sweet peony: when two wrongs become a right...

The dining room is done. Well, at least paint-wise. The color speaks silken texture, old fashioned warmth...and has the glow of new birth. The way too intense red-pink bought a year ago, mixed with the way too pale pink bought this year, in a 30:70 ratio (a stroke of brilliance by JR the wonder-painter) is perfect. I've named it Sweet Peony - giving what seems like an appropriate nod to both 'sweet peas' and 'peonies'. Only 587 more projects to go.

It's clear why I love blogging: Things stand still. You can document an 'ah ha' moment and revisit it ad infinitum and it never gets dusty, never decays. And in writing, the extraordinary presents itself gilded and untarnished:

For sale: 100 year-old, Craftsman style 3BR, 2.5BA home with bonus 3rd floor room-with-a-view, on double lot one block north of Annunciation Cathedral. Wrap around porch; beautiful floors; every closet a walk-in; 2nd floor enclosed porch laundry room; double staircase; full basement. New 50-year roof, recent paint job, newer furnace/AC. $475K.

Cool. Sign me up. Oops...I live here. And I know its faults all too well!

But for now, I'm in the pink. And the obvious metaphor here is how I struggled & worked twice to get the color right...and it was wrong. And the thought of letting go and allowing 'free mixing' was terrifyingly unsure to me...and it was right. Hmmmmm........

Lately, taking pictures, downloading pictures, dealing with blogspot's ass-backwards (uh oh, there goes my PG blog rating) approach to inserting them has been 100% overwhelming. But now, here, in the cool of the late night I've found revivification.

A floating dancer hangs from the piano room light while hummingbirds circle above

A reflection in the piano lid

The piano room

Yet another curtain to view life through, this time in the spare bedroom

Same curtain with a hint of a view of the neighbor's house

Tigger reigns on the guest room bed,
perhaps disapproving of the amount of fabric and patterns I'm packing,
even though I haven't sewn in quite a while.
I think of my daughters as I give myself permission to bring beauty for them to fondle.
I conveniently left the utter chaos of the rest of the room
out of the camera lens' view.

Bixby: in touch with his inner Tigger
and contemplating that special kind of torture only he can provide
on the long drive from Stockton to Warsaw.

calm & blue...

The courtyard area in Pablo Neruda's home.

For a large version of the photo, try clicking here.

So serene. And...the lovely blue paint exudes completeness...unlike the dining room in my corner of the world (The gorgeous pink paint, custom-mixed by JR, awaits application...and is bound to make the wallpaper in the adjoining kitchen look unattractive and outdated!!! A project in the wings???) Ah, blue -- makes me think of Patricia Barber's 'blue'...lift the sash to air the breeze...a mixture of both the serene and the somber.

The other connection, this night, is with Neruda's poetry, as Lauridsen uses one of his poems in his 'Nocturnes' set. However, my excessive self simply can't get past the 'ultimate', represented by the Shining Night offering in that group.

I suppose blue could carry me to other places tonight...perhaps to a cosmic veil of musical tears in one of my other current 'ultimate beauty' cravings: 'When David Heard' by Eric Whitacre. Here I must interject: does a composer who is as California surfer blond and beautiful as Whitacre understand if we at first wonder if he is too pretty to be taken seriously? Obviously, though: serious talent he is.

So, in 'When David heard...' we get 11+ minutes of wailing on a biblical text. When David heard that Absalom his son was slain he went up into his chamber and wept. Oh, my son...Absalom.... Tears. Sobbing. Wailing. Catching of breath...Starting all over again. The climactic musical ascension to the throne of God? A veil: not draping, falling, bidden earthward by gravity, but rather quite palpably, literally, building itself a bridge to heaven...touching the heart of God with its grief. (And let us not forget the context: King David's son Absalom was waging battle so as to win his father's kingdom and throne by force. Yet...the father grieves for the loss of his life.)

Profound. Somber. But indescribably beautiful.

Tonight, though much work (though never 'enough') was done here in my all too earthly un-kingdom, I'm grateful for an escape to the blue, with some rare time & energy allowing me to reply to some recent-and-beyond blog comments.

Off to dream... But first: must face the 'music' in the basement. This evening, Bixby brought in a not-very-dead GIANT pigeon, undoubtedly to impress us. It's about half his size. He only maimed it. I will lift it with tshirt-gloved hands and carry it out to lie under a fern in the front yard. Make he soon rest in peace.

Mercy.

saturday report...

The day thou gavest, Lord, is ending. I'm definitely in the 'looking back' mode. A good day. A rough day.

I spent close to five hours working on the front yard this morning. Annuals are good. Weeding is good. Planting a 'Rose of Sharon' tree from M's green larder -- priceless. If I could find the camera, I'd take a picture.

So, I accomplished a lot in the front yard -- not to sell the house, but to entice prospective buyers to want to walk through the front door. Sometime during my fourth and I thought last hour of work, 'Tyler' showed up. The on-the-young-side teenage son of a man who devoted 8 hours of his life on a rainy day in March weeding the front yard, he and I worked together for another hour or two. Some of what I had done earlier was undone -- as in, I had carefully planted and completed my activity with a 'punctuation' of mulching, e.g., ground up leaves from last fall being placed on the top of the well-worked soil, and then found that much was disturbed by, i.e., covered with, displaced dirt from the Tyler activity of forming a border to the area with discarded mowing strip concrete and brick remnants. Yup. It was all worth it. Got a lot done. Worked with a young teen to that end.

So...the reason I can't find the camera?: The usual center-of-activity, The Dining Room (home to many things, including the digital camera) , is encased in plastic. A talented painter from church is finishing what I started a cool year ago. Except he's even MORE of a perfectionist than I am! So...I'm up to my eyeballs in spackle dust!!! The result of continued work in the past year: there is no trace of the revered wallpaper. No 'cinco de mayo' paint this-time-this-year. Nope. It's going to be 'shell pink', a la Martha Stewart's June issue (why, I ask, does she exclaim 'Shell Pink!!!' in her mag when she does not offer anything close to that name in her own paint line??? Nor does anyone else. And, while I'm at it, will some one intervene as I'm contemplating boxing 36+ issues of her mag for leisurely -- but not certain -- perusal in Indiana???).

Just have to say it: How appropriate is 'shell pink', given Fr. C's wondrous liminality post!

The remaining question: will the sumptuous, heavy dining room drapes with weighty cornice be reinstalled...or will they be stored? I suspect that if we're wanting to sell drapes and cornice, they should remain. If we're wanting to sell a house, then might the large window, newly exposed in its complete glory -- might its inherent beauty and light-giving presence -- speak for itself...sans heavy, lined drapes/wood-framed cornice?

Maybe there will be a picture at some future point. For now, the more pressing eternal hope is that I may find time, energy to comment on amazing blogposts. And respond to amazing comments from visitors on mine -- comments which I hoped to 'comment on' at the time...but missed the window.

Love, DD

mementos from a dialogue between mothers...

Last night, my visit with my mother was consumed with worries and regret - at least on her end of things. She obviously has been waiting to unpack the past with me, now that I am packing bags/boxes for a larger than life move.

She wanted to know about some perceived painful times in my child. Actually, she has come to realize that a chunk of my childhood was overshadowed, derailed, eclipsed by the painful, cruel, awful separation and consequential divorce of my parents. But she started earlier than that: When she worked at my father's veterinary clinic (Fremont St, Stockton) and brought me to work (putting me and my toys in a dog sized 'holding cell'), I once said plaintively, 'Can't we go home now?' I assured her that she was a good mother then and my reaction was typical for a bored child. But...really...the fact that this painfully-good-and quiet child had the courage to verbalize the request speaks volumes for the boredom, at least!

She had done the math: her seven-plus years of famine and grief over my father's betrayal and her resulting near breakdown did, in fact, correspond with a significant chunk of my formative years. She remembers me asking her why she cried all the time. 'I don't want to tell you. Why do you ask?' 'Because it's better to know why than not know anything' (I think she gives too much credit here). I do remember, as a very young child, pledging to a distraught woman that I would care for her forever and stay by her side as she went through the motions of a life with a full time job, a weekend job, and keeping a house with 'roomers' whose rent made it possible for us to stay in the home my grandfather designed and built. I also remember thinking, during one of the myriad times alone, that this young child could not take it any more...that surely, my mother, whose love I sensed went to self-sacrificial heights, would understand if I bailed...if I asked to go live with the Hume's whose home life was constantly laced with the humorous. Shy, responsible, never-wanting-to-cause-pain Brenda could not bring herself to utter those words.

Or so I thought. A few years ago, I mentioned this to my sisters and one of them said that our mother had come to her and said I had made such a request. Wow. To make that request, to verbalize it, would take extraordinary bravery on this small child's part. I was, in fact, desperate.

Still, it was the life I lived. My life. It was real. I shared a bedroom with my mother. My next-older sister entertained us with dancing, singing, and general silliness. Some of our 'roomers' were quite nice. Yes, my cat ate a valued canary possession of one! Her room's door was where I would lurk when a Barbara Streisand special was on, hoping to see some part of the show through a crack. Later, when my mother and sister went to work evenings, I would be alone with too much TV. And consumed with fear of strangers and evil ones 'trying to get me' -- thus, I would end up under the table in the far corner of the kitchen so that I could see someone coming from any angle. Yet, I'm certain, our life then was far more normal than many others.

When I was 14, my mother met a wonderful man. They later married, and he eclipsed any and all of my experiences and/or expectations of a father. And hers of a husband.

Tonight, Fr. C and I bravely went up to the room-over-the-garage -- an art studio for the previous owner. It's full of boxes taken from my mother's house, right before she went into an assisted living apartment. Appropriately, some of the boxes contain remnants of her tools, supplies, inspiration for painting. One precious box took much of my attention and energy: mementos of a life I have little memory of. Pictures of my parents, viewed through my now-knowing eyes, thinking of the meltdown to come. But a glimpse of normalcy and, to be sure, great love.

I told her she was a good mother. And I meant it. She did whatever she could to keep life going for us, and she did it well. And now, she still cares, still wants to make sure I don't suffer at all, in the move or the life to come. Through sheer grace she joyfully supports our life-to-come. And with amazing family members close at hand, I know she will be well taken care of.

google (thinks it) knows more about me than i do...

Here's a tag that I've seen in various blog places...but just happened upon again today, this time at Spaz's place. A nice twist on it, at least in her blogosphere, is the commenting prerogative , adding an additional dimension to this bit of fun.

So....Google "(your name) needs" and see what the top ten responses are.

Now: this flitty dragonfly has got her own variation: I googled "Brenda needs" and found embedded in the lengthy list a link to a 2005 blog belonging to a different Brenda. I found her Google list to be much more scintillating than my 2007 search, so here's a cut-n-paste from Knitter (I'm drawn to mothers who blog about their babies, and her 2007 attention is certainly on her little one).

In Dragonfly's life, more than a few things would substitute for 'duck'...

For the record, I'm guessing a majority of these are soap opera lines!

Brenda needs the help of the public especially her Mexican people.
Brenda needs to get some therapy to help with her addiction.
Brenda needs to stop flying over the Cuckoos' nest.
Brenda needs to let go of her paranoia.
Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services.
Brenda needs to go back to her old profession where she tried to make a career out of being a topless waitress in the early 1970s.
Brenda needs you to massage her bottom, so she can start to relax.
Brenda needs to be brought back to Tucson for further treatment to save the vision in her right eye and to obtain a correctly fitted prosthetic eye.
Brenda needs to get Ed and Joey to a real hospital so she steals Mandel’s car and heads for the border.
Brenda needs to be jerked back down to earth.
Brenda needs to get a life and put the damn duck issue behind her.
Brenda needs an adoptive family experienced with teens and teen behavior.
Brenda needs to cut off ties with her mother, and how.
Brenda needs many boyfriends.
Brenda needs to keep her hands off Sonny.
Brenda needs a new friend so that poor prostitute friend of hers can spend her time doing ANYTHING other than listening to Brenda rant on & on.
Brenda needs to be put out of her misery.
Brenda needs to know how General Goethals might have pronounced his name.
Brenda needs to be spectacular.
Brenda needs to be in capital letters.
Brenda needs to excuse herself.
Brenda needs to de-carb.
Brenda needs to save furbabies!
Brenda needs to return to work.

thinking lemonade & pretending there's not much else to be doing...

I hesitate to blog as it could be reduced to whining, given the state of life right now. So much to do. So very underpowered am I. Accomplishments are measured in mini steps, rather than the leaping bounds necessary for exiting our lives here in an ever shortening amount of time. The latest: friends who we thought had committed to buying our wonder house have discovered they cannot make it work. Yikes. Now, we have some necessary inside and outside work to accomplish as the next interested party might not appreciate some 'as is' parts of it. Thank goodness we may point to the new 50-year roof...exterior paint job...new furnace/AC...and some artistic efforts, such as painted floors. The uniqueness of The House is its own selling point. But the yard must be finished and some crucial interior painting must be done. AND, as Fr. C rightly points out: all activities moving are in direct conflict with showing the house.

So, with much on the Saturday plate...of course I suddenly feel like escaping blogging...

Last Sunday's Choir end-of-the-year party (final version...) was simply marvelous. Singers of all types descended after church...including some spouses/significant others, delightful children, and even a grandchild. I met K's fiance & L's Sam. It was sweet in every way. Hummingbird was the mixologist, serving mojitos and mojingos, mit variations. Introvert's husband did honorable service as encourager and assistant to Fr. C at the BBQ. A Life's Tenor provided exotic shrimp. Miz Minka made The Most Amazing Truffles, and M brought his legendary tabouli.

The persistent image & flavor of fresh Meyer lemon-ade in mouth & heart is the memory's theme for the day. With perfect, large, past-their-prime Meyer lemons from a neighbor's tree, we (a cross-generational group) made batch after batch. In a two-quart container: 2 lemons, cut into eighths, completely crushed/muddled with 1 c. sugar (perhaps a bit too much considering the sweetness of the Meyer's), then filled with crushed ice and water. We tended to mingle new lemons with the previous batch's, leaving a thick, chunky mass at the bottom for a delightfully 'real' presentation. Mmmmmmmmm... sipping perfection for such a memorable summer afternoon together.

The night before, jumping unwisely into a never-before-been-tried project (as I'm prone to do), comforted by the availability of tasteless white substitutes available at the store, I made whole-wheat hamburger buns. Late night sumo-wrestling with misbehaving ovens left me tired and discouraged -- geez, the buns produced seemed uniform only in less-than-perfect shape and were disappointingly hard. However, after spending the night wrapped in a plastic bag they softened perfectly and took on a glow of goodness and beauty that put them in the loaves&fishes miraculous category and we roundly devoured them, eschewing the just-in-case white pretenders. I consulted two recipes: This one, for the ingredients (I increased the proportion of whole wheat flour...and we decided we preferred crushed garlic...and the 400 degree oven was perhaps excessive) and this one for the concept of forming them from a rectangle.

Of course, I just had to make the usual, expected, ultra-intense, 'adults only' chocolate mousse, served in Spega La Natura yogurt jars (I have way over 60 of them which I collected over the space of a year. Do the math when you see the price on this blog! But the yogurt is worth it and the jars are an extra bonus):

From Best of Bon Appetit: Combine 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (I only use Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Chocolate Chips), 1 1/2 tsp vanilla, pinch of salt in a blender or food processor, mixing for 30 seconds. Add 1 1/2 cups whipping cream which has been heated to boiling point and continue mixing 30 seconds or more, until chocolate is completely melted. Add 6 egg yolks and mix about 5 seconds. Transfer to bowl and allow to cool. Beat 2 egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold into chocolate mixture. Place in small serving glass or bowl. Chill. Serve with whipped cream.

Enjoy...

please pass me the life in which i live...

I've had this one in the queue for a few days. Sometimes, I start a post...and the ideas, inspirations are there but come out slightly unformed and, therefore, involve a vague stabbing at and overall a mess to clean up. But I think I'll give some energy to shaping this one up.

Today (actually Friday) I saw my life through the eyes of a moving company appraiser. And I didn't at all like what I saw.

Stuff. Stuff. Stuff. I'm drowning. I've seen for quite some time that I can't enjoy the essence of a life lived because...I can't locate it in the mass. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's not even there, at least not in its entirety. Despite the inherent obvious horror of it, the thought of a fire consuming my life of THINGS has sometimes had a 'clarifying' effect: seeing with unencumbered eyes what is truly important. Except for family photos, my mother's paintings...hmmm...and not much else...I could live without most everything. Oh, yeah: and my one favorite outfit. Of course, as always, I may be exaggerating to make a point.

But - immediately - I see the baggage theme as one that requires some essential and deep soul-searching. The weight of things around me is directly related to the weight within.

During our time at Nashotah House seminary, Fr. C. shared a comment made by a professor (and former monk), who would - while divesting/dressing in the sacristy after service - say to someone "Please pass me the hat that I wear." His years of living in community had taught him to expunge the my from his vocabulary, substituting a longish phrase that itself was an icon of a journey of detachment. I was struck to the core by the implications of this some 20 years ago, as I am still now.

What grabs me now is the mound of baggage that comes with the qualifier 'my'. The sweetness of possession quickly sours as the terror of (false) credit or responsibility takes over. The hat is merely the beginning, the point of inspiration. What about...my dog the dog I enjoy (suddenly, I'm not as fearful of losing her)...MY food the food that I eat (the demands of my peculiar needs in this category that daily strangle me are more easily set aside)...my clothes which I not only bought off the clearance rack at Macy's but on perhaps, well maybe only one occasion found as the perfect complement to my personality the clothes I wear (gone is the pressure to conform, live up to, maintain, seek perfection in my - or others - expectations: hey -- simply wear it)... my self which I'm supposed to work hard to reveal in some of my musical endeavors the sometime gift of the Holy Spirit I occasionally and wonderfully undeservedly enjoy (freedom from false self-expectations and pressure). Hmmmmm: MY thirteen years in one place (open hands release this as I hear a sweet mourning dove flying away).

The costly weight of my perceived ownership of internal baggage is to be shrugged off. Amen.

Tonight, the cool Delta breeze wafting over my couch the couch with astonishing though imperfect grace-filled beauty that I caress with gratitude and I don't even care it has sprung a wayward innerspring...brings with it reminders of many cool occasions of sweet dreams in that spot, and lures me to a land of simplicity. Perhaps on a grand journey eastward I shall take with me that couch and that breeze (in spirit, at least)...and no other heavy furniture or inner or outer baggage. Yes, and a heart of gratitude.

"Lift the sash to air the breeze." Patricia Barber

Summer couch in the early 60's

BUSY!!!!!!!!!!

Way too much to do. Way too much to think about. And so much to care deeply for. But, all are important...especially the latter.

So, for now...here's something that's been 'going around' the internet: 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art. I see that one reviewer suggested that it could be improved upon by using different music. So...the Sarabande from Bach's unaccompanied cello suite in G major isn't everyone's cup of tea!?!

damselfly contrariness

My inner clock needs a major adjustment. Nothing new. And, nothing uncommon, from what I hear others say these days. It's irritating to be tired and coming up empty when tapping into energy reserves -- caverns that used to fuel my life but have mysteriously disappeared. And then to be wide awake when I want/need to be asleep? Torture!

So it is now, at about midnight, when I would prefer to be restfully asleep but am uncomfortably and most certainly not. It does not escape me that there are tons of things that would benefit from my attention, even now. And I wish I could give it to them. Yet, I feel held captive by the fatigued-wakefulness and cannot move. Across the street, neighbors who are older than I, have lights on downstairs -- they're busy with some kind of project. I muster enough will to be jealous.

There's an aspect of this sort of contrariness that extends itself to the 'moving' area of my life. Now is the time to continue the monumental work of closing the house/life down, but I suddenly want to build it up! I should be cleaning out the 3rd floor eagle's nest bedroom - emptying being the goal, attaining a certain hollowness. But, no. I want to make it into the secret garden getaway I've always wanted it to be. So, I've vacuumed attic-worthy dust off of it...washed the sodden bedding, and plan to move the bed even closer to the open windows to get a better view of the treetops...grandly unrolled an area rug, purchased to go with the Martha Stewart sheets and the richly painted green floor. Finally! It has at last been freed from its plastic cocoon which tightly wound it when purchased a handful of years ago.

There is still much in the room to be cleaned, boxed (after checking with son J as to what to keep). But my heart's goal is unwavering: it will be my retreat, a source of beauty during a chaotic time, though it have only a bed, a rug and a view. Claiming the space is not a clinging to it - no weeping planned when I finally say goodbye to it. But rather a cherishing, a living into its promise and potential for this time.

No, I'm not Helena Bonham Carter...

dragonfly and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

First: I come into work in the morning and there's a pile of bee carcasses on the pavement outside my building. They were !horrors! swarming...(I think, isn't this what bees do?) And, perhaps, were filling the walls of the building with honey. Call a beekeeper instead of an exterminator, for heaven's sake!

In between that and going home, it's a general draggy day for me and everyone around me. EVIL valley allergies, pollution & global warming, no doubt.

Then: I arrive home after work and discover that a very sweet old man who lives at a shelter here who used to 'work' in my yard but has been missing for a year is back and has been working for probably 2 hours in the front yard without supervision and he doesn't know that I didn't want work done and very sweet and childlike him doesn't know that dichondra, bacopa and miniature violets are not weeds. And the vegetation that IS weeds are of a variety that Lucy eats medicinally and now they're all gone and she'll be sick. I resist (barely) heaping tears upon the heaps of torn greenery.

Though my heart was eaten by some grief, I'm getting over it today, gratefully realizing that there are some of the teeny, precious violets left. It will take time that I do not have here, in this place, to wait for the rebuilding of the (I resist writing 'my'...) vibrant and lush dichondra. But having spotted teeny weeny flying saucer divets in some of the usual bare spots in the front yard, my attention is diverted to the sparrows (finches?) who are back and enjoying their dirt baths. Ah...

photo courtesy of njminerals.org