My New Car

How cool is this cubist car?


I wonder what it runs on. Do you think I could get it in blue?

Park-itecture

World-renowned architect Frank Gehry will be designing a new playground in lower Manhattan. Wow! That kind of makes my local playground seem primitive and crappy. But wait, it just got a fresh coating of woodchips!

Seriously, I think this is going to be really fabulous and I can't wait to see photos of the completed project. As I recall, when Frank Gehry designed the Springfield cultural center, he couldn't keep the skateboarders away, so he seems like a logical choice for playground design (incidentally, Gehry played himself in that episode).


I imagine the slide will look something like this:

(The Experience Music Project in Seattle)

Or possibly this:


(Fish Dance in Kobe, Japan)

Spring Cleaning

Hmmm...it smells like fresh cut grass, the world is puddle-wonderful, I think spring is here at last!

With the first week of really nice, spring-like weather I have been feeling a strong compulsion, verging on physical panic, to organize my house (and by extension, my life). Last weekend, for example, when I should have been outside frolicking, I was rearranging my closets. It started out innocently enough, with me trying to find a box of sandals and other summer-y shoes. Then, naturally, I had to unpack the summer clothes, and then find my daughter's warm-weather stuff as well. Before I knew it, I was in full-on spring cleaning mode.

This cleaning jag feels similar, though not so intense, to the "nesting" instinct I experienced during pregnancy. It culminated the day before my daughter was born, when I could not sit still for a second because of all the imagined tasks I had to complete before the birth. I remember pleading with my husband to help me hang some ceramic hippos above the window in the nursery, so our baby would have something interesting to look at (keep in mind that newborns can only focus on things about 12 inches away from them, and it takes months for their eyesight to fully mature). Finally, I dragged out a stool to do it myself. My husband talked me down from the brink of madness (because lumbering my 9-month pregnant body onto a stool would have been madness indeed), the next day I gave birth, and the hippos were forgotten. In fact, they remain unhung to this day.

It's interesting how the change in seasons still brings back those primal "nesting" urges, even though as humans we don't necessary have our babies in the springtime.

(the painting is Spring by Alphons Mucha)

"I have lost to February"

February always seems to arrive just at the point when I can't take any more winter. Regardless of what the groundhog sees, February always teases me with some lovely, spring-like weather: just enough so I get excited about unpacking my sandals and summer clothes. Then February laughs and turns back into winter. Curse you, February!

I'm trying to make this blog more about my own thoughts and less about linking to other people, but often I find that someone else has said what I'm trying to say so perfectly that it would be a loss not to mention it. Today, I am thinking about a haunting Dar Williams song about two lovers whose relationship can't withstand the winter. It's called, appropriately, February:

And February was so long that it lasted into March
And found us walking a path alone together.
You stopped and pointed and you said, "That's a crocus,"
And I said, "What's a crocus?" and you said, "It's a flower,"
And I tried to remember, but I said, "What's a flower?"

On a day like today, when it is so gray and cold and it feels like it will never stop raining, it's hard to remember the meaning behind words like "spring" and "sunshine" and "joy."


(Melancholy by Edvard Munch)

Hoggy New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year everybody! Welcome to the year of the pig. In honor of the new year, the Chinese postal service has issued these adorable stamps that both smell and taste of sweet and sour pork. Fabulous!

I can't help wondering what they'll do to celebrate next year, the year of the rat.

(illustrations borrowed from my copy of Charlotte's Web)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I still remember an article I wrote about Valentine's Day for my high school newspaper. I put in a lot of great stuff about the pagan origins of Valentine's Day (similar to this article, in fact, but not quite so well written) and my editor, in his infinite wisdom, titled the article "Sacrificing Goats and Dogs." Romantic, eh?

If you are pro-Valentine's Day, check out this post by Shauna James of Gluten-Free Girl. I adore her blog anyway, but this post about finding her true love is particularly sweet and beautifully written.

If you are anti-Valentine's Day, check out the "Hate" menu at Chow.com. Heart tartare, bitter honey, and loads of stinky garlic to keep those pesky cupids at bay.

(ubiquitous angels by Raphael)

Melancholy

from dictionary.com:

mel·an·chol·y [mel-uhn-kol-ee]

–noun
1. a gloomy state of mind, esp. when habitual or prolonged; depression.
2. sober thoughtfulness; pensiveness.
3. Archaic. a. the condition of having too much black bile, considered in ancient and
medieval medicine to cause gloominess and depression.
b. black bile.

–adjective
4. affected with, characterized by, or showing melancholy; mournful; depressed: a
melancholy mood.
5. causing melancholy or sadness; saddening: a melancholy occasion.
6. soberly thoughtful; pensive.

The word "melancholy" sounds like a beautiful, sad little song in my head. Naturally, I always assumed that's what the word meant: beautiful and sad. I don't really have much to add to this, being in a melancholy mood myself at the moment, but this painting (Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti) is basically what "melancholy" looks like in my brain. Now you know.

A eulogy, of sorts

In October 1995 I was just starting college: young, idealistic, naive. I was priveleged to attend a writer's conference with such local writers as David Lee (Utah's first Poet Laureate) and Leslie Norris. Norris was a Welsh poet influenced by Dylan Thomas (whoever he was) who moved to Utah in his later life. I was equally priveleged to attend a poetry reading by Professor Norris, which included the title poem from his most recent book of poetry, A Sea in the Desert. I described Leslie Norris in my journal that night as "an incredible man...with broad gestures (but small hands) and a worn but scarcely hidden Green-Isled accent".

My favorite stanza from his poem A Sea in the Desert goes like this:

A man is moon to his own sea --
he draws it after him,
like a dog it follows him
the days of his life.

You can read the poem in its entirety here. I love the way the shape of the poem echoes the rhythm of waves on a beach. Something about the idea that we each tug our own ocean along behind us really resonates with me. When I first heard this poem, I thought that this metaphorical ocean described the pool of our experiences, our "baggage", if you will, which we can try to share with each other but at the same time can only be completely understood within ourselves. A lonely idea, certainly, but to me the ocean was always the epitome of loneliness.

I was shocked and saddened when I learned, on preparing to write this post, that Professor Norris died last April. It makes me feel fragile and melancholy to learn that this man, who so inflenced me, who I haven't thought about in so many years, has passed on.

I still have the dog-eared and copiously annotated copy of A Sea in the Desert I purchased immediately following his reading. I noted the date inside, 10/11/95, but wish I had thought to have him sign it. I guess in the end a man's poetry is as much of a signature as anything else he could provide.

(art by JMW Turner (Dawn After the Wreck) and Hokusai (The Hollow of the Deep-Sea Wave off Kanagawa)

Hallelujah!

from dictionary.com:

hal·le·lu·jah /ˌhæləˈluyə/ [hal-uh-loo-yuh]

1. Praise ye the Lord!
2. an exclamation of “hallelujah!”
3. a shout of joy, praise, or gratitude.
4. a musical composition wholly or principally based upon the word “hallelujah.”

Also, hal·le·lu·iah.

[Origin: 1525–35; < Heb halălūyāh praise ye Yahweh; cf. alleluia]

Hallelujah is a word you can't say without singing. I know the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah has been done to death, but I really think Handel was on to something. According to the Bible, this is THE WORD (or at least, a translation of that word) the angels chose to announce their jubilation at the birth of Jesus. Whether you're Christian or not, you've got to admit, that's a powerful word. I can't think of any expression that better encapsulates a feeling of pure joy. In fact, I challenge you to say it and not be happy.

Actually, my challenge is masterfully met by that haunting Hallelujah song by Jeff Buckley (my sources tell me the song was originally written and performed by Leonard Cohen). You know, the one that has appeared in every movie, hospital drama, and "very special episode" of TV ever produced. Basically, in any scene where somebody is or might be dying. Love that song. After hearing it a million times, this line still makes me weepy:

"I've seen your flag on the marble arch
But love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah"

On a totally different note, the song You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon contains one of my favorite lines of poetry ever:

"He looks around and around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity.
And he says hey, Hallelujah!"

Love it. Wish I wrote it. Hallelujah, indeed.


(stained glass by Marc Chagall)

A womb of one's own

During my pregnancy, I became a bit obsessed with my growing womb: that tiny, secret place inside of me that expanded, as if by magic, to fit an entirely new life. Now that my literal womb is empty, I have started to think about metaphorical wombs. That is, the tiny secret places inside us where we nourish any new creation: writing, emotions, music, art, whatever. I'm sure some readers will find this metaphor distasteful, however, I feel compelled to mention it here. After all, we use the expression "brain-child," is it too much of a stretch to talk about a "brain-womb"?

As I go through this process of rediscovering my inner writer and poet, I am tidying up my symbolic womb to make it cozy for the new thoughts that will take up residence there. I am hanging wallpaper and glow-in-the-dark stars, I am stocking up on fleecy blankets, I am choosing soothing music. Most importantly, I trying to keep the noisy, angry thoughts away from this sanctuary, this nursery.

(edited to add that the photo is of Henry Moore's Mother and Child, on display in St. Paul's Cathedral)