What I Did Over My Summer Vacation

Here is what I accomplished this summer:

1) I grudgingly admit to myself that I did make a substantial dent in The Strega's Story. I am learning to share a workspace with Mr. Strega in our cabin/office. I get the daytime, he gets the nighttime--not unlike the arrangement Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes had, with none of the weirdness. The "grudging" is due to the fact that I think I could have used my time much, much better...but, heck, live and learn.

2) I knit over half of my Arachne Shrug. I also probably ripped the same amount out and started over.

3) Planted large garden, which is just now coming into its fullest bloom, due to the late rains this year.

4) Had at least six performances with Dancers of the Crescent Moon. Bought same amount of false eyelashes. Yes, I hate them, but they are a necessary evil(and my troupe director requires them).

5) Performed a sword-balancing dance for the first time in public, and didn't drop the sword or cause anyone's premature death.

6) Entered a Level 2 yoga class and did not fall on my face during Sun Salutations

7) Started African dance and am still among the living.

8) Made 18 million rhubarb-strawberry crumbles, as my friend Mary has a rhubarb plant
and gave me many, many stalks (with promises of a future rhizome), and Mr. Strega kept buying giant flats of strawberries at the Felton Farmer's Market.

9) Made 18 million gallons of tomato soup (Gingery Tomato Soup from the Laurel's Kitchen cookbook) after Mr. Strega discovered one can buy 20 pounds of tomatoes at a time from Dirty Girl Farms at the Felton Farmer's Market.

10) Faithfully took my nightly walk with Mr. Strega and our canine, down the street and back again.

11) Am getting more successful at eating only veggies between dinner and bedtime, which is what my nutritionist suggested, as, despite all the yoga, bellydance, African dance, walking, etc., my weight doesn't seem to budge substantially.

I did not:

1) See "Snakes on a Plane." I would if I didn't have such a terrible paranoia about snakes. I already have recurring nightmares about reptiles. My son Riff saw it and declares it the best movie he's ever seen in his life.

2) Hang out at the White Raven more than once or twice (must remedy this).

3) Go swimming in our community pool every day, like I said I would.

And now, it's nearly over!

summer's lease

I noticed today that it is August 15th and I realized I've not gone to many places this summer, other than bellydance venues.

I've done so little in terms of going out and doing stuff due to working on the book. It has been a commitment not unlike a marriage to a hermit, requiring me to stay at home. I am hoping that when I get my laptop later this summer (just a basic Mac--I need nothing more than Word, maybe some simple PowerPoint capability for the occasional conference, and wireless capability so I can waste time in coffeehouses, pretending to work). Hopefully the editing part can get easier. I do not generally write on a computer--all of the book has been written by hand, using a fountain pen, no less. I came to adulthood in the era of computer paper that was striped green and white, with perforations on each side, and never really got the hang of composing on a computer (though obviously I do it here).

So, staying home with my book has been the norm. I hope as the summer winds down, I will at least have it ready to send off--I realize that, until the book is printed, it may have more incarnations, and this actually reassures me.

I bought Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags yesterday and hung them on a giant rosebush (my Elena rose, which has beautiful, full white blooms). I've never had them before.
At first, I wanted to keep them nice and shielded from the sun, but realized that their purpose is to not only send prayers into the wind, but also to act as a reminder of impermanence. My yoga teacher always says, "Things come and go," and they do, even the writing of a book. So I put my flags out where the sun will hit them, and get back to sending my own words into the universe. Writing is such an act of faith--who knows ultimately where the journey leads? Little by little, the path is revealed and the next step made known.

I knew Persephone

I’ve taken down the original post. It was an autobiographical post about my mother and Marlene Morrow’s friendship when I was a young, vulnerable, and innocent high school student. 

All I wanted was a wholesome environment to grow up in, a mother who would listen to me, a family who cared. Instead, my mother and brother were cocaine dealers, Mom dated a steady stream of shady men, and these dangerous partners exposed us to violence and deeply inappropriate even criminal, behavior. My mother worked in a department store and met Marlene there. Marlene represented fame, attractiveness, and sexual glamour: the very things my mother conflated with self-esteem and happiness. After a time, there was no household: it was all Marlene, all the time. Marlene and her boyfriends, Marlene at the Playboy Mansion, the funny thing Marlene said to Hugh Hefner, Marlene's clothing...eventually, it felt as if the household disappeared into a Marlene Morrow Fan Club. 

 

The damage this caused me and my siblings was indescribable. Children deserve a healthy environment to grow in. And whatever troubles Marlene had, or still has, are her responsibility to deal with. I wish her well, but never want to deal with this part of my life again. 

 

And so I invoke Hecate to protect all those whose innocence was stolen from them (including men and boys, though I don’t mention it in the invocation):

Holy Hecate, goddess of the crossroads, protect all women and girls from the evils of this world. Teach us to love our bodies, minds, and spirits as they are, and not as the patriarchy wants us to be. 

Holy Triple Goddess, Maiden, Mother, and Crone, you work in secret, in shadows, your cloak is the darkness of the new moon, your words the whisper of dry leaves--and you who come here, looking for someone else's story, gaze upon Hecate instead, and consider whether you have met her, a mysterious figure walking late at night on the side of the road, a shadow glimpsed from the corner of your eye, a whisper in your ear in the liminal space between sleep and waking, a tap at your window, though no one is there...

(statue of Hecate in her aspect as the Triple Goddess, third century AD)

August and The Knitting Goddess

August in Santa Cruz often brings fog right up into the redwood forest where I live.
It's odd to wake up to a grey sky after the hot, clear weather. My garden is happy with the slighter coolness, and not going as blowsy. A few giant sunflowers will bloom in the next week or so. Morning glories, zinnias, and the second wave of roses are cresting; poppies are slowing down. Most of the poppies were white with a violet heart, but I got one the color of a faded pink skirt. They only lasted a day or two. The agave is amazingly beautiful, with tons of flower buds, not yet in bloom.

Between writing bouts, I have been working on my first "pre-sweater" project, the Arachne Shrug from Deborah Bergman's The Knitting Goddess. The shrug is basically sleeves and a back, as most shrugs tend to be, so there is no shaping-for-armholes or other scary things. It's been a lot of fun, but this book is strange in that its author seems to have vanished from the world of knitting, and from publishing altogether. She also published a nice inspirational journal before The Knitting Goddess, and it's a shame there is no more work I can find from her. The Knitting Goddess was one of the first books in the current popular "wave" of knitting which went beyond an instruction manual--yet Deborah Bergman never went on to publish anything else, as far as I know, and has shut down the website for the book (and a lovely website it was, nicely designed--it can still be found on Internet archive sites). It's odd when authors just disappear, though--Ms. Strega can only hope that Deborah is happily knitting someplace, safe and sound, and living on the profits from her books.

Not much news to report from the Ponderosa--I am working on "bridging" chapters together at this point, and am working on a part of the book I have been avoiding for
five years. That's always a bit of a triumph for me. I'm finding there is very little in the way of glamour about writing a book--challenges, yes, exhiliration, the
gift of creativity and the bits of wonderful magic that go along with that, but so much of it is simply the ability to plod along trustfully--at least for me. If I plod long enough, I will end up with a finished book.

And that is that for tonight.