Zihuatenejo

"A warm place with no memory," an idea courtesy of Shawshank Redemption. It's where Andy Dufresne goes when he manages to escape from prison, where he was sent for a crime he didn't commit.

I looked it up as I watched the movie last night. It actually exists. It looks like a place where I could get a decent life's rest.

It's not all rosebuds and sunsets and set tables, after all. It's coffee grounds and dog hair and dirty dishes and dust and a straight week of rain. It's profound lonliness, even when you're never alone. It's not having even enough energy to sugarcoat the lukewarm.

A Vanity Fair

I cried the night Princess Diana died. This was decidedly awkward. I was a soldier. I was armed. I sat behind the wheel of a blue six-pack truck, gun barrel against my thigh, heater blaring against the Arctic cold, and I wept like a child while I relieved somebody for chow. I was still a girl, after all, with Cinderella dreams, save the M-16, and Diana's death told me that even in fairy tales, fairy tales don't come true. I knew that I was crying as much for myself as I was for her. This Wallflower's song played in Iceland the night she died, as if it were written for the occasion, and I listened. I still listen...

"So long ago, I don't remember when
That's when they say I lost my only friend
Well they said she died easy of a broken heart disease
As I listened through the cemetery trees
I seen the sun comin' up at the funeral at dawn
The long broken arm of human law
Now it always seemed such a waste
She always had a pretty face
So I wondered how she hung around this place

Chorus:
Hey, come on try a little
Nothing is forever
There's got to be something better than
In the middle
But me & Cinderella
We put it all together
We can drive it home
With one headlight

She said it's cold
It feels like Independence Day
And I can't break away from this parade
But there's got to be an opening
Somewhere here in front of me

Through this maze of ugliness and greed
And I seen the sun up ahead
At the county line bridge
Sayin' all there's good and nothingness is dead
We'll run until she's out of breath
She ran until there's nothin' left
She hit the end-it's just her window ledge

(chorus)

Well this place is old
It feels just like a beat up truck
I turn the engine, but the engine doesn't turn
Well it smells of cheap wine & cigarettes
This place is always such a mess
Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn
I'm so alone, and I feel just like somebody else
Man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same
But somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams
I think her death it must be killin' me."

When I got back to my dorm room, there was a magazine I had bought a couple of days before with her face on the cover. It was a Vanity Fair, I believe. It was to be her last interview, and she'd said that she was just beginning to find happiness in her life. A careless store clerk had slashed right through her face with a box cutter while opening the shipment of magazines. I winced at the irony. I still run across the magazine from time to time when I'm going through my things, and it never ceases to stir regret in me.

Red

Valentine's Day, Georgia

"Stop the car around the next bend," I said. "By the lake. I need to to get a picture of this sunset."

He arrived home with Vosges chocolate, two dishes of gelato (raspberry cheesecake and mint tea), red roses, a chocolate-covered strawberry, and stories about the barrage of poor men rushing for Whole Foods to pick up last-minute gifts. They had the best deal for roses there--two dozen for $19.99, which has been advertised on billboards all over the city for the last three weeks.

We went to a Caribbean restaurant for dinner, but when we arrived, the people were lined up liked Communists for Levi's 501 Buttonflies. We asked a couple sitting in their SUV with an electonic buzzer how long the wait was, and they laughed in our faces. We took that as a sign to move on. We trekked on to Ted Turner's place, Ted's Montana Grill, where we shared a Delmonico, my favorite cut of steak, onion rings, grilled shrimp,and a couple of beers.

The coffee shop and book store, of course, were our next stops and I picked out Penelope Hobhouse's _The Art and Practice of Gardening, A Gardener's Journal_, _The Literary Garden, Recreating Literature's Most Beautiful Gardens in Your Own Backyard_, and _Country Wisdom and Know-how, Everything You Need to Know to Live off the Land_ (the last of which my husband chuckled at me for). My italics aren't working, sorry. I had made the promise just the day before that I would not buy ANY MORE BOOKS until I'd read at least two from cover-to-cover, a fact that he called to my attention when I sauntered up to the table with more books tucked underneath my arm, but I took convenient exception because it was Valentine's Day. I sipped at our sugar-free hazelnut latte while he read business magazines and I read about how to make my own birdhouse and bird feed that will attract songbirds to our yard.

He thinks I'm "cute" for this. Under pressure, I would have to agree.

Strange Beginnings

I was conceived in a sprawling stone house with oil pumps in the back yard. In a small east Texas town of less than three hundred people, the house had formerly served as the town mortuary before my parents and siblings moved in. My mother never told my brother that his bedroom was the room in which the prior inhabitants prepared the bodies for burial.

I always found it awkwardly strange and backward that I entered into life in a place where other people usually left it. That's just like me, I always thought. It's like the soul's equivalent of trying to elbow your way up the down escalator.

My parents rented it from the woman who was getting too old to maintain the huge place. (Her son had built it for her.) I wonder if the house still stands, and if I would recognize it if I saw it. I wonder if it's really haunted, or if that's just something my siblings told to scare each other. My eldest sister once said that she saw a ghost float through her room and out the doors to the balcony that adjoined it. I wish that were true--it makes such a great story.

He can call me Flower if wants to...

My Da Vinci Self Portrait

Wyeth and me

Mars. Venus.

Her: "Doesn't it look romantic?"

Him: "But now I can't see the television..."

sometimes in reverse

Every time I hear the weather report, I think of Holly Golightly. Why must everything remind me of something else? Even this blog entry reminds me of "Intro to Psychology," taken at a small community college in Bettendorf,Iowa, (Mississippi river boats, sweet corn, my grandparents) where I only lasted a semester before I ran out of money. There I was taught how the mind is organized into schemas. Compartmentalized. Emily Dickinson knew about the compartmental mind, and she never even attended that community college in Bettendorf, Iowa.

My late-model Lexus (I feel I have to say "late-model" because I don't want anyone to think I'm bragging for having a Lexus) is where my toddler's chicken nuggets go to die. I always smile to myself when I imagine a cop pulling me over and asking to search my car. I imagine he would terminate the search right after he pulled the first chicken nugget out from under the seat. I still love that car. I was coming home from my mom's funeral last July when a big semi in Paducah, Kentucky, threw a gigantic rock into the windshield right in front of my face. The windshield cracked, though the rock didn't make it all the way through. That's what I would've called a "godsmack" in my younger days. A kick while down. Insult to injury. Let up a little, I say. I'm coming home from my mother's funeral, for Cripe's sake. These days I try to not blame God so much for things. Now the cold weather is causing the crack to spread out from its original concentric circle. It's creeping to the left a little more each day and will have to be replaced soon. And the car goes in reverse most of the time--not all of the time.

I came around the corner today at Target and was starstruck/moonstruck/sunstruck (everything alligned) by a wrought iron pavillion. Target has a new line of international looking furniture (the "Global Bazaar")that helps me to forget and remember and just be where I am. I don't expect you to get it. Truly get it. There are Moroccan trunks and Oriental rugs, and I go there, all those places, just while standing there in the store aisle. Anyway, the pavilion. My husband described it as "whimsical," but he didn't want to disappoint me, so he gave in. It is whimsical, and I love it for being so. I suppose it could be utilitarian if you forced it to be so. I don't.

Closer to Fine

Sunny/cool weather. Poached eggs with sea salt. Stuffed vine-ripened tomato with sliced avacadoes, extra-virgin olive oil, and sweet basil. Butterkase (German butter cheese.) Hot coffee with cream and Splenda. Good morning.

Right now I'm watching a public television documentary on human trafficking. Any problems I thought I may have had in my life become pale.

When the South Freezes Over...

Okaaay...it's snowing outside. That's not exactly normal. (: Pictures and story to come after I shake off a bad case of the sleepies.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

This is my latest creation...I call it the "I-heart-Atkins Spinach Ricotta Frittata." Twas delicious.

Having your chocolate and eating it, too.

I've lost five pounds, and that's not witholding the exquisite squares of Vosges chocolate I had with my tea yesterday. My J. Peterman dress is hanging there, waiting to be worn and serving as a great inspiration. It curves like I curve, and I must say that the company knows what a woman really looks like. I made flight reservations to Dallas this morning, and I'm already giddy over the prospect of travel. I reserved an aisle seat beside the galley and bathroom. The aisle seat affords me the most chance of survival during a crash, and the galley affords me the most chance of a cup of coffee if I want one. (I also like to eavesdrop on the flight attendents' conversations because they don't heed that the passenger's can hear through the little curtains.)

The film Ladies In Lavender is playing on the television, and it has everything I need: German dialog, violin players, English country cottages with lavender in their gardens, and pebbly beaches where I would love to sit and write in leather bound journals.

Goodnight.

Stupid Girls

I just watched Pink's "Stupid Girls" video on Yahoo! Music. Run, don't walk, my sisthren. You'll love it. Anything anti-Paris Hilton is mind-bogglingly beautiful to me.