Sketching Aquincum

The Lumber City House

2008-10-14T11:25:00.002-04:00

She walked by this house as a child and dreamed of living there. Today, she bought it. See? Dreams do come true.

It's Scary Here

2008-03-11T09:26:00.008-04:00

Do you know the scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy wakes up, points to all of those around her and telling them about her dream, she says, “And you were there, and you and you”? I saw this movie when I was 9 or 10 years old, which was 2 or 3 years after my grandfather died. I remember wondering if when I woke up in the afterlife, I would find all of those I had loved and known who had died before me gathered around my bed, nodding indulgently while I told them that I remembered them from before. I found this image oddly comforting: Being able to say to those whom I had lost, “I know you! You were in my life. You, and you” and of meeting again others whom I hadn’t thought much about since they left, of saying to them, “I remember you. I see now that I have missed you and didn’t know it.” I would feel the sudden population of a void I had sensed and been unable to fill until that moment.

It’s an image of a life being chipped away, one living piece at a time, to be reassembled, rebuilt again that fits my idea of everything being, eventually as it should be. It isn’t that I have ever thought that when a person dies, they ‘go’ to another place, though I am sure that someone at some point explained death to me that way and not really accepting it. I remember well wondering, if my grandfather had “gone to heaven” why was his truck still parked outside?

Today I am remembering a beautiful, sweet, bright and talented little girl, whose parents loved her well, took care, great care with the nurturing of her body and spirit, and whose life was taken from her by the offspring of other parents who inculcated the worst rather than nurtured the good in their own. This is a scary place. I don’t want to admit that I wonder what if about my own child, but how can I not, when more than twice now, in the last 2 months, I have had this possibility thrust before me in the form of news of such violence? They say that the Czechs have an enduring faith that things will eventually be as they should be, and a feeling that they may not know what ‘should be’ is. It is something that I admire about Czech character. It is something about them which makes them both more substantive and stronger to me. But today, I am having a hard time, a very hard time, in seeing how the taking of the the life of someone who was good and decent and headed for a lifetime of healing others could have anything to do with what should be, or with accepting that I can’t say what ‘should be’ is. Something evil has destroyed something good. Surely, this is not part of what should be.

Pretty Good Day

2008-02-20T17:23:00.007-05:00

Movie with Thomas, two new books (Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun and The Cloud of Unknowing) in the mail, and I started another good one (Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling) last night. Got another postcard today, this time from Finland and am reminded that I need to do another blogpost. Talked to friends online and on the phone, and started making plans with some of them for the summer. A good apple and a little silly TV, a nice bottle of cider with lunch, and a glass of wine before dinner. I wasn't completely lazy otherwise: I added more books to half.com, organised a few hundred photos into folders and transfered them to the portable drive, bought airline tickets, washed a few clothes, wrote a few letters, planned dinner (easy--ribs, potatoes and beans) and listened to some new music at jamendo.com. Looking forward to a movie with Bram later.

He Made Her a Valentine

2008-02-14T02:57:00.003-05:00

She adores my son and he's made her this Valentine and bought her a dinosaur to go with it. Is there anything more romantic than sharing your passions with your sweetheart?

New Work

2008-01-30T16:53:00.000-05:00

I have about four projects in the works (cliche!). I found a solution to the problem I was having with a story, and can look forward to reworking it for the PF Competition. I already have some poems to send if I get strapped. Radek asked me today if I would consider writing lyrics for his music, and I managed to write a draft of a whole song. I found inspiration for a new painting I've been thinking about and wanting to do for more than a year. I still have some mistakes in the recent nude I started, but the preliminary sketching is going okay, so maybe I will eventually get that worked out. It's nice when these things go well.

It's Empty

2008-01-27T10:35:00.001-05:00

I have made the decision to stop reading a couple of blogs because I find them and their writers (and I use that term very loosely here) so annoyingly dull. It really isn't that I mind that they write about what they did today, but that their writing is so filled with cliches and the hip catchphrases of the month that the hollowness of thought positively echoes. It reminds me of why I have never been very popular: I've never been like the other girls, and I have never wanted to be. Apparently, I don't have a lot in common with the average person. With few exceptions, the interests and entertainments of the masses offer me nothing and I am not the least bit motivated to strive for much more than being happy and making the effort to make the lives of those around me better. Being kind for no reason has always had more appeal to me than having something to lord over someone who doesn't have it. I really don't mind if these women continue to record their minutae and do it badly; I'm just not going to read it anymore.

Talking About a Resolution

2007-12-31T22:09:00.000-05:00

It's New Year's Eve, and though I am usually scrambling to think of resolutions I need to make, I ought to make for the new year, this year I will have only one, and it is one that I have put a lot of thought into for once: to lose the habit of casting pearls before swine. Everything else will proceed from that. I will not offer my help, and instead will wait to be asked. This will be the hardest resolution for me to keep because I like to help others. The gifts I have I will use for my own gain and where they will be most appreciated. I will make a list of my 'marketable' skills and match them up first with my family's needs, my own, and then those of deserving persons and organizations who have asked for them. As for friendships, well, I have always had the most luck with waiting for them to happen rather than trying to make friends, though more often than not, offers of friendship from others have turned out to be thinly veiled demands for incorporation: attend a shower, buy a gift, help with childcare, shop for someone, provide free writing instruction and language practice. I think that being so generous is a character flaw, as is being too forgiving. I have always thought the question, "what's in it for me?" a selfish one, and it is one which it goes against my nature to ask, but now I am thinking that maybe I would be happier if I asked it more often. I am too often disappointed to find that I was being used, and I am too old to care to deal with that disappointment. And honestly, I'm weary of, well, casting my pearls before swine, then picking them, cleaning them off and apologizing to the pigs for troubling them.

Smell the Flowers

2007-12-12T15:35:00.000-05:00

The weather is absolutely beautiful again today: sunny, warm, near 80 and breezy. I awoke at six this morning thinking that today I would like to smell some flowers. It took me half the day, but I finally went out to the porch, from where I can smell the tea olive (does that thing ever stop blooming?) while I wrote two more pages on the new story. Then I went out to photograph the camellias, which unlike any camellia I had ever known, have a scent that reminds me of my great grandmother who grew camellias.
It should turn cold again by Saturday. I'm glad I'm headed for the Caribbean. Unless I could have some serious winter (like a snowstorm in Lednice), I would be perfectly content with this constant Spring, with or without the flowers.

The Church of Christ Without Church

2007-12-10T11:28:00.001-05:00

I took my packages to one of the smaller Post Offices around here today so I could treat myself to a little scenery and to evaluate the incompetence of US Postal workers at another location. I wasn't disappointed by either the scenery or the people in the post office. First, the Postmaster (a salaried federal employee with an average pay of more than $60,000 per year) demonstrated both her ignorance of geography and her inability to pronounce 'Czech', by pointing and asking, "Where is that?", with a look on her face that belied her hearfelt conviction that nowhere is as clean and sweet-smelling as America, " Russia?" I opened my mouth to explain, then thought better of it. After all, I needed my package to get to Lenka safe and sound. When a regular customer came in, the Postmaster and she (a Briton, no less) began to expound upon the many virtues of real torture for people in prisons and to complain about the cushy lives prisoners 'enjoy' at public expense. After listening to this for as long as I could, I asked them if either of them had ever toured a prison or known anyone who had done time in one. "Noo," they both answered, the stench of my knowledge of such things flaring their nostrils. (Criminals, foreigners, and the people who know them all smell bad, apparently). I admit that I should have kept my mouth shut, but when have I ever been good at that? I pointed out the lower recidivism rates in prison systems that educate, counsel and train the incarcerated, and that the fact is that prison inmates do not get three square meals and a cot in a climate controlled room with cable TV. Of course, they didn't buy it. I wish I had the courage at such times to ask "what would Jesus do?" and to ask if they are aware of any teaching of Christ which sanctions punishment, to tell them about my church, the Church of Christ without Church just to watch them gawk. They wouldn't be listening to really hear the name of it. Me and Hazel Motes. Fine company I have put myself in. We're preaching to the masses, who wear their church on their cars and their faith in their mouths.

Absit Omen

2007-12-05T19:50:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is a big BYOA art show and sale, and not only have I not made anything for it, but I haven't really felt like looking at what I have already that I could take. I have started a new story, a complete departure from my earlier ones, and though it is already ten pages from the first draft at the first sitting, it too isn't finished. I hope this is just a function of my mood this week. It's cold and dreary, and without snow or sunshine, I am loathe to get much accomplished.
We will leave for a cruise in a week, so I have been mostly focused on the planning and packing for that. I really need to get back to my Spanish. I have enough to converse and to learn more without relying on English at all. I am disappointed in my progess. I started in April, took a break from it from June to late September, and have been less than consicientious for the last couple of weeks. Perhaps it is my lack of discipline that I should be put out with. I think the trip to Mexico will be great motivation for getting back to it. Nothing like using a foreign language in a foreign country to get me motivated.
I have at least managed to cook this week. One day was a nice Chinese noodle dish which is so easy that I don't know why I don't make it more often. Mexican yesterday. Tomorrow, maybe a roast or Osso Buco, something that will take the chill off the kitchen and our moods while it's cooking.