Visible Woman

Goodbye, Friend

2012-01-29T08:26:00.006-06:00

Sunset came on January 20, 2012 for my dear friend Charles Gentry. His obituary is here. On facebook there are scores of pictures and he's hugging someone in almost every one.

My thoughts on my friend:

Charles came into our lives as an exuberant participant in charity events, but I really got to know him when he needed a little help from his friends. After his brain injury he went through therapy and he lived in Tarrytown where only a few things were within walking distance for him. Somehow we fell into a habit of having lunch every month or so. He would bring along a notebook and write down things we talked about. He said his cognitive therapist recommended it as a way to work on memory and such. I know a lot of people were picking him up and taking him to appointments and exercise classes. My contribution to helping him through that time was small. But one thing that struck me is how he didn’t mind asking for help and he made you glad to give it, but he never felt sorry for himself or doubted that he would be able to return the favors one day.

One day we were going to lunch and he told me that he’d had all this time on his hands so he’d decided to clean out his closet and he had a lot of stuff to take to Top Drawer. (A thrift store supporting Project Transitions, a charity we both supported.) I volunteered to borrow my dad’s van and take his stuff to the store on our excursion and told him I thought I’d just bring my dad along for lunch, too. I remember how appreciative he was and how he made my dad feel his gratitude. (Dad also purloined a couple of things, including a large sack of bird seed.) I’m guessing Charles was planning a downsizing and a move to downtown even then. When we all moved to the 360, Charles and other friends and Forrest and I reveled in our ‘neighborhood’ and he never failed to exalt the glories of the downtown lifestyle when we’d go to lunch or we’d be at a party or even when we just randomly bumped into each other. He was living his dream and he always reminded me that we were, too.

We promised to take care of each other. When I found out what had happened to Charles, I initially felt I hadn't done my job. Then I realized that we really had taken care of each other. It’s sad that Charles’ journey went no further but I believe we all contributed to his life after his recovery -- because he let us in to do it. And he contributed to our community and took care of us, too; not least by making us see some true things about life and death.

I have been struck at how many people felt so close to Charles. We invited Charles to events, he and I had lunch dates and he threw parties and invited us. We weren’t the kind of friends who saw each other almost daily (and he had those). But everyone in his orbit has expressed how much they felt he cared for them. Because when we got together he gushed with enthusiasm that we’d met up and that he got to see us and that we were on this earth at the same time and the same place. Which is really what friendship is all about.

In My Head

2012-01-28T13:03:00.002-06:00

[Thanks to Off the Wall, a cool SoCo shop for this reflection shot.]

I find things to worry about. From the ridiculous to the sublime. What is happening here? What just happened there? What if this happens? Or that? When will I die? What if I run out of money? What if the world ends, more or less?

Meanwhile though I sometimes find a way to enjoy reading (and typing if not writing). I whack a tennis ball for a winner and am thrilled. I take a walk, looking at houses and lawns, dogs and other walkers as well as litter and blades of grass. I think: it's great to be alive, observing this moving this way. And really: who cares what's next.

Still...I'm going to get that air bag recall in my car looked at this week, I swear.

Who Are You Again? And I?

2012-01-25T15:36:00.002-06:00

[Photo at a Shop called Howl on South Lamar.]

When you reach the ripe old age of (insert mumbling dissembling here) you have met a lot of people. They have crossed your path in classes, at work, at play, at events, in your neighborhood, at clubs and bars. Some are family or close enough. Some are family of friends or people you met on trips or through random connections (e.g. social media). They are friends of friends or people you met a degree or two or more away from the initial friend.

If you are like me, you keep up with this crew in various ways. In your head, of course, in that compartment labeled 'people I know.' This mental database contains a lot of people who might actually know you and also the 'famous' (locally or otherwise) who have little chance of recalling who you might be. This jumbled mess is the reason that when I'm trying to remember a friend whose first name is, say, Robert, that a chef's last name or a movie star's might appear in what is my slow-moving train of thought.

My husband has two large Rolodex wheels crammed full of cards, many with business cards attached, others scribbled on. Many times he retrieves precious info from this gadget. Of course, I'm betting there are names and info for people he has completely forgotten, too.

My major contact list is in the form of a computer data base. Currently in a Microsoft Access file, it's been in at least two other computer data base forms (one was, I believe, managed by a data base program called, strangely, Paradox). This data base has been converted, updated and columns added over a long and tangled life. When I first designed the columns...I didn't include 'email' as a heading but resorted to typing them into 'comments' for a long while and I've never added a cell phone column, just putting the cell phone into comments when people had both and now, of course, just putting cell phone into the phone column now that many don't have a land line. When arranging big events, I added columns for 'adult count' and 'kid count' and 'hotel/air.' I added some columns along the way to aid selection for mail/merge like 'XMAS' and 'TEMP.' The thing is a hot mess but a very important data base to me and because I'm too lazy to convert it again, I've had to buy new versions of Access (or Office Professional) along the way.

Of course I have contact information collected in phones and e-mail programs, too. I had the same cell phone for a decade from Sprint. I once typed all the contacts in it into a word document. I saved this in an Evernote (a program that allows you to have notes to yourself in browsers and on gadgets). The iPhone conveniently offers to call the things that look like phone numbers. Gradually some of these are added to my iPhone contact list which is, however, pretty short because really who phones people any longer? And I'm not really into texting either.

Then there are people (and groups) that I 'follow' or have listed as 'friends' or 'professional contacts' or have placed in 'circles' on social media.

There is overlap in all these databases from the mental to the modern social media. I also confess to having found a few printed phone lists the other day from jobs I had which I've never thrown away because they help me remember who these co-workers actually were. Or their names anyway.

There are people in that mental data base who've never made it to any real contact list and who aren't on social media (or not connected with me there). I might say 'hi' to these folks, I might have even had dinner with them, worked closely with them on something or sat through meetings for some charity. But I couldn't come up with an address or phone number on a bet. (Although phone books and Internet searches might do it. And private clubs we belong to have directories.)

I added three columns to the computer data base the other day. One to try to summarize how I came to know the person at first point of contact and one to rate the likelihood of ever communicating with them again. Then a third to describe what the current relationship is. There were a number of people in there who, honestly, I don't have any idea who they are. I should have put a comment in when I added them. I know that a few were friends of my dad's mostly and that I added them to this database to invite people to his 90th birthday party a few years ago. I should probably just delete the names but couldn't bring myself to do it. Some I knew pretty well myself through him and I've had to weed out the ones who died. Every year during holidays or while selecting names for a party list, I delete the dead people. Sometimes you just wipe out the line. Sometimes you have to remove the name of one half of a couple. Just a few days ago I had word that someone died. I found that I didn't have a snail mail address for a sympathy card. This couple had moved around and even though I'd been to an event at one house they had I had zero points of contact in my head or elsewhere. Only the dead person in the couple was on social media. There has been lots of press about what happens to people's social media feeds when they die. I don't really find it morbid or weird or anything myself. What's the difference between that and a hand-written Christmas card list? We got a Christmas card in my in-laws mail for both of them during the holidays. He died in January and she died in November. Someone didn't get the word. Anyway, we found the address for our sympathy card (where this digression started) by e-mailing a friend who we knew was close to the surviving partner.

That's one reason I like being on people's Christmas card lists: you keep up with their addresses. When I receive holiday cards, thank-you notes or invitations, I always pull up my data base and double check the address, spelling of names, zip codes etc.

But...life goes on. People enter and exit. And they don't always exit by dying. Sometimes we just never see them again. Sometimes that's how we'd wish it, sometimes not. You just sort of never know, especially about casual friends and acquaintances.

I began this digression several weeks ago. Since then a friend who lived here in the high rise died. The enormous number of connections he had and we had with him came into sharp relief. And there's his record in my database, his number on my phone. Eliminating them is too fraught today. Another time. And when I attend a memorial for him that's coming up I'll look around and realize how his connections overlap with mine in unexpected ways and also wonder more than once "what's that person's name?" and "are they in my database?"

When I started writing this it wasn't about death. And really, it's still not. But as with everything else, death has a way of sneaking into every conversation and changing all the parameters.

Travel Looms

2012-01-19T15:20:00.003-06:00

As soon as we get a piece of info about scheduling some medical tests we are going to assume that we can book some trips. Getaways. Fun. See new things. Revisit places we love. "New York and Portland [OR] are givens," said himself who is now a partner in pretty much all my travels.We'd considered taking a cruise some time, too. We'd even casually talked about doing one with another retired couple. We knew someone who was on the Costa Concordia (he and his companion got off unhurt). Gives you pause. I am a big believer in travel insurance and giving yourself a lot of options (taking spare glasses and your prescription; putting money, passports, credit cards in different places and one on your person if possible). But I don't think sinking ships or news of natural disasters or terrorists will keep us from traveling. We won't be going to the world's more dangerous places, of course.

We have even started blocking out some times and refusing to make plans for local events during those times.

I've always been a big fan of travel myself. When I traveled for business, I almost always found some time to do some sightseeing. When himself still worked his small business and wouldn't be gone for too long, we'd do long weekends and I'd go for longer trips with friends or meeting up with them and more or less going on my own. When I was a mere twenty-four years old I quit a perfectly good job and went to Europe armed with a Eurail Pass and a desire to see places that seemed impossibly far away during my impecunious childhood and college years. I've never regretted it.

So Bon Voyage to me. Multiple good trips. I hope. And even if something bad happens...well, if you don't survive...what a way to go. And if you do...what a story.

Is there a Draft? Do I Measure Up?

2012-01-18T16:11:00.003-06:00

I can't seem to post here. There are a half dozen or more drafts sitting around unposted. They include pictures, edited and re-edited thoughts, tags. But I do not hit publish.

I tweet. Which is all I can do, it seems with my head full of my reaction to current allergens in Central Texas. (The pollen of the mountain juniper aka 'cedar' and mold.)

Maybe I'll edit some of that junk and publish it. Or maybe I'll just keep tweeting and having the tweets fire off to facebook. It's come to that.

I do like this picture, though. Good old Uncommon Objects.

Where To Begin

2012-01-06T09:30:00.001-06:00

After a long pause, I finally got around to writing a blog entry on Monday, November 14. I felt a bit adrift then. We were planning a little celebration (of our first date) with some friends. We had a trip to New York scheduled. (Which we took December 5-12. The above picture is our multiple reflections in one of the Bloomingdale Christmas windows.) I couldn't decide what, if anything to do about Christmas and the holidays. Whether to send cards, buy presents for anyone.

On November 16 my mother-in-law died. (The events of that day are somewhat interesting. See Forrest's description here.) That capped off a year and a half during which Forrest had a cancer scare and two surgeries; my dad died; his dad died; I disposed of my Dad's estate; he handled his dad's; and his mother died, leaving us parent-less. Then we begin disposing of his mother's estate.

There were three services, burials and such to arrange during what seemed like such a short time. There were fiduciary duties. There were (mercifully short) trips to MD Anderson, times in hospitals here. Three ambulance rides at the end for parents. Through it all we were very 'lucky.' Lucky FFP's cancer has apparently not spread. Lucky our parents didn't suffer too long. (My mother died in 2002 and, sadly, she did suffer a lot longer than I would have liked. My dad, of course, had his share of problems in the last few years.). But still. We were lucky. We had the money to handle things, for me to retire and take care of things for Dad after mother died. For Forrest to retire. We had time to see my dad through some trouble, to look after some things for his parents. We have the money now to not worry about money but just do what needs to be done with houses and stuff and all that.

Lucky or not, things are different. I realized after my dad died that I'd stayed young (in my own mind) and exuded confidence that I could take care of things trying to help him through his old age. Forrest did most of the things for his mom but her presence made me feel younger. Because she needed us, didn't she? Because we were young and strong and capable, right?

Now we can arrange to travel and not worry about what parental difficulties may arise at home. But, of course, we may find ourselves in difficulties. Can't really escape that.

We have kind of sleep-walked through the last six weeks. We went on with our schedule after a few days of handling my mother-in-law's services. We cleaned the valuables and mementos out of the house. We drifted through Christmas. I finally printed a few cards and sent them post-Christmas. We had a fancy dinner with friends on Christmas Eve and we were invited to a family gathering with someone else's family for Christmas Day. I didn't buy any presents except hostess gifts. FFP and I bought whatever we wanted and I sent money to my nieces and sister.

Now I wake up and it is 2012 and I'm vacillating between wanting to make some changes (blog, write my novel, exercise more, socialize with people, travel here, travel there, get rid of stuff, get new stuff) and wanting to roll down the shutters and be a recluse, changing as little as possible and buying nothing.

Where will I go with it? Will the blog record the journey or will I go back inside my head? Too early to tell. Going through old blog entries for the links in this entry make me realize that sometimes it does help just to write it down.

Om My Walk

2011-11-14T16:06:00.006-06:00

Life is so complicated these days that you have to leave home to relax. Get in the theater with your smart phone politely silenced and put in your pocket, concentrate on the production for a couple of hours. Go on a walk where you have to watch the ground for things to trip on and watch for cars or bikes that might collide with you, focus only on what's really nearby and what's in your head.

Even driving there is so much input as you whiz by things. Walking is the best way to relax and concentrate your attention. On a walk you can clearly see the litter, the dead animals, the details on houses and businesses. You can stop and window shop. Maybe look at antiques on the east side (as above). I get my camera out and shoot a picture or two, but at home I'm often looking at slides shows of years of pictures. (I know, I know.) If I watch TV I'm always reading as well, usually a stack of newspapers. I will skip over to e-mail, check Twitter, feeds and facebook and get distracted by linking to interesting stuff. Mostly I think of things I should do: pay a bill, plan some event, organize something, clean something. Can't do that if you are out putting one foot in front of the other.

I have thought of working on a novel while sitting at my computer and have even written a few words of it. But in my head, on my walks, I have meditated my way to the end of the novel. Not all the characters have names but the arcs through time are there, a completely invented world over decades, pretty well worked out. It will never be committed to paper, though, because I'd have to sit at home, with all the distractions, and type it up. Just glancing up at the bookshelf threatens to take me away. On a walk there are plenty of distractions but they come at you slow and give you to time to think, to create, mantra or not.

Speak, Memory

2011-09-06T18:41:00.015-05:00

One of my ongoing agonies is a lack of an accurate record of where I've been, what I've done, how far I've walked and what I ate. A blog is one way to keep up with stuff like that. I haven't posted here since May. So, yeah, that's not working. Oh I've tweeted. Posted pictures of Austin daily. And perhaps scribbled in a notebook or private little logging app. But my life and my history and the history of our time here is essentially getting lost faster than I care to ponder. Not that my life that important. No, it's really not.

But as the anniversary of 9/11 approaches you wonder what you were thinking then. In ten years, I might wonder what I was doing as Texas tried to burn down around me.

I used to organize a daily journal. Online. And I spent considerable time scribbling in notebooks. Notebooks I still have somewhere or have transcribed into (probably lost) files on the computer.

Given all the disasters that abound these days and my good luck (so far) at dodging them, it is interesting what I wrote on 9/13/2001:

Either the molds or the cumulative feeling of helplessness, is making me sick. I take some Dimetapp, drink Sleepy Time Tea and eschew alcohol and caffeine and try to get a good night's sleep. I'm such a wimp. What if something had actually happened to me?

I'm happy to be able to look at my situation and see how lucky I really am. That nothing really significant has touched me. My planes stayed in the air, the 1981 flood didn't reach the house and when I've stumbled on paths near precipices I've been spared the short acceleration to the rocks at the bottom.

But the memory thing. Where was I with that?

What sparks memory anyway? Why do I forget what happened in a tennis game just seconds before and then suddenly say "oh, yeah, passed down the line" or "sailed my overhead volley out." Or never remember at all. Why do pictures evoke an experience for us, even come to represent it totally? Why is everything happening so fast that we can't really record it? Does it help or hurt that all our social media contacts are out there connecting us to people, places, events and ideas we can't embrace ourselves?

I started thinking about writing this ramble one day when I was thinking about things I saw on the hike and bike trail. I heard these two guys talking. One said something like "Do your kids spend a lot of time at your house?" I was going to write it down or tweet it later and then I thought: were they running or riding bikes? Weird. Absent that detail from memory it stopped me in my tracks. On subsequent trail walks, I tried to remember a few encounters more accurately. But still they were missing pieces. Today I saw a pair of small poodles. But I don't remember who was running with them. I saw the Indian chief (a bronzed, bare-chested guy with his gray hair in braids) but I couldn't tell you what kind of shorts he wore. I saw an Old English sheepdog but don't remember the person with him (or was it a she dog?). I do think the owner was female. I heard a guy say into his phone: "Do you know how valuable that is?" It was a man, looked like a businessman, tall. But I don't remember much else about hin. Things are remembered but many more things are lost.

In yesterday's NY Times Science Times there was an article on the development of the memory process. It shows that children develop memories but have trouble retrieving the source of the memory. I empathized with the children in this test. I know I saw something, but when??? Maybe this is why I can't play Bridge well. You have to remember the bidding, the hand being played. It's a blur for me with all the other hands, other times. Maybe I have a child brain. I wonder if I can develop a way to remember things in a better way in my twilight years?

Clearly, it's not possible to make an adequate record of things external to oneself and use that as a crutch. Sure I saved some info from 9/11/2001 but by that very act it almost becomes everything I remember.

I cadged the title for today's piece from a memoir collection by Vladimir Nabokov. And I will use a quote from him to address my final worry about memory and its incompleteness and usefulness. I worry that if I use real things in fiction (which I, of course, never write or at least never complete) that it will rob the thing of some truthfulness. Here's my parting quote:

I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and, presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my former self, where it had seemed to be so safe from the intrusion of the artist.

And so it goes. Another reason not to write 'my' fiction: I would lose even more of my real past!

We may discuss this memory thing, further, lads and lasses, but I've decided to hit publish. Shocking, I know. Perhaps it will not be another three months.

The Importance of Strangers

2011-05-30T15:50:00.016-05:00

We are dependent, as social animals, on other people. Most of us crave interaction with people we know: doing activities, talking, eating, participating in cultural events and talking about them. We like to be able to predict what others will do. We like knowing that one friend will always be late, one will always order then change the order. We like the predictability of our friends' wardrobes and personal ticks.

But we also crave being around strangers or people we barely know. We like watching them interact. We like sorting them into types in our head, but having the slight frisson of seeing that they are wearing something slightly odd or ordering something weird or behaving in a way we couldn't have predicted.

I have thought of this more and more as I've gotten older. How pleasurable it is to be around people without any high duty to interact with them. (I'm actually shy with strangers so not needing to interact much is key.) Over the years, before I married and after I married during travel without my husband I spent many an hour sitting alone in a cafe or restaurant, in a park, on a bus or train. Just watching others. Delighted by their endless variety and yet their capacity for fitting expectations.

The other day we took a walk and on South Congress we stopped in the venerable junk mall that is Uncommon Objects. A lot of the 'booths' (really just areas rented to dealers) have old photos for sale and I always flip through them. I don't know what I'm looking for but maybe it's 'interesting strangers of the past.' I'm also intrigued with how the photos came to be a commodity and left the possession of the people who had emotional attachment to them.

I bought three such photos yesterday.

Helen, Kay & I

Two photos were of three young women enjoying some good times together. The one to the left is labeled on the back (see right): "Helen Kay & I Sept 20-44 our picnic by the tennis courts" (Click on images to enlarge.) We don't know who is shooting the picture or where they might be. A country club, I'm guessing. The war is still on in Europe and Japan. Was this photo sent to a soldier or sailor so he could think of happier times when he was near his wife/girlfriend/sister and had access to HiHo crackers and other goodies. And a park or club? Or maybe a Schlitz beer. (See below.) The second picture seems definitely to be a country club or maybe some armed forces base club somewhere. There are more strangers in this picture. Maybe the gentlemen and lady are even strangers to the three women. The back simply has on it: "Kay Helen Me." They are enjoying their Schlitz (and Helen has champagne assuming she's in the middle) and they might have enjoyed a swim. What are these people thinking? And...where are they now? They were, what, twenty-somethings in 1944? So they might be ninety or so if still alive. Maybe the I/Me person had these pictures and she died and they ended up in the bin at Uncommon Objects. Wouldn't it be strange if someone saw this on the Internet and recognized one of these people? That probably won't happen. They will just be these unknown people. Predictable for their era and yet a bit unknown.

Shipboard

As I said, when these pictures were taken, there was still a war raging in Europe and the Pacific. The third picture I plucked from that bin was taken on a ship. Maybe in that WWII era. Four sailors pose somewhere on a ship.

On the back is written, simply:

Dembrowski
Zagshack
Kennawell
Ates

At least I think that's what it says. Here's an image. That last name might be Otis?

Was this picture sent home to the gals above? What happened to these guys? Where were they from? They are like strangers you pass on the street and never see again. One of many. Sorted into categories. Who went on, maybe died in the war or much later. Who maybe sit somewhere, capacity felled by age.

A Part, Apart

2011-04-30T15:00:00.002-05:00

People wear me out. There. I've said it. It's enervates me to socialize. (Enervate, vt, to weaken mentally or physically.) I like alone time even if I'm out among strangers but not specifically supposed to be engaged with them.

I took this photo in Dallas, on McKinney Avenue, while walking around by myself. (FFP was getting a massage in the hotel spa.)

I realized today that I'm the right age and in the appropriate physical decline to participate in group travel. But. No. Cruise, maybe. (I still want to get FFP to try a cruise.)

On the other hand I like to be a part of things. I like to be included. As a kid I wanted to be in groups that had uniforms. I loved uniforms.

Now I don't want to belong to groups. But I do want to feel like I'm a part of things. But, you know, apart. I've been feeling a little depressed and adrift lately. I hate to feel like that. Especially when I should feel great. When, by external measures, things are going great.

That Hair, Attention Deficit and Whatever

2011-04-14T19:03:00.003-05:00

My head has been stuffed lately. With ideas. About 'doing work.' By which I do NOT mean dusting, vacuuming and scrubbing. Rather art. Novels and photos. Ideas abound. Action is lacking. In spite of the fact that, with certain things off my plate and the fact that I'm retired...I do seem to have some nice blocks of time. I'm very lucky.

Last entry I talked about my clothes. But. Then there are other things about our appearance. Hair, for example. Note here: it sticks up in a (somewhat unpredictable, I like the word insouciant) way.

I struggled for years. With curlers and hairdressers and hair dryers. With long and short. And, finally, I have short hair ("it makes you look younger" someone said once, I never looked back). I wash every day (every time I shower) and put some gel on and let it dry naturally and if I want to later I put some dry hair goop on it to make it stick up in even more unpredictable ways. I no longer think about it. And then, in my self-portrait reflection pictures, I'm happy with it. It's me.

Our lives are charmed. I'm starting to think about writing. And making collages. Or digitally altered photos. Or collages of digitally-altered photos. But. Right Now. I need a nap. Life is good.

Dress Up

2011-04-12T17:36:00.004-05:00

What we wear is so much a part of who we are. Isn't it? We would prefer that people looked beyond our 'rags' I'm sure. But they don't. As I type this I am sitting here in white tennis shorts and a white polo (purchased on the cheap at Costco). It is possible I stink a bit since the dried sweat is now ready to give off that metallic smell. I played tennis, finished eight hours ago and haven't changed or showered.

I still remember the first polo shirt I ever owned. It may have been the first knit shirt I owned. The first thing that wasn't sewn by my mother or grandmother. We got it at some discount store, a one-off precursor of the big box discounters of today. I remember standing in the yard of our house, wearing it. It was windy. I was enjoying wearing that polo so much. I wanted a bunch of them.

I always loved jeans. Bear in mind that I went to school for 15 and 1/2 years where pants were verboten for girls. (Worked a couple of years in business after college where the dress code forbade pants, too.) But I loved pants. And tailored blazers. I still do. I don't remember when I last wore a skirt. It was very possibly in 2002 when I was faced with the third or fourth funeral service in a few weeks time and had run out black outfits. I trotted out a black skirt which I still own. The jacket that matches it is probably due a replacement but that skirt probably hasn't been worn since. Oh, wait! No...the last time I wore a skirt was probably after that. Someone invited us to a 'white tie and ball gowns' party. No, I didn't wear a ball gown. I wore a long velvet skirt and a velvet top to sort of look like a gown.

These days I have a few basic modes of dress and with these I try to get by in the situations polite society presents. If an event is really casual I will wear jeans (a loose fit Levis Men's style that happens to fit off the shelf) and a long or short sleeved button-up blouse depending on the season. I might wear a blazer, windbreaker or leather jacket if it's chilly. Sweaters, too, when appropriate. (Which is hardly ever in Austin but I do travel elsewhere.) I will wear hiking boots, tennis shoes or loafers to fit the occasion. To be a little dressier I'll choose the black-wash jeans and loafers. If I'm just hiking around, I might wear a polo with the jeans.

If an event is a little dressier I will wear a suit with pants or slacks and blazer with a button-up blouse. Maybe a covered placket blouse or some pleats to fancy it up. Maybe even, choke, a piece of jewelry or a scarf. I wear my nicest flats. I can still walk a couple of miles in them. I have one pair of lace up black and cordovan spectators I sometimes wear, too.

For black tie I wear tuxedo pants and a top with a bit of spangle or maybe really wear a tuxedo (coat, too). I have a silver turtle neck, various sparkly tops, vests, tuxedo shirts. I wear a pair pf flat 'tuxedo' pumps There are Cole Haans as are most of flats and loafers. A few of my shoes are Ballys, though.

For tennis or the gym, I wear something from a small collection of shorts, polos, sweats.

And that's it.

I enjoy wearing jeans or slacks and blazers. I enjoy having pockets. My blazers or suits are either custom-made, expensive women's wear or men's wear tailored to fit. All have pockets.

I feel sorry for women who are forced to wear certain clothing. I feel sorry for women who feel they have to wear high heels or short dresses or ball gowns. It's hard to know who is really wearing what pleases them. I empathize with men who want to wear women's wear. I understand that one just wants the clothing they want. But me? Most of the time, now, I am happy with my clothes and I also manage not to offend those around me. I hope anyway.

And I mostly get by with my sartorial choices, too. A black blazer covers a multitude of sins. So to speak.

[Photo: SoCo boutique. Me and FFP.]

The Opposite of Prosopagnosia

2011-04-08T13:25:00.008-05:00

I am fascinated by our ability to recognize ourselves and one another from the tiniest fragments. My series of photos of shop windows and what is displayed and reflected in them plays off this fascination while making abstract art of the intentional goods for sale, the street scene, the passing parade. In this shot, almost nothing of me remains. But there I am, a crown of spiky hair. And in my mind I'm quite confident it's me. My mind is, in fact, filling in the rest of the head and face.

I think one reason I take these pictures is that, in spite of my age (somewhere in the twilight or at least the late afternoon of life), I'm not sure who I am. I want to discover that I'm fat or thin (more the former), old or young (more the former as well) and whether my spiky hair is as insouciant as I hope (yes, I think so, sometimes).

Oliver Saks has a disorder called prosopagnosia. He has difficulty recognizing faces, sometimes even his own. I think I have an ability, once I know someone pretty well, to recognize not just their faces but their voices, body language, gestures from the smallest hints.

This heightened ability that I believe I have does not mean that I can describe a person accurately when they are not present. I'd be hard-pressed to tell you their hair color or eye color accurately. The ability seems somewhere beyond description and into instinct.

As to knowing myself. All one has to go on for the physical is looking at the parts of the body that one can see from the vantage point of one's head, looking in mirrors and looking at photos. (And reflections.) Mirrors (and reflections in general) reverse the image. Is this important? Not usually, I don't think.

Examining this image we have a wire chicken (although that isn't too obvious) some circle shapes and that hair. It's me. There is an, um, emptiness. But in expressing that maybe this picture is a very accurate self protrait.

For the second picture of the day, I offer a self portrait of me along with himself. Shapes and patterns abound. FFP is in profile with tip offs of glasses and nose. Certainly it's him. But my head and shoulders? Obscured by shop window clothes? It's definitely me. At least I can see it for sure. Can you?

Are these art? I don't know what you think...but they are my art. They are Multiply Appropriated Portraits and Landscapes. I've been thinking about this for a long time. See my original artist's statement and critic's comment. There are many more entries in this blog slogging through this subject. And these entries are illustrated with what I call art.

Do I have to do something more with them? Do I have to offer prints? Make physical objects (perhaps mirror-lined, reflective glass shadow boxes with prints in them or prints sliced and made into collages)? Do I do something further with them digitally? Make digital collages of them with varying opacity or animated slide shows of them? With appropriated music? The choices overwhelm. I think I'll take a nap and ponder it.

Who Am I and Where Have I Been?

2011-03-31T08:55:00.078-06:00

These days I'm waking up feeling lost in my own life. The six months from Sept. 10-March 10 were spent in a perfect storm of death and illness and paperwork and duties. It ended all right, really, for those of us who survived. Our dads did "live a long life" as people say, often adding that it was a "full" one. I'm not so sure about the latter. FFP survived two surgeries and a lot of tests to come up allegedly cancer-free and also avoid radiation and chemo. It seemed like there were enough 'have to do' things every day to reduce decision making to a minimum. What follows is an eclectic recap of that six months, the time since and my life in general. It will undoubtedly end up sounding like an extended whine from someone with a charmed life. Because it is. However, I feel that I can't move on as a writer without publishing this. Odd, huh? I don't really identify as a 'writer' anyway. I made up business cards when I retired that said "Pretending to Write but Really Just Blogging." The other day I took a red pen to some of these and scratched out Write and replaced it with Blog. And Scratched out Blogging and replaced it with Tweeting.

The events of that six months have gradually faded. I'm putting together the last pieces of my dad's estate that will let me finally more or less settle it although the CPA says I'll have to file a tax return for the estate for 2011 or something. I'll address this when the time comes and pay anything owed out of my own pocket just to get things cleaned up. We have tenants in the house we own that Dad lived in. His stuff has been sorted and dispersed. (There's a job with potent emotional and physical toll for the healthiest among us. The whole process might also be the subject of another piece at some point.)

FFP got his dad's will probated and and got his mother's new widowed life somewhat settled. I've managed to start using a new mail server. (This was necessary for a weird reason and harder than it sounds. I hate this type of change.) As these things fell away, we started thinking maybe we should get away from duties and do more social and charitable things.

During this six months we did some social events in spite of trips to Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center including surgery there for FFP, another surgery for FFP in Austin and the deaths of our dads. We even saw a few films in the Austin Film Festival and managed to attend the event we helped chair to raise money for AFF's Young Filmmakers Program. But we also didn't sign up for a lot of things, canceled events and gave away expensive gala tickets we bought before we knew what was going to happen.

As things settled out we went a little overboard agreeing to events and buying tickets to things. One day, we decided that we should buy SXSW film badges. At the point we bought them the price had risen to $500. (If we'd purchased them in September, when we were facing the big cancer threat, they would have been $375. The walk-up rate was $550.)

On March 10 we attended the unofficial opening of the SXSW film festival, the Texas Film Hall of Fame party. Some friends had purchased a table and were kind enough to invite us, gratis. (This is not officially a part of SXSW and the $500 badge does you no good for this one.) I learned what Ted Nugent looks like and how he sounds doing the Star-Spangled banner. I was reminded of how much I enjoyed FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and of the familial relationship between Sissy Spacek and Rip Torn. I really enjoyed hearing about and from John Hawkes who I only knew from his performance in WINTER'S BONE. All of the above received awards at the event. (Well, not WINTER'S BONE but, rather, John Hawkes.)

I looked forward to seeing some films, especially documentaries, and being able to walk to many venues and feel the throbbing vibe of the huge SXSW machine while still being able to retreat to our condo.

I usually play tennis three times a week. I played on Thursday, March 10th, and again on Saturday, the 19th, making sure my film festival didn't need to start until that afternoon. I'd missed a lot of tennis dates during the six months of 'the troubles' but at that point I'd been getting to it pretty regularly, weather permitting. One morning I cleaned house, several others were spent regrouping from the arduous film watching or sorting out bill paying and such.

But I spent a good deal of time from March 11-19, nine days, watching films programmed by SXSW film. I didn't attend any panels, spent probably 20 minutes walking through the trade show and attended a party hosted by Austin Film Festival. I watched eighteen movies. I watched a few Q&As. I waited in lines for many hours.

I'm going to summarize that experience here, in a moment. But I reached the end of the festival thinking "I'm watching movies created by someone else, about lives that aren't mine, curated by these SXSW folks."

I decided I needed to be creative myself. Or, at least, be picking my own input (newspapers, books, magazines, movies, images). Yeah, at least I need to be doing my own aggregation! We spend so much time looking at what someone else tells us is worthy of our attention. Yes, I'm going to get creative on my own terms. I'm going to write. I'm going to work on my photography project. I am going to call my 'work' (based on my photos of shop windows and other reflections): Multiply Appropriated Portraits and Landscapes. But more on that later. Perhaps much later.

The Sunday after SXSW was over I finally got around to reading The New York Times magazine for the prior Sunday (March 13). This article resonated with me, expressing a feeling of disconnection from creation that surely critics and aggregators must feel. Bill Keller, executive editor of the paper, was, of course, speaking from a very different perspective. The original reporting he oversees is being co-opted by aggregation. But so is my brain. I no longer give myself time to have an original thought. Not even about whose thoughts to let in.

Yes, it's time to stop and reflect. Reflection seems in order. Reflection on the last couple of weeks and the last six months and, indeed, what I laughingly call my life. Reflection of this sort is so long overdue that it took me over two weeks to write this entry which is now a rambling mess but which I think I'll post anyway. As I said: not publishing it seems to be holding me back from my usual writer's block on other things.

SXSW
As I mentioned above...we bought those film badges. I canceled three tennis dates to clear time to pursue movies and whatever else came our way. We live downtown and we didn't have to fight traffic for the most part. Not in our car anyway. I didn't start my car for over a week. FFP started his three times I think. Others weren't so lucky, haplessly belching fumes while in gridlock or waiting for buses that never came or came too full to take them. Bike riders dodged cars, threatened pedestrians and had trouble finding a proper bike rack. SXSW was too crowded and on the edge of out of control. (Sometimes going past the edge.) People stood in endless lines to get into stuff or to get free stuff. We stopped by and got a free Pepsi Max, no line. Otherwise, we only stood in line for movies or credentials for the fest. I always feel like I should 'review' what I see although I am a hopeless critic (except of my own life). But I do feel the need to wrap it up. So here goes.

We often got to the venues too early (we call this being pathologically punctual), rarely tried to see two movies in a row, even at the same theater, and, with our badges, got into every movie we set out to see and got good seats. Of course, we probably stood in line 16-18 hours. We read magazines or used our iPhones to pass the time for the most part. We talked to people in line, getting ideas of what to see, learning some stuff about Formula One Racing, and meeting some neat people such as Photographer Brian Gray and actress Aimee Thomas. Lines can be at once the most frustrating and the nicest, most serendipitous things about the festival. We also saw lots of people we already knew in lines, while standing in them and watching people go by and in the venues. We saw movies at seven different venues. (Rollins Theater at Long Center; the newly-renovated State Theater; Paramount Theater; the Convention Center Theater, branded Vimeo for this festival; Regal Arbor; the Alamo Ritz; and Alamo South Lamar). We only drove to the Arbor, walking to and fro all the other venues from our condo.

We ate lunch on the patio at Trio at the Four Seasons on the Thursday before the festival began. Most of the time during the festival we retreated into the lounge at Ruth's Chris steakhouse or ate sushi rolls from How Do You Roll or subs from Thundercloud or prepared food from Royal Blue Grocery. Oh, we had a cheese plate at Highball and a few bites and drinks in the theaters. We had snacks and drinks at Manuel's when we went to the Arbor. Restaurants were jam-packed. On the first day of the film fest (the 11th) we thought we'd go to Frank but it had a wait. We did get a table at Second. After that we eschewed the choices popular with SXers.

My festival was almost derailed by my guts. During the second movie of the first day, I had some slight stomach cramps, a sweaty hot clammy feeling. Left the theater a couple of times to go to the rest room. Washed face. Felt better. But that night I lost my lunch, as they say. And I was fragile for food and drink for a day or two.

But we did see two showings that first day: BEST of VIMEO SHORTS and PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES. Both were at the Convention Center at the Vimeo Theater as it was branded for the festival. This is the uncomfortable chair theater. After these two shows we learned to sit on the front row of the risers, the most comfort you can get in that venue.

Some of the shorts shown were animated. I particularly liked an animation of sand and snow. There was a helmet cam video from a bike race over a harrowing urban course that was pretty fantastic, too.

I loved PAGE ONE. I'm an avid reader of the NY Times although I don't do a good job of keeping up with who's who at the paper. (After seeing this movie, I decided to pay more attention to bylines.) David Carr is an interesting character and the story he was working on (the bankruptcy of the Tribune company) was relevant to the overall hand-wringing over new media, newspapers, reporting, etc. The film touched on lots of issues: plagiarism, declining advertising revenue, Wikileaks, rise of aggregation, pay walls. The blogger turned journalist, Brain Stelter, added a face to new trends. I wanted to go home and gently pat my stacks of newsprint. I missed a tiny bit of the movie and some of the Q&A to feeling ill. I regretted that.

I didn't know how the first Saturday of the festival was going to play out for me. I awoke feeling better after getting up almost hourly all night to drink sips of water to rehydrate. I managed to get down a little coffee, a little Gatorade and we queued up for SENNA. The eponymous F1 driver was an enormously successful driver and a hero in his native Brazil. He was killed in a race. I didn't know any of that before deciding to see the movie. I knew nothing about this form of auto racing. Or really any form of auto racing. The movie was a very human portrayal, done without using posthumous interviews with people who knew him but rather using archival footage of him and of people speaking about him. My fragile constitution survived the 'in car camera' racing footage, too.

We tried to get express tickets to get into EL BULLI so that we wouldn't have to queue so long. There weren't any left. The idea that you get a badge and then you queue up to get a pass to get in front of the badge line is not the best idea SXSW ever had. We decided that we'd queue for the movie anyway. We went to the Driskill and relaxed in the cool lobby for a bit after taking advantage of their bathrooms. It turned out we were first in line for badges without special tickets. So we got the aisle seat that I thought I needed given my fragile condition. After watching starred Spanish chef Ferran Adrià make wild, innovative dishes I retired to Ruth's Chris lounge to test my stomach on a plain baked potato with a little cheese and sparkling water. I liked the food shots and people in the movie but the sound track was very weird in places.

So Sunday (3/13/2011) comes along and I've been to four screenings and already feel a little tired. It feels like work. I know how lame and elitist that sounds. The hour lost to Daylight Savings wasn't really missed too much, at least not that day, possibly because I didn't drink Saturday night. We start our fest day at a brunch given by Austin Film Festival for AFF alumni who are local or in town for the SXSW. I eschew the tamales and have a little fruit and a pastry. I pass on alcohol, too, which I often do early in the day anyway. We walk to Whole Foods and buy a few things including a growler of Dogfish Head Midas Touch which, of course, I won't feel like drinking just yet. We only make one screening. We go to Morgan Spurlock's GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD. Morgan is there. It starts late. It is, well, as advertised: a big advertisement with a message that we are always being sold to, even in movies. We go to Ruth's Chris I think. At home I try some Midas Touch. Not too much, though.

On Monday we decide to get Express tickets for the movies we want to see. There are badges. Badges are seated first. They are all equal whether Gold, Film, Platinum or Interactive (for certain movies they are admitted). The festival issues VIP tickets for cast and crew and the like to trump these, though. Then they got the idea to issue special pieces of paper to trump other badges. Sigh. (And there are also film passes, would-be single ticket buyers and people who pre-purchase a single ticket but may not be admitted but are admitted before other single ticket holders. Neither volunteers nor film-goers quite master this before the fest is over.) We get in line before this line up opens. There are at least a hundred people in line. We do get these special tickets but we've wasted at least an hour of our time getting them. Since seating can occur thirty minutes or a bit more before a show we will still have to waste at least thirty minutes per show in a line. In these lines we will be given another paper ticket to prove we were in line. Later in the week they will ditch the film express tickets, thankfully. We won't queue for them again.

We saw SMALL BEAUTIFULLY MOVING PARTS in the newly-renovated State Theater. I liked it very much. Gave it four stars. The theater that is. But also the movie was pretty good. Quiet movie about family dysfunction, parenthood and the connected world of technology. Starring Anna Margaret Hollyman who has been in some shorts we've seen and also in one of the 'bumpers' for the festival. (Apparently that is what you call funny little pieces that precede the films.) Family dysfunction will be a thread running through most of the narrative features we see.

We rested up a bit and walked across the lake and up South Lamar to the Alamo South. We were extremely early and we had those extra special express tickets. So we went to Highball and had a drink (me: Guinness for $2; he: Coke for free as DD although we told the bartender we were walking) and a cheese plate. What a great Happy Hour with pints for $2! We loved, loved, loved A MATTER OF TASTE. Sometimes filmmakers get so lucky. They start filming someone when they are struggling a bit to get a film made and the subject is struggling in his endeavors. Time passes. Something happens to the person (two Michelin Stars!) and the film gets finished and has a nice dramatic arc. So the filmmaker, Sally Rowe, was lucky, but also very good at capturing this journey. The chef at the center of this piece, Paul Liebrandt, was at the screening. He was so nice. He seemed to know who he was and what he wanted. We want to eat at Corton when we go to New York. And, conveniently, we've just scheduled a trip to New York in June. We made the dark walk home and got ready for another day. I think I showed my age by already being weary but, of course, I had gotten a bug or some sort of upset on Friday.

On Tuesday we go to the Convention Center again to see SOMETHING VENTURED. We got those front row seats in the risers. I would have been more comfortable if a guy with about the girth of The Simpson's Comic Book Guy hadn't slipped (well more like plopped) into the seat next to me well after the movie started. This is a great film about the history of high-tech start-ups and venture capital. The dominance of men, then and now, still upsets me, though, even over eight years after my retirement and after some success at beating the odds. That one of the entrepreneurs, now a venture capitalist, was someone whose company I once worked for made it uncomfortable as well. Too close to what I laughingly call my life. Too close to 'what might have been' and missed opportunities. At some point, walking through the trade show, I will also have flashbacks of working trade shows, trying to convince customers that my stuff is what they should buy, not the stuff peddled in the next booth over.

And then...we started a car. Yep. We (well FFP) drove out to the Arboretum area, stopped by our house (where Dad used to live, which is our rent house now) and then grabbed a quick drink and snack at Manuel's and saw a SXSW movie at the Arbor. BEGINNERS really grabbed me. It was a highly personal story, you see. It involved the death of parents. While my dad didn't reveal that he was gay after my mother died (this was a plot point that moved this movie along), I felt such a resonance with the material that I found real tears going down my face. I was especially moved by a pile of garbage bags. Seriously. (See above re: cleaning out the Dad house.) Great movie about loss and love and how to really live. Reminded me of seeing my dad after he lost my mom when he tried to capture some happiness after several years of bumpy health problems for her and sitting with her for 100 days in the hospital. That Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer were in this project comes as no surprise after you see the piece and realize the power of the script. I understand this film (written and directed by Mike Mills) is highly personal and semi-autobiographical. The 'happy ending' for the son distracted a little from the piece but overall I was so impressed that, honestly, I wanted to see the character break out and embrace a relationship. It will be interesting to see if this guy can write another great script using either material he is also this close to or material that requires a little more reach of imagination.

On Wednesday (we are at 3/16/2011 at this point) we spent the morning taking care of our lives. I cleaned the bathroom and the bedroom and took care of bills and stuff. FFP took care of some of his mother's business. But in the afternoon we queued up at the convention center theater for a showing of BOB AND THE MONSTER which is a documentary about Bob Forrest and his rock career, addiction, recovery and attempt to help others recover. It was quite interesting on several levels: music, drugs, recovery and redemption.

In the evening, we went main stream. Jodie Foster's THE BEAVER was showing at the Paramount. She directs and stars opposite Mel Gibson. We were probably in line behind a hundred people with the line stretching far behind us, around the corner, out of sight. Jodie was there, but no Mel Gibson. Forrest was impressed with her legs when she introduced the movie. In my opinion the movie's premise was just a little too wacky to support a real portrayal of mental illness. By that I mean that people went along with the puppet much more than they would in the real world. Yes, the beaver was a puppet. I predict it won't do well in theaters. So...it probably will! I find my tastes don't track with the mainstream. After Jodie did the Q&A and sidestepped the Mel questions we went to Ruth's Chris. I had a Manhattan. Yeah, it didn't take me long to get back to drinking after my stomach upset.

When Thursday rolls around it is St. Patrick's Day. The combination of the holiday and its drunken celebration, the SXSW music being in full swing and film continuing make the streets and sidewalks of downtown both amazing and daunting. It is a day when we will somehow manage to watch three movies. We do this by only going to the Paramount and doing what I said above we never did: seeing two movies in a row at the same venue. But it was the Paramount which is a big venue. Started with APART. Some movies ask you suspend disbelief. Let's say they ask you to believe people can have shared delusions. OK. Accepted. Then they ask us to believe these delusions are really prescient. OK, I'll bite. Then they ask us to believe that the delusions caused the protagonists to act out in the delusions. OK, we've come this far together. But. Then this piece ask me to believe that another character, apparently sane but upset over the death of his son, could instantly figure out the psychosis and initiate a plan to help the pair escape the horror they've caused and get cured. He would do this by committing a crime and covering up another crime. Well, no. Didn't wash. Wrap it up some other way and I'd have enjoyed the diversion. This plot turn stuck in my craw. After I'd allowed them so much leeway. I'd say that the above paragraphs were spoilers but somehow they really are not. Oh well. We should probably stick with movies that are strictly about family dysfunction.

As I said, we managed to watch two movies in a row by immediately going out and queuing for LIVE AT PRESERVATION HALL: LOUISIANA FAIRYTALE. To our delight the Preservation Hall Jazz Band came marching around the corner and entertained for a bit in front of the theater before going inside. When we got in they were performing some bluesy numbers with mournful singing. During the movie, the parts where the jazz guys played or they talked about the history of Preservation Hall were great. But the collaboration with My Morning Jacket was mostly painful to me because their music is so monotonous and dumb in my humble opinion. When their lead singer fronted the jazz classic in the title, that wasn't horrible (not great either) and sometimes a jazz guy accompanying the muck couldn't stand it any longer and just started to improvise and that provided some relief. Now I'm sure My Morning Jacket is a hot new band. Or a venerable hot band. So sue me. If I'm going to be spoon-fed by SXSW, I'm going to still try to retain the ability to form an opinion about what I like.

We regrouped, caught a snack and drink at Ruth's Chris and queued for ATTENBERG. It was very artsy. It had everything required of an art film. For my taste I just couldn't bond with the characters due to the silly sequences and inside jokes. But it was good at being artsy. And...we had seen three movies. Yeah.

When Friday, March 18th, arrives we realize two things: SXSW Music is in full swing and we have been watching movies for a week. I start to feel like an SXSWimp. I know I'm clueless about a lot of the music. (See above: My Morning Jacket.) I know that I don't like excessive drinking, loud claptrap or places that are too crowded.

We see that they are playing the Grand Jury Narrative Award winner at the Rollins over at Long Center. We haven't been to the venue during this festival. And we've heard good things about the film, NATURAL SELECTION. So we walk across Lady Bird Lake and queue up. Only two people in line and one is a gal we queued with at the Arbor, Aimee the Actress, and we enjoy some conversation. The movie's premises are improbable, the arc for the characters unlikely and the movie is thoroughly and completely raucous but somehow it's enjoyable and beautifully crafted. There were interesting subtleties of settings and nuances that redeemed any criticism. Roger Ebert liked it, too, although to me...that means nothing. I make my own decisions. It is my last shot at free will. NATURAL SELECTION could be described as dysfunction of non-family, but it had family complications, too, and that segued nicely into the evening's movie. ANOTHER HAPPY DAY is one of those films that I can both relate to (it was full of family dancing, as I call it, and anyone has seen a bit of that in life) and also feel divorced from (the family place on the Chesapeake is far from my reality). But there was the interesting reunion of cousins, the consternation as old age decimated the powers of the older generation, etc. Those things I get. I like seeing the multiple generations of privilege flailing anyway. Ellen Burstyn and Ellen Barkin were great and Demi Moore camped it up. It's easy to hate Thomas Hayden Church so he was able to make you hate him and yet feel a little sorry for him.

It is the last day. The ninth day! Saturday, March 19th. We see two films to make an even 18. For which we paid $27 each by buying our badges. We saw two documentaries this last round. The well-crafted WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM didn't just give one pause about our current wars and their effect on young people who sign up for National Guard units for a bit of money. It gave me pause about the millions of lost young people with no idea of vocation or goals. I suppose they've always been out there. In an era without a draft they are most of our non-comm soldiers. They are ill-prepared by training and ill-prepared emotionally to fight a battle against IEDs. This film gives an inside look at one group of kids and their families and friends and shows how they could end up in uniform thousands of miles away after taking up soldiering with no more thought than their winter sledding or graffiti project. The film is also very revealing concerning how these families pinned their hopes on Obama to end the obligations their enlistment entailed and how they were disappointed to find little changed. And there is a priceless bit of film of a PowerPoint presentation about Afghanistan given during an army orientation. That alone was worth the price of admission. The return of these kids with their possible unseen traumatic brain injuries and exacerbated lack of focus is painful to watch.

The finale, the finish, the 18th film, is a documentary about Willie Nelson, KING OF LUCK. Billy Bob Thornton directed and it is one awesome piece of music history. We walked out more in awe of Willie than ever. Which was the idea I think: to make a paean rather than a bio. The current footage is presented in black and white to match the archival stuff. Willie is definitely one of a kind and here we see him with a bunch of unique friends and family talking about him. Great as it was...we were so eager to slip through the crowds and be in our apartment that we didn't stay for the Q&A with Billy Bob. Facing down a river of people headed toward E. Sixth, we made our way home and collapsed. Of course, soon enough a long fireworks show boomed across the lake and we stepped out on the balcony to watch it. It lasted so long I was glad when it was over.

At the end of the day, we did see some pretty good films. Ten documentaries, seven narrative features and one short program. But it was draining and I'm not sure it was worth it, all in all, to see all those in such a short period and stand in line that much.

As I write this I've actually been to two movies since the end of the festival. One was a preview showing of WIN WIN (also shown in the festival although we didn't attend). It is an intriguing tale of right and wrong and the mushy area in between, families and what they will do to each other and, at the end, for each other. Also...how the concept of family stretches to sometimes admit strangers. The movie didn't try to tell us everything, taking advantage of ambiguity to make it a bit more real. Which is to say they intentionally left unanswered questions about guilt, innocence and what would happen when the characters left the frame as well as what their complete history might reveal. All you knew for sure was that some situations do have a WIN WIN outcome but maybe not where we expect to find it. I liked Bobby Cannavale being cast as the over-enthusiastic friend, too, which reminded me of STATION AGENT.

We also saw a documentary about the Rural Studio Architecture project (CITIZEN ARCHITECT: SAMUEL MOCKBEE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE RURAL STUDIO). We saw this sitting on the rooftop of Arthouse at Jones Center on a chilly night. It is a nice doc. I'd heard the film makers speak about it before and was glad to get to see it.

We've also been to some benefits, a wine club party, a ballet mixed rep. And we made a round trip to Houston to have a check-up for Forrest.

I'm exhausted now, describing the last couple of weeks. Nevertheless, I want to keep writing, to keep blogging and to reach back through the last six months and try to write some sense into it. I don't know if it will work. In fact, I guess, from experience, I know that it will work but only to a small degree.

The Six Months
You come home from a vacation. You dad has had a rough time of it, been to the emergency room a couple of times, had to sweat out an AC repair during a blazing hot August at the house where he's living, our house, which we are responsible for. We've ducked our responsibilities for a couple of weeks of driving across the great American West and visiting friends. We've left him in the care of repairmen and friends.

We are not home for long and he needs to go to the emergency room again. Instead of relying on friends I have to ditch a party and take him. The next week I take him to the doctor and we think he's doing pretty well. I take FFP to the eye doctor where he will have what turns out to be the last of many excisions of a growth on his eyelid that is not benign, as the ophthalmologist thought for two years, but a rare cancer. I only go because he will have an eye patch for a few hours so I go to drive him home. It is a day I spend in doctors' offices but things seem to be going OK. The doctor does a biopsy. He says, "I'm pretty sure it's not going to show anything." Or he says something like that. We don't worry. Not at all.

Until the afternoon of the next day. We are sitting around thinking about what to wear for a black tie event that we will go to in a few hours. And the doctor calls. He wants to send FFP to an oculoplastic surgeon on Monday. Because he has a very rare cancer. Sebaceous Cell Carcinoma. Before we go to our event we have time to make the appointment. A new doctor is working us in. As soon as possible. We have time to search the Internet. Yikes.

Monday we see the new doctor. He refers us to MD Anderson. We will see a doctor there, probably the leading expert in the country (if not the world) on this type of cancer. On Friday. Friday is a race through tests and more tests and doctor visits. MD Anderson is a massive, daunting place but we make it through with a little help from the staff. We are given an appointment to come back on Monday and get needle biopsies of a mass shown through ultrasound in his parotid gland and one in his thyroid. The word metastasis creeps into our vocabulary. But. We will just take this a step at a time. And worry, of course.

On the weekend that the MD Anderson visits on Friday and Monday (and the three hundred miles of driving) surround, my dad is celebrating his 94th birthday. Fortunately, his two sisters and one brother-in-law have driven down to visit. A friend has a little get together for him on Friday night which we miss. We go through the motions of visiting with the relatives on the weekend and trying to explain what we know about the medical issues.

Monday brings needle biopsies. The parotid probe hurts more. The thyroid one is done twice. The parotid one is identified as benign. An adenoma. The thyroid comes up with Hurthle cells. The problem with this tumor is that it is probably benign but it can be cancerous and metastasize and you can only tell by removing it. This type of tumor is also rare, apparently.

But we have to take care of other things first. The eyelid. The cancer must be removed along with a normal edge and the eyelid reconstructed and biopsies done for skip lesions. They want to do a sentinel node biopsy. A head and neck surgeon will do this using traces from radioactive isotopes injected during a test and again before surgery. Into his eyelid. Without anesthetic. Ouch. Hurts to think about and it wasn't me.

We get ourselves prepared for all this, get hotel reservations near MD Anderson. We have a couple of weeks to ponder it and we try to go on with our lives. I get a haircut. I take my dad to get a haircut on a Friday. It's been two weeks since FFP's diagnosis. Dad says he's feeling a little weak. He complains about his blood pressure monitor not working and I reseat the batteries and fool with it and get it going. He jokes with the barber and looks good with his fresh haircut.

On Saturday I call my dad, as I do every morning for the most part. He says he is 'feeling better.' I guess I wasn't aware of how bad he felt the day before. I don't see him or speak with him again that day. The next day when I call, he doesn't answer on the first try. I try again. The phone is off the hook. I hear something but he can't speak to me. I tell Forrest, "I think this is it." I think of calling the neighbors. But they aren't friendly about being roused so early. I get in the car and drive out there myself. He is in his bed. Struggling for breath, gurgling a bit. I call EMS. They are there in a very short time. They ask me if he has heart problems. They say he is in afib. "That's never happened before," I say. They ask when he was last normal. He seems to have put himself to bed for the night. Or, could it have been for a nap yesterday? Later I see his tablet in the dining room beside his blood pressure monitor. He has recorded his blood pressure the night before and written the time: 8PM. The blood pressure shown, however, was a little was a little low for someone with high blood pressure: 94-58. Was he already in afib?

He is transported to the emergency room. After a CT scan they see he's had a massive stroke. They struggle to get his blood gases up. His heart isn't beating correctly so his pulse races but he isn't getting enough oxygen in his blood. The doctor mentions 'hospice.' By 6PM I've had a visit from the hospice people. They talk about transporting him to a hospice facility. I look at him and realize that we might as well stay here. I've called everyone. My Colorado relatives start making plans to come this way. I don't leave his side for long. The next morning a friend stops by to sit with him while I go shower. A lot of people visit and then they are all gone and FFP joins me. We slip out for a meal and the food tastes so good. I feel bad that it tastes so good. There's my dad, unable to swallow, on hospice care across the street. We rush back to his side. Even though they've removed the oxygen all together, he holds on for a while. And then: he's gone. While we wait for a local funeral home to collect him and arrange for his body to be transported back to Dallas where his burial will be, we call people, e-mail people. I feel a huge weight on me. FFP's surgery is a week away.

My nieces arrive the next day: one by car and one by air and rental car. Each has a three-year-old in tow. They switch gears from trying to see their granddad one last time to helping me arrange a burial in Dallas. He has sisters there, nieces and nephews, friends. We get the funeral home to call us the next day and arrange everything. One niece's van won't start so they switch everything to the rent car and set out for Dallas to put him to rest. They call their parents (my sister and brother-in-law) and tell them to go straight to Dallas. They reserve hotel rooms, order a casket spray and flowers. The next day they bury their granddad and the niece with the rent car drives back with her son to catch a plane back to Denver from Austin. The other niece and my sister and brother-in-law stay over and come the next day to get the niece's van going. I feel bad I didn't make this service but we will have a memorial a few weeks later in Austin. We will try to delay it long enough after FFP's surgery that he can make it. We succeed in this.

We find out on the day before surgery that unless FFP is willing to get a parotidectomy to rid himself of the adenoma the surgeon won't do the sentinel node biopsy. He doesn't want to operate on the face twice and the adenoma may one day cause trouble and require removal. This makes the surgery kind of a bigger deal. Anyway, we spend almost a week at MD Anderson. Child's play considering what some people I know have been through. But tough enough to suit me.

It is day surgery. In that he's not really admitted to the hospital. Only...we are there from before 7AM one day until noon the next. I thought I'd drive back that day. But I haven't left the hospital either, have gotten little sleep. He's had six hours of surgery, a little bit of a rocky recovery, has a drain coming out of his neck, his eye is swollen shut, etc. Luckily, they were able to repair the eyelid without grafting tissue from the lower eyelid. So he might be able to see out of that eye when the swelling goes down. Needless to say, we spent another day and night in a hotel room, sleeping, managing his drain, doctoring his eye, eating room service and entertaining ourselves with TV and iPod tunes. On Saturday I manage to drive him home. We managed for a couple of days, his eye gradually opening, me taking care of the drain stitched in his neck. On Monday we got his GP to remove the drain. That was a great relief. Gradually he gets better. News gets better, too. The sentinel node biopsy showed no cancer. We start getting out and going a few places.

Before we know it the holiday season is on us. Forrest's dad has his 100th birthday right before Thanksgiving. There is a come and go party at their house. It exhausts me and seems to energize FFP's parents.

FFP has another surgery, here in Austin, to remove half his thyroid and have a look at that growth in it. It is benign. So he keeps half a thyroid. He recovers fast from this although he's still recovering from his eyelid and facial surgery, too.

We continue getting out to more stuff. We eat in a brand new restaurant and, the next night, go to the ballet. FFP gets violently ill later in the evening. Food poisoning we think. It sends him reeling, the doctor giving this drug and that and he finally ends up getting an IV to rehydrate and gradually feels himself again.

And we think maybe we've turned a corner. I'd gone to court. I'd cleaned and sorted and discarded and donated and organized and executrixed my way through my dad's affairs and leftover things. It wasn't done but everyday...closer.

A new year arrives. We actually have a pretty good New Year's Eve, wandering the building to various apartments for partying.

The first day of 2011, we stretch and yawn our way through the day and settle in for some nachos and TV.

And the phone rings. And thus begins the fall for FFP's dad. A literal fall getting up out of a chair. A broken hip. Pain. Breathing problems with painkillers. Nothing to do but try to pin it. Surgery a success but patient's blood pressure never stabilizes. The next week we are organizing another funeral and beginning another bit of estate management and trying to help his mother through it all. Between the death and the funeral we have to make a round trip to Houston and get a check up on the whole cancer thing.

I keep trying to hang on to things that are 'normal.' I manage to play some tennis. Go out with some friends. Go out with Forrest to a restaurant. To do chores and projects around the condo. The house which had been so great for Dad becomes a burden without him. Stuff seems to multiply. Each thing has to be dealt with. But, finally, we remove enough to get the floors steam-cleaned. And we find friends to lease from us.

And it's tax time and I spend time getting all the tax things underway. For us and my dad. FFP does his mom's. The CPA and I wade through the business stuff.

Then it seems like we've come out the other side. At this point that we start to play a little fast and loose. We think we can do things. Like get our money's worth out of a SXSW film badge, make it to some galas, go out with friends. I think I can really conquer the chores and stuff around the condo now that I'm not sorting detritus from the life of dad and mom and playing the companion role for the sick.

Of course, we over-commit. Of course, I start to feel nervous and distraught. I toy with solutions. Becoming a recluse watching old episodes of "Northern Exposure." Spending more 'analog' time. (Reading newspapers and books, writing in longhand, playing tennis.) Going through tasks meticulously from left to right, top to bottom, believing that you can conquer. Scheduling trips to look forward to. (We have only been out of town to drive back and forth to Houston for medical treatment for over six months.) Trying to write about what's happened. What's working? What isn't? Hard to say.

How'd I Get Here?
It's funny, isn't it? How your life is just one thing, another thing and then there you are, living with a man you've been married to almost 35 years owning a ten-year-old Honda Civic with an insult on every body panel, a condo, a tennis racket older than the car. Your health is good as far as you know. You are living an urban lifestyle. You feel you've done your duty these last six months, these last ten years, your whole life. You've been responsible. Paid for your mistakes. Paid your debts. Paid your taxes. Not stolen from anyone. And here you are. So I'm going to explore that further. I'll enter some more blog entries here, segueing from images and ideas into an always incomplete but exhaustive exposition on "who is the Visible Woman and why does she do that?" Or not. Maybe I won't write another thing in this space. After all, I've been working on this entry for over two weeks and I'm still not sure I'll publish it.

Missing

2010-12-23T08:05:00.003-06:00

I made that commitment to Holidailies and then, after the 15th I could not bring myself to write a word. I felt bad that I couldn't write some drivel every day. How hard could it be? I have produced reams (if pixels can be considered in paper terms) of daily stuff. In fact, I went looking around and I could show you an entry for every single day in 2005. Well, almost anyway. But it would "bore [you and] me terrifically, too." (Points for knowing that reference.) I got mired in 2005 for about fifteen minutes when I thought about it and had to go get coffee and make up the bed to escape.

The fact is writing, and keeping a promise to get pixels to screen every day, used to help me get through.

Here's why: I used to find the humor in it. Even if I seemed down last year (when I got through Holidailies in fine style while dealing with quite a rough patch for Dad's health) I was on the lookout for a bon mot, a bit of humor, to make writing a little easier. A funny hook for a serious discussion maybe. Maybe my dad was the one that helped me find that. Maybe without him writing blog entries will seem empty and silly. It's sure looking that way. Sigh.

Divagate

2010-12-15T17:53:00.005-06:00

Am I there? In the picture I mean. My life is like that.

Yesterday I uploaded this picture, titled this entry 'Divagate' and typed "Am I there?" Then I could do no more. I had no words to spill into pixels and keep up the stream that is supposed to be my (almost) every day Holidailies 'obligation.'

I'm a wanderer. It's so with tasks. It's so with reading. It's so with my stories.

I love this word. This title. Divagate. No, no, it isn't a scandal at the Metropolitan Opera.

divagate, v. intr.
to wander, stray
digress in speech

Love it. This was dictionary.com's word of the day sometime in the last couple of weeks. I actually pay them money to have access to the site with more info and less ads online. But word of the day, facebook and the iPhone app (which is ad-rich) are free. But...I digress.

I was so, so sad yesterday that I couldn't write. I felt empty. We went out to our house which Dad used to live in. Every time I go out there it makes me sad. And sadder. Like when I'm tossing and giving away 'stuff' I'm emptying my dad, maybe even my parents, from my life. Some of that stuff had been with them as long as I knew them. But. Oh. Well. It's really the memories, right? That's what people say. Of course, I have a lot of pictures and souvenirs. If a computer goes to screen saver after a few minutes a picture of my dad or mom will flash up.

I was also sad because we are getting old. My skin is getting thin and these red 'blood under the skin' bruises appear out of nowhere. Sometimes the skin breaks. We have our ailments. We are old. We both get Social Security checks. For now. Who knows what the Congress has in store. FFP's troubles and surgeries capped by a mother of a stomach ailment last weekend just made me feel it was all worth nothing. There would never be fun again. Just illness and worry. Trips to the drug store, etc. My in-laws are still alive. But old. I worry about them. My dad's youngest sister was in the hospital after falling. (She did get to go home and sounded pretty good today.) She is only 17 years older than I.

I am so lucky. But still I was sad. But words can make me smile. But I wander. Divagate!

Get Control of the Papers

2010-12-13T18:15:00.004-06:00

This picture was taken some time in the late '90's I think. Not sure. Found it in my dad's stuff. Perhaps my mother shot it with her camera. And, yes, I look like one of those 'paper and bones' ladies surrounded as I am by newspapers and magazines I'm trying to sort. Or read. Or something. I see a precipitous pile of magazines on a table in the room, too. This was our media room and the place we sat in chairs and watched TV for a while until we moved that activity mostly to the bedroom. We also entertained in this large room. You know, when it wasn't so messy!

I have a real love/hate thing with newspapers. I love getting my three papers every day really. (Except on Sundays. Then only two.) And, of course, we pick up those weekly give away Chronicles and get a West Austin News in the mail every week.

I hate the way they pile up, taunting me. If I try to trim the pile down, quickly tossing the sports pages, some business sections, ads, etc. then I end up with a smaller but, in a way denser, pile of arts sections, interesting front pages, metro sections (gotta read those obits). When we moved to the condo, I had to do a better job of controlling the accretion. I decided to use two bins I had. One would hold that day's papers (assuming they weren't stacked on the dining table or beside my chair). One would hold those sections I couldn't bring myself to discard and the ones I hadn't even sorted. When the latter got too unwieldy...I'd do something about it, by golly. I usually do. Although lately there have been some tough times and getting reading done didn't seem to be in the cards.

Plus when I settle in and read the papers it depresses me. The bad news, of course. But also the things I just don't know about that seem to be dispatches from another world. You would think, with all this newspaper reading that I would know a lot about world issues, local issues, politics, the arts. But really. No.

And yet I can't give up the papers. I do get lots of news on RSS feeds, through links on social media, from the TV and even sometimes on the radio. But. I need to be a person who gets the papers. I am a newspaper reader. I need to work the Monday New York Times crossword and feel that smug satisfaction of getting the puns or whatever. Yeah, yeah, Monday is easy. Sometimes I can work the Wednesday or Thursday one. Or the Sunday magazine. Without cheating too much.

It's been a rough day. FFP was sick this weekend but is getting better, I hope. (He's got the energy to take a load of papers down to recycling!) Actually getting sick after his surgeries and recoveries was an unnecessary blow I thought. And so it goes. I guess I'll go read some papers. And work that Monday crossword. I am so lame.

Can You Really Control Anything?

2010-12-12T08:35:00.011-06:00

Action/reaction. Cause and effect. Can we really control anything? There are all the things we are supposed to do to stay safe and healthy. To keep things running in our modern world of cars, computers, gadgets and appliances (all which have filters if they involve water or air in any way).

The worst things to control involve other people. People you are supposed to be there for in their time of need, physical or mental.

I can't shake the feeling that my dad would have had a different outcome with a different caregiver. Don't get me wrong. Everyone owes a death. I did my best and maybe his came later than it would have in other circumstances. But you make all these tiny decisions even though you are essentially helpless in the world of doctors and treatments. You try to encourage behaviors, look up drugs, get the right professionals. You help make decisions.

With FFP's health I always feel inept as well. After all the surgeries and such he has come down with a stomach ailment. Complaining of cramping and nausea he took himself to the doctor, got drugs, tests. He feels awful. I feel helpless.

And through it all I have been trying to keep things going. Changing light bulbs, getting cars serviced, paying bills, getting Dad's stuff and affairs in order. It runs away from me.

When FFP is ailing (and this happened during stints babysitting Dad at home and hospital and doctor's offices), I sometimes give myself a vacation from all other duties and just sit and read and eat and don't exercise and just be there to fetch things while entertaining myself reading or with my iPhone or iPod.

And, of course, this brings up the question of when caregivers get sick. How do they manage to postpone the sniffles, the sneezes, their own stomach ailments, their own major complications? Last year at this time a friend was at the hospital every day as his wife fought deadly complications of H1N1. Now he fights cancer. Should we be trying to harness this delay of symptoms so that, even if we have something terrible, we can delay the onset because someone else is sick?

Plus...does anyone else think that the routers, computers, phones, Internet access, cars, TVs, appliances, etc. really have a mind of their own and will only work when you, the caregiver, hold your mouth just right and delay getting that cold or allergy attack?

Sorry about this silly ramble, but it just amazes me that we can seemingly control so many things. And yet. Not.

[Photo taken in Vegas at fancy shopping.]

There's Always Something...

2010-12-11T07:33:00.005-06:00

Dad used to say: "There's always something to take the joy out of life." He used to also say: "I've bought a lot of cameras but I never owned one." He didn't buy the digital point and shoot that I used to shoot the Harrah's sign in Vegas (in August) or the computer and software I used to snip it so it just said 'ahs.' But Dad speaks a lot of truth.

I'm listening to my husband moan right now. It isn't anything serious, I hope. Just a digestive upset and some pesky cramps. Still. No joy.

I'm getting ready to go play tennis. I love it, but I sometimes feel it's the only active thing I'm making time for and it shouldn't be. I have to go check on our other house after that. I no longer have to check on Dad, but I still have to check on the property. I'm ready to be done with it. Of course, I still have to settle his affairs and found out that the estate's inventory has to be on file for ten days and my sister has to sign a paper before I can finish up.

I feel OK myself this morning. Although I didn't get enough sleep because I went to bed too late. After going to see "The Nutcracker" and staying after to talk to dancers and walking home, I felt the need to stay up and read papers and watch stupid crime shows. I slept well but I had dreams. There were battles with office supplies and strange court room scenes where everyone was eating sausage.

OK, but troubled in a vague way. That's me. I need to straighten out a bunch of things. I need to find time to write and love the activity. This daily journal is a chore right now. It isn't Holidailies taking the joy out of it. It's something else. Always something.

Ephemeral and Colorful

2010-12-10T07:59:00.008-06:00

This morning I was doing my best impression of sleeping in. Which due to tennis some mornings and other duties, like being at the courthouse yesterday, is surprisingly hard for this retired girl to achieve. But FFP woke me to see the contrail tracing up the sky by the Frost Bank. It was pretty dramatic. Fleeting. But dramatic. Dawn and dusk are like that: colorful and dramatic. Just like the drama at the beginnings and endings of everything.

Sometimes I wish things would be static for just a moment. Just hold up and let me catch up. I could get through the newspapers and the bills and the duties if more didn't show up each day. But every bit of life is a fleeting moment, a picture you can never take again. Whenever you stand over a dying person or try to help someone who has just been through surgery or just smile or frown at a stranger on the street? That is that moment and it is complete even as it flees across time like the contrail. It fades but it is that dot on the time line and it's irretrievable.

Knowing how ephemeral life is can give us a calm respect for how time towers over us. Or it can weigh us down as we try to do everything at once as we pursue a static place that doesn't exist. I'm trying to grab the calm this morning. To find some peace with the reality of life. To revel in the fact that this moment and its discomforts are soon gone. That things change and that's the good part.

Quit Whining and Pay Attention

2010-12-08T17:20:00.002-06:00

It's been a surreal fall. Tomorrow I go to court for my dad's will probate and I was thinking "Life will somehow be 'normal' when I've gotten all that taken care of." Yeah, sure. Life is never 'normal.' It's always FUBAR. Anything else is an illusion. You just have to take the blows, feint left or right, dodge, go on.

FFP sent out an e-mail saying his latest surgery didn't find cancer. Yeah, we are happy and thinking about being festive and such. Someone replied that their journey was taking a different turn, toward hospice. And then we saw in the paper that our friend died on Sunday. I heard that my aunt had a fall. Don't know where that's going but they took her to a big hospital in Dallas from the suburb where they are living. Fortunately she's near Dallas, near my cousin. She doesn't have children, just nieces and nephews. So I'm glad my cousin's wife is there to help her husband. And her.

I have a feeling that I have got to quit whining and pay attention to things. But, of course, I feel like celebrating FFP's good news of the day. (The permanent sections confirm: no cancer in the thyroid. Turns out the tumor on his eyelid was the only thing that was cancerous.) I told him that for Christmas I wanted to dine in nice restaurants and he made a reservation for tonight at one of the best. Now, of course, I'm worrying about other people. Those not so lucky. But you just go on. You do. Grabbing what joy you can. Whining when you have no right and not paying proper attention to your duties. Fact is, we walked to a place for breakfast this morning and while crossing Congress, solidly in the crosswalk with a walk signal, a guy ran the light, managing to stop only after getting well through the intersection. FFP alertly grabbed my arm and we halted as he passed a few feet in front. I really, really have to try to pay attention even as I keep whining.

We took cabs back and forth to Jeffrey's last night so we could both drink and had delightful food and wine. We are lucky. No whining. Awareness.

Objects of Desire

2010-12-08T06:00:00.002-06:00

I don't really want an art object that is a crane woven from what? Paper? Vinyl? Glass? I don't know. I didn't go into the shop. I just stole the image of it, added my camera-obscured visage and put it here. But thousands of objects, arty and otherwise, are in my possession or control. Dealing with them, their value, their weight and their emotional freight consumes a lot of my time.

Even my images, like this one, weigh down the hard drive, obscure other pictures. The more you have the less you can concentrate and cherish one thing.

When we moved we let stuff go. And go. And go. Lots and lots of stuff. I love a lot of what's left. That painting there. That book. My coffee machine. Some of my clothes. New Italian furniture we acquired. Even now we have to stay on top of things because we kept so much (or acquired the perfect object for this space) that the condo is pretty full. When we add something it threatens us.

Since we moved we acquired two new art works. We had to eject another work to hang one of them. I think the rejected one ended up in our condo storage cage. We managed to work out a space for the other new one. At one time we had several hefty sculptures. And some life-sized ones in the yard. No more.

I rarely see things I desire these days. But I must confess that I take a peek at most of the catalogs that come in and stare at ads in newspapers and magazines. And sometimes a desire is created, but, more often I see a possible burden. And some resistance ensues. I wish I could impose the 'one in, one out' rule. You know where if you buy a new outfit or new shoes then something old has to go. Instead I wait until things are out of control and get rid of piles of things. Or I find places to tuck the goods and wait, as my dad and my mom did, for someone else to deal with it when I'm gone. Six years ago I created a (of course incomplete) list of objects I owned in my blog. It would be interesting to review it and see if I still have the stuff and if I can even remember what happened to it if not.

Datebook

2010-12-07T07:45:00.000-06:00

Going through my dad's things yielded some surprises, some tears, some real finds. OK it was mostly trash and moderate treasure headed to the thrift store without regret. A few things were saved for me or my sister, a few other things judiciously given away. One thing I immediately moved to toss and then didn't was an Austin 2004 date book. Apparently someone gave it to him, maybe for Christmas. If so, he didn't write who gave it to him inside. Maybe he'd bought it for himself. After I retired, I taught him to go to Barnes and Noble, prowl around, read their books in the coffee shop. Sometimes he would buy things there.

Anyway he used it throughout the year to jot down his appointments and in a few cases who he visited with and what he had to eat. Pretty mundane stuff. I read through it all and moved to throw it away and then didn't. I trotted it out again and read all the mundane entries. The name of the urologist he didn't like and later fired. A bunch of appointments to see about a large goiter we'd just discovered. Appointments with a GP I later fired. A note on one day that he spent $14.35 on food. Indications that he planned to attend water aerobics, later abbreviated to H20 Arb or W-A. On January 17, 2004 he wrote 'Rain 5 inches over 3 or 4 days.' Emptied his rain gauge, I guess. This was back when he drove himself lots of places. Not everywhere. The surgeon considering his goiter was in St. David's big medical complex and he wanted me to take him there. He noted cards he mailed to his grandchildren and calls he made to his sisters. The gate code for an apartment where he picked up a woman and took her to church activities. Dates were noted for parties for a friend's 90th birthday and a couple's 50th wedding anniversary.

On June 2, he noted 'Linda and FFP to France.' On July 20 he wrote 'Fly out 12:30P to Frankford [sic].' He meant Frankfurt. Germany. He was eighty-seven years old and headed on an almost thirty day trip to Germany, England and Iceland with a friend. On August 17 he wrote: 'Return from London.' On the 18th: 'From Chicago at 1:30AM No luggage.'

The last six years weren't kind to my dad and he had some difficulties even back when keeping this datebook, but somehow these few scrawls show me just how in control of his life he was then and how much he was enjoying it in spite of everything.

I still haven't managed to throw it away.

[Holidailies note: I didn't find or make time yet to read much of the rich vein of writing that people are giving as their holiday gift to an old school community of lovers of words in pixels, but one I clicked on was an old favorite read. A sad entry but beautiful.]

Festive Me

2010-12-06T07:00:00.002-06:00

The 'Visible' Woman, you see, is a bit of a joke. I like to hide in reflections, opaque images and, if I'm honest, writing that obfuscates and complicates rather than reveals.

This year I'm only festive in reflections like this one. I'll be brushing the glitter off my hands from your cards (actually who sends those now? especially the ones with glitter?) and putting a Santa hat on in reflection only (at Top Drawer Thrift). I'll be looking at your lights and trees, drinking your booze. Oh, I may cook up a jazzy seasonal music play list to listen to on the iPod and I'll post seasonal pictures. But, honestly, I'm not doing festive this year. There was a time when I decorated the house, however idiosyncratically. That was when we had a house. And even a year or two when I had a Christmas party at that house. There were years I gave scores of gifts to relatives, friends and co-workers.

There will be presents for party hosts and my in-laws. That's it. Oh, I sent money to Colorado for the kiddies, but that hardly counts.

So, yeah, as Holidailies kicks off don't count on me to conjure up the smell of cider and cookies or to advise on roasting a turkey. I may, rather, be talking about my strange 2010 of travel and adventure, death and diagnosis, healing and milestones and, of course, downsizing. Downsizing is a favorite topic of mine and a time when you have to decommission an abode is ripe for downsizing tales.

Stay tuned, if you will, for the Visible Woman type of reflection. But, in any case, enjoy the writing that the Holidailies portal offers.

Frames of Reference

2010-11-29T08:26:00.004-06:00

When you embark on some part of your life experience (marriage, moving, new job, illness, vacation) you have expectations from past frames of reference but really who knows what is coming? This year we tried to snap back from a time when my dad needed me very badly and tried to be those happy retirees in comfortable shoes who can drive long distances and fly off on weekdays. But illness and death had other things in mind. I can't find the words to describe my year and its ups and downs, trips and towns, exhilaration and gut-wrenching anguish (sometimes on the same day). So it won't be a year that I describe in a family newsletter or represent with a happy picture of our downtown abode. Which is why I'm not sending a holiday card. The collage above only partially represents my attempt to make sense of it. Maybe when Holidailies is done I'll have the ability to represent myself to the 200+ people I usually send a missive to on the holidays.

[I threw this together for testing Holidailies. So expect more coherency when that actually begins next week!]

Lost Me

2010-11-28T19:52:00.003-06:00

Normally I have a real good idea who I am and how I am feeding my own selfish desires. The last three months have been trying in this regard however.

My dad died. My husband needed medical care. My dad's affairs needed to be concluded. I began to worry about my in-laws more because, after all, they are 90 and 100.

So lately I keep asking myself: Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? Why didn't I get to do the things I dreamed about when I managed to retire early and not completely broke?

I am selfish. I know I am very, very lucky. I have resources both physical and monetary against the onslaught. My husband is going to be fine. For now. One day we will all not be fine. The problem is that that day seems all too imminent of late.

And so....while others are shopping, decorating and celebrating...I'll be helping FFP through a surgery and recuperation and perhaps reading and blogging and pondering the rest of my life. I have made one or two momentous decisions: I won't do a holiday card for the first time in a very long time and I will blog in this space every day until the new year. I will write complete sentences. I will punctuate as well as I know how. I will complete thoughts and write my demons off in pixels.

Dad

2010-09-29T04:04:00.005-05:00

This is my dad around Thanksgiving 2002. He was getting ready to go on a trip to Germany with a friend. He'd gotten over the mental and physical ravages of my mother's hundred days in the hospital earlier that year. After this he would have some other trips, get to meet two additional great grand kids, enjoy events with friends and family, lose scores of friends and family members and suffer a number of physical indignities brought on by time (and occasionally doctors' attempts to reverse it). On Sunday morning I made a welfare call to the house where he was living alone (with assistance with cleaning, cooking, errands, lawn, etc.). This was the one you dread. I found him in his bed where he'd neatly organized himself for the night and where he'd had a heart attack and a stroke. Thirty-six hours later he died. Dad was very much a presence for me, especially the last ten years since he moved to Austin. I cared for his needs the best I could. We had a couple of fun road trips together after my mother died and I retired. He kept his sense of humor until the end. I don't think I could have done.

Road Trip

2010-09-05T15:44:00.013-05:00

In some ways the road trip we took, lasting a couple of days shy of two weeks and covering about 4500 miles, was essentially pointless. We had only two goals beyond the trip itself: (1) see some friends in Las Vegas and check out a hotel there that we had a free suite in for two nights; and (2) spend some time in the Portland, OR and Oregon coast area with some dear friends as we often do in August. We could have flown to these two destinations, burning three or four days on airplanes. Instead we spent about six and a half days on the road and spent three nights in Vegas and five nights in our Portland area destination.

The idea took hold, though. Once we decided to spend those days in those places and travel between them, I had a couple of long sessions with Internet TrikTiks from AAA, some scouring of hotel WEB sites, some conferring with friends on dates and plans, and the trip was afoot. Or acar, specifically, via our 2007 4 cylinder Honda Accord with new tires and a fresh maintenance run.

Getting away isn't easy these days. We arranged for people to give our elderly parents a hand, but then my dad ended up in the hospital for a couple of days after an antibiotic he was given sent his sodium perilously low. I almost thought we'd have to cancel. But we kept planning. I put together two notebooks, Outbound and Homebound with detailed driving instructions and hotel confirmations. I got new paper maps from AAA. I made lists, lists, lists.

There is something about the road running out under you, transferring you magically across the changing landscapes, listening to books on CD, nibbling road snacks, talking, laughing at what you see that concentrates your attention and gives you some perspective. I am energized most by the reality of people, what they wear, where they live, where they shop; by the signs, trash and animals (dead and alive and just promised by crossing signs) along the way. This is the same detail I find interesting in my walks around my own neighborhood but the details really stack up when you cover thousands of miles of the U.S.

So we do get to go on this lark of a trip. The car is all nicely organized. A bag with hiking boots, hiking socks, jackets and sweatshirts stuffed way in the back of the trunk for the Oregon coast. Small bags to take inside one night stand hotels. A bag with books on CD, an emergency first aid kit and a portfolio of DVDs. A small suitcase with some extra clothes. A laptop and its accouterments in a separate bag. Atop this in the trunk two hanging bags with extra shirts, slacks and a blazer each.

In the back seat, a small soft-sided cooler with a few drinks and a little cheese for first day. Also, two pillows; a canvas sack with plastic utensils, wipes and napkins; a canvas sack with peanut butter crackers, cereal bars, plain almonds, beef jerky; a backpack for each of us with gadgets and books. In the front a slim organizer for maps, directions, hotel confirmations, pens, receipts and two commuter cups full of fresh coffee. We are off around five in the morning. Our goal is to achieve escape velocity west out of Texas on our way to Las Vegas.

Las Cruces, NM is not a garden spot but it was a convenient place to lay over. We did our usual marvel at the 80 MPH speed limts on IH10 in W. Texas and the giant windmills turning ponderously on the bluffs in stretches of nothing. We ate at a restaurant specializing in New Mexican wine. In fact, I think, an actual extension of one or more New Mexican winery. The food and wine were forgettable. Our goal was to sleep and be off in the morning very early to make it all the way to Las Vegas. We had gone 618 miles. We needed to go 742 to get to Las Vegas.

Traveling is so different now than it used to be. Once there was no Internet mapping. No iPhone to pop out to help navigate. In fact, I remember road trips before air conditioning and seat belts. And certainly before cup holders, pay the pump, cell phones, singing shoulders (that rough pavement that wakes you up as you run off the road) and books on CD (or tape). Indeed before CDs and cassette tapes. And certainly before XM radio which the Accord also has. These things have changed travel as have more reliable radial tires. We saw few disabled vehicles.

I thought the car would become disorganized straight away, but the organization held up pretty well for the entire trip. Of course, I moved things around every time we stopped. The cooler only had cold packs when we had a frig with a freezer in the room which we did at most of the small Comfort Inns and such. Trash accumulated and was discarded, drinks were rearranged in the four cup holders in the front.

That second day on the way to Vegas was very scenic. From stately Saguaro cacti to mountains and amazing rock formations and rock-bordered lakes on the Colorado. I've traversed some of this before, of course. But it never gets old for me. I really liked Texas Canyon near Benson, AZ. I'm sure I'd been through there before, but I forgotten the majesty of the giant very rounded rock formations. I actually enjoy seeing the crumpled shells of old abandoned buildings and the various people at the stops. It's a long drive, though, and we arrive in Las Vegas pretty weary. We find the Wynn Encore and valet park, taking most of our stuff inside. We will stay here three nights. There are long check-in lines, but we finally get to a lovely suite. A sitting area, a perfect desk with power and Internet, a flat screen that twirls around between the sitting area and the area with the king-size bed. Lovely bedding, an iPod dock, a giant bathroom with a shower and a tub, two sinks, etc. This is no Comfort Inn.

Lest I devolve into a minute-by-minute (or day-by-day) account where I'm trying to convey some of the moments that make the trip worthwhile, I'll just briefly recap the rest of the trip. Spent three nights in Vegas. Ate several fabulous meals (one lunch with the aforementioned friends) and had lots of good eats and drinks. Slept, shopped, viewed a couple of the fabulous fake environments. Did not risk one cent gambling. Then we drove to Boise, Idaho. And then on to Vancouver, Washington across the Columbia from Portland, Oregon. We had a nice lunch on the Columbia, dinner in Portland and took off around noon the next day with our friends to spend a couple of nights on the Oregon Coast (Cape Meares). Then back to Vancouver. We made our pilgrimage to Powell's City of Books and added a new must-do to Portland shopping: Everyday Music down the street from Powell's. We attended an Oregon wine tasting, had a super fab meal where we got to see a very dear friend I've known since Junior High. Our Portland-area friends made every minute of these three days fantastic by knowing places to go, cooking for us and enjoying music and movies with us. Then we spent three days driving the couple of thousand miles home. I used to keep much more detailed records of the activities and not just in tweets and facebook photo uploads. Start here for such a recount of a 2005 trip. Sometimes I wish I kept the dtails of my life like that now, but it is just so much work.

Was it worth it? Did we see anything like the Eiffel Tower (real not Vegas one) or even the Grand Canyon (which was, after all, right there in Arizona)? Could it be said to be restful what with going from hotel to hotel and doing all that driving? To those who see the very real problem of making sense of this 'vacation' I can only offer the following bits of narrative and flashes of images which make it all worthwhile for me.

Sitting down with our friends in Vegas, listening to the narrative of how they live in the Vegas suburb of Henderson, sharing stories and seeing how they are handling their retirement.
Enjoying the wonderful suite in Vegas, having good simple steak as well as delicacies like lamb's tongue and sweetbreads and marveling at the over-the-top ostentation, but still getting a feeling of escape when watching the lights recede as we plunged into the lonely desert to make our way north on the loneliest highway in America.
Wondering why all the road kill seemed so dry and dessicated as if it had been a long time since anything fresh was felled. Also, wondering at how trucks can throw all that rubber that I mistake for roadkill. Laughing as the silhouettes on the game crossing signs got more and more exotic with bigger and bigger racks with the passing miles on Highway 93 in Nevada aka the aforementioned 'loneliest highway in America.' Along said highway, by the way, we found the people very friendly and the restrooms rather clean. Highlight of our animal spotting was a walk to feed goats pinned near the Oregon coast and seeing a tiny pig survive a run across the road in Texico, NM. (This is the first live pig in the road on my life list. I have seen a dead one.)
Wondering why every other customer in a combo convenience store/gas station/Domino's pizza joint was American Indian. Then realizing we were driving on a reservation.
Loving the feeling of crossing the map, turning the pages in the book of directions, recalling past experiences in some of the places. Also: I can now say I've been in Idaho and Utah. I don't think I'd ever crossed those state lines before.
Seeing the same franchises in place after place and knowing that it is really possible to mostly avoid them. An exception to this is occasionally made, of course. FFP finds a particular concoction of a freshly-made Subway sandwich good for filling his stomach. I started to laugh as he searched for Subway outlets, particularly before 9AM but he often found them. We also stopped at one McDonald's to fill a cup with coffee and use the bathrooms. We filled up at more local places on our one-night stands: brew pubs in Boise and Salt Lake and the Owl Diner in Albuquerque, for example. We were asked by one of the owners of our Austin Ruth's Chris if we tried the one in Vegas. But, no, only 'our' Ruth's Chris will do. We look for something different on the road and our affection for that particular Ruth's Chris is not transferable, generally.
Speaking of dining: we did some of the 'fine' variety. Sure, Austin has a wonderful dining scene. But I swear Portland never ceases to make me sit up and take notice. This trip we tried out Wildwood, Metrovino and Davis Street Tavern. All stunning. Add to that the amazing cooking of our friend Tina and eating some fine food in Vegas and we had that element we demand from vacation: fine, fresh and adventurous food. From roasting freshly-bought oysters on a fire to eating offal in Vegas, I'll remember the food and the fun.
Speaking of filling coffee cups. Taking along our Nissan stainless 12 oz. commuter cups allowed me to have a steady stream of surprisingly good coffee provided at prices ranging from free (yes, free) to a little over a buck. That McDonald's filled the cup for thirty-five cents. And no. No, Starbucks. Not one. Of course, many of these spots were chain convenience stores associated with gas stations but they all had a whiff of the local entrepreneur about them.
Speaking of gas stations. We stopped at several Sinclairs with the good old green Sinclair dinosaur. This surprised me because this brand was subsumed in Texas in the '70's I think, by Atlantic Richfield. Which became part of BP decades later, of course. I guess I didn't know the cute dinosaur survived anywhere, and it was one of those little details I enjoyed.
Reading. Honestly, I took along several books and some old newspaper sections and didn't read much of them. But I did enjoy papers we bought or got along the way and I did enjoy the books we listened to on CD. We caught up with the Swedish novel "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Even better relative to the passing landscape and the highway system, we listened to "Lolita" which besides being a telling investigation of pedophilia is a paean to driving the U.S. highway system with its motels and tourist sites in the '50's. We also listened to a book about the Panama Canal which was a constant reminder of how hard it was to cross the continent even in the early 20th century. Funny while driving in air-conditioned luxury at around 70MPH even on 'lesser' roads.
Speaking of driving again, I find the long drives, supported by planning routes and sleep stops like a giant game. We try to observe the speed limits exactly, minimize wrong turns and long stops. Each caffeine-fueled mile feels like victory even when the scenery isn't the best.
A walk on the beach. The beautiful Pacific. Sunset. A three or four mile walk. Ah. Of course, my mother-in-law didn't know why we needed to go to the west coast when we've 'already been to the east coast.' And, of course, we'd already walked on that Cape Meares beach, too. My mom-in-law has not seen the ocean to my knowledge nor left the state of Texas. She probably doesn't know that the Idaho license plate says something about Potatoes. I'm just saying. What's important in this world?
People, people, people. Great to see friends along the way. But also great to see strangers. The couple reading books about beavers in Powell's City of Books coffee shop. She had a T-Shirt that said 'No religion. No flag. No fear.' The truck drivers and other travelers. Was a little upset with the guy dragging three trailers and having trouble holding the lane when I passed him and he was reading a book. But, yeah, all those people, doing their things. Including hundreds at the Tillamook Cheese factory. I didn't see the attraction, but I did enjoy seeing the tourists there. And wondering...why? Although there were free cheese cubes. And a cafe and ice cream shop and gift shop.

Yeah, I loved our trip. I think it puts me more in touch with the greater U.S. where almost twenty percent of people live in manufactured homes and where some of the clerks ringing up those coffee fill-ups may not stray far from the little town you are going through as fast as you can. I wouldn't want to only do that mindless driving, staying in Quality Inns and Comfort Suites, some of which look like they've fought a battle. But mixed in with fine dining, beautiful scenery, wonderful visits with friends, it worked for me. Missed a small crisis for my dad or, rather, got in on the tail end of it, but the caregivers managed it. So it goes. See you in the rear view mirror.

In the Abstract

2010-05-31T23:12:00.004-05:00

I like abstract art. I like collage. I like pieces that use letters, words, portions of words, torn paper. I like this piece. Only...it's actually a photograph of a window in an abandoned store front that has had posters adhered to it then ripped away.

Still, I like it very much. It's accidental quality, curated by me with a digital camera, makes me like it more, maybe, than a painting in a gallery. Or less.

I love collage. Not every artist, of course. I've been a fan of Lance Letscher for a long time. We didn't discover him until he was famous and expensive. But we did recently acquire a piece. It's small, but that's OK because we would have had to give up some other art work if we had gotten a large one. We don't really live large any longer. Except in our heads, of course. Or reaching out into the World Wide WEB to fill our heads with news, facts, images, opinions. And we couldn't have afforded a large one anyway.

I also like Laurie Frick. She created a collage that is in the lobby of our condo. At the recent 5x7 fund raiser for Arthouse at Jones Center, I spied a couple of pieces that Laurie had donated. You aren't supposed to know the artist before buying but I identified the work by its style and, when I bought one of them and turned it over, saw I was right. (Someday we have to explore this whole thing about how we identify an artist's work, people's images, etc. again.)

I want to create collages. I sometimes make homemade greeting cards that are collages of sorts. I put them together with rubber cement which makes for easy work but fragile ephemeral results. I don't know anything about physically making collages that last. I have made some digital collages. I made one of photos I made of assemblages of stuff. I have made simple ones layering on the scanner. I have made them by manipulating ephemera on the computer. I've made them manipulating letters and words and colors and shapes and ephemera on the computer. Not that I consider any of this art, really. It's more practice looking, learning what I like free of the influence of others. It's not unlike looking at work and seeing what I like about it and learning something new about myself.

I'm constantly learning, really. What I like, how I react to art and what art work I might someday is constantly evolving. Can you be unfinished, still, in the year when you plan to apply for social security checks? I don't know if you should be, but I think I am. I think I'm growing and changing every day. And learning. And finding out what I like. Maybe that's how I cheat death until, like everyone else, I don't.

I have been trying to finish this for days. But, I looked up Laurie Frick for the hyperlink (does anyone call them hyperlinks anymore?) and ended up having to look at everything on her site, friend her on facebook and have a chat over there before I could wind up writing this. Then I look it over and I haven't really said much. So it goes. But there is the 'artwork' up top.

It's Right In Front of Me

2010-05-09T10:04:00.005-05:00

Sometimes the answer to all your dilemmas is right there. In front of your face. Sometimes the answer is as simple as this: do your own thing, let others do theirs. That might take the form of not going along with FFP to workout at the country club and rather pretending to workout across the hall in the condo gym and really sitting here and working the Sunday NY Times magazine crossword and then blogging. It might be more complicated than that. Not trying to make others love what you love and not trying to be more than the audience for others' efforts, rather than a cheerleader and promoter. Not trying to be all things to all people, to be every place at once and to get people together who can allegedly help one another.

The head picture today was shot on South Congress at Uncommon Objects. I like it, particularly the way my face is pretty distinct except obscured by the ornate candelabra.

I was trying to work the aforementioned crossword puzzle in a printout from the Times digest (rather than in the magazine itself). There was a typo that caused puzzlement. (Or, you know, extra puzzlement.) Last week there was one also. Why always look for other people's typos? (Even if, as in this case, it interferes with your pleasure?) Mother's Day is driving me crazy as people keep saying "Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's [sic] out there." I had an e-mail the other day where an accusation on a heated topic used an adjective where and adverb belonged. For some reason, both FFP and I leapt on that. Just like we always do with something in print. Ignoring the meaning, ignoring the accusations, going for the syntax.

But I digress into my digressions. We were talking about art (were you here the last few days?) and what it represents and I mentioned we might discuss the delicious whiff of criminality that some art carries.

Today's picture has triggered my discussion above about things that are right in front of you or "as plain as the nose on your face." I was looking at how my obscured but recognizable face is an element of the 'meaning' of my 'art.' When I made an artist's statement back in 2006, I initially used a picture with the reflection of people, but absent myself. My partner in artistic pretending, SuRu, offered that the artist often makes an appearance and I added this revision. I appeared in that shot, although you have to look twice since the (non-reflected) person and shop window are so distracting. And, my face is obscured by a camera. (My jeans, hiking boots and black blazer are recognizable, though. My tramping about in other cities outfit. Paris in this case.)

What happens to obscure my face, what interferes with a pure mirror image, is important to the messages of the pieces. I love this picture because the whimsical irregular painting on the wall obscures the face. (It's reflected in the window of the sales center for the W condos, with part of the model building.) Whether obscured by folds and sparkles or partly by the camera and a pig's head or by light streaming from an opposite window, it's me. For sure. I love this one where my hubby is completely recognizable (to me) from the back with his head turned slightly.

To loop back around to the whole criminal element of these shots: I have actually been approached by a security guard at least once (at the fancy Domain shopping center) about it not being 'allowed' to take pictures of shop windows. This is the merchants, shopping mall people not wanting competitors to rip on show windows, I think. Because he said that it was OK to take pictures of people or the art work (outdoor sculpture, etc.). He really didn't know how to respond when I said I was taking a picture of myself in the window. Of course, when passersby appear, I (almost) never ask their permission. Photographers take crowd shots or details or full-on individuals. Sometimes they have permission, often not. With my shop windows, the art of them and the things they reflect may well belong to someone else. As does most everything but the sky and plants. Even domesticated animals are a 'possession' of someone else. Like graffiti artists putting their work on things, photographers and even painters take away images of things.

For all that I feel like this work is mine alone. Especially when it's stamped with an image of me, however obscure.

Art, cont.

2010-05-08T01:00:00.006-05:00

No, you aren't getting off that easily. I'm going to keep hammering on these ideas until I bore myself silly. Which may be before you lose interest but more than likely will be well after. We like to listen to ourselves talk. We can take more of ourselves than others can tolerate. At least I can. I have just this instant decided to call this picture 'More of Me.' This reflection was shot in April at a fancy downtown apartment building. It was cropped and retouched for the header. There is me, recognizable as always. I'm looking especially, um, robust partly due to the backpack and jacket (still cool in April, sigh) and partly due to the full head-to-foot image. But it's me, three times. Really, there is no question, right?

Below is the picture again, after the crop, before the retouch. I now think I like this one better. I am definitely more recognizable but the loss of detail to the darkening above really didn't do that much harm to one's ability to identify me.
Since last I wrote I received a notice through social media that there was a show at a local gallery. The work intrigued me and I also thought how it meshed with this discussion. The work is at Big Medium and is by Jason Urban and I thought 'Wow, this idea of making pictures and then rearranging them on three-dimensional objects. Cool. I could steal that." Not really. But it is a little like my idea of printing my reflection pix and putting them in shadow boxes lined with reflective material or objects. Jason's work has that element of art that is the whole 'idea of it' that we so often see these days. Oil painters? Well, you can move beyond the medium and have an idea of it but often it's one someone else already had. (Lump up the paint, drip the paint and make friends with Peggy Guggenheim, add non-paint to the canvas, paint mostly all one color, etc.) Anyway, how much of art is the idea and how much is the execution? There's always some of both.

I promised that today we would trudge through some old reflection pictures and my comments about them. If you don't feel like linking, then stop reading now. Sometimes words without pictures are so boring.

Going back over four years, I want to call your attention to a picture replete with meaning and unintended consequences. There we are, of course, obscured and reflected (mirrors! yeah, more layers) but ourselves. I weighed eight or ten pounds more. (Don't ask how I know. The answer reveals an occasional streak of OCD.) The shop window is one at Uncommon Objects, one of my favorite places to shoot because I can rip off the fun objects they put in the window. The church across the street provides a shape and, in this case, a religious symbol, too. Pointed to by the hand of, well, of something. There are many 'frames within the frame' on this one. That is an attraction to photographers according to some words I've read from great ones. (Maybe they said amateur photographers.)

That church across from Uncommon Objects has appeared in so many shots, for so many different effects. Here is just provides a shape, cutting the corners of the photo. Here some shape and texture. Here it once again plays a church sort of straight up.

Some of the work also evokes an idea of a place that isn't Austin. In this picture there is an icon of the city I was in at the time, reflected in the distance. But somehow I like this self-portrait one at the same spot better.

Here's a shot where I intentionally (nah, probably accidentally) reflected something in the window object with my stance, hand up with camera, sort of evoking the statuary. I don't usually try to imitate the objects, but hey it's an interesting idea.

That's all for now. But after slogging through so much of my old 'work' I'm thinking of addressing this issue: why, when there is already so much writing and so many photos (a bunch of it your own), why create more? Now here is a (free idea alert) notion: a novel about a society that decided that there were enough texts and images and that no more could be created for purely artistic purposes until the collection had been adequately studied and cataloged. This would mean that texts would be limited to news stories, government documents, technical papers and that images would be purely for historical or personal identification. Naturally people would start trying to sneak the invented and inventive into the mundane. Doing art illegally. Which always makes it better somehow. Maybe tomorrow we will talk about how the whiff of crime can enhance art and how that applies to my 'work.'

More or Less Art

2010-05-07T08:42:00.007-05:00

Today's picture (taken over on W. Sixth a couple of days ago) is not an all-time favorite. But it does represent a couple of the topics I'm flogging here.

I contend that the reverse images of FFP and I are recognizable although reflected and therefore backwards (note position of wedding ring if you take a closer look at me) and with parts obscured by objects in the shop windows (e.g. most of my face). I liked this better after I cropped it and adjusted the saturation to make us more black and white in contrast to the pink car (which was actually brighter pink in the real shot). Whenever you see those bank robber pictures in grainy security photos with caps pulled down, etc. don't you wonder how anyone would recognize them? But if you knew them well, I bet you would. Often when I'm on the tennis court I catch sight of someone on another court or walking by, not facing me, etc. I know immediately who it is from tiny clues. This line of thought makes me wonder if anyone ever appropriated those bank robber photos to make art. Wouldn't interest me, but who else is interested in my line of inquiry?

You can pluck and pick from the images in your camera, of course, taking the parts that fit your vision, the parts that give coherency to the things you are trying to say. Another person might eliminate self reflections (by the angle of the shot or in the computer). Here is an example of a another picture, taken from the same original. It could be used by an illustrator for an article about how we are running out of time to save energy. To me it's not art, but to someone else? Maybe. Also, it doesn't have the same coherency with my other 'work' as the head picture. This coherency is important in our response to art whether it's in the comfort of recognition or the upending of expectation. ('LB was in her shop window self portrait period during the early part of the 21st century.")

That's all for today, folks. Thanks for listening. Blathering on about this stuff makes me feel less adrift from the arts which I love so much. I should probably eschew active participation in this world, but because of blogs I don't have to sit on the bench. I can assert my art even to an audience of one. (Me, later.) Tomorrow maybe I'll create pointers to a gallery of old photos that illustrate some of my points. Hmm, what were those points again? Ah, yes. Layers, recognition, art and appropriation.

So Sue Me

2010-05-06T14:14:00.009-05:00

This whole intellectual property thing is interesting, isn't it? (And, really, don't sue me. Please. I can't stand the paper waste lawsuits cause.)

Yesterday I talked about all the ownership problems with my reflection photos. Today, let's talk about an artist poet named Austin Kleon. He makes poems by redacting articles from The New York Times. He has published a book (Harper Perennial) of these poems. It's a fun book and it addresses the ownership of ideas in a couple of ways. First it's clear, of course, that the articles, word for word belong to the NY Times. But redacted to words and letters? Well, they don't really own them, do they? Second, he addresses all the accusations about his 'idea' of selecting words from newspapers for art not being 'original' by talking about similar ideas he found with research. So, go buy Austin's fun little book and enjoy some poems. Make some yourself even. He encourages that, too.

And now I'll steal his idea and talk a little bit about how that felt. Here's my first effort:This came from an NY Times obituary. If you like poems about death (or marriage and children) I would recommend using obits. I learned a couple of things doing this one. First, I was tempted to destroy it by simply blacking out every word. (Sort of the blank page poem equivalent of wadding up the paper and tossing it toward the trash can or deleting your file on the computer.) Second, I learned that although the page was full of words, I didn't want to use most of them. I found the blacking tedious at first and then sort of satisfying.

This is my second effort:
I clipped the crossword from The New York Times Digest that I receive on my computer each day. (I print the puzzle sometimes instead of doing it in the actual paper, which I also receive.)

I had worked the crossword. I wish I printed 'SANE' and 'JOVIAL' a little neater. But so it goes. I didn't get the idea to use the puzzle until after I'd been scribbling the answers in while sitting at a lunch counter eating hash browns and a sausage wrap. I didn't get any ketchup on the paper or that could have been part of the charm. I managed to sign this terse work by selecting my initials, conveniently arranged in yesterday's answer.

Is this art? Did I rip it off from Austin K.? First, yes, it is art. But, I'm thinking not great art. I didn't sense in myself the enthusiasm for the medium and the joy in the result that would make me defend it as my art. I must say I had a great time trying it out, though. You should try it. Or, you know, take a shop window reflection self portrait. It's fun to try stuff others suggest. It's much easier, in this case, to defend Austin's efforts as art. Is this just because I started with his technique? No. I simply haven't selected a technique which gives me the satisfaction of, say, collage or reflection photos. Those techniques are ripped off from practitioners aplenty, too. If you doubt this, type 'shop window reflections' into Google Images or study any modern street photographer. But I find myself expressing something with them that is deeply felt, like art is supposed to be, and unique to me, ditto. I freely admit their reductive nature. All art is reductive. Even the abstract painter uses shapes and colors that recall something else.

So what are we to think about the issues of art vs. not art and originality vs. plagiarism? I say we make what we respond to most deeply, that we look at and buy what moves us, that we listen to ourselves not the critics and, you know, wait to get sued. It's a litigious society, you know.

Exploring Creation

2010-05-05T12:30:00.005-05:00

I've been silent in this forum for a while. Sure I've been tweeting along and commenting on facebook things and firing a picture a day into the City Daily Photo mist with my helpers. But Visible Woman is where you are supposed to keep up with me, dear readers. Few though you are, I'm supposed to write here and you are supposed to read it and confirm that I'm still here and still not crazy. Well, still here anyway.

I have written down some writing topics that I've gone over in my head, but at the moment I can't find all of that. Was it in a paper journal? A sticky note? An iPhone note? Maybe the sticky note app on one of these computers?

Well, never mind. I'm just going to start dumping out a few thoughts a day here while looking for my own notes and other inspiration.

One thing I really want to talk about is art. I've been supporting the art of others a lot lately and honing my ability to be the critic. (Read: "I know what I like. So sue me.") I've also been thinking about my own art and taking it more seriously. But, what, you ask is that? What art have you produced?

Well, if I may be so bold, this blog is my thing. Its words and pictures. The neglect I've been giving it is representative of how I think I've been neglecting my own creative juices, subsuming them to others.

Of course, I don't consider myself a great artist or writer. I can't draw or paint. My work is largely the act of appropriation with digital photography and collage. I fully understand that it isn't going up in galleries to be oohed and aahed over by the in crowd. Since anything that might be my visual art is going to begin with some derivative work, some appropriation, we are going to be covering that ground. Of course, I'll be arguing for the side that says everything is appropriated and some people try to hang on to things as theirs alone that are themselves appropriated.

My 'art?' (Maybe we should always use the quotes around it since if the artist isn't sure and confident, and I'm not, then it's certain no one else will be.) Most of it consists of quickly shot reflection pictures. Usually of shop windows, although any extra lens will do. I also dabble in digital collage. There are three ideas I'm exploring. The concept of life in layers, most unlike sharp photo portraits with simple unobtrusive backgrounds. The realization that we recognize other humans (and indeed objects) with the tiniest visual clues and yet have trouble describing people (or things) if they aren't in front of us. The notion that the appropriation that occurs in photography and collage leads to the breach of the intellectual property rights of others.

For example, today's lead-in picture. I have given it a title: "Self-Portrait, Spring 2010." However I haven't used a field of Bluebonnets with me in the middle, smiling at a time release shutter. No. I have shot my reflection in a window with fancy spring clothes that I'd never buy. The clothes were no doubt designed by someone. They are on mannequins designed by someone. In the play of layers in this reflection shot, you have a bit of me and my camera. Enough to recognize me. (At least I could do it even if I didn't remember taking the shot.) The shape of the head and hair. The stance. There are layers here. The reflection of the 'architecture' of the strip center and self storage across the street. The street itself. I chose a shot without a passing car (though I shot several versions with one). No other people are obviously reflected as often happens in these pieces. I didn't do much 'work' on this in the computer. But I sometimes do.

Is it art? Does it explore the idea of Spring? The ideas of transparency and opacity and layers? The idea of recognizing people from small cues? Does it toy with the notion of what is my work, my vision and what belongs to someone else?

Anyway, that's all for today. We will be exploring this further in the days to come unless it is like most of my projects and I run quickly out of steam.

Shedding Light

2010-04-27T07:04:00.003-05:00

Sometimes you figure out something and it is, after all, really simple. In my case the revelation was that if you put people together and they don't get along then you just continue to support them as you wish, but separately. If you can't split the baby, you give it to the most logical nurturer and let everyone make their own way in the world. It's not your job to save people. And, more importantly, to cram them all in the same lifeboat.

This is a picture of the sunset reflected in the Frost Tower last night. The changing light in this thing is so interesting. Moments before the layer that is blue here was deep pink. Life is an ebb and flow, brain chemistry changing, things happening that influence others, words spoken and falling into the air, seemingly gone and yet always lingering. If you look away, the moment is gone and it's time to move on.

Novelty and Nostalgia

2010-03-06T15:28:00.013-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to a local Austin event that is part of a larger international movement. Called Pecha Kucha it's a gathering of creative types with presentations by people in various disciplines that consist of twenty slides which are presented for only twenty seconds each while the creator of the show speaks. I found the presentations intriguing, but I was by myself and I bumped into another woman I'd recently gotten to know, Elizabeth Neeld, who was also husband-less. We chatted before the event and at the break and it reminded me how intriguing I found her. That interaction and putting a face and voice to a person whose blog and twitter feed I follow turned out to be the best things about the event.

When I got home, I went to Elizabeth's WEB site. I discovered a blog entry that intrigued me and since then I've been trying to reconcile the interesting concepts she addressed with some things I feel deeply about personally and that are somewhat contradictory to these ideas or maybe simply a flip side notion.

Her entry cites some research that initially sounds very compelling that asserts that novelty gives our brains pleasure.

I immediately thought that it made sense. People are constantly telling themselves that they should seek the new. "Let's go somewhere different on vacation this year." "We always eat there...let's go someplace new." "Maybe we need some time apart and to see new people." People change their environs, their jobs, their residences, their companions, their lives. And are often invigorated by it. Sometimes they just go see a new movie or museum show or listen to some new music. In Elizabeth's piece she quizzed people about things they'd done to push their novelty pleasure centers and it seemed to be a concept that worked.

And yet. As compelling as that logic seems, as jazzed as we often get to do something different, aren't we really addicted to the familiar and comfortable? The blog entry Elizabeth wrote references research that shows that when confronted with something new "the brain lights up in a way that results in a positive experience for that individual."

Interesting because synonyms I find for nostalgia are 'fond memories' and 'yearning.'

Do we want to be comfortable and on familiar ground and yet seek something new? Is this dichotomy part of our fundamental failing as humans or our gift?

I consider myself a shy person. New situations do excite me but they also create anxiety. I often prefer to settle into a comfortable familiar routine. I love the idea of meeting new people and learning about them but I feel a physical internal resistance when actually seeking these experiences. I love exploring new places but it also creates anxiety. I read some research years ago that showed that babies who were sensitive to environmental changes like light levels would turn out, statistically, to be shy children who resisted meeting and interacting with new playmates.

Do we all contain a desire for the new, for novelty, and yet a sensitivity to change?

Nostalgia may not be the right word. Routine might be a better choice. I chose nostalgia because 'novelty and nostalgia' is alliterative. And the brain loves alliteration, the repetition of the first letter of the two words. Why? Shouldn't be brain like the novelty of a different sound? Why do we like rhyming, repetition of melody. Why does an old familiar song light up our brains in a 'pleasurable way.'

I wonder if this push and pull between novelty and the familiar is why I love found object sculpture and collage. Something entirely new from something we recognize. And maybe that's why I like to shoot reflection pictures. Finding something new even in the familiar and easily available.

There is probably something the marketeers can use in this line of thought. Some way to get us to buy things that are novel and yet known. It argues for movie sequels, movies with big stars and yet a yearning on our part for something entirely new. I'm off to an Oscar party where both the novel and the nostalgic will be fully celebrated for their ability to light up our brains with their projections.

So give it some thought, readers. Newness or comfort? Branching out or well-worn trails?

[Today's photo is of a window of what I think is a computer security firm on Congress which has a video projection of worms getting wiped away. Some of the worms are, of course, my fingers on the camera.]

Less is More

2010-01-07T10:52:00.003-06:00

I snapped this picture on a beautiful day in December when the temperatures didn't seem as threatening as they do today at the Gables Apartments near our condo tower. Dripping faucets inside apartments seems like overkill if you leave your heat on...what? Our condo has been set for the heat to come on if the temperature at the thermostat reaches 60F. I think anyway. That hasn't happened yet but the current cold front may make it happend. The temp has been dropping since I got up this morning and seems to have settled just below freezing. With temperatures, at a certain point less is not more. But this summer during the days and days of 100F plus temps any drop was welcome.

There are other times that less is more, though. Covering some news stories, for example. Eating, drinking.

Also: stocking up. It seems like a good idea to people. They are walking through Costco and they think, yeah, I could eat that many (pick one) nuts, chips, ounces of cheese, etc. But sometimes it's good to not stock up too much and just eat what you have around. When the weather turns bad, people strip the stores of food and water. How long do they think they might be stranded. Don't most of us have enough cans of chili to get through a crisis?

I once was the owner of two beat-up VW Beetles. Somehow we got the idea that having a 'spare' car would relieve the times that we had one car in the shop. (Our other car was a rotary engine Mazda. Remember those.) But. It was a pain. It expanded the times one car needed some work by 50 percent and there was insurance, license, inspection. More trouble than it was worth. And you had to have a place to park 'em, too.

Now, sometimes it's reasonable to stock up on stuff. It's best to have enough underwear, socks and blue jeans to get past the next wash day and enough dishes to fill a dishwasher before you have to run it. But lots of other things, you know, you don't need so much of really. And stockpiling is a really bad idea. You really only need a certain number of pairs of shoes or T-Shirts (but those things multiply, don't they?). You only need a few watches (um, do people even use them any more or just tell time with their cell phones?).

But most of the complications of our life? They are from having too many things going, too many duties, too many households to manage, too much of things we should have never gotten into. From letting too many people grab your time. I've spent my retirement looking for things to do but, at the same time, jettisoning responsibilities and stuff. Some responsibilities are pesky, though, and grow and grow and there is nothing you can do to make them all that much simpler.

But...if I'd made a New Year's Resolution it would have been to remember 'less is more' and to try as hard as I can to simplify things in my life.

Needing a Hand...and Holidailies

2010-01-06T08:40:00.004-06:00

I wanted to do something else for a couple of hours this morning. My dad wanted me to get yet another prescription out of a doctor. For constipation. Trust me, no matter what is wrong with an elderly person it always gets back to the bowel. Trouble is, some of the drugs he's taking cause constipation. He no longer had the pain they were to be used for. Stop those. Some drugs he's taking may cause diarrhea. Some drugs for constipation reduce the efficacy of some antibiotics he's taking. So. What is needed is for a doctor to look at the drugs and situation and recommend something. My sweet husband faxed a drug list to his GP and went over there to try to sort it out and go get a prescription filled or a recommendation. I needed a hand. Someone else to do what may be useful, may be futile but makes everyone feel like we are good caregivers and makes Dad feel like he has what he needs. Someone to wait to talk to the doctor. To take the prescription to the pharmacy and wait for it to be filled or get the OTC drug recommended. To talk to Dad about it. This is all I do, it seems to me. Doctor's offices, pharmacy, emergency room, talk to Dad, repeat. It could be worse. He can take care of some things, or try to do so, himself. But it is constantly on my mind. Other things are scooted out. Because Forrest is doing this possibly fool's errand, possibly errand of mercy, I can sit here and write about it. And go to a two hour class and write peacefully. Unless the phone rings. And my crisis management is required again.

But too many of my Holidailies posts have been about my dad's illness and my frustration with it.

There are other things to write about.

For example, I have managed to write a paragraph or two in this space for thirty-one days. I sometimes did it on a laptop while waiting for my dad's next need. (Often encountering his ire because he apparently wanted us to do something else while waiting for his next need.) I even wrote one on my iPhone. It was a nice release and while I will wince when I look back and see how bitter and ungrateful I was during this period, it will be instructive to look back. I was also pleased that this post got a 'best of Holidailies' designation. I always hope to get one of those a year.

Also, Chip did such a great job on the Holidailies site that it's been a true joy to use it. Why can't more sites cleanly present data, changing seamlessly as people add things?

And, of course, during this spate of writing here I have had the pleasure of displaying many of my shop window reflections, replete with shape and color and depth. Well, I like them and one reader, at least, does as well.

Nothing feels like an accomplishment any more. Not the things I do for my dad. Not the things I write or photograph. Not getting out Christmas cards or paying bills or (when I do get to it) cleaning the apartment. I have been walking a friend's dog since Saturday and I have to say that this chore has been a little bit of a joy, forcing me out into the cold air and forcing me to look around the neighborhood a bit. Fortunately her elimination is working and for that I'm grateful and I'm happy to pick up the poop in the pink bags. Now if Dad can just successfully eliminate, too, everyone would be happy. Well, not really, but you know...it often does just come down to the bowel and bladder. It's good to remember that.

Goodbye to Holidailies. Let's hope I can keep up a bit of blogging or writing without it. Have a great 2010, readers. I hope mine does not consist of 80% of the days taken with doctors, emergency rooms, etc. as the first five have been. Gotta get better.

If Only...

2010-01-05T08:29:00.004-06:00

If only shop window reflections really were art and a reasonable (and financially lucrative) avocation for a sixty-something lady.

If only meeting the Holidailies promise of posting every day from Dec. 7 to Jan. 6, were a real accomplishment you could take to the bank. (Today is the penultimate day of the challenge.)

If only knowing words like penultimate were a real skill.

If only I felt at the peak of health so that shepherding my dad through a very rough patch health-wise didn't feel so much like a rehearsal for my own decline.

If only when I found time when I wasn't doing Dad's stuff or year-end, quarter-end financial stuff for multiple individuals and a business, I would not watch mindless TV but, instead, maybe clean the house or write something significant or exercise.

If only I'd known then, what I know now.

Maybe tomorrow, the last day of Holidailies, will bring something significant to this space.

[Thanks to Mercury on Second Street for this shop window.]

Life's Rubber Bumpers

2010-01-04T08:01:00.006-06:00

I used to love leaning into a six-foot-long tilted board lighted garishly and covered with lots of lights and rubber bumpers and roll overs and flippers you controlled, trying to guide a silver ball to defy gravity and rack up points...to win a free game or beat an opponent or just to listen to the score being counted with dings and clicks, the thunk of the free game counter. No video game ever gave me this feeling. Also, the Atomic Fireball which featured Norse gods was where I learned the names Odin and Wotan. The former is often useful in crossword puzzles.

Life isn't unlike an old school pinball experience. There is the inevitable decline, the lights and color and score-keeping. And the random way the rubber bumpers and roll over poppers send the arc of things careening here and there.

Last night a couple at a party we attended told the story of their meeting, how they both went to a dance club on a certain evening. How she asked him to dance, he refused her because he was in the process of buying someone else a drink, how he found her later and danced. Our lives are like that. FFP and I once wrote a version of our paths through life that improbably brought us together and packaged it up as our holiday card, masquerading as a board game called 'IF' I believe.

All those moving parts of our lives, the world, everything mattering in ways we never expected. All the little accidents, the happy ones and the tragic ones. And you with just the tiny control of a bit of table English (not too much or TILT!) and the flippers (relax, use them separately, careful, timing is everything).

Holidays is drawing to a close...ends Wednesday. Maybe I'll keep writing in this particular space. Or not. Put another couple of quarters in and see.

Anger, Grudges, Euphoria and Memory

2010-01-03T10:17:00.005-06:00

I am sitting here with a cup of coffee, typing on my blue tooth keyboard on my iMac (a physically pretty computer that hasn't lived up to its beauty). I'm leaning back in my chair. I usually use the wired USB keyboard because I'm usually doing numbers and it has a number pad. The blue tooth one doesn't have one. This little keyboard is light and magical. There is that great cup of coffee nearby. Maybe I'm 'just typing' but it is always a euphoric moment for me, using a computer that is working at the moment to write something to store forever (or while blogger archives it) and sipping good black coffee. My life is full of these moments. Moments of reading or visiting with friends. Completion of a task. Just walking my friend's dog this morning on a dreary, damp day felt good. Toasting with friends with some great live music playing gives me a rush of well-being.

Lately I've had lingering anger and attendant grudges to deal with. The good news is that the euphoria of moments of reading, writing, visiting with friends or listening to music stick with me. A sip of coffee takes me there and makes me happy.

But my memory for other things grows vague. Rude comments and slights, behavior that I found offensive, someone taking advantage of me? I hold onto it but then it slips away, a victim of the vagaries of memory. Perhaps because these things are inspired by the memory alone and not, like my moments of euphoria, fueled by the smell of coffee or the clink of ice cubes in a Manhattan or a sight of a red wine twinkling in candlelight.

I'm not sure how it came to be that good memories were associated with these readily available triggers, but I'm glad it's so and that my grudges and anger are more easily put aside, having to maintain themselves out of brain stuff alone.

[Today's photo is an untitled shop window reflection portrait of FFP taken with an iPhone at Let's Dish on South Lamar.]

My Thoughts and Prayers

2010-01-02T12:25:00.006-06:00

When someone is ill, people pray, send good thoughts, send cards and letters, visit, call, bring food. bring plants and flowers and other presents and volunteer to help any way they can. It makes a difference, of course, that support and help. But it isn't a cure. It's not that support might not help you get well. It's just that the support that truly might help is the diligent relative or caregiver managing the real problem. In the end, no one can save anyone. Not forever not from everything.

If you think inserting yourself in pre-op patient prep room to pray helps medically you are wrong. You are in the way. If you think bringing a plant, a green jello concoction and telling relatives that they don't know what they are doing vis-a-vis the patient's care is just the ticket to restore your friend to the healthier person you enjoyed...well you are wrong, too. You might give your friend a nice visit and some hope but you aren't saving the day.

Cards and letters are appreciated and sometimes give the person the spirit to fight on, but they're not a cure. I was surprised that my sister saved funny letters I sent to her while she was fighting to recover from hemorrhagic and ischemic strokes. They were fun and she liked them which pleased me, but it was therapists, the family close to her, the docs and her will that got her somewhere, that helped her recover to a certain point. I sent the letters because I was far away and helpless to help her.

And when people say "if there is anything at all I can do?" Yeah, most don't mean anything really. Particularly not the tough hands on patient care. Certainly when I say it I don't mean it. It's hard enough when you are the primary caregiver and can't avoid it.

Dad's last ditch fix appears to have failed after three weeks or so. We went to the emergency room for the second time in the new year today. I am tired of being asked to speculate on what is happening inside him, what his doctors think. Yes, it' moderately helpful having me around to recite his facts since reading a chart seems to be a lost art. So I may actually help him get better or at least get comfortable. My thoughts and prayers, though? My opinion is that they are at best placebos. Maybe yours are more effective. But really I don't think so.

Today I will write a sympathy card to someone who is grieving. It won't really help the grief process but it is the right thing to do. Just like all those cards, letters, prayers and good thoughts coming my dad's way. They are mostly the right thing to do. Except get out of the way and don't second guess the caregivers.

Finally All Will Be Revealed

2010-01-01T08:42:00.007-06:00

My dad had some news about his health issues today. But it wasn't the first, or even the second, thing that he talked about when I called. The news seemed a portent for the future to me. But he's begun to look at the future as a series of moments, I think. Maybe not. Maybe he's really striving to reach his 95th or even 100th birthday. (As he claims in jest now and then.) Maybe it's me that is living moment to moment. Not accomplishing things while waiting for a sucker punch. And it isn't even his situation, per se, that makes me feel this way. It's knowing that my own decline has become inevitable as well. Really, honestly, we expect those things with those older than us. But situations blindside us and finally we just linger in this fog of anticipation for the next changes.

We partied last night. But in a calm way. I had a few drinks. Ate some food. Listened to music. Chatted to friends. We didn't bother with the fireworks, instead listening to some bonus tunes. Fireworks seem sort of out of place to me right now. Festive in an over the top way that doesn't seem fitting somehow. Not that the amounts of my drinking and going out befits a solemn period of some kind. Things have happened to people at the periphery of my circle (accidents, death, serious illness) in the last few weeks that served to reinforce the unknowns. Dad's situation has been a roller coaster. When I get some time, I think "I need a drink." In a way that sometimes scares me. (No interventions needed. It's just that the idea of the drink is the idea of just idling away in a bar or restaurant and pretending you don't have to figure out the rest of your life.)

The year 2010 since the birth of the Baby Jesus will hold surprises and stunners along with the things we've come to expect and the things we should have come to expect but somehow never do (terrorism, economic cycles, celebrities acting badly, the good dying young, the good dying old and on and on). So what? Big deal. That's the future rushing at us like it always does.

I'd like to keep better track of my year this year. Maybe that is a resolution of sorts. And I'd like to keep track of the stuff that maybe isn't effectively conveyed in a public forum or should never be aired there. I won't do that, keep a daily journal offline whether typed or hand-written. But I should. Because I think 2010 will be one to look back on. Although I might not be proud of my performance in many areas and so it might be a year better forgotten, better misted over with the vagaries of memory with the convenience of not having a solid record, even one written by a party with bias toward herself.

[Another shop window reflection from Let's Dish. Even the mannequin has a mask although little clothing. To convey the theme of today: future as past, revealing what has happened but leaving much in the fog.]

Back to Our Regular Programming

2009-12-31T07:53:00.006-06:00

"Hullo!" My dad said strongly.

"How are you this morning?" I asked.

"Better. I haven't got my paper, but it's time. I'll go get it."

"Do I need to come over there and tidy things up before the lady comes to give you your bath? I'm going to play tennis at nine."

"No. I have it all in good shape."

If you saw him bending over his fancy walker (seat, hand brakes, wheels, grabber at the ready), you'd think he needed help. But he says he doesn't. Says he doesn't even have a need for any groceries or supplies.

I'm proud. I'm a little dubious, too. Of course, we had to go over yesterday to get the garbage can put up. He can't handle that. He'll have to be driven to the doctor. He can no longer handle all the check-writing, organization, paperwork. He will need groceries soon enough, phone calls made and, sadly, even some physical help again in the future. But he is making a valiant attempt at independence, such as it is.

This must be what people feel like when the kid goes off to college and moves into an apartment and says, "No, Mom. I'm fine. My roommates and I are making dinner. I opened a checking account. I got the oil changed in my car."

My dad used to take care of many more things than he does now. He will probably never drive again. (Although I'm sure he's dreaming of being able to do so.) He probably won't be gardening outside or even repotting giant ferns on his porch or filling bird feeders.

But he is grasping at his independence. Managing his medical needs complicated by his illness. Taking his own drugs. So many of the Medicare home health people asked "do you have a pill sorter?" And I had to laugh because we had one because it helped my niece and I organize his pills. He used to dose himself and write it in a little notebook. When we were 'responsible' he kept saying "aren't you supposed to get me my pills?"

Don't get me wrong. It's been a rough couple of months. For one week he was home and I was afraid to leave him for even a second because he couldn't safely go to the toilet or empty his catheter or clean up or change his clothes. Four and a half days of that week, I was there except for an hour or so and then Forrest hung around for safety's sake, vacuuming for something to do. My aunts came to relieve me at night for a few days and then my niece and her family drove a thousand miles to be there so he didn't have to be alone.

Maybe now that he can be alone, he's reveling in it. He was always an independent guy who didn't mind some alone time and said so. We aren't out of the woods yet, as they say, because at 93 you are lost in the woods no matter what, but we have entered a new phase. I might be able to start planning a vacation. Of course, you never know the interruptions you'll have from the old folks' needs. (FFP has his parents, too, 90 and 99.) But we'll take it day-by-day. And I have to figure out what to do with my time with myself and my activities taking the front row for the moment.

[Took the photo at Let's Dish on South Lamar when FFP and I went there yesterday. We were taking in a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse. In the afternoon. Just like retired people are supposed to be able to do.]

Wrapping Up

2009-12-30T07:37:00.006-06:00

As the new year approaches, it's time to wrap up the holidays.

It's time to put away the box of left over cards from our holiday mailing. When we moved I found lots of these stuck away here and there. I saved a few examples and recycled the rest. For the record I think I only used shop window reflections in one holiday card. I think the shop window on that card was in Paris, not that you could tell. I am extremely enamored of today's shot (not in Paris but on Second Street) because the tree and my hair seem to spike together although I could wish my hair was spiking more as here and here. But I digress.

It's time to figure out how to dispose of the cards and 'year in review' letters we received. The stack weighs a little over two pounds. All envelopes save two have been discarded (after checking any address info against the data base). One I haven't yet discarded ihas some lovely stamps from South Africa and the other has a Gary Cooper stamp (card sent by a guy who is named Gary Cooper but is not the long-dead actor).

I counted 104 cards. We probably sent a little over twice that many. Forty-eight included some sort of handwritten note beyond just a name or Merry Christmas. Twenty-eight wished us 'Merry Christmas' but only a handful had an overtly religious theme like a Bible Verse or the Wise Men. Not one Baby Jesus. Forty-one had family pictures, thirty-two with children (of all ages, among our demo if they were young kids they were often grands). Eleven included the family dogs. Wishes for Joy (15) , Peace (16) , Hope (3) and Love (14) appeared. Ten featured, primarily, snow. We don't get much here. There were the usual appearances of toys, packages, trees, stars, ornaments, penguins, Santas, flowers, birds, angels, sleds, holly, wreaths, doves, stockings, etc. Only two had a Southwestern theme. I didn't count how much UT regalia appeared but there was some. Odd one off examples featured a map of Africa with little children angels, a cartoon cat band, a cartoon hippo band and a painting by the sender's grandfather of a landscape.

All in all, a delight, were these cards. But now what do I do with a two-pound stack of board, paper, glitter and other odd material? I'll review them one more time, cursing the glitter, toss the paper in recycling, save a few cards for future decor and toss most of the family pictures and glittery, printed, maybe die-cut board.

For presents I received money and several books and some candy. FFP and I got some fine wine from a friend. We received some homemade zucchini bread and cookies. Less is more. I'm dying to find a moment to sit down and read the books. (While eating candy and cookies and drinking wine?) I gave money, mostly, plus some toys and games to young kids and iPod Touches (in spite of my disgust with Apple) to older 'kids.' I gave champagne, whiskey and wine. I gave my Dad a book showing pictures of him beginning with himself as a boy and including one with he and my sister and me as a baby and then others along the way including one of him with each grandkid and great grandkid as babies. I didn't mean it to be his present (and only present) but he liked it so much that it worked out. He showed it to friends and to the strangers doing home health. I usually give him a book but he hasn't been reading many books of late.

The year is almost gone. Normally I'm tempted to make resolutions. But not this year. Not even snide or silly ones. Not even grand and lovely ones. Whatever happens, happens. The year 2009 taught me that. I plan to start trying to organized for tax season, get my Dad situated in his new, alive but with some struggles, mode. I hope to plan some travels, do some writing, get my computer situation more stable. Clean, organize, discard, repeat. Do some tennis, exercise. Eat and drink. Well, maybe not drink SO much. Same old routine with verve (I hope). After losing five pounds the wrong way (stress) I make no resolution on weight loss. Whatever happens in 2010 will have me along for the ride. Doing chores. Making lists, checking things off them. If I feel the need for resolutions, I'll go to the well of past blogs and journals. Just recycle an old list.

Soon it's 2010. Whoop. Another day, another year. I'm still here, perhaps, and so, dear reader are you.

Days Slip Away

2009-12-29T07:32:00.003-06:00

Days slip away, but some little mementos yank us back to another time and place. Today's Holidailies writing prompt is "Tell us a story behind that thing hanging on your wall over there."

I glanced to my right and there was a little memento box with three things framed and matted: a picture, set of three business check book receipts and a hand-written receipt.

The picture shows yours truly in 1977 along with my husband of less than a year (FFP). We both have long hair. We're posing lugging a box up the steps of a house where we lived together for over a year (he'd owned it since '72) and where he started a little advertising business called Good Right Arm. The box? It is a brand new electric typewriter. The check stubs record checks 101 through 103 and are for purchases of stationery (second sheets), business letterhead and an initial deposit on a phone answering service. The receipt is for the typewriter which used fancy ribbon cartridges and for a supply of the cartridges. That was the beginning of the business. FFP ramped it up to a full-service agency and ran it until 2005 when he eased back to a copy writing service like when he began. Only now he does only what he wants to do, writing articles for local publications.

I would have exhibited the memento here instead of yet another shop window reflection self portrait but I think the glare would spoil the fun of describing it. We used a tiny bedroom in that first house for an office for the first few months and then we moved a block away on the other side of the street and lived there for 31 years.

I'm not sure what made us decide to frame the stuff. Probably at some point, winnowing records we decided to save these first things and we had the picture, shot by a friend visiting us from Dallas sitting around in another frame for years on the mantle. FFP decided to preserve it this way. Just now, unaware of what I was writing over here, he was beside it, disconnecting his iPhone from the charger and he said something about what young kids we were. Indeed, we were 28 and 30. Amazing.

Fragile and Fleeting

2009-12-28T07:11:00.007-06:00

This moment...is gone now.

Life is fragile and fleeting. Even the most solid things turn out to be ephemeral or change before our eyes. We are the most fragile thing in the landscape, though. Well, except for certain other living creatures.

This is a change I embrace. Really. Except, of course, when it takes my body down an inexorable hill and takes my friends and family away forever, here and there, randomly.

I'm writing this because I like the words ephemeral and inexorable. Not really. But I do like them. I wonder when I learned them. Did I find them in an article in The New Yorker? And run to the 'old school' paper and board dictionary (my favorite American Heritage one that I had several editions of?) to see the definition. Why have these words stuck in my head and left me confident of theirs definitions when words like jeremiad always send me back to the dictionary (premier dictionary.com, twenty bucks a year)?

Seeing my dad's decline, reviewing say the last seven years since my mom died, makes me realize how you lose things, bit by bit and step by step. One day you can, the next day you really can't, you rehab but don't come all the way back.

And yet, we can build up. I haven't exercised enough the last two months, too entrapped in my dad's illness and my own sloth while sitting around with him in hospitals, at home, waiting to do what he needs. When I get back into my program, my stamina and muscle tone will improve. Indeed, the simple home PT my dad is getting is helping him make gains back. Against the grain, improvement while declining.

We improve, we slip, we slide. It's over. It's enough to make you eat good food, drink good wine, have a cocktail or two, listen to music and do frivolous things. And...when I've escaped the care-giving mode? That's just what I've done. And I've only managed to feel a little guilty about it.

Today's shop window reflection self-portrait is intended to convey the fleeting and fragile feeling (very alliterative!) and was taken Saturday at the wonderful Mercury gift shop on Second Street.

Something about the Season

2009-12-27T10:19:00.002-06:00

Detail from Black and Blue Christmas Shop Window at Black Mail on South Congress.

We all have fond memories of holidays. Special times, special meals, special presents. I talked to my niece yesterday and she said her older boys were very happy because they got 'almost everything' on their (admittedly short) lists. They told her they would have to write their 'thank you' notes. She always prints pictures of them playing and they write something to us far away gift-givers.

But sometimes things happen that make the holidays a difficult time for memories. My cousin's wife lost her sister Christmas night after a car crash caused by a drunk driver earlier in the week. It will be hard not to remember that when subsequent holidays come around.

Christmas 2001 was my mother's last. In fact, she was hospitalized right before Christmas but they missed diagnosing her cancer then and it went untreated another five months. I see her in my mind looking game for celebration in her Santa wear but looking, frankly, ill. Sometimes this shoves aside memories of her, vigorous in her celebration, like the year she whipped up personalized stockings for all of us including my sister's kids and three kids of my cousin's. I had to make a trip to Sears on Christmas Eve for a sewing machine needle. Yeah, that last Christmas, fighting an unknown foe, shoves aside images of her gamely making homemade decoration, getting down on the floor to play with kids and then grand kids, cooking enormous meals for a dozen or more people in her small house.

This Christmas weighed on me, too. Dad perhaps recovering but with a pretty unknown future. We had a welcome visit from my aunt, my dad's youngest sister, and her husband. They were at loose ends because for many years they visited another sister of his in West Texas. But she died in February.

Life goes and on and around holidays things happen just the same as other days. My mother died in August. On her sister's birthday. I had to call and tell her sister that day. She had the same birthday as her brother, too. But he was already gone. I don't remember when he died. But maybe his children do and it colors a certain time of the year.

I just watched a pastische of the year's deaths on CBS Sunday Morning. Sure, Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy died and maybe you'll remember 2009 for it. Walter Chronkite, too. I was thinking about Jeanne-Claude who with her verve and business acumen created art with Christo. I enjoyed two of the works in person (Wrapped Reichstag and The Gates in Central Park) and wonder if Christo can create that magic again, without her.

The two Christmases we have spent in the condo have been made low-key and even sad by the decline of our parents. Maybe sadder for me than for them even. But at my niece's house there were four young kids and excitement and celebration. And different memories of 2009.

My Point of View

2009-12-26T05:55:00.004-06:00

Looking for inspiration this morning I looked at Holidailies prompts and one was 'five years ago.' I didn't get too inspired about old journals from 2004 so I went to 2005 and was paging through December when I came across this:

I realized that I had a conversation snippet with my dad that he's repeated several times lately. After he said he wouldn't go to water aerobics, he said, "You go get some exercise and stay in shape. You have to outlive me so you can look after me."

"Yeah, after you're gone you don't care."

"Ha. No."

Is that just a conversation thing he sticks in or is he really worried something will happen to me?

That Christmas four years ago I was just worried about Dad not being lonely. He could take care of himself mostly. He drove. He had problems I'm sure but he dealt with them without a lot of oversight from me. Things are different now. I'm four years older. I haven't taken care of myself that well and show no enthusiasm for doing so. My dad and I are somewhat at odds over things in this new era where he needs a strong, available caregiver and I don't feel strong and I resent being available. The last four years have been very unkind to Dad and they haven't treated me all that well either! It will be interesting to see how I feel on the day after Christmas, 2010. Perhaps Holidailies will return and I'll remember to check in with my feelings then.

[Photo is me reflected in the window of the sales center for the W condos, with part of the model building.]

It's That Piggy Time of the Year

2009-12-25T08:18:00.009-06:00

Today's Holidailies Writing Prompt is "Tell us why/how you started the website where you're participating for Holidailies." I haven't done much writing from prompts this Holidailies season, rather I have been making up my own little topics for discussion and diatribe.

Why did I start this Blogger home for drivel or its predecessor, a blog I coded up myself with the help of an HTML editor, available still (with occasional missing pictures and broken links) at www.viswoman.com?

It was a spot to capture my unique walk through the world, to reach out across miles to friends and strangers and across time to myself. I bet no one refers to my old blog entries as much as I do. Trying to find a certain image or confirm when or how something happened. Sometimes I regret not keeping records even more meticulously. For a while I recorded everything I ate, all the exercise I did and a fairly thorough chronology of how the day went. This is all quite useful in retrospect for, ahem, research but entirely too tedious for me in my current mindset. Just posting something every day here for Holidailies and an image every day for Austin, Texas Daily Photo feels like a big responsibility. Ha.

In tribute to selfishness, the overeating time of the year and food diaries, today's picture is a shop window reflection I took yesterday in downtown Austin that I call 'Piggy Time of the Year.'

Dazed and Confused

2009-12-24T08:58:00.003-06:00

Strange doings on the computers, visitors at Dad's, going to a party on the wrong day, falling behind with chores, looking toward tax season (even Dad dreads it and I do the leg work for him). I haven't exercised enough. I'm in a vortex. I don't think I'll be emerging any time soon. And it's my own fault. Because instead of working assiduously on my computer issues, Dad's ongoing needs, keeping up with things, chores and getting some exercise, what do I do? I find myself messing around with blogs and social media and reading books and papers and working crosswords when some undemanding time arrives.

I'm never going to catch up. I'm never going to feel caught up anyway. Too much guilt. Ah, well, I think I'll cut this entry short and take a walk before we go for a (let's face it tedious) meal at my in-laws.

Best and Worst Presents

2009-12-23T08:23:00.005-06:00

I had an impromptu dinner with a friend the other night and said to her: "Oh, there was this great gift I didn't buy you today. It was a Lego Architectural series of the Empire State Building."

"That was a great gift not to get me." She said.

See my friend collects little metal buildings of icons like the Empire State Building, Eiffel Tower, etc. Of course, these days she collects lots less of anything since she, too, moved into a small, downtown condo. And the Lego, though sleek and wonderful-looking was real off topic. (Not a metal souvenir. Something I might like better than she would, etc.) Collections can begat gifts like that. Gifts that are not, in and of themselves, stupid (like Billy Bass, but we aren't going to talk about bad gifts I've received) but just, well, not right for the person at the moment. I'd just given her the idea of the gift, a laugh. We aren't really exchanging gifts this year.

I've written before about gifts...here in the Journal of Unintended Consequences (a dormant blog I intend to revive any day now) and here in this blog about the economics of gifts.

Today I'm just talking about specific things that I remember giving or getting that were especially egregious or particularly wonderful for some reason.

Some wonderful gifts I've given: a laundry basket with pop-up legs; a check to a Junior College for an extension class in loom weaving; and some iPod Touches (this season); a very tiny loose leaf Filofax (in the pre-PDA and Smartphone era); a bunch of Nissan stainless commuter cups. I can't really remember too many others that worked out so well that I gave someone. It was just the right gift at the right time to the right person. Or so it seemed. I'm sure there have been others. And many of the opposite kind.

Some wonderful gifts I've received: many books I wanted or would have if I'd known they'd existed; a Buzz Lightyear room protector; a gadget with a handle that becomes legs to hold tennis ball waist-high and is a wire cage with the wires just far enough apart to compress a tennis ball and let it in and not out.

Some truly awful gifts I've given: a talking bathroom scale; a Melita drip coffee maker; various electronics (answering machine, VCR, etc.) to my in-laws who don't do well with technology. This year, though, they ask for TV ears and FFP bought them, charged them and set them up and it seems to be going over well.

Ah, well, money, gift certificates (although they can be to the wrong place or for the wrong thing) and booze (although, you know, the right booze and for a drinker) always seem to fit.

For a couple of years in the old (big) house, FFP and I would wrap up books for each other...that we found on the shelves in the house. There were often some pleasant surprises.

To say that gift giving is fraught with peril, or was in the days before the very specific on-line wish list, is an understatement. But I do like the look of gaily-wrapped gifts.

[Picture is from 2005 when we still lived in the 'big house.' No tree but a decorated glass and wrought iron table with presents on it.] There is a large, flat present in the foreground. What in the world was in there?]

Kitchen Confessional

2009-12-22T08:01:00.003-06:00

I love to eat. Whether it's cheap Tex-Mex (photo: Aranda's Taqueira, 2005) or fine dining. I eat all veggies. I love steamed fresh Brussels sprouts, al dente haricots verts. Not as big a fan of English Peas. I love delicate little gourmet dishes with precious bits of sauce piped on in fanciful swirls. Foie gras? Bring it on? Your spinach, green bean or sweet potato casserole. Sure, I'll have some. Fish cooked in paper. Things expertly grilled.

I'm not a huge fan of rich desserts heavy with cream and chocolate, but sure I'll have a bite.

However. I have a phobia for cooking. Now I'll go into the kitchen. Because that's where people keep the coffee maker, the beer and the chips, jalapenos and Costco shredded cheese for nachos. Oh and fresh fruit, crackers, cheese and other snacks.

Some coffee-making is somewhat complex but I've always persevered. I'm kind of like those crack addicts delicately boiling stuff in a spoon. Not sure what's that's all about but it is obviously necessary like the methods for extracting coffee flavor into water that are essential to my addiction. We do what we have to do.

I can also boil water. I'm uncomfortable if you want me to then add pasta but I will boil eggs. My technique: put eggs in salted, cold water. Bring to boil. Turn off heat, cover and leave for 15 minutes. Cool in running water. Peel. I'll save my recipes for deviled egg variations for another day.

But about those deviled eggs. Yeah. Chopping and mixing aren't so bad. My resistance arises when heat and timings and butchering and carving and all that are mentioned. With deviled eggs if you get the eggs cooked and the halves neatly divested of the yolks (start with extras because some will be failures) then you just have to mix whatever with the yolks and put some of the mixture back in the halves. Chopping, mixing, but no more application of heat, no turning, flipping, etc.

God forbid you want me to do baking where things have to rise and be mixed in proper proportions, etc. Better a skillet saute dinner where things can just flow and you can see the onions become translucent.

I like to stand in the kitchen and chop things. Onions even.

And I don't mind a mess. Come to my kitchen. Make a mess in my kitchen making something wonderful and I'll clean it up without a whimper.

The truth is that cooking is hard work. And some of it is exacting: baking, handling meat, etc. Souffles? Ha. And if you have the means you simply have to walk in some place and look at the menu. Last night I had a wonderful seafood risotto (Bess). But I would never, ever make one. At lunch yesterday (posole and a Southwestern Caesar at Mirabelle) and my companion mentioned buying the same corn used to make polenta at Enoteca for himself for a Christmas Eve dinner and for a friend as a present. And I was thinking, "I think I'll go to Enoteca and have polenta!"

I get that if you don't have the money, you have to cook. Been there. Skillet dinners, pot of beans, salads (chopping only). And always lots of things you eat without prep.

Yes, I confess, I have major phobias in the kitchen. And this time of year I have to say: "I don't cook turkey! Ever."

There, I got that off my chest.

The Cure

2009-12-21T09:10:00.003-06:00

The picture? The window of a tanning salon in France, 2004. The subject of the day? Medical care, medical insurance, reform, cures, old age.

There has been massive talk of 'health care reform' for months. It has mostly been about insurance and not so much about care. Except that to pretend pay for insuring more people they are planning to slash reimbursements for things like Medicare home health. Which will allegedly make the deliverers of this care more efficient. Only it may drive them out of business, drive the elderly into homes and put the people employed by these services out of work. But maybe they'll have insurance. Each little bit of legislation has its consequences. It's a messy machine of moving parts.

I'm unsure what Nebraska has been given to insure one Senator's vote, but I'm pretty sure health care is different in every state but shouldn't be legislated that way.

After almost two months of Dad's latest health crisis I have some opinions about the delivery of health care and Medicare. I think the doctors have done a pretty good job saving Dad's life. The quality of his life is compromised by side effects and old age. But he has come back miraculously to the point of doing a pretty good job of chores, cooking breakfast, reheating other meals. He even worked some laundry although he wanted me to fold. Everyone, though, comes to their job in his recovery from a different angle. Some nurses see a shift at the hospital as a series of chores...start an IV, find another nurse to verify starting a blood unit, etc. Some nurses see a patient and try to anticipate what things they can do to move the patient toward a better outcome. Some doctors edged away from a patient threatening to die despite their best efforts. Others stood up with the patient and hard choices. Everyone involved asked what drugs he took a thousand times. Some nurses would condescend one minute (acting like you knew nothing about the patient or health) and expect the family to perform nursing duties perfectly the next. Home health from Medicare was helpful to a point. The occupational therapy evaluation was unnecessary but by the book. The bathing assistance was very helpful. The home health nurse covered the same ground over and over (by the book). Honestly, my dad is now capable of living alone with intermittent assistance. If the paper boy would put the paper on the porch and someone brought food and supplies occasionally and did a few chores that hurt his back, he would survive between times to be driven to appointments. For now.

What will the 'reform' wending its way through Congress bring for us? Will some of Dad's providers quit seeing Medicare patients? Will home health disappear sending him into a facility should there be another crisis? Will my high deductible insurance that we currently just use to wangle lower prices from providers disappear? Or cost lots more?

I don't know any of these answers. But I do know three things. There is no cure for old age and death will come for all of us. And, for now, my dad is perfectly capable of soldiering on...with a little extra help, not a lot. And this health care reform might get more people insurance but the care they receive? It won't be reformed by this legislation except due to unintended consequences.

Does Santa Need a Makeover?

2009-12-20T08:39:00.003-06:00

One of the Holidailies writing prompts was "Tired of Santa? Create your own iconic magical figure for the holidays." Writing prompts are magical things. If great lit doesn't leap from your fingers, at least they tend to trigger typing.

Actually, I love Santa. His unapologetic happiness and roundness? His willingness to be Blue or Brown (or here, Gold) Santa for some cause. His ability to bring the right gifts to everyone around the world in a few short hours. (Oh, OK sometimes he needs help from Brown and Blue Santa and the Christmas bureau.)

Nah, Santa makes me happy like nothing else this season does. And, yes, I understand he was once Kris Kringle and much less fat and jolly and was evolved to sell Coke or something. That was a good makeover. He doesn't need another. Ho, ho, ho.

What I Wish For

2009-12-19T07:08:00.002-06:00

I wish I were out taking a walk on a bright, cool day. I took this from the Pfluger Pedestrian bridge last Sunday. I was walking back from Zach Scott theater and I was going to meet FFP at the condo and we were going to a party that promised to be wonderful (and was). The "kids" (my 39-year-old niece and her husband and their three-year-old daughter) were still with my dad so I wasn't worried about him as much. Life felt right.

As I type this I'm sitting at my dad's. Just goofing off on the Internet at the moment. We've been sitting here discussing what help he is going to ultimately need when he finishes recovering from this illness and when/if home health is stopped. There were no big duties when I got here today. I got his paper in and that pleased him. "You get addicted to things," he said. He told the OT evaluator yesterday he didn't read much anymore. He doesn't in the way that I don't read much anymore: he reads papers and magazines but hasn't gotten around to any books lately.

My life hasn't been the way I've wanted it lately. Too much hospital and sick room. Too much worry and unknown stuff with Dad. Heck, with myself as well. Not enough exercise, not enough walks (like the one from the picture), not enough tennis. Not even enough cleaning my own apartment and doing other chores there and computer stuff. (I always long to do that stuff when I don't have the time for it.)

I've gotten away to holiday parties and some adventures with FFP in the evenings and it's been good some nights, great even. Other times I was down a little, feeling sorry for dad, angry at dad, angry at myself, feeling like a failure. Mostly, though, it's been delicious getting away, going to parties and out to eat.

I used to have a little writing exercise I did when I felt my life wasn't going my way. I would write down a perfectly imagined future, what I'd do day in/day out and week in/week out. There would be descriptions of exercise, dining, travel, shopping, creating. Then I would ask myself what parts of the life described I could have in spite of my current situation. In other words, I'd try to find time inside the real life limitations of my existence (work, chores, taking care of others, limited resources like money and time) to do things that I'd do if there were no limitations. This made me really realize how much I enjoyed, say, exercise or playing tennis or even some chores. It made me realize that if limitations were cast aside, I'd still love a fine meal and a glass or two of wine or reading the newspaper with a good cup of coffee.

Digging deeper in your desires will make you realize how much you really have already of your 'perfect' life. And it will make you make a few changes, too, because many times what you want is right there. You just have to do the things you love.

Not All There

2009-12-18T09:00:00.008-06:00

Do you ever feel like you aren't completely present in your life? Like you are entering a new phase where you are adjusting to new realities by halting steps, sometimes one forward and several back?

That's how I feel now. I have been through ups and downs of my dad's medical condition. We seem to be settling into a situation where he is getting stronger, no longer flirting with imminent death although you never know. But he is dealing with side effects of the treatment. He is able to do some things for himself and to complain to his caregivers (me at the moment and my niece and her husband when they were here). I suspect he'll be unhappy with the hired guns that are going to be his reality after I figure out just what he needs and can afford and get some help. He is adamant that he wants to stay in the house he's in which we own but for which he's been paying all the ongoing expenses (taxes, insurance, yard maintenance, utilities, phone, cable, cleaning, etc.). Add on top of that paying caregivers to come each day and help with daily housekeeping, laundry and bathing and such and it will be expensive for him. He can afford it for a few years so why not? But the details of managing hiring and also of absorbing complaints will fall to me. It occurs to me, though, that sometimes he is a little more forgiving of the outsiders. I'm just saying.

Anyway, I feel only partially present in my life. I keep absorbing new things each day, victories and defeats. I feel like I'm in a box with various slits that let you see forward but you have to shake your head to make the images come together to make any sense of it and then you get dizzy.

I'm neglecting things I want to do in organizing my own life...getting some computer issues resolved, getting my condo cleaned and better organized, organizing taxes for 2009, etc. Sometimes I'm just sitting around at Dad's, just babysitting or waiting for the home health people to come by or doing little chores like laundry or taking out trash or tidying up. I will pull out the laptop and do things (like posting Holidailies) and Dad will mildly complain about it. When my niece and her husband were here he complained that we were always on our laptops. He didn't know what we were doing with them. I guess he thought we ought to be doing something he saw as useful all the time. Of course, the elderly are absolved to nap between bouts of watching screeching on Fox News!

When I get away, I just want to go out with FFP, read, eat decadent food, drink. In other words live the decadent life until I arrive, partially present in some further broken down future like my Dad's.

If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not really. I'm just trying to come to terms with my dad's reality and my own and then live that life fully. I have lots of issues to solve but lots of resources to solve them with.

One foolish pursuit I hope to have more time for in the future is the taking, editing and displaying of shop window reflections like today's and the others I've been showing during Holidailies. I think the daily exercise of writing for the Holidailies challenge has been a good thing although I'm pretty sure it has been mostly a long screed against the duty of daughterhood. Ah, well. I'm a lousy caregiver and admitting it may make me a better one...or just get that off my chest.

You Don't Know What You've Lost

2009-12-17T06:18:00.003-06:00

Take something away and then you appreciate it, right?

Actually, I like to think I was appreciating things right along in the moment.

I was happy to wake up every day without my hands stiff and aching. I didn't know what was coming with the hands, I guess, but I woke up feeling good and I appreciated that. My dad used to say "If people don't drink then when they wake up, that's the best they are going to feel all day long." My drinking hasn't caused an unpleasant awakening in a long time. But the hand thing has made the first thing in the morning a hangover for my fingers.

When Dad was taking care of his own needs (apart from the help we'd arranged for yard men, cleaning, handyman, errands), I appreciated that. I appreciated that other people with parental units as elderly as ours had more demanding responsibilities. (FFP's duties still center on shopping and errands, amazingly, since his folks are 99 and almost 90.) Dad is working hard after a bad six weeks to get back to virtual independence. He spent 13 days of the last six weeks in two hospital stays and had four procedures and lots of intervention and tests. He's been to doctor's offices three times and to a pre-opt visit to the hospital and another emergency room visit. He's had several visits from a home health nurse, several from a PT specialist, etc. He has an evaluation from Occupational Therapy on Friday. I figure his ability to dress himself, go to the toilet and even cook is proof that he's getting back some facility. He's dealing with a lot. And I would be lying if I didn't say I long for when he was more self-sufficient. He told me yesterday that he had his last car wreck (and subsequently gave up having a car) a year ago. I admit that when he could still safely drive a few places and do his own thing that I appreciated that. I knew it might end just as FFP's Dad gave up driving (his mother never drove) because of his poor vision and that ended a lot of their independence. (Although his parents took cabs for a long time before they felt that was too onerous after a failure to pick up at the grocery store.)

This is where we are now. My health is good if my hands are trumpeting my age. My dad is improving after the latest interventions have halted a rush to possibly fatal anemia. And I don't really know where he will land. I'm going to monitor it until after the holiday and then, if necessary, get him additional help to stay at his house as he wishes. It would be easier to go to assisted living where meals and other services would be more straightforward. But he resists it. He knows how he would feel if he lost the ability to be in his own private space. I think he felt that during his recent hospital stays.

It's The Cheat That Counts

2009-12-16T07:37:00.002-06:00

Gift-giving is so fraught. You wrap something up in beautiful paper (or use those ever-handy gift sacks with some bright tissue) and you imbue some object with a duty to convey your love and respect. I quit taking gifts seriously a long while ago. When someone gives me something, I thank them and move on. I give my sister and her kids and grandkids money mostly and a few actual gifts that they very specifically ask for through wish lists. My dad sends birthday and Christmas checks to people. He and his sisters exchange these checks. Seems pointless to me.

I bought a couple of calendars at Book People the other day, those page-a-day things with different themes. One I intended for a friend. We often get together with a couple of other friends over the holiday and usually exchange small gifts. I had one of these calendars in mind for her. Then when we were talking on the phone the other day she said we shouldn't buy gifts this year if we did get together. I found another person to give the calendar to and I don't object to a 'no gifts' policy being established for any group of friends or relatives. I hope such things gain a wider foothold. I thought it was ironic that I'd already picked something when she said it, though.

FFP and I often ask at Christmas and birthdays: "What do you want?" Usually we just empower the other to go out and get whatever he/she wants. Yesterday he went out and bought a guitar. He bought a shirt the other day that he's been wearing a lot. (It's festive in a Christmas way with tasteful red and green plaid.) I told him what I wanted was for him to take my car for maintenance. I've been spending so much time at Dad's and hospitals that I haven't had time to go sit and wait for my car or be without my car. He's doing that for me today. I'm waiting at Dad's to help with lunch and watch his PT appointment. So he came out here and left his car and took mine to see if he could get scheduled maintenance, oil change and such done for me.

It feels like a gift having someone else do that car errand for me. There are a couple of physical 'things' I might like to have, too, but right now it just seems like too much trouble to get new things.

Only One Guarantee

2009-12-15T07:54:00.000-06:00

We plan and plan. Our lives and bodies break down. We rehab. But there are no guarantees.

Talk of things like banking reform and health care reform and stimulus are infused with ideals of a precious world where everyone is healthy and happy and has a good job and owns a home until they die, peacefully and suddenly in their sleep albeit they are apparently perfectly healthy, leaving their estate not to their heirs but to the government because, after all, their heirs are living the dream on their own, too.

Never mind that health care reform is really health insurance reform and is not long on ideas in any of its thousands of pages about how we might live more healthy lives until we die. We are dreaming the dream.

But life is devoid of guarantees save one. Death.

I think you should always back into health care reform. You should say 'everyone will die.' Then you should wonder what is most humane in caring for people. Should we try to eliminate heart disease, stroke, hypertension, Type II diabetes, cancer? Just how heroic should our care be when the odds are against us? When the Obama team suggested that insurance should be required to cover end-of-life counseling, that was the most sane thing I've heard in the months-long debate. When the proposal was distorted into death committees? Well, maybe we should have them. Only, of course, the bureaucracy of them would be ridiculous like most of our government-regulated health care.

Everyone plans to live, get healthier and richer. This striving is not bad, in and of itself, but a realistic look at the march of time might help us make better, more realistic choices.

And those are my sparkling, holiday thoughts. Perhaps more appropriate for the Easter season where death brings renewal.

Guilty Fun

2009-12-14T07:27:00.007-06:00

I love to walk around on a beautiful, clear, cool but not cold, Austin day. I love to go to the theater, see friends, go to a lovely holiday party with good wine and food and the unexpected pleasure of a world-class piano player performing for the guests. I love that the hosts had a roaring fire, a giant and stunningly-decorated tree and house. That they are old school and have a guest book for people to sign when they entertain.

Today I'm feeling a little guilty, though. Should I have been having fun while my niece and her husband were seeing to it that Dad was fed and doing OK? He has gotten very independent and all, but still.

I left them Saturday afternoon, had a little time to do stuff and then we went out and heard jazz and talked to friends. And Sunday morning? Ah, padding around the apartment for hours in sweat pants with bare feet, watching TV, drinking coffee, failing to finish the NY Times. Then I showered up, walked to Zach Scott Theater, saw "Rocking Christmas Party" while drinking a Shiner Celebration beer. Walked back after, caught up with FFP and we went to an amazing Christmas party. After that a little more time with the papers.

I felt a little guilty this morning and now I have to face the 'kids' (my almost 40-year-old niece and her husband) leaving for their home in Colorado on Wednesday morning. However, it's clear my dad can be left alone now for bits. Still I'll have to be at his house for appointments, to see about meals and chores. I'm thinking of hiring additional help. And dreading the logistics of that. Waiting to see the pronouncements of the doctor tomorrow and such.

I have nothing to say today except that I had fun over the weekend and I feel properly guilty about it. Well, not really, but you have to say it.

Family Moments

2009-12-13T08:19:00.003-06:00

Families can be strife and misery and even the best can be tense as children grow and assert themselves in new ways and as the tragedies and disagreement pulls against the natural and nurtured links.

But there are little moments when the family seems like the most wonderful refuge from a cruel world.

At Thanksgiving two of my cousins and their families and one of my aunts joined FFP and I and Dad and my niece and her family (in from Colorado to help my dad) for Thanksgiving at Dad's because he couldn't travel. The meal came out great with contributions brought distances or purchased and then put together in a kitchen unfamiliar to all of us. Above you see my great niece with my cousin's 22-year-old son. She fell head over heels for her cousin of some sort (I can never figure out all that ordinal number and removed stuff). Having an older, grown but still young, relative pay attention to a three-year-old is one of the amazing things about families.

There was another moment in the last couple of days when I thought "that's why families work." My niece and her husband were sitting on a couch and their three-year-old daughter (above) was snuggling between them in that way little kids have of getting secure by getting as close to one or more parent as possible. My dad was in his chair (his 'throne' he calls it) and I was sitting nearby. We were laughing and joking, all comfortable with each other. It felt like moments during holidays and such when you were just sitting around and drinking coffee, maybe playing games or just having a conversation, secure in your family and its inside jokes and confident that we can all grow a little older and weather what comes and still be a family.

Going Crazy Now

2009-12-12T10:45:00.004-06:00

What should you spend your mental cycles on? Lately I've been spending a lot of my bandwidth on the issues of my dad's health as well as his living situation and finances. The broad issues of what is going to happen to him and the extremely detailed issues of day-to-day care and feeding. How much of this is really helping him? Some, I guess.

I know there are lots of things I need to think about in my own life and finances. There is housekeeping of all sorts that I need to do. The literal kind, the financial kind and the computer kind. I try to make time for this but it keeps coming back to Dad. When I get away and I know someone is with him, I get a little break from it and start to think about my own life. Which is not exactly filled with purpose just now. Frankly when I get away I tend to socialize. Then people ask me how my dad is doing and I have to talk about it a little.

It's really a sad commentary on my effectiveness. Normally, I don't have any trouble managing a list of 'duties.' The problem with the Dad duty is that you feel like you are making awesome, irrevocable decisions about someone else's life. And that you are imminently unqualified for the job. Even if that person is ninety-three and people can toss the H word (hospice) around in his earshot without irony, it is overwhelming. Now it appears that he may be able to rally for another round, thanks to a last resort try at a fix. Which would make me feel better if it didn't just make the future all that much more unknown. How much additional help will he need now and in a few weeks? How long will this fix work? Will something else come along?

All any of us can do is make the best of where we are at any moment, managing our lives and health and capabilities. It's harder when you're doing it for someone else. I'm unsure if the task is made more difficult or easier by the relative cognitive capability retained by the person. Dad is aware of his situation and also aware of the point at which he wants me to make decisions. He's cooperative with me and his health care providers. I guess this is easier than dealing with someone less capable, in general. Although end of life decisions for my mother seemed easier in the final analysis. I had Dad to help, of course. But her very helplessness made things more black and white.

No...I'm not really going crazy. (Or that's my opinion.) But I wish I could find something else to write about since I'm doing the Holidailies thing and feel I have to write every day.

Even If I Were Feeling Festive I Wouldn't

2009-12-11T06:56:00.008-06:00

Yeah, I'm the opposite of festive. But even if I were maximally festive (for me) there are things I wouldn't do. Not this season. And never.

Bake Cookies. I like a good sugar cookie that looks like a tree or bell or something as well as the next person. Maybe more. I enjoy the occasional other cookie. Maybe something with a little coconut. But I'm just not interested in baking. The rest of you feel free to do it. If I need cookies, I'll go to Upper Crust or Sweetish Hill. Or you know...eat the ones you bring me with the festive cellophane wrapping with Santa Claus on it.

Well, Cook Much of Anything. I have been known to make sweetbreads with an elaborate sauce and I'll assemble an app now and then. I've received accolades for deviled eggs. (Especially my a la Russe. Really. From a food writer.) But, really, I'm going to leave turkeys, hams, mashed potatoes, roasts and the rest of it to the real cooks. Sweetbreads, too. To me, that's what restaurants are for. If I'm invited to your house and you cook, though? Yeah, I love it.

Wear Festive Santa Claus Clothes and Accessories. I have a red sweater (gift) and a red blazer (bought at FFP's insistence decades ago while I was shopping for a navy one). I have no apparel with images of Santa Claus, trees or, for that matter, Baby Jesus. No dangling jingle bell necklaces or earrings. (Uh, yeah, and I never wear earrings anyway.) Now my mom loved a Nutcracker or Santa Sweatshirt, a woven Christmas sweater, etc. And Santa socks and earrings if she had her way. Not me. Never. No way. Seems I had a pin years ago that was a flamingo in a bright Christmas scarf. I wonder where that is?

Decorate a Tree, Let Alone a Tree that was Recently Alive. I like decorations, don't get me wrong. But if it isn't Christmas-themed bendable posable figures and Legos, I will probably not be putting it up in my house. I admire people who collect crystals from old chandeliers, clean them up and decorate a live tree Martha Stewart would envy. I go in bank lobbies and stores (and your house if you invite me) and am genuinely thrilled with the festive stuff. But in my house? Not. My mom loved to decorate and craft decorations. But. Not. Me.

Insist on Giving Real Gifts Instead of Cold Cash. Some friends I usually exchange gifts with have explicitly opted out. I've gotten a 'real' present for my nieces and their husbands and my great nephews. My niece will get a 'real' present from me for my great niece and, if she can find something, for my sister and brother-in-law. I'll give them the cash, too. If I only gave the cash, they'd understand. I have gotten nothing for FFP or my dad or in-laws. And I may not. Too hard. FFP asked what I wanted for Christmas. "Nothing." I answered and I am totally serious. I want nothing that could be purchased. Bah. Humbug.

Wish it Would be a White Christmas. My sister and her clan live in a Denver suburb. They can have my part of snow. Ditto friends living in New York, the Midwest, etc. Austin doesn't know how to deal with temperatures that support snow on the ground. End of story. I love that Christmas Day can be blue skies and a high of sixty. Yep. Go play tennis, walk around the lake! Yeah.

Go Caroling. Yeah, it's one of the cooler things about holidays, really. But I've gotten deep enough into my religious denial to feel a little silly singing along with Silent Night (although I'll do it for nostalgia's sake). Don't think I'll to go out and specifically sing at people's doors. Fact is, of course, that I also can't carry a tune in a bucket. I might put a selection of holiday tunes on the stereo, though. Especially like jazzy Christmas selections and Robert Earl Keen's "Christmas From The Family." Even though I'm not festive this year I might do that.

Shop on Black Friday. I've done some shopping (with support from the niece and FFP). But not on some anointed 'biggest shopping day' and not in the middle of the night. Never.

Well, somehow, delineating the rules has made me feel more festive. Or maybe it's just that I played that "Christmas From the Family" song from lala.com.

Happy Holidays, Folks.

Somewhere Out There

2009-12-10T13:56:00.003-06:00

Out where dreams come true.

Feeling vague and unsettled. No one knows the future, of course, but we can put this nice spin on our own planning when things are not going down fast. Watching my dad reach a nadir of as yet unknown depth has been a bitter experience. There are things with no fixes. You know that. And yet.

My dad's uneasy relationship with his own health right now and the fact that we are still doing the family care-giving 'wait and see' means we are focused on him in a probably unhealthy way. I know people give this kind of care to their relatives day-in and day-out for years and years. I won't being doing that regardless of the cost to my dad and me. Arranging for care will be challenge enough. A care facility might be an easier choice. For me anyway. But he adamantly wants to stay in the house he's been in for nine years. Of course, we bought it with the possibility that my parents could stay in it in old age and infirmity. It is handicapped accessible. My dad likes it. Perhaps too much.

It means I have trouble focusing on joyous things. Like the brief sunshine out there on a cool day. Like reading the paper. Or just editing a shop window picture and writing something. Like having a drink and some good food and visiting with friends.

It's only a couple of weeks until Christmas. My lack of festive feeling is pretty complete. If I get to go to the ballet tomorrow night to see "The Nutcracker" and maybe go to a couple of holiday parties, maybe that will change. But I'm pretty sure it won't. This holiday is a wash for me. Not that I need a holiday. I'm not religious and I'm retired so I don't need a vacation.

Except I do. I need a vacation from responsibilities. But no one gets that. Maybe next year at this time I'll feel festive, though.

Selfish

2009-12-09T06:24:00.003-06:00

Do you ever say to a someone taking care of a parent, spouse or friend "take care of yourself?" Yeah...people say this to me all the time lately as I've worked through this latest weeks-long health crisis with my dad.

Not a problem with me really. It's all about me. As I do what I think is right and proper for my dad I think constantly about what fun things I've cancelled. I wonder whether Forrest (and maybe someone enjoying a second ticket or seat at an event) are having a good time while I babysit my dad or attend to him at the doctor or hospital.

As I plan for my dad's future with him it is not in the back of my mind what will happen with me and whether I will be able to plan for my future for trips and commitments and the alleged joys of retirement. It is top of mind. Me then Dad. I'm sorry, but there it is. It doesn't mean I don't have his best interests at heart. But I'm the opposite of a martyr. Is their a word for that?

In the last two years FFP and I went on three trips I think. If you don't count one night in San Antonio and two nights at Lake Austin spa. Each of those longer trips had the attendant worry of some health problem with Dad and guilt over going away. It didn't end too badly in any case, but yeah I felt a little bad about and maybe resentment over the guilt.

Now the good thing about about my dad is that he doesn't want to be a burden and you can openly discuss your own frustration with him. My mom wasn't lucid at the end and you couldn't have had that discussion with her anyway. She was very different in that way.

When my Mom was in the hospital for the final 90+ days of her life, I spent a lot of time in her hospital room trying to keep her from removing IVs that were saving her life while she was hallucinating. I'd read newspapers and one night I was reading a travel section from "The New York Times" and dreaming of being able to travel, guilt-free. My mom said, suddenly, out of the blue, "I need to die or get better so you can travel." Yeah, I felt guilty for a few seconds and I knew she was hallucinating random stuff. Still I saw the wisdom.

So, when people say 'take care of yourself,' I'm thinking 'you bet I will.'

Not Knowing What You'll Find

2009-12-08T06:00:00.006-06:00

When you are the allegedly responsible party for someone and you put them in someone else's care by leaving them overnight in the hospital, you get this nervous feeling when you are headed back to see them, worried about what went wrong and convinced that you are responsible. It feels like a sucker punch and you have to remind yourself that at the moment your job is to find your way to the facility and go in and then deal with what you find.

I left Dad at the hospital last night and went to his house for some food and rest. I felt like I was abandoning him. I'd had to remind the nurse to do something right before I left. And when I got away I wondered if they'd given him his evening meds. It was shift change and things are not always running smoothly. And his meds, well missing a dose is not necessarily life-threatening for him. My mother received an anti-convulsant that had to be dosed dead on so when she was hospitalized for a hundred days or so I went crazy with concern when they screwed it up.

So I found my way through the dark and fog this morning, ready for the sucker punch, hoping he was OK. He seemed to have been cared for just fine and they gave him pills last night he said. All he wanted really was his usual early pre-breakfast of a cookie and a cup of coffee. And guess what I brought?

I'm not a great caregiver, but I do care and that knot in my gut is my proof.

It's day two of Holidailies and I didn't want to miss so I did this on my iPhone.

People You Know

2009-12-07T01:00:00.004-06:00

Yes, Visible Woman is back after a long drought. I'm participating in Holidailies, a project courtesy of my friends Chip and Jette. Lots of other people are blogging daily (or some semblance thereof) for the rest of the holidays as a gift to themselves and others. So click through to the portal if you arrived at this new entry only to be bored with Visible Woman all over again.

Now onward to my first Holidaily of 2009:

This is a photo of Barbara Hammond and Colum McCann taken at Ulysses' Folk House in downtown Manhattan on June 16, 2009. I like the cigarette lighting ritual between these two friends. The point of using this picture today is just to show some interesting people to accompany this piece. These are some people I know a little. In Colum's case, I was introduced and that's it. (By Barbara.) In Barbara's case we met her at the Austin Film Festival and have corresponded and met up for some Bloomsday activities in New York, had some meals and drinks. (The picture was taken at one of the Bloomsday things at the Ulysses' place where we met Colum.)

How many people do I know? By 'know' I mean I have met them and, if we meet again, I will sort of know I know them and they might recognize me. Not celebrities or notables, local or otherwise, that would never in a million years be able to identify me. But people I am actually acquainted with and who would have at least a small possibility of knowing who I am, etc.

I doubt if Colum would remember me if we met again. Fact is I had to dig in brain and Internet to get his name right. I read this piece in the New York Times the same day I met him. He's a published author so there you go. But I'd forgotten his name's exact spelling and I haven't even read any of his books. Barbara is a playwright but we've exchanged enough e-mail and conversation that I feel like, more than that, she's a friend.

Through Barbara we met a talented niece of hers who happens to live in Austin. We had some food and drink together. We're facebook friends. I'd say I know her a little.

All these people. That one sort of 'knows.'

I have a database of contacts for mailing reference. There are 557 entries in it. I know plenty of people, some quite well, who aren't on this list because I've just never had snail mail correspondence with them or for some reason not added them to this database or had them on it and then deleted them because I lost track of their mailing address and other contact info. Then there are hundreds of contacts on my e-mail address book and some overlap with the mail database. There are facebook 'friends' (who are these people? I sometimes wonder). Based on this evidence I'd say I know a thousand people, probably two thousand counting spouses, children, dogs and hangers-on. Not that all of them could recall who I am, but most would.

Occasionally we need to canvas our 'contacts' looking for willing donors for some cause or, more often, to populate a social event. It's an interesting exercise to, for example, try to have a party for 10 people or 50. Who to choose? How many will say 'no.' How many will say 'yes' and not come? And we try to do an annual holiday mailing. When we moved in 2008, we did moving announcements. Then we have to choose who to create mailing labels for. We usually create 200-250 labels representing, I don't know, maybe 400 people.

This time of year I go through the over 500 names in the data base and adjust a column labeled 'XMAS' putting 'Y' in it or erasing it and thinking about the person or family. Who are they? How did I meet them? Are they still together? Are the kids still living at home? Did they send a card lately? And sometimes, sadly, I delete a name or an entry due to death. Or, if I don't hear from them often, I wonder...are they still alive?

At the end of the day, I think the holiday card thing is really just an attempt to come to grips with a certain group of people I know, reach out and receive the dreaded 'no forwarding address' for some and, for others, receive in turn cards, Christmas letters and who knows what. In today's world I guess it would be like writing on the wall of all your facebook 'friends' or something. Some cards go and don't come back but otherwise you have no evidence they've arrived.

My cards are out this year. There's been a certain amount of synchronicity. I was labeling one card to a relative's family when FFP came in with the mail from downstairs and there was a card from that family. I was reviewing a card address for a very recent widow when I realized FFP was speaking with her on the phone. I told someone Sunday night that I received their card and they said "I got yours! They must have crossed in the mail." I am more pleased with this than I have any right to be and my friend seemed to be, too. Makes no sense really. And I'm wondering what will replace that feeling when printed and stamped mail is well and truly obsolete.

In case you are still reading...here are some past thoughts on holiday cards and such: last year's holiday card wrap-up; a note after sending cards in 2007; a wrap-up for 2006. Anthropologists are welcome, in the future, to examine all this. There's more, too, buried in my old blogs. But it makes me tired seeking it out.

Looking Forward

2009-10-21T09:35:00.003-05:00

We were dropping something off at a PR guy's office Monday and there, next to his computer, was an old Remington typewriter and a TV with little subordinate TVs built in that reminded me of those pictures of LBJ in the White House watching multiple screens. Once this was sophisticated office technology. We looked forward to having such things. (Well maybe we would have been pining for an IBM Selectric type ball electric typewriter.) I remember longing to have...an electronic calculator! Yes, I was of the slide rule generation.

At least, back in the day, I was looking forward. I don't find I do that much any more. Not that I live in the past. Not at all. I'm locked firmly in the present.

It's a present where you could be seduced by dreams of one sort or the other, but quickly slide back to the reality of physical decline (yours and other people's) and limited expectations. Being firmly retired (seven years) and barely into my sixties and living as comfortably as we are? Beyond my wildest expectations but not beyond my dreams. I dreamed of fortunes to lavish things on myself and, especially, others---friends and charities.

If only you felt that you were going to stay healthy and wealthy enough to have the imagined gadgets and adventures and didn't feel that there are many things you'll never do or have. The fact that you don't even want some of the things, that's good. But the feeling of limitation isn't always pleasant.

In 2001, after 9/11 I started working on a list of things "I'd never care to do" and things "I one day (still) hope to do or do again." Among the 'nevers?' Ride a motorcycle. Among the "hope to dos?" Travel to every country where women are not subjugated. It seems like a list I ought to work on some more. I'll look forward to that.

Scarier Than Halloween

2009-10-18T12:02:00.005-05:00

Some people like scary movies. They like being scared? That's what they say. I've finally learned to watch scary movies by disassociating. It's a movie. It isn't happening. It's easier with fanciful big monsters crushing toy cars and trains. I used to hate 'scary music.' You know, the stuff they play to heighten the scenes when you want to yell at an actor to not open a door or go off alone or some such. FFP would watch something on TV and it would have scary music and I'd yell my disgust from the other room.

I've gotten better. Really. But still. Real life scares me enough.

I am not scared of death. Not mine, not anyone's. The fact of it, that each of us 'owes one' suits me. No. I know one day a bus will come my way or there will be some other accident or, more likely, now that I've made it through all these decades, one or more organs will quit doing their work.

Not afraid to die. Know that the choices for friends and relatives are stark, too: mourn me or I mourn you.

But, really, everything leading up to that state is scary. The world is a frightening place. Sure I feel safe just now in my condo. More or less. Lots of people are looking over their shoulders every moment. But I know things are stalking me and my family. Disease and decline.

Every day we read about wars and financial crises and hate crimes and running out of health insurance. Bad things happen to people we know and people far away.

Who needs Halloween to get scared?

[SoCo shop window reflection entitled "Day of the Dead Shadow."]

Where Were You?

2009-10-17T15:24:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake in Northern California. I happened to notice a news story today in my news feed (I probably subscribe to too many feeds because I'm always behind...just like the newspapers). Anyway, this is the earthquake that collapsed a double-deck portion of a freeway in Oakland. I was nowhere near the earthquake. I was, in fact, about 6000 miles away in the south part of France. Nevertheless, I remember it well. I walked from a little country inn perched near Mougins Village in France to the village to buy newspapers. Both the International Herald Tribune (in English) and the French paper had huge headlines about the earthquake. My friends and I crowded into a public lounge at the inn (the only place with a TV) and watched coverage. We were frustrated when they cut off the voice of someone they were interviewing to dub in the French translation. I read the French newspaper (with the aid of my pocket electronic translator) and they described the freeway scene with the collapsed deck on the cars below as 'coffins of concrete.'

Thinking back to that time twenty years ago, made me realize how we connect to big events and disasters based on where we are and what we are doing...even if it's far away from the site.

I finished listening to cassettes in my car about British Kings and Queens. I still can't remember all the Georges and all the hanky-panky and wars. But, of course, I remember when Princess Di was killed. I was home for that one and I think FFP woke me up to tell me the news. A short time later I was in Paris and there was a memorial near the underpass where the wreck occurred.

We all remember where we were when Kennedy was assassinated (if we were alive). I was in History class.

And, of course, 9/11. I saw the first report of the plane flying into the WTC on a tiny 5inch B&W TV we kept in the bathroom at the Shoal Creek house. I think I also heard about the 1994 Northridge earthquake on this TV. I called my Northridge friend. The phones were out. I called my friend in San Dimas and my Northridge friend was there (thankfully).

In 1981 we had a big flood in Austin. Thirteen people died in and around Shoal Creek. I remember the party in the unfinished penthouse of a bank building on 15th Street, watching the storm develop. And leaving early because we were in black tie and sunburned and uncomfortable and, after we got home and changed, deciding not to go out again because it was raining so hard. And waking the next morning incredulous at the destruction and amazed at the debris line in our backyard.

I don't remember when I first heard about August 1, 1966, the day Charles Whitman mounted the UT tower to bring down people with a high-powered rifle. I was in Sacramento, California on a trip with my sister. So I wasn't even in Texas. Little did I know how close Whitman came to changing my future, though, gunning down someone a few scant feet from my future husband, someone I didn't even know at the time.

I think the message is this: if there is going to be a disaster, you should be close to me. I'll be far away or, at least, oblivious and safe. But we always remember a lot about the time, don't we? And where we were.

Stories We Tell Ourselves

2009-10-16T13:05:00.009-05:00

We only deal in narrative, really. Oh, we think we are about emotions and feelings and such: love, hate, sadness, desire, curiosity, learning, meditating. But we can only think about these things, it seems, in the context of the stories we tell about ourselves and others, about places we moved through and things we've touched and seen and events we attended.

Today's picture is a shop window reflection at Uncommon Objects on South Congress. I've always been curious about the photos for sale in shops like this. Important enough to take and develop in that era before digital cameras and yet somehow leaving a family and its narrative and ending up in a bin for sale by an antique dealer. I've even bought a few in the past, thinking I'd just invent a narrative to go with it. Of course, inventing stories, fiction I think it's called, is something I've always had problems with because of the whole 'making it all up' part.

I've been taking a writing class ("Writing Your Life As A Woman" conducted by Dean Lofton) and what I notice in this class (which is focused on just getting the writing out and seeing where it goes, writing from prompts about real things in your life) is that no one just writes "I am happy" or "I was sad" or "I felt lost." Instead, they tell what they were doing constructing that emotion with details. Sometimes the listeners can't even tell that the scenes in the narrative create the emotion but suddenly there are tears from the reader.

I have my stock stories and the other day I was telling one of them and I started to wonder about some of the details. And then I realized that the detail didn't really matter as much as the reason why I hung on to that particular narrative. There was something I wanted to convey about my life in this world and the story was key to it. The story was neither fact nor fiction. It had an element of truth but the retelling made it important.

I frequently talk about the class I took before that was similar to the one Dean is conducting. I talk about how I enjoyed scribbling to writing prompts, reading and listening to others read and following up with writing 'sessions' with a friend. I tell about the hundreds of scraps of paper and dozens of notebooks of all sizes and shapes that I filled up with scribbles and notes and lists and have trouble tossing. (I'd done this for years before that class and have for years after.) I tell that because I want people to understand that I trust writing as therapy and a path to emotion. I sometimes mention that I didn't particularly care for that other instructor.

When I review those old writings, I sometimes say I'm sad or happy or excited. And that's the dullest thing in the world to read. But sometimes I read about the exact exercises I did, what I weighed, what I ate, what errands I did, where I went shopping and what I bought. I find a word I encountered written down, maybe with the definition, maybe not. I tell people I love words, but I tell them with stories. About trying to 'read' the dictionary. And about how when I was programming I'd be writing something and have to look up a word for some reason. (This was back before spell check, online dictionaries, etc.) And I would actually think: "That's the most fun I had all day long." It tells you something beyond "I love words."

Sometimes, though, we tell ourselves a story about a time in our lives that is not really false exactly but just wrong. If we wrote something down during that time, we might edit that story and make it a little more true to ourselves. Today I read some journal entries (actually a wad of yellow legal pad paper written on one side) from 1985. I remember at the time being sort of a lazy goof. Writing a journal when I should have been working. Stuff like that. But reading about the code I wrote and the thought I put into it and the things I was doing outside work and the thought that was going into my diet and exercise, I thought "Hmmm...maybe I had it together a little bit and had some good ideas. Maybe the fact that no product emerged to take the PC-DOS world by storm was not completely, entirely my fault." And yet, it's just a narrative either way. A way of putting the emotions of that time, and before, and since into a frame that I can relate to and that others can as well.

[Note: I'm determined to hit 'Publish' on this even though it doesn't seem to say much. The reason is that there are four unpublished drafts in Visible Woman before this one. The titles are: Free Ideas, People You Know, Ups and Downs and Exceedingly Random. They have semi-clever pictures attached. They languish. My three readers are disappointed. Just must publish something.]

Homebody

2009-09-29T09:29:00.007-05:00

[FFP took this yesterday from our balcony, looking south at sunset. All the clouds were reflecting sunset in the east and south. I didn't look at the actual sunset, but FFP went to the pool deck on nine to take some pictures there, too.]

When I was in school or working, sometimes a sick day sounded like the best thing in the world. Bundled up in bed with some books or newspapers, watching mindless TV. Yeah. Even if a box of Kleenex was needed nearby and you were in a drug fog, it didn't sound so bad, staying home with your entertainments. As DVDs and cable TV came along, it sounded even better.

Truthfully, though, there never seemed to be a good day to be sick (or pretend to be). Always an important event at school, a customer visit at work or a critical deadline or bug to fix.

Yesterday I felt almost perfect. Not quite, one niggling problem but nothing that would keep me from doing just about anything. But...I'm retired. And, in what is really sort of a rare confluence of events, there was no errand, Dad duty, tennis, social event or really any good reason to leave the condo. I needed exercise, but there is a gym steps across the hall.

So I stayed on the tenth floor of the 360 condos for an entire day. Fact is it's been thirty-six hours now because a little rain nixed tennis this morning. Yesterday, Forrest interviewed someone in North Austin, worked out at Westwood, grocery shopped for his mom and us, went down to get the mail and later a package delivery, had lunch with someone at Garrido's downstairs, drove his lunch date home, went to the parking garage with a load of recycling and went to the pool deck to take pictures at sunset. Today, he's been to the dentist (on foot) and to the little grocery downstairs for banana bread.

Yesterday, I cleaned the master bedroom (change and wash linens, dust, vaccum, even the blinds). I took the time to ponder some of the books and objects in there. There are a lot of books I want to read, one I need to read and return to its owner. Today I'm working on some laundry. I have a plan to dust the office and vacuum in here when FFP is away on a lunch date. Maybe.

I watched "Pierrot Le Fou" off and on on a Netflix DVD. Godard's film is really a celebration of settings and objects in Cinemascope. "Life" as Godard said "in Scope. " That's what I thought while watching it. That's what he claimed in a quote I found later on imdb.com.

I read all the papers, did the daily puzzles. I read papers from Sunday and other old papers that I hadn't gotten around to reading.

I did some of the paper reading while glancing at CNN, listening to the iPod (Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, etc.) and riding the exercise bike in the gym across the hall. I also listened to the iPod while cleaning while FFP was out, blasting it in all the apartment's speakers.

I wrote a blog entry (see below) that was much more coherent than this one.

I reviewed all our credit card and bank accounts and Dad's, too.

I watched the Dallas Cowboys play football while FFP slept in his chair. I would have watched a movie or TV but I kept thinking he would wake up and, besides, I was reading papers and working puzzles. Actually, it was sort of an interesting game.

I stepped out on our balcony from time to time to check on construction and de-construction: the Austonian, the W, the courthouse, the decommissioning of the Tom Green Water Treatment plant and some noisy street destruction by the city. (They are putting in a water line to Seaholm track that necessitates tearing up the street every other day.) I watched the sunset reflected in the non-west sky.

I ate yogurt, cereal, a banana, nachos, some hummus. I drank a lot of coffee and, in the evening, a couple of glasses of a rosé FFP opened.

It was just like those pretend sick days in my dreams. Listening to music, TV, DVDs, papers, little chores. Just staying home. Being home when others are out and about. Reveling in all the entertainments and catching up.

But, now, well, I've got a bit of cabin fever. I feel I need to go get on the elevator and go to another floor at least. I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a recluse.

Magpie

2009-09-28T08:56:00.006-05:00

[Photo: February 2008, MOMA museum reflection self portrait in a shiny airstream trailer included in an exhibit. Would a magpie be attracted to a shiny airstream? For sure a peacock would...they love to preen or maybe fight their reflections.]

Let's go back a bit. It's March, I think, 1999. I don't have any online journals from then and I can't find any computer files from this time. I have typed in some paper journals from the '90's but none include this exact time period. So the following is from memory. Faulty, faulty memory.

I was reminded this morning of magpies when I read one of my favorite online journals and John Bailey posted a little haiku (or, at least a poem, I never remember poetry rules) in today's entry that involved a magpie.

Anyway, it's March 1999. I am in a rehab center in the Denver area with my parents, visiting my sister. There is snow outside and there are large black and white birds flying around. It's pretty. Those birds were magpies and they were the first I'd ever seen. I'd heard people called magpies because they were attracted to every shiny object that came along. But I guess I'd never looked the bird up in a book and seen how striking the bird was, large and black and white. I wished I had a picture of them against the snow. My dad enjoyed seeing them, too, and knew what they were I think. He loves nature and new things and always loved seeing things and going places where you might see something new.

The life of our immediate family had undergone a sea change in the December before (1998). My sister had suffered a cranial aneurysm. By a miraculous chain of events she got to the hospital and survived a repair of it. Unfortunately she developed subsequent ischemic strokes and suffered some brain damage and partial paralysis during three weeks of ICU. Now she was in a rehab facility learning to walk again and use her right arm and undergoing cognitive therapy and such. My parents were old enough at this point (they were 77 and 82) that I vetoed them visiting my sister for months. My brother-in-law and my grown nieces were providing the support my sister needed. They didn't need to worry about old folks falling on an icy patch, etc. This had made for a solemn Christmas at our house in Austin. As I remember it we got continued news of complications from Denver. We did the little things that make a holiday (eating, drinking, working a jigsaw puzzle, exchanging gifts) but our minds were on my sister for sure. My parents had trouble swallowing that she was so ill. Parents never expect to see their children in that condition, even if the child is fifty-five.

Finally, in March they were set on visiting my sister in rehab. Of course, it was still winter in Denver. I was still working. I must have taken some vacation. I arranged for us to fly up there and rent a car and stay in a hotel. I determined that I'd look after the parents so as not to interfere with my brother-in-law and nieces, all ready if not overwhelmed by the now months of the ordeal at least not needing another thing to worry about. I don't remember if I flew to Dallas and met my parents there. I do remember renting the car and getting a Subaru Forrester with four wheel drive. The weather wasn't bad. A little snow, no blizzards or really slick roads. I delivered my parents from door to door.

I remember being so glad to actually talk to my sister and see that she still had her voice (although its timber and pace was changed forever), lots of cognitive ability and a drive to get better. The insurance company was trying to dismiss her from rehab as having recovered as much as possible (before she walked again, which she has been able to do for the last decade) and when an insurance rep visited, she reached up with her right hand to shake hands with the woman. The woman did a little double take, knowing it was a left brain injury but having read that she wouldn't recover use of her right side. Sure my sisters arm and hand were weak and spastic but she lifted it from the sheets toward the woman's hand. (She got her reprieve and learned to walk with a cane and use her right arm more.) Dad accompanied her to one therapy session and my mom, niece and I chatted in the room. We somehow started talking about a relative who had divorced and were trying to remember the first spouse's name or something like that. We could not remember. We asked my sister when she came back. She knew right away. OK, I thought, a lot of long term memory intact. Still it hurt to watch her struggle to play checkers on a giant board with Velcro pieces.

When you are in the midst of a struggle like that, if focuses your attention. We'd been feeling that even hundreds of miles away but up close we joined the local relatives in a scenario that heightened everything going on with one woman's therapy and dampened everything outside that reality.

Then I looked out the window and saw the magpies. My dad identified them, probably. Maybe he told a story about seeing magpies somewhere before. The world outside intruded on our myopic view. Things might not get better but they would change and there was a world outside this crisis.

Looking For Inspiration

2009-09-27T11:51:00.001-05:00

I was running through old pictures looking for inspiration and I found this reflection in the window of the (now razed) Las Manitas on Congress Avenue. This was taken in July of 2008. The Austonian across the street was just climbing up to the sky. Oddly there are two fliers in the window that caught my eye. One is for a writing class that my friend Dean Lofton runs. However, I wouldn't meet her until months after this picture. There is also a flier for the Austin Film Festival film camp. AFF is one of my 'causes' and I'm currently drumming up business for a fundraiser for their Young Filmmakers Program. I doubt I noticed these things at the time. Just shooting the reflection of the Austonian construction in the window of a restaurant that was making way for a hotel that has yet to be started.

Why do I need inspiration anyway? I see people every day who have passion for their jobs, causes, projects or art. The work compels them. They don't have to find out what it needs to be. That's the secret to being inspired. it just comes at you and you can't resist the work.

Sigh...it isn't happening. In spite of that I'm going to go read the tiny fragment of a novel I have on my computer. Which will, no doubt, elicit a bigger sigh.

I Must Write

2009-09-26T13:38:00.003-05:00

I really feel like everything is a muddle...but I *MUST* write. Why write? Why not clean the bathrooms? Why not become embroiled in FFP's sudden interest in iPhone apps that has him playing music on his computer? I don't know. Perhaps because I just tweeted this:

Write until the UT game starts! Really. Not to be interrupted by FFP downloading iPhone apps . Random inspiration from stuff on my computer.

And if you tweet it, you must do it. Right? Well, no not really. I think I tweeted that I was going to clean the bathrooms yesterday. And, of course, I didn't.

And really he never bothers me with music or playing tapes of his interview subjects except now it is kind of a pain for some reason when I set out to write with a deadline. I guess I should have waited until the game started to do my writing exercise. Of course, that's when I planned to clean the bathrooms! Really. (It makes me nervous to watch the game. I don't care about the game, but it is bad for everyone in town when UT loses.)

And so my life goes. I've had a little more 'free' time this week than usual. Tennis got rained out twice and my dad was less needy. I spent a bit more time reading and did a little cleaning. (Just not the bathrooms.)

It was a week of worrying a little about my health as I suffered through pain in my hands. I've had it off and on for forty years and no doctor has ever diagnosed it, but this was an especially painful bout. On Thursday I dribbled some hot coffee on my hand and was relieved that the irritated skin (it wasn't really a burn) distracted me from my other hand pain for a few minutes. (Or was it the petit pain au chocolat I had with the coffee?)

Yeah, the week went along, goals cast hither and yon.

I watched a movie I'd always meant to watch to better understand modern cinema: "Bottle Rocket" with the Owen brothers. I didn't find it as charming as some people. I didn't dislike it as much as I did "Napoleon Dynamite." I don't feel a Wes Anderson connection, sadly. I'm out of touch with the young people.

"Bottle Rocket" is (apparently) about rich boys who can't quite find themselves without doing a bit of crime. Actually the boys are men who never grew up. There aren't any adults who did grow up about, either, with only a few criminals to look up to. Anyway. Not much for me to relate to there.

Today I did get to play tennis. It was fun. I almost won three sets, losing the last 7-5 in a tie break. For once, my dad insisted he didn't need me to come out after tennis to do something for him, so I took advantage and stayed at the club and worked out briefly and joined FFP for some food in the pro shop grill. I had some year or two old New Yorker magazines in my car and I was reading about Peter Gelb, the GM of the Metropolitan Opera in one of them while working out and eating. Mr. Gelb has had an interesting life. I read about people like him and am often moved to wonder what my life would have been like if I had been the son of a NY Times managing editor and a writer instead of the daughter of a farmer/hospital attendant and a school teacher.

Now FFP has left his computer and put the bath mats in the laundry. This is always the first thing I do when I'm going to clean the bathroom. Does this mean he is going to scrub the shower, clean the glass and mirrors, scrub the toilet and mop the floor? Sure. Sure, it does. So I can just sit here and write. Now he is emptying trash. He is showing me all right. It's not all on me to clean now that we don't have a maid.

It's not really the interruptions. Nor the thinking about what might have been. Or the lack of inspiration (where on my computer isn't there just that?). No, it's just that I don't really want to write. I don't really want to type even. I want to...clean the bathrooms?

FFP did manage to distract me a little first by looking for the channel which will have the game and then by talking about going down to the store to get something to snack on. But it isn't really about what he's doing, is it? It's just the right time for the mop, the wrong time for the writing.

[Picture is a reflection at the downtown Omni hotel which reflects the depths of my confusion vis-a-vis writing and chores.]

Stuff and Nonsense

2009-09-22T12:21:00.008-05:00

There are big things in life: major illnesses, major events, momentous duties. There are things that cost a lot of money and things that, rightfully, take a lot of time. But mostly life is a drifting sea of puny ideas, passing moments, and meaningless flotsam and jetsam. I've always liked the concept of flotsam and jetsam. The former is the stuff left adrift after a shipwreck or, more generally, the stuff left adrift by our lives. Jetsam is stuff tossed at sea to lighten the load, to stay afloat or, generally, the things we eject from our lives. More intentional but just about the same at the end of the day.

Yesterday as I tried to bring a little order and less counter clutter to the kitchen I was sorting through bottles of liquor and liqueur. I decided to leave some whiskey, blended Scotch and vodka out at the ready and to stow away some things like tequila liqueur, some single malt Scotches and such. I wondered when we'd acquired some of this stuff and when, if ever, we or our guests would get around to sipping it. Last night when we got home from seeing an art film, I decided to have a drink or two. (Full disclosure: I had a beer at Roaring Fork before the show) I picked a single Malt that was out on a small bar cabinet we have in the dining area. The truth is that we usually drink outside the house and when we drink at home, my usual is wine (if FFP opens something), beer or a Manhattan (expertly mixed by FFP). Usually the lack of limes stops me from making a vodka tonic or gimlet I might otherwise mix. In any case, this ragged history of serving alcohol and drinking at home has left us with a number of artifacts. Some bottles are unopened and may never be. Yet, there is no beer and there was no chardonnay so FFP bought a bottle at Royal Blue last night.

When I was doing the kitchen puzzle, I found a coffee grinder. Funny, because, when our machine with the built-in grinder went to the shop, we went out and bought one because I swore we had divested of every one we owned in the move. Now the infamous and much-worshiped at this house, Capresso Jura Empressa E8, is back and seems to be functioning, grinding, tamping and brewing one precious cup of la crema coffee at a time. So the drip coffee maker and the new grinder and are tucked away in the cabinet. The old grinder? I put it in our storage cage. Why, I don't know. I suspect I'll never use it again. There was much incentive to toss things last spring and summer when we knew it just wouldn't all fit. Now, if there is a square inch in that storage cage or some cabinet, there is a foolish tendency to hang on to things.

It is all trivial, I understand that. Equally nonsensical is the way we spend our time. Last night I had my doubts about the art film we'd signed up to see: "Rape of the Sabine Women." But I must say, the lyrical choreography, the weird settings and strange score combined to make me happy and curious...that feeling I get when art stirs me. I'd been in a particularly low mood. It did pick me up. It made me want to study the telling of this tale in painting and myth and it made me want to think about the issues raised by the context of Eve Sussman's film (the '60's). (Most unlike her vision would be the Rubens painting I found on the National Gallery web site! Those '60's figures in bright, tight shift dresses looked very different than Rubens', um, rubenesque figures.)

Tonight we will go to an event. It involves a fashion show. Inexplicably I enjoy fashion shows. (Longtime readers know that I'm a living, breathing fashion emergency.) We chose the event over a meeting to plan another event. That event needs ticket sales and hype just now and we find the best way to generate that is to go to other events and find people who are interested in our other cause.

My entire life feels trivial. My regular Tuesday tennis date was rained out. Dad appeared self-sufficient during my morning welfare call. So I read the Science section of the NY Times while riding the recumbent bike for 55 minutes. I intended to lift some weights. But FFP made lunch (salad and tortellini) and I felt like sitting and reading. And so my days go...full of stuff and nonsense. I'm not thinking great thoughts, but rather I'm bothered and irritated then thrilled and enthralled by small things. Euphoria has been in short supply but it has been interesting inside my head anyway. As I type this, I'm listening to a play list on the iPod created from the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" sung by k.d. lang. This is the only thing Apple calls Genius that is genius. It included Elvis, ABBA, Cream, Cheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd. Now there is music trivia in my head.

[A note on the photo: it is the side of a wine box that got stored in the move last year. From the looks of it, this one didn't have anything especially stellar in it. However, the photo with the box decoration and scribbling reflects my stuff and nonsense mood.]

Another Day

2009-09-20T09:50:00.004-05:00

FFP actually took this a few days ago. But, yeah, every day the sun comes up and you figure your schedule out and bumble through. It's Sunday and the temperature out is pleasant according to my computer. So it would have been a nice day for a leisurely walk. But my actual plan is to walk to a restaurant on Congress (El Chile) for a press party and ASA fundraiser. It's a short walk (about ten blocks). We'll return to the condo after that. I should probably exercise or do some chores at that point, but, if I feel like the twenty block (round trip) walk hasn't necessitated another shower, I won't do those things but, rather, probably sit around and read the Sunday papers.

We'll dress up a bit and go this afternoon to a graveside service at three. After that we'll come back, change and go take my dad on a outing to a friend's house for a (belated) birthday dinner. We have good news on the Dad front: he felt strong enough to maneuver his walker down his sidewalk to the curb to get his mail and papers. After five weeks and six iron infusions, maybe he is less anemic.

That pretty well shapes our day. Looking at the calendar for next week...I have morning things four days (incl. Saturday) and social things every night except Thursday (when FFP has a board meeting). All the events are fun except for a finance meeting at the country club and I've no complaints about being busy having fun. But I hope to find time to do some cleaning and to reorganize the kitchen. We bought a toaster oven we'd like to keep on the counter and our beloved coffee maker is back from the repair depot and the counter is just too cluttered. I think I need to find a place to put away some liquor bottles and stuff like that. The cabinets have been poorly organized since we moved in. There should be plenty of time during the days for this work. Yes, but...will I do it!? Will I find other more fun things to do? Some of the time, probably. I also need to get serious about some gym work.

Well...I wrote the above before we had our walk and some food at the party. I eschewed the alcohol (of course, it's too early) but I still feel the need for newspapers, another coffee and maybe letting the eyes drift downward.

Is This Blog Dormant?

2009-09-19T07:30:00.001-05:00

Maybe this blog is on its last legs. The post below this one is dated two months ago. I couldn't begin to catch you up on the (in)Visible Woman because I barely remember where I've been or what I've done. But maybe I can sort of revive the thing somehow.

I wouldn't like this blogging thing to end up being threatened with extinction. I don't want to be reduced to tweets and facebook comments. So here I am, trying to put together just the kind of recap of life I should avoid and decorating it with (yet another) shop window reflection. [Sur La Table at the Domain with, mirrored, myself and a much larger than life representation of the rare and threatened whooping crane. I wasn't shopping at this store but rather going to, ugh, the Apple Store.]

So...what have I been doing?

Cursing Computers. Yep and all the makers of hardware and software. My vision of sleek systems in my modern apartment has been shattered once and for all. I had outfitted the place with two iMacs, wireless printers and a Time Capsule from Apple, hidden in a cabinet. I was running boot camp on one iMac and FFP was running that with XP. He didn't take to a change to Mac, even for a few moments. We did daily backups wirelessly to the Time Capsule which was also a router. I am running VMWare and XP and Mac OS X. So. Right before we were going on vacation and in the middle of a health crisis for my dad, FFP's iMac started getting errors that looked suspiciously like a hard drive going bad. I made extra backups and tried various things to diagnose it. This computer was purchased eighteen months ago and was initially delivered with a bad hard drive which Apple replaced, taking about ten days to do it. Fortunately we hadn't put it into service at that point but had spent a lot of time configuring it only to get weird errors and finally do a surface scan that showed the hard drive had lots of bad sectors. When I got back from vacation and found a guru to help me deal with this, another problem cropped up before I could get an appointment. The Time Capsule power supply failed. One day it just stopped having a light. I found scores of people on the Web with the same problem with units bought around this time. Desperate to replace the router and backup functions this piece of equipment served to provide, I bought a router and resurrected some ancient USB external drives. Meanwhile I returned the Time Capsule to the Apple Store where they took it in to have their geniuses examine it for life.

My newly-engaged guru came over. Initially I think he thought it was just a matter of a WIN XP installation corruption on the iMac. He put a lot of effort into cleaning things up and we ran a few CHKDSKs which ran forever, finding errors. Finally, on the second visit, it became too sick to boot. At this point I'd put everything on a laptop for FFP to work. This wasn't going to be a great solution for long term not the least because I didn't have good backups in place and the laptop, years and years old, might give up the ghost itself at some point. So we decided, even though the iMac was under warranty, to replace the hard drive ourselves. (That would be the guru doing it. It is at this point that you have to understand that my guru really is an expert and that the Apple Geniuses are so-called to hide the fact that they are pimply-faced nerds with no concept of running a business.)

Apple said they were replacing the Time Capsule. Only they gave me one that was obviously used. Indeed, when I brought it home it also did not work! To receive this non-working product I'd had to sign that they took no responsibility for the loss or breach of my data on the broken one they wouldn't return to me! The 'genius' said breach just meant loss, not that someone might obtain my data. I not so patiently explained that, no, it meant breach and was on a separate line from loss in the lawyerese I was asked to initial. I almost made the kid cry. I didn't feel as bad about that as I should have, probably, him not knowing the meaning of the word breach and all.

So we (my guru actually) swapped the bad Apple (ha!) hard drive with one from Fry's, getting Vista installed (learning curve for moi!) and I bought a new Firewire backup drive for that machine so I could have local backup I trusted more and that would be fast. (I reinstalled my remote backup solutions, got FFP's data on it, etc. after the guru efficiently reinstalled most software.) I finally got a new Time Capsule from Apple but have only put it into service as a LAN drive. Can't trust all backups from all machines to something that the geniuses consider so cavalierly. Indeed, when I was giving them the thing they said "It's OK because you still have the data on your machine!" Well, of course, I had one of their machines failing. And I had generations of backup on it, too, which you don't have on your machine. So, yeah, not impressed.

I ended up getting only one wireless printer to work and the communication among machines isn't working entirely. The guru must come back and give more help. I have more gadgets strewn out where they are visible than I did before. The condo is becoming as messy as my old office. I had to deal with Vista trying to hide things from me about installing external drives and scheduling tasks and endlessly asking me if I started programs, too.

And my love/hate relationship with computers just keeps on. There are more decisions and issues coming. I just can't think about it all now! There's Snow Leopard and how it works with VMWare and whether to upgrade to WIN 7 in October. And then there is replacing software that just barely limps along with XP and will not be tolerated by Vista or WIN 7. I love computers but only when I'm doing something I love. This includes the accounting tasks I do, I love having them automated. It includes writing this blog, surfing for info, using social media. It does not include upgrading, debugging, backing up, diagnosing, buying, returning. Which for the last few weeks was ALL I DID. Or so it seemed. Which may explain why I got surly when I had to change the ink cartridges in the ink jet printer today. I feel like an IT employee who never gets to use computers, only gets abused by them. This long-winded blog entry may stand as evidence to the contrary, of course. Also I tweeted my dissatisfaction with Apple (with a hash tag I made up: #applekoolaid) which caused a lot of strange followers. I must admit that ever time I saw an Apple commercial, it made me mad. And there were a lot of them in the U.S. Open Tennis coverage. (Yeah, I wasted some time watching TV. So sue me!)

Editing Cogent (?) Blog Entries and Stuff that Will Never Be Published. Ideas, nicely expressed and crafted. Written and rewritten. Publish button never pushed. Oh, I haven't done that much of it, but still. I did have some ideas and start blog entries I couldn't wrap up while you've been missing me. (Haven't you?) I have published Austin, Texas Daily Photo daily. Even left a stack to be published while I was on vacation. But this quotidian task is hardly writing or publishing. It is surprisingly hard to find a picture every day, though. And I do try for a paragraph of accurate drivel. Not enough writing has been done in any case although I've started a few things. It would take dedicated time and I'm all interruption these days. Still, the starting to write has taken time.

Paying Too Much Attention to Social Media. Facebook, twitter, news on the WEB, other people's blogs. It's random like a collage. I like collages and I like scanning that stuff. But. Too. Much. Time. And sometimes I respond when someone says something I find stupid or sanctimonious. And that is really a mistake. I craft a comment no one wants to hear. Stupid.

Taking an Idyllic Trip. Portland, OR. August. It's a perfect idea. We've done this several years and the weather has been pretty wonderful. Especially the comparison with Austin and especially this year. When we were gearing up to go, however, Dad started fainting or threatening to faint. So the whole idea and actuality of going was fraught because of Dad's problem which turned out to be critical anemia. Finally, I got him started on iron infusions, lined up a variety of help and support and we went anyway. We did check e-mail but mostly we read books and papers, talked and ate and drank with our friends. We walked among straight fragrant trees and on the beach. And actually saw two movies. Loved them both: "Whatever Works" and "Julie & Julia." It was nice weather and lots of low-key fun.

Buying Gadgets (and not). For months I thought I might get a Smart Phone. My carrier is Sprint. I have a nine-year-old phone. I'm not kidding. It works, though. I thought of getting it replaced with a Blackberry or something. Then, around my birthday I had the idea of trying an iPhone. This wasn't as hard as it could have been since FFP has an AT&T contract. So we got an extra number on his account and got one. Took it on our trip and used it to look at e-mail and such. It was pretty cool really although the battery doesn't last long. FFP liked it enough that he got one for his AT&T phone. I'm still carrying around my Sprint phone, though, because it holds juice longer for just phoning. I've liked the iPhone though, truthfully, although I'd have burned it in longer before getting FFP one, but he wanted one and there you go.

For the longest, I wanted to buy a vacuum and a toaster oven. We'd given up some old ones and promised ourselves new ones in the condo. I kept borrowing a vacuum from a friend who is a condo neighbor and we got by with just the pop-up toaster and the microwave. Today, though, I bought these things. You know what? I hate having to unpack and figure out this stuff. But I did.

Still glad I never bought a GPS gadget or a Netbook. The iPhone serves pretty well for these needs. I guess I should have waited for the vacuum and toaster oven apps! And I wish I hadn't had to go buy a new router and backup drive thanks to Apple's gadget failure.

Being a Child. No really the child of the parent who has no one else. And assisting occasionally with FFP's, too. It's never enough.

No matter how much time I spend with my dad or working on his affairs I feel like it's not enough or I feel incompetent at it. I feel guilty about not helping FFP's parents more, too.

The whole situation of being their support system also gives us pause vis-a-vis our desire to travel more, too. In the last year and a half, my dad has had a crisis before or during our three trips. Fortunately we were here for the latest crisis at my in-laws when a tree limb took out their electric meter and left them without electricity for over two days while electricians worked and the city took their sweet time to inspect the results. It was interesting how deftly they lived without electricity (they refused to leave). It was maddening that the city took them to task on other improvement paperwork that was incomplete...from decades ago! Would that the city did their own work so carefully.

Reading. Read Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs. Mostly on the trip. Excellent book spanning generations, continents and characters and yet seeming intimate at every moment. I was reading, when I last reported to Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. In an amusing cosmic twist I lost track of this book and spent a couple of days puzzling over where it was until I remembered putting it in a briefcase to take when I took Dad to an appointment. Probably should read that soon. I am hopelessly behind on my newspapers. Still I spend lots of time reading them.

Cleaning. It's never enough. Himself does certain things. I feel guilty about when and how I clean. By the time I've made it through what would be the 'last' task (say cleaning the kitchen) the 'first' task (say cleaning the master bath) needs doing again. Will it help that I no longer have to go borrow a vacuum?

Puzzling Over life and, well, crosswords and Ken-Ken. I find crosswords irresistible. I tackle the NY Times on Sunday through Wednesday and sometimes Thursday. I'll do the one in the local rag most any day. Their difficulty doesn't vary by day. The Times has started running Ken-Ken and I find myself drawn to these as well. I know I waste time on these. I can't help myself, though. Maybe there is a Twelve (Across/Down) Step program for it.

Tennis. It's one constant. Well, when I'm not traveling. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I get out there in the morning with one stalwart 75-plus-year-old woman and various otherladies to play round robin doubles. It isn't exercise really (which I desperately need more of) but it's fun. And a constant. For the last few weeks the added morning activity of taking my dad for iron infusions on Fridays has meant getting up and at it four days a week. Almost like a real person with a job.

Fretting over what I'm not Doing. I need to get rid of more stuff. I need to organize stuff at my dad's. It was good to see my nieces leave with a few things. I need to get control of everything. I don't work and how hard can it be? Well, it takes time to fret about that, it does.

Socializing. We had the first black tie event of the year. The Ballet Austin Fete was held in the still-under-construction Austonian. We are always going to other little events, eating out. We celebrated my birthday with a nice gathering with music. It's the rare evening that is empty on our calendar and then we seem to find a bar or restaurant to spend it in. This was what we envisioned, I think, for retirement and downtown. But sometimes I think I should stay home more. And, you know, write, create, clean, organize.

Watching People Work and Play. This is an easy thing to fall into from a tenth-floor perch. I find myself out on the balcony or in my chair, watching earth movers (at the court house site), cranes moving (at Austonian and the W) and destruction (at the decommissioned Green Water treatment plant). Also sometimes just watch people coming and going from the nearby venues, out on the town, gong to dance class at the Butler Dance Ed. Center, just wandering in my neighborhood. Like Chance in "Being There": I like to watch. It almost seems like I'm getting work done or going out myself. Only I'm not watching it on TV.

Yeah, that's been me...and I hope you were doing something momentous yourself whilst I was gone!

Attention

2009-07-17T13:02:00.003-05:00

Are you listening to me? We all crave attention, I think, of one sort or another. If no one ever commented, would I still blog? Well, yes. I'm writing (and posting pictures) for my future self. My current self pays an inordinate amount of attention to old blog entries and their predecessors, online journals created by my former self. I pay so much attention to myself that I don't need much from others! My tweets would drift off if no one ever responded, though. (I send them to facebook where I have enough 'friends' to get a rise out of a few people there.) But they might still go on even if the silence was deafening. After all the twitter-dom keeps them. Apparently for a long time.

I'm reading a book called "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life." [Ed. Funny. LB: Shut Up.] Anyway, one point this book might be making for me as I read a few pages here and there is that "we are what we pay attention to." I'm a believer in a true reality...facts and truth are there, just too complicated for us to interpret sanely sometimes. But I also think that our own 'objective' reality is based on what we are exposed to and focus on.

I'm often amazed at comments about pop culture that not only do not resonate with me but indeed leave me as confused as if they were in another language entirely. I went decades without paying attention to popular music, have put up a firm resistance to lots of TV, books and movie offerings (although I'll often read reviews of these things, perhaps to keep up some culture cred for crosswords or just to understand why I don't want to start paying attention to the actual things).

In my world, my husband gets my close attention. My father gets a lot of attention although probably not all he needs. My condo and its objects fall under my gaze and penetrate although it is easy to lock things away, look until you don't see, etc. And a book cover observed is not a book read.

I read news, in actual papers and online. I read about some events multiple times. I read certain bloggers religiously and others casually. Thus, these inputs inform my reality. That and the voices in my head. Reading about stuff, however, isn't living it. I can try to imagine living in a mud hut with a charcoal fire or wearing a burka or risking violence toward me if I didn't. But this is largely unsuccessful. I attend more to the shorts, jeans, T-Shirts, slacks, blazers etc. that I actually wear and to the reality of a tenth floor apartment in a high rise with AC and a microwave and a plasma TV.

I read a study once that followed children from the crib to school age. Kids that were very sensitive to environmental changes in the crib (such as the amount of light) tended to exhibit shyness as young kids. Maybe shyness is simply too much response to things. New people and environments are overwhelming to certain people who pay attention.

Today I took a walk. I noticed people. I noticed an argyle sock in the gutter. I saw a feather, two small rubber heels from shoes (a block apart) and a sandwich container from a convenience store on the sidewalks. Things like this penetrate and get my focus. To no one's surprise I don't focus on great deeds! It's taken me days to do this blog entry for heaven's sake.

[Today's photo is courtesy of the shop window at Haven Gallery on W. Sixth. I still think my photos are art. The ones where I take a more central role, though, maybe not so much.]

What Do You Want?

2009-07-13T12:13:00.009-05:00

Right after what was apparently the most significant event of the summer (Michael Jackson's death), I noticed a homemade sign on Austin City Lofts. "Wow," I thought. "Does someone really care that much?"

I have long said that the key to being happy, to 'getting what you want,' is to know what you want. I think I've failed miserably at that.

My horoscope today (the Creators Syndicate one in the Austin American-Statesman) says "If your environment isn't well-organized, you will feel distracted if not distraught. Make it a priority to get things in order." Well, that might have been true in the old house. No, it definitely was true. But I think my work area is just about perfect now. The whole house, really. I always have some cleaning task queued up that needs to be done and I do need to go through some boxes and files and organize the storage space and better organize the kitchen but, really, I can pretty much find things and, well, that isn't the problem. [I don't put much faith in horoscopes or fortune cookies or seer advisers. However, if I'm reading a paper and it isn't today's paper then I want bother to read the horoscope!]

We had dinner and and outing with a creative young friend on Saturday and she said she needed to focus her interests a little bit. (She is into photography, has a film she's editing, does fashion designs and sells 'reclaimed' fashions made from thrift store finds, etc.) She's only twenty-five, though, and she's managed to get a college degree, do some travel and live overseas a while and make a move here and get and hold a job to support herself with only a bike someone gave her for transportation. I'd say there is plenty of time to focus for her. Of course, she is thirty-five years younger than I am!

When I retired (how many times over the last six plus years have I used that phrase?), I thought I would learn and accomplish things.

The learning? It's a slippery slope as illustrated here. I would want to know more about world events and that would stick me with learning, for example, where the countries in Africa even are and then I'd have to take the time to actually read articles in my stacks of papers that I used to skip over. I'd want to learn more about movies. I considered learning to make one, decided it was too hard and gave away some equipment that could have made it possible. I read scripts and bought, and left unread, books about screenwriting. I started going to festivals, became involved in screening movies for a festival, read some books about movies, took the time to watch some classics. The result is that I still can't tell you who's who in the film world or really recognize many style things except for maybe some Woody Allen motifs.

The accomplishments? I wanted to find some volunteer work to do, but since I don't much like interacting with people that has been limited. I wanted to be healthier (exercise, diet, lose weight, ho hum) and maybe I am, maybe not. Not like I envisioned. I wanted to write, get organized, cook more.

I think it all boiled down to wanting to become an expert at something enough to help myself or others. I think maybe that's what missing from my life. It would probably take focus, though, and I think I'm destined to dabble. And to feel a little bad about it. Some people are thrust into situations where they have to focus and form strong opinions and do something about them. That hasn't really happened to me. In my career, there was some specialization forced from the outside and, I have to say, it allowed me to occasionally seem to accomplish something. (Although not as often as you might think.) Truthfully, accomplishment of anything needs to be forced on me. And I'm very resistant to intrusions in my retirement so it's hard for those situations to develop. I guess if I can force myself to write about the dilemma, though (fulfilling the 'pretending to write but really just blogging' destiny that's been my mantra of late) then I can maybe exert a little influence on myself to force myself to figure out what I want and accomplish it. You think? Honestly, I doubt it.

Schadenfreude

2009-07-12T11:16:00.005-05:00

Does it make you feel better if some smirking (once) rich guy gets 150 years in prison? Does it make you feel better if someone who has made you feel small, called you names or dismissed you has some grief? Does it make you feel better to see oppressors jailed or killed?

The word schadenfreude is from the German. It means damage joy. If you are flying high and people you think are a??holes are underwater, can that bring you joy? Even if you are just rocking along just the same does a bit of trouble coming the way of a perceived tormentor do your heart good?

I'm pretty sure I'm hiding and watching a number of people to see if they 'get what they deserve.' Or what I think they deserve. Sort of in the manner of those town folk in "The Magnificent Ambersons" waiting around to see if the obnoxious Georgy gets his 'comeuppance.'

But you know what? It doesn't give me joy to see the descent. It's more that instead of feeling bad for them I'm just not cheering them on. Mostly I get my pleasure from a casual indifference to their success or failure. A few less people on the planet I have to feel bad for if things don't go their way.

I just wish people wouldn't have given me a reason to not wish them well. That things had been different, that they had been honest and generous. That they had not placed themselves above me and others. That they had not set themselves up for the fall. I'd just rather folks all made me want to see them do well. But it would be exhausting, too.

Everyone will reach a nadir even if it is just the final extinguishing of life, that moment when we can no longer cling to this realm. (If you are going to some heaven, well, yeah that's the last revenge from my unkind thoughts I suppose if you've offended me.) How horrible to have people smiling at our inevitable defeat. I think there are probably a few people who will feel my ultimate demise will be a victory and who will take joy in dips in my life. Certainly there are people out there wishing me ill or, at least, not hoping for the best for me. But I don't think there are many. Most of us are indifferent to most of the rest of us. The Madoffs managed to alienate a lot of people in a big way but, yeah, they had to really work at it.

Anyway, much as I like the word, I don't think I have much use for damage joy. Like those that awaited George Amberson's comeuppance, it's all too easy to simply forget all about it. And find what joy we can make of our own existence.

[Photo today is a shop window reflection from New York City.]