It's Beginning to Look

Yep. There I am by the Christmas tree. Not our tree, but, um, the tree at the Driskill hotel in the beautiful lobby. We were walking around Thursday night and went into several places with trees and got pictures. It got dull quickly and we went for food and drink. The season isn't really so bright for me.

I am still intent on answering all the holiday cards I receive with a little personal note. However, we are only a few days in and I have two pending ones so I may not get that done.  I guess I fail at Christmas. Or Happy Holidays or whatever others are celebrating. (Christmas is the one celebrated in my childhood before I new other traditions existed.)

And that's about all I've got today.

Letters

Today's writing prompt on Holidailies concerns "World Letter Writing Day" which is tomorrow. The prompt is: "When is the last time you sent (or received) a letter? Write a letter (to anyone or anything you want) and share it with us."

That had me thinking about the early days of ebay, my sister who had a catastrophic health problem around that time and my efforts to entertain her with letters.

Today is my sister's 71st birthday. Shortly after her her 55th birthday she collapsed at her home in Denver from a ruptured aneurysm in her brain, a hemorrhagic stroke. For weeks, she struggled to survive. They repaired the aneurysm and attempted to stop several subsequent ischemic strokes caused by swelling. She survived and learned to walk again although she never regained all the strength and mobility on her right side.

My sister was in rehab hospitals for many months and then home struggling to come back for many more. I was far away. She lived in Denver. I forbade my parents from going to Colorado in the winter so I didn't go either. In March I finally took them to see her.

As my sister progressed I sent lots of get well messages and then, at some point, wanted her to have mail from me that would distract her from her struggles and encourage her to come back to things she loved.

I had discovered the wonders of ebay. I sold a few things, I bought a few things but mostly I was utterly fascinated with the stuff on offer. I would snip out pictures of things for sale. I began in 1999 using these stolen pictures to write letters to my sister illustrated with ebay items (and a few collectibles I owned) and talking about our childhoods or certain categories of collectibles.

My sister loved these letters. She'd always been a fan of junk stores and garage sale and she had a lot of collections, especially of miniatures but of other things, too.

One letter was about Christmas collectibles. The German card above was one of the illustrations.   I loved the way it was written on all around the illustration. Here is another snippet from that letter

I would also close by asking her to write to me. (She was struggling to write again because of the weakness on her right side.) I would tell her that if she wrote to me, I'd construct another one of these letters that was essentially a looking glass into ebay. I think she collected all the letters in a notebook. She may still have them as a matter of fact. I found the word doc for this one among computer files I'd transferred over and over from machine to machine.

Which brings me to my current letter writing. They are more notes than letters, but this year, instead of printing up a bunch of holiday cards and mailing them to a hundred or so people, I am making a card or getting a card and replying to each card I receive with a short personal note. I'll respond to what the person wrote on their card or mention how lovely the children are in the picture. One person sent a MOMA card of a Matisse stained glass window. I mentioned that we saw the recent Matisse show at MOMA. On some of these cards I'm using Forever Stamps (or scans of them) to decorate them. For example,

In some cases, I've used the stamp on the envelope that my correspondent sent me to decorate the one I send. I'm thinking that these cards may surprise the recipients who realize we are suddenly having a correspondence instead of exchanging cards. It's made the holiday card thing fun again for me but as the cards flow in I may not have the stamina for it! Still I do love hand-written letters. Or notes. And remember tomorrow isn't just Pearl Harbor Day but World Letter Writing day.

Texas Christmas

As we muddle through the holiday season here in Central Texas, usually without snow, having a few bitterly cold days, some just right and some, let's face it, too warm, one sees people resort to odd decorations like putting Christmas balls on the sharp spines of the agave (aka century plant).

I'm not much for decorating and this year I will not have a tree or tinsel. No wreathes (hallway decorations not allowed in our building) or centerpieces. I will put some holiday cards we receive out on a shelf so I can enjoy them for a while. I won't be digging in the storage cage downstairs for bendable posable Christmas figures to strew around the apartment. (Yes, when I *do* decorate, it's unconventional at best.)

What I will do, however, is co-op others' efforts to be seasonably festive. I'll go to the hotels around here and snap pictures of their trees and other decor. Ditto the efforts in my condo building. I think there's a tree up on the 9th floor. I'll pose FFP in front of giant presents or Christmas characters. Maybe catch some clever shop windows with the camera. (We usually go to NYC to see those magnificent displays but not this year.) Restaurant decorated? Grab a picture. Someone made a real effort on their yard this year and we happen by on one of our rambles? Grab some pictures for this blog or our daily photo effort.

I consider this tactic making the best use of the efforts of others. One of these years I'll throw a little cocktail party like I used to do when we lived in the house and I will decorate. I may even have to clean the house for that. Not this year though. All the festive stuff you'll see here is either someone else's work or from the annals of time. But I will try to have somewhat festive pictures to dress up for Holidailies.

Time Passes!

Dad's family 1944. Only his brother is missing. I think that may be because he was away in the Navy. This is during WWII, of course. My dad was rejected for conscription a few times for health. Eventually they took him, though. Except for his brother (who was not yet married) this is his family. I wonder if the picture was taken to send to his brother. None of the sisters are married at this time. His youngest sister, on the ground with my mother and infant sister, is no more than 14.

I have quite a collection of pictures (scanned from prints and originally digital) on my computer and various backup drives. I have several computers on my desk (don't ask) and when they are on they frequently go into screen saver mode and I have them flashing up pictures from a few collections.

When I look at old pictures I can't help but think about how much time has passed and how many people have passed with time. If I see the picture above I immediately think: they are all gone except that baby and teenager. The baby is now my almost 71-year-old sister. The teenager is my Aunt Cappy, featured yesterday. Only my granddad didn't survive to be in my life. But my grandmother, Dad, Mom and the other four sisters are gone now, too.

So much happened to these people. Eight more children would be born amongst three of the women in this picture. They would work and struggle and laugh and cry. (The Ball family, in fact, has a tendency to laugh until they cry.) The children would grow, the people in this picture would grow old, the children would have children and those children would have children. A couple of children would die before their parents.

This tendency of mine to look at who has been lost in pictures as they flash by doesn't feel morbid. It feels like celebrating lives lived and the struggle inherent in life. Let's see...there's a picture of my friend Al on the beach at Normandy, my mother with a snowman, two of our dogs (they are gone, too), my mom with us on the Capitol steps when we are children, my Aunts Mary and Dottie at my sister's wedding in 1965. And there's my friend Charles giving me a hug, So recognizable in these pictures on my screens but no longer in the world. Does this make me sad? No just nostalgic and maybe accepting that one is just a pawn in a long sputtering line of humanity trying hard to stop time but failing. Always eventually succumbing.

What's Eating You?

Aunt Cappy at Shaw's near Pemaquid, July 2005.

This morning I stayed in bed until 8 o'clock. I almost never stay in bed that late. I had some weird dreams. When I got up I thought I should write something for Holidailies right away and get that done. The writing prompt was about shopping Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We will speak of my non-shopping ways another time. Today we will talk about my Aunt.

We call her Cappy. It's a nickname her brothers and sisters (and parents for all I know) gave her. She had two brothers and four sisters. My dad and my uncle and my four other aunts on that side of the family. Two of her sisters married and had kids. The brothers, too. (Two of her sisters never married.) She was single until she was in her mid-thirties. She was in the Navy. She married a Marine late in both their military careers. He went to Viet Nam after they married. He had been in WWII and Korea. They were married for over four decades until he died in 2013. All her sisters have died, too. Her brothers. All the husbands and wives of those siblings. Her nieces and nephews married. Some had children. Some of those children had children. But of her 'generation' on my Dad's side, it is only Aunt Cappy. It's true she was youngest of her siblings. The oldest was 20 years older. Cappy was born straddling the next generation, only 12 years older than the oldest niece.

The Marine she married hailed from a little town in Maine where generations of his family had lived. So they moved there after they retired and they took care of his mother until she died and stayed on in the land of harsh winters and beauty and lobsters until they couldn't weather the winters and finally couldn't maintain two homes so they could summer in Texas.

The picture above is of my aunt when Forrest and I visited Maine on a car trip. Nine years ago. She's joking with the lobsters we will consume. (Funny how the camera she's holding dates the picture. A Polaroid I believe. Although the rest of us were in the digital era by then.) We had a routine when we visited called 'Code of the West' (somewhat inexplicably in the eastern most state) that involved going for lobster at a lobster dock restaurant, taking home leftover lobster meat for lobster rolls the next day in a cooler, visiting the Pemaquid Lighthouse and Museum and having ice cream at a gift shop nearby.

My aunt is on my mind. She lives near Dallas now but on a Thanksgiving trip to Houston she fell and dislocated her shoulder and had to get a shoulder replacement yesterday. Several of my cousins and their wives are on the case. But I'm there in spirit. I took her back to Maine the summer of 2013 to lay my uncle's ashes to rest in his native soil. (And, incidentally, to reenact the Code of the West in his honor. And, let's be honest, do every fun thing he liked that we could make time for. That Marine was always so much fun.) I took her back again this last summer with the help of my own niece (who is, gulp, 46 years old!) to do the driving. Another cousin took her to South Carolina this year. On these excursions I worried that she would have a fall. I was inordinately proud of getting her home upright.

I hope that she rebounds to take the risk of being on unfamiliar ground again. There is an army of nieces and nephews and their progeny who will hopefully be there for our last elder of that generation. Maybe we will keep taking her on trips even though we fear the fall, especially the out-of-town fall. I wish she lived closer to me. (She is in a retirement home near Dallas.) But that would imbue additional responsibility. It's been a few years since we had parental units to look after. None were quite as fun as Cappy, though.

And whenever I see some older person being looked after, by a child or someone else, I now wonder: who will look after me? I posed that question to Aunt Cappy one time. She said: "Be nice to your nieces."

The Visible Woman...Unmasked

These lucha libre masks in neon are on display at the Roadhouse Relics art gallery on South First.

Yesterday's writing prompt at Holidailies was "Introduce Yourself" but I didn't follow that prompt. But I guess some introductions are in order. The portal can bring strangers to your virtual door.

The short version: I'm old. I've been retired for 12 years. I thought I'd do more. I'm very lucky.

I retired in 2002. Early retirement by most standards. I worked in various computer businesses (and businesses using computers) for 32 years. I fell into that work looking for, well, work. Money for work. When I graduated from college I had no money. I didn't have enough for an apartment deposit. Fortunately I was able to live with my parents for a while after I got a job with an oil company training to do computer programming. I changed jobs a lot but kept taking jobs in computing because I didn't win the lottery or anything and I had to support myself. I took a job in Austin late in 1975. I met a man and we married. We didn't have much money together either but we had a good time and he started his own advertising business.  Eventually we acquired a good-sized house and paid it off and saved some money. We are both retired now and I feel very lucky that we got from having nothing to having enough money to retire. We set goals but, yes, we were VERY lucky.

I did think I'd do more. Both during my career and after retirement. We sold our big house which was expensive and time-consuming to maintain and downsized to a 1200 sq. foot apartment in downtown Austin, Texas. We've lived here for six and a half years. It seems like it's both been a short time and a very long time. We got rid of lots of stuff when we moved. We moved a lot of books, though, and we still buy too many.

I had the idea that when I retired I would write, solve the world's problems, be very organized and do lots of traveling for pleasure. I've been lucky to be retired and I have a good time and travel a little. It's not as easy to travel as having the time off I find.

Write? I made some business cards when I retired that said: "Pretending to Write but Really Just Blogging." I later used a red pen to revise that to "Pretending to Blog but Really Just Tweeting."

Solving the world's problems? When I worked, I donated to causes. I thought maybe I'd be more hands on with volunteering when retired but actually I'm lazy and a little shy and so it's still financial support that I give to my causes.

Yes. I thought I'd do more. It used to seem like there would always be time. What's changed in the last year or so is that the time doesn't seem to stretch to the horizon and beyond. The time for my little life seems quite finite. On good days this seems fine, encouraging even. On bad ones a bit of a loss.

The things I do accomplish most days, weeks, months? Mild exercise (long walks and doubles tennis mostly). Keeping track of our investments and bills. Maintaining a daily blog of photos from Austin. Doing the minimal housework and arranging maintenance for our little apartment. Watching movies, TV and visiting with friends, going to plays and ballets and attending social events, many fundraisers. We don't cook much. We eat out a fair amount. In all these things but tennis I'm ably assisted by my long-suffering husband. It fills up the days. Completely most of the time. But I thought I'd do more.

Keeping A Record

Remember when having a picture of something involved film? Remember the furor over instant photography where the film developed right after you took it? But then to share it you had to send it off for reprints? These vintage cameras were for sale the other day in Uncommon Objects on South Congress. (For a reverie on the Polaroid Camera from five years ago see here.)

Remember when words on paper meant longhand, typing or typesetting?

Well, now it should be easier to keep a record of your life, right? Digital stills, digital videos, digital voice recorders; digital scanners to convert those old pictures and slides to pixels; computers to process our words and blogging sites like this to format them, date them, search them; and social media preserving your real-time comments and making sharing what you're doing so easy.

But somehow I still lose track of my life. Puzzle over what I did yesterday and wonder why I don't have a photo of something.

There is a comfort in it sometimes, though. That one can still get lost. Hide a bit from others and be a recluse.

Today is the first day of Holidailies. Drivel like this is supposed to be my gift to you my reader. But if it fell short just see what other participants have written that might enhance your day. I guess I'll be a little exposed here for the next month. However, I'm not going to be doing a blow-by-blow diary of my activities here most days. Just little ramblings. I have been keeping a diary offline lately. I used it yesterday to figure out when I last got a haircut. And so it goes.

Repetition brings Reputation

It's funny the things you remember. When I was in school band, I had a  book of music practice drills. It had encouraging slogans on every page. One was: "Repetition brings Reputation." I wasn't much of a musician, talent-wise, and I also didn't have much discipline to practice. But I did remember that slogan and there's a lot of truth to it. Accomplishing something is often just doing something over and over until you get it right or gain some skill. Or, as they say, build up a 'body of work.'

I've participated in the past in blogging exercises where you force yourself to write something every single day for a month. And I'm doing it again this year with the same portal site.It was run in the past by some friends but it has been taken over by some new folks. It can be found here.

The idea is that your writing is a gift for the holidays to your readers. I don't know how much of a gift it will be but I'm going to start the exercise in earnest on Monday, December 1. The portal has already attracted over 40 participants. I'll try to read some of the other blogs as well.

I am really questioning why I do this. Because, after all, who blogs these days? (Still...forty plus people have signed up.) 

I've done online 'journals' since before they were blogs, of course. Sometimes disciplining myself (with no promise to some portal) to write and post pictures every day for months and even years at a time. And while I didn't get much of a reputation I do think it helped me to hone my writing skills a bit and to organize my thoughts.

As to what the picture is doing up there, past readers may know that snapping reflections in shop windows is something I like to do. Especially when they capture a reflection of me. So whenever I blog I do some of that. Artist's statement here. This particular picture was taken at a nearby sporting goods store with big silver Christmas balls in their windows for the holidays.

Holiday Resolutions

That's FFP last year posing with the Santa at Headliners Christmas party.

I used to be a big proponent of New Year's Resolutions. It just seemed so hopeful to be able to stop on a dime and change your life in some way (or ten or more ways) by just promising it to yourself. But the post-resolution depression soon set in as you realized there was nothing about January 1 that promised change more than any other day. In fact, a day when everyone lies around recovering from too much food, drink and revelry while watching football? Yeah, a day best lost to the wasted bucket rather than a new beginning.

In the past I'm pretty sure I bailed on New Year's Resolutions and made Holiday Resolutions. Some time prior to Thanksgiving but after all the stores were already hawking holiday stuff and arguing over whether to be open on Thanksgiving Day I decided what I would do in the period stretching out to the day after New Year's Day. I can't find that old list, but it probably was something like the following.

• Don't go to any big box store or mall between a few weeks before Thanksgiving until a few days into the new year. (I don't visit these places often and in fact made a run to Costco, the only place like this I frequently visit, a couple of weeks ago. I'm stocked on toilet paper and cheese and such.)
• Do go to any independent stores you like and buy yourself or your spouse anything that your whims dictate. (FFP is hard to buy for, but I usually come up with something from a store I can walk to that is one of a kind and independent. I don't buy presents for anyone else.)
• Do not feel bad about sending money to relatives. They enjoy spending it. The adults will pretend to the kids that you picked out a perfect gift. 
• Do not dress up in Santa-themed or elf-themed costumes.
• Do not cook a turkey or a ham, but graciously eat those cooked by others. 
• Do not worry that you are properly addressing everyone's religious needs during this season. They will take care of themselves.
• Do not decorate the apartment for the holiday unless you get those bendable, posable collectibles out of storage. (See below.)
• Do enjoy the decorations of others especially those we can walk to and the magnificent displays at hotels. 
• Do eat out as much as you like and enjoy the company of others. Have fried oysters at Threadgill's for Christmas dinner if you like.
• See a lot of movies both in the theaters and streaming and on DVDs.
• Go to all the Christmas parties that you please and don't feel bad about not giving one.

Object Lessons...The Shelfie

I recently read on social media (which is where I first read of almost everything although I later flesh out many of the stories by reading long articles in actual print: magazines and newspapers) about 'shelfies.' Doing for your inanimate possessions what 'selfies' do for your visage. People artfully arrange their knick knacks, art work, etc. Then photograph them for social media.

I've done this for years, actually, sans the part about social media (although I often blogged pictures of shelves and stuff). See here.

The one above was taken a day or two ago. Every time I dust the shelves, there is an evolution of juxaposition of objects. You see cards I've stuck up there, glimpses of rewards we received, some small art work and some small things we've saved (a silver yoyo FFP gave his Dad, a harmonica he had as a kid).  Of course, books. A picture of us taken for a newspaper article.

Truth is I love looking at my shelves. They give me a warm feeling of memories and possibilites. The books reveal past and present interests. There are ones I've read and many I haven't but intend to read. The cards connecting me to people and events. The art work subject to constant reinterpretation.

I spend way too much time worrying about the physical things in my life and the disposition of them in the short and long term. Does writing about that fretting help or hurt? At least things look better than this:

Taken over six years ago before the move from the big house. I was trying to get organized. Ha.

A Nostalgia For Simpler Times

The Picture
This is another reflection picture from the car show. Behind me is an old '50's era Chevy in that aqua blue color. These cars didn't come with Blue Tooth.

The Year
The random number generator came up with 1987. Specific memories of that year are elusive. I have some files on my computer where I have typed in some hand-written notes from old notebooks and journals and scraps of paper. I only found this:

12/29/1987 (December 1987)This morning on the way to work I was thinking about how I haven’t been playing tennis or racquetball. Then I thought about the lesson I bought for The Black Tie/Tennis Shoe Auction. I couldn’t remember Jeff Moore’s first name. Other Moores. (Greg for example) kept getting in the way. Even remembered his wife, Lucy. Then other Lucy’s started popping up---Katz for example. Finally about 9:30 I called FFP, but got the answering machine. When he called back and the phone rang---Jeff sprung to mind. I knew all the time that (1) it wasn’t alliterative; and (2) it was one syllable. FFP had lunch yesterday with Dr. Ernest Sharpe. He told Forrest he was losing his memory. Sometimes I’m afraid I’m losing mine a little fast for a 39-year-old woman. 

I'm not exactly sure where I worked at that juncture. It was a time of changing jobs before I landed at my final real job in 1989. It was perhaps a company that was later subsumed by another company and then another. I remember the event in the note (it was to raise money for Women's Athletic scholarships at UT) but not the tennis lesson or whether I ever took it.  I am sort of fascinated by the description of my effort to remember the name of the UT Women's tennis coach which, of course, I don't remember trying to remember. I have to laugh, of course, at my 39-year-old fears. This 65-year-old is both troubled and secretly glad that 1987 is sort of lost in the mists of time. It is either wonderful or sad that this year and this day will be similarly lost.

The Object

I got a haircut yesterday. It's a tiny bit short and the bed head effect was weird so I wore a hat on our walk today. I bought this hat in Normandy (en français, Normandie) in 2004. We went there for the 60th anniversary of D-Day. It was unseasonably hot. I hadn't brought a cap so I bought this one. It has been worn on some hot walks around Austin in the subsequent years. So it has some layers of salt from sweat. I keep too many old hats around but I particularly like this one because it reminds me of a trip and inspires some memories. 

The Last Few Days

I played tennis yesterday and took a walk around Lady Bird Lake today and it occurs to me that I'm happiest when doing these two things. We went out last night and serendipity took us to two favorite hangouts, Bar Congress and Arro, and we enjoyed the food and drink (a bit too much of the latter) and seeing some friends who were with some people we didn't know. Enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation.

Monday we went to hear music at El Mercado on South First. Christine Albert and Jimmy Dale Gilmore. Both yesterday and Monday were last minute choices of where to go and what to do. I like that in a way. Tonight we will probably meet up with a friend who is in town to see his mom. We haven't planned for where or anything.

Reflecting...Organized

I've been feeling like updating this blog, but have been at a loss about structure. Don't know if I'll keep it up, but today's structure is (1) one of my reflection pictures; (2) a memory from a random year; (3) a reminiscence inspired by a random object I own or have owned; and (4) something I did in the last few days.

The Picture
I took this at the end of last month at a car show at my club. I'd finished playing tennis. That's me in shorts, with hat and my tennis bag reflected  in a bright red car finish along with a vintage aqua Chevy, I'm not a car person but I love all the beautiful reflective surfaces of paint and chrome.

The Year
I used this random number generator to generate a year of my lifetime. It came up with the year 2000.

Wow. Y2K.I remember being on call for customers of my software firm on New Year's day  in case of problems after corrections for the assumption that years were two digits!

I remember buying a house for my parents in Austin and, in May and June, their move down here from Mesquite (near Dallas) where they'd lived for 34 years. They stayed with us for six weeks while their stuff sat in the garage of the new house and we waited for the seller to move into new digs.

Then, in the fall, I had a gaggle of business trips. Las Vegas, Australia, Europe, Wisconsin. In the snow. I remember the fall being so busy with trips all over. But I don't remember too many details. I went to Paris after my Europe duties for fun. I remember doing a few touristy things in Sydney. And drinking lots of Shiraz. And looking down at the tennis courts in Melbourne from an appointment high in an office building. I remember a restaurant in Las Vegas where I went with two work mates. I took a call from my mother there on my cell. My cousin had died of breast cancer. I missed her funeral due to the travel.

The Object
A manual calendar. This is a little wooden advertising specialty.  It belonged to my mother. I don't know where she got it or when but in 2000 (that year again) she moved it to Austin. It is made up of the frame, two cubes with numbers and six wooden slats with months front and back. You can assemble it to be today's date. I remember it in the move because some of the parts were initially misplaced. She found this upsetting. Two young girls I'd hired to help her unpack eventually found them. Inside a sugar bowl, I think. When my dad died I put the pieces in a baggy and brought it home. Not right away, of course, but as I slowly disposed of everything in the house it ended up here. (My mom had died eight years before.) I couldn't bring myself to toss it in with the thrift store donations (of which there were many). I occasionally move the pieces around, but not often. Only recently did I find it in a cabinet and put it on the shelf with books and pictures and artifacts. It reminds me of time passing and the meaningless of things.

The Last Few Days
We've been 'coming down' from a trip with friends to New Orleans, replete with eating and drinking and doing road trip things. I've been trying to get myself to catch up on chores with house cleaning and such. I did get through catching up on bills and budgets. I approved my tax return for the CPA to efile and I wrote checks to the IRS.

Saturday (the 12th) we walked to UT's Bates Recital Hall and saw the UT jazz orchestra with guest Joshua Redman. He was amazing. I'm so glad we went. (We chose it over several other social events.) There's nothing FFP and I enjoy more than a jazz concert. I have six of his albums in my iTunes (ripped from our CD collection.) I should listen to him some more.

SXSW Film is Over!

Never was I so glad for a festival to end. We only bought film badges and we had a pretty good time and seem to have picked wisely on movies. Still. I wore myself having fun. And I felt compelled to try to see a few things and also to eat and drink at my favorite bars! And the crowds seeking free booze and rap music or whatever made me so weary. I decided I'd recap the nine days just so I'd have a record of it. What I can remember anyway.

We picked up our badges and bags on Thursday, March 6th after my tennis game. It was quick and easy with only minor confusion in the swag bag line. It seems wasteful to have two big guides and two pocket guides and two extra Chronicles. (FFP put one Chronicle back in the stack at the convention center. But as the next ten days went by there were tons of these dead tree publications lying around the convention center.) We put the app on FFP's iPad but it took time to start up and get to the schedule and our personal picks and was also trying to update itself so we did use the pocket guide I stuck in my backpack. I also put some energy bars, other emergency stuff like mints, Advil, extra phone power, a camera, etc. in there. And when rain threatened, little umbrellas. FFP added a magazine or two, I carried around two issues of The New Yorker, I sometimes had a crossword or other puzzle in a newspaper section. We sometimes stood in the line reading from the  iPad or magazine or newspaper but we spent a lot of the line time looking around and talking to friends and strangers.

I chose a bunch of films and panels early on and then, each day, based on how we were feeling and the weather we winnowed it down.

Here are the things we did (that I remember) both as part of the festival and during this time.

• Went to the convention center to see a panel on Lego! This was Day 1 and we had high hopes for doing lots of activities. When we got to the Convention Center we picked up an SXXpress Pass for the movie we planned at the Topfer. They told us that they weren't available for the Vimeo. This did not seem to be true, but that theater is vast and I can't imagine badges not getting in. The panel was in a vast room, too. However, after we were seated we heard there was a pipe burst in our building via twitter. We rushed back to the building to see if our unit was affected (it wasn't) and by the time we returned they were just taking questions. I love Lego but I have no idea if this was a good session. We would not do another panel. I did watch one of the Interactive ones live-streaming. (I couldn't personally get in with my film badge.)
• Saw Thank You a Lot at the Topfer. This movie is about the music business. It follows a struggling music agent who is pressured to sign his father (an aging country singer with a cult following) or lose his job. He and his father are estranged precisely because he'd started his own agency pinning his hopes on having his dad's representation and his dad had disappeared. The father was played by James Hand who is a country singer. They used his name as the character's name, too. I enjoyed seeing the Austin scenes and thought the performances were pretty good. A very Austin and SXSW beginning to our festival. [We had SXXpress passes. They were unnecessary. We didn't get our favorite seats, the row with three seats on the left side, but that was because there were tons of filmmaker tickets seated first.]
• We rode the shuttle bus! We had walked to the Topfer. We thought maybe we'd see another movie at the Vimeo (at the Convention Center). We would not ride this again instead walking around and among the venues we visited: Paramount, Vimeo, Rollins, Topfer and the Violet Crown.
• Saw The Legend of Shorty at the Vimeo. We had plenty of time to queue and get in when the shuttle got to the Convention Center. This movie is a documentary about "El Chapo" the Mexican drug lord from the Mexican state of Sinaloa. I don't know how the film makers stayed alive. They tried to meet with him. They never succeeded but met lots of underlings and his mother. Shorty was captured after they wrapped and edited but they went back and added a bit about the capture. This was a good film and very revealing although there are still mysteries about why he finally was captured and why he evaded for so long as well as how he escaped the first time he was imprisoned. (Most likely it was the old conundrum of who was paid off and when.)
• Hung out in Bar Congress a couple of times. We'd eaten in the restaurant on Wednesday before the thing opened. We love this bar and the food is delicious. We also ended up eating dinner one night during the fest when they had a cancellation and there wasn't much room in the bar.
• Saw No No: A Dockumentary  about Dock Ellis and his famous no-hitter for the Pirates thrown while on LSD. This movie was about drugs, baseball, redemption and much more. Like many docs that thoroughly tell the story of one person it was fascinating and instructive. There was a lot of footage of Dock although he died in 2008.
• Saw Wicker Kittens a documentary about jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts and a competition for them. The title is the actual title of a puzzle. Many jigsaws involve kittens in baskets, apparently. I like jigsaws and spent many a lovely time with relatives and friends bent over a table, especially at holidays, assembling one as a group. This movie was kind of sweet and well-made and had interesting characters but there was an edge of OCD behavior and maybe hoarding that I found too close to home. Something I could find in a not so well-liked part of my own or my relatives' personalities. A rain storm outside and some lightning stopped the film briefly but it was restarted successfully. After this we went across the bridge again and found ourselves eating at Congress. Got soaked on the walk home.
• Almost went to a party. It was not an official SXSW thing. Quite the opposite. It was an annual brunch during the fest given by Austin Film Festival. We stood in a slow-moving line to get inside and then, seeing the line for the tacos and such, walked out and went to Walton's for breakfast.
• Saw Hellion, a film made by a local director and produced in part by friends of ours. It is about a young boy struggling with the loss of his mother and his father's grief-stricken inattention. His behavior seems a little too severe to me, but it is an interesting journey and well-acted. Adults and children do sometimes make terrible choices for the best of reasons, I suppose. This film is very well-made for a budget effort (or any effort really) and I'm proud of the local crowd. Kat Candler is a very savvy director and a fine writer of characters.
• Saw Sequoia, a narrative about a young woman with an incurable cancer who decides on a suicide plan that is to involve her sister but eventually brings in the whole family and a stranger. This was an OK piece with a few characters who were too comically-drawn but with fabulous scenery of the giant trees.
• Tried to get SXXpress passes at the beginning of them being handed out for the Monday session. There were hundreds and hundreds of people in line. We walked down to SoCo and ate at the Snack Bar instead. We then just queued in the badge line for A Night in Old Mexico which was written over more than three decades by our friend Bill Witliff and starred Robert Duvall. It was a romp and the co-stars, Jeremy Irvine and Angie Sepeda, were great playing off the old master. Only saw this one movie on the day and instead sat in the lounge at Ruth's Chris and drank and ate while watching people stream by outside on Sixth Street.
• Saw Lady Valor, The Kristen Beck Story, a documentary about Navy Seal veteran Chris Beck who transitioned to a female identity. It was a very personal story. I could not really relate to the Navy Seal, struggling to become one of these elite warriors and weathering so much danger and death and continually volunteering for deployment. The woman who was fearlessly speaking of her journey to be her authentic self did resonate. At one point in the film she says she hid girls' clothing and faked illness to stay home and dress up during elementary school. It reminded me of a gentleman in a film shown in last year's SXSW (Before You Know It) who had a desire to cross-dress his entire life that, after his wife died, he devoted himself to enabling. People are complicated. That one feels strongly enough to re-identify against society's expectations tells us much about this complexity. Kristen was at the screening and is a very dynamic figure but in a fairly self-effacing way. 
• Saw Take Me to The River, a documentary about the evolution of the Memphis sound. It was told in a most unique way by uniting old hands of the Memphis Blues with younger artists from Snoop Dog and other rappers to teen-aged music students to cut tracks. There was a lot of good history and final interviews and performances from some of the legends. And...it made me not hate rap so much when it was integrated with the other music.
• Punched request into Open Table after seeing above movie and ended up at Wink for a great meal.
• Saw Rubber Soul, a documentary and re-enactment of two interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, ten years apart, in 1970 and 1980. I found it very informative and a unique way of looking at this post-Beatles era as well as the entire Beatles phenomena. I heard other people disparage this flick or at least say they didn't care for it. That unofficial sample of people did seem to be a bit younger, perhaps unborn in 1980! It is, in any case, a very unique take on John Lennon material and perhaps not for every fan even.
• Went to the trade show a couple of times. We did a pretty thorough 'walk by' of the many countries section. Saw many wanna be next social media platform or development platform. Also: Chevy, 3D printing and more 3D printing, post-it notes, origami (but not with post-it notes).
• Went through the CF that is getting into a SXSW movie at Violet Crown. To see something I normally eschew: a vampire movie. But this was Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, a fantastic movie. I'll never have to see another vampire movie. But I'll see anything Jim makes.
• Saw Impossible Light, a documentary about a project to put many thousands of LEDs on the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge and have a light artist, Leo Villareal, program an abstract light show with them. This was a good movie about making a massive in situ art work. It made me want to go to San Francisco and see it. (They are trying to raise money to continue it but currently it will end in 2015.) Very reminiscent of Christo and Jeanne Claude works. In fact, they got Christo to write a letter backing the project.
• Saw Road to Austin, a documentary billed as a chronicle of "how Austin, Texas became the Live Music Capital of the World, dating from 1835 to present." Well, really it was more a cursory look at Austin music history and a film about a concert Steven Burton produced and an homage to him to promote a new non-profit for musician's health. (Austin is really the non-profit capital of the world. Is that a good or bad thing? Sometimes a bit of both.) There's was a party after with music and we almost went but then decided to see the Johnny Winter movie.
• Saw Johnny Winter: Down & Dirty, a documentary about Johnny Winter. A good overall portrait of defeats and triumphs and one man's life. The film needed editing very much but its overstuffed length allowed the man himself to arrive at the theater from a taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live.
• Saw Harmontown, a documentary chronicling Dan Harmon's road show of his podcast. Dan Harmon is the man behind the TV show "Community." He has a popular podcast. I don't attend to either. However, I told FFP that this movie was billed as a "calamitious cross country tour" and sometimes those can be interesting. In spite of beginning with and ending with no interest in Dan Harmon's work, I did not hate the movie.
• Saw Born to Fly, a documentary about choreographer Elizabeth Streb and her work. It was a very comprehensive study of the person and the work. Amazing person, work and film. This is like no other dance or movement you will ever see.
• Saw The 78 Project Movie, a documentary about a cross country trip to make one-of-a-kind 78 records of performances of old songs on a Presto direct-to-disc recorder. The movie shows these recordings being made and has other documentary footage of the Smithsonian folk collection and record collectors. I was fascinated by a lot of this but felt the movie needed some editing. Perhaps it was simply getting to be too late in the festival.
• Saw The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Schwartz, a documentary about a brilliant young programmer who was so tormented about being indicted for downloading thousands of pages of documents from JSTOR (a purveyor of scholarly papers) and threatened with years of jail time that he committed suicide. This piece is packed with information important to our connected society from the contents of ill-founded legislation to our government's role in deciding what to prosecute and bending over backwards for corporations.
• After our last movie (above) we went to Chavez, a new restaurant in the Radisson on Cesar Chavez. I had a wonderful cocktail. (A variation on Manhattan using a chile instead of a cherry and bitters.) Less impressed with ceviche and fish dishes. Felt relieved that the thing was over. Stopped for a nightcap at Bar Congress.
• So we saw 18 movies (5 narratives and 13 docs, no shorts), a bit of one panel, much street craziness. FFP woke me up early in the morning of March 14th to tell me about the car driving into the crowd on Red River. Three people have now lost their lives. No one we knew but only one degree of separation between us and two of them. Life is fragile. And over in a flash. Live in the moment if you can.

And back to real life

You're In Good Hands

Shop Window Reflection of Us with Mrs. Claus costume at Lucy in Disguise on SoCo.

Holidailies are over for 2013. So I don't have to write here and, if I do, there are no rules imposed by the portal or myself to follow. (What was with that The Visible Woman...does whatever? Well, it got me started each day I guess.) There are 'best of' awards at Holidailies. I've gotten chosen in the past. Not this year. But it's not a contest, right? I knew it was drivel but I posted 32 of them, one for every day from December 1 to January 1. I think they just give you to January 1 to get in 31 of them, but I did 32. But it's not a contest, right?

I had the urge last night to begin a little simple (hand-written) diary. Wherein you just say what you do and who you see and maybe what you eat and drink. I didn't do it. So I'm going to type in here that little 'diary.'

We got up around 7:30. I did my blog, drank coffee, more blogging (for Austin, Texas Daily Photo) and more coffee and I ate a banana.

We made the bed. We try to do this before we leave the house every day.

We decided to walk and we decided to go to SoCo because we hoped Snack Bar was open. We were on the other side of the lake a little before 10. I know this because a 5K race was about to begin over there and they had yet to take off.

Snack Bar was open. I had a cup of white bean stew and the avocado quinoa salad (which also has grilled pineapple). I drank more coffee.

We walked up almost to Oltorf but not quite and came back across to South First on Live Oak.

I felt lazy when we got home. I drank some water. I was reading old (Sunday's) newspapers and decided to go to the gym (across the hall) and read them on the stationary recumbent bike. I did that for about thirty minutes.

I took a shower and messed around on the computer a bit more. Not sure what I was doing. Nothing constructive.

FFP worked on one of his columns. He asked me where a certain book was and I actually helped him find it.

Around five we went to a New Year's Day party. We are pretty good friends with the woman of this couple and her daughter who lives in NYC. We met the woman's husband at a dinner party we had at Congress Restaurant. There were young people, friends of the daughter, and family members and people we know from restaurants and a bunch of literary types. We ate guacamole and chips. I drank a couple of Shiner Bocks. We ate black-eyed pea and collard green soup for luck. It was delicious. The hostess is famous for her food since she catered for years.

We left a little after seven. At home I finished reading all the papers from Sunday and Wednesday's editions. (I'd done the NYT puzzles at Snack Bar.)

In bed I read a few pages of the Stanley Crouch book about Charlie Parker. (If I don't read books until fifteen minutes before I fall asleep I'm never going to finish all the ones I want to read.)

During the night I woke up fretting about a little headache and a scratchiness in my throat. I thought of taking some Ibuprofen or something but I almost never take any pill unless I'm desperate. I dreamed strange dreams about one of my aunts.  I got up once or twice and walked around the apartment.

I was finally sleeping well, untroubled by fears of getting sick, feeling fine in fact, no headache no drippy nose or cough when it was time to get up, get on the tennis clothes and get ready to punch in a reservation to play Saturday. By the time I was dressed FFP had made me a cup of coffee.

Now it's time to make the bed, make some more coffee to take with me and go get in the car and drive to Westwood to play tennis. It's good to have a routine. Unfortunately, my routine yesterday didn't include any of the cleaning, straightening, organizing that needs to be done. As my old buddy Maggie (RIP, Mags) would say 'tomorrow is also a day.' In spite of my lax ways I'm still in the hands of lady luck I think. If not Mrs. Claus.

Running In Place

The Visible Woman...is breathless.

While the world goes on, I seem to be stuck mid-stride. Not unlike the feeling from this solid sculpture of a running man. It appeared in January of 2013 (a year ago!) on Cesar Chavez along Lady Bird Lake. Then it disappeared. I have no idea what the story was. Like so many things in life. What seemed solid is suddenly gone but I'm treading along in the same spot doing things the same way in the same shoes. Well, occasionally I buy new shoes. But yeah.

I guess the new year is supposed to make you feel like you have a vast number of days ahead. So you make those resolutions and you think well you have 52 weeks or so, 365 days. You can develop new habits, slowly changing your life for the better. If you lose a pound a week you can lose over 50 pounds. (By the way, I think it would probably be unhealthy for me to lose 50 pounds. Now 20 or 30. Hmmm.)

In a way, though, it feels like an ordinary day. I'm up at my computers. Yes, I have two at my desk. Sure, I'm thinking of all the calendar related things I need to do. Update the family calendar online. Start a new budget for January. For this I need to review last year's. Of course, it's tax time. I've already worked on some of the tax time chores. We need to start new folders for organizing taxes. Once a year, once a month, once a quarter there are things to do.

I feel still. We have no obligations today. Although, besides the computer and paper work I do need to do some cleaning. There are dust bunnies in the hall. We will stop by a friend's house in the afternoon for one of those New Year's Day get-togethers. We used to give such parties in our old house, serving up black-eyed peas and a pot of sausages and Bloody Marys and champagne. We had people sign a guest book and also write their resolutions, hopes, dreams and memories from the year past in another book. I'm sure I still have those books. But where?

I do need to clean out and find things. Winnow things down, find the treasures. We have lived in this apartment over five years. We aren't likely to move or to remodel so we have to otherwise create an incentive to get rid of things and tidy up.

And yet I'm sitting here. Still. Drinking a second cup of black coffee. Just thinking. And typing. Perhaps I should resolve to do more thinking. Or less.

But no resolutions. Although I know I can keep pacts with myself. After all this is my 32nd entry for Holidailies 2013. I not only posted some drivel each day, but I resolved to read a few entries from other people and did it. I really want to continue to keep up with a few of them, too. Doris Mash, PJ Cleary, and Bev Sykes. This will give me a coast-to-coast and across the pond view of other people and their struggle and triumph. Whether I keep up Visible Woman is a big question. I think I probably won't do it daily. My hubby helps with Austin, Texas Daily Photo and we seem committed to taking its daily posts into their 8th year. Man. Time flies while I run in place.

Note: What did we do yesterday? (This space used to be a repository for the things done, seen, eaten and drunk every day.) I played tennis. It was quite cold at the beginning. I went to the Post Office and sent my passport renewal stuff by return receipt mail. And bought stamps. Price for forever stamps going up. I put gas in my Honda Civic for the first time in probably six or eight weeks. We went to see "American Hustle" at the theater around the corner. Enjoyed it thoroughly. Enjoyed being able to walk there. We'd managed to reserve the recliners. I worked the puzzles in the Times which were easier than Monday's. Hmmm. We went to an early dinner at Congress. The staff dressed in 20's outfits. The food was retro but gourmet. An aspic amuse. A pineapple upside down cake dessert. We walked home and I watched the A&M football game and listened as the fireworks boomed outside. (You have to go to the other side of the building to see them.) FFP slept. I was in bed just before it became 2014, reading my book about Charlie Parker. Oh, I accomplished a few things. I reviewed some tax time stuff and updated some financial spreadsheets. Made some backups. And...put up an entry on this blog.

Not Stopping Now...What We Do and Why We Do It

The Visible Woman...ponders.

Pondering is that meandering kind of lazy thinking that can either give us great insights or put us in a muddle.

I was just reviewing entries in my real daily effort (with help from FFP and sometimes others): Austin, Texas Daily Photo. Because tomorrow we will display our favorite picture of 2013, as laid on in the strictures of the City Daily Photo And then I remembered that I have a busy day ahead and I haven't done an entry in this space. Which I have done for each of the prior thirty days to honor a Holidailies commitment. And it's December 31st!

Anyway...busy day. I have tennis in an hour. I'm up and dressed for it, having my coffee and getting ready to punch in an electronic reservation for tennis for Thursday at the strike of 8AM. I need to do the above review and put up a favorite from 2013 for that blog tomorrow. We have tickets for the little theater around the corner (Violet Crown) for seeing "American Hustle" at 1PM. After tennis I'd like to go to the post office and send my passport renewal stuff to the processing center priority mail. I probably have to get gas. I haven't bought gas in so long I don't remember when, but it's getting quite low. Then at 6PM we have a reservation for an early, special dinner for New Year's Eve. After which we will relax safely in our condo while people revel and fireworks explode.

So here are the things I'm pondering. What do the pictures we take and cull from the virtual stack say about us? What happens to the strangers inadvertently captured there? And what, if any, are the benefits of nostalgia? (Just sort of kidding on that last one.)

So...to have a picture for today I chose one from the small archive I have put in the cloud for saving.

This is FFP in 2005 on a very ambitious road trip we took. He has since lost weight. We drove all the way to Southern Maine with some stops. On the way home we spent two nights in Buffalo in order to visit Niagara Falls. He'd never been and I'd never been to the American side. He's standing next to the roar on the American side (I think).

For some reason I framed this picture to show a stranger, a dark-haired man crouching on the other side of the rail. I'm pretty sure he's shooting a picture but this seems dangerous. I think he might be Asian. We all walked away from the falls. And then, what? For us...we know that we moved to downtown. And we lost three more parents. And we weathered a health scare for Forrest. And we just keep getting older. The man in the red, white and blue jacket? How about him? I will never know.

I don't know why I framed the picture to include the stranger. But I'm betting he was just a bit of visual composition to me. Like the mist, the railing, my husband and the building looming (on the Canadian side?) across the way. I wonder: what the pictures the stranger took look like?

Looking back, fondly. Not nostalgia really. Not wanting to be there at that stage. Just wanting to think a bit about how it was to be there. For us. And for a stranger.

Too Many Clothes, Not Enough Wardrobe

The Visible Woman...owns.

I was looking at this picture. I didn't find much to like about this one until I started to wonder why it looked like I had on a collection of winter scarves or a bunch of layers like the bag lady I usually resemble on my walks. I think, however, the clothing was in this shop window.

Which got me thinking about my wardrobe. My clothing storage area in the apartment (half of our walk-in closet with a tiny bit of overflow into another closet and six drawers in our bedroom storage) is crammed with stuff. And, yet, as the saying goes I often have nothing to wear.

So much of my clothing is so old. Custom pants and blazers from when I worked, ahem, years ago. Some custom blouses, too, although most of those have gone the way of frayed collars and cuffs. A few newer off-the-rack things. Some ancient off-the-rack stuff. Some after five tops. Shoes with soles and heels redone many times. I have a few nice jackets and pants I've gotten off the rack and had altered.

I was telling myself last year that I would eat more healthy stuff, eat a little less, drink a little less. I'd lose ten pounds and then and only then...get some new custom clothes. Maybe after I kept it off for six weeks or so. I initially lost a bit and then...back to the old weight. Not a serious yo-yo (I never do that). Just a blip.

So still...wearing the same old stuff. Occasionally and with great regret I throw stuff out. Usually the item has a hole in it or cuffs or collars that are tattered from wear and washing. I was wearing a polo yesterday. It was a logo thing from when I worked which, let's be honest is over eleven years ago now. A small hole is pulled near the placket. I was just wearing it for a hike around the lake. But still. I do have newer polos and they were clean. I was wearing a pair of black jeans faded from many washings. They are a Men's style of loose fit Levis (560's) that I discovered fit pretty darn well in a certain size years ago. (34x30 to be exact.) I haven't bought new ones since we moved downtown. I have a dozen or so pairs and only a couple have holes (along the back pockets) that have taken them out of circulation even though I haven't thrown them away. Anyway, so all these are over five years old. Some are black (or were) and some are other washes. When I travel I pick the blackest of the black ones for the trip (so they don't show so much grime and also can 'fool' people into thinking they aren't jeans). I vaguely remember actually getting jeans laundered with a light starch before a trip because they stayed neater and the starch also helps resist stains. Sure enough when I was taking these off yesterday I noticed that my hubby's name was penned on the pocket inside with a laundry marker...this pair had been to the cleaners. (He was always a dear about taking stuff to the laundry hence his name, not mine. We've never worn the same size jeans although if he keeps losing weight it may happen.)

I have a few pairs of tennis shorts, a couple of pairs of sweat pants, a sweat shirt, a Polartec jacket. I have some walking shorts, some T-Shirts. (Those multiply don't they? People are always giving us T-Shirts.) I have lots of underthings. (These I replenish by ordering online. Then I throw out the frayed and tattered.) I have a few sweaters and most of them are relatively new. It is sweater weather here today but we don't get as much use out of them as people in colder climes. I have two overcoats and a couple of anoraks. Mufflers. Including the one I bought in Germany in 1972. Really don't get much use out of the overcoats here but take one on trips in the cold weather.

 I replace sports shoes and hiking boots every couple of years. I don't throw enough of them out but keep them around 'just in case.' There are several pairs of boots and tennis shoes in the trunk of my car I think. I found this picture the other day I took of all my sport shoes in 2003. So ten years ago. Looks like I had running as well as tennis shoes and five pairs of hiking boots? Really. This was taken at the old house before our bedroom remodel. In fact, we were probably clearing out for that remodel. I hope I've gotten rid of some of these shoes!

All of this is to say: I need to beef up the wardrobe. Get some really nice stuff. But do I try to lose some weight before investing in anything custom? And can't I get rid of a bunch of stuff first? Truly a first world problem of the very lucky (who can afford the clothes even if they can't lose the weight).

Grown Old

The Visible Woman...ages.

I am putting together my stuff to send in my passport renewal. Getting some clear head shots from the photo shop made me all too aware of my wrinkly neck and other telltale signs of aging. Makes me understand why I prefer vague reflection images like the one above.

I've been rereading some ancient journal entries and I really don't think I've aged that much if you compare the ones here to the recent one above. Passport photos tell a different story, however.

Keep Learning, Keep Doing, One More Day

Another Pithy Quote from the rocks at Butler Park.

The Visible Woman...learns.

When I am wasting time I try to pass it off as something useful. 

Playing tennis? Every day I can stay on my feet is good, right? "Trot over and pick up that ball," I tell myself. "It's cool you can still trap the ball between your tennis shoe and your racket and smoothly make it bounce into your hand," I marvel. It may seem to others, and some days to me, that I'm not learning anything new. But I am, I swear. My 82-year-old companion for tennis (it is almost always us and two other people) has recently (in the last year I think) begun to aggressively play the net biding her time and making a great angle volley. On her serve I have her go forward. We are old ladies and we are stuck in many habits, but we can evolve.

Wasting time on the puzzles in the newspapers? But...you can learn a new word or fact. Yesterday's The Wall Street Journal crossword (Friday is the only day The WSJ  has a puzzle I like) reminded me of a word. 

abscissa, n.  Mathematics (in plane Cartesian coordinates) the x-coordinate of a point: its distance from the y-axis measured parallel to the x-axis.

I say 'reminded' because, with a degree in mathematics surely I knew this word at one time! I love knowing this even if I only remember for a few hours or until it pops up on Jeopardy! 

Clearning? Around here a lot of cleaning is dusting and straightening books and magazines. I stop and open them at random occasionally just like I do in the book store and read a paragraph or two.

As long as you are learning (and forgetting and learning) you are alive. I know it won't keep the grim reaper (18 down in yesterday's WSJ puzzle: death personified) permanently at bay. I read the obituaries. Mortality is always at hand. No, it just makes still being alive worthwhile.

A Portrait of Myself

The Visible Woman...reflects.

Self portraits are odd things. Many artists (not that I consider myself one) have explored the image of themselves. I'm intrigued by what the kids call 'selfies.' I have been doing them for a long time, long before phone cameras made them so popular with kids. Before I had a digital camera even.

I also love collage and, at some point, I became intrigued with the collage-like look of shop window reflections especially with interesting shapes outside the window and interesting goods. Sometimes the windows contained mirrors or other reflective objects and this amplified the effect. I soon noticed the fun of having me, FFP or strangers reflected there, too. Sometimes it's the mere outline of my head that shows up, other times more of my features. Always something is a little obscure. Like life itself, oneself is an elusive concept, visually or in the abstract.