To live in hearts we leave behind,
Is not to die.
Thomas Campbell
Well, here it is, our Mary Poppins bathroom, practically perfect in every way. Remember that? I think it was written on her measuring tape.
I finally got the art on the walls and had halfway decent light. It only took six months, nearly to the day, since the whole project started, but getting all the right pieces was not so easy. So much so that I painted three myself, and made the domed whale, too.
The hubster made the cool looking screen over the window, so the neighbors won’t see us nekkid. It lets in the most marvelous light while also letting me bird watch. I’ve got my priorities straight. It will get some tweaks and a twin on the other window, but don’t fret, no one can really see in that one, unless they are actually in our yard, and then we have a problem, Houston.
Greg’s favorite piece is the ship. It’s a cross-stitch I designed to commemorate our wedding (almost nineteen years!) and sewed over many, many nights. It says, “On these seas, we sail together.”
The jellyfish and the whale I painted. Did anyone see that awesome documentary about the Sperm Whale on PBS? Goll-ee, my love for them was taken up a notch. They are amazing creatures.
I love it when the hubster sits on the bench, often with a cat on his lap, while I take a bath. He is such good company. We also like to leave notes on the chalkboard paint on the back of the door, a truly awesome idea, really. Butter!
The beautiful shower surround. We had an overhead light put in, so it is no longer cave-like. In it’s previous incarnation, our bathroom, and especially the shower, was quite dark.
Look how lovely the light is! So very bright, like bathing under the sun. The Little Man approves, too. He was meowing up a storm after I’d finished all of the photos, so I went back and took this of him. I guess he hasn’t quite gotten his fifteen minutes of fame.
If you find yourself wanting what I’ve got here and live in the Portland-Metro, give Alex from Western Oregon Builders a call, and tell him you want Colleen’s bathroom. He’ll know who you mean. Bless his heart, it might have been easier to take up residence in the guest room; he spent so much time here!
Fixtures, etc:
Rejuvenation: Porcelain Collection lights, switch plates, soap dish (the white one in the shower is original – the one item we kept), towel and toilet paper holders, fluted black glass knobs and pulls.
Kohler: Archer pedestal sink and commode, Memoirs faucet, tub spout, and shower fixtures.
Ballard Designs: Classic Bench in Arden fabric.
Land’s End: Organic Cotton towels in Light Paprika
Without meaning to, this week I watched two films (or fil-ums as I once read in an Irish novel) that involved the murder of a child. What the h-e-double-hockey-stick kind of coincidence is that, anyway? Despite the rather gloomy subject matter, they were quite good and had me rapt.
In Bruges, takes place in, you’ll never guess, Bruges! Or “fucking Bruges” as Colin Farrell’s character often says. He plays Ray, a hit man who makes the rookie mistake of murdering a boy along with his mark. He’s in Bruges with his partner and sort of mentor, Ken (the brilliant Brendan Gleeson), while they wait for the dust to settle back in London. I’ve seen this fil-um touted as a comedy, and while there are some humorous moments, don’t go in thinking that it’s going to be funny. It’s actually very melancholy and quite beautiful, save for the end. Avert your eyes, for there will be blood, my friends.
As Ray fights their exile, forever cursing the city, and Ken embraces it, happily taking canal tours and exploring some of the oldest architecture in Europe, both struggle to come to terms with their chosen profession, a sincere loneliness, and, most importantly, the loss of the boy. They meet an assortment of characters: a caring hotel owner, an obsessive gun runner, a stunning drug dealer, and an opinionated dwarf (or midget, depending), each bringing out the essence of Ken and Ray, how they got to this place, and hope for something more. It is lovely and thoughtful in its brutality.
Troubled Water is Norwegian and tells two perspectives of the same event. The life of Thomas after his release from prison for murdering the boy, and Agnes, the mother of the murdered child. Each takes half of the film and merge in the end.
It is almost a thriller and definitely a meditation on forgiveness and reconciliation. How can you ever move on from something so horrible? Thomas tries to start fresh by becoming an organist at a church, his playing a mesmerizing gift. He likes the female priest, and her son, Jens, takes to him immediately, despite Thomas’s protests. Perhaps he is not evil?
Agnes obsesses about Thomas and what he might do now that he isn’t behind prison walls. Is she safe, her husband, their adopted daughters? Then there are the last minutes of her son’s life, never knowing exactly what happened. The truth sets them both free and has the audience (or maybe just me) gasping for breath.
Tags: Movies
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I do not know to whom these boxer shorts belong, save some faceless young man with no fear of exposing his drawers. It may be slightly redundant to say that I quite like them, having taken a photo on the sly and all, neat cassette tapes and fond memories of days before digital. The beautiful garbage made after being jettisoned from a car window, brown plastic fluttering and alive in the slightest breeze.
Yesterday was a weird day, part shitty crapper-doodle, and thanks to friends near and far, part best of the best. Today is better, though cold, cold, cold. I am yearning for an escape (back here!), to lie in warmth with bright light shining in my eyes, but since there is no sun to be had for miles upon miles, and my bank account is not bottomless, I have, a la Mr. Snazzy Boxer Shorts, made a mix-tape, hoping it warms me from the inside. It’s dreamy-rocky-hip-hoppy and as golden as summer skin.
“Tequila Sunrise” – The Eagles
“Someday Some Morning Sometime” – Billy Bragg & Wilco
“Expecting to Fly” – Neil Young
“Going to California” – Led Zeppelin
“Sea Side” – Devendra Banhart
“Warrior’s Ring” – Shiva Rea Yoga Trance Dance CD, to which I lost the sleeve.
“I Know You Got Soul” – Eric B. & Rakim
“The Idiot Kings” – Soul Coughing
“Would?” – Alice in Chains
“The Golden Hour” – Marisa Anderson
“The First Taste” – Fiona Apple
“Moonlight Drive” - The Doors
“Half-Light” – Lanterna
“The Eclipse” – Fionnuala Ni Chiosain
Our girl Paris is almost seventeen and still tears around the house like a kitten. Every day she brings us, with great fanfare – a wild chorus of meows and yelps, one of her toys, usually a mouse. She is a giant fluff of beauty, sass, and sweetness.
Even after thirteen years together, they are not great friends, Paris being the great mystifier, playing for one moment before growling fiercely and trying to beat the tar out of Milo. That being said, he does his fair share of tormenting, biting her ear to claim her warm spot a favorite pastime. Siblings at their worst, I suppose.
Look at his nutty face. Our boy is cuddly as ever and does very little running around the house, save when someone rings the doorbell, and he’s off like a shot. He’s got old man hips and a crooked gait, but will bring string or ribbon in the most nonchalant fashion and patiently wait for you to summon it to life in wild swirls on the floor, happily pouncing for one minute before getting bored and sauntering off.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I camped out for U2 tickets with my friend Dionne and a boy named Ed, a boy I had never previously met, a friend of a friend, who had a camper, and was as eager for good seats as we were. We met at my house the night before, a Sunday, I think, and parked next to the Peaches Records and Tapes on 72nd and Federal. We didn’t sleep a wink, both out of excitement and fear – the neighborhood being slightly sketchy, listening to U2 in the dark, tape after glorious tape, while we spoke reverently, and in hushed tones, on every manner of subject related to the band.
We got our tickets after they made the horde that assembled by morning all cross the street then run back, P.E. style. Ms. Schenk would have been proud. The effort paid off, and we got floor seats! We congratulated ourselves on a job well done, bid adieu to Ed, only to see him one more time at the show, wearing a green plastic visor with flashing lights, ensuring he’d be caught on camera while they filmed Rattle & Hum. Though I don’t remember if he was. It’s been a long time.
Dionne and I went back to her house, skipping school (with our parents permission – we were good girls with excellent negotiating skills), and, in hindsight, made an entirely appropriate decision to watch The Gods Must Be Crazy. For just as a Coke bottle falling from the sky is crazy, so would be the notion of camping with a stranger for tickets to hear music rather than obtain food or something life sustaining. We humans, and in particular, teenage music fans, are a funny lot.
Thanks be to the digital age, we can now buy tickets from the comfort of home or a wi-fi hot spot, with the help of a credit card and swift fingers. I learned this firsthand on Saturday, after deciding that seeing Radiohead, live and in person, is something I must do before I die.
Truth be told, I am rather surprised at myself. I never thought I’d go to a show like this again, generally preferring small venues over being jostled and lost in a crowd, no, a sea of humanity. But being that they are in my top three bands of all time (How very high school of me!), the bullet was bit and seats procured, though for five times what I paid for a show back in the day. Ouch! It’s a different world. Now where is Kadeem Hardison? Maybe he can come with me if the hubster can’t…
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the instigator of my great love of music, my dad, Jim. Growing up, he played record after record from a collection of hundreds, introducing me to a very wide world, and for which I am eternally grateful. Thank you Daddy, and Happy Birthday!
An old love visited me in a dream recently and is now happily ensconced in my conscious, walking beside me, gazing across a crowded room, and every once in a while, if I listen very closely, he whispers something in my ear, though I don’t understand the words.
The hubster and I talked about it (Yup, he’s that cool), how life is that way. The thousand million ways we are bound, six degrees or less, by cables capable of sustaining bridges, others fine filaments scarcely visible to the eye. But each wraps around us every day or for a solitary moment at the most unusual of times, coming in like a flood, in the flesh or the place of dreams, taking up residence, bringing gifts, and sometimes fleeing before we have the chance to ask, Why? My Nana a story, my Aunt Mary a shamrock, my Grandma Frances a scent at the supermarket, my friend Dionne a certain consistency of ice.
Thinking about Joel made me incredibly happy, that we met at just the right moment in our lives, and shared something beautiful, something worth remembering, though not in complete detail. Is that the reason for the visit? So I can sketch the full picture, nuance, light, and shadow, of our time together and embroider it on my heart? Maybe, maybe not, only time will tell.
Nothing like a bit of sweat and Jim Morrison singing “L.A. Woman” to get the demons out, whatever they may be!
Not very visible in the frame is Milo, sleeping on a cushion on the floor. I love the juxtaposition, and how neither cat seems terribly interested in me dancing like a madwoman just inches away (Paris was on a chair in the corner). Their singular concern this time of year is to be in the warmest room of the house, even if it means pumping bass and a crazy mama jumping up and down.
Happy Friday!
Architecture is frozen music.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
…
Hey brother, Happy Birthday!
Tags: Quoting
