#uncoffeed...

I have half an art degree. This means that about the time someone tried to teach me how to come up with a logo even if I wasn't in the mood, I switched my major to Communications. There isn't a degree for Oracle at any reputable institution I can find.  You do what you gotta do. I like to wait for inspiration to create art.  I may be coming to the end of a dry season, thanks to a pile of awesome and creative people I know, people who know how to tap the Universe and dispense it to the rest of us in seemingly innocuous ways.  Mari Sloan is one. Mari takes pictures of her world and shares it - her world - with us. I want some Mari Glasses, because I swear everything is joy for her. I don't need Mari Glasses as long as she keeps sharing.  She took a great portrait of turnips . This turned into one of those moments where I say something, and somebody says Make It Happen, and my muse says, "Yeah. This is how you're gonna do that." So last weekend I star...

Today is a good day. In the middle of a discussion about how a clear mind and a high-functioning network reinforce each other, evidence was delivered on exactly how that works. Message well-received. I have been so much more productive in the last six months than I have in the past six years. Thirteen years.  Not every minute of the last six months has been productive, but enough has happened that I am learning to stop measuring in minutes and I can now measure days. I have a decent overview and can foresee measuring in months very soon. One path to a clear mind is a clear work-space. Clutter is representative of many things:  you are too busy, you are too receptive, you are hiding from something. Building a fort. I'm no hoarder, but I do tend toward hanging on to things that may prove useful later, in the belief that I won't have to waste resources going out to buy a whatever once I figure out what I need. I think my Scots-Irish Ewing genes have handed down this prag...

because you exist things should be considered, though better left absurd. I like my dreams impossible but you crack the door open.

I loved the movie Black Panther.  I love movies based on comic books. Comic books were our escape from reality as kids; they were promises of possible brighter tomorrows. Comic books taught us to think outside the box, to believe. The Fantastic Four was my favorite. Dood was rocks -  how can you not find that a little bit sexy? My Uncle John introduced me to comic books, most notably MAD Magazine. He played folk songs on his acoustic guitar and taught my brother to flip olives over Grammie's chandelier. John was my Godfather in the old Catholic way; he was a Viet Nam veteran and a great father when he finally had kids of his own. He died young, seven years ago. I think today was his birthday. We were oblivious to any insidious racism in comic books. We were kids, and took things literally. Some of those characters were blue, for God's sake. The adults in my young life never addressed the issue of racism at all, because it didn't affect us. People are people to us...

Sorting unloading fighting to let go dispersing attachments rehoming my regrets giving is selfish - said it over and again like a mantra it's best to disarm let the stories speak for themselves without talismans let the metal and stone recoup their identities, and yet they fight back.

Taking a selfie with Frank Zappa "...I think I just want to sleep for a year or two to get my energy back," says my friend Earl. I totally get that. Since moving to Annandale, since divorcing, that's pretty much what I've been doing. It's more difficult than I thought, recharging, but I'm getting the hang of it. There are still bouts of anger and frustration over time wasted, and mourning over that which was lost and will probably be unrecoverable. I'm sure you know this one. Fresh starts aren't really fresh, and they aren't really starts, either - more like picking up a knitting project and trying to remember where you wanted to go with it. Remembering how to knit, even.  Deciding that some of those dropped stitches can just stay dropped and unravel later, because I'm old and no longer care about the competition. Let there be holes in my armor. I don't believe anything can kill me any more. One of the books I'm currently n...

Peter was one of the Scottish Golf Group, not to be confused with the Irish Golf Group who’d stayed at the hotel the month before. While the Irishmen went out to the bar every night promptly at 6 PM, the Scots brought their own beer and sat around the pool drinking, singing, and calling my name whenever any hotel staff member  passed through. "They're calling you," Lindsey grumbled. "What do they want?" "Dunno. Every time they can see me they start yelling DEBRRRRA! DEBRRRRA!" She huffled into the back office, letting the door slam. One night, though, I found several of the Scots at the pub on my way home from work. I can’t remember whether I was drinking, but I want to say I wasn’t, because that happened - I often went to the bar and didn’t drink. I also found my friend Phyllis, who wanted a ride to see her boyfriend working the graveyard shift at the Adult Bookstore. Peter the Scottish Golfer was not content to go back to the hotel at c...

YEAH, no, I shot myself in the foot on this one because I don't like feely-movies. I was hoping, naively, for more focus on the the discussion of art's impact on society, but really I should have known better. It is sad how judg(e)mental I can remain watching these two strangers enact a very realistic fake marriage of 15 years .  A lot of the time I am siding with the guy: if the wine is bad, you say something. I had to stop watching, though, to comment on a pivotal point in the "marriage" - the pretending wife is complaining that her pretend husband doesn't see her, because he didn't notice she changed her lipstick nor her earrings.  On this I disagree, and I have to credit my ex-husband. Yardy rarely cared if I wore makeup or not. I clean up well, as they say. I often call makeup "battle armor", and it's important when how I present to society is important. It's important when I'm feeling especially unwell and ho...

I just came back to my workstation and found this. I confirmed with my supervisor-friend that it does not mean #daydrinking is approved.  I can't find any documentation that it's expressly forbidden, either. That coffee mug, Newcastle Stan , was a gift from my pal Beardo at BoomChang Records . I had to confirm that I like Stan the band, and I do, and so will you if you listen to them. Click that link and get happy. Gifts are awesome, especially when they show somebody actually gets you. Even when the gift is knives , maybe especially then. It is nice to be understood. I may be working up some Artistic Fervor (read: meltdown) this weekend. I really can't stand myself this week - I can't stand how I can't figure out why I'm stagnating, still, again. It's a process; everything is.  I am a process. My process is moving very. extremely. slowly. at. this. time. I want to see results. I crave resolution. I am itchy in this alone-space which I love so much...

Following a guidebook which promised not to be touristy, my friend flipped some pages and declared:  “Fatih Mosque is this way.” So this way we went, three Americans in Istanbul knowing almost no Turkish. Small fenced cemeteries squatted between houses like old secrets. Bearded men with hats pretended not to see us; modestly covered women cleaned the sidewalks with brooms and bleach-water. Most wore simple headwear, not bright scarves like the modern girls in Beyoglu. Our friendly smiles were rarely met in kind; any eye contact accompanied a quiet, skeptical greeting. Merhaba .   Our male companion silently pointed to a house's entryway topped with barbed wire. I laughed at him.   "It’s a neighborhood, not a theme park," I said. He shrugged. I felt so obviously American.   Bright paper streamers and balloons tied to an iron gate caught my eye: we’d bumbled our way to Fatih’s Wednesday Bazaar. It wasn’t in the non-touristy guidebook; my friend ...

The Heart is a Meaningless Symbol My heart is thrice-stabbed: By thee, me, its own petard; I tried to tell it. I've ripped it thereout and lobbed it over to you; I don't want it back. Put it in your sack -it's defective anyway.

One day I will have an all-black garden. This is my favorite, Aeonium Schwarzkopf. I bought a plant of this variety on eBay, long back, and it died. So I bought another one from a Craigslist ad while I was vacationing in Manhattan Beach. That one died, too. I got one last spring at Al and Mari's house in Sun Valley. I researched and followed all the standard advice, but it was dying, too. It looked like a Q-Tip and all but about six of the black leaves had fallen off. I almost threw it away, but instead I followed my own advice and ignored it. I left it out in the Virginia monsoons all summer and just didn't even look, and it happened. It's about 4" across now. It's happy. I recently made contact with an old friend who'd broken up with me. When I wrote back to her, I told her this: I will take root again, but not here. I will not die in Annandale. This place is not my home . Perhaps I do protest too much, but still. I am going to try and take ...

I made a joke long ago that you could tell which Desi husbands were the most difficult and the most contrite by the number of bangles their wives wore. Pakistani husbands apologise with jewelry. Mine didn't apologize, maybe twice – once for calling me a whore, apology in email, and I still have it.  The other time is a different story. When we married, I knew there was a possibility that things could end, and even a possibility that things could end badly. So when we hit the 5-year mark, I was excited. I wanted a badge to commemorate the accomplishment. I suggested rings to my husband. “Of course,” he said.  This meant he wasn’t really listening, or interested. I really wanted a 5th anniversary ring, though, and I found something online I thought suitable:  silver Celtic rings, made in Ireland and representative of my part of our multicultural marriage. I bought one for each of us. “I don’t really wear jewelry,” he said.  And it was true; he still had th...

One of the most debilitating emotions in my legion is the feeling that I'm a fraud. The Fraudmonster can shut me down completely, even where I know I'm authentic and have put in the work. The definition of fraud we're working with here is not the criminal version, though we may find weapons against it in those parameters. Oxford says: 1.1 noun , A person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.  'mediums exposed as tricksters and frauds' I know a lot of miscellany; Tim used to call my random facts "sixteen-penny nails" because I once popped off with the term and he demanded to know why. Here's why: I worked in construction when I was 18, sweeping slabs and keeping sites orderly-looking from the street so prospective buyers wouldn't be put off by disarray. It was a low-paying job, requiring little more than arms and  working definition of "orderly...

Yesterday was a really big day for me, with lots of love in my direction.  For starters, it was the first day of a new year in my tiny Annandale cottage. I moved here after studying the Art Of War as it applied to an amicable divorce. I made careful calculations, but I still wasn't sure what I was getting myself into - only what I was getting myself out of. And I nailed it, or at least I'm still afloat. We had King Cake  at work, and I got the baby.  I didn't find the baby; the baby was presenting himself, emerging from the cake like a c-section and not really hiding at all.  But I got the baby because nobody else was as excited by a Gold Baby Jesus in a King Cake as I was.  Also I received an email from Joe Maita of Jerry Jazz Musicia n. My very short story was the first-ever winner of the Jerry Jazz fiction contest in 2002. When I submitted for contest 47, he wrote to ask if I were the same Deb Ewing. How freaking awesome is it to be remembered? I tell ...