So, yeah! It's a good thing i have my hair parted on the side these days, and a bit of bangs covering at least a bit of one side of my giant forehead, because the naked side was burned to a lovely crimson color while out on an Excursion today...
...Whale watching!
I've pretty much lived in California my whole life, and never taken advantage of this opportunity. The Grey Whale migrates from Alaska to Baja and back again. According to a lovely bit of literature i was handed by a marine biologist from the Scripps Institute, in its lifetime, the average Grey Whale will swim the watery version of the distance from here to the moon and back. Smashing! And today we got to see a mother and calf. Hard to spot them on the whole, but we saw actual breaching, people! Breaching! Tails hitting the water, blowholes spouting off, and everything. It really was remarkable. At one point i was lucky enough to stand at the very tip of the bow out on the open deck, and became completely mesmerized by the sparkling of the ocean water, that spread out as far as the eye could see. Definitely fell into a lull, and had to sit for a few minutes while reality sank back in. I think that this was probably where my current raspberry hue came from. It's funny how each minute that goes by sees me one shade closer to a lobster, or maybe a brick.
::shakes fist at the sun::
We even got to see samples of the barnacles and lice which spend their days stuck to the side of a massive, slow-moving cetacean. (which was funny, because during the course of our roughly 3-hour tour {sshhhhh!}, the marine biologist enlightening us over the intercom mentioned the whale lice so many times that i actually wanted to go pinch her lips shut.)
And because i am learning, always learning, i will end this post now. i'm starting to wonder if this is not a common mistake among many new bloggers? The endless f**king Forever Posts? i'm trying here, people. Bye for now...
next time: Movie madness.
Monday, March 24
Sunday, March 23
So you're brilliant, gorgeous and...
Well, it finally happened- a punctuation mark. This whole thing with me and The Letters actually had me ruminating on the frequency of the characters i am (and will be) seeing. Sort of like Scrabble, with its plentiful E's and N's; sure, you're gonna see more than a few O's and S's occur in everyday natural objects, and maybe T's, but when are you ever gonna see a freakin' Q or a capital R? ::shrug::
i told myself not to worry about it so damn much and just take it as it comes. For f**k's sake, does anyone else think such trivial ideas to pieces as much as i do (please say yes)? i mean, many of the letters i see actually are letters that are simply removed from whatever box or page or marquee they belong to in the world- as opposed to the amazing AMPERSAND i saw today in a fallen buckwheat soba noodle.
Yeah, you heard me. An ampersand... how very! i'd extracted a test noodle from the roiling water and watched as it fell off of my fork and onto the cutting board below, only to form a perfect printer's mark:
the "&".
...awesome ;) Certainly never saw that one coming.
Anyway, the noodle was overdone, but i was so glad that i'd waited to check them until that one particular moment. This happening was also much more palatable than the unmistakable "S" i saw in the bathroom sink today; an errant hair, a bit of whimsy.
i told myself not to worry about it so damn much and just take it as it comes. For f**k's sake, does anyone else think such trivial ideas to pieces as much as i do (please say yes)? i mean, many of the letters i see actually are letters that are simply removed from whatever box or page or marquee they belong to in the world- as opposed to the amazing AMPERSAND i saw today in a fallen buckwheat soba noodle.
Yeah, you heard me. An ampersand... how very! i'd extracted a test noodle from the roiling water and watched as it fell off of my fork and onto the cutting board below, only to form a perfect printer's mark:
the "&".
...awesome ;) Certainly never saw that one coming.
Anyway, the noodle was overdone, but i was so glad that i'd waited to check them until that one particular moment. This happening was also much more palatable than the unmistakable "S" i saw in the bathroom sink today; an errant hair, a bit of whimsy.
Thursday, March 20
"I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree."
Take out the references to "God" in this lovely little Joyce Kilmer poem, and it's quite a gem. Continuing on:
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
"Who intimately lives with rain." - i love that! I feel the same way, except about wind. Am i the only one here who's ever wished she were a tree? Or seen the suggestion of a human form residing -strikingly- among the branches of an oak, elm, maple, or eucalyptus? Hopefully not. Also, i thought this was nice:
.
Found that photo on a website mentioning a tree-sit in Berkeley; ah, some things never change ;). I have a similar(ish) photo to this, weirdly enough... took Nat and A____ to Golden Gate Park, and we found some of these same wonderfully twisted trees growing low and rambling, and as usual i forced them into a photo-op. The print came out really really light- you can hardly see their two faces at first, but when you finally do they are hiding at the extreme edges of the frame. It's awesome! They are not nude, however, which is probably a good thing (by that i mean that i am in the midst of a constant battle against prudishness, not that their bodies are in need of some desperate toning regimen or some such nonsense). i wish i could show you all this photo, but until i get a scanner, nothin' doin'.
So where were we? Ah yes, trees.
Like the two small ones near the apartment where i lived as a kid, the ones which bore plums so wonderful that i always looked up at them as delicious yellow jewels. There were dark purple ones, too, but never were they as amazing and sweet. i would cram as many into my pockets (usually overalls, or my favorite pair of grey corduroys) as i could, until they began to squish, and then just eat as many as i could before reluctantly climbing down through the dappled light, onto the rickety wooden fence, and then a leap back to the earth below.
Or the fig tree, in the courtyard of that same apartment building. It had giant, fuzzy, acrid-smelling leaves, and a low, climb-able frame. There were always bustling lines of ants everywhere on the trunk, but that never stopped us from climbing up to reach the fruit, which we weren't so much into eating as we were simply plucking from the stem, and watching the milky fluid seep out from the wound, fascinated. The fig tree kept us shaded during the summer months as we splashed around in the kiddie pool underneath it. It stood stoically, like a sentinel, for years. Sometimes i wonder if it is still there?
There were also the few pine trees in the neighborhood, and their treasure? Sap. Golden, sticky, and precious- glob after glob of it. I had quite the sap collection, and i suppose i was always searching for a piece with a mosquito or other small insect held in stasis within, even though that was amber but how was i supposed to know the difference? The best part about sap-collecting was the smell. I would come down from the trees some days smelling like i was an entire pine forest all by myself. The end came when a particularly fresh and gooey piece of sap was entangled in the hair near the top of my head, giving my mother a headache and me a stern admonishment on the downsides of climbing trees.
Then there was The Magic Tree. Birch, actually (Silver Birch)- and there were definitely more than one around the street where we lived, but i always though of them all in the singular fashion: The Magic Tree. We learned in school that the betula pendula was used by Native Americans to build canoes, which i remember telling myself i would most certainly have to do someday. This tree's catkins (a word which i know now, and only wish i had known then!) would mature and blow apart in a gentle breeze, sending little floating seeds trailing down every which way into the air. We would collect them at a somewhat earlier stage, and manually rub them between our fingers until they fell apart. This was one of the main ingredients in our Potion*. When, years later, i later showed nat where i used to live, and these trees in particular, he understood right away how special they were, which is one of the reasons why i love him so damn much.
"Cherry Blossoms". These were all over Berkeley, but were actually just plum trees ;) They would blossom amazing pink sprays of sweetly scented, delicate flowers in the springtime, and make even the grottiest city street seem like a faraway place. We dutifully re-created them in elementary school art projects: drop some black ink on the paper, then blow the ink around into little skinny "branches" using a straw (something i still do in art projects these days..), then affix small bits of torn-and-crumpled pink tissue paper "blossoms" using tiny dots of Elmer's Glue... how i adored these crafty trees!!
There are more: The low, leafy tree in my mom's backyard when i was in high school, that my friends and i would clamber into after school (and sometimes even during school hours) to get stoned incognito. Just thinking about the clouds of smoke that must have wafted out of that thing cracks me up to this day. Or the really really tall one at Thousand Oaks park that we would hoist each other into at night, and climb almost all the way to the top, then- you guessed it: light up a bowl. Once my friend A___y dropped The Lighter (yes, we only had the one; what idiots) and M____l made her climb all the way back down to get it. Ha, ha. :)
Bare trees in winter, bird's nests finally naked for the world to see; soaring eucalyptus with an intoxicating aroma and silvery "acorns"; mango and avocado trees in Hawaii whose fruit i ate directly off the branches; Luna the redwood; the stately tree that marked the halfway-point of my journey out after a hard day's work, seeming to point the way towards home.
Do you have any trees? i would love to hear about them.
*This consisted of: My mom's giant silver metal mixing bowl, water, ripped-up leaves from each bush/tree/plant nearby, flower petals, dirt, tree bark slivers, Magic Tree catkins, and ground-up berries from a specific bush nearby, which were very watery (sort of like jicama) and had bright purple skins, and which we would grind to a paste on the wheels of our HotWheels, which, when flipped upside-down for this purpose, behaved very much like a child's power tool.
Take out the references to "God" in this lovely little Joyce Kilmer poem, and it's quite a gem. Continuing on:
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
"Who intimately lives with rain." - i love that! I feel the same way, except about wind. Am i the only one here who's ever wished she were a tree? Or seen the suggestion of a human form residing -strikingly- among the branches of an oak, elm, maple, or eucalyptus? Hopefully not. Also, i thought this was nice:
.
Found that photo on a website mentioning a tree-sit in Berkeley; ah, some things never change ;). I have a similar(ish) photo to this, weirdly enough... took Nat and A____ to Golden Gate Park, and we found some of these same wonderfully twisted trees growing low and rambling, and as usual i forced them into a photo-op. The print came out really really light- you can hardly see their two faces at first, but when you finally do they are hiding at the extreme edges of the frame. It's awesome! They are not nude, however, which is probably a good thing (by that i mean that i am in the midst of a constant battle against prudishness, not that their bodies are in need of some desperate toning regimen or some such nonsense). i wish i could show you all this photo, but until i get a scanner, nothin' doin'.
So where were we? Ah yes, trees.
Like the two small ones near the apartment where i lived as a kid, the ones which bore plums so wonderful that i always looked up at them as delicious yellow jewels. There were dark purple ones, too, but never were they as amazing and sweet. i would cram as many into my pockets (usually overalls, or my favorite pair of grey corduroys) as i could, until they began to squish, and then just eat as many as i could before reluctantly climbing down through the dappled light, onto the rickety wooden fence, and then a leap back to the earth below.
Or the fig tree, in the courtyard of that same apartment building. It had giant, fuzzy, acrid-smelling leaves, and a low, climb-able frame. There were always bustling lines of ants everywhere on the trunk, but that never stopped us from climbing up to reach the fruit, which we weren't so much into eating as we were simply plucking from the stem, and watching the milky fluid seep out from the wound, fascinated. The fig tree kept us shaded during the summer months as we splashed around in the kiddie pool underneath it. It stood stoically, like a sentinel, for years. Sometimes i wonder if it is still there?
There were also the few pine trees in the neighborhood, and their treasure? Sap. Golden, sticky, and precious- glob after glob of it. I had quite the sap collection, and i suppose i was always searching for a piece with a mosquito or other small insect held in stasis within, even though that was amber but how was i supposed to know the difference? The best part about sap-collecting was the smell. I would come down from the trees some days smelling like i was an entire pine forest all by myself. The end came when a particularly fresh and gooey piece of sap was entangled in the hair near the top of my head, giving my mother a headache and me a stern admonishment on the downsides of climbing trees.
Then there was The Magic Tree. Birch, actually (Silver Birch)- and there were definitely more than one around the street where we lived, but i always though of them all in the singular fashion: The Magic Tree. We learned in school that the betula pendula was used by Native Americans to build canoes, which i remember telling myself i would most certainly have to do someday. This tree's catkins (a word which i know now, and only wish i had known then!) would mature and blow apart in a gentle breeze, sending little floating seeds trailing down every which way into the air. We would collect them at a somewhat earlier stage, and manually rub them between our fingers until they fell apart. This was one of the main ingredients in our Potion*. When, years later, i later showed nat where i used to live, and these trees in particular, he understood right away how special they were, which is one of the reasons why i love him so damn much.
"Cherry Blossoms". These were all over Berkeley, but were actually just plum trees ;) They would blossom amazing pink sprays of sweetly scented, delicate flowers in the springtime, and make even the grottiest city street seem like a faraway place. We dutifully re-created them in elementary school art projects: drop some black ink on the paper, then blow the ink around into little skinny "branches" using a straw (something i still do in art projects these days..), then affix small bits of torn-and-crumpled pink tissue paper "blossoms" using tiny dots of Elmer's Glue... how i adored these crafty trees!!
There are more: The low, leafy tree in my mom's backyard when i was in high school, that my friends and i would clamber into after school (and sometimes even during school hours) to get stoned incognito. Just thinking about the clouds of smoke that must have wafted out of that thing cracks me up to this day. Or the really really tall one at Thousand Oaks park that we would hoist each other into at night, and climb almost all the way to the top, then- you guessed it: light up a bowl. Once my friend A___y dropped The Lighter (yes, we only had the one; what idiots) and M____l made her climb all the way back down to get it. Ha, ha. :)
Bare trees in winter, bird's nests finally naked for the world to see; soaring eucalyptus with an intoxicating aroma and silvery "acorns"; mango and avocado trees in Hawaii whose fruit i ate directly off the branches; Luna the redwood; the stately tree that marked the halfway-point of my journey out after a hard day's work, seeming to point the way towards home.
Do you have any trees? i would love to hear about them.
*This consisted of: My mom's giant silver metal mixing bowl, water, ripped-up leaves from each bush/tree/plant nearby, flower petals, dirt, tree bark slivers, Magic Tree catkins, and ground-up berries from a specific bush nearby, which were very watery (sort of like jicama) and had bright purple skins, and which we would grind to a paste on the wheels of our HotWheels, which, when flipped upside-down for this purpose, behaved very much like a child's power tool.
Tuesday, March 18
The gloaming.
This is my favorite time of day, i think- when the world outside is turning that particular shade of periwinkle blue, moving incrementally closer and closer to dusky uncertainty... It always feels to me like your last chance to get to safety, and yet there is something so exciting in that. The birds are softly cooing, and preening on their branches; the night-blooming flowers are releasing their fragrances to the air, and if you look up you can almost pretend that there is a new day beginning, instead of one just slipping away. If you wanted to say something important, now is the time.
Incidentally, "Periwinkle" was my favorite Crayola crayon color; something about the sweet blue and twinkly name always reminded me of fairies. Other contenders were Maize (purely because of the name; flat, browny-yellow was definitely not a fave color), Mulberry and Magenta (red-purples! yay!), Midnight Blue (so dark, so translucent!), Sea Green (soothingly serene), and of course, the lustrous and enigmatic metallics- Silver and Copper. The 64-pack of crayons was a hugely treasured item in our household.
As were the smelly markers. I know you kids remember those chubby, tempting, styrofoam-encased concentrated color-sticks: The seriously fruity Orange; the bright, bright-red Cherry; the garish, purple Grape; the weirdly sharp & sour Lemon; the fresh-as-hell Mint; the "Blue"berry; the lovely, delicate Cinnamon brown; and the addictive Black Licorice, which i swear i despised but could never seem to get enough of! Seriously, i think i probably smelled that one ten times more than the others. Ahhh, Mr. Sketch, how we adored thee.
Why the hell am i always waxing nostalgic about childhood art materials? What the hell is wrong with me?
next time: A lifetime of trees.
Incidentally, "Periwinkle" was my favorite Crayola crayon color; something about the sweet blue and twinkly name always reminded me of fairies. Other contenders were Maize (purely because of the name; flat, browny-yellow was definitely not a fave color), Mulberry and Magenta (red-purples! yay!), Midnight Blue (so dark, so translucent!), Sea Green (soothingly serene), and of course, the lustrous and enigmatic metallics- Silver and Copper. The 64-pack of crayons was a hugely treasured item in our household.
As were the smelly markers. I know you kids remember those chubby, tempting, styrofoam-encased concentrated color-sticks: The seriously fruity Orange; the bright, bright-red Cherry; the garish, purple Grape; the weirdly sharp & sour Lemon; the fresh-as-hell Mint; the "Blue"berry; the lovely, delicate Cinnamon brown; and the addictive Black Licorice, which i swear i despised but could never seem to get enough of! Seriously, i think i probably smelled that one ten times more than the others. Ahhh, Mr. Sketch, how we adored thee.
Why the hell am i always waxing nostalgic about childhood art materials? What the hell is wrong with me?
next time: A lifetime of trees.
Oh, i forgot to mention:
the time when someone yanked on the front doors of the bakery, saw that they were locked, then walked around to the side of the building and CAME IN THROUGH THE WINDOW.
(we had a rather large, low-to-the-ground, sliding window, which was open because it was pushing 85 degrees outside, which translates to more like 90 when you work somewhere with ovens!)
I would have liked to beat that man senseless with a rye baguette. The worst part was that he just nonchalantly began looking at the pastry case, as if this was completely normal behavior. I was agog, i tell you- agog.
also, here is a superhero-related cartoon song adventure, just for fun:
The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
...hope you enjoy! (Also: it's okay if you dance along to that like a dork; i always do.)
(we had a rather large, low-to-the-ground, sliding window, which was open because it was pushing 85 degrees outside, which translates to more like 90 when you work somewhere with ovens!)
I would have liked to beat that man senseless with a rye baguette. The worst part was that he just nonchalantly began looking at the pastry case, as if this was completely normal behavior. I was agog, i tell you- agog.
also, here is a superhero-related cartoon song adventure, just for fun:
The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
...hope you enjoy! (Also: it's okay if you dance along to that like a dork; i always do.)
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