Peg Duthie's Blog, page 53

"Of course Claribel wasn't wearing a hat."

The subject line's the first line of Susan Fillion's Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel: Bringing Matisse to America. On the next page, there are portraits of the two women by Henri Matisse, who wrote to a friend about the process: "I've been working on them every morning for nearly a month now . . . it's hard but I'm learning a lot."

One of the paintings the Cone bought for their collection was Interior with Dog. Doggie!

(That be my brain after 90 minutes of yoga. "Doggie! Pretty! Post!")

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momentum

Two days ago, I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. I had copyediting and lettering targets I'd planned to meet, but I also had a headache, and I haven't gotten past the "eek!" part of the current calligraphy thing, so scrubbing the tub and sanitizing pots and making a new batch of basil toner seemed way, way easier than putting pencil to paper.

Yesterday, I started copyediting after breakfast and worked flat through lunchtime (which almost never happens, because I loooooooove food and get very, very cranky when I'm running on fumes) and didn't stop until 2:45 pm, when I yelped, "Eek!" and rushed out the door to meet my hiking partner. (There are times when I curse pre-scheduled exercise because it disrupts my grooves, but we saw two fawns at the lake, and the ridge that always kicks my ass does seem to be getting slightly easier to climb.)

I worry about losing touch with people. I worry about people dying before I make time to bake the pie and find my crocheting to take over for a long catch-up chat. I worry about not getting around to planting the seeds I bought this year, or the ones I've put in the "plant later" tray because it's already too hot. I worry about the energy evaporating from the sketches of poems I don't have time to amplify or revise right now. I worry that when I finally throw out the bags of tomato seeds my mother tried to preserve -- I tested a few this spring, and nothing came up -- I'll wish I had them on hand a week later when the poem about Rorschach seed patterns on scraps of Bounty finally gels (I could take pictures -- I will take pictures -- but they aren't going to retain the layers or up-closeness of the actual thing. I could keep just one. I could work on the dang poem after all if I'm gonna think aloud about it this much).

I fret about how everything, but everything, expands into a million marigold petals when I touch it. I want to scrape at the scale on my bathroom faucet with a toothpick, and to paint my living room myself, and to redo every inch of my yard. I plan to find the pillow for the cover that's been made out of my wedding dress, and the upholsterer I'd hoped to ask about recovering my dining room chairs has gone out of business. I resent work for taking time away from studying. I am breathless whenever I spend an hour studying, awed at how much more there will always be to learn. I get deep into a manuscript and it reminds me of how much I actually already know, just from the years I've put in and how they've developed that editorial "sixth sense" that tells me when a name is probably misspelled or that something on page 38 isn't in sync with what the author says on page 83, as well as being hyper-conscious of all the little cues and nuances that separate a professionally designed book from a document assembled by an amateur. (Nothing against amateur efforts, mind--as long as the professionals are getting their due.) I miss learning new music, but not enough to rejoin my old ensembles or start the trio I sometimes dream about pulling together.

I am delighted by Cathy Yardley's review of my book. I'm singing along with madrigals in the car to de-rust my voice (I'm leading hymns at the early service this Sunday). I found a Spanish-language copy of Isabel Allende's Zorro at a used bookstore, and gave it to a GA delegate in my congregation to take to Louisville for the library to be established there. I saw that the bookstore had copies of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in both the Reading List and Agriculture sections, and that some of the copies in the Ag section were slightly cheaper, which was intel my hiking partner (and mom of a schoolkid) found useful when she went shopping there a few days later. My E player in fantasy tennis (the delightfully sassy Donna Vekic) has made a surprising run to the semifinals in Birmingham (UK), and I'm still alive in Survival at the Shore (horseracing predictions) -- ranked 1118th, true (my second-best day got negated by a cyberglitch, woe), but I haven't let myself dive deep into researching the ponies, so I'm fine with merely swimming along. Go Chocolate Drops! Go Zealous on the Run! Go Toute Allure! I'm amused by this interview of Charleston chef Robert Stehling, happy to hear reports that Husk Nashville is living up to the hype, and, in the bath, reading a 1996 Baedeker guide to Canada that used to live on the shelves of the Charlotte public library.

(And now it's been more than fifteen minutes since I applied sunscreen, and I've been asked to deliver a shirt and a gallon of water to my favorite motorcycle repair shop. Time to move from inventory to service! :-) )

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one bite at a time

From what I can tell, there are several different species chomping at my bean plants, so who knows if there'll be anything to harvest. I'll have to do more research on pest deterrence before I sow the next batch. Nonetheless, it was lovely to see the start of some blossoms on the stalks this week.

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a minor milestone

I rode my bike to and from my neighborhood farmers' market today. It was nice both to feel reasonably confident doing so (I'm still getting the hang of riding) and to feel I could spare the time for it.



For $20, I brought home

1 bundle of asparagus
1 bunch of chard
1 bunch of beets
1 quart of strawberries
1 pound of broccolini
2 fat tomatoes

Now to contemplate cooking the beet greens...

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Memorial Day

Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, August 2012

holiday
space to spare time
for stories
from the shadows

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RIP Jack Tollett

Yesterday evening, the BYM and I learned that Jack Tollett, a friend in Ft. Worth, had passed away earlier in the day. Jack was a darling man who ran the Waltz Across Texas motorcycle rallies for a number of years, raising a fair amount of cash for the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. He was one of the Chatty Morons (a group of long-distance riders -- long story) who gleefully kept me updated on the BYM's whereabouts during the 2001 Iron Butt Rally in exchange for kisses. He called himself a LBJ Democrat -- something that's come to my mind several times when putting Lady Bird stamps onto letters and packages this past winter and spring. (I associate Texas wildflowers with motorcycles anyhow, what with seeing and smelling them during various rides on the back of a Kawasaki.)

Hadn't seen him in years, but I'm gonna miss that man anyway. At some point this weekend, I'll raise a bottle of Shiner Bock heaven-ward.

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puppy in a purse in Porte Dorée

Paris, November 2011

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Paris, 2011

From paris day 1

Latin Quarter flat, October 2011. Note how the stove, shower, and toilet are adjacent to one another. The price was right for one day and night, though -- I set my stuff down, checked messages, napped, and later headed across the city to Kehilat Gesher to celebrate Simchat Torah.

( more pictures and notes under the cut )

As I waited for various trains, I saw a series of posters campaigning against violence: "School violence, extortion, assault, harassment ... too many young people are victims of violence in their schools, in public transport, in their neighborhood."

From paris day 1

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practicing breathing; being a sports nerd

A couple of days ago, I went looking for photos of some of the Bikram postures, and came across a nifty guide (illustrated with colorful stick figures) produced by a NY studio.

(When I manage standing bow, it feels pretty cool. Then there's me getting water up my nose when I tried to sneak in a sip during savasana...)

I am taking a break from it today, though, because my body and brain both need a timeout -- a couple of old injuries have flared up, and I need a day where I don't have to be anywhere by x o'clock. (It's not really a day off -- I'm planning to divide 8-10 hours between lettering and copyediting -- but not having to stop to get myself ready to go somewhere else will make a difference. I'm such a housecat.)

Yesterday afternoon, I went to Rita Frizzell's memorial service. It included humor and drama and tears and quite a bit of music, including Sarah Dan Jones's "Meditation on Breathing" ("When I breathe in, I'll breathe in peace. When I breathe out, I'll breathe out love"). The humor included Dawn Thornton referring to herself as "Buddish" (referring to her sort-of practice of meditation); the drama included a theatre director reading aloud passages from Hamlet and coming up with a new collective noun ("an incandescence of Ritas") to encompass the different facets of she-who-was-called-Rita. There was chanting from the Tibetan Book of the Dead; there was a colorful portrait of an eight-limbed goddess hanging behind the pulpit. There was a reference to "Tibetan Buddhism's glass ceiling for women" (one of the situations leading Rita to Unitarian Universalism) but also glowing descriptions of the Friday night sangha she led, which will be continued by another member of FUUN.

The closing song was a group rendition of "You Are My Sunshine," a song Rita's mother had sung many times to her. We sang through it three times, twice with the words ("Please don't take my sunshine away...") and once simply humming. Afterward, at least two people said to me, "The humming, that's what got me." Music is such a physical act.

After the reception, I hopped into a friend's car and she steered it downtown toward sushi. Sarge talked about her plans to make blackberry wine; B. and I chatted about our connections to Texas. There was a lot of laughing with and at each other, including me at S. when she declared "I'm too old to be butch" (when B. declined her offer to pump gas) and both S. and B. at me when I waxed enthusiastic about fantasy tennis and horse handicapping. ("Look, I'm a nerd. Therefore I have nerd hobbies." "We're glad you know that.")

Speaking of which: Thanks to an $7K bet on Oxbow and a $10K bet on Mylute, I am currently leading the Smarty Jones Stakes (a Triple Crown predictions contest) over at TalkAboutTennis.com. My penchant for humoring my hunches seldom pays out two races in a row, however; moreover, I've noticed that it's always a longshot I don't pick that ends up second. Still, for the moment, peppermints all around! ;-)

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an upside to being an art-supply junkie...

...is having a clean paintbrush handy when the pump on the sunscreen bottle quits working:



(It is also, to be honest, kinda fun to paint my skin without having to fuss about alignment or angles.)

It has been raining all morning. (Yes -- if I'm going outside at all, I put on sunscreen, even when it's gray.) The school down the street held a field day anyway, so I passed hordes of soggy children on my walk to and from the bakery.

I was engrossed enough in the current manuscript to tune out most of the conversations around me, but what I did overhear reminded me of how lucky I am, to be living here now, where my neighbors are chatting about translations and Eurovision and filmmaking, and the older man next to me was quietly reading today's comics, and the trio of tattooed women in front of me had clearly just finished their morning swim.

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