oy!

apologies to all seven readers (i cherish you, each and every one!) for being away from this blog for so long. i created it just to See What One Was -- and then realized that like any living thing, it needs to be fed.
oops! bad blog mommy! : (
so the good news my lack of wordage here means the wordage offstage has been happening apace, flowing like a good (stuttery, but constant) river, and therefore i can't -- as a writer who hopes (don't we all?) to someday Leave Something Behind -- be too mad about that.
nevertheless, i miss the idea of my delightful seven blessed readers, who signed up to hear What I Might Have To Say (and i type that in full knowledge of the fact that i have been (kindly) prodded to consider that perhaps i overuse the capital letter thing for emphasis. o twell. sue me!
but i digress.
aside from wanting to re-jump into the pool of cyberconversation, i just wanted to note that i LOVED this whole rant:
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/qmoone/2011/06/mr-naipaul-and-becoming-a-writer/
and regret like the dickens that i ever let a former books editor insert a VSN reference into the LEDE of a book review that had nothing to do with him.
what can i say? i was young, impressionable, and stupidly swayed by males who seemed to know what they were doing.
thank heavens i'm old enough to know better.

on realness

the older i get, the more i appreciate the friends who endure.
who allow you to pick up where you left off.
who think the best of you first, not the worst.
who love you anyway.
i just came back from visiting one i've known since we were 15, when we shared some laugh in biology class. tho neither of us can remember exactly what it was, we knew we'd found a kindred spirit.
we saw each other through trying times -- my broken heart, her housefire.
when it gutted the tiny apartment she shared with her mom, she moved in with us during our junior year.
it was only 6 months, but gave us the chance to live like real sisters and gave her a look at life inside our home, warts and all.
after she moved out, we'd lose touch and reconnect as life pulled us in different directions. each time, we picked up where we left off, no one blaming the other for the lapse, both just grateful for the lines that held us still.
when she got sick last year, our conversations grew more regular. we visited in august and spent a long weekend remembering and laughing and telling each other stories about the life adventures we hadn't shared.
eight months later, we got to celebrate her successful surgery.
cancer didn't take her out, as doctors had suggested it might, but gave her yet another chance to show anyone who didn't already know that she's made of stronger stuff than most.
i haven't even downloaded the photos from this trip, but she's so much on my mind today i had to try to write about her anyway.
all the corny quotes about friendship don't come close. it's not just gratitude for the ways our teenage selves live on in each other's eyes and stories, and the ways my parents live on through her.
it's also a bone-deep reassurance that some of what i thought i knew to be true back then really was.
i'm so grateful that one of the loves i thought would last forever actually did.

Mr. Imagination rises again

The renowned visionary artist who first captivated his Chicago hometown by turning castoffs like industrial sandstone and bottlecaps into fantastical creations stopped making art for months after a 2008 fire leveled the life he thought he'd made.
In 2009, Gregory "Mr. Imagination" Warmack left Pennsylvania and moved to Atlanta.
Grieving for all he'd lost – decades of art he'd made or collected; books, photos and historical documents; his beloved dog Pharoah and a family of cats – sapped the energy he'd once used to bring new life to old things.
In his hands, spent paintbrushes and mops had become shaggy-haired kings or creatures; mountains of bottlecaps found new life in giant thrones, sculptures – even clothes. Wire screen turned into dresses, faces rose up from cement and putty.
What was real didn't die, it just came back in different forms.
Turns out, living in Atlanta has been good medicine. Mr. I's friends rallied, he found a new home, time passed. Once he got his hands moving again, the work flowed. Some bubbled up from new places, like birds carved from salvaged wood. Some stayed rooted in the old, like scorched pieces he's reconfigured, repaired or left as they were.
This time, the life he's reclaimed is his own.

http://www.accessatlanta.com/AccessAtlanta-sharing_/visual-arts-preview-mr-826795.html
http://www.barbaraarcher.com/

such a deal

so i'd had a lovely walk in the old suburban neighborhood where a friend lives. it's 30 minutes by car to get there, but worth it for all the birds, traffic-free hills and patches of woods.
when i got back home, it was misting, not quite raining. no need for the umbrella. but somehow my arms were full anyway as i exited the car, so i slammed the door with my foot.
from the second-story porch next door, a woman with dark hair waved, smiling as if we were old friends. in her arms was a tiny white dog, smaller than my cat.
i waved back.
"nice dog," i say, loud enough to carry.
"free to good home," she yells back.
at first i'm wondering why a dog needs four names. then i get it.
"don't think my cat would much care for that," i say, pausing at the sidewalk.
"oh she loves cats," the woman says. "we have three."
"tempting," i say. "but i think we're good with just the one cat right now."
she shrugs, still smiling.
"i'm joy," she says. "this is celine," she points to a girl who's maybe 20, "and he's robbie." a toddler crawls on the clay tiles in his diaper and t-shirt.
i say my name twice before she gets it. i think about asking if they're cold out there without jackets.
we smile at one another, nod the way you do when you're not sure what to say next, and go our separate ways.

catching up on where i've been

so i'm back in the world of quick turnaround newspaper stories – snapshot journalism. the kind of thing where a conversation becomes a window to a life or calling and the challenge (and joy) comes from seeing how quickly you can translate it to the page.
this is what i loved most about my last three years at the ajc, when i worked out of the gwinnett bureau.
sometimes i'd have so much fun immersing myself in one or another of the county's fascinating towns, i'd wonder what it would be like to actually live there, instead of driving up for the day and pretending.
picturing a crashpad under the trees, just small enough for a bed and desk and hotplate, i imagined being able to watch a place go to sleep and wake up, to hear its particular cast of birds and smell its particular flavor of morning.
can you ever really know a place, i wondered, without living in it?
now i get to find out.
committing to a weekly column – wherein i'm never sure what will be next but i'm on the hook for it anyway – is a big part of the charm.
here are links to a few. the first is about painter rocio rodriguez, whose terrific show at barbara archer gallery in inman park has been extended through feb. 5.

http://vahi.patch.com/articles/local-artist-brings-her-art-back-home

http://vahi.patch.com/articles/rescuing-the-rescuers-2

http://www.reporternewspapers.net/2010/12/30/churchs-divorce-recovery-group-helps-singles-learn-loss/

kudos to mtv....

...for balancing out their maddening "16 and pregnant" franchise with a solid 30-minute look at abortion, a topic that seldom gets moving, thoughtful treatment anywhere. and thanks to salon, for reviewing a show that apparently only aired once, late at night.
say what you want about dr. drew, he's consistently a source of straight, respectful talk about sex, aimed at just the audience that needs to hear it most.

www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2010/12/29/mtv_abortion_show_no_easy_choice

who knows where the time goes?

sandy denny's windswept lonely song is never far from my mind. her voice, the scratchy british grandeur of it. the images and waves of richard thompson's guitar. and her question, a heartbeat that sounds like home.
who does know? it's a riddle, a koan, a question mark that rolls on and on.
i know it's all circling, never resting. it's not a straight line the way we imagine in times of too much to do and the choking worry of not enough time to get it all done; not a ruler to be checked off in millimeters or inches, hours or minutes.
more a river that we swim or wade along.
i remember september and october and november. writing, scrubbing old walls till they are clean enough to paint. remembering and forgetting.
and here it's december, nearly the end of. i treasure the last days of each year, reluctant to let the number i've finally gotten used to -- 2010 -- leave; reluctant to get used to the new one. they change so fast.
a story before going.
on christmas day, i was in a tiny church in the florida panhandle. it was my grandmother's, when she retired to that corner of the gulf of mexico, and then my parents. my father's last christmas -- 2003 -- he'd created a songbook of christmas hymns for the church, joined the choir to add his voice to theirs. i'd gone in hopes of seeing a copy, snagging one even.
i arrived late, grabbed a seat in the back, grateful to sing those once-a-year songs with a crowd of strangers.
across the aisle, a huge man in a hunting jacket held a whimpering yorkshire terrier on his lap. everyone pretended to ignore it. i wondered how he'd gotten it past the usher.
finally, at a quiet part in the homily, a woman in a bulky fur turns around to complain to the wife, who wears all black but for a thin gold ribbon banded around her short gray hair.
"can you please do something?" she whispers. "the dog is distracting me."
the big man doesn't give his wife time to answer. "it's a baby," he hisses, "alright? he can't help it!"
her white-headed husband turns around to see who's yelling at his wife.
"don't stare at me!" the big man says, louder. "turn around! you can move if you don't like it!"
it's right in the middle of the sermon, and for a second we wonder if the young priest will intervene.
he's up there talking about light and love and waiting and the birth of a tiny king and his audience is torn.
the fur coat and her husband stand without looking back and move five pews up.
the big guy pets the pocket-sized fur coat in his lap and stares straight ahead.
finally, he gets up slowly with his dog and walks out the door.
his gold-banded wife looks around with a smile, nodding at anyone whose eye she can catch, "sorry. i'm sorry. sorry."
and on it goes.
the little gap inside what was expected closes, and everyone sings aloud the words they know by heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2xODjbfYw8