pollock

when i was in...oh, i think it was...4th or 5th grade...a self-described "art docent" came down from on high ("on high" meaning her large, cranberry spice glade plug-ins-scented house) to teach ~us kids~ about art.

we were herded into a "multi-purpose" classroom with no windows and carpet the color of hamburger helper to stare at poster prints of matisse, van gogh (juicier details of the man's life not included) degas, picasso, and other greats who have unwittingly created a raison d'être for people they'll never meet and probably would object to being associated with. nevertheless, we were charged with creating mediocre imitation krab kopies of what these geniuses had mastered and introduced to humankind. the art docent played enya for us--to inspire us--and flitted about the room in her williams sonoma apron replete with vertical chambre stripes. she spoke in a minnie mouse voice, cajoling the boys into drawing tutus and encouraging them not to break the ballpoint pens and drink the ink. similar invitations were made not to stow beads up nostrils or ingest chalk pastels.

the day that we re-enacted the madness of jackson pollock, several students forgot to bring their token "painter's smock" aka their dad's old work shirt. these forgetters were not exempted from flipping paint and being the involuntary canvas for students with less than perfect aim. in practice, the whole thing looked like a fitting platform for a Tide commercial. thirty-two 9 year-olds were handed buckets of black industrial paint and a thick paint brush with flimsy bristles. the "canvas" was a broad roll of butcher paper, laid flat on the grass outside the classroom.

art, in the form of unintended consequences, ensued. the paper ended up relatively unscathed paintwise, with only a few deliberate drops here and there. mostly, it was the scene of a raucous and teacher-condoned kid crime. the canvas bore gaping holes where feet had perforated it and crumpled stamps where paint-drenched children had fallen and rolled like piggies in the mud. this being the last activity of the day, parents were rolling up in their pleasant worlds, lattes in hand, casually clad in vests and workout clothes to a battlefield of school children flipping, rolling, sloshing and conjuring pollock as they surreptitiously decorated the art docent with a few clumsy flips of the brush.

parents' jaws dropped, they rushed into the mayhem like soldiers on the frontline, a slow-mo "suuuuusie...nnnoooooooo!" bellowing from their horror-stricken mouths as they rushed to stop their kids' brand new school clothes from becoming prime candidates for goodwill. the finished product was a trove of pissed off pta members, a sheepish art docent, and 32 children with a new appreciation for modern art.

follow up to -spoons-

as a follow-up to my previous post "spoons" i am officially collecting aces (to coin my coincidences) now:

after writing about elegant emerald today, i ran into her at the checkstand at whole foods tonight. her long blonde mullet is gorgeous. yet another coincidence. tonight is the october FULL MOON--one that i've been looking forward to all month...and it tonight the sky is obscured by clouds and muck. nevertheless, it is doubly lucky because it is not only a full moon during harvest season, but it comes at the ripest moment in the witching month. click your heels, pull up your striped socks, pour another midnight margarita and make a double wish with double potency: there will be double returns.

oh! and another ace: i dreamt about a certain random personage from high school and, for the first time since graduation, i saw this personage at carlucci's this morning. i'm collecting these events and will, like a sleuth, lay them out on an evidence board at some point and connect all of the dots. for now, i'm just gleefully collecting aces.

emerald

i'm not one to wash dishes before i put them in the dishwasher. nor do i take the time to comb, let alone wash, my hair before i subject some poor, unsuspecting girl to my terrarium of a mop. blow-drying is a circus act that i reserve for overcast days when the mood strikes, and it rarely does. more often than not, i let it do an interpretive dance (aka "air dry") and wake up to one large, moldable dred lock. then i pick apart the front pieces, smoke them silly with a curling iron and hide the rest in a professionally disheveled bun. this is the kind of half-assery that defines my hair care routine.

so when i take myself to the hair vet to be thus tamed and de-clawed, i leave the heavy lifting to the person with the advantageous angles and 2200-volt, car wash-series blow-your-cheeks-back model blow dryer and round brush like a wac-a-mole mallet. then i have to stifle laughter when, after the 40th layer and fifth broken hair clip, the poor dear is sweetly swearing under her breath. that would be me, only the expletives would be audible and i'd be sweating like a wrestler. even the best intentions (starting at the base and moving my way up) often leads to a forced time-out, deep breaths, and lack of resolve to go the distance. that's when the elastic comes in and the hair goes up and i contemplate a buzz cut.

when i met emerald the salonista at landis aveda, i was in full-moon-calico-knotty-dred glory. this was my first visit with emerald--i was cheating on my usual veteran vet ruby, but i saw it as a harmless switch-up--the way one might try a new toothpaste. i wasn't expecting drastic differences. i mostly hoped to discover a worthy opponent for the sheer volume and gnar that is my hair.

emerald was wearing a *turban* that day, to hide her freshly-shorn, waist-length mullet...i didn't get to see it, but her description conjured images of my sister's abyssinian guinea pig. emerald had silver earrings like delicate moorish stencils and a jordanian boyfriend who recently moved to new york city to find himself. we talked about oprah. we talked about art galleries. and all the while, emerald gave me tips on how to brush my hair, how to smear 10-15 different serums in it to take it from a bozo to a bridget, and how to manipulate a curling iron.

throughout her tutorial on "tips and tricks" (read: hair 101) i listened attentively as if i really hadn't a clue how to manage my hereditary "broom straw, gnawed off the ends with my own teeth half crazed recently escaped from azkaban" look. i even assured her when i first sat down, that my current fuzz-a-thon was no indication of my capabilities with a brush and plenty of grease. but perhaps she thought it was just a cover up...a cry for help. so she kindly showed me how to hold and use a brush. how to position a blow dryer and trick my hair out with this multi-purpose multi-miracle invention called "the curling iron". i realized how i must have been like an eliza doolittle to her, a rough pebble in need of some preliminary polish...she couldn't imagine that i would know how to pull, yank and threaten my hair into submission and still go around letting my freak flag fly.

curly hair is one thing. some people celebrate it, others treat it like a shameful rash and offer tried-and-true remedies for such unfortunate genetics. emerald believed that no woman (or man) should leave the house without applying some kind of heated object to their hair. "the whole world would look better" she claimed. i thought of all the mornings that the heater in my car or the hot breath of the subway served as my impromptu drying source...

when we parted, my hair was big and weather-girlish. i expected this and feigned excitement at my new-found ability to brush and curl. emerald was beguiling, and she invited me to her sacred dances jingle-jangle shake your money maker classes on tuesday nights. i think i'll take her up on it...and i'll bring my incorrigible curls with me.

a poetry reading

William Ernest Henley's Life and Death (Echoes)

RAISE the generous gods for giving
In a world of wrath and strife,
With a little time for living,
Unto all the joy of life.

At whatever source we drink it,
Art or love or faith or wine,

In whatever terms we think it,
It is common and divine.

Praise the high gods, for in giving
This to man, and this alone,

They have made his chance of living
Shine the equal of their own.


VII

FILL a glass with golden wine,
And the while your lips are wet
Set their perfume unto mine,

And forget,
Every kiss we take and give
Leaves us less of life to live.

Yet again! Your whim and mine

In a happy while have met.
All your sweets to me resign,

Nor regret
That we press with every breath,
Sighed or singing, nearer death.

spoons

I realize this is the third blog post with a utensil as the title...which is purely coincidence and, coincidentally, frames the topic at hand:

at least 3-10 times per day (and often in my dreams as well, so tack on another 2-5) I encounter coincidences that, were they woven into a fantasy novel, would seem absurdly *convenient*. Out of the air magically falls a miracle and just like that, a crisis is averted. Money grows on trees and suddenly I have more than I imagine. I live in a Dickens novel, I often say. Not only because we (Charlie and I) have certain commonalities with regard to taxes, prison, and arbitrary confinement, but also because the aptly-named personae in my play and neatly braided coincidences permeate the literary fancies of daily life. I believe this is probably the case for most people, if they stopped to notice.

Many times I've had the idea and intention to start collecting these cosmic events like beercaps in jar--little memories of ghostly butterflies fluttering in a glass, reminding me of the seamless whimsy that punctuates the hours. Then I think, "So many have passed unrecorded, the vault is quite empty, why begin archiving little mysteries and miracles now?"

It's like the card game "spoons" where three or more players pass the cards around in a circle, each player holding four randomly distributed cards in his or her hands and doing his or her damnedest to corral four of a kind before stealthily snatching up a spoon from the center of the table. Much like musical chairs, the spoon supply is always enough for all but one, slow, unobservant player who either fails to lasso four of a kind first or fails to notice when the spoons are snatched by fellow players. Collecting the four of a kind depends on deciding (early on) which card to collect. Usually, if one begins with more than one kind in hand, that is the best card to collect. Yet, as we spoons players have discovered, there are rounds where you'll choose your card, and within seconds, you'll pass up three or even four of a kind of a different card. And so you think, should I have started collecting X card a long time ago? Is it too late to start collecting a different one now? Does my neighbor HAVE the card I originally sought to collect? And then, you notice that the spoons have been snatched, and the game is up. The point is, does winning depend on choosing the right card from the outset and then randomly being favored by the deck or does it depend on perseverence and conviction: you chose the jack and you stick with the jack despite the two or three aces that you willingly passed along?

So you never know what's coming down the pipe, but you either stick with the plan or get ready to roll if something better comes along...and in terms of collecting coincidences...the debate is whether to begin collecting them now (now that so many have been caught and released) or to keep letting them pass by because they aren't what I'm after anyhow? is it better to be the first to gather the lot or sufficient to avoid being caught without a spoon?

$billions$

a friend of mine is obsessed with money. and being rich. this friend is not rich, but he likes to talk about being rich and what he would do with his wads of cash and bonds and stocks and 508c6 offshore accounts in zurich and colombia. in an effort to lure me into his whirlpool of desire, he often asks me what i'd do with a billion dollars, right now. he asks me this question often because my answer is never the same.

right now, i would probably go to gallenson's and buy a gun. with that gun, i would shoot things. whatever i felt like. knock figuringes off a wall and down a laundry chute or blast holes through rusty coke cans...i would shoot my gun on the salt flats or in my grandma's backyard. i think she'd borrow it and the neighbors over the back fence could cross "dog food" off of their monthly expenses (and probably add "lawyer").

i'd buy two guns. a big one and a small one, like a glock. i say glock because that is the only gun i have ever pulled the trigger on, and i enjoyed it far more than i thought i would. the big one would be a rifle. and maybe i'd buy a third to slip in my purse or wear on my thigh...one with a pearly handle.

with my guns in tow, i'd buy an airstream trailor traveling van thing--the ones that look like giant vintage toasters. i'd decorate the interior with lickable wallpaper and visit every state in the union, including hawaii because i'd have the damn thing shipped, overnight. i'd probably skip west virginia, unless i had plenty of ammo.

i would do nothing charitable with my new-found wealth. i would hoard it, and never tell my friends or family where my new pet cheetah came from or invite orphans to stay at my gaudy ranch. i'd spend it all in a year and then eBay every last knick knack i purchased along the way. drink myself into a stupor and then enlighten myself with lunch guests like tina turner.

one german on the rocks, please

This compilation comes from Germany. It's a form of persuasion. A soundtrack for the true fiction that came to pass for 72 hours on the mystical, purple coast of Morocco. The track list itself is a poetic testament--a haiku of magic, brown eyes, such lyrics as "your ex is dead and will remain so", etc.

One journey for you, but it's worth it. One life here with me and it's magic.

Coincidence? Imagination is powerful: I ordered it up like a Pizza Hut special with a side of Ipod, and it was delivered in less time than the typical 25-30 minute window. I was at the end of my rope, so like Matilda, I used my powers. I had just discovered them too. And I was being cheeky and irreverent when I said to the sea, "Send me a single, intelligent, well-spoken and intuitive cohort to watch the peachy sunset dance across the crashing waves of this ancient and achingly romantic Moroccan coastal town..." And you can imagine my surprise when I got exactly what I asked for.

Of course, every time I started feeling invincible and "at home" with my new powers, I got a rude reminder that I was a guest in magic territory. After a three hour conversation confirming such odd commonalities as our childhood hometowns, favorite and obscure musical artists and comparing general philosophies on life--I skipped merrily on my way to spruce up for dinner. Humming to myself, quite pleased with my amazingness in fact, I turned the corner to prance down the cobblestones when I got a swift stone to the head. Of course, this was the cold reminder (in impish, local trouble-maker juvenile street urchin form) that I was merely plugging in to the magical Moroccan wi-fi, and I could lose connection at any time. Ok, I thought, thanks for that. My temple was throbbing and I tried not to look like the confused, crying, injured, single, vulnerable and emotional American tourist stumbling through the twilight. Be brave, I told myself, literally, have a stiff upper lip if you've got any sense at all...crying right now would be like a fat, unsuspecting guinea hen parading through a field of salivating foxes. Look mean. Think bitter, acerbic, salty, vengeful thoughts..emit them on high heat. Look mildly irritated and like you've had enough of the "gazelle! amore! lady! hallo!" cat calls from each and every shop boy along Rue Lalouj.

I recovered, ducked into my little hotel that looked like a ride at DisneyLand (mirror tiles and intricate mosaics casually adorning the entire lobby--modestly fantastic) and climbed the stairs to my humble hideout. The room was the size of a flipflop box with a narrow bed, sink, mirror--even some bars on the window to complete the "Alcatraz Meets Morocco" theme.

Now, "sprucing up" was a whole different boardgame in Morocco..my inner she wolf had been kept strategically suppressed as a precautionary measure. I had loaded up on Old Navy cast-offs for the trip, in an effort to turn up the frump dial and minimize any smattering of feminine appeal. And I was hideously successful at it. The plan was to give it all to Goodwill when I got home, but Freulein Maria's voice kept playing in my head, "The poor didn't want this one" and that pretty much sums up my faux maternity collection in which I made my Moroccan debut.

I decided that I'd put in some dangerous effort that night, just to make sure I hadn't completely lost touch with self-expression. This didn't involve any serious primping...I reshaped my hair (notice, I didn't go so far as "brushing out" my fully-organic dreadlock that I'd had in a cleaning-the-catbox knot for 30+ days...that would have been far too suggestive) and felt vaguely reconnected with my feminine side, in the privacy of my own Moroccan cell/hotel room.

I then decided to really vamp it up and add some mascara, after the little crooked mirror told me I had some work to do. I was giddy, like I was digging in Mother's makeup bag--age 5 again--playing with pretty and stomping around in too-big high heels. A few strokes here, a little manipulation of the mop and I was in my old neighborhood again. I'd have to make a well-planned bee line for my designated dinner spot... I had a mental rehearsal to map out my route: left out the front door of the hotel, through the little midget archway, past the mumbling drunk on the corner, right at the mini-mosque on Rue Mohammed Something-abibi. I pranced down the stairs, past the front desk clerk who unsurprisingly inquired just where I thought I was going with my hair looking half decent. With my carefully-cultivated Stupid Smile that came in handy more than once, I breezed past him and out the door.

Then it was about walking fast but not so fast that I'd arouse attention. I finally understood why women are called gazelles by the local male omnivores--gazelles are hysterical animals of limited sense, treading cautiously through the African Savannah and enduring the bloodthirsty cries by their food chain superiors. Hence the gawking, the rubber-necking, the customary fascination and commentary, "Madamoiselle! Hello! Gazelle! Chica Guapa! So sexy!" I realized, of course, that I could be a tranny in gold platforms and fishnets and garner the same response.

Dinner with my conjured-up friend was the flower of my magical realism...a brief rescue from the hazards of femininity and fatal allure of baggy capris.