prairie between my toes

a few of my favorite things

2006-03-16T15:32:00.000-06:00

talent worship/rehersals for extinct anatomies by brothers quay

a few of my favorite things

2006-03-16T15:24:00.000-06:00

talent worship/brothers quay's street of crocodiles

2006-03-16T15:22:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

talent worship/jan svankmajer's faust

a few of my favorite things

2006-03-16T15:21:00.000-06:00

talent worship/mentor to the brothers quay/jan svankmajer

2006-03-16T15:20:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

talent worship/brothers quay

a few of my favorite things

2006-03-16T04:34:00.000-06:00

collecting bones/family farm/bone hill

a few of my favorite things

2006-03-16T04:32:00.000-06:00

a rae oportunity to get a picture with willow and chance

2006-03-16T04:24:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

drive through marriage/our wedding pic

2006-03-15T21:49:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

talent worship/, music and lyric writing super talent

a few of my favorite things

2006-03-15T21:47:00.000-06:00

talent worship/clexico, music and lyric writing super talent

a few of my favorite things

2006-03-15T21:09:00.000-06:00

talent worship/nick cave

2006-03-15T19:06:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things
pop-up book of phobias

2006-03-15T18:32:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

clever walking sticks/chinese hidden dagger

a few of my favorite things

clever walking sticks

a few of my favorite things

clever walking sticks/hidden vial and compass

2006-03-15T18:31:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

writing and directing/pinfeathers

2006-03-15T18:26:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

history and connection/family farm

even the Missouri is receding

Here, where I can see towns away to the east and west, I feel stripped down. Those who walked here, carrying the name I was given, built and grew and knew how their lives would go. Before them the same, related or not, they labored to plant and harvest, struggled against mean cold winters, reckless summer storms, wore the Midwest in the thickness of their skin and dryness of wit. In the restless waving of grass across the hills of the pasture, a parade of ghosts wisps by.
Before the cousins shot apart the windmill, or the collapsing of the chicken coop, when more of us lived and came to visit, when there were more of us here, this farm was alive.

Now it slowly decays and I am a visitor witnessing the beauty of its fade. ... Even the Missouri is receding. 9/04

2006-03-15T18:24:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

absinthe

2006-03-15T18:21:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

locally raised and butchered meat

2006-03-15T18:19:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

the family farm/the old barn

2006-03-15T18:18:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

the farm house/family farm

2006-03-15T18:08:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

bone hill/family farm

2006-03-15T16:30:00.000-06:00

2006-03-15T16:27:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

the combining of disparate elements/mi esposo y dollie

2006-03-15T16:24:00.000-06:00

these are a few of my favorite things

roma tomatos

2006-03-15T16:17:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

sliced jalapenos

2006-03-15T16:14:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

collecting bones/cattle skulls

2006-03-15T16:09:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

the bone hill/family farm

2006-03-15T16:03:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

talent worship/nick cave

"There's a man who spoke wonders though I've never met him
He said, "He who seeks finds and who knocks will be let in"
I think of you in motion and just how close you are getting
And how every little thing anticipates you
All down my veins my heart-strings call
Are you the one that I've been waiting for?"
from are you the one i'm waiting for.

2006-03-15T15:59:00.000-06:00

a few of my favorite things

bernardo bertolucci's films especially a brilliant the conformist!

"Synopses

The Conformist

Marcello Clerici is an ambitious professor in 1938 Italy. As Mussolini comes into power, Clerici lets it be known that he is a fascist, and soon a blind friend has gotten him an assignment with the secret police. After marrying Giulia, Clerici takes a honeymoon in Paris where he is given an assignment to assassinate one of his old university teachers, Professor Quadri, who is now the head of an anti-fascist resistance group. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer."

2006-03-15T15:53:00.000-06:00

the pop-up book of phobias

2006-03-15T15:49:00.000-06:00

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown papper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and snitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eye-lashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad...

2006-03-15T13:38:00.000-06:00

aha! got one of those wiley and wiggly puppies!

2006-03-08T02:09:00.000-06:00

2006-03-08T02:07:00.000-06:00

2006-03-08T01:59:00.000-06:00

2006-03-02T12:38:00.000-06:00

2006-03-02T12:37:00.000-06:00

2006-03-02T12:36:00.000-06:00

fun, toys, play

2006-03-02T12:34:00.000-06:00

2006-03-02T09:41:00.000-06:00

Marco the Magnificent! (music box pop up toy)

2006-03-02T04:02:00.000-06:00

i will write until my fingers bleed! or i finish this book! grrrrrrrrrrr!

The 5 Precepts
abstain from killing
abstain from stealing
abstain from adultry
abstain from lying
abstain from liquor

Eight Fold Path
right understanding
right thought
right speech
right actions
right livelyhood
right effort
right mindfulness
right concentration

2006-03-02T04:01:00.000-06:00

2006-03-02T03:59:00.000-06:00

2006-03-02T03:53:00.000-06:00

2006-03-02T03:48:00.000-06:00

write the bloody book already!

2006-03-02T03:05:00.000-06:00

“Brave New World is more prophetic than 1984,” he explained, “Because Aldous Huxley had expanded his mind on hallucinogenics and could see society hurtling toward mind-numbing non-stop entertainment.” He looked around the room. “Where is your television?”
“Very funny,” I said.
He laughed. “How do you like it?”
“What?”
“My disguise?”
“Pretty convincing, white boy.”
“Look who’s talking. You could light a trail on a moonless night.”
I laughed. “That’s because I have fireflies in my blood.”

2006-03-02T02:57:00.000-06:00

She found Los Angeles of 1930 lacking in vitality and color. It was gray and soulless. The people could find no joy in the midst of their poverty and desperation. Simply being alive was no solace for them. It seemed a country of people only strengthened through material abundance.

2006-03-02T02:56:00.000-06:00

2006-03-02T02:52:00.000-06:00

And kids will tease you into a neurotic, he should have added, I might have seen it coming. I was teased for being so white. I was called “wonder bread.” Milk was poured over my head. I was called “bug eyes,” and often had my long braid yanked by boys. While suffering the constant torment of the kids around me, I had nervously plucked out all of my eyelashes during school and they have never grown back.

2006-03-02T02:48:00.000-06:00

Sheets of cobwebs hung on the juniper trees and had accumulated on inside corners. Dust had long settled indoors and out. Though the sun was white-hot, as was common in the area that time of year, the tiny house was dark and cold.

2006-03-02T02:46:00.000-06:00

When that night came, when my grandmother’s spirit left me, my soul and my body must have known what was about to happen but my mind refused to believe it was possible.
I cried all night until after there were no tears left.

In the morning I dragged myself, sloshing through the tear-flooded floor of the cottage, to the short narrow kitchen to put on the teakettle.

i had been forgetting the signs

2006-02-28T16:08:00.000-06:00

they were there this whole time

My weekend 2/36/05 ...

2006-02-28T15:15:00.000-06:00

absence seizure

my weekend was pretty good. i don't know if you are aware of this about me but i'm in a town of maybe 3500 people, five percent of which i am related to in ever distant ripples of blood and marriages. the largest town nearest here is a hundred miles north in bismark north Dakota. the next largest would be 100 miles east to aberdeen, 30,000 people.

the big event of my weekend was going to bismark instead of aberdeen to shop for supplies at wallmart.i waited in the car because my cousin introduced me to a chinese buffet that had sushi and other good eats i haven't seen since leaving los angeles and i couldn't walk yet. she stopped at the casino on the standing rock reservation and i intuitively picked the quarter machines that were calling her name via my sensitive mental makeup. and she made some money. good thing because we were at least thirty miles from the nearest gas station when the gas guage was pointing at 'you're screwed' and 'soon stranded too many walking miles in this cold wind'. i started coasting down the hills and laughing gleefully while going up each one because it was such an asinine strategy! i thought it all hilarious and even got my cousin to laughing and making fun of our siuation. the wind outside was damn cold and a few feet from the car to inside any stop was enough to get her to whining about how cold she was. and how cold her hand gets since she's been working out and lost weight! how many times to i have to hear about this and have to look at her hand i kept wondering, but only laughed and made fun of her while getting the heat on and all angled toward her bemoaning the cold self.

luckily there was a single pump in a smaller than small town on the res. my cousin dug in her purse for gas change and we all had a good laugh over two goofy white women from town running out of gas far off in the cold. of course we did not run out of gas and all got home safely.

when i got home i thought the worst had been over and found it all entertaining and humerous. that is until i was met with the thorough job our five month old italian grayhound Chance had done ripping apart a rare book that belongs to the family which i sort of borrowed without asking to read about my greatgrandmother. it's the only copy i know of outside of official archives or the library maybe.

Chance!!!

i'm beginning to wish his name was more like cutie pie or cuddles. it seems like all i'm doing is giving him one more chance before i toss him on the barbeque or return him for a refund or exchange.

2006-02-17T02:43:00.000-06:00

2006-02-17T02:40:00.000-06:00

2006-02-17T02:39:00.000-06:00

2006-02-17T02:36:00.000-06:00

2006-02-17T02:35:00.000-06:00

2006-02-17T02:33:00.000-06:00

me in October 2004

2006-02-11T19:32:00.000-06:00

Goodbye

2006-02-09T08:17:00.000-06:00

Go from me but not because I reject you
I have wanted to embrace the promise you offer
And suffered the pain and lunacy you provide
I am not strong enough to endure you any longer after
Thirty-one years of pain and terrible suffering
I release you and honor you both
Go now (March 14)
A month after Valentines day
Hallmark probably never meant it to be this way
Goodbye you reproductive organs
I am childless and bursting with the pregnancy of many books
Wish me well and be on your way

from All the Leaving

2006-02-05T20:00:00.000-06:00

(pic titled menstrual barbie! lol)

Then at dinner one night just after my ninth birthday, Pops was lecturing me about something I still can’t remember.
“You got it, kid?” he asked as usual to make sure I was listening. My interpretation was always that he thought I too dimwitted to understand.
“You should know, Pops, you’re as smart as you are tall and twice as world-wise,” I quoted from something he had once said about somebody else.
“A lotta lip from a kid who can’t even read a book.”
“I can read.”
“What is the last book you read?”
“Katie gets her first period. It came in that girl’s menstruation kit you gave me.”
“Don’t try to divert me with your shenanigans, kid. If you’re going to be a smart-ass, better be smart.”

from All the Leaving

2006-02-03T21:38:00.000-06:00

I had to beat the words out on that old typewriter because the ribbon was so dry.

Still the “I” would not imprint itself onto the page.

I wrote of my earliest memory –

A v ew through the w ndow of my mother’s Volkswagen beetle, of m les and m les of dusty, desolate land strewn w th power l nes and o l f elds.

I wrote about how fear felt the first time in that car, how striking, how palpable it was in the lengthening distance between my mother and I while driving down the street toward the apartment building where we would part.

from All the Leaving

2006-02-03T21:35:00.000-06:00

In truth, it wasn’t about me. It all started long before I was born.

It began in the northern Mexican desert under a cold new moon. Concepcion, only fourteen, pulled her stillborn brother into the world from between the legs of her mother. She put the tiny ashen body in her mother’s arm and lay down next to her. She felt a tugging at her soul while her mother cradled her son’s cold body in one arm, herself in the other, and sang lullabies throughout the night as her life bled away. At first light of morning, Concepcion removed herself from the icy pair.
She cried later, over their graves, wetting the unfamiliar dusty land far from the verdant richness of the home far down south that she had loved, where she was last truly happy and fulfilled in her life.

This Wall

2006-01-13T20:00:00.000-06:00

This Wall

By all appearances I am facing a great wall of difficulty. And though I have felt more like a sufferer than a living being, there is something so familiar about this suffering that it is comforting. It’s like I have felt this suffering so often I have reached a level of familiarity that seems like comfort. Or, maybe more to the point – I have acquiesced myself to a life of drama and great spiritual challenge.

All the same, my challenges of late have included constant physical pain due to degenerative disc disease and pleurisy among yet other VERY painful ailments all strung together and adorning me with incapacitation. As though to drape me layer-by-layer with a costume of physical suffering that no longer resembles my character nor my appearance - my aspect or my being. And erecting in that way a great wall between my pupose of spirit and a weight of suffering.

Now I must obviously become that wall, that weight and distance between spiritual purpose and physical and emotional suffering. What is it made of? Can it be known and understood? Or is it another trick of the ego to succor imagined woes while real and true suffering surrounds and renders foolish anything less?

2006-01-01T21:06:00.000-06:00

2006-01-01T21:04:00.000-06:00

2005-12-29T23:19:00.000-06:00

2005-12-29T23:18:00.000-06:00

2005-12-29T23:17:00.000-06:00

2005-12-29T23:15:00.000-06:00

2005-12-29T23:14:00.000-06:00

2005-12-29T23:13:00.000-06:00

2005-12-29T23:11:00.000-06:00

2005-12-29T22:24:00.000-06:00

tra la la

2005-12-29T22:18:00.000-06:00

fantasyland!

2005-12-29T22:11:00.000-06:00

2005-12-20T01:01:00.000-06:00

Queen No Name

2005-12-20T01:00:00.000-06:00

2005-12-20T00:59:00.000-06:00

2005-12-20T00:57:00.000-06:00

The puppies in their bed.

2005-12-20T00:56:00.000-06:00

inkwell

2005-12-20T00:46:00.000-06:00

The dogs bedroom I am allowed to share. A development I am not pleased with.

2005-12-20T00:45:00.000-06:00

Candles and flowers to come shortly. So imagine it with the candles and flowers, if you would.

2005-12-20T00:41:00.000-06:00

Ah! ... a kitchen! And a purculator! Mm, mm!

2005-12-17T02:45:00.000-06:00

carrousel

2005-12-17T02:42:00.000-06:00

Winter solstice festival in Kensington market, Toronto, December 21st 2004

2005-12-17T02:40:00.000-06:00

Snagged.

2005-12-17T02:37:00.000-06:00

Winter solstice festival in Kensington market, Toronto, December 21st 2004.

2005-12-17T02:24:00.000-06:00

The sun and winter solstice, 1996. Snagged. Hydrogen-alpha light? It reminds me of vintage vaseline glass. Uranium is at a higher level in the vintage than in the more regulated contemporary vaseline.

2005-12-17T02:17:00.000-06:00

Illumination of Earth by Sun on the day of the northern winter solstice. 12/21/2005 18:30

2005-12-16T18:43:00.000-06:00

SUNLIGHT ENTERS THE NEWGRANGE CHAMBER

At dawn on Winter Solstice every year, just after 9am, the sun begins to rise across the Boyne Valley from Newgrange over a hill known locally as Red Mountain. Given the right weather conditions, the event is spectacular.

At four and a half minutes past nine, the light from the rising sun strikes the front of Newgrange, and enters into the passage through the roofbox which was specially designed to capture the rays of the sun.

For the following fourteen minutes, the beam of light stretches into the passage of Newgrange and on into the central chamber, where, in Neolithic times, it illuminated the rear stone of the central recess of the chamber. With simple stone technology, these wonderful people captured a very significant astronomical and calendrical moment in the most spectacular way.

The photograph on left was taken in the chamber of Newgrange on December 21st 2003 by photographer Fran Caffrey.

2005-12-16T06:26:00.000-06:00

what was I saying?

The Dalmation

2005-12-16T06:23:00.000-06:00

With its unique spots, no dog is more easily identified than a Dalmatian. It is also the only known animal to be born pure white, the spots appearing some 10 to 14 days later. Why the distinctive marking? Camouflage possibly, for a dog bred to hunt in desert country, where the white coat blends with the sand and the spots are lost among the pebbles.

Spotted History
The earliest history of the breed begins in 3.700 BC with King Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, who owned a spotted pet dog. Wall paintings and friezes found in Greece and Crete show hounds were imported into Greece to create a breed with size, speed and elegance, suitable for hunting deer. This resulted in a dog closely resembling today's Dalmatian. Collectors of pottery will have found that early Staffordshire figures show groups of Dalmatians hunting fallow deer. Even the origin of the name can be found here - a corruption of Dama (Latin for Fallow Deer) and Chien (French for dog) became 'Damachien', akin to Dalmatian, which evolved later. In the late 16th century, the style of hunting changed and the 'Damachien' went out of fashion. Gypsies and wandering players on the Continent, attracted by the dogs' unusual appearance incorporated them into their troupes. They were also noticed by English aristocrats on their travels in the 18th century, who brought a few back to England. They soon discovered that the spotted dogs had feet and legs strong enough to run on the rough roads for 30 miles or so without breaking down. So it was then they became carriage dogs, and many contemporary prints showing them trotting happily behind their masters' carriages.

2005-12-16T06:20:00.000-06:00

Pictured above is Gowan’s Billy, a little black dog who won the silver collar in 1856. He was considered by the breed experts to be perfect in all his points. The engraving gives his proportions most exactly, but represents him altogether to large according to Stonehenge. He was 14 ½ inches high and 8 ¾ lbs in weight.

EARLY HISTORY OF ITALIAN GREYHOUNDS

2005-12-16T06:18:00.000-06:00

No own knows the absolute beginnings of the Italian Greyhound breed. But the IG can be seen in illuminated manuscripts and in master painters such as Blake, Carpaccio, Van Dyck, Teniers and Ward. According to current theory this breed is around 2000 years old. Most authorities believe the breed was dwarfed for pet purposes from a Gazehound of long ago. Some authorities believe that the breed is of Turkish descent but there is strong evidence that the Italian Greyhound was a favorite in the days of ancient Pompeii as there are numerous relics throughout Italy that point to the breed as the only known pet dog for many centuries.

The high-stepping, dancing action of an Italian Greyhound has been a delight to commoners and royalty alike. This breed has graced royal palaces of such noted historical figures as: Mary Queen of Scots, Charles I, Queen Anne, Queen Victoria as well as Frederick the Great. One of the most popular stories is the Matabele King, who was so pleased by the high-stepping action of this breed that he gave 200 head of cattle to Mr. Murcombe Searelle for one of these dogs. At that time, no other such price had ever been paid for a dog.

2005-12-16T06:11:00.000-06:00

the toile I love

Nursery rhymes are like cherry cough syrup.

2005-12-16T06:06:00.000-06:00

If only I could be like Dominique Sanda ... not in Fizi Contini but in 1900 when she refuses to let herself see what her economic class is doing to the peasantry. "I'm blind!" she yells at a peasant's dance. The poverty and neglect and suffering she refuses to look at - I'm blind, I'm blind she tells those before her who have endured a life of suffering.

Refusing to see is the only place left to hide once you are out in the open and utterly naked.

Always at my core, in my upturned palms, is the suffering like a precious collection of glass and in this collection lies an awareness of the sufferings in life. I hold something precious and ultimately very dark and very powerful. Because we human beings who are not battling hunger, disease, destitute poverty, war, the violence and injustices of others, cannot know true suffering except as something that eats at our souls while we take 10,000 things about our lives for granted without the least bit of gratitude for yet another day.

We so love our mental suffering because then we are blind and can go about enjoying our standard of life with compassion for those who truly suffer. We know anguish and we know despair. We know sorrow. We know pain.

2005-12-16T05:22:00.000-06:00

Meanwhile, us Westerners get to have our well lit, well fed time of it. Continue the Hallmark tradition. Walk that well worn groove.

2005-12-15T02:28:00.000-06:00

WTO Protests, Hong Kong, 2005.
Picture snagged off Google news site.

What a great composition. Like a state divide on a map - a clear line running through. As if the land were this way, parcelling itself out into distinctive and clear sections. As if human beings were this way, simple and direct and good or evil (like two sides of the same coin).

2005-12-14T09:41:00.000-06:00

Willow's new hat.