Red Queen Day: May 2006

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

The Art for the Day is: Persistence

OMG, am I repeating myself? I'll have to check that out. They say (and they are people who think about this stuff a lot) that life is like a spiral. You think you are back again at the same place, but in fact you are one level up above the place you were before. I hope so. Today has been cooler than I expected, so maybe I will rearrange my schedule, and rearrange the room that is too hot to be in when it's hot and muggy out today, rather than later in the week. The cat has rediscovered the couch, and I should clean it off too.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

The Art of the Day is: the Art of Performance

Monday, May 29, 2006

The Art for the Day is: The Art of Acting Grown Up

As opposed to actually being grown up? Well, in this case finding yourself doing something you were very good at as a child, and catching yourself, realizing it's not such a good method of getting what you want, and changing the behavior.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

The Art for the Day is: The art of embracing your idiosyncrasies

Which seems to have brought us to Red Queen Rule #2:

Be yourself, it's who you do best.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

The Art of the Day is: The Art of Remembering Kindness

Jimmy's birthday. He would have been 56. There is a Concours d'Elegance in Newport this weekend. And fog, fog, fog.

Friday, May 26, 2006

The Art for the Day is: The Art of Making Connections

Recently I've run into a couple of couple of degrees of separation relationships, and I'm thinking: How cool is that?

Henry Miller --> Geraldine Fitzgerald --> ME!

(do degrees of separation hold if the person is dead? (Mr Miller and Ms.Fitzgerald))
Marilyn K lent me a book to read, "To Paint is to Love Again" by Henry Miller. Towards the end of the book he mentions that he met Geraldine Fitzgerald. I met Geraldine Fitzgerald when she was producing a show called "Feathertop"- a musical about a scarecrow, and she came into the costume shop where I was working, picked up my cat, who was being a shop cat that summer, petted him and said "Pretty Pussy".
OK, maybe it's not that remarkable, it's just that it was unexpected.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

The Art for the Day is: Being Lighthearted

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The Art for the Day is: Core diving

I have had a deepening understanding of why something (I am being intentionally vague) is so important to me. I'll try to put it into words. I may or may not succeed.
I want to be happy. I want to be over with mourning. I miss my best friend.
Sometimes I miss him, and sometimes I miss the idea of him. I don’t expect to replace him, but I want to fill the void. This causes me some anxiety, because I don’t want to appear or feel disloyal. This has something to do with reorganizing my home after painting. Part of me is happy to be organizing things and removing years of clutter. Another part of me realizes that this is another step in cleaning out his stuff. Good. Remind myself it is only stuff. Remember not to forget.
I am and will always be really grateful to someone who showed me that I have the capacity to re-engage; to put it dramatically, to love again. But it is not reciprocal, and that has become OK. To learn that you can have a crush at my age, and to learn that you can get over a crush is a good thing to know. And if I used him to get from there to here, I hope I used him well. But if I used him as a surrogate best friend, what do I do about that? That is not reciprocal either. Reciprocal is not exactly the word, because there is a friendship there. It’s out of whack, out of balance, not equivalent? Not symetrical. I am not his best friend. I am more reliant on him than the other way around, and while I need to pull back, to find another solution, I’m not there yet, and in the meantime I don’t want to lose the friendship, just re-establish it. It’s all about relationships.
In the meantime all I have to do is remember to breathe, especially when you are diving.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

The Art for the Day is: Keeping my eyes on my own plate

“There are at least two kinds of education”--- George Ade (1866-1944)

There are least two meanings to this art.

Simply, and strongly: Mind your own business. Pay attention to what you’ve got to deal with and don’t go looking over to other people’s problems.

Personally and literally: Watch what you eat, and don’t be jealous of what someone else can have, for you it’s poison.

In sports and business: Focus

Socially and in the spirit of civility: Pay more attention to your own manners than the person or persons you are dining with. Everyone will have a more pleasant evening.

There are probably more meanings, and certainly more nuances, but overall it’s good practice.
I now declare this Red Queen Rule #1. (I can do that sort of thing, it's my blog).
Keep your eyes on your own plate.

Monday, May 22, 2006

The Art for the Day is: Memory Jogging

At 5:00 this morning I had planned out what I was going to write about. Like trying to remember a dream, it's gone now.
But I was also reading up on some programming stuff, and it came back to me, I know this stuff.
Memory: it comes and goes.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

The Art for the Day is: Measuring

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Home Sweet Home, more or less.

Here today, gone tomorrow, so I’m not going to try to make order out of chaos tonight, anyhow.
The ceiling is intact, hooray! but everything smells musty, or vaguely like my neighbor’s cigars. So tomorrow may be airing out day, and laundry day, and measuring the walls and windows day. I suppose I’m considering redecorating. One can’t call it redecorating if one never really decorated in the first place. My house style was more of assemblage and inheritance. There was a time when I made window curtains, but not here. Lists. I need to make lists! Project Home, phase two begins.

The Art for the Day is: Flexibility

I was going to post a downish note, because I was feeling sort of blue, but I went to visit cousins last night, and they cheered me right up. It was great fun watching the family dynamics (they are bright and engaging without being pepperish (pilpul, in Hebrew)), and it was also interesting to see other relatives in their faces. Evie has Scott expressions, and her dad has his mother's eyes. I gave them my blog address, so it's quite possible they will read this, so I'll say Thank You for the evening, and the attitude adjustment.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Random thought:
What if the next PBS reality series was 1960's Negril Commune?

The Art of the Day is: Dreamweaving

Thursday, May 18, 2006

The Art of the Day is: The art of association

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

I had a funny earworm this morning, but now I can't remember it. I think my friend Karen must have a whole worm farm in her head. Consider that!
I am still in Michigan, and thouroughly enjoying Diet Vernor's Ginger Soda, and some sunshine. That was the earworm: Singing in the Rain.

The Art for the Day is: Invention

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The Art of the Day is: Keeping Count

Last night I was stopped at a railway crossing. I counted 58 cars, but there was another train behind it, and I didn't count those. It was an immediate experiential understanding that I was in the Midwest.

Monday, May 15, 2006

“Pack up all my cares and woe,
Here I go
Singing low
Bye, bye blackbird”.

The current earworm.
Earworms are those songs that get stuck in your head. The term is relatively new. I first heard it on All Things Considered (NPR) whose theme has been known to be an earworm in and of itself.
I wake up with earworms.
I have background music in my head when I’m playing solitaire on the computer. Currently it’s a Chopin nocturne. BTW I usually mute the sounds on my computer, now make what you will of that, and tell me if you send me anything that needs to be listened to.

“Life is impossibly lyrical,
Is it me?
No it’s you.”

I think I have a varied repertoire of earworms, but it probably skews to the folksy, show tunes, light classical, and pre-1980’s rock. A baby boomer.
Earlier today I was earworming on Tom Lehrer’s “The Pope”,(did he write it?)but that’s probably because they were talking about the score to The DaVinci Code on NPR.

The Art for the Day is: The art of internal music

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Sto (Czech)
Cent (French)
Hundrede (Danish)
Yüz (Turkish)
Száz (Hungarian)
Mia (Swahili)
One hundred

This is my 100th post!

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Mother’s Day

Another holiday, like New Year’s Day and Valentine’s Day where it is easy to feel marginalized, when people like airport attendants and restaurant hosts assume you are a mom, even if you’re not. Remember: you missed the boat.
And/or you can choose to focus on your mother. Is this the second or third Mother’s day since she died? Well, it seems like only yesterday.
It’s also been raining, hard. So I’ve had a good cry. I believe in good cries.
I remember things that I bought for my mother for mother’s day: a small, delicate, orange glass cream pitcher that sat on the hutch for years, velcro closing terry shower wraps, charms for bracelets, cards and flowers. Nothing extraordinary, adequate.
I just put together why a friend was heading out to visit his mother’s grave. A new way to celebrate Mother’s Day.
Maybe I’ll call some of my aunts.

The Art for the Day is: on the edge between nostalgia and sentimentality

The Art for the Day is: Separating wheat from chaff

Friday, May 12, 2006

I have been corrected twice. I am not less interesting.

The Art for the Day is: Reorganizing

Thursday, May 11, 2006

I am approaching 100 Blog entries. Doing anything consistently seems to me to be a good thing. I would like to retrain myself to do more (good) things consistently. I think this is the most journaling I have ever done on an almost daily basis. Yes, some of the entries are just one line, but it has been a line about something I've felt or wanted to work on that day. I used to keep poetry journals in high school and college. I was SO dramatic then, but I could go weeks or months without writing anything new.
I have also kept a sketch book as organizer for years now, but that is more about keeping a calendar than keeping a diary.
I have noticed that I blog not like I speak, but more like I sketch. I get something very interesting down (on paper) very quickly, and there is something good and energetic about it. As I go back to refine it I stiffen up, doubt my instincts, end up with a section or two that pleases me, and the rest of it is trash. I have done some refining, drafts of things I've written here, but have for the most part been quick sketching, like an exercise, like warming up.
There seem to be one or two things that come up as themes, but apart from serious and flippant, I'm not ready to categorize them yet.

The Art of the Day is:Persistence

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Fallen out of love

I’ve done it. I’ve fallen out of love. And the world is duller, and things are more normal. I am less interesting and less interested. A patina instead of a shine. More grounded, less inventive. Calmer. Less excited. Less invested. Less emotional. More resigned. More room in my brain for other thoughts, but no thoughts are coming in. Not upset. Not angry, Not anxious. Not ambitious. Not even lost. The lid is back on the box. I’m more in control and less in awe.

The Art of the Day is: The Art of Moving On

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Another Red Queen Rant:

The smell of paint. Finally. Today MY painter came to start working on the ceiling and wall that got ruined when the skylight leaked (months, seasons, ago). I realized that he became MY painter, not so much when I gave him the deposit check, but when he deposited it. I became invested in him, so to speak. Yes, indeed I had. I know because I waited for him to show up as anxiously as I’ve waited for a date to show up, and was as disappointed when he didn’t show up. I was concerned about what had happened to him.
I wondered why I was so caught up in his problems, and why I was so affected by them.
Because I chose him. Because I was depending on him to do something I couldn’t do on my own. Because maybe I had made a mistake. Because there was/is too much drama in his life, and I had been pretty successful at not hanging out with people “like that” for a while. Little blinking yellow lights were going off in my head. Caution, and lack of patience.
People like that: whatever do you mean, other joan?
People who drop in and out, say they’ll be in touch and don’t follow through. Chickens. People I have to cajole or intimidate to get what I want. People who remind me that I used to be like them. People who do not bring out the best in me.

The Art for the Day is: Proportion

Monday, May 08, 2006

The Art for the Day is: Dusting

as in dusting out corners, deep cleaning, going back to things you have ignored for a while.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

The Art for Today is: The Art of Moving Gracefully

if it needs to be done, do it with style.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

The Art of the Day is: Zephyrvescence

being like a soft cool breeze.

Friday, May 05, 2006

The Art of the Day is: The art of thought tickling

This definately deserves a list:

I'm sure there are many more, and this is just a start.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

The Art for the Day is: Perspective

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

The Art of the Day is: Ambivalence, Ambiguity

I might be pushing the art a bit, but I do remember the day when I realized what I felt was ambivalence. Truly. Not neutral, but some positive, some negative, and balanced there. It came up again for me recently when I got stuck not feeling fish or fowl, happy for me, but sad for someone else at the same time. It strikes me as a mature feeling, because it demands standing back and observing how you are feeling, and being OK with no firm answer. I'm not this, I'm not that, I'm somewhere in between, and I'll wait and see what develops.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The Art of the Day is: Listening

Monday, May 01, 2006

The Art of the Day is: The Art of Maintaining Possitive Momentum

Some days "It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place". This blog is to chronicle the running, and point out the interesting things, people, places, I meet on the way.

: Name: the other Joan; Location: New Hampshire, United States

I've lived in all 4 New states, NY, NJ, NM, NH. I grew up as far away as you can from Manhattan and still take the subway.(I used to put subway tokens in my penny loafers so I could click my heels three times and go home). I've sung solo in the Parma Opera House. My brother and sister are twins. I believe that people want to be used, but they want to be used well.

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Keep your eyes on your
own plate
Be yourself,
it's who you do best
Every problem has
a family

Red Queen Day