, not the way we make it in Seattle.
And while I am chopping onions the mp3 player turns again and gives me Kevin Gordon singing Watching the Sun Go Down, and I remember how I stopped at 6:42 am, on my way to work, to photograph the sunrise over an electrical power station, and got distracted by some horses too. I think of how the redbuds are surely more beautiful this year than they have ever been before, blooming riotously, everywhere, making the edges of every roadway glow purple. I think of how the heat in Tennessee makes me feel warm all the way through to my bones, like I’ve never been warm before.
So I tell Sherman that he is lucky indeed, to be able wait in line at Bartell’s, but he has to go through cold rain to get there and I am saved by the sun and the green in spring and the sounds, all the sounds, here in the dirty South. Perhaps I am homesick for a place that no longer exists. A place I visited, moved through in childhood, that is just a fairytale now, I can not go back. My adult self does not have the magic to cross back over the boundaries of the places I’ve been before, I can only go to new places or create them myself. And I’m still crying when I sit down to eat my dinner, but not because I miss anything. I am so lucky to have been so many places, both real and imagined. Lucky to be me and to be still so full of emotions good and bad (love) about all of those places I have been and the people in them. Even the rude lady in the Bartell’s line that you have to tell to fuck all the way off. So thanks, Sherman, for reminding of my home, the past one, the new one, the one that is always me and goes everywhere inside my heart. I’m certain that you never knew that namedropping Bartell’s in a story would make some girl in Tennessee break out the fancy smoked salmon from way back home and cook herself a good dinner on a night when she would otherwise have been too tired, too worn down by work, to do more than make a quesadilla. Thanks for dinner, Sherman, I really feel like we are close now.
(Pictures taken early this morning in Tennessee, when I stopped, before I even had coffee, to remember that there is beauty in the world. Even when you feel like you break to pieces because of the stress that swirls around you and puts the anxiety inside you, there is still the color purple and leaves that were not that green yesterday and sunrises. The redbuds really are spectacular this year.)
It seems sometimes that I’m on a biennial cycle for domain name changes. And really once every two years is good. Considering the amount of domains I own and don’t use and the ones I always think I want, I feel like I do a fairly good job of sticking with something at least just long enough for people to get used to it before I change again.
It doesn’t change as often as a hairstyle, maybe, but it’s a similar inclination. I like the outside, the label, to represent the work I’m doing. Even if the reasons for that name choice are only clear to me it makes me feel like I am properly presently myself.
So in line with my other projects this year, this space, is now evereadysmile.com. All previous domain names will still redirect here, so no need to do anything your parts, really.
Of course I did all of this yesterday while this site, and my others, were intentionally blacked out in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Which means you probably missed everything I posted at Love Letter for an Occupant yesterday as well. It wasn’t an intentional taunt, but I got a new camera and was all excited to start posting pictures, the fact that my site was blacked out be damned!
I’ve only had the camera for a couple days, most of which have been spent at work, so I haven’t even had time to photograph anything that wasn’t inside my house (or my office I guess, but that’s even less interesting).
If you thought my web page layout was bright and jarring, well, it’s a reflection of my house and maybe the inside of my brain too. I can’t tell if this is good picture exactly, because when I look at it I simply think about how much I love my bed and how I wish I was in it reading a book instead if in my cold, cold office, or just about anywhere else.
Though everything is starting slow (and thus properly) I think my current projects are going well, both the public and the private. I posted a large self portrait without make up on yesterday on Love Letter and I’m still having pretty conflicted feelings about it (which was the point, pushing limits). It’s funny because I only wear make up, hmm, maybe 40% of the time? Events, any time I have to meet or talk to a lot of people or if I’m feeling either particularly insecure or particularly badass. An astute friend once said to me, “You don’t give a fuck today.” And I thought for a second and said, “No, is it that obvious?” And he said, “Well, you don’t have any eye make up on and you only do that when you don’t give a fuck.” Which is a pretty good summation of the entire situation actually. And yet, while I’m fine going bare faced into the world most days, it feels different to capture on film and leave it up for everyone to always be able to see. As Lyle Lovett says, “Here I am, yes It’s me.” Take from it what you will, because what you see will never be what I intend you you to see, which too, is as it should be.
I wouldn’t say I’ve been too busy to blog, but you know, just too lazy. And I have so many things to share. Alas I won’t be sharing most of them here, because I still need to take or edit pictures and think about what to say and blah blah blah blah.
In the meantime, I’ve got a million tabs open with other things I’m thinking about, so it’s best I think to share some of them here so I can clear my head of them.
1. I can’t stop coming back to this picture. Firstly, Clint Eastwood is sexy. Period. At any age. But, um, WOW, this is above and beyond. Secondly, this picture so harkens to a long gone by era that it makes me incredibly wistful for time when I wasn’t even alive. Fortunately I figured out how to hack my Kindle, so I can make this one of the screensavers. It’s the little things in life, people.
2. Go listen to this Kevin Gordon song. I’ve seen him play it live at least half a dozen times and every time the room goes quiet like people realize that something is happening, like really happening. It’s a moving song that also touches on time gone by, and puts you right back into it, even if you didn’t live it the first time. Take some time to listen, this isn’t a background song, this is a slow build up, get involved in listening song.
3. The UN says women’s right to make choices about their own bodies is a basic human right. On the one hand I’m pleased with this though I doubt it will make any immediate impact in any women’s lives. On the other hand I’m appalled that we still live in a world where this is even in question at all. And not just in poor, “backwards” nations or countries under religious rule, but in our own land of the free. It is my basic human right to make choices about my body, how are we still having this discussion.
5. It’s my dearest, oldest, closest friend’s birthday today. Even if you don’t know her, imagine the sister that made me who I am today and do something nice for someone you love in honor of friendships that cross the years and the miles. I love you, Boots!
I have been completely over hauling my tiny bedroom to make it more colorful and more comfortable since winter is inevitable and bed should always be welcoming at the end of a cold day. I’m 98% done and pictures of the whole thing soon enough. Today I made throw pillows for the bed:
This is made from the curtain that I didn’t end up using the room, deep teal canvas. I applied the stencil repeating diagonally with fabric paint. the back is a soft, dark brown stretch twill.
This is made from the piece of cream canvas left over from the curtains I did hang. I painted the stencil on with fabric paint, did a terrible job of masking it, got paint everywhere and hand embroidered some stitches into the design to cover the paint flubs. I wanted yellow or brow piping on this, but I didn’t have either in the house and I’m making an effort to use what I have laying around, rather than buying more stuff. I’m actually really pleased with how the blue looks, though I do think yellow would have been great to highlight the stitching. The back side of this is piece from the sheets currently on the bed so I can pretend it all ties together.
And here they are on the bed! YAY! The pinwheel quilted pillow in the middle was made by my friend Michael Frazier, about a decade ago. He has since died, but this pillow always makes me smile and think of him. I think he’d like the pillows I made today too.
Hooray for pillows! And for projects finished. Now to get back to the 10,000 other things on my weekend to-do list that still aren’t done.
This is the mosaic of the pics to I took in Maine (click it to see them all on Flickr). I sort of love it. This is basically in chronological order, a few Boston pics at the beginning and end and a lovely depiction what I saw: buildings, sky, ocean, sky, ocean, beaches, forests, oceans, sunsets and sunrises. I love how the colors in the mosaic look like a whole day, bright in the middle and dimming at the end.
I had a great trip. I feel like I should say something philosophical about traveling alone but I don’t know what. It was great the freedom, but it was bittersweet enjoying restaurants alone. I’m utterly i love with Maine. I’m sure this is like when people visit Seattle and the weather is gorgeous and they gush about how amazing it is and I’m like, yeah, grey 9 months a year. Like, clearly Maine must be awful in winter but still it presented itself to me as something wonderful. Like a place I’d only read about in books, a place of my imaginings made real. Which I guess it is. I’ve filled my Amazon Wishlist of Maine things to get through out the next few months so I can keep in my head how I felt while I was there. Especially while I was out on the water. I miss the ocean so much.
I have been fortunate enough to have time to read actual books lately. Granted this has interfered with time I might have to sew or socialize, but I think it’s definitely been time well spent. In the last, oh, month or so I’ve read all of the Southern Vampire Mysteries. I won’t review them for you, as I assume you’ll either read them or you won’t (or you already have) and you’ll judge me or you won’t for having very much enjoyed them. It’s possible that having Alexander Skarsgård in my head as Eric Northman went a long way towards my enjoyment of them, but perhaps not. Perhaps they are just good, light summer reading. Now that I’ve finished them, I might go back and read Book 4 again. Or maybe I’ll start watching True Blood season 4 (don’t spoil me I haven’t seen any yet) and then read Book 4 again. Book 4 is my favorite.
gratuitous ASkars. I can't help myself.
After all the vampires I read Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things, only to discover, about 80 pages in, that I’d read it before. SIGH. Yes, I don’t know if that’s commentary on where my head is right now, where it was when I first read this collection, or if says something about the quality of the stories. The stories, I felt, were uneven, as is so often the case with short story collections. Some were excellent, others I flipped through reading only every fourth word or so. I’m never sure with Gaiman, he’s written some things I love and some I clearly forget. He’s an author I try to not engage with, that is to say that my enjoyment of his writing is equal to how much I am able to entirely ignore him as a media figure or a person of any consequence.
I’ve spent the last 6-ish days pushing through Connie Willis’ Blackout/All Clear.
This is certainly one book split into two volumes and should be read as such. This is in her Oxford Time-Travelling Historians universe, though reading the other books in that universe is not a prerequisite of reading this one. Several reviews I read and a couple trusted reader friends suggested that B/AC would have benefited greatly by having an excellent editor and being a few hundred pages shorter. Something I have said often about the last 3 Harry Potter books, about everything Diana Gabaldon has written since Outlander, about Cronin’s hideous Passage, and many more. And yes, I imagine that B/AC could have been more concise, more dense, more tightly crafted but for me Willis is one of the few authors I simply can’t get enough of. Her worlds immerse me utterly, her language keeps me in instead of pushing me out of the story, letting me see only the story and not the writer and she clearly loves her characters so much that I can’t help but love them too. I would gladly sit down right now with 1400 more pages of her characters.
I knew this would have a happy ending, I knew it would all work out, but it twists and turns enough that one can never guess quite how. I found myself anxious to the point of wishing she would just get on with it already in a few scenes. Mostly because some of the secondary characters were so beloved and seemed so likely to die that I just couldn’t stand it.
I know only the basic framework of history for WWII Britain. Still I have been to most all of the places in London that the action happens in, and I have been to museums and memorials all over Britain about the war and the Blitz specifically and I believe that engaged me all the more with this tale. London is a character in the story being just as battered and ill-treated as her people were through out the war. I felt many times like I was walking through the locations of the story and thought deeply about how it must have been to see the city both before and after the war.
Time travel is very tricky and I think Willis handles it well. Generally making it simply a framework for an understandable historical bit of fiction. This time though the time travelling paradox itself plays into the mystery of the plot to good effect.
I was feverish and sick and slept a lot this past weekend. I dreamt long involved fever dreams of this book and the characters and myself in with them. I have, in this way, completely internalized this story. I feel exhausted and thoroughly satisfied having been through the ringer with this story. It’s always hard to recommend things. Do I want you to to read it because I liked it? Yes. Do I want you to read it because I think you’ll like it? I don’t know. If you liked her other books you’ll probably like this one, even if you think it is too long. If you’re interested in WWII history from an every day standpoint of how citizens dealt with it, you’ll probably like it. Amazon hopefully has enough of a preview up that you can decide if you want to read more or not. If you decide not to read this you should read To Say Nothing of the Dog anyway. Yes, you, all of you, everyone should read it. Because I said so.
I also went and saw Captain America which I enjoyed very much. It was a very, very different WWII than B/AC. I think they used a lot of the same location shots from Band of Brothers which really tickled me. I’m totally digging the universe connections in the Marvel comic movies and all the cameos etc. It’s like each movie makes the previous ones even better. Thor and Iron Man are both somehow that much better for having seen Captain America. I can’t wait for The Avengers!
(A note on formatting: I had been writing my posts so they were easily read when imported in to Facebook but the importing feature only works intermittently and really I’d prefer if you clicked out and read them here anyway, so I’m not formatting for FB anymore, if you don’t get pictures you’ll have to click out to the original post. If FB can’t be bothered to make itself work right, I can’t be bothered to cater to it.)
I spent a good portion of this past holiday weekend trying to prove to myself that I could still sew with some success! My last few projects have been frustrating wadders that I’d like set on fire, rather than wad up and throw on the floor. But this weekend I produced three neatly made, wearable pieces, which maybe didn’t end up being to my taste or my style, but are definitely proof that I at least sort of know what I am doing. Pictures hopefully taken tonight, if I can be bothered to stop catching up on Doctor Who long enough to snap myself.
♦♦♦
I bought a new leather belt. It smells like Europe. It was made in Canada and not China (like surely my last half dozen belts were) and I wonder if that isn’t the difference. I mean, it smells like leather, but it smells like leather I only associate with Europe. It’s wonderful and merely opening the box it came in filled me with fantastical memories of the streets of Florence and the amazing foothills of the Pyrenees, of shopping in Amsterdam and riding night trains through Germany. Even if I was to never wear the belt (which I surely will) the price was 100% worth the evening of those memories. To that end I leave you with a tiny slice of vistas I have seen.
Because I firmly believe the year starts on April 1 (everything is subjective, right?) I’ve made some resolutions. Including blogging here once a week about sewing and sewing related things. Yes, really, I’m gonna do it. I’m settled in enough at the new house that I have good sewing space and I need to get going on it! (No new house pictures yet, still waiting until there isn’t a stack of boxes in the living room.)
Today I bought these boots, in my size for $9 at the Goodwill on Berry Rd. But what does one wear with such boots (besides the obvious skinny jeans or leggings)? Conveniently I’ve started cutting out these patterns:
I think the Lisette will be view B (in grey canvas and hopefully a cool print fabric that I just haven’t discovered yet) and I’m already starting on 2258, view C (but without the waist tie in black canvas, brown stretch twill and some dark stretch denim). Which means boots are now practical for summer if we have enough cute skirts, right?
I also have two dress refashions in the works. Hopefully one will work for a wedding I’m attending in a couple weeks and the other will just be a cute summer dress. I remembered to take before pictures, so surely I can remember to blog about them when I’m done. I plan on making the view E Lisette top in a couple prints too, hopefully including one in this fabric. It’s my goal not to buy any new clothes this summer and make or refashion everything I wear, preferably using my fairly substantial stash of fabric. Is everyone else excited about spring sewing?
April begins BIRTHDAY MONTH. I would love to say it’s all a celebration of me, from beginning to end, but indeed many of my most loved friends share this month for their own celebrations. I’d say a good dozen or so of you are already, or gearing up to celebrate your own births. Let’s all do it together! HOORAY!
The April birthstone is diamond and the flower is Sweet Pea. Which seem some how at odds with each other. Like at what point is someone going to be like, ‘say, baby, I got you some diamonds and this Sweet Pea bouquet’? It seems simultaneously weird and actually just like something I’d want, so maybe it does make sense for April after all. Though I prefer amethysts to diamonds, partly over the whole blood diamond and hideous over hype of them and mostly because everyone knows anything purple is superior to anything else!
March has wound down being grim and grey, despite some thrilling spring sun there in the middle and I have high hopes for April. A little more sun and fewer days I have to put on gloves in the morning to keep my hands from stiffening up on the drive to work.
April also brings an awesome surprise visit from my cousins at the beginning, a long anticipated visited from good friends at the middle and my birthday at the end, so I surely couldn’t ask for more goodness from this month! It should be calm, wonderful, joyous friends and family love all the way through! Everyone should have a month like this occasionally.
April is also National Poetry Month for which I shall share some of the poems I carry around in my handbag at all times:
Three Crepuscular Poems Federico García Lorca
[1]
The evening is
penitent,
still dreaming about
noon.
(Red trees & clouds
over the hills.)
The evening, loosening green
lyric hair,
is gently trembling
… vexed
to be the evening having once been
noon.
[2]
Now the evening starts!
Why? Why?
… just now
I watched the day droop down
just like a morning flower.
A day lily
bending its stems
… just now …
the roots of evening
rising through the gloom.
[3]
Adiós, sun!
I know for sure that you’re the moon,
but I
won’t tell nobody,
sun.
You sneak
behind the curtain
& cover your face
with rice powder.
By day, the farmhand’s
guitar,
by night, Pierrot’s
mandolin.
I should care!
Your illusion,
sun, is to make
the garden
turn Technicolor.
Adiós, sun!
And don’t you forget who loves you:
the snail,
the little old lady
on her balcony,
& me …
spinning my heart like a …
top.
So I’m moving in a couple weeks. Trying to keep it as low key and not stressful as possible. I figured the best way to do that was to embark on a bunch of really ambitious projects right before moving. Hahahaha! Sometimes I am dumb. Still most of these projects revolve around refinishing or painting furniture that I’ve been meaning to update or fix forever and would love to have in its finished form in the new house. Thus it’s been fun and I need something to keep me busy and out of trouble anyway.
Oh my! Look at this tiny, pretty indoor pond. I have been messing with terrariums for a bit now, on and off. My new apartment has great light and I’m hoping to be more successful with my terrariums this spring. But look at these amazing water terrariums, which, uh, I guess are aquariums, but just for plants! So pretty. There might be one of these in my future once I’m settled and done with everything else.
Also I love this hippo shower curtain, although I’m not buying it because I got clear shower curtains to take advantage of the light from all the windows in the new bathroom. I’m hoping to get lucky some day and find fabric like this curtain, I love the cute little helpers the hippos have!
Here are some random bits about my new apartment:
My current commute is a marathon round trip: 26.1 miles
New commute: 21 miles
Annual driving miles eliminated: 1300
New apartment currently only has one (1) interior door
Ratio of wall light switches to interior doors: 1:1 (heh, most the lights have pull cords from the ceiling rather than switches)
Number of hobbit sized closets in the new space: 3
Number of hobbit sized people living in the apartment: 1 (me)
Amount of support provided by quite overly generous mother, both emotional and financial, in this move: incalculable (but surely somewhere in the billions)
Number of friends I realized I have while dealing with the things surrounding moving: 129,567 (if we are calculating at a rate that measures each person’s individual emotional worth)
Days until I move: 14
Things needed doing by then: 570,000
Personal excitement level about the new apartment, on a scale of 1-10: 42
Here is a sneak peak at a ‘before’ picture of the apartment:
Looking forward to having many after pictures to show!
I have been thinking about it, and given the frequency and astounding brilliant content of my posts, I assume my readership to be made up entirely of incredibly wealthy, bored, would-be patrons who just haven’t found the right person to send gifts too. In light of that, I would like to point out that today it is 94 days or 3 months, 4 days until my birthday (of course you don’t have to wait until my birthday for gifts, silly, even though it’s très gauche, I accept them at any time). Here are some ideas of what you can get for me:
The purchase of this pillow would give me something soft upon which to rest my head and save me from having to to do hours of pains-taking, meticulous embroidery myself to recreate such a homespun masterpiece.
Any sized print of any of these three photographs (the larger the better!). This would save me the time and expense of having to go 2500 miles across the country and waiting around in the damp woods for the perfect lighting conditions. Plus, I am generally an abysmal photographer and mine certainly wouldn’t look this good.
The Frye Carson Lace-up. This fulfills my need to romanticize early last century laborers, while looking cool, hip and stylish. A purchase of these (dark brown, size 8.5 please) would save me from having to spend hours on pouring over Ebay to find some that were a tenth of the cost of these lovely originals.
If none of those suits your fancy, I am also accepting plane tickets to Spain (no return needed, assuming you are also purchasing a small coastal villa to reside in as well) or one (or both) of the following:
Thank you for your consideration to this very, very important matter. If not gifts, you can direct flowers or checks directly to me in my office and I will use them to buy my own villa in Spain (assuming the flowers are filled with diamonds as well).
Happy New Year! It’s 1-1-11, so I am calling it a new beginning. As with so many beginnings I have no idea where the end will be. I am going to try and not burden myself with too many resolutions, too many stumbling blocks to trip me up if I fail at them. Instead I will simply say that I am determined to end 2011 in a better place than I am beginning it.
And in the course of that I hope to exercise more, sew more, learn more about sewing, read more, sleep more, and smile more. And, you know, floss regularly.
In lieu of anything deep or meaningful to say in my own words, I’ll start the year with some of my favorite poetry. Frederico Garcia Lorca:
Clock Echo
I sat down
in a clearing in time.
It was a pool of silence.
White silence.
Incredible ring
where the bright stars collide
with a dozen floating
black numbers.
First/Last Meditation
Time
is in night’s colors.
Quiet night.
Over enormous moons,
eternity
is set at twelve.
Time’s gone to sleep
forever
in his tower.
All clocks
deceive us.
Time at last has
horizons.
Today the solstice coincides with a full lunar eclipse, the first total lunar eclipse to occur on the winter solstice since 1638.
Today in the Northern Hemisphere we round the corner on darkness. It is the Hibernal solstice when the sun is near its greatest distance from the equatorial plane, standing still as it were.
Today Marduk tamed the monsters of chaos and for one more year we are safe as we move back into the light.
Today we light candles and keep them lit. Though darkness is already on the run, we must continue to chase it away so spring can come faster.
Today the Oak King is apparently dead, his branches bare and cold. We thought the Holly King had won, as he remained green, but long live the Oak King as he returns to rule us into Midsummer! Go, hang the holly, let it catch bad spirits on it’s tiny horns, protecting us in the months of darkness when the border with the shadowlands is permeable.
Today is the Saturnalia where we eat and dance and decorate the evergreens with red berries. We will reverse all our roles, switch with our opposites and see the world from the other side, through other eyes.
Today and for the days to come, find joy in each other, celebrate, kiss beneath the mistletoe, feast in the light of candles. Celebrate the darkness and the joy we have as it washes away. Tonight we breathe and meditate on our lives. We breathe out the things we want gone, we breathe in our wishes for the coming year. Tomorrow life begins again.
April begins BIRTHDAY MONTH. I would love to say it’s all a celebration of me, from beginning to end, but indeed many of my most loved friends share this month for their own celebrations. I’d say a good dozen or so of you are already, or gearing up to celebrate your own births. Let’s all do it together! HOORAY!
AJAX BELL 
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