Category Archives: Splashes

The Curviest Music in History

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La Paz Music Statue

John Philip Sousa once said, “Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.”

I’m not sure if it was jazz or some other beat that inspired the creation of these three curvaceous musicians, found in a plaza a block or so off the Malecon in La Paz, and since the descriptive tablets have either been removed or never existed, I may never know.

What I am certain of, is that the music that inspired this public art had to be the kind you hear, not just with your feet, but with every part of your body.

I imagine the sculptor hearing a street musician play a tune, while another joins in. I imagine a balmy breeze spreading the salt air from the bay throughout the city, and people out and about in the evening, listening to the combined voices of singers, instruments, sea birds, rustling palms, and ocean waves.

My friend Carmi says that this week’s Thematic Photographic theme is “curvaceous.” I’m pretty certain these sculpted musicians played the curviest music in history.

The Mess of Humanity

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MessyCoffee

My friend Carmi hosts a photography meme on his blog, and recently (though I think it changed last night, or will change later today) his theme had to do with messiness.

What better mess is there than the one made of cookie crumbs, drips of coffee spilled over the edge of mugs, and crumpled napkins? This mess isn’t the result of a tantrum or a break-in, but is, instead, the natural by-product of good conversation.

It’s evidence of my trip to Mexico to spend time with my mother, who is one of the most generous people ever to populate Planet Earth.

Our adventures, this trip, weren’t terribly grand. We soaked in the sun and sipped lots of espresso, bobbed in her pool, floated in the ocean, and ate several excellent meals in restaurants and at her table.

If I didn’t get a lot of writing done, I came home feeling like my soul was well-rested, and my mind is brim-full of stories I’m getting ready to share.

There’s another kind of messiness, though, the kind that wells up from the place of our deepest emotions. While I was relaxing south of the border, my husband was here, and a skirmish among our dogs ended with the messy reality of putting Miss Cleo to sleep.

This was a decision that would have been made within the year, anyway, but a part of me feels like I failed her for not being here, and failed my husband for making him do it without me.

Human death, too, tainted my trip: My great-aunt Peg died last week. She was nearly 97, and died in familiar surroundings, wrapped in the arms of people who loved her, and comforted by her strong faith in God.

Oddly, that knowledge means that while I feel her loss, I’m less emotional about it than I am about my dog.

But all those tangled emotions, joy and sadness, grief and solace, pleasure and pain, are part of the Mess of simply Being Human. And, just as in improv, where there are no wrong answers, just high and low percentage choices, in life, there are no wrong feelings, just wrong actions people sometimes take in reaction to them.

My own mind is messier than usual right now – too much time, and too little being required of me, I think. I’ll be working, these next few weeks, to reorganize mentally as well as physically.

But not completely, because sometimes I think it’s the messes we make that keep us interesting.

Sunday Brunch: Heroes, Villains, and Loss – Excerpt

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reflectionthroughabugle_by_markcoffey_via_istockphoto

Reflection Through a Bugle by Mark Coffee via iStockPhoto.com – Click to embiggen

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Earlier this week, I found out that a good writing buddy lost his battle to cancer a few months ago. He was a veteran, and an amazing writer, and so I talked a lot about him.

Excerpt:

Fading light dims the sight,
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.
From afar drawing nigh — Falls the night.

Like many people, however, especially those of us with family, friends, or loved ones serving in the military, “Taps” has a more emotional context. It’s the bugle call you hear at funerals, and once you’ve heard it in that setting you never lost that connection. For me, the tears come, mostly for my grandfather, but for a string of others as well, from the very first note.

This weekend, Memorial Day Weekend, “Taps” is playing on an infinite loop in my head.

Why? Because I found out recently that a dear friend, a military veteran who survived a tour in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army, then a year in Kabul with the National Guard, lost his last battle, one with that insidious enemy we call “cancer,” in February.

His name was Mike Greene, but I knew him best by the handle he used on OpenDiary (an early blogging platform that existed before LiveJournal or Blogger): WarriorPoet.

You can read the entire post here: http://allthingsgirl.com/2013/05/sunday-brunch-heroes-villains-and-loss/.

Taking Myself to Bed

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illustration-of-woman-sleeping-on-white-sheets

There are days when I wake up in the morning and am disgustingly perky, bouncing in and out of the bathroom, dancing my way to the kitchen, making coffee because I want it, and not because I need it.

Then there are the days like today, when I woke up aching from head to toe, feeling like my brain was wrapped in gauze, and that every movement required me to swim through pudding. I have these days about once a month, but this one snuck up on me, although, in retrospect it explains the meltdown I had via email with two good friends. Hormones are SO much fun!

Fortunately, today was a day where I had no deadlines, so I was able to take myself off to bed as soon as I’d finished wrangling the dogs (the three older ones have to be fed before the puppy can be let out in the morning, or no one eats the right food, and since the four dogs have three different types of very expensive grain-free dog food, this is an important part of my mornings).

I had every intention of doing some writing, but my brain and body joined forces and dragged me into sleep, and so, I spent most of the day curled up on the bed with a stack of books remaining largely ignored, the computers all turned off, and three of the four dogs curled up near me.

Around five, I began to feel slightly more human. Or at least, I felt hungry, so I had a tuna sandwich and part of a ginger ale, took a shower, read magazines for a while, and ran to the grocery store, though I still had that pudding-feeling.

The house is devoid of chocolate (with the exception of chocolate protein shake mix), and I made a point of NOT buying any at the store, but when we got home, I brewed some lovely Kusmi tea which had come in my last Birchbox. The flavor was called “euphoria” and was roasted mate with chocolate and orange. I added a level teaspoon of turbinado sugar, and while I didn’t feel euphoric after drinking it, I did feel a bit more grounded and centered.

Another mug of tea followed about an hour later, along with a cup of strawberry Chobani yogurt, and a ton of water.

And now? Now it’s just after midnight, and while several layers of the brain-gauze have been lifted, I’m still tired and sore, so I’m taking myself back to bed.

Sometimes sleep really is the best medicine.

With One Hand Tied Behind My Back

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I woke up this morning with my right elbow throbbing with pain. It hurts to bend it, and if I try to lift anything heavier than my iPhone, tears spring to my eyes.

Icy Hot Balm, ibuprofen, and a single, leftover flexeril got me through the day, mainly because I logged off everything and spent the day doing laundry, reading, watching comfort television (currently Season 3 of Gilmore Girls) and napping. Max was so worried about me (possibly because he hit my sore elbow causing me to send a glass of cranberry juice flying across the kitchen) that licking my face clear of tears wasn’t enough; he curled up on Fuzzy’s side of the bed, under the covers, and let me rest my sore arm on his warm, soft back.

Dogs make everything better.

Even when you essentially have one hand tied behind your back.

Walking Dessert

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In preparation for the annual summer lightening of my hair color, I’m allowed to use hot water to wash my hair again (my usual technicolored dyes require tepid-water washing) and I’m also once again able to use mint shampoo (mint strips moisture and color).

My current minty fresh hair products of choice? Organix Mint and Tea Tree Oil, which come in curvy green bottles, and smell almost exactly like Girl Scout Cookies…Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies, to be specific.

The Dove body-wash I’m currently using, is made with pomegranate but smells like raspberry Zingers.

Combine them? I’m a walking dessert.

Whatever Happened?

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…to lazy Sundays where the most taxing thing we did was grill hamburgers outside and sit in deck chairs with gripping novels?

This weekend was a blur. A vet trip (just routine stuff), dropping the foster dog at adoptions, a trek across town to a favorite eatery, a facial, the reverse trek to fetch the unadopted foster dog (he’s such a great dog; I KNOW the right family will find him), and then barely enough time to collapse into bed after a too-hasty dinner.

Today? Rudely awakened by work, an early trip to CostCo, laundry…

I need another rest day.

Lamplight is the word of the day….

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CherryBlossom-and-Lamps-by-mstroz-via-istockphoto

It’s time for Sunday Brunch at All Things Girl, and today I wrote about lamplight.

Here’s an excerpt:

I remain convinced that the only thing that would improve my house would not be replacing the cabinets or rebuilding the decorative lintel over the front door, but adding a lamp post in the center of my lawn. We have a corner lot, so a light at the center point would shine as a soft, comforting beacon no matter the direction of approach.

Streetlamps aside, my favorite days are what one of my aunts named for me: lamp-lit days. These are the days like this morning, where even hours after sunrise, the sky is shrouded in a cool mist that softens the light and deepens the shadows, making it absolutely necessary to interact with the world from within the protective circle of light from a lamp.

Oh, we have overhead lighting, of course, but somehow to use such glaring brightness would seem a sacrilege.

Click through for the complete post.

Mind-blowing Television

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I never thought a show on the ABC family channel could blow my mind, but tonight’s episode of the teens drama Switched at Birth did just that.

From the beginning, I’ve been a fan of the show despite the fact that I’m woefully outside the target demographic. Partly it’s the engaging and talented cast that keeps me watching, and partly it’s the incorporation of not just deaf actors but Deaf culture that the show is getting better and better at as it continues to develop.

Tonight, however, I have a new appreciation for the show, and for those who are deaf and hard of hearing. Why? Because tonight was the much-hyped all-ASL episode, in which, with the exception of a brief scene in the beginning and a few words at the end, no audible spoken dialogue was used. (Obviously the hearing actors who were signing were speaking as they signed, we just weren’t given an audio track.)

So why was my mind blown? It’s not that I’m new to ASL. I mean, I don’t have a working knowledge of it beyond the alphabet and a few choice phrases, but I had high school classmates who were mainstreamed deaf students, so I’m past the gawking stage.

No, it’s because this episode – as it was intended to do – made me realize how much we (in general, and I in particular) rely on audio cues to follow conversations.

More than once, I’ve written about the fact that when I need noise while I’m working I play reruns of The West Wing because it’s both dialogue-heavy and familiar. I don’t need to see the facial expressions to know how Donna REALLY feels about Josh, for example.

But even when I’m watching television I haven’t seen before, I’m rarely giving it my full attention. I’m texting, reading, playing with the dogs, getting up to refill my drink or serve dinner (yeah, we often spend our one hour of tv a night eating dinner – we’re adults, it’s allowed). Rarely, however, do I truly focus on the show in question.

Tonight’s episode of Switched at Birth, however, required my full focus. I had no choice but to put down the phone, and JUST WATCH. And, yes, okay, there were music cues, but they just enhanced the emotional drama.

I knew I would respond favorably to the episode, because it was called “Uprising,” and I’m all about activism – I come from a long line of activists. But I wasn’t expecting to feel TIRED after the episode – because it does take a LOT of energy to focus – really focus – on a conversation where you don’t have even non-verbal noise to give you context.

But this is why I love this show, and why I hope many more people start watching it. Because it DOES make us pay attention. Sure, it’s still a teen drama underneath everything else, and true, it does have it’s soapy moments. Nevertheless, it’s innovative, interesting, truly compelling tv.

And that young Sean Berdy isn’t bad to look at either.

(Hey, he’s legal, and I’m allowed to look.)

Thursday 13: In the Pink

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raspberries_by_matka-wariatka_via_istockphoto

I know Valentine’s Day was last week, but I’m in a distinctly PINK mood today, so I’m celebrating a color I used to detest, and now can’t get enough of, with this week’s late-ish entry for Thursday 13:

  1. Beet juice, when it stains the sink and cutting board, seeping into the cracks in the ancient enamel.
  2. Gerbera daisies, especially when they’re in salvaged glass bottle-turned-vase.
  3. Raspberries, the perfect sweet-tart explosion on your tongue.
  4. The blush of a new romance, just as it begins to take form.
  5. The tender kisses you still share almost twenty years later.
  6. The sky when the sun is at just the right angle against the clouds, at dusk or dawn.
  7. Cherry blossoms against a chilly gray sky on a damp day.
  8. Roses cut from the back yard bush – watch out for thorns!
  9. A fresh coat of OPI “Dutch Tulips” nail polish.
  10. A strawberry and vanilla breakfast smoothie made with unsweetened almond milk.
  11. Grocery store carnations that your husband brings home because he knows you love to fill the house with flowers.
  12. The soft, warm belly of a wriggling dog asking for attention and affection.
  13. The hint of color that makes watermelon tourmaline your favorite semi-precious stone.