Winter of my discontent: Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day

Photo from the marvelous Cappy. As he said, it works on multiple levels.

Winter of my discontent and Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Textual healing, “Snow, the hardest thing to imagine”

Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.

via Austin Kleon.

I suppose it’s about time I re-read the Lonesome Dove books, but I really do try not to add any more books to my list of compulsive yearly reads and I fear they would so easily slip in to that pile. … Still…

Winter of my discontent: Summer friends

By Old York on the d.a.

In the summer there is Maria. She is the other person I am closest to, and sometimes, in the winter, I long to call her up and say, come here and live with me, in this cold place. But we are summer friends.

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There is a rule it seems, that summer friends don’t get together in the wintertime. Now, sitting here, waiting for her, I realize that I have never seen Maria in a winter coat, and for some reason that makes me sadder than anything else in the world.

(The amazing Jacqueline Woodson. “Slipping Away.” Am I Blue?: Coming Out From the Silence. Ed. Marion Dane Bauer. New York: HarperCollins Children’s Books, 1994. p. 51.)

To read what happens between Maria and Jacina, hit up Am I Blue? on the Googlebooks.

Winter of my discontent: Dreamtime

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I said before that writing about my dreams was too disturbing, but that is a cop-out. This dream I had about two years ago. Its winter setting was emphatically a part of its ominous overtones.

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I dreamt that I was in a frozen town with my daughter, who was very young in the dream, and a man I had used to be with. I became separated from them during some type of dreary, macabre parade. There was something wrong and sinister about it, but I wasn’t sure what, and I was caught up in looking for my daughter and the man.

Winter Carnival, 1909.

The procession of people were all bundled up in raggedy black clothes, like Victoriana gone to seed, and the “floats” were black carriages making tracks down a main street in the snow.

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As I paced the street looking for the rest of my party, blowing on my hands and calling out for my daughter and the man, I saw a pulpy mess in the road and smeared, reddish-purple blood and tissue in the ruts left by the carriages.

They’d run over something that I had the impression was small and helpless but also somehow dear and marine, like an otter or seal or something. Each carriage kept rolling on, continually running over and through the remains of whatever this now bisected and strewn-out creature had once been.

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I tried to escape the image by going down different side alleys in the frozen town, but they all lead back to the same main street. The sight of the gore and entrails against the snow was chilling and horrifying on a deep-down level which was out of proportion to the event, like as if it had some weighty significance that my mind was shying away from fully realizing. I woke myself up with the kind of shock and sweat that suggested it had been a terrible nightmare, but I could not, when recollecting the details of the dream, understand why it upset me so much.

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I never thought about it until just now, but I guess it must have been my daughter in the street. I think that’s what my mind kept pulling me back from seeing.

This has not been an at-all uplifting or illuminating “Winter of my discontent” entry. But it does represent the second time I’ve attempted a Dreamtime entry. The first one was about a hanged woman. Based on that, you may think that I’m not doing so hot on the Dreamtime sharing, but that’s actually about the usual caliber of my dreams.

Winter of my discontent: Sharon Tate and embracing the cold

Sharon Tate on set for Fearless Vampire Killers (Her husband, 1967. His is also the photo credit).

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, “I’m going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough. I am going to snow anyway.”

(Maya Angelou.)

A harsh, deep, and well-put truth.

Maybe what I’m not so good at is quelling my instinct to hibernate: I need to face problems and conflict instead of waiting for them to melt away. Embrace the cold with the warm. I am more the type to sit in the lodge drinking cocoa and waiting for the storm to pass than to go flying down the mountain in to the drifts. I’ve always thought of that as the rational course, but maybe I am cheating myself out of testing my endurance.

Man. If someone has to make me feel like a physical and metaphysical wimp who can’t handle literal cold any better than frosty times served up to me in life, I suppose I prefer it be Maya Angelou.

Winter of my discontent: Inaugural edition feat. Goethe throwback

Photographed by Ffion on the flickr.

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom?, but we hope it, we know it.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.)

Honestly, I could do, like, three more Goethe Months, and maybe someday I will, but for now, I hate January and I want to do something about it.

The Wonder Woman project helped me appreciate and understand her better; the William S. Burroughs project opened me up to new ideas and biographical facts I’d never known nor even heard of; and the NSFW November project — well, the NSFW November project had boobs.

Photographed by Eros Turannos on the flickr.

So this January I will be seeking out deep, positive messages about Winter along with photographs that show me more than bleak snow and the dull, same ol’-same ol’ that the cold weather serves up to me in my perception, and try to draw some conclusions about just why exactly I wake up on January 1st feeling particularly low and the mood does not lift until late February.

Weekend warrior friendohs, and a brief bookfoolery follow-up edition

Gorgeous George and Corinnette on our way to find undiscovered country.

Had a great weekend up in the great white woods with the fabulous friendohs, other than the kidlet being wretchedly sick; if she dies of double-pneumonia-screaming-meemies-and-bad-hair (very common and tragic disease) it is sure to be my fault for falling prey to her “I’ll be fine, Mommy, please please please let me go to the snow!” baloney sauce and not just keeping her home like I ought to have. The only component missing that would’ve made the weekend even more perfect were Paolo and Miss D, who’d sadly decided, with greater wisdom than the kidlet and me, to stay home so Paolo did not compound his cold. We are hoping to do a follow-up trip in the Spring and I can’t wait for them to come along and appear in my annoyingly copious pictures (my friends are kindly tolerant of my photographic shenanigans, but I’m very lucky they’ve never seized the camera and thrown it off a cliff).

Did You Know? This beautiful child is actually a festering harbinger of plague and germs that can singlehandedly fell a houseful of hale and hearty adults in Just Two Days. “Think I’m cute, do you? Enjoy the bronchitis, suckaaaas!”

Poor Corinnette, who rode with me and Gorgeous George and the kidlet, was probably sick to death by Sunday night of Elvis, which we bumped in the car nearly the whole weekend, partly because we’re both huge fans and partly because Gorgeous George was the driver which left me as the passenger with way too much time to look over cliffs and dread death at the hands of unknown reckless drivers (I trust Geo implicitly: it is those loose cannon other sons-of-bitches that I fear will careen around a corner and cost me my child’s life), so we played tunes that I could stare out the window and sing “Little Sister” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” along to, giving me something familiar to focus on rather than hairpin turns and speeding Subarus.

Elvis Presley and Sophia Loren clowning around. I am telling you this because though talented they are virtually complete unknowns of whom you have probably never heard.

At one point along Highway 140, when we were on a straightaway and I was feeling less Nervous Nellie —had my eyes open and everything! just like a big girl!— I remarked to Geo, “Elvis Presley really was a great performer. It’s too bad he wasn’t more popular,” which we thought was hysterical.

Gorgeous George’s wonderful parents were as wonderful as they always are, and Saturday night, after playing word games and bullshitting over beers and barbeque for a few hours, Pam-tastic and Senior (Geo’s folks) screened this nothing-less-than-cool-as-shit movie for us about the early career of Shirley Muldowney that seriously revved me up.

Still from Heart Like A Wheel (Jonathan Kaplan, 1983), starring Bonnie Bedelia and Beau Bridges as Shirley Muldowney and Connie Kalitta. Anthony Edwards (pictured) plays her grown son, who is on her pit crew. It’s a really great, great movie. I sat next to Pam-tastic, who had posters of Shirley all over the den we were watching the movie in, and she filled me in on extra details while we watched. Amazing experience. They’re so great.

Shirley Muldowney was the first NHRA female champion drag racer; her struggle was totally engrossing, and a story I’d never even heard of, which I love finding out about all new shit when it comes to deeply detailed sports, and for it to be a lady driving fast on top of it just sealed the deal. I am going to try to find more screencaps and factoids to share more about her in the coming days. Pam and George even know her. They are rad. Kick ass, I’m serious. Best in the West!

Lo-Bo and the Gentleman when we’d finally stopped trekking past protected meadows (normally I’m all in favor of those but cheese-and-rice, I had a sick kid and it was really coming down; it was a great relief to stop walking). They are watching Corinnette gather the materials needed to demolish the Great Dane’s mini-snowman. All respect due to Niels and his snowman, I need to say that for being built by an engineer, that thing sure went down like a bitch.

As a follow-up to my last entry before leaving town, on the bookfoolery front: I took neither Vonnegut short stories in the wake of Jonohs’s novel-loans nor Panda’s much-maligned copy of Oates’ Zombie up with me to read while on our weekend Yosemite retreat. (Although I did let kidlet bring her comic book, and I did not at any point attempt to swipe it: I can be taught!)

l to r: Corinnette, the Great Dane, and Michelle-my-belle at the lea, watching Gorgeous George destroy the snowman.

I realized the only logical choice to take for a trip to the snowy woods with friends was a book about a trip to the snowy woods with friends: Dreamcatcher, by Stephen King. It was perfect to sink in to bed at night and re-live the highs and lows of that admirable group of old friends after spending the day having so much fun with my own.

I really dearly love every one of the four lead characters in Dreamcatcher and will happily tell you all about why I think they are some of the best and most shining examples of King’s already-wonderful pantheon of character creations if we are ever stuck on a tarmac at the end of a runway while they repeatedly de-ice our plane; lord, how a real estate secretary from Miami wishes this were just a random example of a situation and not pulled directly from my real life.

Jonesy and the Beav (Damian Lewis and Jason Lee) attempt to hail a helicopter in Dreamcatcher (Lawrence Kasdan, 2003). This movie is jam-crack-packed with hot men bein’ hot. And nice and brave and heroic. Great book, great flick.

Anyway, snow and friends in the novel. Snow and friends in my life. Synchronicity. Except we did not encounter aliens. That I remember. Moving along, the free time I have today while watching my little sicklet means I have almost no choice but to pass the time between making her food and giving her cold medicine by finally crack-a-lacking on posting up the undone Valentine Vixens. Come sail with me. HMS Sexytimes, ahoy!

Daily Batman: Enter Batwoman

Originally named Kathy Kane, the character [Batwoman] was introduced as a love interest for Batman to disprove allegations of homosexuality in response to the backlash from the book Seduction of the Innocent (1954). (the wiki)

Lost the credit but it’s fairly obviously a character sketch from DC.

The modern incarnation of Batwoman, Kate Kane … is written as being of Jewish descent and as a lesbian in an effort by DC editorial staff to diversify its publications and better connect to modern day readership. Batwoman’s sexual orientation has been both criticized and praised by the general public and the character has been described as the highest profile gay character to appear in stories produced by DC Comics.

Batwoman, Kate Kane, with Det. Renee Montoya, now The Question via dance with shadows.

Oh, those crazy redheads.

Stormy weather, snowy going

This stormy weather has got me worried that Paolo and Miss D are going to get snowed in at Taahooooe. But I suppose there are worse times and places to be snowed in than with your new spouse on your honeymoon!