Translations

I picked this issue of McSweeney's on sale at Skylight books the other day. It's from 2012.  I'm not a huge reader of literary journals.  This caught my eye, though, as it's twelve stories in six different translations. The stories are translated from the original language to English, then to another language, then to another, etc.  There are three English versions of most of them, and other versions in Arabic, Urdu, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, German, Hebrew, etc., from writers from Etgar Karet, Jonathan Lethem, Nathan Englander, Gary Shteyngart, A.S. Byatt, J.M. Coetzee; it's quite a collection. It's also interesting to have writers who you've read in English translate another author from their native language.
The wonderful Kafka "The Creature in our Synagogue" was the story that caught my eye and made me pick it up. It's an odd, disquieting story. It makes me want to read more Kafka. There is also a beautiful fable called "The Fox and Earth God" by Kenji Miyazawa, a delicate, heart-rending tale of jealousy.  It's a nifty collection.  Pick it up. I think Skylight has a few more, or you can buy it online.

Lists, part...

I'm making a lot of lists.

I've been writing, and not writing.  The screenplay I mentioned in my last post (in January? Has it been that long?) was a quarter finalist for a competition. It needs work. So does the pilot I wrote. And that other screenplay I'm working on for a friend. And that short I had an idea for. And that other story.

So, I'm making lists. I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. I make them and do not cross things off.  Is making a better list another thing I need to put on my list?  It does feel nice to cross things off when I eventually do, but I forget to revisit the list. I've thought about writing more mundane things like grocery and dry cleaning into them, to feel like I've accomplished something. Impossible lists are probably not helping much.

I've several books that are pressuring me to read them, too, as well as a whole lot of television shows. Is it just really too much? How much until you feel full? I've thought about list of those to keep track of what I'm missing - Breaking Bad, Mad Men - maybe I should only watch shows with alliterative titles.

I read that Sherman Alexie doesn't blog because he says it's a waste of time you should be spending writing, instead of writing something about writing, or writing about yourself. I'll put that on my lists of things I'm doing incorrectly.

In the meantime, fingers are moving. I did notice, the other day, when I went to a notebook to write with a pen, which I prefer, I found I was impatient because typing is faster. I have read, though, that it doesn't get as deeply connected to the brain as handwriting.  I'll add that to the the list.

Finding a process

I hate writing. I love having written - Dorothy Parker

I'm new to this writing thing, folks. Well, not new. Let's revise that.

I'm new to really sticking to this writing thing and not just vomiting something out every few years when the pressure builds up, folks.

That sounds too complicated.

How about, "Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for reading this evening. We will be discussing modes of -"

No.  I'm new to forming things into coherent pieces. I've only done it a few times.  A couple of short plays, a short film, a spec script, a pilot.  Doesn't feel like an oeuvre, by any means.  Or even a bad habit yet. Or even a style and a voice. I'm barely out of voice preschool.

This evening I'm working on adapting a short story I wrote about ten years ago (has it been that long?) into a screenplay. I always saw it as a film. I kind of see everything as a film.  The idea is getting bigger. Anyhow.  All of it is very new. It's hard not to be over critical.  When I was writing my spec I wrote DON'T EDIT WHILE WRITING across the top of the page as I started writing.  Good thing to remember.

Today, as I was brainstorming, which I'm becoming aware is part of the process for me, I suddenly wrote F*** THE RULES, DO WHATEVER YOU WANT.  Thank you, inner voice.

The thing about doing this and being self-taught is you read a lot of opinions of how things need to be shaped and formed, what they should look like when they're done. But I'm not there yet. I'm still gathering ingredients, if you will.  I haven't even left the grocery store. In one sense of the metaphor, I'm still making a list and haven't even driven to the store yet.  It's too early to think about dessert. Actually, that metaphor doesn't make sense, because you really do have an idea when you cook a meal what you need and what it will be.  I think this is more driving the cart along the grocery store aisles thinking, "Mmmm. Tacos." Something came up about the relationship in the story, a new place I hadn't discovered, and I felt a pressure in my chest and a well of emotion. I'm hopefully in the right aisle.

Like the post below about good/bad, I think rules are great, necessary to know and have their place.  But along the road, when you're making something, the joy is in finding out what it's going to be, to let it become what it is. The best things I loved bent the rules a little. Or that's how I see it; I'm still a novice.

The Good and Bad

I had an interesting conversation with a woman I know recently. I was talking with her and told her I had downloaded the new Taylor Swift album "1989" last night. I may or may not have been dancing to a few tracks alone in my apartment last night, and with no witnesses that cannot be proven.

The conversation went something like this (discussion of politics and feminism deleted for expediency) :

Her: I don't listen to that kind of music.

Me. Country? This album is pop.

Her: No, I just don't listen to it. I don't like her music, whatever it is.

Me: I think it's fun and I like her and what she has to say. I've realized most of my collection is sad singer/songwriters, and I wanted some happy music.

Her: You don't have to listen to that; there's good happy music.

And scene.

This stuck in my craw, this bad/good dichotomy.  Aside from her admission that she doesn't listen to her music, and may, in fact, have never heard it, I was interested in this label of "bad."  What's bad music?  This particular album was the largest selling of 2014, so people apparently liked it.  I don't think music sales are a measurement of good and bad; plenty of great music doesn't sell. In fact, I don't think that's an apt measurement of art at all - good and bad. I can get behind the like/dislike dichotomy, as that's all about personal taste.  I personally don't like green pepper, but I don't call it "bad" and shame people for cooking with it; I just don't care for it.

I will go even one step further: I think the good/bad dichotomy is a harmful way to look at art.  It's not helpful for a viewer/receiver, as it discounts whatever their personal response may be, and it's not helpful for the artist, as it sets up a judgement of the art before/during/after it's creation.  That will, as anyone who has tried to make anything knows, shut down creativity.

A dearest friend gave me Lynda Barry's fantastic latest book Syllabus, subtitled "Notes From An Accidental Professor."  The book is notes and exercises from Barry's class about "The Unthinkable Mind" - getting to a place of creation that is beyond thinking that she teaches at University of Wisconsin/Madison.  She discusses drawing, and how the inability to render has led most people to think that they are "bad" at drawing, when, she argues, they actually have a style that has yet to form.  She encourages coloring - in silence as well as listening to music or lectures. She has great exercises. I've taken her workshop.  Her feedback is mostly an emphatic "good! good!" while encouraging no one to discuss their work or anyone else's. In fact, while you're listening to others read you are drawing a spiral and looking at your paper. Her goal is to get out of the thinking mind and in to the place where creation happens. I'm very much over-simplifying, but I thought of it when this friend told me she didn't think Taylor Swift's music wasn't "good."

Tim Burton's movie "Big Eyes" touched on this idea, telling the story of Margaret Keane's Big Eye paintings that were popular in the sixties.  Kitsch to many, the painting nevertheless sold millions of copies. They touched a chord, and were painted sincerely.  The art world may have called them "bad" art, but they were popular and beloved. Bad? Good?  Who knows.

I'm finding the more I create the less I find bad/good a useful dichotomy, either in my own creation or in the assessment of others' work.  I can tell you if I'm drawn to it or not. On a critical level, I can hopefully appraise whether it's doing what it wants to do as well as it can, and even better, how to help it get there. But bad and good are beyond me.  Even love and hate feel more apt to me.  Bad and good, at the end of the day, just aren't very helpful.

I think you get the idea.  Now I'm off to color like a ten year old, while maybe listening to something I like.  There may be dancing involved. We'll see.

The Theory of Everything

I went to see a matinee of the Theory of Everything (a plus to being laid off is having afternoons free to see an inexpensive matinee. I'm planning on hitting the Sundance cinemas on Tuesday to take advantage of their $5 Tuesdays, too. It's a good movie time).

Anyhow, the movie is a biopic of Stephen Hawking based on a 2007 book by his ex-wife. It's an interesting biopic. As a movie, it's a little diffuse, and there are some plot points that in any other movie would derail the proceedings.  It is anchored with strong performances by Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, who manage to keep you entertained and involved enough to not ask some of the more difficult questions that seem to be skirted over. It's worth seeing, but not earth shattering, which is a shame, as his story is.

Hawking was diagnosed with what the film terms "motor neuron disease" and also as ALS. Though Hawking was initially told he had two years to live in 1963, he is still with us, and still writing.  It's a triumphant story.  The movie deals with the challenge of his care, and the toll it took on his wife and family.  It touches on his theory of everything - his search for an elegant mathematical theorem that would explain the universe. Strangely, though, it felt somewhat soft pedaled to me.  Perhaps because my father was diagnosed with a neurological disease when I was 5, and died of it when I was 32.

I had a difficult relationship with my father, to say the least. My theory of everything would include anger, resentment, and a lot of rage. It would include violence and the threat of violence. We hear so many stories about people handling their decline with grace. It's important. Those stories are uplifting. This story is uplifting.  Perhaps it's the stiff upper lip of it all, but I was wondering if perhaps there was a little more to the story, more frayed edges from a woman who took care of her husband as he diminished physically while also raising their three children.  My mother doesn't remember a year of her life.  Unlike Hawking and his wife, their divorce was acrimonious and awful, played out on the children as well.  It echoes. It becomes less with time, but then something like this movie will bring the sense of that time back.

The movie got the physicality right. Redmayne is transformed -  the feet, the curl of the hand; the walking with canes and then the wheelchair and then the motorized wheelchair. My father had heavy wingtips that he would drag along, eventually pulling up to put in the foot rests of his chair once he no longer used the aluminum braces with the gray plastic arm cuffs. My theory of everything would include some point of view of the children, though they seem to have a good relationship with both their parents.  I imagine that some people with an illness like this actually grow closer to their families from mutual struggle. That wasn't our story. My theory of everything would include an equation that factors in the possibility of fracture, of loss of purpose rather than drive. And of how to learn that it doesn't need to dictate the future as well.

Hawking moves from a theory that has a need for god and an origin to one that doesn't. His work as explained in the film centers on time and black holes, and how a magnetic pull from this dead star can be so dense that it consumes itself and everything around it. In the denseness, he said, you can measure the radiation from the origin of the universe.

Cleese and creativity

I was looking at my notebook today, as I'm feeling a little stuck -

Okay, full disclosure: I picked up a screenplay that I'd started and submitted for a fellowship that I hadn't looked at for a few months.  Of course, my first thought was that it was awful, and I was as well by extension.  Then I went and got an iced tea.

Back at my desk, I opened a journal thinking I would write a list of all the projects I have ideas for but I haven't started, as list making always calms me a little, though now I realize writing a list of all the things I'm not working on is perhaps counter-intuitive if you are seeking artistic confidence.

Anyhow, I opened to the back and saw this summation of John Cleese's creativity lecture that I had watched a while ago. It was under the single item list "READ FRANKENSTEIN."  There are two check marks by that, neither would indicate that I've either purchased or read the book yet. I did, though, see the National Theater version directed by Danny Boyle with Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller twice, and it was fantastic.

Here are my Cleese notes. I'll save you the block letters as it would look like I'm yelling at you, which is not a great creativity motivator.

• Open mode = curiosity
• Stick with the problem longer
• Tolerate discomfort and anxiety while problem is unsolved
• Don't make a decision just to make you feel better
• Looking at decisiveness as an aim is not helpful
• Give maximum pondering time
• Don't try to get out of creative discomfort just to get out
• Three things you need: Space, Time, Confidence
• Confidence = open to what happens
• You're either free to play or not
• While being creative nothing is wrong
• Don't forget humor
• Keep bringing your mind back to the subject

Good words to remember. I'm going to go stew in some anxiety and unfinished business.

Helen Keller & Annie Sullivan

I'd never seen this. Breathtaking.

The Writing Brain

Well, this is a fascinating MRI scanning experiment about writing - the difference in experienced and more novice writers' brains.

21 hours a week?  Only 19 hours to go...

In other news, it would be helpful if they discovered what part of the brain is involved in making one sit down and do it, and how to trigger it.

In other other news, I actually have a second draft of a script. No surprise, but I discovered I find it easier to revise and have ideas about other's work than to revise my own.  That would be a useful area of the brain to trigger as well, preferably triggered by eating a daily bowl of ice cream.

Tanaquil Leclerc

I just finished watching the documentary "Afternoon of a Faun" about Tanaquil Leclerq from PBS American Masters.  Riveting.  Tanaquil (Tanny) Leclerq was Balanchine's 4th wife, and a star dancer with the American Ballet theater, when she was stricken with polio in 1956 at the age of 27.  There are some incredible dance clips of her dancing with Jacques D'Amboise (a legend in his own right), and clips from ABT in the 50s. She was beautiful, sensuous dancer - intelligent, alluring.  The documentary is a fitting tribute, as well as a time capsule for the creation of some of Balanchine's work.

I had no idea of her story. I love documentaries.  She lived to almost 80, taught at Dance Theater of Harlem, and lived the rest of her life in a wheelchair once she adjusted to the loss of her legs.  It's quite a triumph from a strong, strong person. I am so glad there are photos and film of her dancing. Quite impressive. Ironically, Balanchine cast her in a ballet where she played polio before she contracted it. I won't spoil one of the most heartbreaking moments, but it's incredible how one small decision can effect our entire lives.

Waters of March

This is Waters of March (Aguas de Marco) by Antonio Carlos Jobim sung by the great Elis Regina, who died much too young. Her daughter is the Brazilian singer Maria Rita. 

I posted this version, even though it's a little choppy, as it has literal English subtitles. Jobim wrote English lyrics, but these are his original in Portuguese.  They're so specific and beautiful. The English lyrics are great, of course, but these are evocative of the end of Summer in Brazil, and much more specific. I think they're much more beautiful.  A perfect marriage of word, song, and performer.  No wonder some say it's the most beloved Brazilian song of all time.

Alone and in groups

I have been reading Stephen Greenblatt's Pulitzer Prize-winning, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern" recently. My mother passed in on to me. It's an interesting book about how the rediscovery of Greek and Roman texts, specifically Lucretius' "On the Nature of Things," changed the course of history and thought. I'm still in it, but I came across this bit here (reproduced in gotoreads, which makes me wonder if this is like a torrent site for books, so hopefully not breaking any laws here)

Ancient Greeks and Romans did not share our idealization of isolated geniuses, working alone to think through the knottiest problems. Such scenes—Descartes in his secret retreat, calling everything into question, or the excommunicated Spinoza quietly reasoning to himself while grinding lenses—would eventually become our dominant emblem of the life of the mind. But this vision of proper intellectual pursuits rested on a profound shift in cultural prestige, one that began with the early Christian hermits who deliberately withdrew from whatever it was that pagans valued: St. Anthony (250–356) in the desert or St. Symeon Stylites (390–459) perched on his column. Such figures, modern scholars have shown, characteristically had in fact bands of followers, and though they lived apart, they often played a significant role in the life of large communities. But the dominant cultural image that they fashioned—or that came to be fashioned around them—was of radical isolation.

It's interesting how the religious thought or idea actually changed what we valued in thought, also possibly creating a world of saints, solo inspiration, and eventually the tortured creative genius. It's an interesting lineage to think about.  Also interesting to note that when you look at our own history, rather than the lore of the individualist that we love to tell, most all discoveries and thought were created out of group development.  There's an interesting history book about the enlightenment and coffee houses, and how the greatest thinkers of the 18th century all knew each other and bounced ideas off of each other, though they were in different disciplines. Of course I can't recall the title.  We may arrive and leave alone, but in between its clear we are shaped by our time and those around us.  I like the idea that we work through things together.  So much less pressure. 

Speaking of pressure, I have a pinched nerve in my neck that's traveling down to my fingers, making writing somewhat challenging.  I will persevere, but I've not been spending much time doing it as it feels like a funny bone has been hit up and down my arm.  It's lessening.  And sometimes you just gotta go ahead and type even when you have a numb finger.  

Suffering for art. That's another trope for another time.

Outfest, part 2

A few years ago, 2008 to be exact, a dear friend of mine passed away.  Another dear friend sent me 10 tickets to Outfest, as it was coinciding with the event, and he thought it would be a good way to deal with grief.  Having something to do is certainly helpful. I was introduced into a whole world I didn't know.

I think since then I've gone most years, and it looks like I've written about it a fair amount.  This year, though, my first film will be showing.  I'm aware now of how much goes into making a film, even a short. I'm a little nervous about how it will be received.  Frankly, aside from some short plays I've written, I'm used to performing other people's work. Most of my writing is on this blog, so it's not like I feel like I'm playing to an audience.  This theater has a 600 seat capacity.  Yikes.

We screen this Sunday night at 9.  The festival is exciting, with many parties, breakfast, lunches, all kinds of things.  I'm being open to whatever happens, and keeping a good attitude. Here we go!

That moment when...

There is a vogue of late to post things to Facebook, twitter, social media site of the moment, etc., with "that moment when," e.g. "that moment when you forget your house keys," or "that moment when you fall into a well" or "that moment when you forget how to correctly punctuate e.g."  Yeah. That.

This is that moment when you've been sent a box of things from a relative who recently passed away, and you can't bring yourself to open it.  That moment when the photographs of that relative sit an envelope you brought to the funeral and haven't made it back into the picture frames.  That moment when a weekend of Facebook only yields a "look at all the things no one invited me to" in spite of a full weekend with friends.  That moment when you're in a dangerous emotional territory. That moment when "confessional" might be "over-sharing."

It's that moment.  We all pass this way. "Pass" is the word to remember.  There will be other moments.

I did see a play and two movies this weekend, and I'm seeing Cher tomorrow night, so it's not like I've been sitting home brooding.  It might be time to do that, though. But back to our regularly scheduled not scheduled program soon...

Not going to

I'm not going to write about the Supreme Court decision, and how wrongheaded and disturbing the decision about Hobby Lobby is.

I'm not going to write about the ridiculous open carry laws which just led to a show down in a convenience store in Georgia THE FIRST DAY the law was enacted and the police had to be called.

I'm not going to write about the virulently anti-gay bishop from Minnesota who, surprise surprise, has been revealed to have been in several same-sex relationships.

I'm not going to write about ISIS in Iraq, and how we have possibly spent trillions of dollars on a wrong-headed war where we have once again empowered a group of fundamentalists to take over a country we had no business invading in the first place.

I'm not going to write about the increasing wealth divide and increasing youth unemployment.

I won't write about the drought.

I'm fighting hard against cynicism these days.  I'm looking at ways to take action. There is so much to be upset about.  I know a strategy is to look around and see what is good with your world. There's a lot. And there are things to do.  Perhaps all of this is mobilizing people - realizing that when you don't vote, the people in office do not make decisions that you're happy with.  Or I guess if you're a fundamentalist business owner, they do.

Meanwhile, I'm going to take refuge in history, and have faith that things will work themselves out.  I'm going to enjoy the weekend, and our independence.

And I'm thinking it's time to read Don Quixote.

That last part was a non-sequitur, but it's amazing how many classics there are to read.  Never too late.

In other culture news, Boyhood and Venus in Fur are both opening this weekend, so good news for adults and movies.  I'm also going to see Stupid F*ing Bird at the Boston Court - a remix of Chekhov.  When do you not love that?

Please

I'm writing again with no idea of what will happen. Wish me luck.

Today I was on Melrose waiting to get a standby ticket to a theater.  A young boy, probably about 12, came up to me and asked me to buy his incense for a dollar as he was passing by with his mother.  She kept walking. He looked at me and pleaded, and said please several times, like a child asking a parent for candy at a movie.  I kept saying no for some reason. He only wanted a dollar, and I had a dollar in my pocket.  I didn't want the incense.  I could have given him a dollar.

I don't know why it sticks with me, other than being asked for money by children is always disconcerting.  His mother didn't even notice. I don't know where the live, even if they have a home. A dollar would have been nothing to me.

When I first moved to New York, I would make eye contact with everyone, and smile.  Mostly what this meant was that I was engaged by people who would ask for money. I eventually learned, like everyone else, to avoid eye contact. I learned how to say no. I'm still guilty whenever I do.  A friend got angry with me once when I gave money to someone, asking why this person and not the other ten who've asked. It's a good question.

It's my policy now to buy food. I rarely give someone money, but I'll buy a sandwich or a banana or something. I don't always have money to give, and those are the easiest times. If I'm not carrying cash, I'm not lying.

I wasn't lying today. I didn't want to buy the incense. I was put in an uncomfortable position. I don't want to say no to a child. Would that dollar mean he would have had dinner?  Is that what his mother was looking for when she walked by me to one street corner and then walked past me again on her way back?  Someone else bought incense from the boy.  Some other helpful stranger.

It's going to bother me, if only for the way he said "please." I don't have children, but I said no like I was the adult. I am an adult.  Children shouldn't have to beg for money on the street. I didn't make the situation, but it will be difficult to forget it. Of course, I want to make it some larger recrimination of myself, that I missed a chance to be giving and I was being tested, my karma will be effected.  But I know this is not true. I don't have enough dollars to solve the situation.  Sometimes I'm the helpful stranger, but sadly, not today.

Art text and Ray Kampf

My friend Ray Kampf did a gallery retrospective for this 50th birthday. It was a great one night party downtown at the KGB gallery. One of the neatest projects he did was to have 50 creative people do a version of a 3D graphic representation of himself called a Ray-doh, which looks like a playskool figure.  People did some incredible things.  His work is great, straddling art and design, and he has a great deal of it.  One of his colleagues where he teaches said to him, "I had no idea you were this talented."  He is.

He asked me to write the introduction to his show, which I was honored to do. It's always been something I've wanted to do - write text to curate an art show. I did.  The picture of it is above, and here's the text. I hope you enjoy:

Raymond Kampf is firmly lodged between Duchamp and Disney, on a log flume dark ride through the subconscious of 20^th century Americana.  His tools are puns, surprising juxtapositions, comment on commentary. He knows the quickest way to make a point is through humor, and the sharpest jokes reveal a difficult truth.

 

His work is mid-century optimism meets early 21^st century sarcasm. He is Mad Men meets Mad Mag. Though sarcastic, ironic, and even angry, his work is hopeful not pessimistic.  Hope points toward a solution, while pessimism rarely admits there may be one.  He provokes to make the viewer think.

 

Raymond Kampf pokes you with a stick and runs away laughing.

 

If Mary Blair, Saul Bass and Charles and Ray Eames starred in a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” Ray would design the poster. He might even be the missing child.  Deborah Sussman would probably understudy all four parts. It would be performed for Al Hirschfeld.

 

When Raymond Kampf sees incorrect kerning he becomes incensed, graphically. If we were using Roman numerals we would call this his Lth birthday. It is unclear if he would be annoyed or amused.

 

In Fauxtopia, Ray reveals the sham hucksterism behind the “amusement” park, making the viewer rethink the concept of “rides” through the juxtaposition of historical events with amusement park themes, e.g, “Triumph of the Will Skyway” or “Dogma and Pony Show” with its exhortation to “Taste Jesus.”  He imagines life and history as a horror ride, finding politics suspect while exposing the ridiculous and horrible underneath; witness “The Red Scare,” “Jingo Juxebox Jubilee” and “Colonial Renaissance Re-enactment Festival Faire.”

 

In his personal life, when his late partner Jim Daniels was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, Ray expressed his emotion through his art. Working in a form most would closely associate with advertising, Ray explores and engages in the wider world. He asks us to look deeper at graphic art,  and what we find there is surprising, challenging, sometimes touching.

 

His Christmas illustrations are whimsical, funny, silly, urbane. They are a yearly highlight.  The musical theater timeline is an ingenious salute to one of his favorite subjects. I’m certain you will find a piece, or several, in this retrospective that speaks directly to you.  It’s possible it will be pointing at you and laughing.

 

Enjoy the world of Kampf. Here’s to his Lth.

Getting out of it

So that last post was a little dark.

This morning, I looked at a friend's Facebook, where he had linked to an article written by an old roommate from New York, who is now the senior religion editor on a major news website.  And he's gay.  And married. The post was great, about things to learn from the younger version of yourself.

I looked in the comments below, and most were very favorable.  One, though, had written something that seemed vaguely homophobic, and it linked to his Facebook page. I clicked on that link, and saw some very homophobic vitriolic words.  And then I noticed this person had 9 friends.  9.  And not only that, they all were pictures of young models, so probably not real accounts.

I found this heartening.

Also, a lesson.  I could choose to concentrate on this upsetting, unhappy loner with few friends who feels the need to spew hatred.  Or I could concentrate on the hundreds who enjoyed the post, and had nice things to say.  Whatever is there if I look for it, especially on the internet.

Certainly, there are some troubling things going on in the world. I can despair, or look for a solution.  The solution is always more interesting.

Cherry

I bought some cherries at the farmer's market on Sunday.  I looked around, since the ones I saw were expensive, $8 for a large pint, and it seemed to be they were less last year.  I went to the youngish guy with the tattoos who has fruit that seems actually organic - bug spots, smaller, riper.  He usually has deals, and if the scale is on your side he'll throw a couple of extra plums in to even out the bunch.  He said, "Sorry, season's over. It was a short one this year." I bought some from the one kiosk selling them, and the older farmer said it was probably the last week. They wouldn't have anymore.

I started thinking about our food supply.  Dying bees, droughts, things we take for granted can just disappear.  Industrial farming has taken a lot of the nutrients out of our food, so even when we're trying to eat healthily, a lot of what we buy is tainted or shiny in presentation but empty of nutrients. It's tempting to make a jab at are culture, that our food is an analog to it, but that's too easy.  I worry we won't have enough one day. It is happening other places.  Money can only get you so much. I couldn't find organic apples for months, and I was told it was just a bad year.  The non-organic, shiny, non-nutritive ones that you're not supposed to eat because they are sponges for pesticides were plentiful.

I was at the gym, and saw pictures of Isis in Iraq, taking over cities. I've become so cynical it would not surprise me if Dick Cheney and Haliburton we're funding them, as he seems to go to any length to try and blame things on Obama, and I read the other day that Haliburton profited something like $137 billion dollars from the war in Iraq.  A war he started, and is now trying to hang on someone else.  He is pure evil.

I worry that the rhetoric he and other conservatives spew about guns, about freedom, somehow equating the idea that guns keep America free while every day another child or another innocent bystander dies from some idiot with a gun, will cause these people to mobilize under some religious banner and turn us into a terrifying theocracy. I typed theocrazy by accident, and that may be more apt. I always want to tell religious nuts to go and live in an actual theocracy for a year, and if they survive, come back and tell us how free it felt to them.

I heard a story on the news this weekend about the slums in Brazil, how outside an expensive new stadium, people are living in a city that must be traversed by boards above still flooded waters, filled with dog excrement and refuse, which causes sickness and death - especially young children.  Millions spent for the world to watch grown men play a game for entertainment, while people die around the corner. We do like to distract ourselves.

I need to look for some more uplifting stories. Maybe we're not meant to know what 7 billion people are doing at every moment of every day. It doesn't effect our day to day lives. I draw incorrect conclusions from history, and at times it seems dark.  It doesn't always go that way, though, does it?  There's still hope we can fix our food, feed people, have enough water, solve our murdering each other in the streets and ignoring the suffering for the sake of a good time, right? Lighten up, I hear someone say. It's only a game.  And it is. Only a game.

I picked up a few different quarts of cherries to see which was the best. The woman at the kiosk assented to my choice, and as she dumped the cherries into a bag there didn't seem to be as many as when they were packed together.  I am savoring each cherry.

My grandmother, part II

I just found out about this video of my grandmother - an interview that my Aunt's son's wife did a couple years ago. I watched a bit of it, and reminded me of her spirit.  I can't watch too much, as I don't want to think about what we've lost. I love her bearing. My mother always said, "There's a reason her husbands called her Queen Esther." She was regal.

Loss is always strange. Loss in our times is even stranger. When you don't see someone every day, you don't feel the lack, and you can still forget or even imagine that they are still around.  I don't know that this has sunk in yet.

This video is not searchable, so I wanted a record of it.  I loved my grandmother's spirit.  I'm also aware that it's late, and I'm avoiding going to bed so I can avoid waking up tomorrow. I don't feel bad about posting it since I don't have a huge following.  And if someone sees it, the worst they can do is celebrate her with us.

We had dinner tonight, the few of the immediate family.  It's bittersweet; great to gather in a way we rarely do, but for a bitter reason. You can see the loss touch people at different times, moving around the room like a malignant spirit. It weighs. But there is also laughter, buoyancy, remembrance, celebration of a life well lived.  This is what we have, and what we all must do if we want to care for people.  I do, and I must.

For My Grandmother, December 2, 1918 - June 5, 2014

Esther Estelle Katz, my grandmother, died last night peacefully in her sleep.  I didn't want to let the day go without writing about her, things I now or have heard, memories of her. I hope I am not divulging any family secrets, but I've loved these stories that tell how strong and optimistic my grandmother was. The picture above was taken when I was about 3 or 4.

I did not realize how hard it is to put an end date after a birth date.

She was born Esther Muller on December 2, 1918. It was pronounced "Miller" because of anti-German sentiment.  She told me she added the Estelle later because she liked it and it means "star."  It  was a fitting addition.

She was one of four children: Frida, Leo, Marvin & Esther. She told me that she was not a great beauty like her sister, so she had to work. Her sister Frida was 16 months older than she was.  Once, when my grandmother was 7, Frida could not say a Hebrew word for something correctly and was rapped across the knuckles with a ruler by the teacher in Hebrew school. My grandmother took her hand and said, "Come on Frida, we're getting out of here." She took her out of the classroom and back home.  Her mother was terrified she'd done something like that, but when they were called into the headmaster's office he said, indicating my grandmother,  "This one should be a rabbi."  My grandmother refused to go back. It was 1925.

Her father was challenging, and would disappear for days, coming home after a bender remorseful that he'd spent all the money and left the family without food. One day, when she was around thirteen, her father came home remorseful, stood on the landing on the way up to their apartment and said that he should just kill himself. My grandmother opened the window and said, "Jump." He didn't, but I imagine he was wary of saying anything like that again. 1931.

My grandmother didn't love to cook all that much, and would say, "I have kitchens open 24 hours all around town."  If a restaurant wasn't that great she'd say "I can do better than this."  She interviewed the waitstaff and knew everyone's name.  Every restaurant I ever went to with my grandmother, I was told by someone on the staff how special she was. She loved hearing people's stories.

My grandmother wrote wonderful birthday cards saying things like "I am glad you're being you in my Universe." She often said she was filled with "nachas", which is a Yiddish word for joy and pride in one's children or grandchildren.

She was married to my grandfather from the age of 18 to 51 when he passed away.  She was widowed, and had to get by on her own. She went to work, started a business. She struggled. She remarried. And she was always a wonderful force of love in all our lives.

She told me she had been a worrier earlier in her life, so to cure herself she wore a rubber band around her wrist and snapped it to change her habitual thoughts. She loved Jack Kornfield, particularly "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry" and Carolyn Myss "Why People Don't Heal." She took EST and self-esteem workshops.  She went to elder hostel universities with Fred, the brilliant man she married after my grandfather. When she could have stopped and given up at 51, a new widow, she went further into life, continually learning and growing.

I visited my grandmother in April. As always, we spoke about life and how best to live and enjoy  it. She was reading a Buddhist book about transitions.  She had a spiritual counselor she spoke with, a Catholic nun. She loved Ekhart Tolle and the Power of Now. She had been watching him chat with Oprah.

I know I can't begin to touch the loss of a spirit like that. I will miss our conversations. I will miss how alive and engaged she was. I will miss that spirit of investigation and interest. At 95 she moved to a independent living facility, as she felt her social world was shrinking, and she needed to have interaction with people.  We spoke when she had started to settle in, and she told me she was loving it - that what she thought she'd miss she didn't, and that she was enjoying being somewhere new, having a new experience. I will miss her unqualified love, and I will miss being seen by her.

I will miss her terribly. I am grateful to have had her in my life. I wish and hope that everyone has someone like my grandmother in their life, or if not, that they can be that person to someone else. I will think of her every December 2nd, and I'm sure much more often than that. May you all have extraordinary lives, and may your life be a blessing.