Velvet Verbosity

You may have noticed Velvet Verbosity has been “off air” since last Tuesday. That makes nearly a week of dead air space. If I were a disc jockey, I’d be out of a job. Was I plagued with writer’s block? No. Carried off by my local caveman? No. Lost in the jungle and adopted by lions? I wish. Swept off my feet and taken away on vacation? No, I’m still here in freezing New England in “the house that I hate”.

Lots of posts jangling around here in my head, so I will be back this evening to write something of substance.

Good morning! I am inexplicably delighted that it is Tuesday. Perhaps because Tuesday is not Monday. Perhaps I am still riding high on the good news of a friend. Perhaps because I am just poking my head out of a long, blue funk, and I always feel hopelessly hopeful (hehe, oh yes I did!) upon emergence from blue funks. I also tend to fall in love with everything and everyone, and that is the corny mood from which I greet you this morning.

Before you reach for the Pepto Bismol, or sacrifice a cute fuzzy bunny in order to reduce global saccharin levels, let’s get to the 100 Word Challenge. (Rules, such as they are, are here.) Last week the challenge was “Openings”. Openings are many and varied, from a first move in Chess to opportune positions on a playing field, from beginnings to premiers, from the gaps in things to a clearing, like in a forest. I tried to find a good quote on “openings”. There were few. I did like this one by Daisaku Ikeda, a controversial and dynamic Buddhist leader.

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. This is not an easy struggle. Indeed, it may be the most difficult task in the world, for opening the door to your own life is, in the end, more difficult than opening the doors to the mysteries of the universe. ~Daisaku Ikeda

Here is what our my readers had to say about “Openings” in 100 words. First, Secret Agent Mama rings in with another poetry piece. I can barely keep my head around writing exactly 100 words, but to make that work in poetry form simply blows a few circuits in my brain. Hopefully I don’t need them.

Like the flower blooming in spring,
I am.
My petals outstretched towards the sun, absorbing warmth,
They are.
Drops of rain wash over, cleansing my soul,
It does.
So purely my eyes release tears,
I weep.

Like the flower, I am so delicate,
Penetrable.
We are colorful, fragile, and free;
Abundant.
Seasons of life, so much endured,
Metamorphosis.
Yet the rain still beats down, washing,
Cleansing.

Time changes so much–years escape,
It continues.
And like the fragile flower, I’m anew,
I grow.
Looking for openings to find warmth,
I search.
Still the sun comes out and together,
We discover.

Ever faithful 100 Word participant LouCeel has taken flight to England and left behind a few hot and bothered mommy bloggers with this one.

You bless -
My Eyes - meant to see you, explore you, see the line of your hip, the swell of your breast, recognize danger and keep us safe.
My Ears - meant to hear you and know your voice, your laugh, the sweet sounds you make during love.
My Nostrils - meant to smell your pillow when I’m alone, so I feel close to you when I’m not.
My Mouth - with lips to kiss you where it hurts and tongue to taste you in times of intimacy, teeth to nibble those sensitive places you like being nibbled.
Your presence, it blesses my openings.

Say it isn’t so, but I haven’t written my 100 words yet for this challenge. I’ve been really chewing on this one and have yet to be inspired. Don’t worry, I will rise to my own challenge. There’s something brewing in here that I can’t quite get a grasp on yet. It could be the sinus infection I’m suffering from has gotten into my brain. Great, two brain eating episodes in one post. If this keeps up, I’ll be a drooling idiot within the year.

This week’s challenge comes from the The Conscious Reader, Ninth Edition. My first choice was to choose a word from the actual book I’m reading this week, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond, but five random finger points produced only dry, scientific or political terms like “exterminate” and “sulfur” and “leaders”. While I understand that given the right mood those words could be inspiring, I just wasn’t feeling it. However, if you feel a burning need to write 100 words on sulfur, please do. I’ll be, er, interested to read them. In The Conscious Reader, my first finger point landed on:

The Point

Last October, before I moved the blog over here to its own domain, I discovered Wendy Drolma (formerly known as Wendy Klein) and her amazing hand crafted leather masks on Etsy.  Since that time, Wendy has moved to a new website too!  She asked me to be so kind as to change my links to her.  I thought I would go one better and re-introduce the blogosphere to her handicraft.There are a few things I like about Wendy’s mask work.  It goes without saying that she is superbly talented and that each mask is a work of art.  Aside from that, she doesn’t seem to be bound by narrow vision.   Her masks span from the elegant to the dark, from the sensuous to the disturbing.  She has also come up with a unique “over the ear” bead design that holds the mask to your face without having to be tied behind your head.

I don’t want to tell you everything here.  Visit her website, which is itself mysterious and alluring, and check out the various designs, along with an interesting interview with Wendy.

See. I watch funny stuff too. Meet Flight of the Conchords and Bret’s Angry Dance. If you don’t at least smirk at some point during this video, I’ll eat my clogs.

So Woman Remodeled and I were talking on the phone last night and I was on one of my usual spiels about something frightening, maddening, and even depressing. In this case, it was our tanking economy. She was firm in her optimism, and I firm in my resolve to get her to understand the situation we’re facing.  Not that WR is one to keep her head in the sand about important issues (just read her blog and you will see she is a woman of depth and carries concern for the world), just that this was an issue that she couldn’t do anything about.  Finally she asked, “Why do you read about this depressing stuff?” I don’t remember what I said, something off the cuff and vaguely humorous. Then she emailed me today with an article on the Federal Reserve stepping in that she had been reading, and I thought, “Oh, this is not good. What have I done to the cheery sprite?”

So I started thinking about why I DO read the things I read. Why does it seem I’m always looking for the problems? The answer to that is more complex than I can tease out, but I do know some of the core reasons. It is not that I am looking for problems. One reason is my untiring quest to see life as it really is, without the sugar coating. I do this with people too. A friend told me recently that I have a way of walking in a room and looking like I’m seeing right into people. Another person told me essentially the same thing, and then added, “not everyone wants to be seen that clearly”. It’s not that I’m looking for the bad or the negative, it’s just that I can’t really know anyone, truly, without seeing all of them, and it’s only the bad bits that anyone or any institution doesn’t readily reveal. I’m just always looking for the authentic person.

I carry this into my interpretation of the world too. I want to know the truth about what is going on. I’ve been this way since I was a child. It just seems to be part of my nature. The thing is, it doesn’t really depress me the way it depresses others. It just motivates me to do something, or say something, or write something so that others can be willing to see through to the truth of things, and make decisions for themselves about what they’re going to do about it. I realize that sometimes this makes me seem too serious for my own good. Sometimes people just don’t want to hear about it, much less talk about it. But I can’t change who I am. I’m passionate about all things generally. Whatever I become passionate about in any given moment, is usually either a truth I’ve myself recently discovered, something I’ve come up against in my own pursuit of personal freedom, or what people most don’t want to hear.

Yesterday, I was driving home from work and there were two police cruisers in front of a house. The officers were walking from the house with a man between them, cuffed, and obviously being arrested. Some people would see this and feel a sense of relief. Ah, score another one for the good guys, right? Another criminal sniffed out and taken care of. I can’t see it that way, I just can’t. I see this event, and I see the whole picture. It makes me a little sad. I know all too well, for example, from my studies in Neuroscience, that it is highly likely that this “criminal” they are arresting suffers from a frontal lobe disorder. I also know from my studies of Neuroscience and genetics that it is highly likely that a frontal lobe disorder can be attributable to a chaotic and “dangerous” environment during the early years of development. I know that we, as a society, actually breed criminals by our failure to address poverty and violence, and that our punitive institutions as well as our social services (arguable part of the punitive system) do little to help, and much more to harm. I know that it is likely this man will be released in a short amount of time, that our tax dollars will go into housing him, but not into reforming him, or getting him treatment that might help. I know that we cannot allow him to be free because we didn’t take the steps for preventing it in the first place, nor will we take the steps now to reform him. I know that the police arresting him may very well have their own dirty secrets but they are protected because they are on “the right side of the law”. I know they’ve been trained to think in terms of black and white, and I don’t just mean race, but it is probably not a coincidence that both arresting officers were white and the arrestee was black.

I find it a dangerous state of affairs when people don’t want to face truths, in themselves especially. It’s not that I fancy myself as some crusader of truth, or that I think I’ve got myself and everything else nailed down, it’s actually more innocent than that. I’m trying to make sense of things, and then vocalizing it to further help me make more sense. People don’t want to talk about things they can’t do anything about. While I know that I can’t fix all these problems with a magic wand, it still inspires me and gives fuel to creative forces within me. I’m a “big picture” person, and I can’t talk about the environment without talking about sociology, and I can’t talk about sociology without talking about evolutionary psychology, and I can’t…well, you get the picture.

So, if I sometimes seem the bearer of bad news, look a little deeper and you will see that I am struggling to make sense of it all, so that when the time comes in each little moment everyday, that I will make the best choices. The choices that will cause the least harm and do the most good. I’m far from getting it all right, but I aspire to at at least try.

Oh, and I also temper all of my media input with less violence on television and my daily dose of Gimundo, all good news all the time.

On the fly, but I know you’re out there waiting.  This week’s challenge is:

Openings 

Be back later with more!

Sitting in a cafe, pondering stuff, feeling the pulse of the place and realized it’s almost Tuesday and I haven’t written here in a few days.  There’s not much cohesive to write about but I could share a random sampling of tidbits.  Actually, there are a few posts brewing underground, but I’m not ready to write them yet.

Over the weekend, I watched Lord of the Rings on a big-screen TV at my friends house, drank toasted almonds, and generally had good times.  Since I myself don’t really watch TV, I rely on a few friends to make me watch what they find interesting.   It is at other people’s houses I’ve discovered shows like House, or Scrubs.  Just when I start to get addicted, I return home and it’s all over.  Whew.  Don’t ask me why.  I’m not adamantly anti-television or anything, it has just never struck me as something I want to spend time doing.  It’s happened more by accident that I’m without a television habit, but I must say I’m glad it’s worked out that way.

I also went to see a friend’s band, The Lowercase g’s.  I wish I had a website or a myspace profile to send you to, but alas, couldn’t find one.  They were awesome, even though it was a bit surreal to see these late 30-somethings rocking out Ludacris, and then Madonna in one set.  Don’t ask me how they do it, but they were working the magic!  Some dancing, some free food (courtesy of a friendly bartender), and lots of fun was had by all.

That does remind me though, a few weekends ago I had the pleasure of seeing the Alchemystics for the second time, and that band rocks in a way I can’t even define.   Being in the same room with their live music equals exponential amounts of good times.   If they play near you, I INSIST you go see them.  Understand?  You will not be disappointed.  They are also in competition for a record contract and need lots of support.  I think you can find info on their Myspace page.

And THAT reminds me.  What is it with grown people having the tackiest Myspace pages?  What’s worse, is that these designs often render the text on the page unreadable.  Why would you do that to your “friends”?  Really.  Why?  People, clean up your Myspace pages before I have to give you a good talking to.  None of us want that.

I don’t know about you, but this has been a long grueling week, and with not much to look forward to on Monday (in fact Monday could be a pretty bad day for the Velvet Verbosity household), I plan to squeeze as much enjoyment out of this weekend as possible.  Tonight involves a tool-belt, toasted almonds, and movie adventures.  The rest of the weekend is open, but plans are a’brewin!

The snow is melting and the mercury is rising. Go out, good folks, and enjoy yourselves. I’ll expect a report of your goings on come Monday (or whenever you fancy).

Cheers!

Who are these, my teachers? Not who I expected them to be. Not who anyone expected them to be. Lessons learned on love from a triad and a single journeying man. Lessons learned on parenting from a teenage boy. Lessons learned on patience from an angry, venomous girl. Lessons learned on forgiveness from a hypocrite. Lessons on grief and softening from a stranger let in. Lessons learned from the paradoxes of life, from the in-betweens and opposites and unexpected hidden corners. Who are these, my strange and wonderful teachers? The greatest lesson? Everyone has something to teach. Be still. Listen.

Last week’s 100 Word challenge was “Lessons”. The greatest gift to me in giving this challenge is getting a window into other’s thoughts and view on the world, and how that differs from my own.

Lceel uses a comical and light approach as he tells about early lessons in parenting.

Home from the hospital just a few days before. Our son, named after me. He was so small and helpless. And Annie was nursing. They would lay abed. And she would suckle him. And I would be shushed to silence. I was seldom there when he was awake. I ached to hold him, to touch him, to bond with him. Finally came the call. “Will you change him?” At last. My time with him, alone. Diaper off. I turn away for a moment, reaching for a diaper. I feel warm wet falling on me. Just one of life’s little lessons.

Secret Agent Mama (aka One Cool Secret Agent Mama) uses poetry to express frustration over others’ judgement on the important decision she has made for her children and family to homeschool:

You’re going to what?
Why would you want to do that?
I’d just send them to school,
Then you could get a job.
You know it’s going to be hard, right?
What about friends?
What about riding the school bus?
The cafeteria?
I think you’re being cruel.
Why on earth?

Do I care what you think?
How crazy you think I am?
Decisions not made lightly;
Life’s all about choices.
We’ve chosen what we feel is best for us.
Lessons learned, here at home,
Are applied everywhere, all the time.
Cruel, wrong, strange, or imposing?
It’s your judgment that is!

So, let’s see, what books do I have around here…ok, just looking over at my bookshelf without opening a book this time, the challenge for Thursday is:

Atonement

Happy writing, and please do pass the challenge on! Tell your friends, your neighbors, your bloggily buds. Oh, and news! Blog O’ The Week, One Sentence, has linked to the 100 Word Challenge on their About page. Onesentence.org is a place where you are challenged to sum something up with one sentence. There are no specific challenges, just whatever is on your mind. The majority are somewhat confessional, giving it a Post Secret feel, only not so heartwrenching.

First, let me just get this out of the way. I got carded the other day. Not just carded. When I handed the guy my license, he laughed and said, “Wow!”. When I asked what the “Wow” was for, he said, “Nothing. I just wasn’t expecting, you know, 1970. I was expecting 1980-something.” Oh. My. God. Did he just say that and mean it? Score! Any of the crap going on in my life was suddenly and swiftly erased from my memory for a brief moment.

Ok, it stroked my ego. Sue me. Believe me, the universe will punish me for it in some unkind way in the very near future. Let me have my moment.

Last night I experimented with the different paints and brushes I bought. The children’s washable paint was crap. I mean crap. I wouldn’t let a two-year old paint with this stuff. It left washed out lines with rough borders, and was hard to control. There’s a good waste of a buck-99.

Then it was on to the tubed water-color. I was pleasantly surprised. I was able to add two drops of water to a small amount and get a very good consistency. I begged my daughter to let me practice on her, but I had to bribe her with Ben and Jerry’s (this would not be the first time) and she giggled and squirmed so much that it was an exercise in frustration. So I had to resort to paper and my own forearm which required a lot of washing to renew the “canvas”.

I was skeptical about watercolors, thinking they would run too much, but with a bit of practice, I was able to get beautiful, crisp, dark lines. I was also surprised by the brushes. I bought one very thin one that I thought would be best, but I also bought a few others with thicker points, and it turns out that the thin point was too thin and didn’t hold enough paint, forcing me to refresh for each letter.  I would have pictures to show you, but alas, my camera is dead.

I still have to try the pens and the glass quill.

I’ve been receiving a lot of enthusiastic support for the project, and I hope this translates into higher likelihood of getting grant funding. So far, everyone I’ve asked to write and model for me has been happily willing. Still, I don’t know a lot of people in my local area. I had to ask at least one person that lives in another state, but as it happens he’ll be passing through my general area in about a week so that was just a stroke of luck. I spent the bulk of my time here in the Smith bubble, not getting to know anyone outside of the college. Then I took a job where most of the people work remotely from New York or elsewhere. One might think this will be a great opportunity to meet new people, expand the circle…but I think that approaching guys at the local hipster cafe and asking them to write and strip for me could be a little, uh, misconstrued.