LaurieWrites

Roll with the changes...

Strange things are afoot, part II:

*At left, the most ridiculous sign in Blockbuster ever.

*And my favorite quote of the evening, from Nicolas Cage. on CNN's Showbiz Tonight: "I love irony. I'm an actor." Okay.

*No, that is not the sky you hear falling. I have started running. I know, I can't believe it myself. Two nights this week. My knees are all, "Hello? Remember us? And remember you, and all those cheeseburgers? You are KILLIN' US!" However, I pushed on through, and the frightening thing is, I think I like it. The weather has been gorgeous, and it was awesome to be outside working out for a change, as opposed to the gym that will house me from (at least) November through March/April (depending on the vagaries of spring weather round 'chere.) Watch out. Running. I have never liked running, but all of a sudden I do. Amazing what those Nike Shox can do for a girl. Oh, man. I love these shoes. Even the very hot, yet very silly, trainer at the fitness center at school said, "Hey, nice shoes," and I was actually all proud. ; )

*I have to turn in my first roll of shot film on Tuesday and I am totally nervous. There are so many things to keep track of -  so many numbers! My friend Shobha is a photographer, and she helped me when she was home last weekend. I really want to be good at this part of it - the mechanical, developing part. The "capturing intriguing images" part of the gig isn't so hard. My professor said on the first night that photographers are capturing the most accurate and comprehensive anthropological record of this age, and I believe that. It's an amazing thing. But like any art, there is a science behind it. I think I'll get there. I still need to get the digital, but even with cutting expenses I still don't have a ton of cash left over, and I refuse to charge it. I'm excited about working in black and white.

* I am singing onstage at a show we are putting on at work next month. I have completely lost my mind, but I think this time I'm using those powers for good. I think. At least that's what my friends who suckered me into doing it are leading me to think. Suckers.

* I have connected or reconnected with lots of friends since early summer. It is bringing lots of new energy in - sorely needed, I might add.

* I am going to Las Vegas the first week in October. I am freaking out! I'm dubbing it the second leg of my Southwest Tour, 2005. One of my biggest goals in life is to visit every state, so I can knock out Nevada and Arizona this year, and that is so exciting. I would love to go into California but I'm traveling pretty closely with other people, so that may well not happen. We'll see. In any event, it'll be interesting to see what all the hype is about in Vegas, not that I'm interested in (or have the money for...) gambling. We are going to try to go to at least one big old show that they're so famous for. No Celine Dion. Bleh.

Life can be so interesting if we let it.

Will you be my American dream......

Strange things are afoot, part I... 

I have been beyond humbled in the past couple of weeks by the hurricane coverage. Amidst the screaming commentators, staggering lack of solid information, and intensely disturbing images in all manner of media, I've sought out my own sense of what happened and why, and what it means to a country to have a specific area suffer so. It's like having a temporary Atlantis as our neighbor. I'm sick of people saying "I've stopped watching it", because I think as fellow citizens we should see how these folks are doing. I was away with friends when the levees broke (talk about a wacky song reference from now on...) and they were kind of irritated with me for watching it. I couldn't help it. First of all, I wanted to be aware of where all of these people were headed. Sometimes I'm concerned that we'll have a civil war. If one of our cities topples, others can too. And I think there are some really angry, really desperate people who wouldn't need to be pushed far to start things up. Clearly, cities and civilizations are held together by some pretty fragile threads that we mistake for galvanized steel. Look what happens during a crisis - hospitals, universities, a million buildings - just gone. Anyway, what I'm taking away, besides the incomprehensible suffering, is the reminder that all of this - this life, this civilization, this "republic" that our "leaders" like to spout off about in the name of a very small strata of its citizens, is, like anything made my human beings, inherently fragile.

It's hard to think about it, and I know I don't win any friends when I flip on the news right now, but I think it's really important to be informed about the largest displacement of American citizens since the Civil War. I wish I had a million dollars, or a house to put people in, or a job I could actually leave for a time to help these people directly. As it stands, I think I'm going to do the Red Cross disaster training, and go visit my friend in Austin where lots of people have gone.  It's hard to know what to do, really, when there's so much to do for a group of people and so (in my case) few resources. I just keep in touch with the news, try to make sense of what's happening in the world around me, and live a good life where I am. I don't know sometimes what else most of us can do but that.

Baby, Three More Times

Um, hello. So yes, after a seventeen month, completely photographed pregnancy, Britney and K-Fed had a BABY today, a baby no doubt born shaking from caffeine withdrawal after months of mom's big old Starbucks drinks. But guess what? Guess who else had a baby this week, and got nary a peep on the People website?

Tina Fey, people. Tina Fey is a mom. And Maya Rudolph will be on maternity leave from Saturday Night Live this season also. Wow. I wonder if Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch are at the doctor as I type?

I can just imagine life with Tina Fey as my mom. She'd wear that blue blazer and those funky glasses all the time. Every day would be full of rollickingly sarcastic comments, delivered in between visits from freakish side show impersonating characters. She'd throw pencils across the desk at you when you were done speaking. She'd sing occasionally, and mostly read off cue cards.

Ahem, anyway.

In honor of these momentous SNL births, that thankfully have nothing to do with Britney Spears and her overexposure while leaving public restrooms and her fast food habits, here is my very favorite Sylvia Hewlett rant, from SNL's Weekend Update a couple years back. There are typos, but you'll get the drift. Got the job done, girls. Yes you did. : )

Castles in the Sand

Some people in my building - and in other places I've worked - have "zen gardens" on their desks. These are typically miniature Japanese-style gardens, with fake baby bonsai trees, tiny pebbles, sand, and a little rake...maybe a teeny pagoda or some such accessories. The idea is to pick up the little rake when you're feeling some strain, or needing some meditative activity, and push the sand around for a while. You can make patterns in it, back and forth...back and forth...Sand meditation. Ahhhhhhhhh. They're neat little things really, and when I go to visit my friend down the hall who has one, I always find myself raking away (or pushing the sand around with my fingers. I'm not proud.)

So, I bought myself a sand castle garden last week when I was at the beach. It's totally unnecessary, but I love it. It has a teeny shovel and a teeny trowel, miniature sand molds, and shells - even a SAILBOAT. How fun is that????? Don't answer that. I assembled it today (to the utter amusement of several people who only know HALF the child I can be) and set it by my monitor, so when I'm on the phone or need a mental break (only like 100 times a day) I can pretend I'm at the smallest beach in the universe...and build tiny sand castles in November.

Today's Conversation

"The greatest thing was that she, like, was the first person besides my mom and dad to see me, like, as soon as I was born. And I, like, was the last person, besides the nurses, to see her right before she died.

It was awesome."

~ Overheard conversation while waiting to cross the street today. The speaker was maybe 14, and was talking to her friend, also a young teenaged girl. It was very touching.

K-Fed likes the Caramel Frappy

The response to this story (in quotes below) made me laugh:

Pop superstar Britney Spears has revealed her three favourites names for her unborn child. They include Sean Preston if it's a boy and Addison Shye if it's a girl. However, the singer had also said that she is considering calling her baby London! Britney told Female First that she has a gut feeling her first child is a boy, but has not found out its sex because her and husband Kevin Federline want it to be a suprise at the birth.

"Actually London is pretty tame compared to what I thought she'd name it. I figured we'd all be talking about little Starbucks Frappy Federline."

I don't know why it's called Indian Summer, although it likely has something to do with the harvest. However, what I do know is that it's heartbreakingly beautiful. There's a way the light hits everything, not quite so heavy, less in focus. It's good, you know, to see things a little less clearly sometimes. The other way has been giving me a headache lately.

I have a cold, and it's pissing me off. It's slowing me down a bit, and I can't really afford that right now. I'm in a place where I don't feel that I have any profound things to say about anything. I have more friends than I've had in a long, long time, which feels good, but I find myself dancing on the surface of so many things. I either can't or won't take the time to feel them more deeply.

"If you're going through hell, keep going," Winston Churchill allegedly said, and I'm trying to keep in mind that I'm NOT really...My neurosis is silenced by the constant stream of images of people clutching to houses, wading through literally shitty water, crying on tarmacs in towns they never had a minute's desire to visit much less live in. Taking a Louisianan to Cape Cod may as well be taking them around the world, and in spite of the fact that it's safe and dry, and I'm sure there is gratitude for that, what a loss this is for so many in terms of spiritual as well as physical geography.

I stopped watching television two days ago, although my father is addicted to the coverage, and sits up every night flipping from msnbc to cnn, Tucker Carlson to Anderson Cooper (why do they all have last-name names?) The clip that sent me over the edge covered the Humane Society's response to the disaster, and showed the dogs wandering around in the shallows of the receding water. I couldn't take it. I couldn't take the stories of the people leaving their animals to get on buses and planes - one young boy cried, reportedly, until he threw up, and I can understand -, or the stories of people staying because they wouldn't. I realized for a hot second that I wasn't sure WHAT I would choose, if it was between leaving a hellhole for an assuredly safe spot without my dog, or staying in it, still with a chance of survival, with him. More moments than most, I imagine I would stay. It doesn't pay to be connected to things, or beings, some might say, but I'd argue that these kinds of connections are what give our lives some meaning. Without them, we're just shells on buses to strange towns, where there may or may not be happiness waiting for us.

Last year, when Mike and I were driving to a wedding on what would turn out to be a devastating day for a couple of reasons, I saw a dog torn, literally, in half by the side of a country road. We had been bickering about something or the other that meant absolutely nothing, and I was putting on some kind of reparatory makeup that wasn't doing much good at the same time. It was cold, and kind of cloudy - what I remember to be kind of a crappy day for a wedding. I looked out the window, and as soon as I saw the horror of what amounted to domestic animal roadkill, I forgot whatever it was we were on about, and immediately burst into the most wracking of sobs. They erupted from somewhere deep inside of me where most tears don't, and I know he realized that because he wasn't mad at me anymore and did the only thing he probably knew to do at that moment, and took my hand and patted it and told me it was okay, and not to look over there anymore. The funny thing is, we whizzed by it in a second, and it was burned into my brain. I cried for the poor little guy because he was killed, of course, but mostly because he was alone, and so damaged, and I wondered if anyone loved him and if they knew where he was, so they could at least put him somewhere better than out in the open like that. I cried thinking of the possibility that that could happen to an animal I loved, or any animal, really, and that when it comes down to it there's nothing you can do to stop it, except for latch the door or the gate, and pray that they don't get excited and jump over or out.

And I don't really remember much about the ceremony after that, except for a solo guitarist playing Prince's "Diamonds and Pearls", and the bride and groom vowing to share the first bite of their meat and first sip of their cup, and me turning to Mike and telling him that nobody was getting the first bite of MY meat, thank you very much, as there are keepable and truly unmanageable vows.

I hadn't thought about that dog much in the months since, until the other day when I saw that horrible hurricane animal rescue coverage. I imagined then that if it were me, walking away from one of the only breathing things that loved me unconditionally, my cries would go all the way to heaven. And this would be especially true if I, like many of these people leaving what mattered most behind, had had so little in the way of breaks, or creature comforts in my lifetime, and my dog, who didn't care what I did for a living or how much I had, would consider me the queen of everything. And it would be especially true that my cries might carry that far, because at one point they almost did, for a strange broken animal by the side of the road.

The end of the summer...

A few shots from the beach last week should round out the summer nicely...

First of all, here's the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, through the window. I thought this was very cool. I love driving over the bridge. It's one of the most freeing yet kind of nerve-wracking experiences. Every time I cross it I imagine how hard it is for people to build such structures, all in the name of getting us from one place to the other quicker, or housing us closer together, or meeting whatever other modern need we might have. The day was cloudy, but warm - a nice day for a drive.

Here's my "Still Life While Washing Off Sand". The almost-sundown shadows were so pretty, and I had lined all this stuff up with no intention of taking a picture of it. It just struck me as a great summer shot all of a sudden...Never mind the people staring at the crazy lady taking pictures of her shorts and shoes.

I'm taking photography this semester. Can't you tell? ; ) 

Love, New Orleans

From columnist Chris Rose of The Times-Picayune, posted at www.nola.com

Dear America,

I suppose we should introduce ourselves: We're South Louisiana.

We have arrived on your doorstep on short notice and we apologize for that, but we never were much for waiting around for invitations. We're not much on formalities like that.

And we might be staying around your town for a while, enrolling in your schools and looking for jobs, so we wanted to tell you a few things about us. We know you didn't ask for this and neither did we, so we're just going to have to make the best of it.

First of all, we thank you. For your money, your water, your food, your prayers, your boats and buses and the men and women of your National Guards, fire departments, hospitals and everyone else who has come to our rescue.

We're a fiercely proud and independent people, and we don't cotton much to outside interference, but we're not ashamed to accept help when we need it. And right now, we need it.

Just don't get carried away. For instance, once we get around to fishing again, don't try to tell us what kind of lures work best in your waters.

We're not going to listen. We're stubborn that way.

You probably already know that we talk funny and listen to strange music and eat things you'd probably hire an exterminator to get out of your yard.

We dance even if there's no radio. We drink at funerals. We talk too much and laugh too loud and live too large and, frankly, we're suspicious of others who don't.

But we'll try not to judge you while we're in your town.

Everybody loves their home, we know that. But we love South Louisiana with a ferocity that borders on the pathological. Sometimes we bury our dead in LSU sweatshirts.

Often we don't make sense. You may wonder why, for instance - if we could only carry one small bag of belongings with us on our journey to your state - why in God's name did we bring a pair of shrimp boots?

We can't really explain that. It is what it is.

You've probably heard that many of us stayed behind. As bad as it is, many of us cannot fathom a life outside of our border, out in that place we call Elsewhere.

The only way you could understand that is if you have been there, and so many of you have. So you realize that when you strip away all the craziness and bars and parades and music and architecture and all that hooey, really, the best thing about where we come from is us.

We are what made this place a national treasure. We're good people. And don't be afraid to ask us how to pronounce our names. It happens all the time.

When you meet us now and you look into our eyes, you will see the saddest story ever told. Our hearts are broken into a thousand pieces.

But don't pity us. We're gonna make it. We're resilient. After all, we've been rooting for the Saints for 35 years. That's got to count for something.

OK, maybe something else you should know is that we make jokes at inappropriate times.

But what the hell.

And one more thing: In our part of the country, we're used to having visitors. It's our way of life.

So when all this is over and we move back home, we will repay to you the hospitality and generosity of spirit you offer to us in this season of our despair.

That is our promise. That is our faith.

Chris Rose can be reached at noroses@bellsouth.net

Autumn Leaves

Voila, a new color scheme.

I walked into Starbucks today, totally mourning summer. I had such a great time at the ocean this week - great friends, good food, awesome weather. I wasn't quite ready to come back and face the grind, or the grownup stuff I have to deal with that comes along with it. I was a little out of it, "re-entering reality", and I needed a cup of coffee to ease the pain. Just to prove how life can turn on a dime, and despair to happiness along with it, I was greeted with the thrilling news that the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte is BACK ON THE MENU.

These retail giants really know how to manipulate me into adjusting to the change of seasons. It may still be 85 degrees outside. I may still be shaking the sand out from between my still-summer-hot-pink-toes. I may have been sitting on the beach yesterday, enjoying one of the most gorgeous days I've ever spent on the Atlantic coast (I'm not even lying. It was incredible.) I may be quite (heehee) gorgeously tan. Yeah, yeah. With a swipe of the menu board and a swirl of the Sharpie at my favorite purveyor of caffeine crack, it's FALL. Heat be damned, I'm pulling out my long pants and buying bags of miniature candy. (And yes, it is still "fall" to me. Autumn is such a pretty word, but I just can't say it - outside of poetry - without feeling like a dork.)

The day when I walked into my local Starbucks last winter and realized that there were no more Pumpkin Spice Lattes to be had was very dark, indeed. I was already having a crappy winter, Mistress of Darkness was I, and pity the poor young barista who refused me. I probably withered him with a glance, when he innocently said, "No, sorry. Not 'til next year." Even the Toffee Nut variety, which held out for a little longer, could not quell my distress. Sigh. I love pumpkin things - pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake, cinnamon and nutmeg and muffins and PIE. I've had some kickass pumpkin soup in my other life as a foodie (do not turn up your nose at root veggie soups, until you've tried them. Seriously good.) It even turns out that with all its beta-carotene, pumpkin is likely to reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease. I might even like pumpkin juice (obscure Harry Potter reference, from someone who doesn't even make them, and hasn't even read the last book yet...Scary.) Even my dog is named Punkinhead (pidgin pumpkin, so to speak.)

Anyway, besides giving me an incredible treat when I was going through beach and summer withdrawal, today's unexpected pumpkin goodness inspired me to change up my colors a bit on here. I'm a huge fan of orange tones - what I call the "sunset colors" - that call to mind the fall, yummy spice candles, leaves and drives enhanced by (what I can't help but call...) lovely foliage. It's one of the reasons I don't think I could live in the south full-time. I do love the change of seasons, as much as I'm not a fan of extreme cold. Fall and spring are necessary intervals, sensory treats of an incredible degree, and when they happen, there's no holding them back. I'm sad to see the warm weather - and the fun times that go with it - go, but here in my state and many others, there are still glories to behold. And only one of them happens to be sold at Starbucks.

*And here, in fact, as more proof that if it's not on the Internet, it JUST DOESN'T EXIST, is a recipe for a "mock Pumpkin Spice Latte". Of course, this is found on a site called Starbucks Gossip, so there ya go.