Weblog 67
May 20, 2007~ 1:00am
Last night I began to look through some beautiful magazines given to me by a co-worker who thought my daughter- who's a very creative seamstress- might enjoy. The magazine is called FiberArts (online at FiberArts.com) and believe me- it is much more than simple sewing techniques or quilting. It's opened a world of unbelievably lovely and sometimes disturbing new art forms, using fabric and texture. The mostly women involved in this branch of creative pursuit seem to have an endless capacity to weave, paint, wire, and depict life through cloth- and it's both incredible and exciting to me. Plus... it reintroduced me to someone I'd harbored a very wrong impression of since my fella Wayne gave me a Mapplethorpe art/photography book years ago, and I came across what looked (to me) to be-- simply a creepy, weird old woman holding a petrified bull penis!...
... LOL!! I remember how disquieting it was to me. Something about her obvious glee- in holding that enormous, withered thing...
Well, guess what? I found out that the woman in question is none other than Louise Bourgeois, one of the premier artists of the 20th century. Here she is in 2005 at 94 years of age- and still creating.
Louise has done work in bronze, in marble, in paint....and the most remarkably moving pieces sewn from the fabric of her own old clothing, stretched over wire frames and done in lifesize. Look at this one called 'Couple'. See how the woman's feet are standing on the man's-- how intimate and touching that pose is, the way they cling to one another tugs my heart.
Louise has the ability to present uncomfortably intimate, often brutal images as well, and even though abstract, there is something that digs right down inside and hurts just looking at them.
....or back to her soft, cloth sculptures, this "Seven In A Bed"
....or the wonderfully tender, "The Woven Child"
Like Bourgeois, both artists seem to absorb more depth as they age. They are both magnetic force fields-- female to the bone- dangerously so, and vital, vital, V-ital, with a capital 'V'. In the same way that Smith's voice can meow and croon as well as bring down the house, Bourgeois can do softness, surreal grace and loveliness with the exact ease as she does disquietude--- look at this sphinx smooth beauty
May 21, 2007~ 5:45pm
Today marks one week I've been putting up with this cold-- the coughing and nose-blowing, sneezing and tiredness. Yesterday, however (actually, it began, but not as badly, on Saturday night) I developed a truly full-blown case of LARYNGITIS! A new wrinkle!-- and this is the "MUMBLY" sort of loss of voice, you know, the wheezy, strange-assed laugh that sounds just like Mumbly, the detective Hanna-Barbera cartoon dog....
... - there I am, in all my whispering, giggling best. Did you ever have to LAUGH when you had a case of TOTAL laryngitis?? It weirds people OUT! the conspiratorial 'spy hiss-and-whisper' is bad enough- but the laughing....my God!
So I'm totally dragged out here from coughing and straining to be heard, and today when Wayne called me at work, I started that Mumbly-laugh, and he panicked on the other end of the line. I couldn't get a blessed word out, which struck me as so funny--- and then 'sad'--- and it was the end of the day and I was so exhausted, I then spilled over into crying - (for no REASON!)- and this scared me....I mean, I was like a crazy person-- I couldn't get a grip! (Of course, after squeaking out "goodbye", he called back twice more just to check on me, to see if I was laughing or crying or having a fit of some sort- all very embarrassing by the way, which was-- of course-- EXTREMELY funny--LOL!!- on and on.
So you get the general idea here of this ridiculous vicious cycle- and oh, God, I'm just so tired from a week's worth of hacking and pill popping, and trying various booster vitamin supplements and herbal teas and inhaling their steam, etc.- I think no matter how big that pile of work is (and it is)- I may have to crash tomorrow, stay home and just sleep as much as I can.
Right now, I'm playing that one by ear. Oh, and my buddy Mumbles...that's the early version of the mutt-detective. Later on, the artists made him blue- ...
...- and I know why. He was cyanotic- lack of oxygen will DO that, ya know. And all the laughing- yep, the poor thing was slowly breaking down from not being heard or understood. Laughter is just the flip side, and sometimes, oh- the trip is short indeed. Put that dog in a straitjacket, and there you have me. A cartoon 'me'- digging up things to write about and wheezing, wheezing, wheeeeeeeezing....
May 22, 2007~ 5:15pm
Stayed home and slept much of the day. Not talking has helped the loss of voice. I can be understood better- at least that's what my mother told me even this morning, after the nine hours sleep last night, so I probably could sing like Mariah Carey now...lol. Going back to bed shortly and greedily soak up all the rest I can before slipping back into the fray tomorrow. Hopefully this ban on speaking will have worked-
May 24, 2007~ 5:15am
Sooooooooo....the 'cold' wasn't mere cold at all, but a sinus infection. On top of that, when I got up yesterday my worst fears were confirmed about the spasming and throbbing above the pubic bone- a UTI! LOL! When it rains, it pours. Got myself to a doctor, have a MEGAPILL antibiotic working its wonders and another script for a decongestant/cough suppressant. That oughta fix me up. Back to work after two days of being holed up and hacking, hot water bottle on my belly and lackluster eyes. (Guess those eyes are gonna POP when they see the work accumulated today....as Vonnegut was wont to say, "So it goes.")
Funny thing about both the doctor visit and the trip to the pharmacy-- at the doctor's after I had given my urine specimen and I was sitting in triage with the nurse she said, "Well, you urine looks clear. That's good!" -and I said, "No, my urine is maroon and has chunks in it." (She'd been looking at the wrong chart.) Then at the pharmacy, when I stepped up to pay, the clerk said, "That'll be 76 dollars." "Wow," I said, "even with the insurance discount?" "You have 3 prescriptions here- one of which, without the discount, would have been 330.00. Plus, you have the Lipitor as well." "I'm not taking Lipitor", I said. "Whoops. Wrong bag," he said, as he cleared the register. Modern medicine is tricky. We have all these wonder drugs, but it's still important to keep straight who is who and who gets what.
Wish me luck. It's gonna be a bumpy day out there, I just know it. (Oh, and yes...still sound like Mumbly.) :)
May 24, 2007~ 7:30pm
HOUSE PICTURES! lol!!! (HEY, I MUST BE FEELING BETTER...) Today I came home, and like magic-- my voice is returning! The cats don't hide from me anymore. (I think they thought I was hissing at them instead of talking.) In fact-- stupid Ed Harris padded out into the kitchen after me when I saw that the kitchen ceiling light had burned out. I pulled over a chair and climbed on, and began to stretcccch (a job I HATE, btw- damn ceilings are 10 ft. high) to unscrew those impossible little turnscrews that hold the glass globe in place, and after I'd changed it and was stepping down, she got clocked in the head with my foot. LOL!!! Sounded like a hollow coconut, and for good reason!.
So the medications are working. Hurray!!! What did I do then? After coming downstairs, having changed out of my work clothes, I was struck by the odd beauty of my mantel- honestly! (Maybe these drugs are hallucinogenics! Move OVER, Castaneda...I'm walking with the gait of power! Xytlan, here I come!)
I have a mishmash of things up there (undusted, of course) but lovely in their eclectic strange-assed appeal, so I wanted to share them. Here is a list of what's up there....lol...no shit: a life-sized bust of the suffering Christ given to me by a priest friend when I fell in LOVE with it in 'cold storage' at his rectory. It was hidden in a back room with a bunch of other life-sized statues. It does seem that the more garish portrayal of the passion is somewhat passe' in churches nowadays-- and this statue has it in spades: white teeth opened in agony, eyes (real glass eyes!) rolled up to heaven and a crown of thorns made out of metal nails that poke like hell if you're not careful when cleaning him.
There are woodcarvings of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza-- a replica of an antique clock-- a pewter dragon-- various small silver bells, many of them keepsakes from past trips-- a silver-plated Art Deco faerie maiden-- 2 giraffes-- a globe diorama with a miniature English cottage on top of a hill-- an EVIL Humpty Dumpty-- a crazy bright aqua vase with yellow raised polka dots-- an antique silver salt cellar from my grandmother-- an African metal art 'woman' candle-holder-- a foot across split geode with amethyst crystals in the middle, with a small geode beside it (it's its "baby"...lol)- only 2" wide with a tiny pewter angel I slipped inside it-- a 'water rock'(has minute amounts of water inside you can see through the polished rock-tumbled part)-- another glass globe with a bald Chinese wiseman inside, made of colored and dried art clay-- and most INCONGRUOUS of all----a HUGE RED BOW left over from Christmas that I just like to look at. OOoooo....and the WILDFLOWERS- they're from my front yard, picked today by yours truly. Here's a few photos-
..."garish", no? But I love him.. He weighs a TON.
...AH....there's the little baby daisies and those purple things- and buttercups!
Damn! Shoulda taken the glass off. He's a wonderful little guy....
A souvenir from my late boss, from Hawaii. (RIP, Manny)
When you lift the barrel, a HUGE phallus as big as the
man pops out on a spring! LOL!
That's the MANTEL TOUR. Hope you enjoyed it. Next stop.......the "kitchen with NO STOVE". Watch your step getting out of the gondola-- don't wanna lose any toes.
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
Last night I began to look through some beautiful magazines given to me by a co-worker who thought my daughter- who's a very creative seamstress- might enjoy. The magazine is called FiberArts (online at FiberArts.com) and believe me- it is much more than simple sewing techniques or quilting. It's opened a world of unbelievably lovely and sometimes disturbing new art forms, using fabric and texture. The mostly women involved in this branch of creative pursuit seem to have an endless capacity to weave, paint, wire, and depict life through cloth- and it's both incredible and exciting to me. Plus... it reintroduced me to someone I'd harbored a very wrong impression of since my fella Wayne gave me a Mapplethorpe art/photography book years ago, and I came across what looked (to me) to be-- simply a creepy, weird old woman holding a petrified bull penis!...
... LOL!! I remember how disquieting it was to me. Something about her obvious glee- in holding that enormous, withered thing...Well, guess what? I found out that the woman in question is none other than Louise Bourgeois, one of the premier artists of the 20th century. Here she is in 2005 at 94 years of age- and still creating.
Louise has done work in bronze, in marble, in paint....and the most remarkably moving pieces sewn from the fabric of her own old clothing, stretched over wire frames and done in lifesize. Look at this one called 'Couple'. See how the woman's feet are standing on the man's-- how intimate and touching that pose is, the way they cling to one another tugs my heart.
Louise has the ability to present uncomfortably intimate, often brutal images as well, and even though abstract, there is something that digs right down inside and hurts just looking at them.
....or back to her soft, cloth sculptures, this "Seven In A Bed"
....or the wonderfully tender, "The Woven Child"
Like Bourgeois, both artists seem to absorb more depth as they age. They are both magnetic force fields-- female to the bone- dangerously so, and vital, vital, V-ital, with a capital 'V'. In the same way that Smith's voice can meow and croon as well as bring down the house, Bourgeois can do softness, surreal grace and loveliness with the exact ease as she does disquietude--- look at this sphinx smooth beauty
May 21, 2007~ 5:45pm
Today marks one week I've been putting up with this cold-- the coughing and nose-blowing, sneezing and tiredness. Yesterday, however (actually, it began, but not as badly, on Saturday night) I developed a truly full-blown case of LARYNGITIS! A new wrinkle!-- and this is the "MUMBLY" sort of loss of voice, you know, the wheezy, strange-assed laugh that sounds just like Mumbly, the detective Hanna-Barbera cartoon dog....
... - there I am, in all my whispering, giggling best. Did you ever have to LAUGH when you had a case of TOTAL laryngitis?? It weirds people OUT! the conspiratorial 'spy hiss-and-whisper' is bad enough- but the laughing....my God!So I'm totally dragged out here from coughing and straining to be heard, and today when Wayne called me at work, I started that Mumbly-laugh, and he panicked on the other end of the line. I couldn't get a blessed word out, which struck me as so funny--- and then 'sad'--- and it was the end of the day and I was so exhausted, I then spilled over into crying - (for no REASON!)- and this scared me....I mean, I was like a crazy person-- I couldn't get a grip! (Of course, after squeaking out "goodbye", he called back twice more just to check on me, to see if I was laughing or crying or having a fit of some sort- all very embarrassing by the way, which was-- of course-- EXTREMELY funny--LOL!!- on and on.
So you get the general idea here of this ridiculous vicious cycle- and oh, God, I'm just so tired from a week's worth of hacking and pill popping, and trying various booster vitamin supplements and herbal teas and inhaling their steam, etc.- I think no matter how big that pile of work is (and it is)- I may have to crash tomorrow, stay home and just sleep as much as I can.
Right now, I'm playing that one by ear. Oh, and my buddy Mumbles...that's the early version of the mutt-detective. Later on, the artists made him blue- ...
...- and I know why. He was cyanotic- lack of oxygen will DO that, ya know. And all the laughing- yep, the poor thing was slowly breaking down from not being heard or understood. Laughter is just the flip side, and sometimes, oh- the trip is short indeed. Put that dog in a straitjacket, and there you have me. A cartoon 'me'- digging up things to write about and wheezing, wheezing, wheeeeeeeezing....
May 22, 2007~ 5:15pm
Stayed home and slept much of the day. Not talking has helped the loss of voice. I can be understood better- at least that's what my mother told me even this morning, after the nine hours sleep last night, so I probably could sing like Mariah Carey now...lol. Going back to bed shortly and greedily soak up all the rest I can before slipping back into the fray tomorrow. Hopefully this ban on speaking will have worked-
May 24, 2007~ 5:15am
Sooooooooo....the 'cold' wasn't mere cold at all, but a sinus infection. On top of that, when I got up yesterday my worst fears were confirmed about the spasming and throbbing above the pubic bone- a UTI! LOL! When it rains, it pours. Got myself to a doctor, have a MEGAPILL antibiotic working its wonders and another script for a decongestant/cough suppressant. That oughta fix me up. Back to work after two days of being holed up and hacking, hot water bottle on my belly and lackluster eyes. (Guess those eyes are gonna POP when they see the work accumulated today....as Vonnegut was wont to say, "So it goes.")
Funny thing about both the doctor visit and the trip to the pharmacy-- at the doctor's after I had given my urine specimen and I was sitting in triage with the nurse she said, "Well, you urine looks clear. That's good!" -and I said, "No, my urine is maroon and has chunks in it." (She'd been looking at the wrong chart.) Then at the pharmacy, when I stepped up to pay, the clerk said, "That'll be 76 dollars." "Wow," I said, "even with the insurance discount?" "You have 3 prescriptions here- one of which, without the discount, would have been 330.00. Plus, you have the Lipitor as well." "I'm not taking Lipitor", I said. "Whoops. Wrong bag," he said, as he cleared the register. Modern medicine is tricky. We have all these wonder drugs, but it's still important to keep straight who is who and who gets what.
Wish me luck. It's gonna be a bumpy day out there, I just know it. (Oh, and yes...still sound like Mumbly.) :)
May 24, 2007~ 7:30pm
HOUSE PICTURES! lol!!! (HEY, I MUST BE FEELING BETTER...) Today I came home, and like magic-- my voice is returning! The cats don't hide from me anymore. (I think they thought I was hissing at them instead of talking.) In fact-- stupid Ed Harris padded out into the kitchen after me when I saw that the kitchen ceiling light had burned out. I pulled over a chair and climbed on, and began to stretcccch (a job I HATE, btw- damn ceilings are 10 ft. high) to unscrew those impossible little turnscrews that hold the glass globe in place, and after I'd changed it and was stepping down, she got clocked in the head with my foot. LOL!!! Sounded like a hollow coconut, and for good reason!.
So the medications are working. Hurray!!! What did I do then? After coming downstairs, having changed out of my work clothes, I was struck by the odd beauty of my mantel- honestly! (Maybe these drugs are hallucinogenics! Move OVER, Castaneda...I'm walking with the gait of power! Xytlan, here I come!)
I have a mishmash of things up there (undusted, of course) but lovely in their eclectic strange-assed appeal, so I wanted to share them. Here is a list of what's up there....lol...no shit: a life-sized bust of the suffering Christ given to me by a priest friend when I fell in LOVE with it in 'cold storage' at his rectory. It was hidden in a back room with a bunch of other life-sized statues. It does seem that the more garish portrayal of the passion is somewhat passe' in churches nowadays-- and this statue has it in spades: white teeth opened in agony, eyes (real glass eyes!) rolled up to heaven and a crown of thorns made out of metal nails that poke like hell if you're not careful when cleaning him.
There are woodcarvings of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza-- a replica of an antique clock-- a pewter dragon-- various small silver bells, many of them keepsakes from past trips-- a silver-plated Art Deco faerie maiden-- 2 giraffes-- a globe diorama with a miniature English cottage on top of a hill-- an EVIL Humpty Dumpty-- a crazy bright aqua vase with yellow raised polka dots-- an antique silver salt cellar from my grandmother-- an African metal art 'woman' candle-holder-- a foot across split geode with amethyst crystals in the middle, with a small geode beside it (it's its "baby"...lol)- only 2" wide with a tiny pewter angel I slipped inside it-- a 'water rock'(has minute amounts of water inside you can see through the polished rock-tumbled part)-- another glass globe with a bald Chinese wiseman inside, made of colored and dried art clay-- and most INCONGRUOUS of all----a HUGE RED BOW left over from Christmas that I just like to look at. OOoooo....and the WILDFLOWERS- they're from my front yard, picked today by yours truly. Here's a few photos-
..."garish", no? But I love him.. He weighs a TON.
...AH....there's the little baby daisies and those purple things- and buttercups!
Damn! Shoulda taken the glass off. He's a wonderful little guy....
A souvenir from my late boss, from Hawaii. (RIP, Manny)
When you lift the barrel, a HUGE phallus as big as the
man pops out on a spring! LOL!
That's the MANTEL TOUR. Hope you enjoyed it. Next stop.......the "kitchen with NO STOVE". Watch your step getting out of the gondola-- don't wanna lose any toes.
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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