Countertop still life
Whatever ‘it’ is
As Nora Ephron once wrote in the New York Times Book Review, “Fiction is chance to rework your life so that you give illusion of being intelligence at center of it.”
I’d settle for being either somewhat intelligent or at center of it – either one.
How ’bout you?
Why tribe? As a poet once asked …
In my novel What’s Left, she has every reason to proclaim:
Nobody breathes a word about hippie. We’re simply ever so hip.
She and her brothers and cousins had their own style and direction, apart from whatever their parents had done. And the quip didn’t survive into the final version of the text.
Still, though, if you look to the time of the pivotal Woodstock music festival , you might ask if we were trying to be neo-mountain men or newly converted Amerindians or spaced-out yogis or cool Victorians (without the inhibitions) or liberated urbanites or … ? Well, a huge stream of historic inspiration fed into the movement, and we were willing to play with just about any wild expressive fashion.
What’s easily overlooked is how huge the role of the Gypsy – or, more correctly, Roma – was.
The very term Boho or Bohemian – as in Puccini’s opera, La Boheme, dealing with starving underground artists in Paris – has far more to do with the Roma than with any geographic region of eastern Europe. Even Brahms’ famous Hungarian Rhapsodies are code words for Gypsy violin music. As for Spanish flamenco? Ditto. Play your guitar, if you will, or dance wildly.
So underground artists are …? You got it.
And here, drafting and revising my novel I found myself forced to ask:
Why are they so widely romanticized?
And why are they so widely reviled?
As Cassia investigates her father’s reasons for moving into the extended family where she’s grown up, she digs far beyond his counterculture inclinations.
Well, for a hint, here’s something else I cut from the final version:
The scandals, according to Nita? I’m not going there. Not that any of it was bad, on the contrary. There’s just too much to delve into now. And then, despite herself, she does.
~*~
Like Cassia’s father, I did live in a rundown farm where we all split the rent. And like him, I later lived in a monastic setting, where ours was based on yoga and its Hindu writings rather than Buddhism.
Not all hippies veered off in those directions.
Have you ever wanted to live in a Gypsy wagon? How about a tree house?
Snow measure
Looks cold to me
Ten things I don’t like about December
- Too dark. It’s not just waking up and going to bed in the dark. Where I live, it also means going to work in the dark and coming home in the same. And that’s coming from someone who’s officially retired.
- Too cold. Where I live, we’re just not used to it yet.
- Too many shoppers. That means long lines at the cash register everywhere.
- And all that shopper traffic. Parking lots are full. Traffic lights are backed up.
- Everybody’s snarly. Can’t blame them. So am I.
- Santa Claus ditties. They’re coming out of ceilings everywhere. They have nothing to do with the birth of the Christ Child.
- Lying to innocent children. These presents don’t come from a fat man in a red suit, for starters. He doesn’t come down a chimney anywhere in the world. And telling them all this blarmy undermines their trust in anything else we tell them, especially about Jesus.
- Guilt, paralysis, and panic. For guys, especially, this hits hard about three days before the big event, when we still haven’t figured out what to get anyone.
- Everything else stops. Do I really need to explain this?
- It’s all about the Holiday Season. Or more accurately, holiday shopping. Let’s be honest and admit that what’s happening has very little to do with what should be happening.
How about a few firsts?
Yesterday was not only the first day of December, it was also the first day of Advent.
(Make that Advent in the Western Christian calender, which runs between 21 and 27 days before Christmas, depending. The Eastern Orthodox faithful, in contrast, observe it as a 40-day fast that began November 15 this year.)
For us, our first snowfall of the year also began yesterday, and it’s already delivered seven inches, a bit under half of what’s expected by tomorrow morning.
My wife was pleased to have all of this also fall into the extended Thanksgiving Day weekend, a welcome break in what’s been a chaotic schedule.
How’s the month kicking off for you?
Regarding designer John Galliano
As he said: “It has to be raw and sophisticated at the same time.”
He often revised by looking at models in a mirror … would see the flaw … like looking through a camera, framing?
Antique farmers’ forks
Jnana's Red Barn 