Dark and Fuzzy Xmas

Tights.

Just two dark and fuzzy images taken with my old Android camera.  (Does anyone know why these photos are much darker on Fb and hence, here than they were on my phone?)

Not enough sleep, although the children did not wake until almost 10:00 am.

Lots of paper and my recycled fabric ribbons.  I love tying up packages with fabric ribbons.

Too many frosted sugar cookies ingested.

And this afternoon--I worked with phyllo dough sheets--something I'd been afraid of handling for a very long time--for the very first time.  And it turned out . . . really well, Lara.

Our host's favorite carol is "O Holy Night" which A played on the uke.

Here's a nice Christmas song:

Winter Tights

 The top two photos were taken on my way to the Librarian's Ball.  Royal blue tights!  You don't see that hue very often.  And you don't see a hat covered completely with fake flowers very often either (unless, of course, it's Easter).

I realized along the way that I'd gone to library school with this gal and she's a rad children's librarian.

The third photo was forwarded to us in heartwarming fashion by our friend, Dave, who approached a Polish woman in London and showed her our blog.  I love her stance and the sweatery goodness of her tights.

Speaking of which, Lara, I feel a tights' giveaway coming on.

In honor of the above tights, the festive holiday song of the day is the Rolling Stones' "Winter:"

Tights High

Tumeric?  Or marigold?  What color are these tights?

I was so excited to put them on this morning, brand new, and the right size.  Brown boots.  Fall and stuff, Lara.

This color, these tights on my legs, got me through my day.

salon on conference saturday

farmer's market tomatoes--last week or two of this bliss.

1) got my hair done in real salon today, the kind where they offer you a drink, give you a scalp massage at the shampoo bowl, and carry your purse, drink, and magazines from station to station for you.  it's been years!  and it was quite glorious.

2) made chicken soup--so good!  with tons of fresh basil, garlic, tomatoes from the farmer's market, some lemon & chili garlic sauce.  ate pizza on the grass from the wood-fired pizza guy.  pistachio and cream pizza.  very good.

3) ate at black sheep cafe.  grandma beth took us, and it was so good.  again.

4) visited my mom, who's been battling a bad infection the whole time she's been in town.  i'm super mad at that infection.

5) suddenly chilled.  even in tights, boots, and a jacket. it's finally fall. & yesterday is really hitting me right about now.  too many big days this week.  good night.  again.

the price of pleasure

the queen & her beloved

what strikes me most about  benoit jacquot's farewell, my queen is the delicate play between the impending massive people's revolt and the tiny but emotionally charged detail of every day life in the court:  a beautifully embroidered dahlia, a precious clock, the rustle of brocade and hollow footfalls of a french heel against marble, cobblestone and wood.

the court is focused on attending to the indulgence of every physical and emotional whim of la reine, so focused that one sees how they could possibly not have realized what was imminently arriving at the gates of versailles.   the film catches you up so completely in the minutia of the baubles and minor intrigues of the sex lives of the courtly entourage that one sees how the queen and her attendants became confused about what the most important concerns were on july 14th, 1789:  the fact that the duchess de polignac was not as in love with the queen as the queen was with her, or the fact that both of their names appeared in the top three on the list of those who should be beheaded in the name of liberty.

on a sensory level, the movie is pure pleasure:  great music, gorgeous shadow and light, the skin of beautiful women caressed lovingly and a little creepily by the hand-held camera. as the neo-realists put their cameras at eye-level, jacquot holds his at décolletage level.  the ladies' oft heaving bosoms almost become characters in and of themselves

enjoy.

enjoy the girl on girl flirtations, the whispered french gossip, the tableaux layered against the giant poplars filmed on the grounds of versailles, the nightgowns and wigs, silk stockings and pewter dining ware.  watch the queen enjoy them.  watch the court enjoy her enjoyment of all things beautiful, sensuous, and decadent.

& maybe wonder, for just a second, if losing your head is a price worth paying for so much fun & drama.

Punk Rock Tights

'

 Ah, Lara.  Bad news abounds, doesn't it?  Every day there is death.  Some days there is slaughter. Maybe the truest music on earth is punk rock.  Maybe the most authentic way of being in the world is this punk rock girl in her shredded woolen tights on a steaming day, so hot the skies split would soon split open.  From Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces via the May revolts of '68:  "LIVE WITHOUT DEAD TIME" (31).  And on the Sex Pistols, "This was music that refused its own name, which meant it also refused its history--from this moment no one knew what rock 'n' roll was, and so almost anything became possible" (39).

Anyway, I sat in the park again and listened to more bands commemorating the Tompkins Square Park riot in August of '88.  There were political speeches and verbal accounts of the night.

On the bench, I cradled my husk cherries in my skirt.

I watched this guy get arrested by a plain clothes cop, and then get perp walked by a uniformed cop.

Afterwards, I strolled past the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop and watched this charming male employee dressed like a milk maid (plus, tights) entertain and manage the long line that stretched down 8th Street.  These people were thinking, not of riots--not of violence and their own deaths--but only of soft homemade goodness.  Perhaps, the Bea Arthur?  The Salt Pimp?

Inherited Narratives

A complex narrative for your legs at Wolford, which I pass on the way to work

This week for Artist's Way homework, Lara and I are supposed to examine our perception of God or god--depending how you see Him/Her or him/her, or whatever God means to you.  (The Artist's Way isn't religious, but is big time spiritual.  So if that bugs you, you might have a hard time with it.)

It was interesting writing about this today--actually, maybe for the very first time.  What I came up with was that growing up, I felt that God was withholding, that S/He rewarded other families, but not mine.  And this didn't make sense to me, because there is this thing in Mormonism, this thing that has come out with the rise of uber Ritchie Rich Romney this year, that righteousness (church attendance, tithe paying, callings, Sabbath observed, etc. etc.)  will get you blessings--yes, even temporal blessings:  good jobs, good house, good money.  So where were our blessing?  Because my parents were checking off all the righteousness boxes, like totally checking off . . . and still we struggled, to a humiliating (at least for me as a kid) degree.

Sometimes our car broke down and we--mortifyingly--walked to church.   Because you know, Lara, that no one walks to church in Arizona, even if it's two blocks.

Well into adulthood now, I think I still live in the narrative I inherited, that life is a downward trajectory, that things don't get better--only worse.  And I'm really trying hard not to live in that narrative space.  But it's hard.  

On the upside, on the way home from work, I met up with two kids who were in the BYU dorms with me Spring term of 1983.  They met each other during that small window of a term, and ended up marrying about a year later.  And 29 years later--we meet up in NYC, and they are just as delightful and interesting to talk to in the Time Warner building as they were in the Morris Center cafeteria.

Occupy Tights!

And leggings, too!  I was so glad--(before going home to find out some disappointing news)--that I dropped by Bryant Park on my way home from work.  Bryant Park was one of the spaces for May Day/International Worker's Day action today.  Peeps were supposed to strike:  not work, not attend school, not shop . . . in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street/99% movement (which, as you know, is close to the heart of this "tight places" blog).

Even when I'm in a political space, I can't help but take pictures of protest fashion, and there was some tremendous activist legwear in today's Bryant Park actions, plus Gertrude Stein presiding. 

Tomorrow:  hanging out with Occupy Guitarmy.

Gertrude monitoring

tights trajectory/ a missive poetry prompt

leaving utah--encountered blizzard outside of beaver, ut.

did i know the bowling shoes would match my dress in mesa, az.?

pool legs, sans tights, scottsdale, az. 

so, one more day of spring break "vacation" (decision:  taking kids places is not a vacation--it's much, much harder than going to work.  not to say it's not a worthwhile endeavor, but it's certainly not relaxing.  or is it just me?)

it's the end of the day, so i won't go into much detail, but we've gotten to see all siblings and spend an entire day at the pool, so mission accomplished--sun & sibs.  got to hold my newest nephew, marco, aka mr. bubbers/papi/chubby hubby.   he's very advanced and handsome, as are all my nieces and nephews.

i barely had time to post my guest poetry prompt from book balloon today, so i'll let it double for my blog post as well.  it's inspired by yesterday's post, and it uses jean valentine's poem again which i love more and more with each read.

i'd be so overjoyed to read anyone's attempt at this poem.  the idea for it is rather nascent, so it would be great to see how writers respond to it.

& DEFINITELY go to book balloon, register, go to the forum and click on "go--get creative."  janet mcadams has been posting a prompt for each day of april, except wednesdays when i prompt, and she has a few surprise guest poets coming up.  so do it!

A Missive, A Supplication

To whom do you supplicate?

I’ve been thinking about the poem as a prayer, a cry, a missive, a plea, an attempt to speak about something we need but we don’t have the right words, in the expository sense, to ask for. 

So we send a missive out into the world, “This is my letter to the world, that never wrote to me,” Emily Dickinson said, not knowing whom, exactly, in the world or universe, is listening, or what they will hear.

Prayer and poem connect on many points, but specifically in the way that they can be expressive in a non-direct, non-linear, nonsensical way that sometimes someone will understand and make their own sense of. 

I love this poem by Jean Valentine, and think of it as a prayer; in the end, God knows she needs to take “Jim” into the wide front porch of her lap.

The Rose


by Jean Valentine

a labyrinth,
as if at its center,
god would be there—
but at the center, only rose,
where rose came from,  
where rose grows—
& us, inside of the lips & lips:
the likenesses, the eyes, & the hair,
we are born of,
fed by, & marry with,
only flesh itself, only its passage
—out of where?    to where?

Then god the mother said to Jim, in a dream,
Never mind you, Jim,
come rest again on the country porch of my knees.




So here’s the prompt for a missive poem, after all my blah, blah, blahing (thanks for listening!)

A.  Dear __________________, (insert a word that is god-like or ungod-like here.  How about “toothbrush”?)  Please___________________________.  (Insert your cry for help here.)  It can make sense (“Brush my soul clean/Sweep my heart with your bristles") or not sense ("Please tell me who you are/change from neon pink to clear/make the teeth fall out of my head.")

Repeat this warm-up 10 times.  Here are a couple of my first attempts:

1. Dear Strawberry,  please curl me up in your tongue until tendrils sprout, and I become we.

2. O pencil, please write and unwrite, write and unwrite, write and unwrite until god’s breath makes me clear and blank as a spirit.

3.  Beloved bowl, please don’t mock me for overturning you and wearing you to the winter formal and pretending like you are an Alexander McQueen.

Okay, so some of those are silly, but I’m brainstorming and therefore not getting too critical yet.

B.  Choose three to five lines that you like and make a stanza for each, letting the prayer extend itself to wherever it wants to go?  (Who would EVER have predicted that, in Valentine’s poem,  “Jim” would come into the picture, or that god would be a mother rocking on the porch with her big comfortable lap for Jim to sit in?)

What I’m trying to say here is let your poem write itself into a prayer, let the poem tell you, your toothbrush, god, your pretty bowl, ripe strawberry, or the stars above, the words that need to be said.

Then post on book balloon, and/or get on your knees & speak your prayer aloud in a dark room.


legwear:  cocoa butter & bathing suit

inspiration: baby flesh/mr. bubbers

looking forward: to going back to work/routine

ego work assessment

a student's awesome outfit/every day dressing/i LUV red shoes

following julie's example, i went back to january's initial posts to get a handle on where i am in working on the stuff i set out to do at the year's start.  the first thing that struck me was this:  julie's street fashion photos rock!  if you haven't read the whole blog, scroll through the photos and you'll be really inspired to get your game on in your daily dressing.  (i happen to think every day dressing is important and can make your life a lot more beautiful, no matter what your circumstance.)

the second thing was this:  i've written a lot about ego, and that seems to be the emerging theme of this year.  how much do i do things in order to fufill certain egoistic expectations and how much do i do things because they're good and true?  i set out to make this year about the latter thing.  not so sure which is dominating in the battle between a life that is lived for the wrong reasons and an authentically lived life.  i'm on day two of my fast, and it feels great.  i started it for twin reasons, one of them egoistic and one of them in an attempt to be a better, kinder, more humble person, more in tune with the beauty and goodness in the world.  both reasons are still there, coexisting fairly well, i must say.

i wonder how often other people think about the situation in which we humans find ourselves, trying to sort through seeming contradictions between motivation and action--how one can be bad and one can be good, both at the same time.

but here's what i set down in january:

1) something meaningful to write about everyday:  this has actually come to pass.  writing something every day has made the day more meaningful.  julie and i have both managed to post something every single day of 2012 so far.

2) every day beauty: the blog has been a sort of gratitude journal, and it's helped me realize, like ayun halliday said in her guest post on monday, that i have nothing at all to complain about.  it's made me more observant of, say,
the awesome outfits my students wear every day,
the daffodils under my window surrounded by snow,
the AMAZING mountains my home snuggles up against,
the fleetingly beautiful holes in my seven-year old's smile,
& the more than bountiful circumstances i was born to.

those are the important items from my list.  i feel good about that, and inspired to keep consciously working, at least until the summer equinox!

legwear:  sweats.  but i'm about to change into argyle knee socks.

looking forward: to folded laundry, graded midterms

inspiration:  gratitude enhanced by hunger

p.s. i'm reading rebecca lindenberg's column this week on mormon-belt food.  loved her post on funeral potatoes and community.  that tension again between belonging and outsiderness that may or may not be adequately smoothed over by the balm of creamy condensed soups.  i happen to live in the heart of the heart of zion, and this tension exists every day, many times a day.

minaj--complicit or critical?

>
first, let's get right down to tights, since this is the LAST DAY for our tights giveaway.  to convince yourself that you really need some new tights stat, checkout the beautiful turquoise, sky, robin's egg blue-blue pair on minaj in the opening of "moment 4 life."

and then tell me if she hangs with drake to make herself appear, through juxtaposition, even more overwhelmingly rad and charismatic.

and THEN

we need to talk.

i read a fantastic discussion about "stupid hoe" on the blog nuñez daughter, linked by the super rad (and i actually mean rad as in radical this time) crunk feminist collective.

here are two bits from kismet nuñez's article:

Minaj hurts my head.  She perplexes me.  I think of her as Trickster, two-faced in her betrayal of global black feminist possibility and powerful in her contradictory elucidation of black woman’s power within the realms of celebrity and hip hop.  Reading her as Ellegua, that frightful guardian of the crossroads and the in-between and the everything-that-is-not-yet seems to fit an artist who switches alter egos as easily as she switches clothes.  Conjuring the ritual and physicality of possession seems to fit a celebrity who changes clothes as she changes personality, putting on her and taking off her tropes as each personality comes down.  The sometimes garish, sometimes delightful carnival of color, glitter and expression–even the repetitive dancehall/house music refrain–also fit a woman whose aesthetic choices continually find their footing in her Trinidadian roots.
In other words, I think of Nicki Minaj as diasporic black, as radical, and as speculative.

AND

But what if she isn’t supposed to be the vision?
What if she is just the oracle?  The vessel?  A portent of things to come?
What if she is just the keeper of the crossroads?

the first time i was aware of radical re-appropriation was with madonna in the late 80's/early 90's.  and you might say that dolly parton presaged madonna in exploiting femininity/the male gaze to be "in charge".  to make $$, to change her personna like she changes wigs and one-piece zip up pant suits (minaj and parton share a proclivity for both wigs and one piece zip-up suits that highlight their outsized secondary sexual characteristics.)

& then

there's gaga.  but i don't wanna talk about her.  i find her as uninteresting as drake.

the points here are three:

1) can you radically re-appropriate, i mean really, in a HYPEr capitalist market?

2) this whole thing about women using their sexuality to be in charge of stuff, i mean, that's not new, right?  remember salome?

3) does shapeshifting/ changing your image frequently equal empowerment.

i'm with nunez that minaj is endlessly fascinating.  i want to know what feminists writing their dissertations on minaj are saying,  and if it's legit, or if it's a bunch of HYPE.

and yes, if you are, like me, of a certain generation, and not accustomed to the stuff the kids these days are listening, you might beware before watching this video.

unless, of course, you plan to take it all in stride as you de-contextualize minaj's (her producer's?) imagery and language and view it all through the lens of radical re-appropriation.






inspiration: radical re-appropriation of tights
legwear:  snakeskin jeans
looking forward:  to the sundance best of fest screenings tonight

Underground Tights and Filthy Tracks

Years ago, I stopped looking down when looking for the arrival of a train.  The subway tracks below are always dirty and dotted with fetid pools of water.  Rats scurry and cavort.  During tights season, it's best just to keep one's eyes peeled for tights like these.  Monochromatic gray tights may be among my favorites.  Dove gray.  Dare I say--rat gray?  Yes!  Of course I do!  One one hand (leg?), these tights were part and parcel of another boreal day.   These were practical city tights made glamorous with blush pumps and a leopard skin print coat, reminiscent of Edie Sedgwick, although I'm sure she was almost always above ground in cabs.  

Why do I love tights so much?  For a relative pittance, they provide not only warmth but glamor.  They are ubiquitous, easy to find, easy to pack and stow away.  They are democratic like Levis.  They obscure faults but tell the truth.  They make the truth more beautiful.  They easily re-contextualize a shoe.  They make it easy to be stunning.  And they don't have to be dry-cleaned.  

Just writing off the top of my head here and fully aware of how silly this might sound!

The train came and the gray tights disappeared into an adjacent car. 

Punx Win!

I have no idea where I'm going with this post tonight except that I do love the photo that opens it.  I spotted the graffiti in my neighborhood last Sunday afternoon, and had to take it home with me.  The phrase makes me happy on many levels.  It's fun to say--with your fist raised over your head, especially--and it has a solid, yet exhilarating retro feel.  It plays rights into my Gen X sensibilities.  After all, punx should win, and always do in my imagination.

After work, I met, for lunch, an old friend who works at Random House, where I love going, not only for my friend, but for the lobby.   I've posted a photo of their auspicious lobby below.  There is a matching bookcase on the other side of the lobby, and the books on the shelves are all RH books (BOOKS, you punx!) arranged chronologically by date of publication.  I did snap a first edition of Invisible Man before I left for the day.  Those books (plus the lighting) make the lobby seem like a temple.  The downside is is that the books are for display only:  museum pieces behind glass.  But still.  Punx win!

Didn't you find Lara's post so inspiring today?  After reading, I put lit candles on my dinner table, turned up the music.  Didn't you?  And while I wore no tights of note, I've been wanting to transcribe a beautiful tights' passage from Dana Spiotta's first novel, Lightning Field (Scribner 2001), which I read this past fall:  

"Mina bought cashmere tights, guaranteed to let you wear skirts through the most frigid days of winter. They were the most expensive hose in the store .  .  .  .  She had to admit the Viennese 70 denier strumpfhose in Pearled Cracked Cement, part of the Urban Disaster collection, tempted her, as well as the Semi-Sheer Velvet Finish Tights in Bruise and Blood Ultra Ultra Red . . . . But these couldn't match the feel--the promise, really--of the Cashmere Pure-Luxury, woven with the tiniest bit of nylon and Lycra (to make the cashmere cling and not bunch, barely detectable, a soft breath, a whisper on the skin).  When she spotted the last pair in medium, in the sort of oatmeal cream that would make her feel October and Ivy League, coed an coquettish, or at least like a sort of wrapped Xmas treat, all warm and inviting to the touch, she said, yes, knowing, in a sinking way, it was obscene" (78).  

Now do you see why tights are just as important as books.  The Punx in the audience will understand.

Girl in a Tights Place

Here are tights I've collected over the past two weeks: tights both sheer and textured.  

Let's not forget this blog is fueled by tights.  Tonight, I'm in a both a tights place and a tight place.  Trying to work my way out of one of them.  Searching for inspiration--and advice if you have any.   Any kind will do.

Sleep is Free

Oddly--and kind of thrillingly--I had a similar day to Lara's, which you can read about below.   It other words, it was a middle kind of day, too, the kind of day I was not imagining for myself when I was on in the throes of New Year's Eve high ten days ago, but days like this are inevitable, unavoidable.  Aren't they?

Three things that I did:

1.  I worked.
2.  I ran errands.
3.  I made some necessary phone calls.
4.  I listened to the NH primaries on headphones while quasi dozing in my kid's school lobby like an old man.
5.  I wore the same tights I've been wearing off and on since mid December.

Four things that kept this day from being completely middling:

1.  I read James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room on the subway.
2.  I went to Mast and read Jean Genet.
3.  I did some yoga after being freaked out by yoga.
4.  I thought about the things in my life that are free.

Mama Patti Goes On WIthout Me

Patti Smith read from a new/old book tonight at "St. Mark's Books, and I had planned on going, even though this plan was pure fantasy. Tuesdays, my spouse works late and I needed to be home with the kids on the first school night of the new year. It made me feel very self-sacrificing but not in a positive way. I just felt deprived (and then guilty for feeling that way), and it made me realize again how difficult it is to get artistically fed as a parent. My one consolation is that I felt Patti, herself, would have understood. I remember reading that someone has asked her with disdain why she hadn't done anything in the '80s--it seemed like she had disappeared, they said. She replied that she had been raising children in Detroit; what more could she do than that? Motherhood: it can swallow you whole. Most of the time, that feels good and right. Sometimes, I just feel obliterated.

New Year's Day of 2002, I took my six-week-old baby out into the night to keep her from crying. She had colic and if I kept walking, if I kept her surroundings unfamiliar, she would sleep and not cry. I ended up at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery at their annual New Year's Day marathon reading--their benefit for the Poetry Project (of which Patti is a veteran). It was so crowded in the sanctuary where the live performances were that I went in the back where books and food was for sale. The back turned out to the "green room" of sorts, and since it was so late in the evening, all of the St. Mark's "celebs" were milling around: Philip Glass, Lee Renaldo, etc, and Patti Smith, flanked by a small entourage. I took my baby out of her wraps, and Patti noticed in the way that people notice newborns, and she smiled at me, well, either me or the baby--I couldn't decide, but I took it as confirmation and encouragement. I needed a lot of that. Still do.

Today I worked on a story for an hour, but I need to do much more tomorrow. Much more!

Wore: my tights from yesterday with thick acrylic leg warmers pulled over them. Temperatures in the 20s today and tomorrow. I really need to change up my legwear if I'm going to make it through the winter. Just sayin'.

By the way, the photo is from Wikipedia Commons and totally okay to use, copyright wise.

And what is Amazon doing linking up with my page?

acedia, and girls stealing tights

i want this to be a blog about positive things, inspired by the people i know who are, right now, attempting to change their minds, hearts, and practices, but today was very, very difficult. and sometimes many days or months in a row are like that.

please don't let it be the black dog chasing me again.

here's a book about it, since i don't want to really get into it right now, and somebody else already got into it better and more comprehensively than i could anyway.

this article made me think of the book of the same name, which i read for the first time years ago, and made me think of the tenuous walk between solitude and sociality that a writer walks, or an introvert, or a person with monkish leanings who wants to walk across the desert but can't quite make herself.

part of my problem right now, aside from the bitter cold, might be winter break, about to end, with almost no time to write and reflect. that certainly makes a writer crabby. and for now i'm going to hope that when the kids go back to school tomorrow, the black dog will run away, and i can deal with the noonday demon instead.

***

on a lighter note, i bought six new pairs of tights before christmas: three black, one grey, one charcoal with a tiny black leopard print, one silvery grey. guess what? they've all disappeared. three other females, all wearing roughly the same size in tights, currently reside in exoskeleton (aka our house on locust circle), and apparently all needed new tights. sigh. i have trouble keeping in tights. do you?

Heat Seeking

On the last day inside the holiday bubble, S got out--for the first time--the Fairy Cards I picked up at Golden Braid Books in Salt Lake City on New Year's Day 2011. I had never interacted with them and still not sure what I think of tarot (Fairy Cards are along the same lines), etc, but I asked the following question of them. "What can I do this year to be more productive?" Stella pulled, at random/sight unseen, the three cards pictured here: 1. Ask for What You Want: "Let the universe and other people know what you need." 2. Practice, Practice, Practice: "Polish your skills and talent and increase your confidence." And this one was weird: 3. Pregnancy and Birth: "Big change." I'm choosing to read that one as a metaphor.

All of these things are great and I have to keep them in my head. Won't you help?

It's January 2nd--my spouse's birthday. Kids go back to school tomorrow. I go back to work, my paid work and my work work, which I'm too shy to talk about here yet.

Not too shy to write about tights: Because it's cold today, I wore thick gray ribbed tights from Uniqlo. Newish, bought just before Xmas, they are supposed to be imbued with heat seeking "Japanese technology." I'm not even kidding; they are really that warm. I'm going to try and generate this kind of heat all year.

The Crow

Lara, this post will be short, because this New Year's Day consisted of hosting in-laws in back-to-back activities, but I managed to wear tights, plain black tights that one might wear to a job interview although I'm still in a holiday bubble. With them, I wore flat boots of leather so soft the boots go on like socks. Hours later, I went home and changed into red Frye engineer boots that I've almost broken in, because I wanted something that hurt a little for the live music I was going to see later.

Lara, I like your last post a lot. I went to see a performer named Joseph Arthur, who is a cross between William S. Burroughs and Chris Robinson from the Black Crows, and with something of the dead drug addled comic Mitch Hedberg. He made me wonder what it would be like to live in art all day, even when you are parenting, even when you are irritated or totally exhausted, or worse: jealous.

He read some of his 2012 resolutions--he had about 40 of them--from the stage and I jotted some down in my brand new red Moleskin appointment book:

--Eclipse fear.
--Let dreams learn how to be true.
--Carve from invisible stone your true love.
--Be generous.
--Accept yourself with love.

By the way, I burst into tears and sobbed during one of his songs. And by the way, the crow used to be easy for me, too, and now I can't do it at all.

effort/effortless

here are some things i think this blog will address:

1) something meaningful to write about everyday.

2) maternity and art.

3) everyday beauty.

4) work and career/success/remuneration--two totally different things.

5) accomplishment without ego.

6) focus without overdetermination.

7) cooking (because i spend much time providing food for people, and i enjoy it.)

8) legwear.

7) that tension between effort and effortlessness.

So, today's post deals with effort and effortlessness and a few times when effortlessness was achieved.

• today i wore black tights and some shoes that required effort. in honor of 2012. in honor of making a new effort, and to remember the effortlessness of bare feet?
• one day, i was practicing crow pose in yoga. i got my nose in the right place. after a year of effort, the pose was effortless. in the next practice, it required effort again.
• my first poetry publication came next to a poem called "effortless". it consisted of its title, "effortless" followed by nothing(ness). followed by a blank page. it took a long time before i understood it. that editor, who published my first two poems, accepted 18 more poems for future publication. a year later, he returned them all to me, saying vintage press was requiring him to "reduce the backlog". i was 22, and i thought it would be effortless. i didn't publish again for many years.
• lately i think a lot about a pattern in the zen koan. the student is presented with a problem. he thinks he has it solved right off the bat. he doesn't. he doesn't realize, at the moment of initiation, how little he has solved, how hard it will be to solve it. he wanders for something like forty years trying to solve the problem. he returns home, problem unsolved. when he is around 12o years old, he solves it, and can rest. effortless, no?
• the student is always a "he". in my experience, the "she" can't/doesn't have unsolvable problems. most problems can be solved with her bowl of soup, or clean sheets. it's not that hard.
• but still, it's a comfort that forty years of working on one problem is acceptable.
  
• the seventies, with its orange terry cloth, yellow smiley faces, carol king, disco, skateboards, swimming pools, and turn tables, were good to me.
• the eighties, not so much.
• the nineties, which i spent largely in seattle, were great for me. black tights, chunky shoes, baby doll dresses, water, experimental opera, mushrooms, hildegard of bingen, low tides, & great, great, music, were good to me.
• the zeroes were not.
• this should be an "on" decade, if the pattern holds. or maybe that won't come until 2040. not sure if i need to think in decades or forty year increments.
  
• in yoga last week, the yogi quoted pattahbi jois. student: "how do i achieve enlightenment?" pattahbi jois: "you do."
• how do you keep doing? how do you keep doing?