Tenderness and the Blueberry

Coconut cake with fresh blueberries. All organic. All VEGAN. All cruelty-free and you can bet it is good.
And yes, I made it and the lil dogs helped. Especially Charm. They are turning into really good bakers!

Oh Facebook and all related blogs!! I have spent a day or two away from you, a week angry with you, and more than a little time vowing to never post again. And why? Why is this so you ask? Well . . . I will tell you! Listen up, OK? Aside from my constant checking of stats and worrying about saying this wrong thing or that wrong thing or the way the entire process demands that my grasp of punctuation and grammar take a back seat to passion and ranting or the way oh for gawd's sake, there are so many of us saying the same damn things! Over and over! The sun on my face, the wind blowing my hair, the birds in the trees, this sunset, that cloud spread, the crows, the street sounds, the nice guy at the rite-aid counter, the idiot blocking all lanes of traffic to check his cell phone, solstice already finished, fiesta looming its beery head. Sigh. I am quiet now. For a moment anyway. I guess what I am saying is that there comes a time when life simply must change because I make it change-not just react to changes- and this is one of those times. I am pretty damned sure, anyway. 10 hour workdays for the next two weeks and then free floating. Unattached. All children way grown and launched successfully, happily, and brilliantly into their own lives. Me. My three lil doggies. A house bursting with art. A museum of memories. All of it is going, going, gone. A wealthy landlord raising my rent. My fatigue at living month to month sets me off in search of new adventures. Is it worth it-this resurrection? Re-creation of a most painful and unsure kind? So many of us writing, posting, letting our online world know what we eat and with whom and where, why we should carry guns, what music is best, why the health care plan is a bad idea, the beauty of gardens and flowers, animals lost and found, children graduating and traveling, our faces greying but still smiling, distant but somehow superficially connected by this cyber umbilical.  I had a wonderful poster of a dark eyed beauty from Chicago, a street kid, and it was hung in my classroom with the title of "tenderness" and I think that word is a valuable one and precious. I challenged myself to rise from the flames and spend the rest of my time in a worthy pursuit, one which brings me close to people in the service of tenderness and I think I have finally hit upon an idea. Resumes will be flying and there will be a few more cakes like this one before I have the yard art sale of the century and part with my California possessions and strike out for uncharted territory.  Will I miss the pavement I have dog-walked on for 17 years? Will I miss the sun-light slatting just so through my front blinds? Will I miss the families of doves and crows and woodpeckers that have become my constant companions, the jacarandas hanging thickly purple up and down my street, the sounds of parties and dancing from the corner restaurant, and my best views from years and years of downtown walking? Oh yeah. I will miss them all like a giant crying storm all the way up the coast. But I know this move is right. I am going to be strong with myself. I am going to be unsentimental with myself. But mostly I am going to be tender with myself. Even in their cells, the prisoners must quake a little before their locked doors open. No one told me that the hours of free time wished only as moments when my children were growing would come and sit like heavy stones in my lap one day. Nobody told me that there can be something suffocating about solitude and that living inside your own head can be more like camping out in tornado alley with trashcans than a perfect zen retreat.  No one showed me the way to live these years with little money but much joy, little security but much trust, and little direction but much energy. Joan hangs around my neck and goes with me everywhere and I am always reassured by her courage and focused passion and determination to believe what she knew was right. We have eaten up the miles, I have breathed away the days and oh my friends I have burned that candle at both ends until only a wee stump of wax is left. And yet I believe that with enough cake, much tenderness, and the love and support of my beloved children I am going to stand on the shore of a Brave New World and WOW. That will be cool. Love always!!

Sky is the Limit

And here we are. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Live and real and busy doing a brazillion things, experiencing a million adventures, and chasing down memories of three decades, loading forgotten means and ways of magic, and urging ourselves on through fatigue when few will know, fewer still will care, and even less will appreciate. "There are a lot of problems buried out there in that desert." comes from my boss, a rock-solid good old boy with a heart as strong as his soul, and as we gazed down on a million (at least) cubic feet of stuff in our beloved dumpster WOW we appreciated our barely halfway through job really well done. Because finding an authentic purpose and deep meaning in life as to career and finances and all of that stuff I would SO rather not think about constantly, I vowed to do what was before me and really? A dumpster? Loaded TWICE? Me in my toxic waste mask shoveling out, well, I don't want to talk about that but yeah really? Me? I mean am I not supposed to be lounging on a riviera somewhere or sipping something sinful on that certain bridge in Paris or getting my nails done, hair styled, cards read, car washed, passport stamped or lottery ticket cashed? Whaaat? Wait . . . people keep asking me: "What are you going to do for the big 6-0?" and tonight, after a solid seven days of working REALLY hard, with everything aching and I do not even want to talk about my blasted out shoes or completely trashed clothes, I am going to tell you. Here goes: I am the VERY FIRST to admit that many hits on my blog make me insanely happy, turning out a killer batch of vegan anythings makes me ecstatic, the super small puffs floating across our summertime sky make me thankful to be alive, broken and chipped fingernails-all of them BTW-make me feel like a little tomboy devil, the cyber sounds of my youngest home for a few short weeks only before he leaves for northern promise-my last to go- makes me feel warm and included, my rescue pup's head on my foot makes me feel loved and all of this is wonderful, fabulous ENOUGH actually but WAIT there is more. Here is what I am going to do . . . tonight, right now on this glorious midsummer's night of historic proportion, I am going to tell you a short story about some special people in my life.  "Make a wish" her card says and those three words remind me to appreciate this: how can you EVER know what will come next in your life? Last year, the worst year of my existence,  I imagined myself succumbing to despair. I wondered if I could will my heart to stop. I was alone with my pain. I felt invisible. And not so many months later, because of much much writing, much much support from my beloved children, and some solid support from a boss I mentioned above-I am able to read BIRTHDAY WISHES that are some of the most loving and generous I have ever known. Who knew that a man capable of heaving a fully loaded trash can TWICE over his head into a dumpster from a porch several feet above to resounding applause and well-deserved ooohs and ahhhs, a man I have watched JUMP up a creaky ladder many feet above a stage to fool with yet another slippery light, a man who almost scares me and whom I would NEVER want to disappoint is father to one of the smartest, kindest, and most loving young women I have ever had the honor of knowing. Truly.  THANK YOU could NEVER say what I honestly feel. I am that speechless. The card that she gave to me is the official beginning of one of my most beloved birthdays of all time, and so YES!!! A birthday week!!! Sooo much cake!!  Her words remind me that truly our only mission and purpose on our beloved planet is to love and love well and love with all our hearts. Seriously, like the grinch himself-I know that her card and her words have caused my heart to grow and I am hopeful for the fate of many and the future of life on earth because she is here with me now.  May I always measure up to her respect and be deserving of such love. Every moment we spent working together was special and make a wish? OK. I'll bet you know what it is and thank you for reading and LOVE ALWAYS AND FOREVER! VIVA LA VIDA!!!

I Forgot to Dream

I am coming back to a couple of words: terminal uniqueness. I believe I have been wallowing in the squalid soup of that concept for as long as I can remember. Is it the precious bubble of the superficial town in which I live? The crystallized air of Southern California perfection that keeps most of us trapped in this Now I've Got It! sort of delusional dream of motion and meaning? The last two days have found me shoveling out a swamp of forgotten problems and using my calculator to add up days, weeks, months, years since certain businesses and ways of life and living existed in this place, as my work, and daily racing up and down the main drag of our city.  For instance . . . there was this coffeehouse where pretty much everyone hung out-back before the selfish ones sabotaged our newspaper-the suits and the junkies threw down together and laptops had not stolen our brains and our ability to communicate face-to-face and all sorts of nonsense and festivities and COMMUNITY took place there-the good and the bad.  There were these fabric stores-one of which was NATURAL and BRILLIANT and full of wonderful fabrics that kept us busy and a fireball of a brainiac woman owner with the gift of fine conversation and it too was a gathering place. There were bookstores-corporate yes-but DAMN, no matter how low or lonely you were feeling you could wander and look at a decent magazine or two and undoubtedly meet up with friends and spend a bit of time CONNECTING. Now that I am a woman of a certain age and that age has tipped me over into oftentimes invisibility-a shadow of my former self whatever in the hell that means some might say-I am looking at Bastille Day and one of my favorite claims to fame Me and France! and that certain age becoming even more certain and WOW.  What a long way I have come, from the plains of Nebraska and leaving home before I could squeak really, and living on the streets of Chicago and surviving, and hitchhiking across America and joining a cult, and herding goats, and working in a commercial bakery-a couple of them-and traveling traveling traveling gypsy style, having and raising the LOVES OF MY LIFE, and teaching, and working in theatres and wasn't it all supposed to add up to something definitive and sustaining? Yet I am standing on the threshold of certain indecision. New York? New Orleans? Portland? Woodstock? Nashville? Why oh why oh why would I ever leave PARADISE you are wondering no doubt as my own terminally unique self thinks as I sit here at command central, 17 plus years of art, costumes, and writing surrounding me-the sounds of crickets and the train way, way off joining me in my silence, dogs quietly panting just under my desk, the stars just visible through the trees surrounding my front windows-and perhaps it is all of the people I have listened to in the past year.  They have come into my life from NY and LA and points south and even Europe. Their stories are interesting, their lives are lively, and a window opens in my safe little cage that brings in some fresh air and new experiences and adventure. I do not want to spend the next decade of my life in fancy yoga clothes attempting once again to bully or forget my ego into submission with the mind numbing but I know it is good for me like fish oil meditation and all things buddha and zen. I forgot to forge a pension, I don't even really know what a 401 entails, and I honestly have a shoebox of saved money. Not under my bed in case you had designs.  With all the stubborn immaturity I can gather, I think I would rather bake a batch of vegan brownies at close to midnight, and eat as many as I want, and research places to move until my fingers go numb, and count up my dimes and dollars to see if they add up to gas money enough to  move me somewhere, anywhere before I simply fade away.  Time to strike out in my seven league boots I think and no sleepy Northern California towns for me. I have been in a beautiful weather coma for about as long as I can stand it I think.  Give me bookstores. Fabric stores. Vegan everythings. Music at night. With people as old as me. Give me crowds on the streets with small and interesting stores and many art galleries and museums.  Buildings of all kinds. People of all kinds. And purpose. Something really, really worthwhile to do, to build, to teach, to learn, to share to the best of my ability. You have been listening to me whine for a couple of years now. I did not have the money for therapy. I do not take any sort of drugs.  So I have been struggling along, trying to craft a life, trying to create art, trying to support myself.  I have walked the MILES in this town with no inheritance, no wealthy partner, and no trust fund-trying, trying, trying to make something happen, make a name and a place for myself, come out from under my terminal uniqueness and just live for gawds sake. I listened to Brene Browns talk on vulnerability once more this morning and here is what I have to say to her: vulnerability is HARD. It is damn risky. The tremendous support she has in her life, a loving husband, enough money to live and afford therapy and travel-she is smart and inspiring and pretty damn fortunate. Finding a path, speaking your mind, living an honest and daring life, is pretty awesomely scary when you are attempting to figure it out on your own. And I have UNLIMITED RESPECT for people I know, and ones I read about, who have managed to do this without all of the whining that accompanies my seeking. But it is daring whining. In all sincerity? I work as hard as I whine. I am not asking for or desiring a violin. I think, honestly, that somewhere along the line, somewhere in the middle of that train track where I have derailed momentarily, I simply forgot to dream.  I let fear and despair and shame grab my soul.  Tonight, with a head full of ideas, a journal full of figuring, and a room lit with a tiny candle of inspiration, I dared to write down a dream. An idea which I believe will become reality. A plan that I think just might break me out of this mire of frustration, indecision, and overwhelming feeling of complete OH MY GOODNESS DOES ANYTHING MATTER? thinking. Everything matters. Nothing matters.  I am always thankful to be alive, I am always grateful to be still in the game, and I am mostly full of love for my readers of these late night caffeine and chocolate infused running like a river jabberwocky moments. You keep it real for me-your terminally unique bohemian queen who just might spend the rest of this night dreaming. LOVE ALWAYS!!

A Militant Stitcher

There is no need to throw numbers and percentages, statistics or charts and graphs at you.  For one thing, we have grown empathy exhausted by the sheer weight of depressing facts as to how we are destroying our planet, environment, species, air quality, relationships, food, families, and all and every and each aspect of our human existence.  And for another, in our heart of collective hearts WE ALREADY KNOW everything we continually post and blog. We do, we really do.  When I had the honor and privilege of having an art show for my art dresses-I was determined to explain some things that make up the world of me, seen through my eyes, from my perspective.  The only vision I really actually know- as clouded and partial and fragmented as it can get at times.  Blurred by the need to survive. Taken down by one too many days loading dumpsters or not, a few too many all nighters-or perhaps not enough, and much, MUCH too much time worrying needlessly about pretty much everything. Useless for sure.  And wasted energy times a brazillion. The very reason, I am quite sure, that my hair continues to grey. At my show I hung my "Howl" dress with the words of Ginsberg written painstakingly across yards of silver grey dupioni for my beloved daughter muse. The only person for whom I would ever have hand written his words in such exacting detail.  I hung my "BodyBag Ballgown" which is a Goth and Steampunk nod to a gown which could take a woman from vanity at the ball to death and zipped up burial after the big one hits. There was whimsy and joy too . . . my wee granddaughters crumb covered "Fairy Princess" dress, which is never washed-just worn and worn again at mud pie gatherings, late night gaming sessions with cookies, and to every conceivable outing, picnic, and creek forging.  There was a  collection of circus dresses which brought me great joy to make and looked like Cirque gowns for toddlers. Loved them!! I had my "No One Owns the Roses" dress which is too personal to discuss but consisted of 101 handmade silk roses covering a shade shifting party dress skirt of the most exquisite rhubarb dupioni silk once again. There was my "Nervous Breakdown and Body Faults" dress which spoke of how as seamstresses we torture ourselves and each other to get stitches and seams PERFECT whether or not it will EVER matter or be seen. And the body faults part, I am quite sure you know what that consisted of.  My "Picasso's Business Suit" paid homage to the great man himself and I painted a crow which I know my daughter could have painted oh so much better but never mind and I lined the jacket with an amazing shimmery blue silk with words about "Woman and Crow" and Picasso written in wonderful script. The whole suit is decorated with birdseed beads. Thousands of them.  Each dress had a story and a picture which went along with it. Gawd it was an experience and heady stuff.  An art show. Mine. My work. But the greatest of them all had to be my "SHAME ON LADY GAGA THE ANTI-MEAT DRESS" and the reason I am shouting right there is so that you will hear me.  Will it help to tell you how many slaughterhouses there are in our country? How many detailed medical reports will give you the realistic facts as to the UNHEALTHY aspects of eating flesh and dairy? Would it inspire anyone to have a book store sized reference section of all that has been written about the INSANELY cruel methods of captivity and slaughter in the meat and dairy industry? Is there a person ALIVE who cannot imagine the pain and intolerable suffering that accompanies warm blooded JUST LIKE US animals kept in conditions beyond description and killed by methods and people so unkind and cruel WE MUST LOOK AWAY to take part in the savagery?  OK. So here is how my dress came about  . . . and yeah, I am serious about all of this.  I read a long article about Lady Gaga and her dress--the meat dress she wore at the 2010 MTV video awards and the subsequent outrage and much publicized debate and the $6,000 paid to a taxidermist to preserve all of that dead flesh by bleach and dye and formaldehyde and I COULD NOT SLEEP.  I started researching like a mad woman-no like a SANE woman- and I found quote after quote after quote written by all of the greats as to the inhumanity of our lust for flesh and our cruel disregard for the sufferings of our fellow passengers on our glorious ship of earth and our selfish refusal to confront what we are doing and I decided that no matter how many more people would never speak to me, I had to become a MILITANT STITCHER. The bodice of the dress has a quote by Schopenhauer, yeah and I know, the haters among you will tell me that he was a mean man and mean to women and didn't live what he preached-WHATEVER-keep it up for as long as you want but this ONE PERSON, that would be me-simply LOST IT. Or found it actually. In my best of all possible ways, I made this "Shame on Lady Gaga the Anti-Meat Dress" because I feel ABSOLUTELY HELPLESS in the face of such hatred and condemnation by people who eat meat, consume dairy and eggs, and SWEAR BY the whole you gotta eat your body weight in protein and meat and dairy mentality. Such hostility. Such entitlement. I DON'T get it?!! I have kept and butchered chickens.  I have herded goats and watched them killed and slaughtered.  I have been party to the entire animal husbandry circle of life and death. I know of what I speak.  In my deepest, strongest, purest place in my soul I know I am right.  I have held a shivering, fragile baby lamb in my arms, close to my heart, and smelled its sweet soft curls and marveled at the barest butterfly breath of its existence.  I have rested my head against the side of a calm, kind cow and felt the kinship of warm blood and warm skin and warm heart.  I have held tiny peeping chicks and petted polka-dotted chickens.  I have moved among my sister friend goats and they have raised their heads to me in greeting and snuffled and bleated their shared conversations. I know, without a doubt, that WE ARE ONE. My dress speaks to the undeniable link of blood and bone that we share with all living creatures. It speaks to my love of all of those relationships I have shared so deeply, with my domestic animals, our horses in the back country, and the farm animals I have tended. For me the reason for my "Shame on Lady Gaga the Anti-Meat Dress" comes down to this: until we acknowledge that we have caused and ARE CAUSING EVERY MOMENT tremendous and undeniable pain and suffering to millions of animals, we will never be free of worry, we will never be happy, we will never sleep in peace.  The very thing that enables us to turn away from our cruelty and continue, the very attitude that allows us to look away and justify our actions, the very ability we have to blindly pursue our own lusts over other animals lives-allows us to live unkindly as people, unfairly as citizens, and inhumanely as fellow passengers. And this dress is my VERY SMALL, tragically insignificant attempt to be a STRONG AND LOUD voice in this world moving too fast for its own good and too selfishly for its own survival. I am learning still.  See how many times I mentioned silk dupioni in my story? PETA thanked me for my "Shame on Lady Gaga and the Anti-Meat Dress" and then told me that my dress was not 100% VEGAN because it is SILK!!! Ohhhhhh. I had to learn about silk and the manufacture of silk and silkworms and WOW!! I am not angry about this. I am EXCITED. I am thrilled and PASSIONATE to contribute however I can in the FIGHT AGAINST ANIMAL ABUSE.  I am learning all I can about living CRUELTY-FREE. I wrote a short story about my beliefs. I will always remain a MILITANT STITCHER. LOVE ALWAYS and don't eat animals!!!

To Dream the Impossible

i will always love you.

Why not i am constantly asking the universe? why not? on my good days i don't need anyone to pat my head and say "good dog", i just step out into the great big fabulous video game of life and hit play. it's all good, the struggle, the dreaming, the work or lack thereof, money disappears or falls from my piggy bank, my exchanges with sidewalk strollers, clerks behind counters, and casual conversations, the sky is an exacting blue, the fog burns through at just the right moment, and i am confident in my life lived as well as imagined, as well as felt, and as well as dreamed. on my days of despair, all drama intended, i cannot seem to match up the ever increasing speed of things with my feelings of inadequacy and ahhh my gawd i have waited a lifetime probably to use this word . . . impotence. yeah. for real. a beautiful and smart young woman paid me the honor of coffee and a wee peek into her life and FOR ONCE i got to partially set aside my woman of a certain age miseries involving invisibility (and i do not mean the fabulous super hero kind) and painful aging which no one NOBODY ever warned me about and listen to her.  as i sat there, listening really really hard, i was distracted by her oh so young passion, compassion, vision, intelligence, honesty, and ok-i am going to have a girl moment don't hate me please-golden green eyes and she talked about THE DREAM and surviving and choosing a path and direction and oh WOW, she reminded me so very, very much of my own personal beloved daughter muse and her equally impassioned every move and breath-ok and her impossible shadow grey eyes-and similar, no in fact EXACT conversations and i thought GOOD GAWD!!! why is life so damned difficult? why as artists, creatives, women of a certain age, human beings in general i guess i will say, why oh why oh why the constant and continual traffic noise of what is worth doing and what gives our art importance and is validation necessary or merely desired, and good gawd again i sure as hell hope we get some or all of this sorted out before we are DEAD!!! i have a feeling that as inadequate and impotent as i might feel right now, i will feel a whole hell of a lot more useless as a pile of ash. or perhaps not? instead of believing that i am not a decent writer because i haven't been published, perhaps i will drift across moon lit prairies and tangle it up with a tumbleweed.  perhaps instead of hating myself because all the nickels and dimes in my piggy bank and shoe box refuse to add up to the cost of opening a community coffee shop/art and sewing studio/ bakery/ writer's den i will sprinkle myself over the surface of a fir trimmed lake high in the mountains.  instead of despairing over a back room with art dresses unbought and zero sales anywhere on planet earth i will sift myself down into dark soil and help bring forth great flowery beauty. ahhh . . . validation. direction. i believe we need to find each other.  i believe we need to stay hidden in our caves. i believe we need to step away from the cyber world. i believe we need to dedicate hours everyday to our many and growing online relationships. how to build a brave new world? at almost 60? i envied my coffee drinking companion her youth and drive. i loved the inspiration she sparked within me. now the work begins i think. sitting here, my legs aching me into a sleepless night, i want to become that fly away ash and leave through my front window, right past the portrait of grandpa and sit down with the stars for a bit, listen to the hum and spin of planets, and take in the dark blackness, breathe in the frozen coldness and look back at our beautiful jewel of a planet. before i time trip slaughterhouse five style, i will take a last look at one of the greatest pictures i have ever received. this dress was patched together by me when i had almost no money, working with tiny scraps given to me by a dear friend. i worked slowly and carefully and thoughtfully. i tried to sell it. nothing. i tried to give it away. no one wanted it. ashamed of my lack of validation as an artist, i tried one last time to find an owner and finally gave it to one of my best BEST students with the disclaimer that she could give it away or thrift store it if she didn't like it and LOOK!! she told me it is her favorite dress and that she wears it almost all the time. with a full heart and a rekindled desire to remain my very best me, i am pushing off and dreaming the impossible until sleep returns me to my bed. with dogs. LOVE ALWAYS and i do so love you er!! and i thank you for validating the work that comes through my hands. with all my heart.

Full Circle

3 days. Man, that is a lot of stuff!!

One of my best bosses said that he likes to stay until the party's over. I get that. This dumpster represents one of the main reasons I will never perfect anything ala Outliers style, flaunt fancy fingernails, win the husband lottery-or even boyfriend I don't think-and all of that is OK, okey dokey in fact because WOW what could possibly compare with clearing out a much and long loved theatre, sorting through countless COUNTLESS collections of pretty much everything, keeping the good and future games useable and then wheeeeee!!! tossing the no longer useful from the city's most picturesque porch.  Fabulous stuff this endgame and moving on and a new chapter. I am loving it, I really am. And then to race off after three hard working days of all of this and meet up with one beloved son here from NY, one beloved son in his last days here before San Francisco, and my beloved daughter muse and her best friend and then OH MY GOODNESS . . . the best of all-my most darling and precious granddaughter scooting over to make room for me and giving me little hugs all through dinner. There just is nothing better. Tomorrow night the skies might be full of exploding color, the streets may be filled with crowds and smoke, the weekend ahead looks long and happy, but RIGHT NOW, right now is one perfect, fabulous breath of a job well done, everyone I love gathered close, my thermos of green tea, and YOU-my best and most important reader. Love always!!