On other trips to Los Angeles, it seemed I could not take a bad picture. On this recent trip, however, the landscapes look dusty, uninspired, and ill-composed. I think it was me.
Here on the east coast, it continues to be dry and hot. We missed the scorching heat while visiting my brother, but our plants did not. Through the use of timers and soaker hoses, we were able to preserve a lot, but some astilbe dried to a crisp and several newer shrubs gave up the ghost. I just dug up two of them. I don’t plan to replace them.
I cooked for us all at my brother’s and that was nice but the real contribution of the week was to blow up the solar-powered beach-ball lights that had been sitting in their boxes since Christmas.
It was strange while away to check the daily temps at home and find the Boston area hotter, by five, six, seven degrees sometimes.
It took longer than usual to “arrive” home but here we are. The AC blowing. The dog sighing. Greenery bouncing in a light, hot wind.
Before I sign off, look what Nancy sent me. How nice it was to come home to!
I used to work bigger more often. This smallish tower quilt was getting a rest pinned to the back of another quilt and I decided, after looking at it for a day, that I liked it with a surround of brown.
I went looking downstairs, fully expecting to have to make a substituon, but I found the very cloth!
Bigger surround wd allow yellow roof. Yeah or nay?
It is going to be hot today. Dog walk was sweaty. K has his five-year colonoscopy midday and of course he needs a ride. Because of the Covid numbers, I will wait outside. Hope there’s a patch of shade.
And below find yesterday’s collage results (some of them). Feel free to skip if you’re on Instagram!
This is Paris Collage Collective visual prompt for the weekThis one is not a part of the series Look for the fedora. It represents the rise of theocratic surveillance. The birth collage speaks for itself I hope. Original birth collage made in 90’s, when I was, you know, giving birth. One of the weird residual attitudes of having been raised Catholic is a lasting affection for all things Mary. In my universe, she is allied with the Divine Feminine and not Christianity. Mary’s hand is a helping hand. Yes, that’s Jeremy Irons. One layer here is another paper collage featuring the actor and paper doll losing her head.
Players: Older man with his grey-whiskered pug. As is often the case, man and dog look alike. They have parked themselves at the side of the path to let us pass. You’d be surprised how many people do not do this. Courtesy made visible. Man is on his phone.
Important detail? Man speaks with an accent. I can’t identify it. Eastern European, maybe, but not Russian or Ukrainian. In my imagination, he is speaking to someone in another country and he is trying to explain the inexplicable, that is, life in America today.
“It’s amazing,” he starts. “There was an insurrection. It was filmed up and down and still people support him.”
It was filmed up and down and still people support him.
Scene II: checkout at Wegman’s supermarket.
Actors: Two young women working adjacent registers.
Important detail: they are both attractive with the blush and confidence of youth.
Unimportant details: one is Black and the other Latina.
Black woman: “He followed me around the store. I kept turning and asking him, Can I help you? And he kept coming. Can I help you? I kept asking. He was old, like 40 or something. Really old. He asked me for my name. I’m good, I told him. He kept coming. I looked at him and said, You’re old! He asked for my Instagram account and I told him my boyfriend has a temper.”
Latina woman about some other man: “I was wearing a blanket, I mean I was completely covered. And still he came at me. A blanket!”
Black woman, to me, perhaps by way of acknowledging that employees aren’t supposed to indulge in quite so much talk across a customer’s basket: “I’m sorry.”
She apologized to me!
It wasn’t one of those situations where I could have feigned not listening. So I said something, not just to let her know that no apology was needed but to emphatically support their indignation.
I told the Black woman she could have accused the man not just of being old but also of being a fucking creep. To the other I said it never mattered what she wore. Ever.
The Black woman awarded me the “customer of the day” award.
These two exchanges were telling, not just because of how my ongoing, general isolation makes these casual interactions more important than they might otherwise be, but because of what they say about where we find ourselves as Americans — as Americans on a precipitous decline that shows no sign of slowing.
Just catching my breath between dog walk and writing workshop, so I have to be brief.
Sharing screen shots here to give you a sense of how some digital collage goes. Variation after variation. Layering one layer on top of another. A small sampling!
This week the exercise served as a way to process the news. I like the versions, like the one above, that make trump spawn and in-law look like monsters. Because they all are monsters. In fact, the hearings could be described as: Monsters on Parade. Even the so-called good guys are monsters — for having supported the Monster-in-Chief in the first place and for keeping a damaging silence in the intervening months for another.
PCC image for the week
I’ve been critical of Maureen Dowd over the years, but she wrote a good opinion piece this week using Frankenstein story as reference.
The list of things imposing misery right now is quite long. Ukraine is never far from mind. For many of my friends, Russia’s atrocities are personal.
Things I’ve heard in the last month from people I am close to:
My mother grew up in Belarus.
My grandparents are Russian Jews, but from areas now Ukraine.
I just found out that I have a relative from Poland who died in the Holocaust. I was named after her.
I’m have very little family history, which is traumatizing too.
My grandfather grew up in Odessa.
I didn’t realize that H’s mother was Ukrainian.
Meanwhile, it’s Monday and K has gone into the office. He will travel into Boston every day this week. It strikes me as a signature Covid experience how the familiar becomes strange and the strange becomes familiar. Example: in spite of this being my husband’s commuting routine for decades before the pandemic, it now feels a little weird, a little dangerous, a little not-normal.
Also today: I get to make a friend lunch and we won’t have to be quiet because K is on the phone at his workstation (aka the kitchen table).
