Looking at light

Of course it's dark because it's ten o'clock and when I look out my window, I cup my hands and lean into the glass to banish the reflections of my lamps and the TV. I find I am looking into two things that fill me with, well, joy. An evergreen (Thula Green Giant) I planted six years ago, into which I have entwined white twinkle lights. The same lights are around the trunks of a sweet guy tree and a cedar tree about fifteen feet from the house, and I plugged them all in after I mowed the lawn this afternoon.

I look farther, beyond the evergreen and the sweet gum and the cedar to the Leyland cypresses lining the back yard before it gives into the woods. Above the cypresses I think there's still some light left in the sky, a deep indigo, but I realize it's the reflection on the window glass from my blue bedroom. Still quite lovely. I lean into the glass; it's very clean because reflections are one of my favorite things. On the blue walls I have three mirrors, not necessarily from narcissism, but because of the way the mirrors catch the afternoon light in this southern exposure.

I can't see any more but the twinkle lights, but I think if the window were open, I could smell the new-cut grass. As I peer out, the tree frogs start up. After a rain, and it rained last night, they start their serenade. When this happens, I mute the TV or music and listen for as long as they go on. So close, I can tell they are in the Thula Green Giant, and that one is about five feet up while the other close to the ground. They trill back and forth one more vibrant than the other, the one close to the ground sounding as thought it might want to settle in for the night. A good idea, I think, so I pull the sheers over the panes and head back to bed, still listening to the frogs. When I turn my bedside lamp off, I will leave the twinkle lights on so if I wake in the night I'll see a dim glow filling the blue bedroom. Through the WindowLooking at lightDaily PostThrough the Through the Through the #64

My daughter's ankle

My 17-year-old daughter told me she was going to the library, and I thought it was odd, but she is the reader of the family, so I thought, well, okay. She came back with a tattoo. It was an anchor on her ankle, and I was nonplussed. She told me it was for Hope, her friend who had just died in a car accident, so I did not voice my opinions about tattoos. She already knew them, anyway. Six months later, when Maggie applied for college she had to write an essay about a formative experience. It was only then that I understood the import of her actions.

Maggie wrote that when Hope was killed, she felt absolutely nothing. She thought she should be feeling grief, but she didn't. She got the tattoo in the same way. She settled on Hebrews 6:19: "We have this hope as the anchor of the soul." My good girl. It wasn't a particularly original tattoo, but it was maybe the the first autonomous decision she made as an adult. She made it with deliberation, knowing that she would have to tell me, her mother, and accept the consequences of lying and doing something that I had always preached against. I had firm views on despoiling one's body, and Maggie has mostly honored my authority, so this was a decisive foray into adulthood for her. When she wrote her college essay, she said that the feelings she had while getting the tattoo were exactly the same as her feelings when Hope died, numbness. The artist told her it would hurt, but she didn't feel the pain, only listened to the buzzing of the needle and watched the ink imprint into her skin. The result though, permanent and indelible, like death.

In my second year of teaching school, I lost a student I loved to a motorcycle accident. Every Sunday for sixteen years, I've prayed for his soul, and I think Maggie's tattoo is really the same thing  Every Sunday, I think of how old Willie would be, what he might have done with his life. I imagine Maggie thinks of what Hope have done with hers. I won't forget Willie and Maggie has told me she won't forget Hope, I guess prayers are a kind of tattoo, or tattoos might be some kind of prayer. Ink on skin, words from the heart. I have to respect Maggie's lie about the library. It's a testament not to deception, but to loss, honor, and recognition of sorrow.

Recycling center

I am most myself in other people's clothes--my father's old yacht club cap, my daughter's outgrown sports bra, the gym shorts my sister gave me, and the t-shirts that came from Goodwill. In those I paddle the Chattahoochee, flop around on my yoga mat, and bike the roads east of Atlanta. I attribute my fondness for hand-me-downs to having a big sister I tried hard to be like, but the slovenliness is all me. I remember my mother reprimanding me about wearing the same clothes three days in a row, and forty years ago, it was the same outfit: shorts and a t-shirt. Especially in the summer, when I still try never to put on make up or wear real shoes. Mostly I wear sunscreen and flipflops that cost 98 cents at Walmart.

In the fall, however, which now starts the first of August, school begins and I have to do things like wash my hair and put on lipstick. I wear dresses and bracelets and carry a purse; I  embrace entire color-coordinated outfits and wear high heels so my eleventh-graders won't dwarf me. They're still hand-me-downs, though. My friends and family all know I will accept and love their discards, and when I do shop, I head for the thrift store. The teacher part of me wants to take in those vagabond garments, the little sister part wants to look grown up, and the nerd in me wants to live by Thoreau's advice to beware of any enterprise requiring new clothes.  Whatever, I may never enter a department store again.

A Healthy Poverty

"It's still the first week in January, and I've got great plans. I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast by a generous hand But--and this is the point--who gets excited by a mere penny?If you follow one arrow, if you crouch tremulous on a bank to watch a ripple on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat, kit paddling to its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only and go your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued he won't stop to pick up a penny, But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty, bought a lifetime of days."
                                                                            --Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker CreekJanua

January 2013

Jan. 1--The last night of winter break.I walked and ran in the cold drizzle and cooked a big meal for Maggie, Trevor, Andres, and Lily. Watched Supernatural with a sage-scented candle burning.
Jan. 2--Clearly, a day of wrong numbers. I weighed four times, aghast that the scale said 128. When I put in my contacts, it actually said "123." Whew.
Jan. 3--Instead of owing $4000, tuition came to $1350.
Jan. 4--Hiked Harbins Park today with Karen, Courtney, Donna and Audra. Kept to 932 calories.
Jan. 5--Hiked Sweetwater by the river today with Maggie, Lily, and Andres. Stopped at Frontera on the way home and had a fantastic spinach quesadilla.
Jan. 6--Waxing crescent moon and the smell of pinestraw.
Jan. 7--The light looked like a freaking Ansel Adams photo today.
Jan. 8--Found a pad of Post-it notes
Jan. 9--Kathy and I went to Goodwill. She looked up at me and said, "I only have on one sock." I did, too. We both think we have never left the house wearing only one sock before.
Jan. 10--Saw a girl wearing a green sequined shirt in the hall; wrote recommendation for Andres; Maggie tagged Melissa Thomas in a post that she made a 99 on an algebra test.
Jan. 13--Fell over the flowerpot on the way out this morning in the dark, skinned elbow and knee, bruised shin, spilled the entire cup of coffee in my hair somehow. Later Kathy noticed my hair and commented that it had "a lot of texture." But I did not break anything.
Jan. 18--Cody Crawford: Can I go to the bathroom?
Me: No.
Cody: You'd let Harry Potter go to the bathroom.
Jan. 14--Saw crescent moon, had money to pay for new brakes, alignment, and an oil change.
Jan. 19--First, it's a Saturday. Then, when I woke up, I logged into Chictopia, a fashion site, and David Beckham had a new underwear ad up.
Jan. 20--Went to gallery reception and Taqueria del Sol with Claudia.
Jan. 21--Worked on collages for Emmy. Pleased with one of them. Lily and Andres' anniversary and Craig Beddingfield's birthday.
Jan. 25--Decided in first period to make a coffee run to All Ground Up. John Cole said he needed help to carry coffee. Brandon Williamson raised his hand and said, "I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!"
Jan. 26--Big gorgeous full moon in the sky tonight like the purest thing in the galaxy.
Jan. 27--Lady in parking lot at Kroger said I looked exactly like someone she had gone to school with, probably the millionth person to tell me this. She was really nice, but surprisingly weatherbeaten-looking, and I drove away wondering if I look like an old saddlebag.
Jan. 30--Made Dante PowerPoint today. Used AC/DC's "Hell's Bells" for intro. Very pleased with myself.
Jan. 31--RBES conference with Durrence. She was nice to me. Had great convo with Lily on phone about this year's lax team

Souvenir oddities

At Myrtle Beach, I learned to put myself on a per diem seashell plan. I started out by collecting no more than I could carry in one hand, but that quickly seemed extravagant. Folly Beach brought the more Zen restriction of one seashell each day we walked to the coffee shop. The first three days I collected spirals, but on the fourth, an interestingly porous chalk-white rock attracted me, so I picked it up. Kathy carried a limp, unregenerated starfish that creeped me out. I prefer inanimates.

I blame some travel author I read who said he and his family managed vacations in part by never ever buying expensive souvenirs. Then I heard this guy on NPR who had just published a book of lists he’d found. That summer, 2008, I found a great NY list on the back of a bagel receipt from Heathrow airport, listing all the places the anonymous tourist planned to go. My inchoate desire for restrained and original souvenir accumulation took a nebulous shape.

The list, obviously. A blog entry—“Mistakes you make on vacation” and photos we took of interesting New York outfits, long before I discovered street style blogs, were early ones. In Puerto Rico, the four-star hotel soap enchanted me. I t was square and opalescent, like mother of pearl. One year later, I have a small remnant in the green bowl on the edge of my bathtub, and the scent conjures up the glamorous square glass shower in the middle of the hotel bathroom.

In Blue Ridge, Georgia mountain country, I peeled a poster off a storefront of a circus event that had already passed. The poster featured a clown in vibrant pink and orange; I like pink and orange, and I am one of those whom clowns make uneasy, so I’m ambivalent about the poster. I laminated it and put it up in my class room, where John Everest said the poster looking at him from the wall made him nervous every day, so I took it down and put it behind him instead so the clown could sneak up on John.

Two days ago, searching for a place for my watch-obsessed nephew to buy a new timepiece in Charleston, I found a flier, again posted on a store front on King Street, just south of Calhoun, about an Edgar Allan Poe event, in pleasing black and white, as befits the twisted Mr. Poe. The flier featured a print of a mixed media portrait and advertised Israfel: The Ordeal of Edgar Allan Poe, but my personal Poe ordeal is how to spell his middle name. I always get it wrong, and when I took this photo, it inverted the letters mirror-style, in the most Poe-esque fashion. Anyway, I’ll put him next to the clown in my classroom and hope for another student I can make uneasy. Wesley didn't find another watch for his souvenir, but I sympathize with his desire to collect. One commemorating each trip doesn't add up to excess, as far as I'm concerned.

Puerto Rico gentlemen

Full Frontal Athens

The decisive moment

This is not it, by the way. This is just one of the few I took in Puerto Rico of someone from the front. I have, taken from the rear, the following: lady on the cell phone wearing very high heels (the lady, not the phone), this same policeman, a policewoman directing traffic, storeowner taking a cigarette break, waiter taking a cigarette break (love those cigarette break photos), delivery man at the same restaurant, a guy at the pool gesticulating wildly while taking on the cell phone, a girl in hotel pool, and a very dapper man crossing a plaza in Old San Juan. It is because I'm shy about shooting these people, but sneaking up behind them is not only difficult for me and startling for them, it's creepy and stalkerish, so I must stop. I did get one of the delivery man wearing a lovely blue shirt and the cigarette waiter front on, but only because I was so far away they didn't notice me, so when I enlarged it, the resolution sucked.

So, I'm going to run over to Athens and shoot people while actually facing them. Or at least sidelong. If I"m very, very lucky and there's another World Cup match this afternoon, maybe I'll get some fans. Here's hoping. I dub my new project "Full Frontal Athens."

Red chair

What is there to do to get ready for Easter? Here's my list:

1. get ready for Melissa's impending visit
2. prepare to park myself in the chair of denial (it's the red one above) if she claims she can't come
3. paint some birds (if they'll just hold still)
4. put up creche in attic and pretend I just realized Epiphany is over
5. urge Albarta to take down her Christmas tree
6. paint some buildings magenta

Sadly, all those things, plus taking pictures, may be put on hold while I mow the lawn and try not to eat all the Easter candy. Or Alberta and I may just blow everything off and go out juning around, as our mother XLo-05 would say. Happy Easter to all!

Alberta just sold a painting

Yes, it walked right out of the gallery---Your Own Personal Jesus, a mixed media work with a red/orange/pink/yellow color scheme. I'm delighted to say it featured (in the bottom right corner) my photo of Jesus, taken on the way back from Myrtle Beach, although I guess she should now share collab credits with the person who had the statue of a purple Jesus in his or her front yard.

My sister, the hotcakes-like-selling artist. Mine. I knew I taught art history for something. Now I'm the most qualified applicant when Alberta opens her own gallery and needs a curator.

Happy Valentine's Day

Scots and clocks

I used to teach with a Scot on an exchange program who mocked me for not wearing a watch. "That's such an English teacher thing," he said. What? He attributed it to some entrenched Emily Dickinson-free spirit affectation.



Which was fine; I liked being bohemian. He also called a wrench a "spanner" and kept threatening to invite me over for haggis, so of course I thought of him Sunday when I skipped going to church to look for clocks instead.



They're not easy to find. Here's the short list for Walton/Gwinnett county:
1. Monroe courthouse
2. Funeral home in Social Circle
3. Duluth town square


That's it. I scurried around feeling like the White Rabbit, looking for a good clock. Instead I found a nice green swing, a stucco former jail,



and a couple of appealing rooflines. Oh, and I was also seduced by a few windows, cause I'm easy.
A toast to all watch-wearing Scots wielding spanners and haggis(Poor wee slicket timorous beasties; sorry, I can't help myself) and bon voyage to Melissa, Scotland-bound with a sore throat and knocking back tea with honey, who will no doubt come back all bohemian, sans watch.