I'm 40 Today

Happy Birthday to Me!

Love & Architecture

Timothy "Speed" Levitch in The Cruise (1998)

Sunday Morning

Inspiration

I woke up today thinking; I'd like to get some writing done.

Then I meditated, putzed around, went over to Sandy's and watched the end of a movie. I drove down my favorite street and I came home.

I re-read completed chapters, moving commas and adverbs around and then I remember... Skip says: "There's always inspiration in the refrigerator."

I'll have to see if he's right.

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Blessing Seeds

I got all sorts of unexpected goodies today!

1) A boy gave me a mix CD
2) Delane bought me lunch
3) The florist brought me a chocolate orchid

And it's only five o'clock...............

Sugar Scrub

As summertime comes to a head, I begin to make amends for damage done by the sun and the surf to my skin and hair. I battle any lasting atrophy with one of my favorite remedies: a SUGAR SCRUB!
I only need two things for a proper sugar scrub; and .
(I don't always get these brands, however I do prefer the thickest, greenest, fruitiest smelling olive oil my grocer has on offer. )

My sugar scrub begins with a hot oil treatment for super-shiny locks. But I'm getting ahead of myself. OK, here's how it goes, from start to finish...

I run a bath (and make it hot). What goes in the water generally depends on my mood; Today it'll be a light bath oil. I get in the water and I lay back, submerging my hair and floating around in there (shaving, masking, plucking and whatnot) for as long as I can stand it. My pores open by the heat of the water.

When I've had my fill, I wring the extra water from my hair and dunk a hand towel in the hot water. I pour a few handfuls of olive oil over my damp hair and squeeze the excess water from the hand towel as well. I wrap my hair with the towel (turban style) and with that, I drain my bathwater.

While sitting in the tub, I mix the two ingredients in a large measuring cup (or some sort of unbreakable, Pyrex container). First I pour in a big pile of sugar and then dump the olive oil over it. I take the mixture, in hand fulls, and slather it over my shoulders and arms, torso, legs, feet and even my face and neck. By now, all the water has drained out of the bath and I massage the slick, grainy mixture into my heat-softened skin, making small circles with the palms of my hands, gently and patiently exfoliating.

Once I'm scrubbed smooth, I'm on my feet, rinsing under a hot shower. I lather (both hair and body) a few times to get the sugary, oily slime off me and then a final rinse with cold water to close my pores.

The end result is baby-bottom skin and corn-silk hair.

*Le sigh*

The Ruby Suns - Maasai Mara

The Burning

I’ve kept journals, in some form, for as long as I can remember. There were writings from my adult life, college, high school, middle school and elementary school years. There were odd papers, songs, poems and letters documenting 37 years all put into a bonfire in May of 2005, on the gated front lawn of a 4th Avenue 4-plex in Venice Beach, California, USA, North America, Earth. The burning took three days.

I crafted a homemade chiminea by resting a large brass planter on its side on top of a squat barbecue pit borrowed from a neighbor. The half-spent charcoals and pieces of wood left behind in the pit fitted themselves around the planter, holding it secure from rolling away. From the stack sat next to me, I lit pages, one by one, and added them, burning, into the old planter. Soon I began grouping the pages together, stacking and folding them around each other.

Quietly, in the warm glow of the fire with a glass of wine, I watched and waited for my past to go to ash. With my kitchen tongs, I shifted the soot regularly to be certain each shred was reduced to a fine grit that I later tossed over the lawn and watered away into the soil beneath the thick green grass. Every once and awhile, I’d catch a glimpse of an old song, some primitively drawn guitar chords, a post card or a random paragraph recalling a brief snapshot of time.

On the second night, sitting in the warmth of the fire, my phone rang from inside my pocket. There was an uncomfortable ex on the line. He asked me if I was OK and what I needed. He said I’d called him just then but he was away from his phone. I told him I hadn’t noticed I’d dialed him but hoped he was well. I was good. Once the call ended I thought of the things written about him, thrown in the fire. He must have smelled himself burning.

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Sleepless Nights

Written by Colette (1873 - 1954)

In our house there is only one bed, too big for you, a little too narrow for us both. It is chaste, white, completely exposed; no drapery veils it's honest candor in the light of day. People who come to see us survey it calmly and do not tactfully look aside, for it is marked, in the midddle, with but one soft valley, like the bed of a yound girl who sleeps alone.

They do not know, those who enter here, that every night the weight of our two united bodies hollows out a little more, beneath its voluptuous winding sheet, that valley no wider than a tomb.

O our bed, completely bare! A dazzling lamp, slanted above it, denudes it even more. We do not find there, at twilight, the well-devised shade of a lace canopy or the rosy shell-like glow of a night lamp. Fixed star, never rising or setting, our bed never ceases to gleam except when submerged in the velvety depths of night.

Rigid and white, like the body of a dear departed, it is haloed with a perfume, a complicated scent that astounds, that one inhales attentively, in an effort to distinguish the blonde essence of your favorite tobacco from the still lighter aroma of your extraordinarily white skin, and the scent of sandalwood that I give off; but that wild odor of crushed grasses, who can tell if it's mine or thine?

Receive us tonight, O our bed, and let your fresh valley deepen a little more beneath the feverish torpor caused by a thrilling spring day spent in the garden and in the woods.

I lie motionless, my head on your gentle shoulder. Surely, until tomorrow, I will sink into the depths of a dark sleep, a sleep so stubborn, so shut off from the world, that the wings of dream will come to beat in vain. I am going to sleep . . . Wait only until I find, for the soles of my feet that are tingling and burning, a cool place . . . You have not budged. You draw long drifts of air, but I feel your shoulder still awake and careful to provide a hollow for my cheek . . . Let us sleep . . . The nights of May are so brief. Despite the blue obscurity that bathes us, my eyelids are still full of sunshine, and I contemplate the day that has passed with closed eyes, as one peers, from behind the shelter of a Persian blind, into a dazzling summer garden . . .

How my heart throbs! I can also hear yours throb beneath my ear. You're not asleep? I raise my head slightly and sense rather than see the pallor or your upturned face, the tawny shadow of your short hair. Your knees are like two cool oranges . . . Turn toward me, so that mine can steal some of that smooth freshness.

Oh, let us sleep! . . . My skin is tingling, there is a throbbing in the muscles in my calves and in my ears, and surely our soft bed, tonight is strewn with pine needles! Let us sleep! I command sleep to come.

I cannot sleep. My insomnia is a kind of gay and lively palpitation, and I sense in your immobility the same quivering exhaustion. You do not budge. You hope I am asleep. Your arm tightens at times around me, out of tender habit, and your charming feet clasp mine between them . . . Sleep approaches, grazes me, and flees . . . I can see it! Sleep is exactly like that heavy velvety butterfly I pursued in the garden aflame with iris. Do you remember? What youthful impatience glorified this entire sunlit day! A keen and insistent breeze flung over the sun a smoke screen of rapid clouds and withered the too-tender leaves of the linden trees; the flowers of the butternut tree fell like brownish caterpillars upon our hair, with the flowers of the catapas, their color the rainy mauve of the Parisian sky. The shoots of the black-currant bush that you brushed against, the wild sorrel dotting the grass with its rosettes, the fresh young mint, still brown, the sage as downy as a hare's ear--everything overflowed with a powerful and spicy sap which became on my lips mingled with the taste of alcohol and citronella.

I could only shout and laugh, as I trod the long juicy grass that stained my frock . . . With tranquil pleasure you regarded my wild behavior, and when I stretched out my hand to reach those wild roses--you remember, the ones of such a tender pink--your hand broke the branch before I could and you took off, one by one, the curved little thorns, coral-hued, claw-shaped . . . And then you gave me the flowers, disarmed . . .

You gave me the flowers, disarmed . . . You gave me, so I could rest my panting self, the best place in the shade, under the Persian lilacs with their ripe bunches of flowers. You picked the big cornflowers in the round flower beds, enchanted flowers whose hairy centers smell of apricot . . . You gave me the cream in the small jug of milk, at teatime, when my ravenous appetite made you smile . . . You gave me the bread with the most golden crust, and I can still see your translucent hand in the sunshine raised to shoo away the wasp that sizzled, entangled in my curls . . . You threw over my shoulders a light mantle when a cloud longer than usual slowly passed, toward the end of the day, when I shivered, in a cold sweat, intoxicated with the pleasure that is nameless among mankind, the innocent pleasure of happy animals in springtime . . . You told me: "Come back . . . Stop . . . We must go in!" . . . You told me . . .

Oh, if I think of you, then it's goodbye to sleep. What hour struck just then? Now the windows are growing blue. I hear the murmurring in my blood, or else it's the murmur of the gardens down there . . . Are you asleep? No. If I put my cheek against yours, I feel your eyelashes flutter like the wings of a captive fly . . . You are not asleep. You are spying on my excitement, You protect me against bad dreams; you are thinking of me and I am thinking of you, and we both feign, out of a strange sentimental shyness, a peaceful sleep. All my body yields itself up to sleep, relaxed, and my neck weighs heavily on your gentle shoulder; but our thoughts unite in love discretely across this blue dawn, so soon increasing.

In a short while the luminous bar between the curtains will brighten, redden . . . In a few more minutes I will be able to read, on your lovely forehead, your delicate chin, your sad mouth, and your closed eyelids, the determination to appear to be sleeping . . . It is the hour when my fatigue, my nervous insomnia, can no longer remain mute, when I will throw my arms outside this feverish bed, and my naughty heels are already preparing to give a mischievous kick.

Then you will pretend to wake up! Then I shall be able to take refuge in you, with confused and unjust complaints, exasperated sighs, with clenched hands cursing the daylight that has already come, the night so soon over the noises in the street . . . For I know quite well that you will then tighten your arms around me and that, if the cradling of your arms is not enough to soothe me, your kiss will become more clinging, your hands more amorous, and that you will accord me the sensual satisfaction that is the surcease of love, like a sovereign exorcism that will drive out of me the demons of fever, anger, restlessness . . . You will accord me sensual pleasure, bending over me voluptuously, maternally, you who seek in your impassioned loved one the child you never had.

Translated by Herma Briffault (1934)

Cool Hand Luke (1967)