L A Stories

The movie watching spot in my studio...when I'm actually watching

I love Claudette Colbert. I realize how mouldy that makes me, but after watching 'The Palm Beach Story' again last night I repeat, I love Claudette Colbert. She was sequined & sparkling, rapier-sharp, sardonic without any hint of bitterness, all a fine line that so few actresses managed to straddle. Myrna Loy had it too, & it was (I believe) unique to that era. 

After Claudette, I moved on to Grace in 'Dial M.'  She managed an iciness the first two lack, probably a factor of looking he way she did. I prefer her in 'High Society,' but that may be the reflection of her in the fun mirror of her other cast members--Crosby, Sinatra, Holm, Stewart, Armstrong.  

What goes on in my studio when I'm watching movies with my back--the million mermaid march, all awaiting heads & wigs

I've watched these DVDs so many times, I now watch them with my back.  

I sit at my desk, making mermaid fannies or whatever, listening to the movie behind me as if it were an old radio serial. They are frivolous, pure entertainment, like cotton candy a la mode smothered in whipped cream, i.e. the perfect substitute for the junk food I've given up. Full of 'smarm 'n charm,' they weigh no more on your mind than a gnat on a trampoline.

Yesterday was the seventeenth (my lucky number, incidentally) anniversary of the airing of the first episode of 'West Wing,' my absolute fave for when I'm in the mood for something more substantial. I'm on my second set of WW disks (having worn out the first set), plus I stream it on Netflix when I'm in the living room.  It is my 'fetal position go-to,' for when I can't make sense of my world or THE world. It gives me hope (albeit fictional) for humanity when I can't find that elsewhere, makes logic from chaos, & always leaves me researching something else, learning something new, & wondering (in a good way) about the future. 

The First Day of WHAT?!?!?!!!!

No colorful leaves?  No problem!

Halftime, as I call the big gap between the January to May part of the cruise ship season & the late October through December part, is winding down at breakneck speed. My desk calendar at my other job just had the audacity to announce that today is AUTUMN?!

Fall on the island is more of a slip than a Fall.  The leaves that change hue or drop are mostly limited to one color, two species (coppery mahogany & red dog almond) & happen in late Spring/early summer instead of Fall. 

West Indian Mahogany trees have small leaves that turn brown & flutter down in huge drifts...that are as shiny as a pile of pennies, & as slick as a slip 'n slide. The lovely Mrs Fruit who sells her produce under the mahoganies in front of the Kingshill Post Office discovered the latter characteristic as I glanced over one day, saw her hit a patch of leaves & land flat of her arse.  As I helped pull her to her feet & settle her bucket hat back on her head, we were grateful the leaves were drifted deeply enough to break her fall & ensure she would live to play her ukulele under those trees as she does most afternoons.  

Autumnal stony pup

To render St Croix even more seasonally disoriented,  long & golden rays of light usually reserved for Autumn in the states also appear here in late spring, with the polarity causing objects to stand in relief. I catch myself smiling about thoughts of cooler air & Halloween/ Thanksgiving/Christmas...only to wake with a start when I realize it is about to be summer instead of Fall, & Hurricanes rather than Chanukah are upon us. 

I should have been making these for months now!

So here it is, the cusp of Autumn, & I  just can't make myself believe it...except three people have asked me about Christmas ornaments in the last two days...& Williams Sonoma is pelting me with images of pumpkin-shaped marshmallows...and I'm sharing pics of rubber snake-enhanced Halloween wreaths with a friend...and my summer to-do list is SO NOT 'TO-DONE.'

But I'm done--done fretting over what eluded the 'finished' slash of my pen or the peck of a delete key--done measuring the 'success' or 'failure' of a given day by a litany of tasks remaining to be completed & thus robbing me of zzzzs, done cramming quantity instead of quality into every 24 hours.  

Man.  I talk a great game; don't I? I almost believe me. 

Cro-Magnon High Tech?

The flea market find...AFTER!

"Pull sharply on the farthest choke feasible."

Batten Handtree, Niddy-Noddy, Umbrella Swift, Squirrel Cage, Butterfly skein, Reeds & combs, Rya, Dobby, Leno, Huck, warp & weft, dents & stretchers & beaters.  These curious terms & phrases comprise the language, techniques & tools of my people-dem--weirdo weavers.  And all constituted the cutting edge of tech in the era they were coined. Complicated & odd lingo, likely deliberately made odder by people who learned it more from telling than from reading, like a convoluted & protracted secret handshake to a long ago lodge member. 

Sad little before

Yes, I'm from West Virginia.  Yes, I grew up in an area that honored another newly (at the time) coined phrase--'Fine Craft.' Yes, it was the 70's, & the 80's.  

Weaving still made me a weirdo. I wasn't the weirdest of the weaving weirdos, as I discovered in My weaving classes at Marshall University. That slot was reserved for the weaver who had grown up as the daughter of a circus elephant act. Her projects included weaving a sweater from...wait for it...Airdale hair saved when a friend's dog got his summer trim & which my friend hand spun into bulky yarn. Note:  If at all possible, be as far from a dog-hair spinner as you can.  Two issues here--airborne Airdale particles cause a wicked cough, & there is NOTHING redeeming about the scent of a wet Airdale sweater if said spinner gets caught in a shower.  For her graduate project, our daughter of the elephant trainers chose to cut the candy pill strips--those chalkily delicious pastel sugar blobs adhered to what appeared to be adding machine tape--into long, narrow bands & weave them into...wait once more...EDIBLE UNDERWEAR.  

So not the weirdest of the weirdos was I. Not by a long shot. 

The studio...where the older floor loom was supposed to live. 

I wanted to be a potter way before Demi & Patrick made that cool ('Ghosts'), but visions of muddy 'slip' water trailed through the house, coupled with amorphous blob miscreations that they'd have to display in their starkly modern home in the name of supporting my pursuits led my parents to steer me toward weaving over pottery. I had entered & won a couple of competitions with classic 70's, über textured weavings on driftwood. They won, no doubt because they were judged to be the grooviest. So I begged & wheedled until my parents succumbed & gave me a huge Leclerc (Canadian) table loom for my twelfth birthday.  It was so big that it did not in fact, fit on a table & my Dad had to make legs for it.  

From the day I turned twelve to July of 2015, every apartment or house I considered had to have a prominent & perfect space for my loom. Several times that involved a choice between a small dining table & the loom, & we ended up eating in the kitchen for the duration.  I stuck with the Leclerc from 1974-1992 when we moved to this island & I decided that such a big life change warranted a change to a larger, better loom--a 48" wide, 8-harness Harrisville floor loom (see my post from 7/2/15 for more about that, plus pics). After 23 years of planning for, factoring in, & generally walking around that beast, in late June of last year I carefully disassembled & stowed the parts of my loom in the back of my closets.  The pieces are still in there, beackoning me to do as I imagined & convert it into an upright tapestry loom that would take up much less floor space. 

A 23-24 year old tapestry that was displayed in Government House at a STX Environmental Ass'n show, the first year I lived here 

And then last Saturday my friend Phillip sent me a pic of a misbegotten table loom which, despite a good pedigree (Schacht is a respected name in my geekdom) had ended up a jumbled & unloved mess on the concrete floor of the Animal Shelter Flea Market. A couple of close up shots & I knew about how much coin & manual labor would be required to bring it back to life, so I gave Phillip a realistic counter offer to the posted price & the arguments to support the reduction, & within a few hours he delivered my project to my porch work table.  A couple of days of disassembly, wire brushing/WD 40-ing stubborn rust, applying paraffin to chafing & seized parts , replacement of the rusted-beyond-recovery reed with a bamboo slatted one & cleaning & conditioning the wood with a homemade mix of 1 part white vinegar to 3 parts olive oil (Mu licked the loom & says it just needs salt), I reassembled it into what should be a working loom.

I made an inviting space for it in a sunny studio corner (where the original floor loom was destined before I realized it didn't fit through the studio door & it ended up idling in my living room for 7 years, eventually demanding $2k+ in metal parts replacement to be functional).  In the recent upheaval, sorting & cleaning of my studio I even unearthed a bunch of fine cotton crochet thread I bought at a fabric store close out some time ago.  Eventually it will be the first warp on this loom, but weavers know any project is 70% winding the warp & dressing the loom, 20% actual weaving, all preceded by 10% plotting/dreaming/scheming on graph paper. 

I found a pad of graph paper just before I finished the studio rehab. There is definitely a reason the words 'dream' & 'weaver' hang out together. 

On Hershey Bars, Nylons, Dieting & Collective Bargaining

This is not ice cream. It is home-grown arugula & a neighbor's gifted avocado with key lime dressing I made from my bounty of limes. Lovely, sure, but I repeat, NOT ICE CREAM. 

Vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberry topping. 

That's what I've been craving to point of distraction.  For a solid frikkin week. 

This is not normal. Vanilla always left me cold, especially if chocolate was an option.  Chocolate, specifically MILK chocolate could motivate me to do anything except lose weight. 

Sure, I went through a noir phase where I thought the darker the chocolate the better, until 3 things swung that pendulum:

1.  Über-dark chocolate actually tastes a bit sour. I generally love sour, even going as far as to always buy two jars of pickles--one sweet & one dill, take them home & switch the pickles from one jar into the brine of the other. But sour & chocolate...oh HELL no. 

2.  Scientists a few years back discovered dark chocolate is GOOD for you. So much for stolen moments with purloined & verboten pleasures. My perversity switch flipped & I immediately preferred milk chocolate with its sales pitch of 'no redeeming qualities whatsoever.'

3.  Texture. Like the saw about the secret to real estate being location, location, location, my cravings are always about texture, texture, texture--smooth, silky, 'I won't fight back' texture without the graininess frequently characteristic of super dark chocolate varieties. 

So why vanilla with strawberries??

These, while perfectly delicious, are Surinam cherries & decidedly NOT strawberries. Not even close. 

I blame it on global warming, that bastard. Somehow vanilla with berries sounds summery & cool...& I WANT IT NOW!  And so this week at the most inopportune moments, that phrase in all caps & a much larger font repeatedly flashed in my head, like a peskily bright neon sign right outside your window when you're trying to sleep. 

It was flashing thusly when my ex sweetheart called to launch another salvo in the perpetual battle to remove the 'ex' prefix from his title. And genuinely liking the guy & so not being a jerk & just yelling 'NO!,' I did what I always do & pivoted to an Un-relationship-related or 'safe' topic, that of how after dieting since mid-March & successfully quashing most evil cravings, this week I had somehow become the bitch of a specific frozen dessert idea. 

And that was when I suddenly understood the WWII bargaining power wielded by soldiers offering Hershey bars & nylons to women deprived of same. When he offered to be at my house in minutes, bringing the coveted & craved ice cream & topping, it was all I could do not to give up my beachhead--the position I've stalwartly held for a year & a half.  Realizing my vulnerability, I cleverly threw out a plausible excuse to end the conversation quickly & before I succumbed--'I have to run now--Mu's playing with matches & you know how flammable she is!' 

Because I'm smooth like that.  Smooth like ice cream...

Mu, laughing at the flammability comment because as she says, 'How am I supposed to light a match without opposable thumbs?'

'Clos-play?'

At this moment there must be a group of mothers who have surely marked me for death. 

Because despite 50 plus years of maternal admonishment, I currently have the lights on IN EVERY ROOM OF MY HOUSE. 

At 11:30 p.m. I awoke in my studio in front of the last moments of the original, Louise Beavers/Claudette Colbert version of 'Imitation of Life.'  I thought 'I'll do my yoga & go to bed early'...with Santa Claus & a unicorn, evidently. Instead I have gone from room to room, starting or finishing several tasks in each, & blazing a lighting trail to lure me back.  

And then I finally got productive & started going through drawers, sorting into give away or throw away piles stuff that I'm replacing with the neat, clean, folded items I'll sort into give away or throw away piles a year from now.  

Among the cast off linens, I found some swimwear & a couple stray bras that I had to try on before levying judgement for or against.  The best was my red, rhinestone-studded & preposterously padded gag bra, made even more outlandish by the fact it is now buckety-big from a combo of weight loss & TEFS (Tropical Elastic Fatigue Syndrome--the early onset dry rot that possesses elasticized items here in paradise).  

When I bought this little house, there was a medium sized safe in the bedroom closet. After thinking 'how cool is that?' & obsessively closing & opening it with the combination to be sure I could, I considered what to put in there. I then realized I was pretty much devoid of what most people & all thieves might consider 'valuables.'  Eventually I pulled the little tray insert out & carefully arranged my bejeweled red bra in it, then stuck it back in the safe, leaving the door slightly ajar. Some time later I told Buck I had finally decided the item of greatest value & deserving of the safe's protection. He looked, laughed & my gag bra has been in the safe for the last eight years. 

Time for yoga & bed, but I'm already planning tomorrow night's 'clos-play' (as in closet) foray. I seem to recall a pair of satin platform shoes emblazoned with pastel rhinestones that will definitely require a try-on.  Good night!

Aerosmith Insomnia

Screenshot of the next endeavor--installing this 9'x9' Anthropologie mural

Classic.  2 a.m. & I'm just in from stargazing. It is a gorgeously clear night, & among the other visible brilliant luminaries, Orion, Big & Little Dippers, Dorothy Parker, Julia Child & the Seven Sisters (I don't tell you what to see in the clouds, so don't tell me what I see in the stars--deal?), three shooting stars made guest appearances. 

Raucously loud-mouthed lizards, frogs & distant confused roosters provided the soundtrack, & the show was so good I had a hard time making myself come inside to do my day's end yoga, shower & finally find my pillow. 

I feel bad for people who really suffer from insomnia. I don't. Instead of lamenting or fighting sleeplessness, I've always embraced it, not just for its familiarity but for its potential. A true insomniac puts head to pillow & waits for elusive sleep to overtake. Instead, I have 'Aerosmith Insomnia'--in Steven Tyler's dead-on lyrics, 'I don't want to miss a thing.'  I'll turn my bed down at midnight, but at 2:12 a.m. I'm still ratting around, fighting the strong compulsion to start a new project or complete a procrastinated to-do item.  

Yes, this weekend is scheduled to be 'slipcover-palooza 2016

And all the while Mu looks for the darkest of the still-lit rooms in which she can get her redundant beauty sleep.  

Sweet Dreams!

Sixth (non-?) Sense

If you define 'Senses' as the entry points/means by which we experience the world, I'm voting to add a sixth I'm labeling 'hope.'  Synonyms would include 'potential,' 'faith,' 'promise,' 'possibility,' or 'vision.'  You could argue hope is less real/tangible than the other five, but I'd argue back, citing Synesthesia, the neurologically baffling state wherein a Synesthete experiences one sense in the form of another, as instead of hearing a sound, sees it as a color (thunder might manifest as a red rectangle, or the sound of a piano might be experienced as a flash of blue light).  If that is possible, then I believe some of us actually experience hope in a way that is just as real as sight or scent, etc. 

Hope in the form of a 'before'

Like everything, hope is relative & subject to degrees. Depending on the seriousness of your conviction, hope could be as small as the sparks of interest in a chance meeting or the rush of obtaining something dilapidated to restore.  Bumped to the next level, we have re-marriage after a bad divorce, buying a whole fixer-upper, or moving somewhere radically unlike where you're from.  Then the epitome of hope is faith, when defined traditionally as 'belief in the substance of things not seen.'  

And 'after,' in the form of manifested potential

Not surprisingly, hope is the very model of my favorite psych concept--intermittent reinforcement, the sure-fire way to create an entrenched behavior by randomly rewarding or withholding reward for it.  The fact that once in awhile & following no particular pattern, we get a pleasing result from some behavior, & that the positive result is not attributable to anything we did or didn't do.  This forms the basis for gambling, gardening, Home Depot & HGTV.  

This weekend hope took the form of sanding/painting/transforming an ugly brown lingerie chest purchased at a big box retailer about ten years ago.  Since I'm happy with the result, maybe I'll move up to leaving the house & meeting people next weekend.  

The new/old piece in place

Or maybe I'll paint the two chests in my bedroom.