A mirror

The memories of my early childhood are like sparse crayon sketches...

A small house on the edge of town with a smattering of homes around us. Enough space to find a spot to play that was out of the periphery of the house.

A baby in a rickety crib: cranky or sleeping, cranky and sleeping. My mother's faceless voice hollering after me (from where? in the kitchen? probably. She was always in the kitchen) to "shut the door- you'll let out all the cool air" the baby needs to be in cool air... was the unuttered half of the sentence.

Books scattered about: Mom tells me I could read by the time I was three. I don't remember reading but I do remember sitting in my mother's lap and pouring over the pages. Books always left open on the floor of my room.

Clinging to the neck of my grandmother: her house, the yard and farm, the conversation a later memory that seeps into the younger me- a water color background that fills in the blank skies and ground beneath me.

One water-color landscape: A rattle trap wagon clattering through the grassy backyard that connects one child to the other. A blue-eyed, brown-sugar-haired child waves at the face peaking between the cotton curtain of the nearby home. Chubby fingers waggle back and forth in response and little legs dangle over the edge of the counter, toes in search of the tile floor. The child seeks out her mother, begging for freedom and play. Denied for some reason that is beyond the connections in my synapses, the lingering feeling is one of disapproval (disapproval of the child's mother? the child?- I don't know...) and confusion. Christie is my only friend in my secluded little world between the houses and it seems odd now to have had anything to disapprove of in a three-year-old.

Photographs scrutinized now reveal the shy and backward nature of the child- a slight frown still lingering in the eyes, unhappy, with the break from play for a trip to the photographer, the uncomfortable frilly dress complete with lacy undies that were GI (well in this case: MI- mother issue). Battles over clothes with the tot are retold at the dinner table by the mother, the grandmother. They are, apparently, World War II vets in the American Legion, reminiscing over the skirmishes with the child over clothes, food, separation... (tisk, tisk, such a strong willed child. How will such a strong willed child be obedient to God?)

Happiness... abandon... freedom... does not seem to be a part of the sketches, either filled in later or original background. You can feel the uncertainty, the blankness- a hollowness that was never filled in.

Death and Politics at the end of the world

Lazarus Unwound

She walks down the street with a confidence that holds life itself in contempt- a "you-aren't-going-to-defeat-me" gait that carries her around the common and beyond the peonage. She plows through the cracked and crooked cyprus door, pausing only to allow her cornea to adjust to the dim, a duskiness that inhabits the cleavage of the walls, scurries across the floorboard and over the surface of the shack that somehow gained the reputation as a shop. The compound odors of garlic, curry, cigar, incense, dust, and ancient artifact condensed to agitate the nostrils of her finely refined nose. She swipes at her sharply pressed sierra sand colored skirt and fitted white blouse in reaction to the nearby grime and scans the perimeter against possible incursions. The tailor made "Refined Explorer" boots she purchased in Milan wrinkle at the toe wrinkle in distaste of their own volition at the dirt floor which had undoubtedly been the bed of a herd animal at some not too distant past. Her cosmetically enhanced nails brush a single stray hair back in place as she gathers herself against the onslaught.

She takes a folded letter out of her pocketbook and glances over it "...happy to hear you may have discovered... can't tell you what it will mean... will await your article... Finkelberg has a new find... a real blow... your work, in the right hands, might... Get back to us as soon as you can!" Finkelberg! That Israeli hack has no loyalties. His own people were tired of his anti-biblical rant. She takes a step in one direction, then another. Scowls silently, "Gives pacing a bad name" then stops to glare toward the "back" of the hovel where a man's voice seems to transmit from.

"You, hey there," the international accent was so heavy that it was nearly unintelligible-- to anyone. "What do you here?"

the dark side of the moon

What does this mean?? Twisted, dark things that are funny... maybe like me.


Some of my favorite funny things are the Ann Taintor products (www.annetaintor.com)

You can also find her products at Peppercorn and Paper Dolls in Boulder. (The kitchen towels are terrific!)And FYI: these are real models. She has profiles of them on her website.

I have found a few that express the inner Danette... how about you?