O, Death. If You See Me Coming, You Better Run.
Today would have been my grandmother’s 100th birthday. She told me long ago that she didn’t want a party. She died just under four months’ short of her centennial goal. That means today I must light a candle in honor of her life and my grief. This story is that lit candle. Stand with me.
There’s A Tale About Me I’ve Been Itching To Share
*Whispering* Does anyone want to talk about art and money? One more question: Is anyone interested in reading my *full* writer’s bio?
Adulthood CONFIDENTIAL! Get Your Damn Foot Off the Brake.
You know what? This has not been my favorite season. (And the hits still keep comin’!) But here’s the thing— ultimately I know what things I can control and what things I can’t. And what I could not control during this trip to Big Bend with my friend D. was this person who kept stomping his brakes in front of us on a curvy basin road in the rain. Are you ready now? Tale my hand and let us go together into this story.
Borderlands Kōan
It seems we are always crossing borders. As a result, we are each other’s greatest mysteries. <3
The Olla Podrida of Ogden Avenue
MY FRESHMAN YEAR of college I lived in an apartment near my favorite coffeehouse. It was not my first time to live in a transitory neighborhood. But it was my first experience with a wheelchair flasher and a SWAT team.
The Universe, According to My Husband
I did not know when I married The Husband that his hobby was studying the universe. And I did not know that would include having to listen to and/or watch in passing a sleek-packaged array of programs about every element of the science of the universe. But I now know I do not understand the following: astronomy, astrometry, astrophysics, astronautics, astrochemistry, aerospace engineering, spectroscopy, cosmography, cosmology, and basic geography.
Adulthood CONFIDENTIAL! Enough.
“When you are completely off balance, so much so that you are certain you will topple over—you bring the paddle down hard on the water’s surface, the way ducks bat their wings. You will feel your kayak right itself. Only by moving in the direction you least trust can you be saved.” —Roger Rosenblatt
I Was a Teenage Irish Stepdancer! Or, A Few Notes on Irish Stepdancing That I’ve Been Meaning to Write Down for Years Now
For seventeen years’ worth of St. Patrick’s Days, I performed without pay (because I was still an amateur competitor) starting at 6 a.m. on the 17th and ending somewhere around 3 a.m. on the 18th. So today, I raise my cup of coffee to those dancing in the trenches— I was a teenage Irish Stepdancer. This is my tale.
In Calving Season
It’s calving season again in South Texas, so my mind has turned to the usual things: spring apples, new life, and the flourishing world of the subconscious self despite the tidal pull of a conscious mind. You know— the lighthearted stuff. <3
Color, I Exhaled
Can you visualize color without reference? Can you recall sequenced sound? Does the smell of baker’s chocolate bring up a complete memory, unpacked, of your childhood? Which of the five senses unlocks your world?
Insomnolence (A List)
In the story of sleeplessness, you will cast yourself in every roll— every roll, that is, but that of one who gets a good night’s sleep.
Organizational Strategies for the Hyperexcitable
At the beginning of every new year, I try to hash out my big organizational issues on paper. This year I discovered I had something new to screw up with an untested organizational method— digital media.
The Breath Between Frames: Meditations on the Self-Portrait
Why do we take self-portraits with our cameras? Why do I? Why do you? <3
In the Dream Kingdom
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Pinterest lately. I’ve also been grieving. Somehow, the two are connected.
The Little Black Dress That Never Was
For two days, I have been looking for a dress to wear to my grandmother’s out-of-town funeral— a dress I cannot find. Is it really about the dress? Or is there something else, something greater I am looking for?
Nothing’s Ever Quite as Wordless as You’d Wish It Would Be
I stand in my grandmother’s room at dusk. Someone before me left the door ajar—
Succor and Ogden Nash
At every hospital stay, I have read to my grandmother from every book she loved and every book I thought she’d love. Last night, I ran out of words. Why?
Faint Song from a Distant Station
My very elderly grandmother had a brain aneurysm on Saturday night. And today? Today I am singing a little bit of her story. Well, our story, really. <3
Taking Photographs in the Arcades of the Mind
There are three photographs from my childhood that remind me of who I am. And all three of them were taken with a bellows camera by a professional photographer who called to my mother on the street one day.
![Adulthood CONFIDENTIAL! Why I Didn't, and Why I Did, and Why I'll Do It Again [A Costume Design Story]](http://i0.wp.com/bluebirdblvd.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/mohairsweaternationalarchief.jpg?resize=250%2C250)
Adulthood CONFIDENTIAL! Why I Didn’t, and Why I Did, and Why I’ll Do It Again [A Costume Design Story]
When you try to learn a new skill, remember this: Learning how to fail at something new, takes you halfway to learning how to succeed at it. Really.
Hurried Meditations on a Headache
You think you can remember pain, but you cannot. What you remember is the idea of pain.
![Adulthood CONFIDENTIAL! Why I Didn't and Why I Did [A Fashion Story]](http://i1.wp.com/bluebirdblvd.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/hatsatinflowersostrichfeathers.jpg?resize=250%2C250)
Adulthood CONFIDENTIAL! Why I Didn’t and Why I Did [A Fashion Story]
First you take the fabric and boil the chicken broth and examine your light sources when you consider the built in furniture potatoes are a good source of potassium and don’t forget to press your seams, students.
The Adventure You Didn’t Know You Were Already Having
When fear meets desire and a set of sewing scissors, you will find me right in the middle of it all. Quoting Macbeth.
The Rain Makes You Tell the Truth
The sky broke in two last night, halved like an eggshell, as the rain came down and down on the tangled earth. I sat up in the rumpled bed watching the room exhale and expand with electric light, then contract into darkness.
Bluebird’s Alaska (The Caribou Hour)
There is a type of latitudinal luck I have wondered about for most of my life.
Bluebird’s Alaska (More of a Statement Than a Question)
Another train. Another young voice explaining permafrost and glacial silt and drunken forests on loudspeakers.
Esteban’s Record Collection
Wherever it is I go in my dreams, the rest of me, that dogged corporeal self, attempts to follow.
Mash Note Dept.: Diana Vreeland
I went through puberty in the mid-to-late 1980s, which to this day still feels like a rarefied hell of impossible tight dresses and supermodels with large teeth and big strange hair at odds with gravity.
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