Discord

Photo of a long, layered, and flowing skirt caught mid-twirl. A pair of legs showing through the fabric clad in striped tights, with the toes of a pair of clunky boots poking out.

It’s so spooky to be doing all the everyday things like working and going to the store to buy hazelnuts and grapefruit while also watching this shitshow unfold in LA (and the whole world) and wondering if the governor of California is arrested, will we be under martial law? I emailed my new physical therapist to say that I’m kind of stuck and could use a little more direction and then I thought about messaging her back to say that I understand in the scope of things this isn’t really a problem, and I feel ridiculous for even bringing it up. We have to work and shop and take care of ourselves, but this discord and sustained outrage is feeling like just too much all the time. And I don’t even watch the news on TV, I just listen to the radio and read a couple of things online.

I’m working on self-portraiture again this year with a mentor/friend/goddess and a small group of open, lovely, smart, insightful people. Weirdly, or maybe not, it doesn’t feel like turning away from the world to focus on myself. It feels more like connecting. I don’t always have the language for it, but that’s fine. It’s fine.

I’m at the start of a big life transition—the one where all my kids live somewhere else. The closer it gets, the more I have dreams of them as babies. Last night it was Sophie, she was about 2 years old. We were waiting in the car while Scuba popped in to grab groceries and she was unhappy in her carseat so I unbuckled her and she climbed into my lap, all sweaty in her little blanket footie pajamas. I unzipped them and pulled the sleeves off and she had on this little onsie that I remember so well, even though it was plain. She hugged me and put her little sweaty head on my chest and fell asleep, and I maybe knew it was a dream, partly, because I was so still and quiet so i wouldn’t wake her up. In my dream I knew this was the good stuff, that weight of one of my babies sleeping against me that I miss so much. When I opened my eyes, there was still a weight on my chest, but less. It was just the comforter, kind of piled on me. I imagine I gathered it up in my sleep and pulled it onto me.

So yeah. Transition stuff. Sad stuff. Kinda lonely stuff. But also getting to know myself better, figure out where I can be useful, see what kind of feelings I can capture in a photo that might resonate with someone else.

Let’s examine my cancellation policies

When being a New York Times reader didn’t work for me anymore (summer, 2024), I cancelled my subscription and switched to the Post. (Kept the NYT cooking app, tho!) Later, when Jeff Bezos wouldn’t endorse Kamala Harris, (as W. Kamau Bell said recently, by way of Rebecca Solnit, It’s a chess move, not a valentine) I immediately canceled my subscription and deleted the app from my phone. Turns out, Democracy didn’t die in darkness, it’s dying because we used it to elect fascists.

This paper needs a new tagline

When he then posted that gross congratulatory tweet after the election, I saw that a lot of people were canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions. I didn’t. Maybe I handled it backward? The shallow truth is that having Prime is useful to me (I have a bunch of purchased media there, subscriptions, I’ve used it for over 20 years, blah blah), and seeing the Washington Post makes me mad. Starting next year, our new fascist regime will get to work dismantling media outlets that don’t promote their backward and deadly policies. Bezos has signaled that he’s falling in line, so maybe the Post will still be around and maybe there will still be journalists there who are fighting the good fight, but they’ll be swimming upstream to do it. Scuba subscribed to the New Republic, which is definitely my speed, and I think we’ll even be getting a print version.

One more thing: I’m not as well read as I ought to be, so this was new to me even though it’s widely known. Anyway – look what we’ve proven out:

The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. This paradox was articulated by philosopher Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), where he argued that a truly tolerant society must not tolerate those who promote intolerance.[2] Popper posited that if intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit open society values to erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices.

It’s nearly impossible for me to think about anything else at the moment, but I did get a bit of a break at pottery last night, so I’m planning to get to the studio more often.

It’s a backing wind situation

Well. Things feel truly terrible. I cannot seem to think of anything else. I stayed up late last Tuesday night, late enough to know. When I finally went to bed a little before 3 a.m., I opened Instagram and saw that the first two stories lined up at the top were from my girls. I rarely look at stories—it’s a time warp I try and stay out of. But I clicked on them. They’d both posted voting information and encouragement during the day, reminding people that in California you can register at the polls, and please, please vote. It’s so important.
Seeing that was so painful and sad.

It seems like what’s left of any sort of reasonable media might be first on the long list of things they will work to destroy. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything to stop them. And aren’t these the stories we grew up on? Evil forces in charge, dooming the future of humans and the planet, the rebel alliance working in secret to defeat them.

Little things/big things

I have nothing original to add to the general discussion around this election. It’s no shock that I’m vehemently anti-Trump (because I’m not at all into fascism, duh. I feel rather badly for actual republicans who have no candidate to vote for). However, there’s this: Four years ago, I took Soph and one of her besties to vote in their first presidential election, and yesterday they went and voted together again, took photos, and shared the 2020 photos along with the ones from this year on social media.

NaBloPo(al)Mo(st)

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit

I was cleaning up/looking for my Poppa’s old Land Camera (it’s here, but I’m not sure exactly where I stashed it) because I found two packs of black and white Fuji peel apart film. It expired in 2011, but since they don’t make it anymore, and probably never will again, that’s kind of it. There’s this, but my photo skills don’t merit the price (plus I think it’s hard to get). I’d love to plan out some photos with this precious Fuji film it if it’s still any good. ?

While I was looking for the Land Camera, I found my old Sony Handycam and a box of 21 Hi8 tapes, I think from around the time Alex was born in 1996 or so until the early 2000s. I’m pretty sure I’ve never watched any of them, so I charged up the Handycam to see what was there, and Oh, my heart. The first tape I put in was from maybe 2007. The kids (Sophie + the boys) were doing a summer theatre camp at the park, and I’d taped a performance that I have no memory of. Not even a little bit. But it’s very cute and Willow’s in it, too, saying she didn’t like the show. Then Willow and Sophie and I watched one from Christmas of 2003, the year Willow was born, and a little bit of her first birthday party that next February. Watching them made me feel like I was in a down elevator with no bottom, you know? And kind of depressed, but also really happy. I don’t know, it’s a lot. Time went too fast. I’m getting a little device that will let me convert them to digital, so maybe this will become a bit of a mom blog again?

Making vs Taking

Here’s a very nice thing to remember: The Polaroid I made at Cathedral Rock was featured on the Flickr Explore page and I got really sweet comments from people. : )

I remember my grandfather always said ‘making’ or ‘made’ instead of ‘taking’ or ‘took’ when talking about photos. This could be why:

“Ansel made photographs, he didn’t take them”

I met a photographer when I visited Taos Pueblo who told me that her grandmother knew Ansel Adams and Georgia O’Keeffe when they were spending time there. She had nothing nice to say about either, telling me they’d been asked by residents to leave. To not use their cameras and paintbrushes to capture what wasn’t theirs.

Ultimately, her paintings and writings make clear that she saw the region much as countless others had before: as both deeply informed by the presence and history of its Native peoples and as open, empty, and ripe for claiming.

There’s making a photo, and then there’s taking one.

I’m pointing this finger at myself as well. I took a LOT of photos when I toured Taos Pueblo and once I thought I was going to get arrested in Spain for taking photos in a cemetery. The guard made me delete my entire memory card and show him it was blank. We learn as we go. Hopefully.

Polaroid Week Day Two & Three

‘Roid Week Day Two: Cathedral Rocks, Yosemite, Late September 2024
‘Roid Week Day Three: Mariposa Grove, Late September 2024

It’s Polaroid Week and I remembered! I did start a day late, but that was a misunderstanding on my part, not because I forgot. Tiny victories and all that.

When I told Grace that I’d never been to Yosemite she was like, Wait, NEVER? You’ve NEVER been there? I’m taking you! Within a couple of weeks she scored reservations for us at Camp Curry and at the end of September, off we went. I can’t believe I’ve lived so near to the park for most of my life and never visited before, but it turned out perfectly—I had the best time getting to see it with Grace (and not just because she is patient and listens to me talk (and talk and talk and talk and talk)). If you’re lucky enough to have someone in your life who you’re perfectly comfortable with, no matter what, and if that someone is funny and smart, a fabulous storyteller and generous with their time and their snacks and coffee and hiking poles + gear, then you know what I mean. But EXTRA to all that, Grace used to live in Yosemite Village, SHE CLIMBED THE NOSE OF EL CAP (!) and she is full of great stories about the park and the dirtbags (loving term!) who play there. It was an enchanted, magic few days and I’m not in any danger of forgetting them.

Unrelated stuff I’m sticking here so I don’t forget: this recipe is a keeper; this is the website I’ll be looking for when I start my embroidery project in a couple of weeks; I want to watch this movie; make these at pottery; and for the next few Mondays there are new episodes of My Brilliant Friend. See you next time I remember to update!

Yes, I renewed my passport.

At sunset, an incoming ocean wave splashes over Hawaiian lava rocks covered with seaweed.
This photo is unrelated, I just like it. I took it just after the sun set, and it was still nice and warm on the beach because we were in Hawaii. The seaweed on the rocks was such a pretty green.

I keep forgetting stuff lately. Recent example: In April of 2023, I finally renewed my passport that expired in 2017, ten years after I went to Spain for a really quick trip. But the other day, I forgot I’d renewed it, which is alarming since it had involved checking for open appointment slots every morning for weeks, finally getting one at a little library 40 minutes away and then really enjoying the little library and the tiny scrap of orchard they’d preserved in the courtyard. Anyway, Scuba and I were talking about taking a trip, and I was like, “OMG I have GOT TO renew my passport!” and he was like, “Yes, please do!” And then slowly I started to remember that maybe I had? But honestly I wasn’t 100% sure until I looked where I keep all our birth certificates and immunization cards and passports. Mine wasn’t there, but then I remembered it was in my desk and even when I found it, I wasn’t sure-sure that it was mine until I flipped to the photo page.

I remember things better when I write them down. It’s always been true for me. So, for the sake of my stress levels, I’ll start with today: I woke up early, at 5:20, made coffee, and read to almost the end of By Any Other Name (Jodi Picoult – I am pretty sure I’ve read a few of her books, but, omg I don’t remember). Went for a 4ish mile hike on the creek trail with Scuba, watered the plants and changed the bed and then got back into both my pajamas and the bed and finished the book, which made me cry. A lot. I think I’m a little depressed? I like the Emilia Bassano theory! I was riveted and read it in like 2 days even though it’s 528 pages. What else? It was dramatically cloudy today but didn’t ever rain. I made some really good hard boiled eggs* to go in the giant salad we made for dinner. I put away almost all my laundry, until I ran out of hangars. I got a new kind of coffee to try since I like their espresso so much. So boring, but also exactly the kind of stuff I like. Now I’m going to find a story I haven’t heard and listen to it while I work on the sleeve of this sweater I’m knitting until I fall asleep. And maybe sometime down the road, I’ll come back here to find what that book or that coffee was called, or what the hardboiled egg method that works every time is again.

Edited to add: To further prove my point, I wrote this on 10/27 and forgot to post it. Chef’s kiss!

*What makes a “really good” hard boiled egg: No green edges on the yolk. Easy to peel. Tiny little lentil-sized oozy bit of yolk in the middle. I generally prefer a jammy soft-boiled egg, but not on a cold salad. Ew.

Alice Neel & my neighbor.

We have (or I think at this point, probably had) a neighbor across the street that we don’t really know. He’s single, older. Old enough to have a difficult time getting his trash and recycling containers out to the street and back, which is what prompted the only conversation either Scuba or I ever had with him: Scuba: Hi. Can I help you with your garbage cans? Neighbor: Thank you, but no. It’s the only exercise I get at this point.

A couple of years ago there were several police cars parked at his house, one of the few two-stories on our street. Turns out he had a collection of old rifles in a glass-front cabinet and some kids broke in to steal them. He came home in the middle of it all, and they ran out the back door, dropping the guns on the lawn and hopping his back fence to escape down the creek behind his house. The police were asking the neighbors questions to figure out if anyone saw anything, and the first thing they asked me was, Do you know your neighbor over there? pointing to his house. I told them I did not.

I don’t know if he moved into assisted living or if he died. He’s for sure gone, though. From what we can tell (Scuba was outside and overheard some conversations between people we assume were his children) his kids/heirs wanted to quickly sell the house before the value dropped. (Sidenote: with a new large, upscale shopping center going in a couple miles away, and two HUGE new campuses planned for Apple and Google not too far away, I think they were a little misinformed.)

Next came about ten workers, who began by pulling the trim off the exterior of the house. I figured they were going to spruce the place up a little and list it. Most of the houses in our neighborhood are pretty modest 3 bed 2 bath 1,200 or 1,400 square feet, but this one’s big and backs up to a little stream that’s dry most of the time and means no neighbors behind you. It would sell in a hot minute, updates or no. After the trim was removed and repairs to the exterior stucco made, we noticed the workers were putting in six or seven twelve-hour days a week. Also appearing occasionally are a couple of complete assholes driving matching Teslas heartlessly barking orders at said workers. It seems the kids sold to a couple of house flippers.

Here’s where my personal baggage starts making all this difficult to watch. I loved my grandparents. Both sets. Tremendously. I remember when my mom’s parents built their house. We got to go visit when it was just wooden stakes and string in the ground and they showed me and my brother where our bedroom was going to be, just for us for when we came to visit. I was 4, almost 5, and too little to really understand that the string would later be actual walls, but I do remember. They lived there for the rest of their lives, and I spent a lot of time there when I was little and not nearly enough when I was grown. My dad’s parents lived about 20 minutes away from my mom’s, in a house that they, too, built in the 50’s when my dad was a kid. After my parents split, my dad moved back home for a while and my brother and I spent every weekend there with him, just a few doors down from our same-aged sibling cousins. The four of us were inseparable.

I can recall every detail of both houses. What the faucets and light fixtures looked like, the dishes and the art on the walls. The bedspreads and front doors and floors. How the light came in the windows at different times of day. And the kitchens — what was in every drawer, where the ice cream and Cokes were kept in the fridges. How at my dad’s parents’ the kitchen closet by the washer and dryer with the ironing board inside smelled of starch but I didn’t know it at the time, and how as an adult the first time I used starch while ironing the memory of hiding in that closet was so strong I almost fainted. This is my overwrought and long winded way of saying that there’s a couple of house-sized holes in my heart. Both places have been sold, first by my family and then by the subsequent owners, and I wish I could take back ever seeing the listings when the later sales were happening. Everything was horribly different. The kitchens. Just thinking about it right now has me crying again. I know it may seem like an overreaction, but they were my childhood and they got torn out for stupid cookie cutter shitty modern boring garbage kitchens. The people are all gone, and now their places are, too.

So, with that history I started seeing the remodel unfold across the street. One day a giant pile appeared on the front lawn. Books, appliances, clothes, small pieces of furniture, chairs, magazines, cameras, televisions, records, linens. A huge pile of this man’s life. I almost threw up. His kids couldn’t be bothered to sort through his things? I feel betrayed on his behalf. His whole entire life just went straight into a dumpster and I can’t seem to get over it. It’s really giving me a lot of feelings. Clearly.

About Alice Neel, though. I love her. I love the way she saw and the way painted, and how even though she knew Andy Warhol, she wasn’t tempted by art trends and stuck to the art she had to make. Apologies for the paywall, but this morning I read a piece in the New York Times about her upper west side apartment, and how it’s virtually unchanged from when she died in 1984. Her brushes and partly used tubes of paint are still sitting out, waiting for her hands. Chairs and sofas people sat on that were captured in their portraits and that you might recognize are in their places. From the article:

Seeing her paintbrushes in an empty Maxwell House coffee can, her lesser-known sculptural pieces positioned on her mantel, her piano in a corner — all attest to a creative energy that endured years without much attention or validation. It is for more than posterity, however, that Neel’s home has been kept as it is. “It is very hard to let go of your mother,” Hartley says. This, perhaps more than anything, is the reason Neel’s paints remain drying on the table. Hartley says he had always wanted to preserve the apartment, but Ginny recalls it differently: “It just kind of happens that you don’t go through the closet,” she says. “You just keep putting it off, and then it becomes, ‘Why change it?’ We really couldn’t give her up.”

We really couldn’t give her up.

I have some of both my grandmothers’ things that I use on a regular basis. A teaspoon. A wine opener. Little sunflower earrings. A diamond wedding band. I cannot give them up. A pair of one of my grandfather’s boots sits next to our fireplace. The autobiography my other grandfather wrote on a shelf next to my bed. I cannot give them up, either. Every time I look across the street, I’m sad all over again because it feels like our neighbor didn’t have anyone who couldn’t give him up. No one to come and lovingly sort through his belongings, keeping the things that remind them of him the most. I know not everyone’s home can become a shrine to them. Her son and his wife do stay there sometimes, they just don’t disturb her things. Honestly, I imagine that Alice Neel herself might prefer that someone in need turn her home into theirs. Who knows? I just know that as I see more and more things pile up on the lawn (most recently: kitchen cabinets, light fixtures, lots of wood and plaster) I feel more and more sad about my neighbor and the whole entire world in general.