Novel Eye

When we were landing in Cleveland over Lake Erie, the plane banked just beneath the clouds. The clouds met the water as though we were inside a globe where the edge of the world curved up.

I find that I still like flying, but that I like traveling less. If I packed lighter—felt I needed less accoutrements to be content—like this laptop for instance, I might enjoy it more. But the security difficulties make traveling more of a headache than it used to be. It occurs to me that traveling is a great leveler. The business man must take off his shoes and often his jacket, just like the casual traveler. But I do still like flying. I like the growing speed down the runway—the moment when the friction of the tarmac gives way to the friction of the air, and one is airborne—doing the impossible. Heavier than air flying. I like watching the earth disappear beneath. The people, cars, buildings growing ever smaller. In Boston, one often heads out to sea before turning back to head inland towards one’s destination, so one is nearly in the clouds before being over land. Out of Kansas City we are over farmland. The tiny cows dotting square or nearly square fields. On a Sunday afternoon ...

a flutter of late flying birds move as one scatter like tossed pebbles above the highway dappling the cars through the brilliance of the late autumn sun and for a moment we are underwater

I have a lovely rubber stamp which says that. I'm typing this in Nashville. So Not dead, just in Tennessee. On a hotel "business center" computer because I didn't want to pay for the internet . Although...it just occurred to me that the rep gave us some codes to use to log on for the conference... Probably get charged twice. I'm debating whether to go swimming or just go pass out. Passing out is sounding more and more appealing. So I am in the midst of my conference--my raison d'etre as far as the company is concerned. So far DHL lost a box we shipped on Friday and refused to deliver it when found--containing many things I needed for Sunday's session. Frantic photocopying on the hotel equipment. The case arrived broken, and the brand new booth had a broken bit too, leading to looking for super glue at 7:30 in the morning. Fortunately the hotel store opens early. Didn't realize someone needed a kosher meal. Erased a presentation from the ...

"For transracial adoptees, our lives are written in pencil. Everything you think you know about yourself can change in an instant." Bryan Thao Worra

Get this widget Track details eSnips Social DNA Daughter (You guys ready...) Alone...listless... breakfast table in an otherwise empty room Young girl... violins (ence)... center of her own attention The, mother reads aloud, child, tries to understand it Tries to make her proud The shades go down, it's in her head Painted room...can't deny there's something wrong... Don't call me daughter, not fit to The picture kept will remind... me Don't call me daughter,not fit to, The picture kept will remind... me Don't call me... She holds the hand that holds her down She will...rise above...ooh...oh... Don't call me daughter, not fit to The picture kept will remind me Don't call me daughter, not fit to be The picture kept will remind me Don't call me... The shades go down The shades go, go, go...

Sorry about the title. I had a better one in my head earlier, and now it's gone. Anyway--I had a terribly productive weekend. I did all my laundry AND all My ironing (not my husband's) Finally filed my own bills, papers and whatnots . Brought down my box of Halloween decorations, split it into a pile for home and a pile for work and put the house things around--even decided to weed some of it by passing it on to other people. Tidied other bits of the house not involved in the above, including my poor neglected sewing room. Wrote all those blog entries AND modified a graphic for work. I felt very powerful and excited about things and made plans for all sorts of things I could continue to do in the nights and weekends ahead. Oh, and went out and enjoyed sushi and Indian Summer with my husband. Tonight I worked until 6:30, came home and went back out to drive around a house (may go back to look at it on Wednesday). Washed the towels we dirtied cleaning on Sunday, changed t...

So, I've managed to get one in for everyday and I think pretty much without filler--all things I wanted to post about. I realized I'm sort of writing letters to different readers and if someone other than the intended chimes in, then so much the better. I do find I'm working through things on here--and sometimes I'm working through them just by thinking about posting them here. Edit: I didn't realize it, but this was kind of momentous. 222 posts this year, 300 total.

So, I've thought about posting this here for sometime. I feel it's unfinished but I don't know where it would go. Extremis You tied me to a sand dune, and left me baking in the sun Still I crawled back to you You sold me into bondage, to wolves and wastrels I bought myself back for you. I ran from you with hobbles on my legs. You cut them off with the teeth of your tongue. I carved totems from the length of your thigh bones. You made them into oars. I put you on a multitude of funeral pyres And spit on them every time. Everything I ever did for you I did under duress. Everything I ever did for you Was a bouquet at your feet. For years you kept my voice in your cigarette case. This house, this life, this skin Inside out for you. All the pictures need rearranging in their frames. They have fallen out of true.

So here are good pictures of my children. Which made me think of an old poem. I still like this poem--it's different from the kind of thing I usually write. The Dog Poem Yes, you have shaped us. Bred us down, up Dark, light, lean, round, sleek, full. Like tools to a purpose we have been formed As you form and shape and build with hands that flex and hold. Were we somehow more malleable, more honeable ? Our DNA more willing? But what you do not know is that under these customized hides, We are the first dogs, slipping high through tall grass, Short fur, the color of the Savannah, Tails, curved as totems, upright ears that rotate 180 degrees, Gleaming, unshadowed eyes, beneath smooth brows, Pointed muzzles, slim as the prow of your ships As an arrow, as a gun. A machine of the senses. We scent you and we are still in our contemplation. The pleasure of wind running through our fur the only motion. We scent you, dark and matted , tongues unsuited for grooming, In stolen skins. They ar...

So, I have a new camera. A Fuji FinePix S700. I've wanted a good digital for ages and periodically I would do some research. I didn't want to pay more than $200. I wanted at least 7 megapixels and some serious zoom. I also wanted it to feel better in my hand than the standard under $200 Canon which I dislike. So, expect to see more pictures here. The big thing about buying this is that I've researched cameras off and on for about a year and then put off the decision. What if the price went down? What if something better was released? And I couldn't find a perfect camera under $200. And you know what, all of that is probably true, but I finally had to reach a point where I just DID it. I could debate it forever and not have a camera, or I could deal with the fact that everything I worried about is true, but doesn't matter, and have a camera. Now, if I could just apply that to important things.

We like our toys. This is the Tardis USB port on my desk at work. We have one at home that we got about 6 months ago from Britain. Now they're available here at Newbury Comics so my husband got one last week and I decided I needed one too. The little construction site pieces came from one of those box kits you can get at Border's or Barnes and Noble. I love those. We have a Zen Garden in a box, a Gong in a Box and Stonehenge in a Box. This is a small collection of miniature things I keep at my desk (the fire extinguisher squirts water--my husband got it as a Christmas gift from his boss last year). So you're painting and keeping a fire extinguisher nearby for safety when you decide to kick off your Birkenstocks and eat some ice cream with Dr. Pepper. I should have put in something for scale. The little shoes are for massage and actually work really well in the late afternoons when I've been hunched over my desk. They say they fit on thumbs, but I have to p...

This is one of those little Kenneth Branagh films that disappear into the aether. I'd always wanted to see it, but apparently it wasn't on DVD for sometime. So it came on TV last week and we made a point of watching it. It has a great cast, many of the people he was making his "actual" Hamlet with around the same time, Richard Briers, Michael Maloney , Julia Sawalah , Celia Imrie and John Sessions (as the actor playing Gertrude no less). Also quite amusing cameos by Jennifer Saunders and Joan Collins (yes, Joan Collins). The plot is basic--let's put on a show, only it's a slapshot version of Hamlet staged over Christmas to raise funds for a church, by an out of work actor. The only other actors he can get are also unemployed (read bad actors). Because in Britain most actors are working in pantos at Christmastime. The panto is a fairytale or other children's story done with as much innuendo and topical reference as possible. EVERYBODY does Christmas pant...

We watched this HBO film last week. It was a difficult film and it was a film which delicately managed to give no answer. Lord Longford was a member of the House of Lords several times over, a devout Christian and converted Catholic who devoted much of his life to prison visits and championing prisoner's rights. In the late 60's he started visiting Myra Hindley . It's hard to describe for people who haven't studied British History how hated Myra Hindley was and actually still is. Her name is on a par with John Wayne Gasey or Jeffrey Dahmer in America. She and her lover Ian Brady murdered 5 children and buried the bodies on the moors. Three were under 10 and two were adolescents. Hindley and Brady were considered monsters and it was only because of the abolition of the death penalty, a mere weeks before their trial, that they were not put to death. They were both given life sentences, but life was considered to be 21 years. Longford was played by Jim Broad...

http://mirroruptolife.blogspot.com/2007/09/lights-lights.html There's an unintentional personal joke in there for Mirror, but it's an interesting discussion. "Art is a man's name," as Warhol allegedly said. As I said in my comments, "but I like Duchamp" and I don't like Rothko, and I'm not so fond of Pollack, but I'm way ahead of my mother who can only appreciate representational art. Is this artist, Martin Creed, laughing all the way to the bank (as my parents used to say), or is he on to something. He does seem to have an odd vision of all the canvases and statues stacked up and taking up space. Theater art for instance is about both what is there and what isn't there. Negative space to use the general term, which can mean both the white or empty space on a canvas, or the literal empty space on stage where there are n actors or set. This is then the ultimate piece of negative space with no "positive space" to surround it ...

There is a new book called, "Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History," written by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. And yes, that is the bumper sticker and t-shirt slogan, but Ulrich is the actual author of the phrase in a 1976 essay. Her new book is not an exhortation to women, but rather an actual study of some less polite women of history such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and also Virginia Woolf. I was reading the review (because the review is just as good, right? Kidding! Kidding.) and was struck by this phrase: History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. Isn't that exquisite? I wish I read more non-fiction, but I find it a slower read, like surfing the internet--things lead to other things, things to be checked, looked up, references followed, etc. I have friends who claim to read only non-fiction (although I might argue that some non-fiction IS fiction)...

Red Queen recently won a rather amazing prize from her job where she gets to go to a spa with a few of her friends and she has graciously chosen me as one of those friends. I'm very excited. It's October 14 th , so one week before I leave for Nashville and I'm sure I will need the facial, back cleansing and massage and that it will help me gear up for the trip. Here's my dilemma: Do I really want people to look at my skin that closely. I don't like my skin very much. I had bad acne and have lots of scars and gunk in the pores. I don't like to have bare skin in public. Isn't that silly? Musing has explored this question recently, here and here . Why do we worry about what total strangers think of us? As if we are somehow abnormal? As if they (the viewers) are not also plagued with body odor and excess hair and gunk in their pores. As if they are not worrying about how we view them. I have felt obliged to use my skin lotion more religiously to try and...

That last post reminded me of a time, a long time ago, when I first picked up Games Magazine. On reflection it had to have been some of the earliest issues, because the magazine started in 1977. I got a stack of them at a garage sale. Yes, used Games Magazine is a rather sad purchase but the previous owner seemed to be interested in different puzzles than me (except for the crosswords which were pretty well shot.) The one I'm remembering had a cover puzzle to guess the bands from the pictures. What's funny is at the time (I was 9 or 10) I didn't listen to rock and roll and neither did my parents so these bands with their exotic names were impossible for me to guess--I didn't know what I was aiming at. A few years later when I did start listening to rock and roll and started to hear band names regularly (if not the bands themselves) I suddenly realized what the bands must have been. See if you can guess (these are 70's bands for the most part). A picture of a black s...

A newsletter on webdesign had a contest to mash-up band names with book names--though it seems to have expanded to all literature. My personal favorite is: Horton Hears a Hoobastank But there are many others bubbling under: The Who Moved my Cheese (The Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf is nice too) Courtney Love in the Time of Cholera Wallflowers for Algernon Bleak Housemartins I like the ones that just merge, but this is good too: One Fish, Two Fish, Hootie and the Blowfish (because the rhythm works) For the 80's girl in me: The Joy Division Luck Club The Elements of Style Council A Kraftwerk Orange (which is so great I'm surprised the band never used it for an album name) The Jesus and Mary Chain of Command Everything But the Girl, Interrupted The Five People You Meet in Heaven 17 The Natalie Merchant of Venice Romeo Void and Juliet The Motels New Hampshire (that one's stretching it, but it's funny) At Play in the Fields of the Lords of the New Church (and also At Pla...