Saturday, June 30, 2018

Saturday, June 23, 2018

werk

I've been spending a lot of time doing drywall work lately. The only skills I have in this area, I learned from volunteer work with St. Bernard Project and Habitat for Humanity. It's a man's world, especially at the hardware store--snide comments, the assumption that the little lady doesn't know what she's doing, elaborate explanations of simple concepts--with the exception of Dunn Lumber, where a very nice woman helped me buy a bucket of joint compound and discussed mesh versus paper tape, without any implication that my vagina might hold me back.
That said, once I have all my supplies and tools ready to go (including this gem), I truly enjoy the work. Measuring, cutting, fitting, sanding, drilling, taping, mudding and eventually priming and painting.
You get sweaty and dirty.
Maybe a blister or two.
You can see your progress.
You curse your mistakes and then figure out how to fix them.
You give yourself one-on-one motivational speeches.
You finish, legs and back aching, take a step back, and see how far you've come.

Saturday, June 16, 2018

my inheritance

Thanks in part to my shrink I have been thinking about what my parents passed along to me.
In addition to the keen intellect and sparkling personality.
Anyway.
Last night I dreamt that I was packing for a trip and doing the whole dream-anxiety thing of running around a house with a dozen rooms, trying to find things, getting frustrated, and then my parents handed me a huge slithery stack of junk mail, scraps, old pictures, letters--a slippery mess that I couldn't fit into my bag and that I had no use for.
Dang.
The old subconscious is working overtime while I zzzzzz.

Monday, June 11, 2018

the joy before the Krach

New video alert!
I have a few things to say about "Blood Beneath the Skin," a biography by Andrew Wilson, about the wildly talented Alexander McQueen.
With a few comments about how fashion gave me life.

Saturday, June 9, 2018

with all the devastating reports

We have lost luminaries these past few days.
Kate Spade.
Anthony Bourdain.
*
After the shock, the (predictable) post-mortems begin to roll in.
The statistics about middle-aged white folk and suicide.
The posting and re-posting of hotline numbers to call.
The admonishments. 
I find none of it convincing and most of it ghoulish and/or pointless.
Again and again I go back to William Styron's powerful 1989 essay in Vanity Fair about his own nearly-fatal descent into despair.
Rest in Peace, KS and AB.