Something new and different!

Ahh, the power of being in charge of your own blog. I'm in charge! I can write about whatever I want! I can discuss everything from lavender to fireworks to being laid off! Supper clubs! The weather! The sky's the limit! Having said that, I am introducing a side of me you may not know. Amateur artist and appreciator of art, the whole wide world wonderful range of it… from Matisse’s “Purple Robe and Anemones” to the magnolia blossoms unfolding outside my window… to the way the evening sun last week illuminated the spring colors in a kind of cinematic glory.

 I create vignettes. They are throughout my apartment, here and there, having come to life over the past several years as I have steadily figured out just what it is that makes me happy.

This particular vignette is called The Lady in the Crane. That's a Monopoly piece coming out of the cup, you know the one, the man on the horse.

Supper club

I joined a supper club. At my church. Somehow that sounds very hot-dish, sensible shoes, permed hair, coffee in flowered cups. Someone in their 50s. Oh wait, I am in my 50s. I actually looking forward to it, the set-up is that we meet at each other's houses once a month and everyone brings something. I'm bringing oatmeal-raisin cookies because I'm really good at baking and not so confident about the rest of the courses. My son's not coming but I'm broiling him some chicken. I had to ask at the meat market how to do this and she looked at me as if I was asking them if chicken was edible in the first place. When she realized I really did need direction, she very gently and not even a little bit sarcastically said, "You just put it under the broiler." She suggested some olive oil and salt and pepper, she pushed for paprika, onion powder and garlic powder but I think I'll keep it simple.

Temperature change

Last week, even my bones were warm. I went across the street to the little garden the park ranger is letting me take care of and the daffodils and early lilies were taking no mind of the foot of mulch the park dumped on them last fall. Spikes of green underfoot, tiny fists of buds on the stiff hydrangea stalks, even the coral bells (which I was sure would be forever drowned under the weight) were sending their first scalloped leaves through to test the air. Back home, outside my window, white blossoms of the star magnolia tree multiplied by the day, filling up the lower pane of the glass with shimmering petals. Even after the sun went down, their whiteness drank up every bit of available light and they were faintly visible in the deep indigo evening. Then, the New England weather, which perhaps had been distracted with the task of planning a long and miserably humid summer, remembered it had a reputation to uphold and WHAM BAM. I had to turn the heat back on, lower the few storms I had cheerfully raised the week before and put on an extra blanket. In the morning, the magnolia flowers no longer held their faces to the sun but rather hung, somewhat pitifully, from the ends of their branches. They reminded me now of old ladies' hankies, soft brown stains from too many dabbings at a damp neck, pulled from a long forgotten pocket. When the tree releases its remnants of bloom, they'll go in an afternoon of breezes, looking like a snow squall as they fall to the grass and street. For now, though fragile and old, they're still dancing and waving in the cool morning.

sad and worried

Laid off... again... third time in under two years. Where's NPR to put a tape recorder in my home so my less-than-stellar work life can be broadcast for the whole nation. Today is my last day of work... so bittersweet. At least I know I can go around the corner on a weekend and visit these new and funny friends I've made. I'm soooo worried about finding a job. I have an interview in the morning for a family-school liaison position. I want to go in there and wow them. I know I'd be really good at this job. I've been looking around on line at other family-school liaisons and what they are offering so that I can be fluent in the subject by tomorrow morning. I'm anxious. Trying to stave off disappointment on the other side of not getting the job. Feeling like crying. Snapped at my son this morning and then cried and said I was worried about not having a job. He came over to me and rubbed my back a little and kissed me on the shoulder saying what a good worker I was and that he was sure the interview would go really well.

I'm thinking that maybe I should send the job description to my sister on the West coast so she can go out in the yard and hold it up to the California sunshine and maybe that will work some magic. Or maybe I should bury a copy in the back yard and burn sage over it.

Maybe I need to get a grip.

I will prevail no matter what although I will stop short of selling my little pumpkin on the street corner.

more about the moon

The moon was low and soft in the late late afternoon sky, as if it were trying to disguise itself as a planet, deep yellow with grey streaks of cloud. Later it rose and was disguised as a Necco wafer, Canada mint, or possibly the cross-section of a marshmallow. I realized as I drove home tonight that I don't think of the moon as a sphere, rather as a disk, as if it had an edge and was vast in its flatness. Completely mysteriously it hangs up there, sometimes round, sometimes narrow, sometimes gone behind a drape of shadow. I have come to depend on its presence, through heartache, through raising a teenager, through a parent's lifechanging illness. If the moon were a word instead of an orb nearly 24 thousand miles away, it would be FAITH.

winter moon

A very, very short post albeit a necessary one. The moon, oh man, the moon this evening was down by the horizon, a huge heart-squeezing orb glowing through the winter tree trunks and I was driving and thinking of love at the same time and then I was crying and feeling good and sorry for myself and somehow connected to every other sad lover since the beginning of time. Ah, such sweet drama.

fireworks

We watched the fireworks… for hours they exploded and sailed above our heads all up and down the Milford beach, an annual friendly competition among residents with plenty of money to spend on this sort of thing. Spark lines whistling upwards and then ear-splitting booms, light blooming, spinning, and falling on sand and ocean. We were in the very middle of this celebration, not watching from a distance as I was used to, but underneath it. The final embers could have landed on our shoulders. We walked the crowded beach road, little kids on bikes, older people in chairs, everyone in between having to walk sideways to avoid bumping shoulders. Lots of stop-and-chats along the way: Hey how are you? Great to see you! How’s the boat? Are you ready for the race? Can you believe the World Cup? And these firework displays! John says he didn’t buy new this year, these are just his leftovers but I don’t believe it. Hey, this is my friend Lizzy.

Sitting on two chairs facing the harbor, we passed a metal thermos back and forth, sipping the last of a fruity bubbly tipsy concoction Lou mixed for the night’s travels. Bonfires fading behind us, the beach still busy with people glad to be out late under a deep July sky with the salt water nearby. A group came by collecting chairs and we got ready to give ours up, they laughed and said, No no, stay as long as you want! They wandered away, lugging their empty chairs and we settled back, happy with the ease and beauty of the evening.