HoneyMoon Trip

This is an account the 'Honeymoon' trip Mike and I took after we got hitched- followed by a Shark poem I wrote to accompany a sculpture for a show that required that sort of thing.

This is a change from my usual postings. I have been working on a sketchbook for the Fiction Project - which requires handwritten stories with illustrations. The original book must be turned in to the Brooklyn Art Library, where people can check them out.

Tattoos

Maybe I am working things out on paper in an effort to resolve issues that I have been carrying around with me. The scars of the past are etched into and under my skin - indelible tattoos that commemorate achievements, mark indiscretions, and document misunderstandings. Rather than beaming with pride, polishing the trophies of my successes, I instead find myself fretting over the missteps I have made, and look for long sleeves to cover the marks. The prized possessions and unwieldy burdens of my past seem to persistently buzz around in my mind like those summer gnats that are unswattable - that no matter how fast you walk away from them seem to stay a part of your airspace. Am I looking for the 'undo' button, so I can back-track to that pivotal moment or phrase that set me onto a slippery emotional path towards future remorse? While attending an art reception years ago, I made some harsh comments about a few pieces on display - wondering out loud why on earth this piece of crap had been selected for an award and not some other. I later found out that the artist had been standing behind me with her two young daughters. There those kids were, all dressed up and here on a special trip to see their Mom get an award - only to hear some mean lady trash talking her beautiful creation. We've all put our foot in our mouth at times and this is one I replay again and again, wishing to be able to hit the mute button on myself. In front of her kids, Jeeze! What a jerk I was. No I hadn't burned down a church or strangled a puppy, but I cringe every time I recall that incident. Now when I am ready to shoot off my mouth in public, I remember those two little kids and put on the safety, lest I harm them or my feet. My memory is a creation that I return to and tweak, sometimes with the insights of maturity, sometimes with a new piece of information which skews things into a different arrangement, most times with a sigh of resignation. But every once in awhile, a new revelation shines a light on previously darkened passages and I find a pathway to serenity. In a never ending process of mending tears and holes in the suit that clothes me for life, those patches become hard-earned badges that commemorate lessons learned.

15 Books

I was recently asked to name my top ten books and was at a loss as to how to narrow my choices - loved then - loved now - coming to the conclusion that it would be best to go with the Facebook note qualification - 'which ones stuck with me'. I am still loath to limit myself, different books for different times, the list would change over the years, but some would keep finding their way back into the queue - some would stick. I remember getting one of my first books as a gift, a golden book of Frosty the Snowman. I loved singing the hit 50's song along in my head as I read it. There was another children's book about a beaver that dug his own swimming pool, patting down the sticks and mud on the sides with his flat paddle tail, I later used his technique of sticks and rocks and mud to create little lakes in our sandbox. There were walks to our little local library with Mom, at first she read to me the books we brought home and later on I read them all by myself. She would tell me how as a child I would get so excited about whatever current book I was reading that I would follow along beside her, relating choice excerpts to her while she weeded. A favorite as a kid was Miss Pickerel Goes to Mars. A chapter book that I could read! - and I owned it! It was about a little old farm lady who inadvertently rides along on a spaceship trip - outer space was a favorite topic at our house. Dad's old paperback science fiction collection was stored up in our attic in cardboard boxes and I remember getting distracted reading through them trying to decide which ones to bring down to my room, It was Southern California and perpetually summer, our attic was a stifling crawlspace, sweat poured down my neck as I sped through each smelly yellowing paperback, stopping occasionally to look at the lurid cover graphics - the cool ones were the double editions where you could flip the book over and the other story was printed upside down, both ends meeting in the center. Two for the price of one! Dad couldn't resist a bargain! As I grew older and had acquired more books of my own, I catalogued them, putting numbers on their spines with a blue felt pen and writing out an index card for each so that when my sisters and friends 'checked' them out I had a record of their whereabouts - the ying and yang of possessing and sharing. In my high school years I would drive a carload of little sisters to the library once a week to exchange books, wandering around the stacks as the ding ding of 'library closing in ten minutes' sounded and rounding up little strays amongst the piles of books. When stuck at home, we would park ourselves in the short passageway that connected the entry hall and our living room. In that narrow passage were floor to ceiling bookshelves that held novels, biographies, magazines, math books, travel books, and various Time-Life series. There we would lose ourselves in our search for something for a school report, or spend hours distracted by the pictures in National Geographic Magazines. Sometimes we would expand our range, meandering through Dad's old college math books, with their odd numbers and graphs - such fascinating gibberish, magical in it's indecipherability. we'd climb up the shelves seeking out obscure texts - every so often finding a long lost Easter egg that had been a little too well hidden. Mom loved historical fiction - books with characters that actually lived through epic events. She was continually shoving books at us. I refused to enjoy The Bobbsey Twins and found Gone With the Wind's heroine not a strong role model, but an irritating bitch. Years later she sent her very first Bobbsey Twins volume to my young daughters. It was given to my Mom when she was 8yrs old by her Aunt Nida. Mom enclosed a letter with it describing how she and my sister found it propping up one of the bunk beds at our cabin - obviously no longer the cherished tome of her youth, but still playing a supportive role in our lives. I wish I had the WWII first aid manual we kept in our family room. Mimicking the diagrams I would use torn sheets carefully rolled up into bandage rolls and truss the wounds of willing little sisters who played war casualties. After they had endured hours of binding they were dispensed medication in the form of 'smarties' candies to speed their recovery. My list includes some of my parent's favorites and others I found by following the paths they carved out for me in my youth. Some of these I made my own kids read and they expressed their gratitude with a mix of tears and kisses and groans and curses. Years later when we children gathered to divide our parents' possessions, it was the book collection that took us the longest. As we read excerpts and shared memories together, one in-law declared that they could read one in the time it took us to sort through them.

here's my list - in a random order and omitting oh so many

Barthomew and the 500 Hats by Dr. Suess

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth

Franney and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

Tarzan of the Apes series by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck

Island by Aldous Huxley

Fahrenheit 451 and the short stories by Ray Bradbury

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Fatu-Hiva by Thor Heyerdahl

Julian by Gore Vidal

any and all Agatha Christie

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Our Mutual Friend and lots of others by Charles Dickens