Monopoly

My two youngest granddaughters, cousins aged eight and nine, were here for a sleep-over the night before last. They are of course adored by this grandmother and I cherish the time I get to spend with them. They spent lots of time online playing Battle On on Adventure Quest. I am not sure that is educational, but they had such a great time I was loathe to kick them off the computer. They made up songs about the game and sang them and their singing was indeed music to my ears. They also sang Frere Jaques very sweetly and in tune, by lord.

But the best time during the twenty-four hours they were here for me was when we all played Monopoly. The eight year old is a master at that game, her cousin and grandmother novices. It was hilarious. The first day we played (for three hours) I was lucky and accumulated so much cash and land (Boardwalk, railroads and utilities in my generous portfolio) that when I stopped to cook dinner I split it all between them and what I gave them was probably at least equal to what they had.

But the next day--that is yesterday--was a different story! I had no luck and did so poorly, that my nine yo granddaughter kept patting my hand and telling me that she was truly sorry I was doing so badly. But I would not trade that game for tickets to Cirque Du Soleil! I laughed more yesterday than I have in weeks together. And laughter IS the best medicine.

Yoga yearnings

Yahoo! Today I was able to do the Cobra pose properly for the first time and hold it to a count of 1010. Yahoo, indeed!

I have been back at doing Yoga now for about 6 months, after a 15 year hiatus. At first my 15 minute tape seemed hours long. Now it seems quite short. Maybe a more challenging tape is in my future, but for now I want to enjoy the sensation of having accomplished something I would not have thought possible, when I began.

I am 66--67 in May--and yesterday I was complaining about a) a sprained hand, from cracking Brazil nuts for my granddaughter, and b) the ravages of time--a sprained hand from something so easy, something that was incidental at 40, even 50? It seems like every day I notice some new sign of the inroads of time on this body. "So get over it" or "face it, that's life--just accept it" is what I hear when I muse on that subject with some contemporaries. But Hey! I am going to do what I can to keep moving.

After I began doing the Yoga I noticed an improvement in my flexibility immediately. Oh, I still wake up stiff and aching, but after doing the Yoga, I rise to my full height and walk freely. What a return for an investment of only 15 minutes!



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making the sacrifice

"A green grape rolled down the aisle of the bus." --from a Farside cartoon

Yesterday I just made it around two blocks, while walking. I have revised my expectations. I realized that my goal of pushing to add two blocks each time was actually preventing me from doing any walking at all! It is better to walk a little than not at all.

Although it was overcast by the time I got out there, it was so nice to be on the move. I passed a family, including two little kids, working hard in their yard. One of the little girls, only about three, decided to go for a walk of her own, just as I approached that yard. I gave her wide berth on the sidewalk, but even so, the father was on her immediately to get back in her own yard.

On my last walk I saw pairs of squirrels and a pair of chickadees chasing one another--it is that time of year. But yesterday nada, not even a cat. Guess they were expecting a shower. It sprinkled a few drops. Some of the street lights had come on, even though it was only 3 PM.

Madagascar Hissing Roaches

They are selling the live little babies on eBay for only $80 a pop. But they are not your kitchen variety roaches--they are bred and fed esp. as pets. And come with leashes, so you can attach the little critturs to your bosom, and--this is the exciting part!--they are bejeweled!

Someone actually takes the time and expends the patience to apply little jewels to their carapaces. (Not any other part of their little brown bodies--on the carapace the jewels don't retard movement or impact their health.)

Imagine: your own creepy crawly jewelry.

But certainly they aren't for everyone. (Roaches give me the geegees big time and these are at least two inches long.) Paris Hilton, maybe?

migraine

I scrap Yoga, my walk, pull chartreuse fluffy socks from my drawer to warm my feet. The acid green is lovely with my blood-red sweat shirt--I think, "The color will soothe my migraine." Watch Huo Che. Covet the old gambling cups.

Shy

Spring took a bow yesterday and then fluttered offstage. I am screaming "Encore! Encore!" between claps.

The Caravaggio Disease

The Da Vinci Code read like a treatise tricked out as a novel. But The Lost Painting, by Jonathan Harr, reads like a novel, even though it is an account of a scholarly search for a lost painting by Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ. The Lost Painting is an easy read, completely without the obfuscation one expects from scholarly writing. I picked up the book to sample it and read rapidly through the first fifty pages, completely hooked.

Harr interweaves the story of the mystery of the whereabouts of the lost Caravaggio, an account of Caravaggio's life, and the description of the restoration of a painting which just might be the one scholars have been trying to locate. All those bits are fascinating. The real people in the story, Francesco Cappelleti and Laura Testa, two Italian students searching through dusty files to find a trail to the painting, Denis Mahon, the dapper English Caravaggio expert, and Sergio Benedetti, the gruff Italian restorer living in Ireland, are described as if they were characters--they are three-dimensional, each with his or her own foibles. But the central characters are Caravaggio and the precious painting.

Francesca aludes early on to the "Caravaggio disease." Scholars become gripped by it and it takes over. They become obssessed with all things Caravaggio. One is described as nearly falling from a scaffolding, while trying to lean over and kiss a Caravaggio being restored. And she herself is under the spell of the artist who has been called a genius, but it is not the myth or legend which binds her--it is what she sees, when she looks at one of his works. She enters into the painting and for a few minutes in time, before being brought back by the activity around her, she lives within the painting itself.

Caravaggio is a fascinating character. Harr's description of his strange habits only served to whet my curiosity. According to Harr, C. cared very little for his personal appearance and would go without washing and wear his clothes into rags. He consorted with prostitutes, and when flush, after selling a painting, would become wildly and belligerently drunk, picking sword fights, one of which ended in his murdering the man he attacked, and eventually being hacked in turn, his face suffering the worst of the blows.

But I am most curious not about the colorful bits of his life, (there must have been scores bad actors who behaved exactly like him during that period) but about what set him apart: his ability to compose works which still astound with their drama and originality.

The Taking of Christ is reproduced on the dust jacket of The Lost Painting. But it is a small reproduction, very dark. It is not possible to see clearly the details Harr aludes to. (Have to go to Ireland, for a good look.) I hefted out my old Jansen, to get another view of C.'s work and found only one, The Calling of St. Matthew, but it is a full page color reproduction. (About 1/100 the size of the actual painting, that is.) Seeing the two reproductions together brings out the qualities I associate with Caravaggio: The dramatic lighting and the use of common people with very individualistic faces in a composition deliberately designed to illuminate the religious message of the painting.

I am well on the way to having the Caravaggio disease, myself. Seicento, puntinature, pentimenti, lacunae, lead-tin yellow, malachite, red lake, bone black, green earth, walnut oil--those words strung together are like poetry. I need to catch some glimmer of what drove C. to paint. Did he paint merely to be able to buy wine and debauch? The paintings tell a very different story. At the end of the Jonathan Harr provides a list of his sources (he met and interviewed all the people he describes), including three biographies of Caravaggio that he recommends. I can hardly wait.

Blogging

Jen at Law of Sympathy (I am too tech dumb to provide the link) said yesterday that she had "browbeaten" me into blogging. Well, she did encourage me with great unflinching regularity, tee hee.

But I have no idea what this blogging is all about, even after checking out a lot of different blogs. It seems to be an online journal that is whatever the blogger wants it to be, right? So I am just writing whatever comes to mind, and trying my damnedest to write what is meaningful to me, without weighing whether it has any meaning for anyone else. Until she added my link to her website, I felt safe. She was the only one likely to read what I am writing. If any of you out in cyberspace have opinions, I welcome those with open mind and open heart. Even as I muddle along with my solipsistic musings, I welcome dialogue.

Grey Day Blues

After getting a late start on my walk today, I plowed on and even managed to add two blocks to my previous count. At the half-way point I debated taking the short route home--this is supposed to be about doing something to make myself feel better, after all. But I was feeling taller and striding along without too much pain, so I decided to push it--especially since I had missed the last two days of fine weather.

It certainly seemed bleak today. Grey and overcast. As someone said yesterday, typically Portland. Once in a while, we will have a glorious spring, with every flower bursting out at once and the sun shining on it all. This spring will unfold slowly, it seems. The flowers today were as bright as when the sun shines, but they did not stir me as they did on the sunny days. It is the sun that puts a smile on my face, irresistibly.

[The silly thing is, it cleared up later. My sweet spoiled sable cat's fur was actually hot to the touch, from baking herself in the sun in one of the West windows.]

I was heralded nearly every block by raucous caws. Crows must be guardians, protecting their territory. I have noticed that city crows are actually much larger than crows I see at the beach. (The ones that have been coming to my yard for handouts--now probably at least fourth generation--are really big. They strut about, big as banty hens.)

This neighborhood is very familiar to me. I have been walking these streets for over ten years. Seen most of the houses change hands. Noted the changes people have made to their yards. Have it down, where I can see a flicker pecking away, or huge flocks of robins. Today passing the yard where an ailing birch used to be a favorite of the flickers, there were a half dozen crows in the yard, who flew off noisily when I passed by. Two young squirrels high-tailed it to trees on either side of the walk, to peer at me, angrily, it seemed. They were equidistant in their respective trees, both facing me, like a formal design--or combat maneuver.

We feed the squirrels black oil sunflower seeds, and I always wonder why we only see young ones. Squirrels are not social animals, but the older ones, the parents, must be around somewhere, after brooding the young.

As I walk, I look for color. Today I note the orangey-red of a rambling picket fence, smeared vertically with yellow moss. I like the way it looks--aged and a little uncertain. I see yards where every blade of grass is manicured, but I prefer the yards with toys--kids' or adults'-scattered about and the flower beds a little wild, even undefined. I think those are a haven for creatures and birds.

I brought home a couple tails from a monkey puzzle tree. (Wow, those funny trees do create a lot of litter!) I will smear them with peanut butter laden with seed, for the birds and squirrels. It is getting warmer, but there are plenty of cold days ahead.

A little addition about the monkey puzzle trees: seeing them on a visit to Portland was one factor in my decision to move here. That and the small-town feel of big-city Portland. Now this area seems as familiar to me as--the place where I lived for thirty years. But at first it was like being in a foreign country. Different trees, different birds. (I cried on seeing cardinals, on my first visit back to the Midwest.) An adjustment. But the monkey puzzle trees are a bonus: we sure didn't have those in the Midwest.

Revisionist Walkabout

I got out late today--it was looking dark and I expected rain before getting back home and I was right. But I did not walk yesterday because of 'prior commitments,' so it felt important to push myself. (I look forward to the time when no pushing is necessary.)

The same moss that glowed the day of the snow was yellowish, sort of rusty, some places nearly amber, today. Chlorophyll shortage, because it is overcast? I definitely have to learn more about mosses.

I have to revise some of my impressions from those other walks. That little ugly bush looked cute today--it was be covered with buds. Now I can't wait to see what it will look like, when they open. And the leaves weren't so miniscule, either. Ranged in size to as big as my thumbnail. The flowers on the variegated Daphne are, more accurately, a deep rose, rather than burgundy. Obviously what I remember is not always accurate. Another reason for getting a camera!

I added two more blocks, but boy those last four seemed long. About three blocks from home I had to walk out around a car parked on the sidewalk, and turned my left foot. Got a sharp pain. Worrisome, since at Christmas I was hobbling around with a cane, after mysteriously injuring it. (Getting old ain't for wimps.) But, after a few strides, it felt just fine.

Floppy Flakes

I am trying to establish a routine here: Yoga--Breakfast--Internet--Walk. So I pushed off about half an hour ago and managed 2 extra blocks, despite the weather. Portland does have snow! Big floppy flakes on a kamikaze mission, coming in at a slant from the South and diving hard and fast at the sidewalk, to magically disappear. I only saw two other people while out there--a couple, walking huddled under an umbrella. The mosses are that vivid green I love. New growth?--don't know anything about mosses. My eyes kept taking them in. On one of those raised gardens, that come about to my armpit, the gardener (optimist) had put out several decorative tiles. On the wall, carefully placed, was a chunk of limestone with moss growing on it, not much yet, but beginning to flow over the edges. That perfect green.

When I came up on my porch, the feral Siamese-mix stray ran desperately in all directions. She has blue eyes that can be seen at forty yards, and four white boots. Her life is a hard one, but I know there are at least three people who take her plight to heart. I was glad to get home and take off my wet clothes. Thanks to my Goodwill Landsend gortex, I stayed dry, but my boots and jeans soaked through, in just 45 min.

Walking in Circles

Years ago I walked everywhere. Refused rides home, unless it was 20 below. (Ohio.) Battled through 3 foot snowdrifts in my Fry's, to get downtown. So why is it now so hard to just get out and walk?

Today I put it on my list, layered up really well, against the wind, and went out before lunch, before showering, before doing the laundry. Because I do know that if I wait to walk after all doing all those things, I won't get out--like yesterday.

Max(his name has been changed to protect his innocence), a neighbor's sweet broad-striped tabby, was waiting outside the door. He pranced around, wanting to come in. But from experience I know that my cats will welcome him with claws, hisses and deep-throated growls. I want to pet him, but he is hand shy.

I followed his wet tracks down my steps and started off, not going too fast. In fact, though I did not know it then, I never did pick up any speed. The whole walk, my feet felt like I was wearing Moon boots, but walking on Jupiter.

What I dreaded, as I rounded my corner, was the painful pressure in my chest and jaw I often feel when I walk. But I knew that if I concentrated on that feeling, it would only feel worse. So I concentrated on what I could see, which is all the flowers and trees in bloom that think it is spring, despite the rain and despite the snow predicted for today.

After walking just a block, I saw something dive into a very low bush ahead of me. The bush was cropped short, with mingy little leaves the size of my small finger-nail and some sort of berries. Not one I would plant. When I got to it, I looked for what I had seen--a bird? But I didn't find it, only a bunch of brown oak leaves, from last year. Maybe I imagined it, or it was just a dried leaf, blown by the wind. Today the wind has tossed the yellow recycling tubs into the street.

A stand of rose bushes where I often pause to sniff in warm weather looked as if it got caught unawares. At first I thought the pink was early blooms, but it was just the backs of the leaves. They twirled, hanging limply. I wished I had a camera, to catch the tourmaline colors.

Another place I wished for a camera is when I noticed a spindly varigated daphne. The yellow-green edges of the leaves contrasted sharply with the dark burgundy of the flowers. There were many daphnes that I passed, but none as eye-catching as that one. I hope it thrives.

My usual walk is a loop, which I try to expand each time I go out. I took in the plants and looked for birds--saw only crows--and heard them! I concentrated on the flowering quince and forsythia, checked to see what trees were ready to bloom (like a small magnolia, with pussy-willow-buds) and just generally focussed on what I miss when I stay inside with the TV, computer and the books. As I passed the half way point, I was feeling taller and though I still plodded, I had forgotten the annoying rustle of my gortex hood and only noticed the ache in my back when I turned my attention to it.

I don't generally pay much attention to the people wrought stuff along the way, but someone had put a round mosaic step stone near that bush where there just might have been a bird. And smack at the edge of the sidewalk further along another person had laid some blue-glazed tile in an unlikely place--at the top of one section a short wall. Pretty.

I thought of those bits as I walked. Thought about that camera that I want, to record what catches my eye and heart. It must not weigh me down, or else it will just sit here, unused, like me.

When I had looped back to withing half a block of that small ugly bush, I decided backtrack and see if I had imagined something fluttering to it. As I walked toward it, I again saw something small and brown fly before me. Must have been a leaf, I thought. But when I got to the bush, out flew a bronze song sparrow. It flew to a break in another bush about twenty yards away, and peeked out at me. I had disturbed it and now I regretted that. I wondered if the brown leaves were part of its nest, but surely that couldn't be. No bird would nest in such a low bush right next to the sidewalk.

When I walked past Max's house, he was there, on the lawn. He dashed up the stairs and leaped up onto a window sill. Max is a lovely kitty, but thin and getting thinner. He peered in the window, but the rooms were all dark; his humans were at work. I felt a pang, seeing him unable to get inside. Could he sense snow in the wind?

the Oscars, thumbnail version

"If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behaviour." Henry David Thoreau


Well, I can't complain. I only saw one movie--Breakback Mountain, so how can I judge? But I can still regret that Breakback Mountain did not win for acting or picture. I thought of that movie and those two guys for weeks afterward. At all sorts of odd moments. Found myself crying while driving over to pay the rent. Thinking of them while scrubbing counters, taking out the trash. The film sprouted many conversations.

It is hard for me to imagine that any of the other films were more moving or memorable. Or the acting more perfect. I will certainly check out the film's competition.

But even as I write that, the ridiculousness of the whole thing strikes me. How can there be only one Best Picture? I think, they could have more than one winner. ( I am a weenie.) But no, that doesn't make sense either. How many? But we can look at the list of nominees and think: THOSE were the best pictures of 2005, judged by a jury of their peers.

After seeing the movie I read the short story by Annie Proulx. I have not read anything else of hers, despite trying, but I admired that short story very much. It seemed to me that she described their lives with exact details of the sort only guys of that period could know. But, while reading the story, I admired the screenplay even more. Of course McMurtry and Ossana had the advantage of the director and esp. the cameraman, but they expanded the story and showed and brought to life what she described.


On the lighter side, I love the frou frou and glitz of the occasion. Now why won't they leave Theron's dress alone? It was an amazing construct--probably way too sophisticated for the occasion and certainly for the commentators.

Catching Up

Admiring friend: 'My, that's a beautiful baby you have there!'
Mother: 'Oh, that's nothing--you should see his photograph.'

Catching Up
I dragged my foot setting up this blog, because I know how infrequently I do anything on a routine schedule. Well, feed myself and feed my kitties. But that doesn't count--the cats don't let me off the hook, in fact tyrannize me! and eating is something I have to work to avoid, rather than the reverse.
So here I am with lots of stuff that has been littering my brain, waiting for an outlet.

Like the Olympics.

I have been watching the Olympics since moving to OR in 1988. (Before that I did not have a TV. If I did not have one now I might accomplish more, like writing here, but who knows?) This year I watched every minute possible, and still missed more than I would have liked. I loved the big opening ceremony, with the runner and the lighting of the torch, which, as my grandson said, was awesome. I am a sucker for the sentiments of international peace and good will, what can I say? I also get a high from the true athlete's work ethic and I get teary eyed when an American wins. For instance, I could watch Apolo Anton Ohno win his 500m gold metal again and again and never tire of his glow of happiness. (Actually, I do revisit that moment, at apoloantonohno.com) Or, what a high, watching Sasha Cohen pull out a medal after two falls!

But I was a little disappointed this year at the antics of some of the American athletes. I would not say that I wanted to bag the whole Olympic experience, but I could not help wondering why we often appear to be acting like jerks, without any manners or respect for the occasion. They asked Bode Miller if he planned to compete in Vancouver. His reply was noncommittal, like, 'I don't know maybe.' Why would anyone sponsor Bode Miller for the competition in Vancouver? Hmmm. Could be he is going to grow up in the next 4 years?