still

for my dad, who's 84 today

when I am still
I can still smell
that beat-up truck
with sticky red seats
and the radio knobs that wouldn’t work
so I could fiddle with them all I wanted

driving home from school...

and when I am still
I can still smell the mockingbird house
we visited…catawpa tree’s shed
its wiggly worms…
sun beating down on a rotten red porch

craning my head, trying to see more between the boards

when I am still
I can still smell
your working skin
underneath green broadcloth…yellow rice
steaming on the stove and cornbread
muffins just like I like…with pea-juice on them

and the taste of the alabama dirt they grew in

when I am still
I will smell
your Sunday smell…and my daughter’s
little voice telling you
how sweet it is and how sweet your are….
in her princess world ~

when I am still
I will smell my daddy’s hugs….my father’s kiss
light on my lips
no matter where I am

growing, going…

still.

Glamorama

From our first ballerina jewelry box, we're smitten with a chest to store our treasures. Not long after getting my ballerina box, I discovered my mom's "old" jewelry box that had loads of bootie to be pillaged. From high school rings to rhinestone brooches to clippy earbobs that pinched but looked fabulous, I was hooked, and often visited there to encrust myself (even tho the metals and the funky smell of the waxed beads and celluloid sometimes left me feeling a little high ;) )

Now that box sits on my dresser along with a vintage red lacquer box that also belonged to her and still holds some old secrets from another life lived. And even though I have these wonderful treasure chests, I like to see my most favorite sparkly things! I'd always puzzled over how to make this work until I found glumpire's enid collins collection AND her pin mannequin.

Maybe it's the light from the window or the effortless way everything seems arranged but that photo was instant...irrevocable...mannequin LUST.  There, I've said it, disturbing tho that may sound?  Like many things in my now, make-do living arrangement (my daughter and I share a room, and did I mention she's 9) my mannequin doesn't exactly look *like* glumpire's?  Mine does have some lovely vintage brooches, but it's also dripping with an 80's charm necklace, some homeless baubles from fave etsy sellers that deserve more than a bottom of a drawer, a sparkly star headband and, last but not least a slightly rumpled silver glittered pink cowgirl hat to top things off.  And altho sometimes I'm frustrated that my room is camera shy for a reason, a thought occured to me? That mannequin may well one day be a memory for my daugher like my mom's boxes are for me?  So for now, I'm happy to share her.  Mean time seems like some others have had similar ideas for displaying collections.  And altho Velda's (glumpire's)  is certainly the first and best I've seen...these certainly are too worthy of the title glamorama. 

p.s. I think I feel a vanity post coming on....


~ Some other glamorama worthy mannequins ~



The Decorologist finds a great place to put her bling:

Jessica, from Such Pretty Things finds her daughter has inherited her love not only for vintage pins but the art of arrangement as well :)

and finally my not quite glamorama, but definitely mini me mannequin in the making...wish me luck!

lallyhoo, for daddy

there is nobody but nobody here wheedling me
in this blackberry lane growing wildly man-free
with thistles they bristle and bleed fingertip wine
stickly sickly blackberries with nectar divine ~

in here I’m transported back into the garden
the eden of dreams and innocence forgotten
but where there’s berries there’s snakes
grandma mo-mac used to tell me……….
so fear suddenly clouds my thought’s reverie:

I'm re-living the nightmare of old black miss sara;
hunched over just like this, nary a care.
without any warning, the rattler lisped at her face ~
in a death clutch they find them eternally embraced.

miss sara used to make a sweet lallyhoo.
that was Swahili for blackberry stew?
we ate till our smiles trickled tickly sweet
just like bob white quail who’s feast we repeat...till we bloat
after watching their gorge-stained, odd
blue and red throats…….

we miss her and the lallyhoo’s of summer's past time
bitter-sweet thistles and bristles and fingertip wine.
and, so I wish I could take those sneaky bites back?
erase all the sorrow and fear like grandma mo-mac’s.

And now I am hunched here low in this garden
my primeval, bruised, eden far from forgotten
and there’s nobody but nobody here wheedling me
in this blackberry lane growing wildly, finally free.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sylvia Plath's Blackberrying

Samantha's Song

Samantha's song...
walking off the world

so here I finally am
no hurry to find you there
walking off the world

seemingly finally heard
in the last breath drawn
with a steely smile…

I’ve wondered all the while
about this and that,
and I’m wild with all regret

that this has been so hard
for you and me….
this continued confidentiality?

Will April always be the
cruelest month for you and me?
seems like there’s an empty space of days…

when we sit down and chat in lost malaise
over early times, and better times
and the innocence of illusion…

of happily ever after times
and all the opportunities chosen
wasting, chasing away our youth.

I always feel the showers falling
in april’s soft sweet streets,
puddles reflecting a muzzled face…

and I’m so there finally,
no hurry to find you
walking off the edge.

Why do we do this?

why do we do this?

we do it because we love it.



this dance of words...

courage hurled upon a page,

persuading ourselves

despite our constant parade of humanity

that calamity of life is wonderful

amid those fragile shells



we tiptoe around ~

the silent sounding thoughts;

the echoes in our collective head…

that secretly dread the day when east meets west

without apology and we are facing

that omniscient horizon.



what will we find then?



when time no longer matters and the

days are scattered out before us

without that thin line that grounded us along?

how will our rhymes sound then

amid the babbling den of everything?



or nothing?



I’m wondering? will the temptation arise

to double back within the loop of space

erasing all the waiting from before and

seize the day’s open door of opportunity

in that stunning gift of frail human possibility

once we finally grow and know….



why we do this?

for those who like their numbers

for those who like their numbers
random
I ask:

Is your life like a Shirley Jackson story?


Because if it is, you might be missing
something………………………
like



a chance encounter
with a barefoot girl named sunny
dancing in the rain?



prepare your mind
to favor
chance



and dance with me
silly?
become a paradox in probability?



let’s gamble with the gods,
creating our own order in the chaos
in unpredictable abandon of the odds



erased of blind faith
we become wonder?



and instead of random,
we are tandem….



Shirley Jackson Bio

Randomness

Look before you leap...list

(or why I use elipses so often...)

This year's leap year and I saw a Honda commercial the other day touting a leap list. Like all good ads the term leap list kept rolling around in my head until I was forced... to...go... to the Honda website:

http://automobiles.honda.com/leap-list/my-list/?item=&goal=1

So the leap-list campaign is a pretty snazzy one aimed at 30/40/50 somethings who aren't quiiiiteeee ready to do a bucket list.  Before you make your next "leap" in life make a list of 10 things you'd like to do/accomplish.  The most popular ones are:

travel to Europe (done but always ready/willing/able to do more....)

learn a new language (hopefully to tie in with numero uno)

buy a house (i'd just like to QUALIFY to buy a house at this point)

start my own business (in a different economy)

live abroad for an extended period of time

go skydiving (would probably help with item number two, I'm sure I'd be saying a few new phrases)

run a half marathon (see my blogstream of consciousness remark above)

graduate college (overdone)

get married (getting married is easy, it's the staying that's the hard part)

run a marathon (would prolly entail more new phrases than number two or the half math, besides every morning by the time I do everything that has to be done before I sit down at my desk I feel like i've run the gauntlet)

So it hits me, aside from the running and skydiving, I've DONE alot of these things, and truly given my caffeine intake really don't need falling through the air with the greatest of un-ease added to MY list.  I suspect the people compiling the Honda list are slight bit younger than my demographic also...

So here's my list:

1.   publish something (this is akin to skydiving in my reality)

2.   take a consumer detox (especially challenging when you have a kiddo)...live on cash only

3.   speaking of, travel with her (and I don't just mean to Disney)....make it include sleeping under stars

4.  take her to Manhattan / Ellis Island  and look up our ancestors

5.   travel to Hawaii, walk on then collect some black beach sand

6.   take a Gondola ride with my love

8   cruise the MED

9.   meditate in sedona, then count shooting stars (see 3)

10.  swim with dolphins

11. roadtrip for at least two weeks with no destination planned

12.  ufo watch out west on the ET highway

13. walk in a crop circle or three

14.  visit arecibo (yes CONTACT is one of my favorite movies)

15. get the tattoo

16. rock a bikini

17.  practice yoga daily

18.  drink in Doheny and Nesbitt's in Dublin

19.  take my daughter Savannah to Savannah

20. see the pyramids and cruise the Nile

21.  eat at an automat in Toykyo

22.  live transparently while retaining my southern belleness

23.  own a home that is a home (that's WAY different from buying a house)

24.  learn to ride a bike (secret shame, enough said)

25.  cook...and enjoy the results

26  climb to the top of a Mayan temple

27. meet a tibetan sherpa

28.  see billy joel in concert one more time (sing LOUD)

29.  karaoke in japan, visit harajuku

30.  take really good photos of it ALL (except below)

31.  make love with my love in a wheat field

32.  sleep in a haunted castle; i'd love to see a ghost

33.  spend a few months in an ashram



I will say this,  my biggest leaps are the people I love and everyday magic moments with them... THOSE are the things layered in my elipses...my pauses as I'm gathering thoughts....and why I use them so often...

what's on your list?  it doesn't have to be limited to 10 btw....those are Honda's rules, not mine...