Map of the Lost by Miriam Sagan. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. 136 pp. $24.95 paperback.
Miriam Sagan’s most recent poetry collection, Map of the Lost, traces the migratory history of the poet, while meditating upon what is irrecoverable. The poems explore various expressions of loss encompassing disassociation of childhood, youth, and memory, to a larger contemplation of how history and culture are forgotten. Composed of eighty-seven poems divided into four sections, the strongest poems in Map of the Lost are rooted in the landscape and histories of the Southwest where Sagan has made her home for over twenty years. And though the poet gives herself away as a stranger in “City of Sacred Faith,” the narrator gradually transforms from outsider to insider by living in the same place long enough to register change. Sagan documents urban development and the upscaling of retail businesses in the Plaza, pollution in her neighborhood, the rise of homelessness, forests decimated by fire, “pointing to what has sprung up/what has been torn down.” (5)
One of the strongest themes throughout Sagan’s book is the poet’s engagement with the mother-daughter relationship. In poems like “Demeter in Winter” and “Kore,” Sagan traces her shifting relationship to the feminine. Once a “wild, heedless” Persephone, the poet becomes Demeter to her teenage daughter who threatens the mother-daughter bond with her awakening sexuality. Sagan’s biographical poems of her own life as a young woman, provide an interesting counterpoint to her poems on mothering, with poems like “Diana Doll” and “Séance” expressing a deeper sense of self-reflection and initiation through a contemplation of the loss of girlhood innocence.
Ekphrastic responses to visual artists are scattered throughout the collection; largely descriptive and occasional poems upon the work of Shirin Neshat, Robert Rauschenberg, Morris Louis, Jennifer Bartlett, and lesser-known luminaries such as Santa-Fe based installation artist Erika Wanenmacher. The more interesting of Sagan’s ekphrastic texts are pieces like “Jizo Statue, Art Institute” and “Miniature Rooms,” two poems about visits to the Art Institute of Chicago which engage the poet’s memory. Also compelling are Sagan’s explorations into the lives of female artists like outsider Czech artist Anna Zemankova, Rebecca Salsbury James – ex-wife to Paul Strand and a close associate of Georgia O’Keefe, and performance artist and murder victim Ana Mendieta – former wife of Carl Andre.
The richest poems in Map of the Lost are the texts that attempt to recover a missing history, a private narrative, or individual truth. In “Clovis,” the first human inhabitants of the New World are alluded to through archaeological evidence left behind. Within the text, Sagan calls attention to the interrupted narrative of the Clovis people, by interrupting the poem itself, questioning what destroyed and eradicated the narrative. “Diner” documents the life of a restaurant that is the site of a murder precipitated by a lover’s quarrel. Dramatic enough on its own, the diner is only one small stop along the Santa Fe Trail to the Ludlow Massacre site where memorial statues have been vandalized and relegated to “headless miners/ and everything lost in the story.” (78)
Sagan resists the “sense of souvenir” throughout her mapping of history, which is perhaps best executed in “Mission.” Tracing the background of San Francisco’s Mission Dolores, the poet comments upon how “California schoolchildren/ Must build models of / In cardboard, or with sugar cubes” (111) an urban monument with a legacy of spiritual and cultural subjugation. Drawing parallels to the cultural legacy of the church (San Esteban del Rey) at Acoma Pueblo/Sky City, New Mexico, the poet is haunted by the “desire for what is lost.” It is this recurring theme of loss in Sagan’s collection that ties together the poems in Map of the Lost to form a cohesive and compelling body of work.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
My neighbor hung a confederate flag
up on his balcony two days after Kort and I moved in. This disturbed both of us, but we never talked about it. We thought perhaps that we live next to young college kids who have some sort of Southern pride complex and don't understand the weight of symbols that they deploy. I did find the timing of the hanging strange, to coincide with our move-in, but dismissed it as best I could. Last night, Coconut Diaries came over to meet us at our apartment before we went to dinner at Kobe Steaks. I watched at the way that she stared at the flag in horror and thought about what that symbol means to other ethnic groups and how they have experienced oppression and violence throughout history. When she came over after dinner and then left within a few minutes, I wondered if it was that she had to work early in the morning, or if there was an underlying feeling of dis-ease or lack of safety. And I wondered too how many steps away is Dixie from the Nazi swastika - Aryan nation being a reality and all. And do I live next door to a cracker or just a kid who believes in his "freedom of expression" and what kind of conversation am I going to have with the management company who condones inappropriate patio decorations but doesn't police it and no matter how I talk about it, will it be reduced on the other end to "what are you talking about - we have a black president, there's no such thing as racism!"
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Home Improvement, part 2
Before
After
Instructions at DesignSponge. The plastic seat went a lot faster than yesterdays wooden-seat upgrade.
After
Instructions at DesignSponge. The plastic seat went a lot faster than yesterdays wooden-seat upgrade.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Home Improvement
Before
After
Budget: Chair (free/inherited), fabric (Hobby Lobby, 3/4 yard for $9), staple gun ($10), extra staples ($2) + 3 hours of labor
Extracting staples is like pulling cactus needles or eyebrow hairs.
We used the old fabric on the chair as a template/measure for cutting new fabric.
Kort did the stapling.
One more chair to reupholster with an orange pattern... but the seat is plastic. Will staples go into plastic? We may have to use glue.
After
Budget: Chair (free/inherited), fabric (Hobby Lobby, 3/4 yard for $9), staple gun ($10), extra staples ($2) + 3 hours of labor
Extracting staples is like pulling cactus needles or eyebrow hairs.
We used the old fabric on the chair as a template/measure for cutting new fabric.
Kort did the stapling.
One more chair to reupholster with an orange pattern... but the seat is plastic. Will staples go into plastic? We may have to use glue.
It was an interesting week at work - Monday morning, staff arrived to find graffiti on the wall of the Special Collections area that had also been spray-painted in stairwells throughout the library. The perps emblazoned the phrase "420" in front of the new expanded gallery. The two young male suspects were caught on videotape at the library, and after they left the Alkek, they went over to another building with a sledgehammer and busted some glass doors. I can't help but think of my museum classes at UW and how useful that knowledge really was - learning and role playing about all the travails administrators must deal with, fundraising aside - security, safety, facilities, pest control, etc.
There is a cash reward for information leading to the capture of the vandals.
A few weeks before Monday's event, staff discovered graffiti on some tilework in the entry area tagged with a fraternity symbol. But it's impossible to tell if it was truly a fraternity stunt, an anti-fraternity stunt, non-college related hooliganism, or what. What's to say at all that the perps even attend the university?
There is a cash reward for information leading to the capture of the vandals.
A few weeks before Monday's event, staff discovered graffiti on some tilework in the entry area tagged with a fraternity symbol. But it's impossible to tell if it was truly a fraternity stunt, an anti-fraternity stunt, non-college related hooliganism, or what. What's to say at all that the perps even attend the university?
Friday, September 25, 2009
The project for the weekend is to DIY reupholster two of our home desk chairs. First upholstery fabric shopping and to acquire a staple gun. We will take before and after photos. This is my birthday gift to myself this year - recycle, reuse, and reimagine what we already have.
My friend Molly has started her own boutique design shop on Etsy. Buy here. Molly has been sending me handmade cards and letters for years and is terrifically talented. With our friend Nicole, she took a pattern-making class over the summer. I'm looking forward to seeing all sorts of cute clothing and purse-type designs...
I had a big setback earlier in the week. While texting and walking, I fell face first on concrete, re-injured my left ankle, banged up both knees, and split my right hand open. Kort has recommended an Ayurvedic turmeric paste remedy to reduce bruising, but I've been wary of turning my skin yellow. But maybe over the weekend.
My friend Molly has started her own boutique design shop on Etsy. Buy here. Molly has been sending me handmade cards and letters for years and is terrifically talented. With our friend Nicole, she took a pattern-making class over the summer. I'm looking forward to seeing all sorts of cute clothing and purse-type designs...
I had a big setback earlier in the week. While texting and walking, I fell face first on concrete, re-injured my left ankle, banged up both knees, and split my right hand open. Kort has recommended an Ayurvedic turmeric paste remedy to reduce bruising, but I've been wary of turning my skin yellow. But maybe over the weekend.
Monday, September 21, 2009
This is the review I wrote of Santee Frazier's Dark Thirty for an upcoming issue of Southwestern American Literature.
Dark Thirty by Santee Frazier. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2009. 96 pp. $15.95 paperback.
The title of Santee Frazier’s debut collection of poetry, Dark Thirty, refers to the time of day after the sun has gone down, when fading rays illuminate part of a quickening dark landscape. Shining the light on the marginalized citizens of Dry Creek, a community located within Cherokee County, Oklahoma, Santee Frazier has crafted an astonishing collection of poems that bring the varied voices and intimate narratives of a community afflicted by crime, violence, substance abuse, and poverty into stark relief.
Dark Thirty is organized into six sections; the book’s first section, “Dry Creek” introduces the mood, voice, and central themes that recur throughout the collection. In a poem entitled “Chauncey,” narrated by a plainspoken character of the same name, Chauncey gives the reader glimpses into a private life while effortlessly gossiping about the locals in his native vernacular:
Dang near had tah pluck my yard bird
other day, we had done ate all are fatback
Meely over tah tha Teller’s Liquor got caught
round back drankin listo, huffin on some gold. (8)
Frazier compresses and layers complex subjects into short couplet stanzas that reveal an intricate portrait of an individual and the people in his community. Elsewhere, poetic personas like “Joe Bunch” reflect upon a life of hard living and a body regulated by “nitro pills.” Another character, “Nick Cheater,” details overhauling the transmission on his Trans Am, while brokering a deal to buy a neighbor’s Buick that includes one of Nick’s dogs in the bargain.
The reader is also introduced in this first section to the dominant voice that narrates poems throughout the collection. In “Mama’s Work,” the poetic speaker recalls a mother who turned tricks to feed the family, “her work/ in the quiet corners of barns on the hay.” (7) The unsheltered childhood of the same speaker is explored later in “Bluetop,” a poem where the underage child, (his “legs too short to work/the brakes,”) drives his Mama and her Buick home on gas fumes. (13) Fraught with the uncertainty of running out of fuel on gravel roads deep within the countryside, Frazier ends his poem on a note that hovers on the edge of danger and quiet beauty. Numerous poems that reflect upon family and domestic life also make up the third section of the book.
The second and fourth sections of Dark Thirty, “Baptism of the Knife” and “Skillet Face” follow the life story of Mangled Creekbed, an outsider figure whose experience is traced throughout the collection from his stint in a circus as a knife-thrower to his incarceration for cutting a man in a bar fight to his confinement to a wheelchair, after suffering from a stroke. The most tender poems in this sequence are the pieces that touch upon Mangled’s companionship with Lulu, the circus’ Target Girl, who writes letters for the illiterate Mangled, reads him stories, and sings Baptist hymns with him in church.
Dark Thirty is rounded out by poems set in inner-city environments that make up the book’s remaining two sections, “Jack Move” and “Aerosol.” The poems in these later sections of the collection focus on first-person narratives and shift from a native vernacular to a more urban sensibility. A narrator remembers discharging a gun for the first time in “Firing a .38 at Age Sixteen,” while the image of a murdered teenager found dead in a dumpster appears in “Crosstown.” “10th Street Anthem” sketches the cityscape of Oklahoma City, “boys sprinting in the streetlight”; a kid with “a blade in his tube sock”; asphalt smelling of “hot rocks and tar”; a “flattened mutt in the gutter.” (69)
The final section of Dark Thirty concerns itself with the theme of recognition. In “Solitude,” the poet chronicles aspects of an unnamed singer’s life (Billie Holiday) that resonate with the sensual and “ruined” women who appear throughout Dark Thirty. A sense of exile and poverty are awakened in the speaker of “Eating Against a Wall,” when the poet is able to identify with the experience of the refugee-like figures who improvise a simple meal on the street –– eating noodles slurped from a Cool Whip Bowl, while squatting on an unrolled bamboo mat. This impression connects easily to the images of “One Room Apartment,” a poem that occurs much earlier in Dark Thirty, in which a young narrator scavenges a meal from “A-1 and stale saltines…pickle juice from the jar.” (33) The closing poem of Dark Thirty, “An Aerosoled Representation of the Maya and Moche” is the longest piece within the collection and reflects most directly upon the theme of recognition through the eyes of a poetic narrator who is kept for years from knowing the existence of his infant daughter. Upon their reunion, he recognizes “a face half my own.” (82)
Frazier’s debut collection displays affinities with a documentary poetic tradition that includes projects like Kwame Dawe’s Wisteria, a poem collection based on oral histories collected from a community of black female elders in Sumter, South Carolina. Connections also seem evident with Natasha Trethewey’s poetics, which are largely concerned with restoring subaltern voices to mainstream historical narratives. For Frazier, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation, no direct mention is made of his characters’ Native identity, nor is the gesture necessary, as the language, spirit, and tenacity of the protagonists who inhabit Dark Thirty shine through.
Dark Thirty by Santee Frazier. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2009. 96 pp. $15.95 paperback.
The title of Santee Frazier’s debut collection of poetry, Dark Thirty, refers to the time of day after the sun has gone down, when fading rays illuminate part of a quickening dark landscape. Shining the light on the marginalized citizens of Dry Creek, a community located within Cherokee County, Oklahoma, Santee Frazier has crafted an astonishing collection of poems that bring the varied voices and intimate narratives of a community afflicted by crime, violence, substance abuse, and poverty into stark relief.
Dark Thirty is organized into six sections; the book’s first section, “Dry Creek” introduces the mood, voice, and central themes that recur throughout the collection. In a poem entitled “Chauncey,” narrated by a plainspoken character of the same name, Chauncey gives the reader glimpses into a private life while effortlessly gossiping about the locals in his native vernacular:
Dang near had tah pluck my yard bird
other day, we had done ate all are fatback
Meely over tah tha Teller’s Liquor got caught
round back drankin listo, huffin on some gold. (8)
Frazier compresses and layers complex subjects into short couplet stanzas that reveal an intricate portrait of an individual and the people in his community. Elsewhere, poetic personas like “Joe Bunch” reflect upon a life of hard living and a body regulated by “nitro pills.” Another character, “Nick Cheater,” details overhauling the transmission on his Trans Am, while brokering a deal to buy a neighbor’s Buick that includes one of Nick’s dogs in the bargain.
The reader is also introduced in this first section to the dominant voice that narrates poems throughout the collection. In “Mama’s Work,” the poetic speaker recalls a mother who turned tricks to feed the family, “her work/ in the quiet corners of barns on the hay.” (7) The unsheltered childhood of the same speaker is explored later in “Bluetop,” a poem where the underage child, (his “legs too short to work/the brakes,”) drives his Mama and her Buick home on gas fumes. (13) Fraught with the uncertainty of running out of fuel on gravel roads deep within the countryside, Frazier ends his poem on a note that hovers on the edge of danger and quiet beauty. Numerous poems that reflect upon family and domestic life also make up the third section of the book.
The second and fourth sections of Dark Thirty, “Baptism of the Knife” and “Skillet Face” follow the life story of Mangled Creekbed, an outsider figure whose experience is traced throughout the collection from his stint in a circus as a knife-thrower to his incarceration for cutting a man in a bar fight to his confinement to a wheelchair, after suffering from a stroke. The most tender poems in this sequence are the pieces that touch upon Mangled’s companionship with Lulu, the circus’ Target Girl, who writes letters for the illiterate Mangled, reads him stories, and sings Baptist hymns with him in church.
Dark Thirty is rounded out by poems set in inner-city environments that make up the book’s remaining two sections, “Jack Move” and “Aerosol.” The poems in these later sections of the collection focus on first-person narratives and shift from a native vernacular to a more urban sensibility. A narrator remembers discharging a gun for the first time in “Firing a .38 at Age Sixteen,” while the image of a murdered teenager found dead in a dumpster appears in “Crosstown.” “10th Street Anthem” sketches the cityscape of Oklahoma City, “boys sprinting in the streetlight”; a kid with “a blade in his tube sock”; asphalt smelling of “hot rocks and tar”; a “flattened mutt in the gutter.” (69)
The final section of Dark Thirty concerns itself with the theme of recognition. In “Solitude,” the poet chronicles aspects of an unnamed singer’s life (Billie Holiday) that resonate with the sensual and “ruined” women who appear throughout Dark Thirty. A sense of exile and poverty are awakened in the speaker of “Eating Against a Wall,” when the poet is able to identify with the experience of the refugee-like figures who improvise a simple meal on the street –– eating noodles slurped from a Cool Whip Bowl, while squatting on an unrolled bamboo mat. This impression connects easily to the images of “One Room Apartment,” a poem that occurs much earlier in Dark Thirty, in which a young narrator scavenges a meal from “A-1 and stale saltines…pickle juice from the jar.” (33) The closing poem of Dark Thirty, “An Aerosoled Representation of the Maya and Moche” is the longest piece within the collection and reflects most directly upon the theme of recognition through the eyes of a poetic narrator who is kept for years from knowing the existence of his infant daughter. Upon their reunion, he recognizes “a face half my own.” (82)
Frazier’s debut collection displays affinities with a documentary poetic tradition that includes projects like Kwame Dawe’s Wisteria, a poem collection based on oral histories collected from a community of black female elders in Sumter, South Carolina. Connections also seem evident with Natasha Trethewey’s poetics, which are largely concerned with restoring subaltern voices to mainstream historical narratives. For Frazier, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation, no direct mention is made of his characters’ Native identity, nor is the gesture necessary, as the language, spirit, and tenacity of the protagonists who inhabit Dark Thirty shine through.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
If we ever need to move again, we will not use Atlas/Ace Moving in Austin. Nor would I recommend them for transport of art or archives. Our goods finally arrived on September 8, with several broken items and fees doubled what were estimated for a shuttle truck. Our belongings were held hostage until we authorized those charges. There was also that moving crew member who I found sorting through my belongings in the Atlas truck in Seattle without cause. And that driver with the broken hand? Who broke down in Colorado and then elsewhere on the road because of bad brakes and parts? We will definitely be filing a complaint with the BBB.
I saw the commercial for a new romantic comedy out soon with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart. I am not a fan of either. But the last shot in the preview was the Space Needle which gave me sharp pangs of longing. Yes, that's right. Heartsickness for a city. Which means that I will probably go and see cheezy movie so that I can reminisce about the PNW. And yes, I will be seeing Twilight part two, as well...
But in the mean time, we live in the present. San Marcos appears at first impression to be an economically depressed city of 50,000 residents with little integration between the university and the town. One might say, it has a lot of potential for development and investment. We are nestled in the heart of Texas Hill Country, which, while not the Puget Sound to the eye, does provide vistas of rolling green hills. And now that the drought has slightly broken and the grass has rebounded, I am struck at times at how much areas like the adjoining town of Wemberley resemble the hills of Taos, NM. But Wemberley is a small town where everybody knows your business, and maybe we are city mice at heart, better suited for South Austin.
I grow to love my work more every day. Today, several of the curators met to arrange photographs for the upcoming Nueva Luz show that opens officially on October 17. It includes work by Bill Wittliff, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Marco Antonio Cruz, Graciela Iturbide, Kate Breakey, Robb Kendrick, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Joel-Peter Witkin, and more. Any of these artists on their own are complete and total powerhouses.
I help with collections development on both photographic collections and literary archives, as well as general collections development for books and various materials related to the collections' artists. The website for the Collections will relaunch sometime later this year. The mock-ups for the site reflect the quality of the collections and we are all hopeful that it will come to completion sooner than later. Construction, renovation, and expansion continue and hopefully the galleries will be re-installed by early October. Friday, I travel to Austin with a co-worker to pick up archives from Mike Cox.
Tentative plans to be at AWP 2010 in Denver.
For those of you who know the poet Jack Myers of Dallas - he's been very ill. Write to him and send him and Thea some good cheer. He's waiting for a liver transplant.
RISD is going to be hiring for a new creative writing position. Someone who can teach theory as well as writing. If the E. Coast is your thing, then you should apply.
Thanks to Coconut Diaries for putting us up while we were in transition and for putting up with us while we continue to transit as mercury sits in retrograde.
Next month: Iowa City trip to the U of Iowa, the famous Workshop, and the IWP. All the writers that were on the China trip - Eni Mushisijia, Guo Wenbin, Wang Hua, Jin Renshun, Nie Le, and Cao Youyun - will be with us again. Riding camels in the Taklamaklan seems so very far now. And Edward will be there too, who is moving to Austin with his wife Elizabeth at the end of the year.
Tentative plans for a Dallas reading in Feb. 2010 with Jerry Kelley.
The season premier of Biggest Loser made me cry. Well, every episode of that show elicits tears - people doing the hard work of recovering through addiction and years of self-abuse and stuffing one's feelings. There's one contestant on the show that we were smitten with - Abby - who lost her husband and two children in a car accident two years ago. She lost 15 pounds this first week/weigh in. We find ourselves rooting for everyone on the show. And I find myself wondering if on my worst days, I would make a stellar personal trainer. All that yelling and such.
I saw the commercial for a new romantic comedy out soon with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart. I am not a fan of either. But the last shot in the preview was the Space Needle which gave me sharp pangs of longing. Yes, that's right. Heartsickness for a city. Which means that I will probably go and see cheezy movie so that I can reminisce about the PNW. And yes, I will be seeing Twilight part two, as well...
But in the mean time, we live in the present. San Marcos appears at first impression to be an economically depressed city of 50,000 residents with little integration between the university and the town. One might say, it has a lot of potential for development and investment. We are nestled in the heart of Texas Hill Country, which, while not the Puget Sound to the eye, does provide vistas of rolling green hills. And now that the drought has slightly broken and the grass has rebounded, I am struck at times at how much areas like the adjoining town of Wemberley resemble the hills of Taos, NM. But Wemberley is a small town where everybody knows your business, and maybe we are city mice at heart, better suited for South Austin.
I grow to love my work more every day. Today, several of the curators met to arrange photographs for the upcoming Nueva Luz show that opens officially on October 17. It includes work by Bill Wittliff, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Marco Antonio Cruz, Graciela Iturbide, Kate Breakey, Robb Kendrick, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Joel-Peter Witkin, and more. Any of these artists on their own are complete and total powerhouses.
I help with collections development on both photographic collections and literary archives, as well as general collections development for books and various materials related to the collections' artists. The website for the Collections will relaunch sometime later this year. The mock-ups for the site reflect the quality of the collections and we are all hopeful that it will come to completion sooner than later. Construction, renovation, and expansion continue and hopefully the galleries will be re-installed by early October. Friday, I travel to Austin with a co-worker to pick up archives from Mike Cox.
Tentative plans to be at AWP 2010 in Denver.
For those of you who know the poet Jack Myers of Dallas - he's been very ill. Write to him and send him and Thea some good cheer. He's waiting for a liver transplant.
RISD is going to be hiring for a new creative writing position. Someone who can teach theory as well as writing. If the E. Coast is your thing, then you should apply.
Thanks to Coconut Diaries for putting us up while we were in transition and for putting up with us while we continue to transit as mercury sits in retrograde.
Next month: Iowa City trip to the U of Iowa, the famous Workshop, and the IWP. All the writers that were on the China trip - Eni Mushisijia, Guo Wenbin, Wang Hua, Jin Renshun, Nie Le, and Cao Youyun - will be with us again. Riding camels in the Taklamaklan seems so very far now. And Edward will be there too, who is moving to Austin with his wife Elizabeth at the end of the year.
Tentative plans for a Dallas reading in Feb. 2010 with Jerry Kelley.
The season premier of Biggest Loser made me cry. Well, every episode of that show elicits tears - people doing the hard work of recovering through addiction and years of self-abuse and stuffing one's feelings. There's one contestant on the show that we were smitten with - Abby - who lost her husband and two children in a car accident two years ago. She lost 15 pounds this first week/weigh in. We find ourselves rooting for everyone on the show. And I find myself wondering if on my worst days, I would make a stellar personal trainer. All that yelling and such.
Friday, September 04, 2009
We have been separated from our belongings for about 3 weeks and Atlas Van Lines has for the second time, delayed delivery of the goods, citing a truck breakdown. Get with it, Atlas!
Kort broke the news to me last night. He had gone to some care to soften the news.
I walked in the apartment to find a burgundy pillow case elegantly improvising as a table cloth over a plastic storage tub. (The linens are in the moving van). A lit candle and hand-made sandwiches (bread toasted) and corn chips (all of our cookware is in the moving van). He also bought me a bottle of tamari soy sauce at the organic store. (The salt and soy are in the moving van. When I asked if he had spoken to the driver of the moving van today, he said no. But then about 10 minutes later, he introduced that he had spoken to the move agent who alerted him that our goods would not show today. We have been sleeping on the floor for about 2 weeks now and I am ready for the transition to be over. Argggh.
Kort broke the news to me last night. He had gone to some care to soften the news.
I walked in the apartment to find a burgundy pillow case elegantly improvising as a table cloth over a plastic storage tub. (The linens are in the moving van). A lit candle and hand-made sandwiches (bread toasted) and corn chips (all of our cookware is in the moving van). He also bought me a bottle of tamari soy sauce at the organic store. (The salt and soy are in the moving van. When I asked if he had spoken to the driver of the moving van today, he said no. But then about 10 minutes later, he introduced that he had spoken to the move agent who alerted him that our goods would not show today. We have been sleeping on the floor for about 2 weeks now and I am ready for the transition to be over. Argggh.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
To pass the time until we can move into our rental, Kort surprised me today and took me out to Inner Space Caverns in Georgetown - a privately owned series of caves in the Austin area. Kort was last there when he was a few years old with his parents, and the caves occupy a special place in his memory. He remembers being in the gift shop, riding atop his father's shoulders and reaching out to try and grab a forgotten item on display. In the process, he knocked over a bunch of Mexican jumping beans that made a mess, spilling onto the slatted wood floor. Mexican jumping beans jump because there is a larva inside the bean that is alive. So people do not actually eat the beans. And actually the "beans" are not beans at all, but seeds.
There were no beans today at the gift shop, but all else remained essentially the same. We took a guided tour that took us about a mile into the caves which run directly under Interstate 35 and open up to a major fault line.
This is the original excavation hole that was made to explore the sink hole, when drillbits used in excavating the roads continually broke off and disappeared into the caverns.
There were no beans today at the gift shop, but all else remained essentially the same. We took a guided tour that took us about a mile into the caves which run directly under Interstate 35 and open up to a major fault line.
This is the original excavation hole that was made to explore the sink hole, when drillbits used in excavating the roads continually broke off and disappeared into the caverns.
Leaving Seattle
Kort and I packed up and left Seattle last Tuesday. One of the last things that we did was to take the Tibetan prayer flags down from the back porch.
And to take down the windchimes that made music outside our bathroom window.
We spent our last night in Seattle at Carol and Geo's. I insisted that we leave the blind up, so that every time I woke up in the middle of the night, I could look out onto the Puget Sound and let the beauty fill me. I am sad to leave Seattle. This is no small transition.
We drove through Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, covering 12 hours of driving a day. The first night we stayed in Ogden, Utah, a town west of Moab. We found decent sushi in the town square. Visited Zenshin and JB in ABQ, had one night in Dallas, and then headed here to Austin, where we are until we move into rental housing on Thursday.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Yoga scripts
"Relax the hair."
"Relax the ankles."
"Let relaxation drip down your wrists."
"Roll the heart open."
"Relax the ankles."
"Let relaxation drip down your wrists."
"Roll the heart open."
Two uses for eggs
1) Place a raw, uncracked egg in each of the four corners of whatever room you are trying to smudge. If the eggs cook, you know that you are cleansing some bad juju.
2) Roll a hardboiled egg over a bruise. The egg will pick up the black and blue of your bruise.
In both cases, do not eat eggs after using.
2) Roll a hardboiled egg over a bruise. The egg will pick up the black and blue of your bruise.
In both cases, do not eat eggs after using.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Kort and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary last week. We have actually been together since 1998, but I took a long time to get on board with marriage.
To celebrate, we planned a trip to the Olympic Peninsula - specifically Neah Bay, a small native reservation on the western tip.
The rock formations at Neah Bay remind me of the abstracted rock shapes in Yehlio, Taiwan.
We hiked to Cape Flattery, the most western point in the continental U.S. where there are amazing views.
And were very very lucky to be overlooking the Cape when a whale surfaced.
After saying farewell to Neah Bay, we traveled through Port Angeles and ferried back over to the mainland and detoured through Edison to see friends.
Randy and Jenny just bought a vintage Airstream trailer which they are in the process of rehabbing. Carpets have been torn out and the trailer will be refloored with wood laminate recycled flooring from the Carver gym of the university at Bellingham. The electric signage points actually to the Sugar Shack, not the Airstream.
aka the writing studio and headquarters of Foreign American Pictures. Shack blueprint courtesy of Ready Made Magazine; reappropriated lumber courtesy of The Lucky Dumpster.
I will miss this area and the friends we made here (none of whom were actually from Seattle!). Linh, Andy, Sophia, Saleem, Sam, Nicole, Carol, Geo, etc. The water and the beauty of this place.
New adventures await...
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Packing every day for the past week means needing to take some breaks to stay sane. So yesterday I went over to the Urban Craft Uprising event at the Seattle Center. The choice of the Seattle Center's Exhibition Hall building felt like a strange one. The hall was far from full, with a lot of space around the fair to walk the perimeter of the room, and big pockets of unused space - compounded by the density of hundreds of visitors packed into what must have been about 6-8 rows of what was about 50-75 vendors.
I didn't take photos as a lot of these craft artists have original ideas, designs and concepts that I imagine at least some of them being propietary about. Popular trends noted: plush and crochet toys and dolls in food shapes with faces such as marshmallows, cookies, and cotton candy, hardboiled eggs, and drumsticks. Shmancy does a lot with pins of empanada turnovers, hardboiled eggs, carrots, and fortune cookies. I really liked this idea - soft handmade toys with a touch of creativity to coax children into eating or trying new foods. Comfort food.
My favorite find, which I didn't buy, but was meanly tempted to, was a rollable pouch targeted towards kids. The best comparison I can make is to picture a rolled cloth that has a holder for a variety of tools - Kort's got such a pouch for his chakra energy tuning forks. Each fork fits snugly into its own niche within this fabric pouch which can then be rolled up to make the tools easily portable. Picture this design applied on a smaller scale, to a set of children's crayons. Colorful printed cotton cloth decorated with cars and trains holding seven individual crayons in place. Portable, light, and secure.
The jewelry makers I saw are doing a lot with objects encased in resin, glass buttons and marbles as rings/neckalces. The best jewelry I saw was made by Faryn Davis of Fernworks who embeds fern fragments, leaves and other natural materials into her one-of-a-kind pieces.
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