Poetry for Sails

To her they must be paper sails hanging off of things. I know that I am in denial because I believe that she reads and processes their information. But she doesn’t. Hasn’t for years. If the plastic case of two dozen lemon poppy seed mini-muffins has written all over it “Not for dogs!” and “For people only!” I will come home and they will be disappeared, all twenty-four. Perhaps she ate one half of one muffin and the rest? Well…

She takes the delicate, older, hard to find if I had to buy another indoor broom and sweeps the back porch and walkway of rubble and wet leaves. While a tough as hell outdoor broom, like on a wicked witch might use, sits right there against the house. My notes could be grocery lists. Or poetry lines.

Now there’s an idea! Change all of my notes, my little white sails, into places for lines of poetry. Instead of a note saying “Please! No snacks! Dogs are both overweight,” it could read:

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her

(excerpt from e.e. cummings’ Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town)

On Being a Pill

I don’t trust Cleopatra with her pills. The problem is that she loathes taking them. She didn’t take pills all of her life — well, except years ago when a van rear ended her Triumph Spitfire (that my father had purchased wrecked and repaired) and the doctor prescribed Valium which caused her to remain on the couch for at least a few days. The poor kid was really shaken up.

Tonight I brought her dinner and her pills. Five pills, in the child’s porcelain teacup. One is an 85 mg. baby aspirin. When I came back in later she had one left – a long, moss colored number — but the glass of water that I’d left for her to down them with wasn’t very changed. And I know she wouldn’t take them with her wine. So I kept an eye on her and got suspicious. I watched her like a hawk as she rinsed her plate that had, like, 5 toast crumbs on it, with a few gallons of hot water (plus it will go into the dishwasher later; she rinses stuff to excess, wiping butter crumbs cheese juice off with her hands even though it will be scrubbed clean in the machine! She probably sees that I’ve bought Seventh Generation dishwashing powder which doesn’t have fish murdering chemicals in it, hence may not clean. You’ve got to have cancer-causing chemicals in stuff in order for it to work worth a damn!)

She loitered in the kitchen, picking up my coffee and drinking it (she’s also been wearing my glasses of late, which make her look so mod!). I was focused on the cupboard door that hides the garbage can. I’d seen her throw her dinner napkin in there and I was suspicious that she’d put pills in it (I have reason to be paranoid; she does leave pills sitting all over the house if I don’t watch, plus she has been known to shove them in her pockets). As soon as she left the kitchen proper I dove to the little door to open it and dig around the top layer — the “canopy” as we call it in the rain forest — of  trash.

She puts napkins in the sink so often they are completely wet and stained, which makes it all more like digging around in a toilet! Her dinner napkin is sopping and has brown stains. I open it but there is nothing inside. I sample another, a dryer one — it’s twisted but holds no juicy pharmaceutical surprise.

She hates water and I had given her that to take her pills with tonight. With regard to water she is the W.C. Fields of Magnolia bluff.

I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.

I never drink water. I’m afraid it will become habit-forming.
W. C. Fields

When the power went out for 15 hours last weekend I burned some candles up on the fireplace mantle. In the morning I realized that Cleopatra's antique cats below got splattered with candle wax.

The Wine Dark, See?

Last night after being at my Professional Filmmakers Program via EDGE at Artist’s Trust from 9-5 – a course that has only made me realize that I am not going to make a documentary because I have no money and need higher production values AND a story and see I didn’t film with a story in mind I was sort of waiting for a story to happen to the band KHV that I’ve been following I took a risk this way but they broke up last week and I will say that this EDGE thing has been like a crash course in small business which rocks and so since I need to make some goddamn money plus I love the way Capitalism drives me I think I’ll start a business instead more to come on that — anyway so after class drove home fed everyone and left for a dinner party with old high school friends that was major much fun because we all laughed our damn heads off .

I had left home about 6:30 and didn’t return until 11:00. When I got home the power was out. Tonight at the local gym I found out from our neighbors Margaret and Rex that the power had gone out at about 7 PM which means that Cleopatra, Bix and Charley were alone in the cold darkness together for 4 hours! I came in and started a fire, lit candles, found our lame flashlights. Thank goodness I didn’t have to break into the earthquake kit I sent for which is still sealed in its box in the garage. Mom burnt up most of the kindling last month trying to get ‘rid’ of it but there was enough to finally get a large log going with wadded up newspaper and cooking oil helping out along the way. The entire house smelled of smoke becasue mom had tried to start a fire before I got home and hadn’t opened the flue but since her senses are dull now she couldn’t smell it. I had to balance the urge to open the doors and air out the house or keep any residual warmpth in. I opened the doors for a spell into the pitch blackeness (no streetlamps, either) but the night was eerily still. There was no breeze, just a moist blanket laying across the neighborhood keeping all the smells under it’s covers. All wooly and stinky. Mom kept forgetting that the power was out and kept trying to switch the lamps and light switches on and asking, “Who turned out all the lights?” Today I found all kinds of full wine glasses around and a wine massacre — red smears on the counters, drips down the cupboard faces and around drawer handles – in the kitchen where mom had poured dark wine in the dark house over and over since she could probably not find the glass or mug she had just poured! It must have been rather like Athena flying over the wine dark sea.

I stayed downstairs on the couch all night with the dogs, tending the fire. Mom went upstairs to bed and I put about 5 blankets over her. I woke up at nine and the power was still out. The night before I had walked the dogs down to where some of the utility trucks were working at the end of the block. It’s only OUR side of Viewmont that goes out very often — across the alley have lights as well as across the street. It makes one envious looking out at them. Anyway, walking the dogs we looked up and the guys on the crane came down but left all this stuff hanging from the poles, a scene that I could tell was not good. I called the City Light hotline again this morning and the recording said that the power should be back by around 9 AM. It finally came on at 10, which means that it was out for 15 hours.

Today I fed anything perishable in the fridge to the dogs, which made them extremely happy.

What rhymes with ‘orange’? Hairspray!

Pure Citrus -- "Smell the Difference!"

D. has been in a Delancey trance.

Delancey is a pizza restaurant that recently opened in Ballard and is the talk of the town. I think it’s because — besides the food being delicious! – the place has such a good story and people love stories as much as they love pizza. I guess the owners fell in love (the male half, Brandon Pettit, is from NY where Pizza rocks and the restaurant is named after his favorite subway stop — I found this all out on a blog called Slice) and opened a restaurant. The female half of this couple, Molly Wizenberg, is a writer who also keeps Orangette, a blog that everyone in the world reads so…it is some sort of combination of romantic, culinary and technological qualities that makes this restaurant the current rage. D. told me that the city even put speed bumps in the street on either side of Delancey after it opened because the neighbors complained — but that could just be one of her mild-keen practical jokes.

So when D. calls today and says, “Are you free between 4:30 and 6:30 today so we can go to Delancey?” I say Of course since I have no life right now other than tending to my high maintainance dogs, finishing some graphic design jobs and maintaining the flow of mom’s wine.

I could create a job of driving about and opening older ‘third age’ peoples’ cheap wine! You should have seen strong me trying to open the 3 liter bottle of Livingston Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon (I am so SURE, like why bother with the fancy distinctions when the bottle costs eight dollars?!). My entire hand ached. I finally dampened a dish towel in order to wrap the top and get some friction around the thing. Still couldn’t open it. Eventually I had to put the dish towel over the lid and shove the whole enchilada under the cupboard where hides the metal lid-opener that is shaped like physicist Julian Barnes’ triangular Platonia. I cranked the mammoth 3 liter bottle with all of my might and the black lid finally budged. I can really see an 86-year old lady doing THAT! If I weren’t here mom would have had to take the bottle out back, in her pajamas, and bash the neck in with a hammer.

Anyway so when D. showed up in order that we could get to Delancey before it opened (if you get there after 6:00 PM it can be a two-hour wait!) I was entering the house after walking the dogs and was hit with a pungent odor-wall of orange. I was bustling around and D. was coming in from the alley at the same time so I just thought that Cleopatra had sprayed it in the bathroom. Alas! When we got out to the car D. told me that she saw mom scrubbing furiously at her raw, red forehead with a cotton ball while mentioning that she was trying to wipe something off. (I hadn’t noticed, I was settling the dogs in and trying to leave.) Then D. surmised that mom must have used the citrus spray on her hair thinking it was hairspray and hence got some on her forehead! 

D: “You’ve got to hide that spray.”
Me: “I know — I’ve got to Cleo-proof everything.”
D: “It’s like having a kid around.”
Me: “Yes, only one that can reach everything!”

Cleopatra’s Sitcom

Today I came downstairs singing all crazy to Charley dog as I am wont to do and as soon as I got in sight of Cleopatra who was reading the newspapers in her quasi matching gray nightgown and sweater set she looked up briefly and in her flat delivery said, “If you’re that sick why don’t you go to bed?”

Damn she would have been a great comedy writer. It is god’s gift to her. She used to love watching Golden Girls and Everybody Loves Raymond because the writers of those shows spoke her language. It’s uncanny — even though mom can’t remember what was just said to her ten seconds ago she can nail something with humor. Her quips are so lightening quick that I’ve already given a ’serious’ answer to her before I realize what she said was a joke!

It’s humbling. And fabulous. Good thing those are not mutually exclusive qualities!

What would a sitcom that Cleopatra wrote look like? Perhaps it would include two  unlikely pups and a daughter who never grew up (well, a daughter she never taught how to nest-leap)? Or…maybe her sitcom would be based on the past — on relatives that drop by to smoke Pall Malls and drink beer whenever they wanted and expected you to drop everything, which was usually not much. The past — when women were voluptuous and nobody jogged, when you could drink and drive cars built like tanks and not put seat belts on the babies, when records skipped and stereo needles grew fuzz. Back in the day when housewives leaned against the bookcase with a glass of wine in one hand and a broom in the other to sing their hearts out before the husband and kids came home.

I have no idea why I've included this; it's colorful, I guess!

The Dao of Dishes

Doesn’t she see these dishes? They’ve been in the sink for two days. Getting that viscous science experiment look to them. I’m busy. I have to drive to Bellingham today plus make the dogs’ breakfasts and our breakfasts and coffee, start the laundry, take out the recycle that just piles up unless I take it to the bin. If I leave dirty laundry on the floor by the washer she picks it up and folds it. And I mean towels that have dog pee on them from Charley’s accidents! If I leave one there it will be folded and smelling of ammonia amongst the clean towels! Ick. Her senses are so muted that she can’t smell it. Because I was at class all day yesterday she didn’t eat. I left her a sandwich in the fridge and it was just sitting in there when I got home. No sign of eating anything else, either. Brought her home a hot halibut gyros on the way home from class and she ate half. Gave Bix the other half mixed with his Iams. She won’t wear a sweater and it’s November! Okay I need to while putting away the clean dishes and filling the dishwasher with dirty ones I need to cheer up. To switch my brain into service mode, that I am doing a spiritual service here. Why is it so difficult for me to flip that switch, the one that goes from ‘annoyed’ to ‘grateful’? What is the benefit I get from not doing that? It’s because then I would be in the flow of life, I would be dealing with dementia on dementia’s terms. I would be so in the flow that I could maybe even see death on the horizon. Without all the bunched up sheets in the way, like when I watched the moon landing from my parents’ bed so early in the dark morning. Without resentment in the way one can see forever and ever more, like Barbara Streisand singing “On a Clear Day,” from Funny Girl? God, I love that song. But not enough for it to be the theme song of my life. But not enough to want to see clear enough to have the end right in my face. My panicked face, panicked because I haven’t chosen anything. Because I am so scattered I only skim the surfaces and I want the illusion that…I have endless time to finally delve deeply SOMEWHERE. Unless…maybe this is as deep as I can go? I may be a puddle vs. a Crater Lake.

HA!

Family Patterns

For my very famous monthly Queen Anne/Magnolia NEWS column “From the Bluff” I am focusing on a new, local shop called Fabric Crush. What is more seductive than fabric? It is a perfect love story between beauty and utility, form and function. I could write about the joint in standard, informative article form but…I want to get more personal and so will hybrid the deal and write an informative column. Rather like the hybrid fabrics of unique weight that Fabric Crush carries that can be used for both upholstery, clothing and bags.

My mother taught me to use her Singer treadle sewing machine when I was five years old. My mother also made most of my clothes. She made really crazy stuff for being so conservative in most other ways! For instance I remember a couple of jumpers. One was of shiny, navy blue vinyl with matching, drawstring purse. She used marigold colored thread atop the navy and I wore this ensemble atop a marigold colored blouse and matching knee highs. Another jumper was out of faux lamb wool, tight curls of gray synthetic ‘hair’ all over the jumper. She also bought me a white denim outfit — jeans with matching jacket — where the fabric was printed to look like colorful paint spatters. I was so beautiful! Also, she bought Barbara and I matching bell bottom jeans that were of psychedelic colors and patterns, like something out of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour.

The funny part is that as I got older my mother was always shocked at my outfits such as the motorcycle jackets and high tops I wore to weddings, or the daily vintage 1940’s suits and velveteen dresses. I remember sewing pants that had different colored legs. At age 18 I made a leopard skin jumpsuit before faux leopard skin was IN (I got the most nasty hangover in that outfit; I had made it to wear to my friend Keith’s 21st birthday in Portland and I drank so many different genres of alcohol that I could not lift my head from the pillow the next day due to the crush and spin).

My outfits were at one time bizarre enough to get honked at by passing cars. I never owned a car until I got married in my mid-thirties so I walked all over town back then (and later bicycled). But I am just saying, there was a time in Seattle when odd outfits were not as ready-made and available in the stores.

Anyway, I always thought it ironic that my mother got upset at my clothing choices during my ‘teens and twenties (back when I cared enough to take time to look…something) when she is the one that started it.  

Now I am ashamed by how my mother is dressed (the ironies just pile up, don’t they?). She needs new pants desperately yet have I gone out to buy them? I hate shopping for my self let alone someone else. But I must. I can’t buy her pants online either because I need to measure waists since a Gloria Vanderbilt (isn’t that Anderson Cooper’s mother?) size 6 is the SAME as a Liz Sport 8.

What is a caregiver to do!?

Above is a sketch I made (and dolled up in Photoshop) with measurements of mom’s pants that I can take to the store. I mean, my poor mother is wearing torn, burgundy stained jeans…and it is too much for her at this point to actually take her and make her to try stuff on in the little waiting rooms.

God, please help me to be willing to shop so that my mother doesn’t resemble Oliver Twist!

Break Up to Wake Up

Shannon and D.W., members of the band Katharine Hepburn's Voice

On the pity pot today because the band I have been documenting is breaking up. It isn’t so much about the documentary –I was going to drop it anyway because now that I am in filmmaking class I realize I’d have to get more serious and upgrade my production values because people don’t accept crappy looking videos anymore. No, my sadness is due to the fact that the band has everything it needs to be a big success except for chemistry. There are personality differences between the two main members that sound…so large can’t get under ‘em, so tall can’t get over ‘em, so wide can’t get around ‘em must go out the exit door. Rocka my soul in the bosom of potential. Potential: such a stupid pipe dream that hooks fantasy addicts.

Speaking of video! Today I clicked on a facebook link to a short that was sub-titled from Russian (I think). It was about an old man sitting outside of his house with his son on a bench. The son was reading a Russian newspaper while the father kept asking his son regarding a sparrow that was flitting about the area ”What is that?” The father kept asking and the son kept answering, getting more and more peeved each time. Finally the son blows up, “It’s a sparrow! S-P-A-R-R-O-W — can’t you SEE!” Then the father goes into the house and comes back with a diary kept when the son was little. He has the son read an excerpt where the father had written, “Today at the park my son asked me what a sparrow was 21 times. Each time I told him.” Then the son felt all guilty and everything.

Why is it that way? That the parent answering a child is not the same as a child answering a parent who is suffering from short-term memory loss? Is it because your energy in answering a child is going into the future, is headed toward something whereas the energy going in to answering a parent is headed down and out into death and nothingness.

I guess if we lived in the moment it would all be the same.

Don Your Changing Mantle

Fireplace Mantle Collage

One of the grooviest things about mom’s dementia is that she doesn’t care how stuff looks as much anymore. For the decades leading up to this Era of Dementia everything had to be just so, kept in the place and in the configuration it was.  Things like that drive me crazy, the way that, say, old worn tins in their counter cluster stacked and standing in rows like soldiers…when you try to clean the counter they clatter and clang. After cleaning under them you are then forced to put them back in exactly the same place — you have to stand in the shoes of Cleopatra in order to get them right. If you rush, you screw it up. If you don’t put them back then each time you pass their chaotic state of abberation you feel guilt as strong as hunger pains.  Which isn’t good for your health so…might as well just keep everything where it is supposed to be!

Let’s just say that my mother and I have a very different aesthetic. Or, I should say, she has one and I don’t. I am rather like my father that way and will most likely soon begin donning a velveteen maroon blazer over plaid golf pants (what my father would attempt to leave the house in until mom met him at the door and sent him back upstairs).

The fireplace mantle is a fine example of the hybrid aesthetic going on around here of late. Tucked in-between the tins are now photos of my nieces and nephews’ kids, bulldog figurines, greeting cards, children’s drawings, a framed stealthily taken photograph of Bartell’s Judy crossing a street in her long brown sweater, cups full of forgotten Burgundy and a pair of cowboys on stallions that Cid sent from Montana. These things would not have had a snowball’s chance in hell of staying up there even just a few years ago.

One could see this change as akin to god lessening Degas’ sight near the end of his life; he loosened up, his paintings became timeless because any artifice was let go and his drawings filled double with life.

Chinese Food can be Spooky

Just like life: sweet, sour and FLUORESCENT!

Just a normal day. 

I had a meeting at noon and was late. The house is full of steam from my cooking vats of dog food which means rivulet marks down the insides of all the windows. While sitting doing a watercolor for a restaurant gift card with Charley on my lap he glanded on the leg of my just-washed jeans (ass-bath for him in the sink).  Mom used the fragile indoor broom outdoors (again). I labeled a bag near the back door for peanut shells as Cleopatra keeps throwing all of hers in the recycle box. The sea-gull on the garage roof  — her name is Space Chicken! — was only, due to her slick webbed feet on the roof slant and my rotten pitching arm, able to get half of the peanut butter sandwich chunks I threw before the crows got ‘em. My sister and Jerry are coming in for dinner and Jerry wants to go to Gim Wah, the spookiest Halloween news yet! (Gim Wah is our local Chinese Food restaurant that only serves food as a way to legally run their rollicking bar!). Mom has gone back to bed, says she doesn’t want to go out, gestures across her stomach area and makes a yuck face. There is unfolded laundry on the den couch since I felt it was more important to report in here. I have received the kindest notes from people who love me regarding my last post. D. dragged me to an outdoor haunted house thing on the eastside last night and it rained like hell so my ‘dress shoes’ (black tennis shoes) got all muddy (I thought we were only going to the indoor one in Tacoma, the Black Lake Asylum house, but that one was SO LAME that we had to drive to the other one out near Klahanie!). Obama still hasn’t decided what to do about Afghanistan (isn’t this Iraq/Afghanistan tragedy the worst foreign policy decision(s) EVER?!). I STILL haven’t run into General Barry McCaffery who moved into my nephew’s house just two blocks away! I’ll need to get myself to the gym tonight at 9 PM. Charley still hasn’t learned how to use his dog door (but he looks so CUTE staring out of it, his eyes in the little clear area like a painting…). I had dreams of men trying to rescue me from real life haunted houses all night long.

Like I said, another day to be damn grateful for!