romanlily

from a greeting card

2010-06-22T15:46:00.003-05:00

Came across this list in one of those cool funky stores that has great greeting cards and jewelry.

1. the path is not straight.
2. mistakes need not be fatal.
3. people are more important than achievements or possessions.
4. be gentle with your parents.
5. never stop doing what you care most about.
6. learn to use a semicolon.
7. you will find love.

— Marion Wink

Please update your bookmarks!

2010-04-10T11:00:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm messing with this blog and have changed the URL. The new blog is now located at http://romanlily.blogspot.com/. You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

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Thanks!

the restlessness

2010-03-19T11:15:00.005-05:00

I've been feeling extraordinarily restless with my life this year. There have been plenty of colorful adventures and interesting twists (many of which would make juicy journal entries in this space if I was still into "confessional blogging") — yet I am still feeling frustrated, cooped up, short-tempered.

Life is good, life is sunny, life is generally in alignment with my values. Yet I feel hungry for some kind of great journey. A change of scenery. New sights. Something to clear the eye, clear the mind.

I've spent several weeks trying to talk myself out of it. "You shouldn't be burned out. People would kill to have the life you have! Your good friends, your satisfying work, your peaceful oasis of an apartment..." Funny how that never seems to work, isn't it?

What does one do when one reaches this point of burnout? Sell everything and move to Brazil? Take up a villa in the Mediterranean, and hide out until the money expires? Add a sprinkle of red pepper to the pasta sauce?

I came across this quote last night in a lovely book I checked out from the library. The book is called A Woman's Path — it's a collection of "spiritual writing" about women's journeys across the world. This really spoke to me:

"My desire to slip away from the stories and the choices we make to secure our identity in everyday life has borne fruit again and again. To go on a pilgrimage, I discovered, you do not need to know what you are looking for, only that you are looking for something, and need urgently to find it. It is the urgency that does the work, a readiness to receive that finds the answers." — Janine Pommy Vega

Those words resonate with me so deeply at this point that my eyes fill with tears just reading them. I'm telling the universe that I am ready. I hope it is listening.

Elizabeth Gilbert on women who are not mothers

2010-02-25T12:35:00.003-05:00

"...the number of women throughout history who never become mothers is so high... that I now suspect that a certain degree of female childlessness is an evolutionary adaptation of the human race. Maybe it's not only perfectly legitimate for certain women to never reproduce, but also necessary. It's as though, as a species, we need an abundance of responsible, compassionate, childless women on hand to support the wider community in various ways. Childbearing and child rearing consume so much energy that the women who do become mothers can quickly become swallowed up by that daunting task — if not outright killed by it. Thus, maybe we need extra females, women on the sidelines with undepleted energies, who are ready to leap into the mix and keep the tribe supported. Childless women have always been particularly essential to human society because they often take on themselves the task of nurturing those who are not their official biological responsibility — and no other group does this to such a large degree. Childless women have always run orphanages and schools and hospitals. They are midwives and nuns and providers of charity. They heal the sick and teach the arts and often they become indispensable on the battlefield of life. Literally, in some cases. (Florence Nightingale comes to mind.)"

(Just one paragraph from Elizabeth Gilbert's latest book, Committed, which I love. I guess I'm revealing my leftist commie pinko roots by loving this thoroughly modern treatise on marriage. This paragraph in particular makes me nod ferociously in agreement.)

My top songs of 2009

2010-01-03T12:22:00.007-05:00

Sure, I'm a little late to the game, but here are some of the songs that I really loved in 2009.

(7) "Scuby" - Little Wings. I came across this mild, mellow tune while listening to a terrific episode of All Songs Considered with Will Oldham as guest DJ. I loved the gentle, whispery, lo-fi harmonies of this song, the meandering piano in the background, the hushed living room vibe. It was a perfect song to discover at the quiet beginning of last year.

(6) "Fiery Crash" - Andrew Bird. I know, I'm pulling a song from Andrew Bird's 2007 Armchair Apocrypha album, when I should be paying homage to his 2009 Noble Beast album. Somehow Armchair Apocrypha slid past me when it was first released. But this was the year I rediscovered it. It is a very, very good album, and "Fiery Crash" is my favorite track. I love the spacey layers of strings, the driving tempo, and all the typical oddball Bird flourishes — jaunty whistles and cryptic lyrics about a passenger's last thoughts as their airplane goes down in flames.

(5) "Ahuvati" - Kaki King. This is probably the song on this list that none of my readers will have heard of. I encountered this gorgeous instrumental number in a podcast, and I liked it so much I had to find out what it was. This song became a quiet soundtrack to some of the more meditative moments of 2009. King is originally from Atlanta, and she is only 30 years old. I think she has years of good work ahead of her. If you like "Ahuvati," you may also enjoy "First Brain" off King's album ...Until We Felt Red. This is beautiful, richly atmospheric music.

(4) "Down Low" - Teddy Thompson. Teddy Thompson is a fella who seems to have everything going for him. Son of folk music gods Richard and Linda Thompson, Teddy is young, talented, pedigreed and beautiful. He also collaborates frequently with my beloved Rufus Wainwright, which means I adore him by proxy. From 2007's Up Front and Down Low album, this song evokes last call in a dusty roadhouse. The album is a solid collection of covers and country standards. I seem to be able to listen to this album on repeat without ever tiring of it. Even when Teddy is singing about heartbreak, he's doing it so beautifully that your faith in humanity is quietly restored.

(3) "Two Tongues" - The Swell Season. This was a big year for The Swell Season — their Strict Joy album was released to great fanfare in October, triggering a string of sold-out performance dates across the country. "Two Tongues" really stood out for me on the album. Having been through a brief romance this year with someone I really enjoyed but did not trust, I was glad to encounter a song that reflected beautifully on that landscape.

(2) "Augustine" - Vienna Teng. Vienna Teng has a computer science degree from Stanford University. She is the only musician I am aware of who worked as a software engineer for Cisco before leaping into a full-time music career. That is impressive. This song, from her album Inland Territory, thoroughly captivated me this year. I love its ringing open piano octaves and the big kick drums, and the lyrics, which hint at lost illusions and the pain that can accompany fresh starts.

(1) "Be Thankful For What You've Got" - William Devaughn. Released some 35 years ago, this is a beautiful, mellow, charming R&B song that has recently become a ghetto anthem.

Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac
Gangsta whitewalls, TV antennas in the back
You may not have a car at all
But remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tall
Just be thankful for what you got.

In July, my brother's fiancée Ana gave me a magnificent mix CD that featured a glorious 7-minute version of this song. Over the July 4th holiday, I had the CD on constant play. The simple lyrics and Curtis Mayfield-esque groove of this song made it the most delightful discovery of 2009.

- - - - -

Here are some honorable mentions. (Maybe next year I'll work up the nerve to include the high-test pop/R&B/rap songs in the numbered list.)

"Bad Romance" - Lady Gaga. I have to mention this song here. Everyone is probably sick of hearing about Lady Gaga, but after really listening to this song, I started to appreciate the hype. There's something genuinely affecting about this song (not to mention the crazily brilliant video). Sure, it can be seen as song about domination and sadomasochism. In another sense, there's something haunting about the lyrics — is it profoundly authentic to tell a fresh new lover that I want "your love," "your ugly," "your disease"...? Isn't that what you end up getting, anyway?

"Daniel" - Bat for Lashes. The chord structure is lifted straight from Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon," but what a catchy number.

"Forever" - Chris Brown. Yes, I was one of hundreds of ignorant individuals who first discovered the song through the infamous wedding march video. So infectious!

"Renegade" - Kings of Convenience. It's not the first time that Kings of Convenience has been mentioned in this year-end list. This song had me at the first line, "I'm letting go / to see if you hang on to me...." The rest of the album, Declaration of Dependence, is all hushed harmonies and beautifully transparent guitar. If you've been desperately searching for Norway's answer to Simon & Garfunkel, search no more.

- - - - -

You know what's next - I hope you'll leave a comment telling me about the music you loved in 2009.

Slow cooker chicken tortilla soup

2009-12-09T13:25:00.002-05:00

This week I was hit with the most diabolical of all wintertime cravings: one for spicy, soothing chicken tortilla soup.

It came out of nowhere, and in the words of Spoon, it hit me like a tom.

Here is where I must confess one of the great things about being an able-bodied grown-up. When the craving for chicken tortilla soup hits you, you can go out and just get yourself some chicken tortilla soup.

Better yet, you can make your own.

I did a quick recipe search and found this recipe for slow-cooker version. God bless Allrecipes.

It's extraordinarily simple, and highly delicious. If you don't want to cook your own chicken, you can pick up cooked chicken from the deli. The most you'll be responsible for, besides opening a few cans, is chopping up an onion and a few cloves of garlic.

This soup doesn't photograph all that spectacularly, as I found out moments ago, but what it lacks in photogenic pizazz it makes up for in flavor. (I'm slurping it down even now. I should know.)

Ingredients

1 pound shredded, cooked chicken
1 (15 ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, mashed
1 (10 ounce) can enchilada sauce
1 medium onion, chopped
1 (4 ounce) can chopped green chile peppers
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups water
1 (14.5 ounce) can chicken broth
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 bay leaf
1 (10 ounce) package frozen corn
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
7 corn tortillas
vegetable oil

Directions

Place chicken, tomatoes, enchilada sauce, onion, green chiles, and garlic into a slow cooker. Pour in water and chicken broth, and season with cumin, chili powder, salt, pepper, and bay leaf. Stir in corn and cilantro. Cover, and cook on Low setting for 6 to 8 hours or on High setting for 3 to 4 hours.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
Lightly brush both sides of tortillas with oil. Cut tortillas into strips, then spread on a baking sheet.
Bake in preheated oven until crisp, about 10 to 15 minutes. To serve, discard bay leaf from soup. Sprinkle tortilla strips over soup.

from Blood Horses

2009-07-22T09:46:00.004-05:00

This is an excerpt from Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son by John Jeremiah Sullivan, a beautiful book I've been reading this spring and summer. (I read slowly, and tend to juggle multiple books at a time... )

The book is part memoir, part reportage, part history. It is a meditation on horse racing, beauty, and Sullivan's complicated relationship with his father. I read this bit last night and it shattered me. It's set on the evening of Sullivan's father's wake. I don't know if it will work as an excerpt, but I just had to post it here.

I think this writer gets the relationship between sadness and beauty better than just about anyone writing today. (Which is to say, you've been warned.)

Very late that night — It must have been early the next morning—my brother and I were in the hotel room that my grandmother had rented for those of our friends who had traveled to come [to my father's funeral]. There were clothed and sleeping bodies draped like refugees across the beds and floor. It was quiet. The two of us sat up Indian-style, facing each other with watery eyes, passing a bottle of Bourbon back and forth and whispering. We were going on about the Beach Boys, for some reason, and one of the last things I remember my brother saying before I fell back against the bed, was that in his opinion the greatest single moment in all of popular music was the complete bar of vocal silence near the beginning of "Good Vibrations," after Carl Wilson sings "I" but before he sings, "I love the colorful clothes she wears." My brother was weaving as he counted out the four empty beats on the carpet. "It's like..." he said, "it's like the whole universe is in that silence."

Then we were silent, drinking. Before it went black, my mind was already driving through the dark, with headlight vision, leaving the parking lot, taking a left onto Richmond Road, following Richmond as it turned one-way and become, without any signage to mark the change, Main Street, which I knew was deserted, the stoplights flashing yellow, then across the bridge, to where the cemeteries were, left into Calvary, curving along the paths back to a corner where two hedges met, where my father's body was already under the ground. Is it cold there, even in summer?

My brother shook his head. He said, "I can't believe Dad's dead."

Tortellini Primavera

2009-07-13T15:55:00.007-05:00

Finally. I am back. Yes. There was a lapse. My camera walked away from me, so I had to take a hiatus from photographing food. This seemed to manifest a hiatus from preparing food, oddly enough. It's as if I'm unwilling to cook a lovely meal if I can't photograph it.

But I'm back, spatula in hand, and I would like to tell you about a beautiful little main course that you will enjoy making in your own kitchen.

Tortellini Primavera is a light, easy, summery recipe that is full of the beautiful colors and subtle flavors that make summer produce such a treat. I prepared this meal with my friends Lalah and Jean last week. We served it with some white wine and Ina Garten's scrumptious pesto pea salad, and enjoyed berries with fresh whipped cream for dessert. The whole night was really quite heavenly.

First, you will want to shell a bunch of peas. I used zipper peas from the farmer's market. Truthfully, they looked so much like beans that it was hard to tell if they qualified as peas:

But there is something really satisfying about using fresh shelled peas in a summery recipe. Even if they are just beans in disguise.

Pay no attention to your friends when they complain about how much work it is to shell a pound and a half of peas! Choose to believe that they are secretly loving it.

After the peas are shelled, put them in a beautiful ceramic bowl and take them outside to be photographed:

Be sure to get a shot of Jean's bare feet in the grass:

After you're done chopping and shelling everything, the recipe comes together very quickly. A few minutes in a saucepan for the pasta, then a few minutes in a skillet for the vegetables:

Here is the recipe. I'll definitely be making this one again.

Tortellini Primavera
4 quarts water
1 (9-ounce) package fresh three-cheese tortellini, uncooked (really, you can use any kind of cute pre-made pasta — something vegetarian is best — we went with a cheese ravioletti)
1 cup vertically sliced baby carrots
1 1/2 cups fresh shelled green peas (about 1 1/2 pounds unshelled)
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup canned vegetable broth
2 cups quartered baby pattypan squash (you can use regular varieties of squash if you have the misfortune of not being able to find pattypan. Just cut the squash into smaller pieces)
1 cup vertically sliced baby zucchini
2 cups torn arugula
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon minced fresh chives
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1. Bring 4 quarts water to boil in a large Dutch oven. Add pasta; cook 5 minutes. Add carrots; cook 2 minutes. Add peas; cook 30 seconds. Drain and rinse with cold water; drain well.
2. Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the green onions and garlic; sauté for 2 minutes. Add pasta mixture, broth, pattypan squash, and zucchini. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer until thoroughly heated. Stir in arugula and remaining ingredients.

Yield: 6 servings. Source: Cooking Light.

lemon sandwich cookies

2009-04-28T08:00:00.004-05:00

This baking adventure began with a pretty new apron purchased on a whim from the World's Greatest Hardware Store:

Sure, I already had an apron waiting faithfully for me at home. A simple cotton one that had served me well for many years. But this apron wrapped its arms around me and would not let me go.

One might call it a trophy apron.

Baking is an activity I find deeply calming and deeply joyful. It's so simple, yet so mysterious. I still find it surprising that mixing a bunch of ingredients together in a bowl and applying heat to it can yield such an unbelievably delicious payoff.

I also purchased a rolling pin recently, and I wanted to make a cookie with a dough that required rolling.

So I made lemon sandwich cookies. This is a Martha Stewart recipe, laid out in typical Martha fashion. The editorial voice in these recipes is so spartan. There's minimum of direction, and a tacit understanding that you are a cook who owns multiple aprons and thus knows her way around a rolling pin. Martha would never say anything like, "If the dough tears up when you roll it, and sticks like a fiend to the rolling pin, just take a breather and let the dough warm up a little." (I wish she would.)

Once I let the dough warm up a little and tried moving the rolling pin much more slowly over the dough, the cookies came together fine. It really is a joyful thing to use cookie cutters on dough — my interior second grader leaped with glee every time I punched the fluted cutter through the dough.

Lemon Sandwich Cookies

Makes 3 dozen cookies if you're using a 1.5" cutter; less with a larger cutter.

16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest (from 1 lemon)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for rolling
2 tablespoons granulated sugar, for sprinkling
Creamy Lemon Filling (see below)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl using an electric mixer on high speed, beat butter, confectioners' sugar, lemon zest, and salt until combined. With mixer on low, add flour (dough will still be stiff); finish mixing with a wooden spoon.
Turn dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap, pat into a disk about 1/2 inch thick. Wrap, and chill until firm, about 1 hour (and up to 3 days).
Unwrap dough; place on a lightly floured piece of parchment or waxed paper. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll dough about 1/8 inch thick (if dough cracks, let it warm up slightly. If dough sticks like a fiend to the rolling pin, just laugh a little and take a walk around the block).
Cut out cookies with a 1 1/2-inch round cutter (reroll scraps once, chilling of too soft). Place 1 inch apart on two baking sheets; sprinkle with granulated sugar. Bake until barely beginning to brown, 15 to 20 minutes; transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
Form sandwiches: Place about 1 teaspoon (or more!) Creamy Lemon Filling between two cookies, sugared sides facing out; squeeze gently.

- - - - - - - - -

Creamy Lemon Filling

Makes enough for about 3 dozen sandwich cookies

1 package (4 ounces) cream cheese, room temperature
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest (from 1 lemon)
1 to 1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions

In a small bowl, mix cream cheese and zest until smooth. Gradually add 1 cup confectioners' sugar, mixing until smooth. Mix in remaining sugar as necessary to create a firm but spreadable filling.

— from Martha Stewart

Spring green risotto

2009-04-16T08:20:00.013-05:00

Last night Lalah and I made risotto. Risotto, of course, is another one of those Scary Food Things I've always been too intimidated to try. All that stirring! And who's to say what al dente really is? I can't be responsible for judging these things!

But we made risotto, and it turned out beautifully. I pretty much demanded that we try Ina Garten's Spring Green Risotto recipe. The seatback TVs on my long flight back to Atlanta from San Francisco last month featured the Food TV channel with Ina Garten cheerfully making this risotto. People, I hope you will never be strapped into a chair and made to watch Parmesan cheese softening luciously into tender arborio rice in a glorious closeup as you're gnawing on airplane peanuts. It's torture.

I'd been thinking about this risotto for weeks, so I was ready to get to it.

This recipe is particularly enjoyable because it introduces a number of spring vegetables to the line-up. Asparagus, peas, leeks, fennel. Risotto primavera!

Revelations:

First, as expected, risotto is a demanding but extremely pleasurable dish to make. It's not a good idea if you're really hungry, because Lord knows, it takes some time. It's a very good idea if you feel like taking your time, having a cooking experience, sipping some wine while you stir, filling your kitchen with delectable fragrances.

The overall texture and vibe of this dish was just what we wanted. It was creamy and comforting and filling and rich. You'll taste many layers of flavor in this dish. They all play beautifully together. Creamy rice, earthily sweet asparagus, savory broth, the bright blanket of lemon tying everything together.

This recipe makes a lot. Invite a crowd over for this one. A crowd that's not in a hurry.

Spring Green Risotto

1 1/2 tablespoons good olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts (2 leeks)
1 cup chopped fennel
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
2/3 cup dry white wine
4 to 5 cups simmering chicken stock, preferably homemade
1 pound thin asparagus
10 ounces frozen peas, defrosted, or 1 1/2 cups shelled fresh peas
1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
* Note: This is a lot of lemon zest. Lalah and I both loved the prominence of the lemon flavor in the finished dish, but if you are not nutty about lemon, you may want to start with the zest from one lemon, taste, and work up from there. *
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (ditto on the mention of zest above)
1/3 cup mascarpone cheese, preferably Italian
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra for serving
3 tablespoons minced fresh chives, plus extra for serving

Directions:
Heat the olive oil and butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the leeks and fennel and saute for 5 to 7 minutes, until tender. Add the rice and stir for a minute to coat with the vegetables, oil, and butter. Add the white wine and simmer over low heat, stirring constantly, until most of the wine has been absorbed. Add the chicken stock, 2 ladles at a time, stirring almost constantly and waiting for the stock to be absorbed before adding more. This process should take 25 to 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the asparagus diagonally in 1 1/2-inch lengths and discard the tough ends. Blanch in boiling salted water for 4 to 5 minutes, until al dente. Drain and cool immediately in ice water. (If using fresh peas, blanch them in boiling water for a few minutes until the starchiness is gone.)

When the risotto has been cooking for 15 minutes, drain the asparagus and add it to the risotto with the peas, lemon zest, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper. ( * Note: 2 teaspoons of salt felt like a lot. We added one and found it to be sufficient.)

Continue cooking and adding stock, stirring almost constantly, until the rice is tender but still firm.

Whisk the lemon juice and mascarpone together in a small bowl. When the risotto is done, turn off the heat and stir in the mascarpone mixture plus the Parmesan cheese and chives. Set aside, off the heat, for a few minutes, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve hot with a sprinkling of chives and more Parmesan cheese.

— from Food Network's Barefoot Contessa

About eating

2009-04-12T13:12:00.003-05:00

From California last week, my friend Amy sent a postcard with a quote on it. The quote has everything to do with what I've been thinking about lately in relation to food. Also, Wendell Berry is pretty much completely right about everything, all the time. I love that guy.

"Eating with the fullest pleasure — pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance — is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend." — Wendell Berry

Mustard-maple salmon with hollandaise sauce

2009-04-09T08:05:00.007-05:00

Sauces are one of those "scary food things" that have long intimidated me.

When I saw a "cooking class" article in this month's Cooking Light about sauces, I felt newly inspired to get over my anxiety and try making a sauce from scratch.

Lalah and I decided to try preparing a simple piece of salmon and making a hollandaise sauce to accompany it.

Step 1 was going to Whole Foods and picking out a really beautiful piece of wild caught walleye salmon. Behold:

Step 2 was buying the ingredients for the hollandaise. Hollandaise is basically a warm, buttery version of mayonnaise. It's one of the French mother sauces. (Frankly, just the phrase "mother sauces" makes me want to attempt cooking all of them. Either that, or take a bath in them.) Hollandaise known for its rich, silky texture and its versatility.

Because the hollandaise was going to require a lot of attention, we selected an exceedingly simple recipe for the salmon, something that would require us only to place it in a glass pan and put it in the oven.

A couple of hours before dinner, I marinated the fish in dijon mustard, maple syrup, and balsamic vinegar (recipe below). That was the most complex part of the salmon preparation.

Over at Lalah's house, we rolled up our sleeves and got into the hollandiase. The timing of this meal was tricker than most meals we've prepared. Because we wanted to have the salmon coming out of the oven at the same time that the hollandaise was ready, and also at the same time that we had fresh asparagus and broccoli emerging from steam, we had to be on our toes. We adopted the phrase "gazelle-like intensity" to explain our mindset for preparing the sauce. We did a little fist-bump and then donned our aprons.

As it turns out, preparing hollandaise sauce does indeed require gazelle-like intensity. This is not the meal for a lazy cook, or for a Sunday afternoon when you just want something nourishing and simple. This is a great dinner to prepare with a two-person cooking team interested in exploring a somewhat technical meal. The preparations basically required full attention from both of us.

Having had no previous experience clarifying butter, Lalah and I worked together to make judgment calls about separating the solids from the butterfat. That was really helpful.

It was really useful to have one person focus on the sauce while someone else watched the vegetables and salmon and managed the plating. (Sorry, I just said "plating." Someone shoot me.)

Yes, we melted and whisked and clarified and blended and by the time we were done, we had something approximating hollandaise sauce. I even pulled out my grandmother's old gravy boat so we could serve it properly. It was the first time I've ever employed that particular piece of china.

Conclusion: the salmon was excellent, and made even more excellent with the addition of the sauce. The sauce itself was a little grainy and not quite as velvety as the sauce in the beautifully art-directed photo in the magazine. It would never have made it into service at a mid-level French restaurant. But it had terrific flavor, and was a delightful addition to the meal. Two thumbs up for a challenging and spirited cooking adventure.

Mustard-Maple Salmon
3 T Dijon mustard
3 T maple syrup
1 T balsamic vinegar
1/4 t salt
1/8 t freshly ground black pepper
4 (6-ounce) salmon fillets (about 1" thick)
Cooking spray

1. Combine first 5 ingredients in a large zip-top plastic bag; add salmon. Seal and marinate in refrigerator for 20 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 400º.
3. Remove fish from bag; discard marinade. Place fish in 11 x 7 baking dish coated with cooking spray. Bake at 400º for 12 minutes, or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork.
— adapted from Cooking Light

Hollandaise Sauce
1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 large egg yolks
2 T cold water
1 T fresh lemon juice
1/8 t salt
Additional equipment: cheesecloth

Editorial note: I'm transcribing this recipe exactly as we prepared it, and exactly as it appeared in the magazine. Some other recipes for hollandaise call for straining the melted butter through cheesecloth at the end of step 1. I think this is probably the traditional way of clarifying butter. I wish we'd had cheesecloth; it definitely would've helped us separate the butterfat from the solids. Also, some other recipes involve vinegar and peppercorns. Although this recipe worked well enough, I can see myself trying a different hollandaise recipe later.

1. Place butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat; cook 5 minutes or until completely melted. Carefully skim solids off the top with a spoon; discard solids. Slowly pour remaining butter out of pan, leaving remaining solids in pan; discard solids.
2. Combine egg yolks and 2 T water in a small saucepan, stirring with a whisk until foamy. Place pan over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture thickens slightly. Gradually add 1/4 c clarified butter, about 1 T at a time, stirring with a whisk until each addition is incorporated and mixture is thick. Reserve remaining clarified butter for another use.
3. Stir juice and salt into butter mixture, whisking until blended. Yield: About 2/3 c (serving size: about 1 tablespoon).
— from Cooking Light

Top 75 awesome things about Flashdance

2009-04-05T15:09:00.007-05:00

Well, this entry doesn't have much to do with cooking, but I just had to write about Flashdance after seeing it for the first time today.

I actually own a copy of this movie. It's one of about 10 DVDs I own. Yep — Howards End and Flashdance are the bookends of my DVD collection. (My ex-boyfriend gave Flashdance to me when we were together, for reasons I won't go into here.)

This DVD has been sitting on the shelf for more than two years. Today was finally the day when I thought, "Yes. Today is Flashdance day."

As you might have guessed, I was bowled away by this film and its boatload of awesome '80s movie stereotypes. Here's what I love about this movie:
- The fact that the heroine is a hard-working, cheerful, charming, model-gorgeous welder and exotic dancer
- The fact that the male counterpart is a very attractive single man with no commitment issues
- The fact that the male counterpart drives a Porsche, lives in a gigantic mansion, and is rich
- The fact that the movie is loaded with legwarmers and leotards
- The fact that it involves multiple utterly awesome montage sequences
- The fact that the filmmaker was obsessed with Jennifer Beals' ass (her butt gets almost as much time on screen as her face)
- The fact that the run-down burger shack where our heroine dances apparently sets aside 95% of its annual operating budget to provide dancers with lavish sets, lighting, props and costumes for specific dances (note: YouTube clip involves strobe lights and mime make-up. See also: the first superbly awesome exotic club song and dance, and the later superbly awesome "Man Hunt" song and dance)
- The fact that the heroine has a heart of gold and high moral standards (for example, it's not appropriate for her to date a superior, or for her friends to work at a strip club)
- The fact that choreography for the final dance involves a clever blend of ballet, Jazzercise, club dancing, gymnastics, and hardcore breakdancing
- The fact that the heroine is not classroom trained in any of these dance forms, but nonetheless delivers a flawless performance
- The fact that everything works out perfectly in the end and that the movie ends with a freeze frame. Bonjour, perfection.

So, two thumbs up for Flashdance and everything about it. Why can't life be more like this movie?

the spiritual vibrations of food

2009-04-01T20:19:00.005-05:00

I've been wondering for a while about what to do with this website.

I'm past my personal era of confessional blogging. I no longer feel inspired to bare my heart to all who visit this space. But I have enjoyed writing here a lot over the past five or six or seven years — I forget how long it's been — and I don't want to give it up.

This week I'm having an epiphany about how to use this space. Naturally, this epiphany comes with a story. (Epiphanies usually do.)

At the end of December, my good friend Lalah and I went to North Carolina for a women's retreat led by Christine Kane. We had a wonderful weekend, full of laughter and reflection and unusually delicious food. The meals at this weekend were prepared by a local chef, a lovely woman named Deva who served mostly vegetarian fare. Many of the vegetables she used for her dishes came from her own garden. Each meal was colorful, inviting, comforting, and delicious. Almost as an afterthought, I'll add that these dishes were probably pretty nutritious, too.

On the way home from the retreat, Lalah and I stopped to have lunch at the Early Girl Eatery in Asheville. We both had a post-retreat glow — we felt clear and aligned and happy. We had been fed beautiful food for three days. We had been drinking herbal tea and doing yoga. We were feeling pretty zen.

Lalah said, "I loved the food at that retreat. Everything felt totally nutritious and totally yummy at the same time."

"Yeah, it was really nice."

"I really want to learn how to cook," she said. "I've always wanted to feel more comfortable in the kitchen."

"Well, maybe you can take lessons," I said.

"Or maybe we could try cooking together," she said.

Hey. There's an idea.

Since January we've been getting together to cook. It usually happens about once a week, though we took a few weeks off in February when life got in the way. We talk beforehand about what to prepare, and we take turns buying the groceries. Dishes are often vegetarian, but when they're not, we steer toward sustainably harvested seafood or free-range poultry. We go for the good stuff.

The meals are timed carefully after the arrival of Lalah's husband home from work and their 3-year-old son's nightly bedtime routine. They are not elaborate meals, but they are consistently delicious. And the process of cooking with Lalah in this context has been, well, utterly delightful.

Here's what I really want to say in this entry:

As I've been cooking with Lalah, I've been tuning into the many layers of my relationship to food. I've become much more attuned to what I would call the spiritual vibrations of food. Does that phrase sound a little odd to you, or do you instinctively know what I mean? There's a difference between eating a plate of nachos with yellow cheese sauce, and eating a little piece of really good cheddar from the farmer's market with a sliced apple. There's a hell of a difference between eating a Smart Ones® Honey Mango Barbeque Chicken frozen entree (that's part of Weight Watcher's "Fruit Inspirations™" line, FYI), and actually preparing a piece of free-range chicken with a chutney barbeque dressing.

It's not just the nutritional differences between these options that I'm talking about — it's the way you feel as you're preparing the food, how you feel when you're eating it, and how you feel afterwards.

What I'm seeing is that my relationship to food feels like an invitation to something richer, something more sacred.

I think this is something a lot of Americans are waking up to right now. I don't think Michael Pollan's message would have had the same resonance if he'd been writing in the early '80s. But now, his words are like springs of water in the desert.

We're reaching the end of our relationship with un-reality. We're reaching the end of our relationship with fake food. Eating an Egg McMuffin doesn't really fly when we can dine on fresh berries and Greek yogurt instead.

In the coming weeks and months, I'll bring you reports from my cooking dates with Lalah. I'll give you our recipes and a summary of what we loved or didn't love about the recipe. I hope you'll read along, and comment, and even cook along with us.

I'm looking forward to this.

don't read this unless you feel like reading a really sad story

2009-02-23T11:49:00.009-05:00

I've been in an obsessive loop for the past several days about a deeply unsettling crime that happened here in Atlanta last week. I'm writing about it here in an effort to sort through it and hopefully lay it to rest.

Eugenia “Jeanne” Calle, was murdered in her condo on Tuesday morning. I don't know Calle. I never met her. She was a single white woman living on her own (that's Particularly Interesting Note #1). She was in her late 50s and had just retired after a lifetime of award-winning work in cancer research at the CDC. She had recently put her condo on the market. Her plan was to sell the unit and move in with her fiance.

On Tuesday morning, while walking through the lobby of her condo building, she overheard Shamal Thompson, a 22-year-old black male, chatting with a real estate agent about touring two condos for sale in the building. Thompson was acting as if he had an interest in buying a condo.

She popped into their conversation and said, "Don’t forget about my condo. It’s for sale, too."

Thompson expressed interest in her condo and said he would follow up with her. After he toured the two other condos, a security guard called Calle and said that Thompson was in the lobby, ready to look at her unit.

“Would you like for me to escort him up?” the guard asked Calle.

“No, it’ll be fine,” Calle responded. “I don’t want him to think that we don’t trust him." (That's Particularly Interesting Note #2).

Of course, things went badly. Thompson murdered Calle (it's not clear exactly how, but she died of blunt force trauma to the head). After he killed her, he stole several credit cards and valuables, and slipped the diamond ring off her finger. Then he moved her body into the walk-in pantry, took her electronic access swipe card for the building, and closed the door to the pantry.

He left the building and then went directly to a birthday party in Atlanta for a girl he had a crush on. He presented the birthday girl a bottle of very expensive champagne and a diamond ring. He posed for many pictures at the party. Fellow party-goers described him as "fun" and "charming."

- - - - - -

Particularly Interesting Note #3: Thompson came back to the condo building the next night. He arrived with a couple of friends. Maybe he was going to steal more property. Did he think that no one cared enough about this woman to miss her? Did he think he now owned the place since he had murdered Calle?

Calle's fiance had discovered her body the night before. Of course he had alerted police immediately. So law enforcement was all over the building. Security guards became suspicious of Thompson's attempt to enter the building and turned him away. A security guard took down the license plate of his vehicle and called police. He was arrested shortly after and was immediately charged with the murder.

I guess that's the good part of this story. This person is now behind bars.

- - - - - -

Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking about this story. Perhaps I should just try to forget about it and go read Happy News or something. Really, I wish I had never read this story. I just can't shake the particular awfulness it. Particularly Interesting Note #4 is that the condo building in which this poor woman lived across the street from one of my client offices where I have spent a lot of time in the past few years. This story feels very local and very personal.

- - - - - -

On Thursday afternoon I was at my apartment alone. In an idle moment, I looked absently out window to the carport behind the building. I spotted a young black man there, smoking a cigarette and walking slowly, gazing up at the buildling.

Odd behavior. I know all of the residents of the building. He was not a resident. No one ever goes out behind the building unless they're a resident walking to or from their car. A non-resident loitering in the parking lot with no apparent reason is suspicious.

I watched him carefully. And I thought of my burglary in December 2007. In the grand scheme of things, it was a trifling little burglary, but at the time, it was very upsetting and sickening. The police never solved the crime.

I absolutely hate the concept of assuming culpability to someone I do not know. I've read Malcolm Gladwell. I'm familiar with the story of Amadou Diallo. But my spider sense said, "Hey! I wonder if that's the guy who broke into my apartment!"

The young man lingered. No one else was around. He gazed appreciatively at the building, at the ground, at the cars parked in the carport. My pulse was pounding at this point. He strolled on, and I lost sight of him as he rounded the far corner of the building.

This was even more suspicious behavior. Not even the landlord visits that side of the building. It's an very narrow little alley where rain-soaked leaves gather, and squirrels hide nuts.

I put on my shoes, picked up my phone and keys, and ran outside. I didn't know what I was going to do. I just knew I had to see what this person was doing. I considered calling the police. The mere thought felt uncomfortable. I kept thinking, I haven't seen this person do anything wrong. I am being a stereotypical hysterical white woman.

I burst out of the building and ran down the steps to the street. There was no trace of the young man. I started walking up the block, growing both more frightened and more angry by the second. A few steps into my journey, I heard a rustling of leaves and -- presto! There he was! He emerged from the narrow alley beside the building, the alley where people never go. He glanced at me and then down at the ground. I stared right at him. He ignored me and strolled casually by. (It is interesting to me how staring directly at someone in this context feels like an act of confrontation and violence. I was staring at him, flinching, scared of what it meant to stare at him! It was very hard to stare at him.)

He just shuffled away. I stood there, breathing hard, clutching my keys. Finally, after he was out of earshot, I said quietly, "I have my eye on you!"

- - - - - -

I probably should have called the police. It seems fairly obvious that the guy was casing the joint. Why else would he be casually strolling around in a carport, walking down a gutter. But I didn't. I felt guilty for making assumptions. Me and my white guilt. Suspicious, snoopy white woman asks police to pester poor black high school kid! Let the healing begin!

- - - - - -

I just feel so sorry for Calle. I feel so sorry that this sequence of events is a possibility in this world. I'm all for looking at the bright side of things, and I'm all for assuming the best about people, including total strangers. But it is deeply distressing that she made a point to trust this young man and was punished so brutally for it.

That is all. I never met Calle, and I never will. And realistically speaking, two weeks from now, I will probably have forgotten that this horrible, horrible thing happened. But right now, it feels profoundly upsetting, and I don't know what to do about it.

My top songs of 2008

2009-01-02T18:07:00.006-05:00

Once again, it's time for my review of the year in music. Admittedly, my list of music favorites each year is terribly lopsided and self-interested, since it's based on my experience of music over the past 12 months, and not necessarily the hottest releases from the hottest bands. Look elsewhere for the Super-Definitive List of the Greatest New Music of 2008 (Paste has a pretty good list – though I think they have a weird ability to consistently miss the #1 album of the year).

5. "Sex on Fire" – Kings of Leon. Weirdest title of the year; most satisfying straight-up rock delivery. (Listen for the fill at 2:23 and make rock fingers.) I love the fact this song seemed to be written in a key that is slightly higher than the vocalist can comfortably handle; listening to him reach is glorious.

4. "Blue Ridge Mountains" – Fleet Foxes. Like everyone out there with a pair of fully functional ears and an affection for three-part harmony, I loved the entire Fleet Foxes album. Part of what makes this group of musicians so exciting is their youth (the members ages are 22, 22, 27, 31, and 27). When I listen to them, I hear years of beautiful future songs glimmering off in the distance. Fleet Foxes managed to shoplift everything I like about My Morning Jacket (shimmering harmonies, transparent arrangements) and left behind all the stuff I don't like (the occasional hairband screechiness). I hope these guys stay together for a long time.

3. "Ramblin' (Wo)Man" – Cat Power. I always feel like a cornball including a cover on my list of the year's top songs, but I think Cat Power belongs on this list. Cat Power's Jukebox confirmed Chan Marshall's special ability to add her own beautiful character to a song. Her aching vocals coupled with the echo-chamber production made this a huge favorite for me.

2. "Little Person" – written by Jon Brion, as performed by Deanna Storey. Hated the movie (Synecdoche, N.Y.). Adored the soundtrack. Jon Brion does diminished chords better than anyone writing music today. This song is classic Brion soundtrack gorgeousness. A simple vocal, a gentle piano accompaniment, a lyric about longing and loneliness. It doesn't get much better than this.

1. "A Change Is Gonna Come" – Sam Cooke. This is the first time I've included a song from the 1960s in my year's top discoveries. In some ways, it is an odd one to include in the top spot. Of course, I knew this song before 2008. But this year, I heard this song in a totally different way. The morning after Barack Obama won the presidential election, I turned this song up to a good volume, sat down and took a few deep breaths. I've never cared about a presidential election the way I cared about the election this past fall. I am thrilled with Obama's victory and with the way that he has captured the imagination of so many people in this country and around the world. I think 2008 was Obama's year. (2009 and 2010 may be his years, as well.) I can't wait for him to become president of my country.

Honorable Mentions:
"Days Like This" and "Greatest Story" – Kim Taylor
"Goodnight, California" – Kathleen Edwards
"I Will Possess Your Heart" – Death Cab for Cutie. Those drums! That bass! That piano! It goes on and on! I love it!
"Burn You Up, Burn You Down" – Peter Gabriel, Billy Cobham, et al. (from the Big Blue Ball collection)
"For Emma" – Bon Iver
"Lost Coastlines" – Okkervil River. This became my "11-pm-and-still-working-and-got-3-more-hours-of-work-to-do" failproof fire-me-up song.
"Oh No" – KaiserCartel. Discovered on the utterly fantastic Chirp mix, which you should probably know about.

Talk back to me! What were your favorite songs of the year?

Late bloomers

2008-11-22T14:59:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking a lot over the past few weeks about an article from Malcolm Gladwell that appeared in the New Yorker last month. "Late Bloomers" is the title of the article.

I've liked Gladwell for a while, but this article raised my appreciation for his writing to new level. I'm very thankful for this article.

In the article, he compares "child prodigies" to "late bloomers." He illuminates the difference between Picasso (who began producing powerful work in his 20s) and Cezanne (who plugged away for decades and produced his best work at the end of his life).

Naturally, I'm reading something of my own situation into this article. Because I've been panicking just a little lately. I'm in my mid-30s! I should have accomplished more by now! I'm sunk! It's all downhill from here! (Et cetera, ad nauseam.)

One of the bits from the article that I appreciated most was this quote from economist David Galenson, discussing the "slow burn" approach to creativity from the Cezannes of the world:

The imprecision of their goals means that these artists rarely feel they have succeeded, and their careers are consequently often dominated by the pursuit of a single objective. These artists repeat themselves, painting the same subject many times, and gradually changing its treatment in an experimental process of trial and error. Each work leads to the next, and none is generally privileged over others, so experimental painters rarely make specific preparatory sketches or plans for a painting. They consider the production of a painting as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it; they typically believe that learning is a more important goal than making finished paintings. Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal.

Boy, does that resonate. The quote talks about frustration, but I was so heartened to read it: Maybe there's hope for me! Maybe there are still good photos in my future! Maybe it's OK that I feel stalked, haunted, hunted by work still begging to be made.

I have begun seeing my therapist again with some regularity. She helped me through my divorce, and after that, I gradually tapered off my visits. But lately it seems like it's time to get back into a conversation. Last time I saw her, we started talking about photography again, for the thousandth time, about how frequently I dream about photography, about how I "don't know what I'm doing with it," but how I feel deeply compelled to keep working at it. Every time I choose not to follow it or engage with it, it feels like a self-inflicted wound. It feels like a big old lie.

She said, "I'm glad you're bringing this up now. I think you should bring some of your work in with you next time, and we'll talk about it." She is an artist herself, and someone I admire hugely. This feels like it could be an interesting conversation.

So, here I am, Saturday afternoon, ordering some prints for our session coming up this week. I have no idea what will come of these sessions, but it feels so good to open up the conversation about photography in a place that is totally safe. I'm taking prints of Amy with me (above). The photos I most recently shot were of her (see also this photo and this pairing). She is an inspiration and a favorite model. These photos feel like a good place to start.

why I find corporate America so annoying

2008-11-20T08:25:00.004-05:00

Though I am mostly out on my own lately, I still freelance occasionally for a major corporate client. It's good money, and it helps fill in the gaps in my freelance work flow. So I'm grateful. Of course, that one bit of corporate freelancing still comes with a lot of stupidity. Here's the first sentence I came across in my inbox this morning:

"We talked last week about the importance of actively engaging around the Value Campaigns that are being rolled out in our local market, and providing impactful "on-the-ground" support to both our GEP's and our local Campaign Champions in ensuring that we are successfully executing against both identified and logical additions to the target lists."

With language like that, it's no wonder I wanted to leave an environment like this...

I am thinking about prayer

2008-11-11T18:19:00.006-05:00

Tonight I am thinking about prayer. I miss it. I want it back.

I somehow gave prayer up around the time of my divorce in 2005. (My friend Amy wrote a perfectly wonderful first sentence in a short story years ago. It says something like, "I quit praying a few years ago, around the same time I quit smoking, and for the same reasons." I've botched the line dreadfully, but I can't find a record of the real thing.)

When I quit praying, back in 2005, it was hard at first. I kept reaching for it, like Amy's cigarette. I felt frustrated by my own spiritual confusion. I wanted desperately to have everything figured out. I believed prayer would work best if I had broad, open lines between me and the Deity, whatever his/her name was. It would be best if I knew my place and worked forward from there. But I didn't know what to call God. I got hung up from the get-go. Praying is tough when you literally can't get past the first word.

Last week I came across this bit of a Rumi poem. I feel like it was written for me:

If you cannot pray sincerely, offer your dry, hypocritical,
agnostic prayer; for God in His mercy accepts bad coin.

It doesn't matter if we have it all figured out, or if we're totally confused. It still counts.

My mother asked me nervously last week, after the election was over, after my father was out of earshot, if I considered myself a Republican or a Democrat. I didn't give her a straight answer; I wasn't in the mood to break her heart with my liberal politics. Later I realized her question was probably about my faith — she wanted to know if her daughter is still Christian, if her daughter still shares her values, if her daughter still believes in God.

I still don't know what I believe. I'm really not interested in studying different understandings of the divine and figuring out resonates most with me.

But I think prayer is a worthy pursuit. I think finding a way to feel connected to something larger than ourselves is a worthy pursuit.

People need prayer. They deserve prayer. Maybe prayer is one of the best gifts I have to offer people who are in a lot of pain. So tonight I am praying for my friend S. who is working hard to get her life back after suffering from depression for years. I'm praying for J.'s mother, who is in the hospital again with an unexplained illness. I'm praying for D., a woman I've never met, whose young son died unexpectedly this week. I'm praying for J., who is stretched thin with the demands of motherhood, who needs a really good night of sleep.

Ultimately this is about connection with a greater, older, deeper wisdom. Mary Oliver says it better than I ever could:

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

thank you, ray

2008-10-19T09:45:00.004-05:00

Through a few lucky coincidences, I got to see Ray Lamontagne perform last night at the Tabernacle here in Atlanta.

I like this guy. (The passionate screams of "I love you, Ray!" coming from many women in the crowd last night confirmed that I am in good company.)

I sat up and took notice of Ray when I first heard the single "Trouble" on the radio in 2004. Later, attempting to stalk him online, I read a little about his start in the music industry. I read that he had been working a terrible job at a shoe factory when he heard a Stephen Stills song on the radio ("Treetop Flyer"). The experience moved him so deeply that shortly after, he decided to leave the shoe factory and pursue making music full time.

Stories like that always kill me. Stories of someone having a soul-changing experience with art and then deciding to quit the [ paint factory / shoe factory / soul-deadening corporate job ] to explore their own art. Such romantic stories!

Last night was a real treat. Somehow, Ray's voice is even more raspy in real life than it is on his recordings. He spoke very little, but he and his band delivered a tight show with tons of heart. The Tabernacle, an enormous, loud room filled with an energetic, beery crowd, was brought to a reverent hush as he played some of his quiet numbers.

From my seat in the balcony, I got to hear some of his lyrics as if for the first time. That was a real treat. I love this verse from his song "Empty" for the simplicity and richness of the images it presents:

Lay your blouse across the chair
Let fall the flowers from your hair
And kiss me with that country mouth so plain

Outside the rain is tapping on the leaves
To me it sounds like they're applauding us
The quiet love we've made

I went home feeling newly grateful for artists with the courage to change their lives in honor of their gift. Thank you, Ray, for making music.

happy stories

2008-08-04T15:49:00.004-05:00

People, I'm here with a plea.

Give me some good news.

This can be good news about your kitten finally learning to tinkle in the litter box. This can be good news about the use of clean energy in the production of construction materials in the Midwest. This can be good news about how you've learned to talk to a difficult person with kindness. I'm up for anything.

Lately it's seems like it's been all bad news and sadness around here. I'm ready to hear some other voices. Leave a comment with some good news if you feel so inclined. Thanks.

my top 10 recommendations for life as a free agent

2008-07-28T14:28:00.008-05:00

"Free agent" is writer Daniel Pink's phrase for the 25 million Americans out there who are self-employed, temporary workers or independent contractors ("people who move from project to project and who work on their own, sometimes for months, sometimes for days"). I downloaded Pink's Free Agent Nation from Audible.com last week; I really like the way he thinks.

As I've been listening to Daniel Pink, a couple of friends have recently expressed interest in joining the ranks of the free agent. They're ready to leave the comfort and confines of the corporate world and go solo.

Listening to their reflections on their work lives, I started thinking about what I've learned since I began freelancing full-time. Sure, I still feel like an uneducated bumpkin when it comes to the finer points of self-employment, but I think I have learned a few things. So here is an unsolicited entry with advice for anyone leaving their 9-to-5 and going solo for the first time.

(1) Have a dedicated work space. This is big. It doesn't matter if you're an event planner, a writer, a quiltmaker, a code slinger, or a therapist. Set aside a physical space in which to practice your art. I believe that we're all more focused — and profitable — when we work in spaces that work with us. Also, having a dedicated physical space invites you to set up mental boundaries around the work. I know that when I'm sitting in that chair at my desk, it's time to work. And when I step away from the desk, the day's labors are done.

(2) Spend money on the important stuff. When you're just getting started, it's kind of tempting to outfit your space with completely new stuff. New computer! New filing cabinets! New trash cans! Most purchases are not that critical. For me, the most important physical acquisitions to make are: (1) a high quality, comfy, supportive desk chair; (2) a functional backup system; and (3) critical self-promotional items for your business. For many folks, this translates as a website and business cards.

(3) Give yourself a cash cushion. I've been freelancing for a few years now, and in that time, I've become intimately acquainted with the ebb and flow of my income throughout the year. The flow of money has actually become fairly predictable! But when you're getting started, nothing is predictable. Every little bump in the road feels like it might toss you right out of the wagon. The first year I went freelance, money came in pretty nicely for the first half of the year. Then it really dried up in the second half of the year. (In August of that year, my grand total in billings was $300. That was not a good month.) Your admission into the ranks of free agency will be much smoother if you start with a little cushion of savings for those slow months. Now I know to anticipate that the second half of the year is going to be slower than the first half. I make a point to say "yes" to my clients more frequently in the first half of the year, and I plan my vacations and personal projects for the second half of the year. As a matter of fact, I've already booked a spot at a women's retreat in December. It's also paid for already — so I don't have to worry about scraping together extra billings late in the year.

(4) Surround yourself with experts. I'll be honest — what I know about tax liability could easily fit on the inside of a matchbook. Dealing with the IRS puts me in my unhappy place very quickly. However, I have a smart, funny accountant who helps me make sense of the IRS. I pay her for her expertise, and it's worth every penny. Consider the value of a long-term relationship with an accountant, lawyer, web development genius, or other expert.

(5) Mine your longstanding relationships. One source of steady income for me has been past employers. In fact, one of my main clients today is the creative director I worked for in my very first job out of college. He's now growing his own small business, just like I am. As you get started, spread the word to past employers about what you're doing. If you have good relationships with past employers, and you still enjoy the work they produce, there's no reason you can't come alongside again. The implied subtext of this recommendation is, of course, "Never burn your bridges."

(6) Diversify your income. Don't be afraid of part-time jobs. They can be wonderful ways to invite some steady income and predictability into the mix. Having a little flow of regular money can also be very psychologically comforting. I used to be weirdly offended by the thought of part-time work — I felt like I was somehow failing if I didn't have a full load of client hours every week. Now I think that's just silly. A few lucky free agents will hang their shingle on Day 1 and immediately fill up their calendar with billable work, but I think of that as exceptional.

(7) Take breaks. One of the joys of working from home is finding little windows of time for yourself during the day. I love to step away from the computer and walk around with my camera in the middle of the day. I spend 20 minutes shooting this or that, and then get back to work. It clears my head and sets me up for a productive afternoon.

(8) Consider your tax status. Do you plan on being a free agent for more than just a couple of months? It might be more profitable for you to incorporate your business. The money you save in taxes is probably worth the trouble you'll go through to file articles of incorporation.

(9) Plan for vacation. Frankly, I work harder as a freelancer than I ever did as a salaried worker. If I deserved decent vacations when I was a cubicle warrior, I deserve them now. Plus, who wants to be that guy who doesn't know how to not work for a few days?

(10) Find a rabbi. Find someone who's a little further down the road than you are. Someone who talks about the challenges of business in a language that you can understand. (Personally, I love singer/songwriter/creativity consultant Christine Kane.) Buy their books, read their blogs, and reflect on what they have to say. It's OK to have multiple rabbis. I have a whole folder of bookmarks of writers who support the entrepreneurship and the free agency model in their thinking (Escape from Cubicle Nation is another favorite.)

If you have any recommendations or reflections about life as a free agent, I'd love to hear them.

uncollected thoughts

2008-06-08T19:59:00.004-05:00

Greetings from a muggy Sunday night in Atlanta. I just logged onto Blogger to see if I could remember my password, remember how to post. I feel like I've been in a creative drought lately. I'm ready to come out of it. Is that something one can do simply by intending it? Well, I'm here, and I'm trying.

I'm not here to write about anything in particular, just bits and pieces floating through my brain. Welcome to the blotter.

(1) I went to a funeral on Saturday for a young man I'd never met. Alex was the 22-year-old son of a woman I know through my contradance community. Alex's mother, Linda, is a petite Southern firecracker of a woman. Until Saturday, I don't think I had ever not seen her smiling. But the funeral was crushing. After a long struggle with addiction, Alex died of a drug overdose. I gather that his death was quite unexpected. He'd been in and out of recovery programs; I suppose he seemed to be making progress. And then he was gone. Linda sobbed and sobbed on Saturday. I didn't think I'd cry at the funeral, but I did, just because I hated to see Linda so sad. A mother should never have to bury a son.

(2) In a strange way, I feel oddly excited about the increase in the cost of gas. Yes, that sounds kind of sick. But being a good Socialist-hearted American, I find it interesting that we are finally starting to encounter some checks in our extravagant waste of fossil fuels. Wendell Berry wrote a splendid article in the May issue of Harper's that gets right to the issue, noting the psychological shifts that are accompanying the end of cheap oil:

…That human limitlessness is a fantasy means, obviously, that its life expectancy is limited. There is now a growing perception, and not just among a few experts, that we are entering a time of inescapable limits. We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one. Nor are we likely to believe much longer in our ability to outsmart, by means of science and technology, our economic stupidity. The hope that we can cure the ills of industrialism by the homeopathy of more technology seems at last to be losing status. We are, in short, coming under pressure to understand ourselves as limited creatures in a limited world.

I wonder sometimes what it would be like for American filling stations to sell gas at $10/gallon, like they already do in some parts of Europe. If we couldn't drive everywhere, would not our lives become significantly simpler, smaller and quieter? Yes, $10/gallon gas would necessitate some major life changes and some major inconveniences for most working Americans. But I think many of those shifts would be incredibly healthy for us in the long run.

(3) I've been working way too much lately. The financial freedom is nice. The disconnect I feel from my artistic life is not so great. I don't like who I become when I work too much. I become this machine, a hyper-productive, stressed, anxious, furious footsoldier. I continue to seek balance in this area. I miss taking photos a lot.

(4) I'm continuing to enjoy getting to know a couple of women neighbors in my apartment building. We went to Birdi's a couple of weeks ago and I had a "faketini" called the Christini Milkshake. $8.75 for vanilla vodka, white creme de cacao, Kahlua, and cream. I don't really care for elaborate drinks, but this thing was seriously delicious. I've been thinking about that drink for two weeks now. I'll try to steer the group back there and take photos next time.

(5) My older brother is spending the summer in Oregon and I miss him.

(6) I'm getting my hair cut on Tuesday and I can't wait. I haven't had it cut since March and I'm looking especially pitiful. I'm going back to the woman who did this to me — but this time we're going to have a Come To Jesus conversation before she picks up the scissors.

Thanks for reading this far. It's good to be back. Hopefully it won't be three months before I post here again.

Rivers and Tides

2008-04-01T08:45:00.002-05:00

[cross-posted on my Gaia site]

Last Christmas, my friend Kathy gave me a copy of the documentary Rivers and Tides, about the work of Scottish environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to get around to watching it. I'm so glad I finally did.

At first blush, this documentary is 90 minutes of footage of a man playing with sticks, snow and rocks. Beneath the surface, this is a very compelling and beautiful story of a man who has found his life's work making beautiful sculptures from the elements. His work is designed to be ephemeral -- he'll spend a day or two or three developing a piece of art, only to see it melt, thaw or be carried out with the tide.

His work offers a window into the transcendent in nature and illustrates the extreme fragility of the world around us.

Something about this documentary touched some pretty deep chords in me. After sitting down somewhat skeptically and watching the documentary with just one eye over the first ten or fifteen minutes, I got completely drawn in. There is so much that I admire about what this man is doing. I rewound certain parts and watched them again and again. I got out the second DVD and watched a bunch of the additional footage, the kind that certifies your standing as a bona fide fan. And I had to stop halfway into the video and get out my journal and write:

"Here's a guy who is basically doing pure art. He's working in deep connection to a landscape and he seems to be working for no particular audience. The elements are so pure. Water, sun, earth. He is doing it to achieve a greater understanding of the transience of life. It's not about scoring xyz gallery or spinning his grant application in the right way with the right phrases. It is about pleasure, learning and beauty."

Over the past couple of years I have noticed the increasing volume of drumbeats in my head. The drumbeats calling me to The Great Work. This Goldsworthy video was another wakeup call.

I'm not even sure what I mean by The Great Work, and I feel more than a bit foolish talking about it here. But the idea isn't going away, so it's probably time to try to poke at it some more.

What it's not:
This is not about spraypainting my name ("Class of '92!!!!") on the caves of Lascaux. This is not some Salieri-esque dream of immortality. I don't wish to be famous or rich. I don't care about making some mark on the artistic world that will never fade away.

What it is:
It's a desire to create something larger and more honest and more direct. It's a desire to bring more truth to the table. It's what Mike Scott was getting at when he wrote a song called "The Big Music" for The Waterboys 20 years ago:

I have heard the big music
And I'll never be the same
Something so pure
just called my name

Why fill your life with hundreds of your dumb snapshots when you can take three or four or just one really good photo. I think that we have the opportunity to speak more truth, we should.

(For me, "truth" is still a word that has a lot of sticky Christian tentacles attached to it. Certain Christian groups talk about the world's "truth" and about Jesus's "Truth," and about how the only enduring Truth is that found in Jesus Christ. I don't believe that anymore, and I'm trying to reclaim the concept from the church. Truth is turning out to be something much more beautiful and powerful and startling and life-giving than I was ever able to see before.)

In all of its breathlessness and recklessness, Annie Dillard's Living With Weasels grabbed me by the scruff of my neck about fifteen years ago and it still hasn't let go:

"We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't 'attack' anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

"I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles."

it's time for music!

2007-12-20T18:22:00.000-05:00

It's that time you've all been waiting for — time for my favorite songs of the year. Yessss!

Yeah, there's a lot of other stuff I could write about in this space, but I am working hard to put the break-in behind me and move forward. To be honest, I am finding it upsetting to think any more about the break-in than I already have.

So I am here to share some delicious songs with you. I hope you enjoy.

(6) "Sanssouci" — Rufus Wainwright. Lord knows how I love this man. 2007 saw the release of Rufus' decadent Release the Stars, an dazzling album with the same lavish production that characterized his splendid Want One album and the cryptic Want Two. "Sanssouci" is probably my favorite song from the album, a playful little number about love and longing and boys in hotels. The song features a charming flute part, a sort of trilly, lacy little flute line that makes you feel like dancing around in a tutu. Over the summer I was rewarded with the sight of seeing a big muscular man wearing pin-striped circus pants playing that flute part at Rufus' Atlanta concert. That was a good day.

One of my favorite lines in the song is almost a throwaway, a casual line in which Rufus sings I'm tired of writing elegies to boredom. When this song came across my radar in the spring, that line felt like a strange revelation, a clue on the path. I took it as encouragement to broaden my horizons, to jump into something unexpected and scary. As silly as it sounds, I felt an implicit endorsement from Rufus when I quit my horrible soul-eating job at the Very Large Multinational Corporation a few months after discovering this song.

(5) "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" — Iron & Wine. I've been following Sam Beam since the days of The Creek Drank the Cradle, and I was happy to welcome this album to the fold this year. "Flightless Bird" is a beautiful, hymn-like waltz that closes The Shepherd's Dog. This song captures all that I love about Iron & Wine. The images of simple purity in Beam's music suggest a transcendent beauty that always waits just beyond our awareness.

(4) "The Part Where You Let Go" — Hem. I'm growing terribly predictable by adding a Hem selection to my top songs list each winter, but I can't help it. They're one of my favorite bands and one of the groups I turn to most frequently when seeking solace. They're like comfort food, except without all the guilt and calories. This song found me in June when I was leaving the stability of that soul-eating but lucrative day job and entering unknown territory. There were a number of occasions over the summer when the chorus reduced me to a quivering pile of tears.

(3) "Miracle of Five" — Eleni Mandell. NPR's delightful Song of the Day feature brought Eleni Mandell to my attention for the first time this spring. Her entire Miracle of Five album is full of sweet, folky songs like this one, with easygoing guitars and some sleepy saxophones. This is a very pleasing album.

(2) "Either Way" — Wilco.

Maybe the sun will shine today.

The clouds will blow away.

Maybe I won't feel so afraid.

I will try to understand

Either way.

The childlike simplicity of these lines that open Wilco's album Sky Blue Sky took my breath away when I first heard them. The clarity and courage in those lines becomes even more significant when you realize that the person who wrote them, Jeff Tweedy, suffers from major depressive disorder and panic attacks. The lines seem like the best kind of therapy, a promise to just accept each day with open hands. Perhaps it was the knowledge of Jeff Tweedy's ongoing struggles with depression that led me to somehow link these lines to my thoughts about Bob, my friend who killed himself in August. I think this song was borne from deep vulnerability, and that's what I like best about it.

(1) "Australia" — The Shins. I loved all of The Shins' Wincing the Night Away album, but this song especially. The joy and abandon of this song buoyed my spirits throughout the year. It's been years since I came across a song this singable. The entire first half of this Wincing album is about as close to genius as contemporary pop music gets.

Honorable mentions:

- "The Storm" — José Gonzalez (this was a Friday Night Lights soundtrack favorite — thanks to the producers of FNL for their fantastic taste in music)

- "What Is a Soul?" — M. Ward

- "Is There a Ghost" — Band of Horses. I bought Cease to Begin this month after seeing that the album made it into the top 10 of Paste magazine's Top Albums of 2007. The album feels like what would happen if The Ocean Blue and My Morning Jacket got together and had a big fight and then decided to be friends. Melodic, bouncy rock and some really lovely harmonies.

- "Goes Around" — Rockfour

- "The Story" — Brandi Carlisle. The way Brandi's voice cracks at the climax of this song never fails to give me shivers.

Well, that's my story. Let's hear what you've been listening to for the past twelve months.

amusing

2007-11-28T13:14:00.000-05:00

I took my car in to the mechanic today so he could look at some things. My check engine light was on, and it had been a while since I'd had the car serviced.

I love my mechanic. I've been seeing Rick for years. If he told me that he would need to charge me $5,000 to service my differential, I'd probably believe him and write him a check, even though I don't really know what a differential is or what it does.

This morning, when I dropped off the car, I asked him to look up the information on my car and tell me when I should plan to change the timing belt. The timing belt is a little rubber loop that is helps the valves in the engine fire at the proper times. The part itself isn't that expensive, but the timing belt generally lives in a terribly inaccessible place in the engine, so when you replace the timing belt, it ends up costing a ton of money, because the mechanic has to basically pull the entire engine out to get to it. I have to plan a few months out with the timing belt, because I can be confident that it's going to cost about $1,000 to change it.

Rick called me this morning. "Well, I've got some good news and some bad news." (This is how most of my conversations with Rick begin.)

I asked for the bad news. It was pretty bad: the car needs some obscure but important oxygen sensor unit. I have no idea what this part does, but the part costs about $600. Crap.

Then I asked for the good news.

"I looked up the information on your car to find out when they suggest you change your timing belt," he said. "I found out that your car does not have a timing belt. So you will never need to replace it."

"You're kidding!" I almost shouted into the phone. I was thrilled.

Then I stopped, and laughed, because I am pretty sure this means I've reached adulthood. The thought of not having to eventually pay for this car repair brings me to the same level of happiness that I have when Rufus Wainwright gives a concert, or when I get together for dinner with good friends.

Adulthood is amusing.

the gratitude list

2007-11-22T19:53:00.000-05:00

Back at home after enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with my family in the Atlanta suburbs. It was a wonderful meal, with both my brothers attending. This year we were also joined by my boyfriend, Rob, and my brother's girlfriend, Ana, who made a couple of scrumptious side dishes for our feast.

It was a really good day.

Things I have loved or appreciated recently:

- The way Ana's entire face lights up when she is talking about food she loves. She gestures with her hands, her eyes widen, and you feel your own pulse quicken at the thought of potentially tasting the food she's describing.
- The chance to enjoy very good food with Ana and Scott... they are discriminating food-lovers with terrific taste in food. Dining out with them really tops my list of yummy and fun things to do. (Last night I took them to Feast and they really enjoyed it.)
- The way my parents have made such an effort to welcome Rob and Ana into their lives. My parents have three children. Two of those children chose partners and married, and both of those marriages ended. Clearly, this was not part of what they wanted for us. But they are rolling with it and finding a way to enjoy "Plan B."
- Being able to make a living doing things that I really like.
- Being able to take photos every day of things that interest me.
- Actually knowing what to do with the photos once I have taken them (really enjoying getting to know Lightroom right now).
- A growing sense of spaciousness and permission to explore my creative dreams. That sounds really corny, doesn't it? But it's true. I am really grateful for the opportunity to develop my creative sensibilities.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

goodbye to a friend

2007-11-13T19:51:00.000-05:00

This morning I found out that Bob is gone. Bob is the friend I wrote about here. And that's a photo of him, taken by his wife Judy. His body was discovered, some time this past weekend, in the woods where he disappeared in August. It is apparent to authorities that he took his own life, probably on the same day that he disappeared.

In the three months since Bob vanished, I've discovered more information about some of the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. I found out about some major obstacles he was facing in some of his most important relationships. There were a lot of personal issues troubling Bob that I knew nothing about. But the thought of Bob killing himself is profoundly upsetting. I feel like I want to go back to the park where he disappeared, to sit down with him and just talk things out for a while. What I'd really like to do is talk him out of it.

I'm not really sad yet. Mostly I'm just mad. This feels like a profound loss of talent and heart for the world. Plus a damn fine dance partner for me.

It is so painful to know that some part of Bob really thought that ending his own life would be a good idea. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There was some small part of me that hoped that Bob was still alive. That he had just decided to go somewhere quiet to collect himself for a while.

A few weeks ago I even found myself hoping (irrationally) that Bob was alive, that he was Googling himself somewhere in a public library in the middle of nowhere, and coming across the journal entry I wrote about him back in August. Just so he would know that I was thinking about him, that I missed him. That sounds silly now.

Bob, I hope you are happier where you are now. I miss you.

the long apprenticeship

2007-11-04T19:15:00.002-05:00

Whew. I had no intention of letting this blog go for so long. I've been getting adjusted to my new work schedule, and feeling more overwhelmed than usual.

What's funny about my new schedule is that I work way more than I used to. And I get paid less. If I wasn't enjoying the work so much, I think this would be called irony.

Tonight daylight saving is on my side, and I have an extra hour, and I'd like to just say hello, because I've missed writing here.

Work with my photographer friend Mark has been going pretty well. I'm looking at my time with him as a long apprenticeship where I get paid only a little -- but I get to ask a lot of questions.

I'm learning a lot. And not all of it is technical stuff. A lot of it is good life stuff.

When I started working with Mark last month, I felt pretty sure that he was a photography god. (Well, sure. I do have a tendency to idolize my creative heroes.) I was convinced that he was one of the lucky ones who was just born with a boatload of natural talent.

Now I'm changing my view. I still think he's a damned good photographer. But now I think that his success is due only in a small part to what he was born with. More of his success comes from how hard he has worked to build his craft, how he slaves away at making his photos really sparkle. The purity and clarity that I see in his finished photos isn't there straight out of the camera. It's a process, a secret sauce. He begins with strong composition. Then he makes thoughtful choices about editing, cropping, color balancing. And then things start to shine.

My work with Mark requires me to look at a lot of photos. Sometimes I have to sort through a couple thousand shots a day, making quick judgments about what stays and what goes. I have two things to say about this. First, I love getting paid to look at photos all day. Second, the editorial process is teaching me some good stuff about what makes a photo work. I can't quite verbalize what I am learning, but when you look at a couple thousand photos a day, you start to develop a pretty strong sense of what makes a photo successful. So I am tucking away good information about what I'm seeing each day. I'd like to try to start incorporating some of the ideas I'm picking up from my time at the studio in my own photography.

In the afternoon, we stop working and go downstairs to eat something. And we talk about photography. At his core, Mark is a people-watcher. He is a big fan of the work of Gary Winogrand (you may enjoy Winogrand's World 's Fair, New York photo, or his spectacular 1969 image, Los Angeles, California).

We talk about Gary Winogrand a lot.

Gary Winogrand was a great photographer. Gary Winogrand also shot a ton of photos. According to this Wikipedia entry, he left behind more than 2, 500 undeveloped rolls of film when he died. That's a lot of film. He just shot all the time. If you shoot ten rolls of film a day and give the tiniest bit of attention to what you're doing, you're probably going to walk away with some very good shots over the course of your lifetime.

What I'd really like to do now is get over my fear of doing bad work. I have to remind myself that the only way to do something better is to do it badly for a while.

So much of my creative life the past couple of years has been about making a plan, hitting a wall, losing my way, falling apart for a while, and then starting over. This time around, I'm actually enjoying the process and yielding to the lessons as they come. This time I'm grateful to work my ass off for less money, grateful to learn, grateful to soak it all up like a sponge.

a few dark thoughts

2007-10-06T10:00:00.001-05:00

Saturday again. I'm writing this from work right now, my last day of work at the photo store. I've been wanting to write more lately, but the best I can summon at the moment is a handful of disjointed thoughts.

- My job in the photography studio is going well. Of course, things go really well when I don't screw up. Yesterday, during a long day of work, I tossed a few important papers into the trash. I wasn't thinking about it. I was done with the papers, and was trying to eliminate clutter. This morning my photographer boss called me (here at work, at my other job) to ask where the papers were. I didn't know right off, and gave him a couple of places to look. He couldn't find them. I cringed over the phone as I suggested they might be in the garbage can in the kitchen, where I had tossed a few things yesterday in a flurry of activity. Of course they were there. Dripping with tomato juice, plastered with potato peels. He was angry. I felt terrible.

(Maybe this is the kind of mistake that will be funny to look back on in a year or so.)

I wonder, will be possible for me to not feel terrible for the rest of the day about this error? I'm still learning how to make mistakes responsibly. How to take ownership of my errors without beating myself up. Self-flagellation is the pattern I'm used to. Learning how to thoughtfully accept the mistake and move on does not come easily.

- A client of mine emailed me last week to ask if I could take a photo of a watercolor painting he wants to incorporate into a brochure we're developing. He emailed me just after I realized that I must stop accepting new projects -- my work hours are completely absurd. I wrote back and explained that I was overcommitted and wouldn't have time for at least the next couple of weeks to take a photo of the art. I suggested that he find another solution. He replied by pushing back harder, suggesting that the photography project wouldn't take very long -- maybe he could bring it by one of my part-time jobs on my lunch break so I could just fire off a quick shot or two while he waited?

Alas, there is no faster way to enrage me than to disregard my shaky grasp on my boundaries. I have stomped all over my own life with muddy shoes these past few weeks, rearranging my days and nights in order to accommodate the needs of my clients. I find it very frustrating when I finally work up the courage to say "no" and receive only push-back.

I'm not going to shoot the photo. (It's become a principle thing.)

- My relationship with my parents has never been better. Last week my mom and dad sent me one of those silly song cards, the kind that play a really loud, corny song when you open it. The audio track on the card was Gloria Estefan's "Conga," and I almost jumped out of my skin when I opened it -- the song was so loud. Mom's handwritten message inside offered congratulations for all the developments in my photography life over the past few months, congratulations on the new job in the photography studio. Then it said something like, "Just remember, when you get famous, please don't take pictures of us when we're dead" (a reference to Annie Leibovitz's tendency to photograph loved ones on their deathbed). That's just quality photographic humor.

Lately I have found myself calling my mom first when something good happens. She is a wonderful cheerleader for her kids. I have never been so grateful for her support.

- Tomorrow is my first day off in a while. It feels like forever since I've been totally irresponsible for a day (it's really only been three weeks) I plan to celebrate by turning my phone off completely! And of course I may be sacking out on the couch and catching up on Season 1 DVDs of Friday Night Lights, to which I have become completely addicted. Go Panthers!

A perfect fall soup recipe

2007-09-23T19:22:00.000-05:00

In an unsuccessful but heartfelt attempt to simply force cool, autumnal weather to arrive in Atlanta, my boyfriend and I made this soup for dinner last night. It's got lots of nice fall flavors. The soup is pretty easy. The croutons are more complicated, but (I think) worth it. Now if only fall would get here...

White Bean and Rosemary Soup with Roasted Garlic Croutons

Croutons:
2 whole heads garlic
1/4 c + 2 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
1/2 loaf unsliced whole wheat bread, cut into 1" cubes

Soup:
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 Tbsp. olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 large onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
2 carrots, peeled and cut crosswise into 1/4" coins
2 stalks celery, cut into 1/4" slices
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
2 cans (14.5 oz each) white beans, drained, rinsed, and drained again
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF. Slice off tops of garlic heads so the cloves are just exposed. Rub each head with 1 teaspoon olive oil; wrap loosely in foil. Roast 25 to 35 minutes. Remove from oven (but leave oven on); let garlic cool until comfortable to touch. Squeeze cloves from the heads into a small bowl; mash with a fork and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine half the roasted garlic with 1/4 cup olive oil, salt, and pepper. Add bread and toss until well coated. Place bread on a baking sheet and bake 20 minutes, turning once or twice, until golden brown. Remove from oven and set aside.
3. To make soup: In a large saucepan, heat butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, carrots and celery, and cook until tender, about 10 minutes. Add broth and remaining half of garlic and bring to a boil; reduce heat and cook 20 minutes, until carrots are very tender. Add drained beans and rosemary; cook 10 more minutes.
4. With an immersion blender or in a food processor fitted with a knife blade, puree half the soup until smooth. Stir to combine. Serve in bowls topped with croutons and drizzled with remaining olive oil.

Makes 4-6 servings.

Recipe developed by Rori Trovato for O magazine.

bokeh like butter

2007-09-12T12:58:00.000-05:00

This morning was the first meeting of my six-week "people photography" course that I am getting to take through my new job. I'm not getting paid to take this class or anything, but the course is free. Which rules.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the first class meeting. The director of the school where I am taking the course had asked me beforehand if I had a basic understanding of how my camera works. I'm not a technically strong photographer, but I have a general idea of how the camera works ("Just put it on P and press the shutter!"), so I said yes.

The instructor, Dave, invited each of us to introduce ourselves to the class. The class includes about a dozen people of all different skill levels. There were people who had just gotten a new digital camera and wanted to learn how to get satisfying photos of their kids. There were people who worked in photography professionally who wanted to learn some new compositional tricks.

The director fired up a slide show of some of his favorite portraits from celebrated and little-known photographers, and some students started asking questions. What was exciting is that I found myself nodding along to all of the answers he gave. I actually understood what he was saying, and I understood why he was giving those answers. I would have answered the questions the same way if I had been teaching the class.

Dave gave us our first photographic assignment, made a lens recommendation (the 50mm f1.8, for those of you playing along at home), and set us free to go take some great portraits. We report to next Wednesday's class with JPGs from this week's photographic assignment.

It was an encouraging class. It helped me see that I am slowly developing my skills and learning to trust my instincts about what works and what doesn't. Also, just being in the same room with a group of people who are excited about improving their craft is really energizing.

There's a lot of wonderful little stuff happening here, stuff that isn't earth-shattering but still lets me know that I am on a good path. I am waiting for some more of the details to unfold and then I hope to share some of those little stories here.

It looks like Wednesday is going to be one of my "weekend" days in this new schedule (Saturday is now a work day). The schedule is not as predictable as I would like, but it's doing work I really enjoy. So far, quitting the corporate game is proving to be a great decision.

bits and pieces

2007-08-28T13:46:00.000-05:00

The wonderful Doug Plummer has a great entry in his blog about the unchronicled, unsung skills needed to be a good photographer. As someone who is still trying to grasp many of the technical elements of photography, I found his perspective refreshing:

"...The technical minutia of photography is the easy part. It's just a skill set. The crucial element is your ability to connect with the diversity of subjects and clients and situations that a professional photographic life is going to throw at you. The crucial quality is curiosity."

I just love that thought. The whole entry is wonderful.

This has been an interesting week for work and photography. For the first time, I'm going to be working part-time in a situation that allows me lots of exposure (heh) to photographers and photography. The job is definitely small potatoes right now, but I'm still really optimistic about getting to learn more, meet new people, and increase my skill set. I feel like I'm at a plateau photographically right now — perhaps one of many plateaus I will reach during my creative life — and I am looking forward to reaching beyond it.

Photography-related links I've been enjoying lately:
- Kathleen Connally's "A Walk through Durham Township, Pennsylvania" photoblog
- Photographer Jeremy Cowart's portraits tagged "experimental"
- Bill Wadman's incredible 365 Portraits project. This guy is amazing. One new portrait shot and posted each day. Thanks to Paulie for the link.

Don't tell anybody, but it's 3:00 pm and I'm about to go sack out on the couch and watch a movie. I divided the morning between yoga and some freelance work. Tonight I'm getting together with a friend for some wine and conversation (her email was titled "we should drink more").

Life is pretty good.

prayers for a friend

2007-08-21T18:54:00.000-05:00

My friend Bob has been missing for three weeks. He disappeared some time on August 1 in Washington County, Kansas. Authorities are starting to conclude that he drowned while exploring a river on the campground where he was staying. Though his body has not been found, the situation is not looking hopeful.

Bob was one of the people that really encouraged me when I was getting started with my photography. When I told him last year I was thinking about upgrading to a newer, faster camera, he encouraged me to shell out the cash for a Canon 5D, which is a really powerful professional digital Canon camera. "The caliber of your work easily justifies this level of gear," he wrote me in an email. "If you want to hold up liquor stores to get the money, let me know. I'll drive the getaway car." I didn't end up getting the 5D, but the thought of robbing liquor stores at gunpoint with Bob made me laugh.

Bob had a 5D himself, and he also had the technical skills to stretch the camera to its full capacity. He was known around my community for his ability to capture dancers twirling and smiling, finding moments of pure joy and connection on the dance floor. I still don't know how he did this while keeping faces in focus and the shots properly exposed.

He was one of my favorite dance partners, too. That's how I first got to know him. He was an extraordinary partner, tall and strong. I knew if I was dancing with Bob that I could cut loose a little bit and he'd always be there to catch me on the other side.

Some of my favorite images from Bob:
Mentone fire dance
The bass player
Me dancing in 2005 with my friend Bruce

I hate the thought that I might never get to see Bob again.

what went right

2007-08-02T14:32:00.000-05:00

Some hints of cynicism have been coloring the edges of the days lately. It occurs to me that I am really scared about finding my next job. I long for work that is colorful and interesting and fun, but man. Three seasons of The Office have threatened my belief that such a job even exists.

This morning I went to another class at Dance 101. The class was led by Ofelia, who basically owns the studio and calls the shots. She led one of my introductory classes a few weeks ago and I wanted to try another one of her classes, because I really liked her style.

We started with a warm-up. Ofelia's graceful style turns even basic stretches into elegant displays of art. The way she moves is just so beautiful. As we danced through the class, I found myself feeling so grateful that this woman had found dance (or that dance had found her) and that she had decided to open this studio to students. She didn't even discover dance until her late 30s — then she dropped everything, sold the insurance business she had started in her 20s and put all of her energy into Dance 101.

When you see Ofelia dance, you sense that she is doing the exact work that she was made for. It's so beautiful to know that this kind of perfect fit does happen sometimes.

Today, in an effort to push back against the brittle taste of my own negativity, I am writing a list of What Went Right. There are always far more things that go right in a particular day than go wrong, right? I wish I was not so quick to brush aside the joys of the day and agonize over the "problems." So without further ado:

- Made it to dance class and back safely.
- I got some of the dance steps down correctly, and found those very enjoyable!
- Anticipating going out for a yummy dinner with two juicy girlfriends this evening
- Andy and his wife were nowhere near their Twin Cities home when that bridge collapsed in Minneapolis. They use that bridge all the time, but they happened to be on vacation yesterday when it fell apart.
- The old discarded leather chair I spotted a few days ago down the street was still available to be photographed this morning... photos possibly forthcoming on Flickr.
- I did not have to work today with S.J., C.D., K.B., or J.B. (a host of former work people at the VLMC who were pretty much impossible to deal with).
- I found the absolute perfect card at the store down the street to give to a certain friend this weekend. I don't know why that's so satisfying, but it really is.
- No one else was using the washing machine so I put my clothes right in and now they smell terrific.
- A very kind librarian was able to find the misplaced copy of the Cormac McCarthy book while I waited so I could check it out.
- I got to spend the whole day on the couch reading said Cormac McCarthy book (an extremely rewarding way to spend a day).

Remind me to make lists like this more often.

practicing happiness

2007-07-17T19:32:00.000-05:00

Some twelve years ago, when I was a tender, mumbly sophomore in college, I applied for a small scholarship from a philanthropic foundation specializing in journalistic education. In order to get the scholarship, I had to be interviewed over the phone by some hard-nosed news editor who evaluated all the scholarship candidates. I've forgotten just about every detail of that uncomfortable little exchange, but I do remember the editor closing the interview by asking me some ridiculously lofty question, something like, "What do you think the most important thing for humans to do with themselves in this day and age?"

I was extraordinarily nervous about this whole interview, and not at all prepared for a question of that magnitude, but I remember scraping together my faltering self-assurance and saying something incredibly somber like, "I think it's important for humans to really be serious and do a good job in everything they do." That was basically my answer.

Years later, I'm recalling that conversation and wondering how it was that I got to be so serious. Endless productivity is a massive bore.

Maybe what I'm starting to feel this week is a weird byproduct of being a distant heir of that pack of overzealous, hardworking Puritans that came over on the Mayflower a few generations ago. I don't know. But as of this week, being on vacation is starting to get hard.

When you go on an open-ended sabbatical with no job waiting for you at the end, the rat brain comes out to play. No matter how much the rational part of my brain knows that I am completely fine, the rat brain does not care. The past few days, I have begun to feel some weird tremors of worry, panic, and scarcity. Real rat brain stuff, stuff I haven't felt in a while. In an idle moment, I will start thinking about how I need to find work. Or I'll get agitated, or chide myself to do something "productive."

This afternoon, I took a long walk, and I realized that my job right now is to practice happiness. To simply rest, enjoy my time off, and to be content. There is absolutely no need to flail around and wonder anxiously where I'm going to get a job. There's much more to life than being endlessly serious and productive. I want to fully enter this state of uncertainty, and to do so knowing that I am sustained and safe.

The poem I just posted in Ephemera speaks beautifully to this issue. I think I need to print that poem out and tape it to my forehead so I don't forget.

things to try

2007-07-09T10:24:00.000-05:00

One week into unemployment. Last week I joined my boyfriend for a trip to see his family in Virginia. It was such a pleasure to take that trip, smack dab in the middle of the week, to spend long afternoons strolling the beautiful countryside where his family lives instead of sitting through another painfully boring meeting in which a dozen topics of no interest or use were discussed ad nauseam.

Nope. I'm not missing my old job too much these days.

I know these unoccupied, unscheduled days won't last forever, so I'm trying to make good use of the time while I've got it. I've started a list titled "Things to Try" and I'm having a lot of fun adding new items to it. It's not a list of "Things to DO," mind you. At this point a long list of things I had to do would feel restrictive and slavish. No, this list contains "suggested activities." This list is a polite garçon standing at my elbow saying, "Perhaps the lady would like to email Jane now about having lunch together next week?"

It is just so satisfying to make lists. But with this list, I don't need to feel any guilt if I don't cross off one of the elements of the list. It is a list about possibilities.

Here are a few items on the list:

Paint a wall?
Photostroll to middle Georgia
Go visit Sheila and Atticus
Register for some Dance 101 classes
Clean out coat closet
Have a Flickr pin show?
Dinner party for building?

I have been staying busy with the list, and already crossed several items off the list. That feels good. (My first Dance 101 class is tonight!)

samba, sun, and feng shui

2007-06-30T13:21:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting here in the kitchen with Stan Getz playing and the A/C going strong. I'm putting together a dish for tonight's movie potluck at Jean's house — we're going to watch Venus. Tomorrow I'm headed to Virginia with my boyfriend for a visit with his family. The trip is kind of last minute, and a happy reflection on the fact that I no longer need to sacrifice half of my accrued vacation hours for a spontaneous little road trip.

Yesterday was my last day of work at the Very Large Multinational Corporation, and I'm very glad to have that chapter behind me. Four of us on my team were leaving our jobs on the same day, the results of the restructuring process. We all went out to lunch, told some funny work stories, and turned in our badges to HR. I don't think any of us wrung our hands or shed any tears yesterday.

The photo above depicts my desk at the VLMC. My office was in a dark little cave, a room with bad ventilation and not much natural light. I'm glad to leave that space behind and to spend more time in my tiny little apartment, which I have always loved.

I've been unemployed for 24 hours! No regrets so far.

Okay, there is one final mystery lingering in my mind about the VLMC, and then I'll stop talking about it, I swear:

My co-worker Wendy had been with the Corporation for 8 years. She started her career as a Level 2 associate, then worked up to Level 3 Manager, and then, in February, was promoted to Level 4 Director. Wendy was terrific in this role, and was getting lots of kudos from her supervisors. She was a great employee because she knew how to play the game and speak the language of the Corporation convincingly. At the same time, she remained a real person, and not some sort of corporate robot who spoke only in acronyms. She enjoyed her work and brought real credibility to her role.

Anyhow, as she was going through the restructuring process with the rest of us, Wendy was told that she was going to be demoted from Level 4 back to Level 3. Then she was told that the VLMC was going to hire a new Level 4 Director, and that Wendy would be reporting to that person in the future.

Why would this happen? This news just stunned me. I must emphasize that Wendy was the perfect fit for her role at Level 4. She was incredibly smart, accomplished, and energetic. Does this just mean that someone at Level 5 had it in for her?

At any rate, the issue is moot. Wendy told the VLMC to go jump in a lake (I am paraphrasing a bit). She was one of the four employees who left the Corporation yesterday. When I heard that she was resigning, I went to her and threw my arms around her in a terribly unprofessional bear hug, because it was so nice to know that the bad guys were not going to get her. As of yesterday, Wendy had already interviewed a couple of times with a terrific company and was well on her way to a better job.

It feels funny to be in this place right now. At the kitchen table, with a Stan Getz samba coming through the speakers, fresh laundry tumbling in the dryer down the hall. I'm an unemployed, divorced 33-year-old woman with a big swirl of ideas in my head, a handful of half-baked ambitions and no real clout in the job market. Yet I couldn't be happier with my choices and where I am.

I have already started looking for other work — I don't intend to just be a hippie for the next ten years. But I feel enormously satisfied with the places my decisions have taken me. I plan to take the next few weeks off to soak in that feeling, swim around in it for a while. I ordered a copy of the book Sacred Space. Feng shui is kind of corny and passé these days, I suppose, but I still love the concept. When the book arrives I'm going to do some space-clearing rituals here at home, reset the energy for the next passage of life.

These small moments seem to be my happiest ones. Singing, loafing, cooking, cleaning up, sweeping, reading, shooting photos. None of them are mountaintop moments. But those are the moments when I experience a profound peace with who I am and who I am becoming.

Sayonara to the Money Factory

2007-06-14T19:26:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like my tenure at the Money Factory (also known as the Very Large Multinational Corporation or "VLMC") will be drawing to a tortured close at the end of the month. I've had eighteen months of blissful stability, plenty of money, amazing health benefits, meaningless work projects, an endlessly agitated bullshit sensor, and the knowledge that the gig wouldn't, shouldn't and couldn't last.

The decision to leave became much clearer and easier for me last week when the VLMC let go one of my good work friends in part of a massive re-organization. Before Andy was let go, I didn't fully realize that he was sort of a lifeline to me in the office. Without him around, work quickly shifted from tolerable to fairly unbearable.

The silver lining in this situation is that I am timing my exit during the same re-org that swept Andy out the door. Most of the people left behind in my department are getting "re-matched" to a new position, but since I'm choosing not to accept the new position, I'll get a nice severance package that will help keep me going through the summer. It will also help me pay off the new Canon D20 and the fantastic new lens I just bought. (I can't figure out if the timing of that major new camera purchase is amazingly terrible, or eerily good. I'm choosing to believe the latter. Now I'll have time to enjoy using the darned thing.)

After my last day of work, I'll burn some work materials in Lalah's fire pit. I plan to make a little ritual out of it. Seems like an appropriate use for those 250 business cards I never distributed. I hope to never see my name printed next to that company's logo again.

I am really not sure what comes after this, but I feel very positive about closing the books on this chapter. The lesson I learned at the VLMC is that it's not enough to just make good money and benefits. There must be something more. Some little seed that opens up new possibilities. Some opportunity for growth, or even some interesting relationship with a co-worker that provides a beam of light in the middle of the day. I'll probably never have an Amazingly Meaningful Job, the kind of job where I save babies from burning buildings or distribute protease inhibitors to AIDS-infected Africans, but I need to do more with myself than clock in every day to a job that leaves me half asleep. I suddenly find myself reminded of the words of Jesus, when he talked about how worthless it was to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. As far as I know, Jesus never worked a day in an office, but clearly he understood how crappy it feels when part of you goes dead inside, and how much better off you are when you fight back against that death. And this thought is oddly comforting.

Goal-setting

2007-05-25T10:09:00.000-05:00

Somehow over the past few years, I've fallen out of the habit of regular goal-setting. Other friends have merrily plotted magnificent courses for themselves, saving money, paying off debts, improving their fitness and cleaning up their unfinished business. And I've just been sitting here on the couch eating tortilla chips and thanking God that I'm not one of those crazy goal-setting maniacs who's always pushing herself to improve. Because, you know, self-improvement is hard work. It's kind of a drag sometimes.

I mean, who needs goals? I've got serenity, and a bag of tortilla chips, and a remote control. Sweeeet.

So I've been drifting along, aimlessly bumping into jobs, friends, activities that happened to float my way. Did yesterday mark my 100,000th tortilla chip on the couch? Maybe it did, because I suddenly realized that I'm getting really tired of being so utterly rudderless.

At work we've been going through an excruciating cycle of "self-development and coaching." This cycle apparently comes up once a year, and sweet mother Mary, it is torture. You have to request written feedback from others who judge how well they think you're doing in the area of Change Agility™ or Communicating Impactfully™ or Building Meaningful Relationships.™ It feels awful, asking a co-worker to wax eloquent about how skillful I am at Change Agility. I would rather ask them to personally throw away my used dental floss.

I thought I was done with all of this, but then yesterday my Superboss came in and provided some On-the-Spot Coaching™ about this one final bit of development I need to take care of. It is a massive Self-Evaluation Form™ where I have to write a long, reflective essay about how I've done with my own work objectives over the past year. I have to write entire paragraphs about my skills in Sharing Knowledge Openly™ and Communicating Impactfully™.

"I usually spend four or five hours putting mine together," Superboss said. "It's good to spend some time on it, because it ends up getting put into in your permanent file."

I nodded thoughtfully and made a good Listening Attentively™ face, absorbing all the details about this massive crap-fest I cannot seem to extricate myself from. As soon as she left, I took out my journal and wrote an angry screed which contained so many swear words that I am too embarrassed to quote it here. The bottom line is that I am getting back into personal goal-setting, and the first goal to permanently eject myself from this company in the next year so that I never have to go through one of these ridiculous self-assessment cycles again. Change Agility that, Superboss.

Yes, I know I'm pretty much repeating myself a lot here lately. But this is where I go to process reality and concoct new plans. So bear with me.

(Deep breath.)

Yesterday I ran across this quote from Theodore Roosevelt. I keep reading it again and again:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man [or woman] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs; who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

First, I wish this guy was still president.

Second, I love that final phrase: "those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." I know that when he wrote this, Roosevelt was probably talking about courageous soldiers who went into battle to give their lives for the cause of freedom, but from where I'm standing, I feel like that phrase is a good characterization of my attitude towards work over the past few years. All the upper-management shakeups at the office over the past few weeks have helped me clarify with unshakable certainty that sitting on the couch eating tortilla chips is not enough anymore.

mental health day

2007-05-17T10:40:00.000-05:00

Today I called in sick to work. I'm not feeling unwell at all — quite the contrary. Just needing a break. I had told my boss yesterday that I might be coming down with a little something, you know, needing a sick day. He gave a little smile and said, "You know, sometimes people do get sore throats, and they really need to stay home." It was such a simple little thing he said, but there was so much gentleness and permission in it. I took him up on it by staying home today.

The past couple of weeks have involved a lot of tumultuous concerns about work. Yes, it looks like my job at the Very Large Multinational Corporation will be going away in the next six months or so (maybe the next six weeks — who knows?). The Very Large Multinational Corporation leaders have lots of colorful words for exactly what's happening. My department is not being downsized; it's being redesigned. Our work is not being off-shored; it's being centralized. The upshot is that about 20 people on our 80-member staff of artists across the country will be laid off, and the rest of us will probably be asked later in the year to "centralize" ourselves down to "central Florida." Or, to accept severance packages.

Getting fired has never sounded so lovely.

After feeling terribly conflicted about my job for months, this seems like perhaps some sort of divine push to get the hell out of the company and doing something else. I don't know precisely what that "something else" is yet. But I hope and believe that it will be a good thing.

So I'm asking myself lots of questions lately about what might be next. At the same time, I'm still worried about money and very unclear on whether I can go to grad school now, or if I should just shelve that idea for a while.

Last night I got together for a lovely dinner with Jean and Lalah, two of my favorite, most connected, most lively and authentic friends. Lalah was late but when she showed up she had three dozen roses in her arms, a dozen for each of us. We all looked like prom queens as we were seated at our booth. At one point during dinner, they asked me what was going on with my job. I'd been sharing the rumblings about potential layoffs for a while, and they wanted an update. I took a deep breath and said, "I don't know what is going on with my job, but I do know that I have too many skills and ideas to stay cooped up in this stupid job that has absolutely nothing to do with my values or personality!" And Lalah lifted her glass and said, "All right!" and then we drank to that, and I started to think that even if I don't know what else is around the corner, things are going to be OK.

the lynch mob sounded like a good idea

2007-05-06T14:33:00.000-05:00

I've been cleaning like a madwoman this afternoon, right down to the strips of rubber on the refrigerator door that help seal the cool air in. A mild solution of white vinegar and water is what I like to use for this chore. I suppose the acidic content of the vinegar helps eat mold and destroy microscopic creatures that would otherwise build their condominiums right next to the fresh egg compartment.
Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from an old friend. She was rounding up me and four of my oldest, most beloved friends from our college years, calling an emergency meeting for that night on behalf of X., who had something she needed to tell us.
When an emergency meeting like this is called, it's rarely for celebratory reasons. We met at the restaurant, all of us feeling a little concerned, and settled into the biggest booth we could find. X. steadied her nerves with a glass of wine and told us that she had been living in a physically abusive relationship with her husband for ten years. She was initiating a separation from him. He finally went too far this week, his rage reaching a level that left her fearing for her life.
I went cold and shuddery at the news. I could only shake my head. We all listened as she told us what she had been through for the past ten years. How it started with a little shove against the wall years ago from this man, who is two heads taller and eighty pounds heavier than she. And then things just got worse and worse.
We all cried, and told her how much we supported her, and offered sympathy and help with lodging and practical necessities. We remembered times when things had seemed not quite right between the two of them. We said mean things about her husband. We expressed wishes for him to experience pain, a lot of it, and slowly. I had to hold my tongue during that part — I wanted to go into graphic detail about exactly what I wanted for this man, but I also knew that that wouldn't help.
Truthfully, I kept thinking about how great it would be to go down to Ye Olde Viking Superstore, and get some big torches, the kind as big around as the trunk of a sapling, the kind that actually drop little pieces of flaming cinder on your shoulders as you hold them aloft. And then I was thinking about how maybe all of us could go down there, march down the street with our torches blazing and cinders flying everywhere, and beat on the door of his house and demand that he come out.
Of course, I do think of myself as a peaceful hippie, a middle child, a peacemaker, someone who has actively sought to incorporate the qualities of Nonviolent Communication into my relationships. To suddenly relish thoughts of leading a lynch mob was unnerving, and I quickly tried to bleach the thought from my mind. Calling a lynch mob together would not improve the situation in any way.
Plus, I might get put in jail.
As we continued talking, I realized that X.'s husband is exactly where he needs to be. He has stopped denying everything, and is beginning to recognize the depth of his problem. And his wife is already doing OK. After years of knowing that things have not been right, she is getting her life back. She is going to be fine. She is going to be very, very fine.
The women that were called to the restaurant that evening have been in my life for a decade or two. Though the reason for the gathering was very painful, I couldn't help but rejoice over the fact that we were all together in that booth, all thinking the same thoughts, wanting the same things, a tribe who would gladly walk through fire to help our friend. These women found ways to support, care for, question, and bear with me during some of the darkest days of my life, and they were doing it again for X.
I thought about the strength of that tribe of beautiful, strong women, and I knew that we didn't need a lynch mob. We were unleashing hell on X.'s husband simply by being completely present for her, for bearing witness to her story and reminding her that she would never feel that kind of aloneness again.

art and fear

2007-04-29T19:24:00.000-05:00

Several years have passed since I visited the Inman Park Arts Festival. It's one of Atlanta's big spring arts festivals, and it's one of our better ones. Sculptors, woodturners, painters, jewelry makers, metalworkers, knitters, and, yes, photographers had art on display today when I visited.

At festivals like this, I always examine the photographers' goods most carefully. It inevitably becomes a little contest. I size up their photos. I mercilessly compare the quality of their work to mine. I create an imaginary graph with x and y axes and see who scores the strongest. (It's really kind of ridiculous.)

Today I saw some mediocre work there, and some really beautiful work. I saw some stuff that I really enjoyed. I even splurged on a wonderful black-and-white print from a north Georgia artist who shoots beautiful nudes.

It was only when I got home from the festival that I started to reflect on the uselessness of my little comparison game. Setting up a contest like that is basically an exercise in envy. It yields mostly resentment.

It occurs to me that these anxious feelings are an almost constant companion for my photography right now, to one degree or another.

It's a good indication that I need to re-program some of my thinking.

Julia Cameron might as well have been there with me today as I mercilessly eyed the artists' wares:

"Jealousy is always a mask for fear: fear that we aren't able to get what we want; frustration that somebody else seems to be getting what is rightfully ours even if we are too frightened to reach for it. At its root, jealousy is a stingy emotion. It doesn't allow for the abundance and multiplicity of the universe. Jealousy tells us that there is room for only one — one poet, one painter, one whatever you dream of being..."

As you might guess, carrying around an attitude like this tends to drain a lot of the fun out of art. It flavors the artistic process with bitterness — rather than the natural sweetness of playing, enjoying, noticing, exploring.

I've felt for a while now that I'm at a threshold with my photography. I think today's experience at the Festival was just another reminder that I need to keep pushing to get into grad school. It's not even a particular degree I'm after — it's the structure of the curriculum, and the opportunity to learn new things while gaining a clearer sense of what my own work is about.

I want to pursue school mostly because I'm not doing myself any favors by staying in this small and petty place with my art. Sure, I want to take better photographs. I also want to get myself to a more open place, and stroll through the Festival with a desire to celebrate every piece of art I run across.

Ten really good things about this week

2007-04-20T12:15:00.000-05:00

(10) Getting my taxes paid (see also: simply having enough money to pay my taxes).
(9) Fage yogurt with honey drizzled on top.
(8) No cavities at the dentist on Thursday.
(7) Working from home on Monday. (Folding fresh laundry and listening to Spoon while writing emails. Working from home is like being on vacation.)
(6) This funny Will Farrell video.
(5) Canceling my subscription to Harper's magazine. I know they're a highbrow current events/arts magazine, and I'm pretty sure I deliberately attempted to score some intellectual snob points in the past by leaving a couple of issues casually strewn on the coffee table when friends dropped by. But god, it's so damned bleak. Every time I finished reading an article I just felt sad and bruised. Attention Harper's: I know there's a lot of bad stuff happening in the universe. You do not need to remind me each month. If that makes me a Pollyanna, fine.
(4) Getting back into boot camp. The new session I signed up for is at 6 pm, and that's working out well. This week, it's been great working outside in the park, with beautiful breezes keeping everyone cool. Running around at the park when it's spectacular outside is really fun.
(3) Buying airfare to the beach in June for a long weekend with Kathy and a group of other powerful women. The emails flying around about the trip bear the subject line "Badass Beauties on the Beach." I must say, I don't mind being identified with that group.
(2) Making a conscious decision to approach my work with a more positive attitude. Sure, the concept is in vogue, and it's fairly Oprah-ish. But it's something I need in my work. Maybe positivity is something you learn rather than something you're born with. I could use the practice. I would rather be a positive person than a walking Harper's magazine.
(1) Running into Baton Bob on the street yesterday (see photo). A 6'3" black man wearing a tutu, sparkly majorette boots, twirling a baton. Seeing this guy out there on the street doing his thing just makes me smile. After I took that photo of him, I gave him a very big tip. Please keep doing what you're doing, Baton Bob.

Regarding the Future

2007-04-18T13:41:00.000-05:00

I've been puttering away at this keyboard for quite some time now. 2000 or 2001 was when this site got off the ground.

But like many journalers out there, I find myself at a loss for words these days. (Is it possible that we bloggers are all talked out?) I'm wondering what I should do with this site. A handy poll appears below. Would you add your two cents to the conversation, and let me know what you think? I'd like your opinion. (And feel free to make up your own answer, if none of mine seem to work for you.) Thanks.

a good Friday

2007-04-06T18:10:00.000-05:00

Today the office closed early for Good Friday. When the head parter at work sent out the email on Tuesday advising us of the early closing, I blinked in confusion for a moment before I realized, "Oh, yeah, Easter is this weekend, isn't it?..."

I've obviously strayed a long way from my roots, when Easter inevitably involved a wide assortment of church services leading up to the big day, and a big fabulous gut-busting meal to celebrate the big day.

I haven't done a Lenten fast (or any other type of fast) since I left the church in 2004. I can't say that I miss it much. Thoughtful Lenten fasting is probably therapeutic for many people, but I never feel like I "got" the fasts in the way that I wanted to. A fast inevitably yielded frustration and feelings of failure when I didn't keep it as completely or honorably as I had aspired to. Maybe I had fasting performance issues.

At any rate, I had a relaxing Friday afternoon at home. Today has been a good Friday. There was no hymn singing or Psalm reading. I did a little laundry, sorted the recycling, and burned a CD of eclectic waltz music to take to the contradance tonight for the halftime break. I look forward to seeing everyone dance to the assortment of music I picked out in 3/4 time: selections from Madeleine Peyroux, Over the Rhine, Norah Jones, Jon Brion, and Cowboy Junkies.

On Monday the new session of boot camp kicks off. This time, I wisely chose to join the 6 pm class instead of the 6 am class. Though I showed up diligently for each 6 am session last time, I felt like my sleep never settled into a groove, and I spent most of the six weeks stumbling around in a strange sleep-confused haze. It'll be a rush to get from the office in Midtown to Grant Park by 6 pm — but at least I'm usually awake at that hour already.

This time I want to focus on my eating, keeping it clean. My main personal goal for this year was to introduce some integrity into my eating habits, and keeping the boot camp required food diary this time will be a good way to try that out. Sometimes I'm amazed that I'm 32 years old but still manage to eat like an unsupervised 8-year-old for weeks at a time.

-- Oh, one more note: I just published a new poem to Ephemera. This one's a perfect springtime poem. And if you read it in just the right way, you will end up laughing out loud.

cubicle rot

2007-03-21T14:34:00.000-05:00

One of the things I've learned through the past few years of reading online journals is that it's a bad idea to talk about work on your blog.

But I figure that the vast majority of people at my company don't read this blog, so I'm free to talk about it openly. Right?

Really, this post isn't so much about my job itself as about the way that a 9-to-5 job can slowly kill your imagination.

I'm looking for advice here. I'd like to hear about how other "cubicle dwellers" manage to hang on to their sanity and their imagination in the workplace. This isn't an issue that I'm going to "solve" today, of course, but it's an area where I would really appreciate some fresh perspective.

So far in my career, my work as a graphic designer has presented a constant tension between two poles: interesting, challenging projects that paid poorly (or not at all), and "fat cat" projects that paid the bills. When I took this design job with the Very Large Multinational Corporation last year, it was a smart financial move. After a couple of bumpy years, I was delighted to have a job with bona fide health care, a 401(k), and a salary that would let me save a little.

But as with so many scenarios, there was a snake hiding in the garden. In this case, the snake was called Soul-Eating Boredom.

I could do this job in my sleep.

One of the issues with working at a giant corporation, of course, is that you are generally rewarded by honoring the many restraints the company puts on you. In a way, you're getting paid to be bored. You fill out your Periodic Self-Evaluation Forms (PSEFs) with rigorous care. You contribute to the annual United Way campaign with a smile. You learn what all the acronyms mean, and you use them correctly in sentences. Mediocrity is applauded. (So much that I sometimes find it crushing.)

All those limits that I carefully honor from 9-to-5 have started to leach into my 5-t0-9 life.

It makes me want to run away and join the circus. It makes me want to get a job driving a bus or planting trees or working as a trashy waitress at a trashy diner. (The dream of working at a trashy diner has been with me for years. Years!)

This is a hard place to acknowledge. I think I thought that by this point in my career, I'd be past the place where I felt like chucking everything in the nearest dumpster.

So. How would I start over? What is that work that I'm seeking? What is the job that will prevent me from losing that quiet little spark of creativity and imagination? Am I expecting too much from work? Maybe when you work in an office, a certain element of office rot is just to be expected.... right?

I don't know. Who ever knew that the thought of serving hash browns to deadbeats would one day sound kind of invigorating?

Lessons from the Past Three Weeks

2007-03-05T16:34:00.000-05:00

About three weeks ago, I started doing a boot camp workout in the mornings. It's a six-week course, with four sessions a week. The workouts start at 6 am and last for an hour.

The past three weeks have involved lots of getting up early, sweating, Advil, and pain (I developed a fairly impressive case of shin splints early on – thank goodness it seems to be abating now).

I wanted to enroll because it sounded like a good way to get off my keister and do something with myself. If you work at a desk all day, like I do, there's probably a pretty big disconnect between the physical universe "out there" and all the little problems running around like drunk squirrels in your brain all day long. The disconnect was starting to make me a little crazy, and I wanted to push back against it.

Three weeks into it, I think it's one of the best things I've ever done.

I was ready for a change, and this boot camp is a change. It has forced me to make some real lifestyle adjustments – getting into bed by 10 pm, eating differently. It has also paid off in some satisfying ways, some of which I'm just now starting to witness.

Here are some of the lessons I've started to learn over the past three weeks.

Doing physical stuff can actually be pretty fun, if for no other reason than the massive wave of good feeling you get when you're done. I love getting to my office in the morning knowing that I've already done something really good for myself.
The drill sergeant is king. Having somebody tell me what to do when I get to the gym is invaluable. It's a vast improvement over my previous gym pattern of walking around aimlessly for a while, doing some random some sit-ups, taking a casual stroll on the treadmill, and calling it a day.
The endorphin rush is a wonderful high. Maybe the people honking and cursing at traffic in the morning are the ones who skipped their workout!
The food angle is probably even more important than the exercise. I have started to eat way, way less junk food now that I've begun to recognize how hard I have to work to burn all that crap off. Also, I want my body to run like a well-oiled machine. I can see now that Chips Ahoy and chocolate milk is not quality fuel.
You are capable of a lot more than you realize. That is probably the biggest lesson I have begun to learn. I hope to explore this one some more during the second half of boot camp.

The exercise is all old-school stuff. There is no fancy equipment. We do sprints, squats, jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups, lunges and suicides. We also play freeze tag on Fridays, when the coach feels like cutting us a bit of a break.

For me, there have been no Rocky-style victories. It's all been hard. This morning we were challenged to do some fairly ridiculous exercises, and I felt so weak that I almost started crying in the middle of it. Then I seriously contemplated getting my keys and leaving early (behold, The Power of the Crushed Spirit!).

And I am one of the worst people in the whole boot camp. I'm usually the last to cross the finish line during sprints, and I do things badly on a regular basis.

But I still keep doing it badly, and I figure that doing it badly while trying to improve beats the heck out of not doing it at all.

Mostly I've just learned that if I want to address the disconnect from the body and from the physical universe, no one is going to do it for me. I can think about it all day and wind up more frustrated than before. I am in charge of making the changes that I want to see in my life.

I just booked a massage for the last weekend of March, when boot camp ends. It will be a small personal reward for completing the workouts. The next boot camp season begins the first week in April. I think I'm going to sign up.

too many choices

2007-02-25T13:26:00.000-05:00

If you were shopping for shampoo this morning at the Edgewood Shopping District® Kroger, I apologize, because I stalled out this morning in front of the hair care section, and stayed there for fifteen minutes, and probably prevented you from accessing any of the stuff you wanted.

I was there to get some hair spray. The hair spray I was looking for was was not some elaborate, exotic French hair spray from the research laboratories of Vidal Sassoon. I basically wanted some cheap, generic, no-frills hair spray that would keep my luscious locks from blowing away in the strong winds we've had here lately.

And it took me fifteen minutes to find it. I found Dove Advanced Care Sheer Moisture Replenishing Mist™. I found Superstar Queen for a Day Thickening Spray™. I found L'Oreal Full Of It Upright Volumizing Foam Spray™. I looked and looked and looked and there was nothing that just said, "Just Some Basic Hair Spray That Will Basically Help Your Hair Not Look Like A Bird's Nest When You Go Outside At Lunch."

After fifteen minutes, I found it. Very bottom row, down by my shoes (of course!). White Rain Extra Hold™. Pre-tax price: $1.03. I claimed it and resumed my shopping.

Unfortunately I had to pick up some toothpaste next. Don't even get me started on the toothpaste issue!

Yes, this is a silly, shallow rant. I know But I have reached the end of my enthusiasm for the endless cycle of product improvement. I'm all up for helpful options, but at some point, it becomes irritating. Does anyone understand or appreciate the difference between Colgate Luminous Crystal Clean Mint and Colgate Total Clean Mint Paste? (Colgate's product line is so complicated that they devote a whole page of their website to helping consumers choose a toothpaste. My inquiry for the Colgate marketing team: Is this truly helpful or useful to anyone?)

Attention marketers: My dollars and my loyalty are up for grabs. They will go to a brand that streamlines their offerings and simplifies my choices.

Things I don't need to hear any more about

2007-02-19T13:57:00.000-05:00

Today is Monday, and I'm feeling disillusioned with the state of the universe. I'm pretty sure this is because of the grad school no man's land I seem to have stumbled into. I had a feeling of tremendous momentum last week, and it was immediately followed by a feeling of impressive stuck-ness. So far, the stuck-ness is winning.

Therefore, I have put together a list of things I don't need to hear any more about:

1. the rising cost of health care
2. the eventual comeback of Britney Spears, Winona Ryder, Whitney Houston, etc.
3. the fact that nobody in the world is going to have enough money for retirement
4. that weird detox diet involving lemon juice and cayenne pepper
5. the fact that baby carrots make a great little midday snack. When baby carrots start to taste like Reese's peanut butter cups, then you can talk about them some more.

Conversely, I wouldn't mind hearing more on the following topics:

1. this song, which sounds like it was recorded for less than the cost of a meal at Denny's (but somehow it succeeds beautifully)
2. baby snow leopards
3. anything that the endlessly interesting Paul Ford touches

Tomorrow kicks off a six-week boot camp for me. I am tired of feeling like a slob. The boot camp will require rousing myself at the crack of dawn (5:30, to be precise) and reporting to a gym down the road. It will involve lunges, squats, and other uncomfortable words. I am finding that the "brisk walk at lunch" doesn't really do it for me. I sit at a desk all day and I'm craving more tangible reminders that I am not just a machine who knows how to apply makeup and operate a mouse. The boot camp cost $350 and requires me to keep a food diary. In a weird way, I'm looking forward to it.

your voice takes you to what it wants to sing

2007-02-07T11:17:00.000-05:00

Last night I drove through an hour of primitive rush-hour traffic to the Atlanta campus of SCAD so I could see Greg Gorman give a talk.

He's one of the most popular celebrity portrait photograhers in the country. Though his name isn't as well known as someone like Annie Leibovitz, he's photographed hundreds of stars over the years, people like Muhammed Ali and Marlon Brando and Al Pacino and Bette Davis. He does beautiful black and white studio portraits, high contrast images with simple backgrounds.

He spent an hour with the audience, going through his wonderfully impressive slide show. Then took some questions from the audience.

One person asked him how he got started in the business. He said after he finished college, he started shooting headshots in LA for $35 a day. Eventually he got good at it and began to draw attention from studios looking for glamorous images of their stars. He got a few projects shooting high-profile stars like Barbra Streisand. And the rest is history. Now Bette Midler invites him to lunch, Pierce Brosnan asks him to shoot his wedding, and Robert DeNiro comes to his rooftop parties (not kidding).

When I hear stories about "humble beginnings" like his, part of me is inspired. Another part of me gets hung up. It seems like the days of starting that small and working up to something that big are long gone. The world I'm living in today is saturated with people with digital cameras and expensive lenses who want to make a buck off their skills. The 60s are over, Jim Morrisson is no longer available to be photographed, and I don't live in LA. Brand new game.

At the same time, I know this line of thinking is too pessimistic. Really, any story that involves an artist actually making a good living by producing good work is a story that I can appreciate. Greg Gorman had a passion, and he followed it, and believed in the fact that he had something interesting to contribute to his field.

A couple of weeks ago I heard an interview on NPR with Patty Griffin (whose new album, Children Running Through, is making me happy). The interviewer asked Patty about her artistic process. How did she manage to write so many great songs? The response:

"I just really need to sing and sing and sing, and not worry about writing. Just by singing for pleasure, your voice takes you to what it wants to sing. And that is how the best stuff emerges. It just pops right out."

More and more, I'm coming to see that this process of getting into photography, into my artistic life, is just about doing it. Going after it, even if I am sure that the market is saturated already. (What the hell does market saturation have to do with my artistic vision, anyhow?) This is not about the experience of someone who got started making images 30 years ago, or 60 years ago, or 90 years ago. It's about being awake to what's happening around me, taking photos every single day, and following the thread of pleasure that runs through all of it.

new music notes

2007-01-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

I spent much of the weekend rocking out to the new Shins album, Wincing the Night Away.

If you're on the fence about getting this album, let me just push you off, right into the buy camp. You won't regret it. If you require further convincing, go visit the Shins' myspace page – you can listen to ten complete tracks there.

It's a really satisfying record, with wonderfully imaginative melodies that recall everything I have always liked about Morrissey's more spirited songs ("Australia" is the particular Shins track I'm thinking of here – don't you hear a little bit of "Piccadilly Palare" in there?).

In other delightful music news, my friend Jose recently sent me a tidbit about Rufus Wainwright's forthcoming album, Release the Stars:

The LP, which is due to be released in May, has been executive-produced by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys.

Wainwright said of the new record: "The theme is just about releasing your love and your brilliance, or acting on your impulses and basically laying it all down on the line.

"I think so much of life is spent hoarding and saving and protecting, and very few of us really live our full potential."

Speaking about his recent creative activity, Wainwright told the Ann Arbor News: "I'm definitely in my prime and ready to flex all the artistic muscles I have been training over the years."

Needless to say, I am quivering in anticipation over this one.

Doing My Little Part to Check World Population

2007-01-23T17:15:00.000-05:00

I spent almost the whole day on Sunday in the kitchen. It was the kind of grey, cold January day that just makes you want to stay put and not really do anything useful or meaningful. The rain was falling steadily outside. I decided to make a chocolate buttercream cake from the first Barefoot Contessa cookbook. I took particular pleasure in picking a great soundtrack for my baking, hitting Marvin Gaye's What's Going On before firing up Hem's Funnel Cloud and Madeleine Peyroux's Half the Perfect World.

It was the kind of blissful day that was completely free of obligation. While the cake layers were baking and cooling, I ran some laundry, sent a few emails, and read a few chapters from the flighty little novel I'm reading. These days come along only every once in a while, but they refresh me completely and leave me ready for whatever is around the corner. At the end of the day, as I finished dressing the cake with luscious buttercream frosting, I had a single thought:

"This kind of day would be almost impossible for me if I had children."

It was last summer, after reading Anne Lamott's foreword to this book, that I finally realized that I Really Don't Want Kids.

I'll get her words all wrong here, because I don't own the book and returned it to the library months ago. But in the foreword, she says something like: "Some people think that having a child is the only real way to truly find yourself, connect with the deepest parts of life, and return your own gift to the world that you came from. But frankly, I think that is a total crock."

She pretty much nailed it for me with that sentence.

Of course, even months after arriving at this place, I still notice an edge of tension entering my body whenever the question comes up in conversation with others (especially other women). I'm not quite sure why. Billie Jean King famously defeated Bobby Riggs before I was even born; how is it that a single woman living happily on her own in this century even has to ask herself this question multiple times? (I should add that nobody's begging me to have children, anyhow.)

I really enjoy children and find them beautiful and fascinating, but I've never, ever longed for one of my own. Coincidentally, I also have a fairly mild gross-out threshold when it comes to baby drool, baby spit-up, baby poop, and any other type of waste byproduct emerging from these amazing creatures with the giant, reflective eyes and wobbly necks. I don't think I'm cut out to be a mother.

So I'll probably never know how it feels to buy one of those impossibly tiny pairs of baby socks for my baby's impossibly tiny feet. And I'll probably never know the absolute purity of holding a baby of my own in my arms and singing her to sleep. I think Sunday let me know that I'm really okay with that.

materialism, money, raw silk, dovetail joints

2007-01-17T10:00:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been carrying around a lot of anxiety regarding money.

The money concern I am dealing with now is the opposite of the money concern I had a year ago. In 2005 I went through a real drought with my freelancing work, and my bank accounts pretty much bottomed out. I was able to scrape by, but that's about it.

Last year I set aside freelancing, got a steady job and started saving. I replaced my wheezy 13-year-old car, opened a Roth, established a money market account, started a relationship with a financial planner, and started maxing out my contributions in my new company's 401(k) plan.

It was a good year, financially speaking.

Now I'm feeling flush and would like to buy some Stuff® for my apartment. Ah, the lure of the big box retail store! I would like some grown-up furniture. Most of the furniture I own was given to me when I graduated from college, or secondhand stuff I bought over the years. It has a certain "vintage Holly Hobbie" quality. The bed is particularly troubling. In addition to the vestiges of old marriage juju still clinging to it, it's squeaky, too small, and prone to collapse at inopportune moments, as on Saturday when my boyfriend made the grave error of sitting on it. I'd like a new couch, too. (I'm currently fixated on this one.)

However, when I begin to think about separating myself from a decent amount of money, I am hit with a wave of anxiety over my parents' financial situation.

To put it mildly, they are not so great with money. I know that it's easy for a child to criticize her parents when she doesn't really know anything about their financial reality, but I have a few clues. First, they just started saving about five years ago for retirement -- and they're in their early 60s. Second, they still owe a tremendous amount of money on their house -- which they bought with a lot of assistance from my grandfather back in the 80s. They just don't make a lot of money. What they do make, they seem to spend pretty quickly.

My brothers are also concerned about my parents' finances, but they have money issues of their own. One works part-time as a schoolteacher, and one works in the restaurant industry and lives in an expensive city. We are a solvent bunch, but we aren't exactly rolling around in big piles of Benjamins.

As I languidly leaf through this Pottery Barn catalog, I'm wondering: What is the best response to my parents' financial situation? Do I need to be saving for their retirement as well as my own? If so, what do I need to save -- where do I draw the line?

For some reason this issue feels hopelessly thorny. And really irritating. I would like to arrive at some point of rest with this question, because I've been struggling with it for a couple of years now. I feel like I'm being slowly eaten to death by a pack of crows. The genuine pleasure of enjoying my money is pecked away by these worries.

I crave your advice, if you have any to offer. In the meantime, I shall be selecting the finish of my choice on my Farmhouse Collection Canopy Bed, and perhaps picking out a cute little throw rug to tie the room together.

I sing of arms and the man

2007-01-08T14:23:00.000-05:00

Every year or so you'll bump into a newspaper article or a radio story about the "famous first lines" of acclaimed novels. You've read these little articles, right? They always trot out "Call me Ishmael," which is the "Jesus wept" of opening lines.

A list you see less frequently is great opening lines of songs. Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism album delivers a fine opening line, perhaps because it's beautifully couched in thundering drums and guitars:

So this is the new year
And I don't feel any different

I have an endless affection for good opening lines, and my exhaustive research suggests a few important ways to deliver a memorable first line.

A good opening line often sizzles when it's served up on a bed of epic music. Big horns or big drums or a mysterious chord played on the organ that builds and builds. I've always been partial to "Heroes" by David Bowie for the way the music leads you way, way in, and then kind of drops you off on a dark corner:

I... I will be king
and you... you will be queen

The Waterboys' song "This Is the Sea" features 9 acoustic guitars playing the same chord progression in unity, and an opening line full of superhuman wisdom:

These things you keep
You better throw them all away

Another fine approach is to spin a yarn.

Falling James in the Tahoe mud
Stick around to tell us all the tale
Well he fell in love with a Gun Street girl
And now he's dancing in the Birmingham jail
dancing in the Birmingham jail

("Gun Street Girl" – Tom Waits)

A well-placed oddball line can be enormously satisfying, as with so many of the songs recorded by Belle & Sebastian ("The State I Am In"):

I was surprised,
I was happy for a day in 1975

Perhaps my favorite current opening line is from Drive-By Truckers' 2003 album Decoration Day. I have to admit that it's the only song I know by this band ("Heathens"), but word for word, it's one of the best opening lines I've ever encountered:

Somethin' 'bout the wrinkle in your forehead
Tells me there's a fit about to get thrown

I'm sure there are some great lines I'm leaving out here, so post a comment and share your favorite with us. Or maybe an anti-favorite – an example of the world's worst opening line. Kind of like Pat Benetar's "Hell is for Children":

They cry in the dark, so you can't see their tears
They hide in the light, so you can't see their fears

Clearly, friends, this is the songwriting craft at its finest.

photo-a-day

2007-01-02T08:57:00.000-05:00

As a person who aspires to use my camera as frequently as possible, I've flirted several times with a new year's resolution to take one photo per day.

It sounds like a lovely goal, doesn't it? Just one photo each day! No problem! But usually I get to January 8 or 9 and then give up in frustration. Finding interesting photos is really challenging (at least for me). It takes a lot of effort to get a good image on a consistent basis.

Somebody who does this very well is Seattle photographer Doug Plummer. He's been posting an image a day for 600 days in a row (!). What's remarkable is that his daily photos are really good. You can view a Flickr slide show of 2006's photos here, or scroll through his photo-a-day site here.

One of the things I like best about Doug is how thoughtfully he writes about his photographic process in his written blog. He gracefully articulates a lot of issues for which I've never found language. Which is one reason that I make a point to visit the blog every day.

Even without the words, his work is delightful, and his dedication to his work is deeply inspiring.

My Super-Duper Top Favorite 7 Songs of the Year

2006-12-28T19:42:00.000-05:00

Well, 2007 has been a good year for music.

This year I decided to refine my listening habits, trying to purchase whole albums instead of just fabulous singles. Yes, iTunes is a beautifully addictive technology that puts untold hours of juicy music right at my fingertips 24/7. It also lets me severely limit an artist's scope by just downloading one 3-minute pop song instead of digging deeper into their work. So I made a deliberate effort this year to choose the long view whenever I could.

Picking out these songs is always one of my favorite exercises at the end of the year. Every year, I sift through my music collection and come up with this list of songs that I didn't know twelve months ago. It just makes me realize all over again how much beautiful stuff people are doing out there in the world. (2007's forecast calls for new albums by Nora Jones, Rufus Wainwright, and Sam Phillips. People, life is good.)

(7) Ray LaMontagne — "Within You"
'Til the Sun Turns Black was Ray's much-anticipated sophomore album, and though I don't think it hit the crazily high standard set by his first album, it did offer some memorable moments. This song is one of those curious pieces that manages to be deeply mournful and uplifting at the same time. The song doesn't even have much lyrical content, but it has a soulful, soaring melody that gets me right in the gut every time I listen. The arrangement of the strings and the horns really makes this song shine.

(6) Jon Dee Graham — "Something Wonderful"
This spring, a friend at work told me about Jon Dee Graham, a Texas artist with a gravelly voice and a lot of sad stories. His voice sounds like he just got off the bus that took him to hell and back. And now he's singing you the wonderfully simple lesson he learned while he was there: "Something really wonderful is going to happen to you." I challenge you to listen to this song at an appropriately blistering volume, and just try to not feel better. Impossible.

(5) Sera Cahoone, "Couch Song"
Sera Cahoone's voice pays tribute to hillbillies and torch balladeers. I was delighted to discover this debut album on NPR's "Song of the Day" (an endless source of thoughtful musical selections). "Couch Song" showcases Sera's soulful Patsy-Cline-meets-Neko-Case voice, and her wistful lyrics. "If we don't talk, I won't mind, because that's the only way to get along sometimes," she sings, offering a perfect tribute to a faltering, complicated love.

(4) Luka Bloom, "She Sings Her Songs With Open Arms"
The little promotional sticker on the cover of Luka Bloom's Before Sleep Comes album calls it "nine songs for insomniacs." In 2003, an aggressive bout of tendinitis forced Bloom to lay down his usual instrument of choice, a steel-string electric guitar. While recovering, he picked up a gorgeous Spanish guitar with nylon strings, hoping it would be easier on his hands. This gentle mini-album was the result of his nights experimenting with that guitar. Clocking in at just 28 minutes, the album offers nine little lullabies for adults. You can almost feel the tension melting away at the first notes of this first song. This album is a particularly fitting soundtrack for a quiet cup of tea (and Bloom offers a beverage recommendation — the fifth track is titled "Camomile").

(3) Rocky Votolato, "White Daisy Passing"
Rocky Votolato may be Texas' answer to the ghost of Elliot Smith. "I'm going down to sleep in the bottom of the ocean," he sings in this haunting folk song layered with delicate harmonies. I became slightly obsessed with this song in 2006, adding it to just about every mix CD I made. I also made a point to tell as many people as possible that I did not discover Rocky Votolato after hearing this song on The O.C., where it was apparently featured. (I've got standards.) Just because Mischa Barton likes this song doesn't mean you can't like it, too.

(2) Cat Power, "Lived in Bars"
Choosing just one song off Cat Power's fantastic 2006 album was very, very hard. The Greatest reveals Cat Power finally coming into her own, and knowing how good she really is. For this album, Cat Power (Chan Marshall) recruited a handful of great Memphis soul musicians to support her in the studio. I've been following Marshall's music for a while now, feeling pangs of sympathy whenever I encountered another story of her paralyzing stage fright ("she has been known to stop playing in order to apologize for a self-perceived flaw in her performance," says Wikipedia). That's why The Greatest is a particularly satisfying release for The Little Girl from Georgia That Could. "Lived in Bars" begins in its typically simple, stripped style, a minor-key dirge on the piano. But about halfway through, the song picks its skirts up and starts dancing around in the kitchen, and you find yourself singing along. It just makes me happy every time I hear it.

(1) Kate Bush, "Sunset"
"Every sleepy light must say goodbye / To the day before it dies in a sea of honey," sings Kate in this elaborate song near the end of her masterful double-CD release, Aerial. Kate Bush is definitely an acquired taste; if you are a meat-and-potatoes music lover, you will find her tendency to experiment endlessly annoying. Aerial features bizarre sound bites of Kate's son talking, her lover whispering, birds chirping, Kate herself laughing hysterically, Kate herself reciting 150 decimal places of pi, etc. But "Sunset" feels like a slice of genius, six minutes of musical perfection. It starts with just a single piano, a voice lamenting the end of the day and describing the colors of the sky and water. It gradually builds to a joyful climax that makes me envision Kate herself dancing on the beach at dusk. Naturally, she pulls out lots of her classic tricks along the way (weird Greek chorus thing in the background, crazily ambitious tempo changes that shouldn't work but somehow do, etc.). It took Kate Bush 12 years to develop this ambitious double album, but she has said that she hopes Aerial will not be her last release. I am glad that this artist plans to continue sharing her work with us as she moves into her richest, most imaginative years.

Honorable Mentions in no particular order:
Paul Simon, "Another Galaxy"
M. Ward, "Poison Cup"
Bob Dylan, "Someday Baby"
Neko Case, "Hold On, Hold On"
Maria Taylor, "Song Beneath the Song"
Camera Obscura, "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken"
Hem, "He Came to Meet Me"
Hem and Autumn Defense, "Saint Charlene"
Madeleine Peyroux, "La Javanaise"

What was your song of the year? Post a comment and tell me about the music that changed your life in the past twelve months.

hibernating

2006-12-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

Sometimes working for a Very Large Multinational Firm does offer some perks. The office is closed this week. Closed, as in, "please do not come in to work; please stay home and relax." What a huge gift. Best I've received all year.

So I'm laying low. I really think that humans function best with a period of true hibernation each winter. This week is the exact kind of solitude I crave in July when the office is clicking and whirring with all its noise and fury. Maybe I can store the silence up and pull it out of the freezer when things get loud in the summer.

So far this week:
(1) Updated the ephemera page. It's a good end-of-year selection; go check it out.
(2) Threw away about four big garbage bags of stuff, including about one big bag full of those free-gifts-with-purchase cosmetics trinkets accumulated in about ten years of Clinique counter visits. I am nothing if not irrationally devoted to the Clinique free-gifts-with-purchase.
(3) Organized two closets into near-military levels of precision and order.
(4) Left the Chia Herb Garden given to me by my mother last year for Christmas in the public space of my apartment building with a "free to good home" note. (Miraculously, someone claimed it.)
(5) Listened carefully three times to the Joanna Newsom album. Though I am being careful to not to make a snap judgment on this recording, I have found it to be a difficult and inaccessible piece of music. (Amazon.com's review of the album calls her voice "a piercing flutter that's pitched somewhere between Björk and a hand brake" -- ha.)

So far, I think this album is a strong front-runner for the Most Overrated Album of 2006. Or possibly Most Irritating but Widely Acclaimed by Groupthinkers Album of 2006? I'm not saying that this album doesn't have admirable qualities. I just wonder if all those music listeners out there who nod along energetically when this album pops up in conversation are secretly thinking, "What the hell is that album about?" Listening to it feels like I'm back in college, sitting through some agonizing, highly conceptual art performance in an effort to earn cultural events credits.

(Coming up next time, a list of songs that did work for me this year....)

dancing in the living room

2006-12-22T09:17:00.000-05:00

Last night I got together with some friends for an evening of Irish set dancing. I've dabbled in dance for years, but my familiarity with Irish dancing begins and ends with those Riverdance commercials you used to see on TV.

The dance was at Wendy's house. She lives just a couple of miles from me in a beautiful bungalow adorned with prayer flags and candles and Buddha statues and more gorgeous cookbooks than I've ever seen gathered in one place.

As my boyfriend and I arrived, Emily was starting to make eggnog in the kitchen. She made a glass for Stephanie with a bit of brandy, and Stephanie tasted it and laughed and said, Oh, Emily, could I have a little eggnog with my brandy? Then the music started.

There was a beautiful Irish harp, and two people who knew how to play it well – this felt like some kind of miraculous coincidence. And a fiddle, a guitar, a flute, a bodhran. While the musicians warmed up, Scott gave us the basics on the steps, which, of course, were nothing at all like Riverdance. And then we started dancing.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my divorce. It seems weird to use the words "anniversary" and "divorce" in the same sentence. I've been wondering what this anniversary might feel like, because my memory of the event last year is still so fresh – the trip to the courthouse, shaking the judge's hand in his chambers, inviting two of my best friends over for a ritual after the divorce, where I sobbed and sobbed.

The steps were easy to pick up on. When you dance in an Irish set, you dance in a tight group of four couples, everyone standing practically shoulder to shoulder. If you lose your balance, you just kind of bump into somebody else and move right along. The dance figures were not delicate, uplifted gestures with a lot of finesse. They called for twirling and jostling around. The flames on the candles trembled as we thundered by. Scott's shoes sounded like handclaps when they hit the floor. It started raining outside and another set of eight dancers squeezed into the crowded living room. Every time we came to the "round the house" figure, Rob would say, "Ready?" and I would pull him a little closer and say, "yes."

About halfway through the evening Stephanie took off her shoes. She approached Wendy, and said, "I think I'm going to just leave these off, because I'm worried about your floor," and Wendy said, "Oh, honey, you couldn't hurt this floor if you tried."

The past couple of years were so hard, with so much change crammed into such a small space of time. Last year alone, I quit my job, moved twice, started freelancing, and got a divorce. This year it feels like I finally slowed down, landed in a soft place. And when I stood up and got my bearings, I realized that I was exactly where I wanted and needed to be.

The musicians were still going at it when we finally left. The drizzle outside made halos around the street lights, and the music followed us as we went.

The Many Lives of Julia Roberts

2006-12-18T09:36:00.000-05:00

Pretend careers held by Julia Roberts on film:

- Sexy, troubled legal assistant (Erin Brockovich)
- Sexy, pint-sized fairy (Peter Pan)
- Spunky, clever actress (Notting Hill)
- Spunky, clever reporter (I Love Trouble)
- Quirky, lovable waitress (Mystic Pizza)
- Quirky, lovable hardware store gal (Runaway Bride)
- Quirky, lovable art professor (Mona Lisa Smile)
- Quirky, lovable hooker (Pretty Woman)
- Sexy, troubled photographer (Stepmom)
- Sexy, troubled photographer (Closer)

looking up

2006-12-13T13:39:00.000-05:00

Atlanta's most enthusiastic Flickr afficianados gathered on Monday night in Little Five Points for a little soiree. While sipping on a glass of red wine, I bumped into a fellow photographer named Jason. We'd never met, but we started talking photography.

It turns out that Jason is a candidate in the MFA photography program of a very good art school here in town. It turns out that the school he attends happens to be the same very good art school to which I hope to apply next year. They have an excellent photography program, a curriculum that asks just the questions I want to ask in my photography.

It was great to connect with him. We talked about different photographers we liked, approaches we take in our own photography. We talked shop. I walked away feeling encouraged and nervous and happy about my own photography and my application to grad school.

This jumble of delight was followed immediately by a wave of genuine terror at the thought of actually doing something with my photography.

In many ways, it's much, much easier for us to be unaccountable to our own artistic impulses. We know very well how to lumber along through the work week. How to be a successful wage slave and keep our supervisors happy and count down the days until the weekend. (When I go to the office, I wear an ID badge around my neck all day. I know exactly which doors it will open and which ones it will not.)

The thought of potentially going to school for photography makes me accountable for my creative longings, and this thought is genuinely frightening.

"Well, it's just a hobby," I've said to others over and over again. "I don't do it professionally. Just for fun." Only yesterday, I told a friend, "Well, I want to study photography. I mean, the company's paying for it, so why not." I knew what I was really saying: I'm not dumb enough to think I really deserve a degree in photography from this fancy school.

There are doubts at every turn. When Jason said something nice about my photography, I was ready with my bow and arrow to shoot down his compliment. (I am an excellent archer.)

Julia Cameron, that wonderful self-help guru for artists, writes, "Perhaps the greatest barrier for any of us as we look for an expanded life is our own deeply held skepticism.... It does not seem to matter whether we are officially believers or agnostics. We have our doubts about all of this creator/creativity stuff, and those doubts are very powerful."

What I'm seeing tonight is that all those doubts are starting to wear me out. Carrying around these duffel bags full of arrows and reasons why I should not be taken seriously as a creative person is actually kind of exhausting.

I think I want to try something different. I think I want to see what happens when I put the duffel bags down, and stop spending so much of my best energy developing reasons why I can't give a voice to my own creative desires.

I like the way Rumi put it: "Listen. Make a way for yourself inside yourself. Stop looking in the other way of looking."

cookin' in my kitchen

2006-12-09T18:14:00.000-05:00

Tomato Soup with Toasted Cheese Croutons
(Also known as the world's most scrumptious creamy tomato soup ever)

3 Tbsp. butter, divided
1 small onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
2 (28-ounce) cans crushed tomatoes
6 sprigs parsley
4 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
Salt
Freshly-ground pepper
1/2 sourdough baguette, sliced into 1/2" cubes
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese

1. In a large pot over medium heat, melt 2 Tbsp. butter. Add onion, carrot, and celery. Sauté until tender but not browned, about 6 to 8 minutes.

2. Add tomatoes, parsley and stock. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer and cover. Skim foam and fat from top of soup and cover. Simmer until carrots are tender, about 25 minutes. Remove parsley sprigs from soup and discard. Puree soup in batches in a food processor or blender. Return to pot and stir in cream and remaining Tbsp. of butter. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.

3. Meanwhile, toss cubes of bread with olive oil and Parmesan. Place on a sheet pan and bake at 400º for about 10 minutes, until golden brown and crispy. Pour soup into mugs and place a few croutons on top. Makes 8 servings.

I got this recipe from Oprah's magazine a few years ago, and I think I love it enough to tattoo it on my body. Best cold-weather soup ever.

Currently Thinking

2006-12-05T12:14:00.000-05:00

Arguments for and against the use of three names.

Pro:
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Frederick Law Olmstead
Neil Patrick Harris
Daniel Day-Lewis
Paul Thomas Anderson
David Foster Wallace

Con:
Lee Harvey Oswald
Mark David Chapman
John Wilkes Booth

???:
Haley Joel Osment
Thomas Haden Church
Tiffani-Amber Thiessen

Sunny side up

2006-12-01T11:21:00.000-05:00

Last week in Iowa City, Amy and I went out to breakfast at a little cafe in her neighborhood. We sat and talked about art, ambition, our past, old lovers.

Amy and I have been friends for almost ten years now, but we became really close four years ago when she was going through a divorce.

That was a tricky passage. I was still "good" back then. I found her decision to leave her husband terribly upsetting. She was divorcing a friend of mine, an old college classmate, a person I really admired. I wrote her a terse letter, carefully addressed it to her married name, asked her if she really knew what she was doing.

She replied with an equally terse letter, telling me that yes, she did know what she was doing, and it was very hard for her, too, thank you for your concern.

There was a great deal of drama in our early days.

Two years ago I went through my own separation, and there was even more drama. But it was different this time. A more sisterly drama. Amy forgave my judgment against her and chose to support me. We pledged allegiance to our broken promises, marveled over James Wright poems, and commiserated over the unsettling nakedness of an empty ring finger.

As we sat at the cafe on Friday talking over scrambled eggs with salsa, I had to marvel at how far we had come from the day of my indignant letter brimming with judgment. It felt like a small miracle that the two of us would find ourselves there, talking warmly of our lives, making plans for the future. It felt like our relationship had left its painful adolescence and become a strong connection that no vow could create or destroy.

polaroids

2006-11-24T11:38:00.000-05:00

Last December I came here, to Iowa, for my friend Amy's birthday party. This year I'm here again. Here for a chance to sit on the couch in Amy's quiet apartment in Iowa City. To pet her cat, PJ. To witness the unfolding of her creative life, especially as displayed in the still life tableaus all around her home. I love this place for the old photographs and curious postcards tacked to the refrigerator, the polaroid snapshots strung up on an old clothesline in the living room.

The polaroids are home-made, souvenirs from her trip west this summer with her boyfriend John. They are inspiration for the story she's writing now, which is set out west among aspen trees ("they tremble, you know," she said, talking about the trees in the story).

There's something so delicious about visiting a home that's kept lovingly, a home with equal portions of sweetness and mystery. Amy's home is one of my favorites to visit. There is a lightness about it, a sense of humor, an appreciation for all the small beautiful things that bring pleasure.

favorites

2006-11-20T21:43:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite feelings ever is to be in a new place with (a) somebody I really like, and (b) no major plans to speak of.

I was bowled over by a big wave of this feeling when I took this photo of my brother Scott as he escorted me patiently through Washington, DC on a sunny Friday in October. After wrapping up a couple of days of work for the Very Large Multinational Corporation, I was taking an extra day off for myself. We were crossing the street at the beginning of a gloriously unstructured day. The air was crisp and the sun was shining. I thought, "Everything right now is perfect."

(I'd like to hear about one of your favorite feelings.)

"You're a purist..."

2006-11-19T17:39:00.000-05:00

Two and a half years ago, I was given a digital Canon Rebel camera for my birthday. At the time, it was not just a nice camera; it was a very, very nice camera. 6.3 mpx, 2.5 frames per second, RAW shooting capacity. It was one of the few times I've been in the "early adoption" end of technology. I usually wait around for everyone else to buy the new gear and then discover all the problems with it. This time, I was the only kid on the block with one of these cameras.

Before the Rebel, my photographic interests were supported with great dignity by a gorgeous old 35mm Pentax SuperProgram handed down to me wth pride by my father. A fabulous battleship of a camera from the late 70s, it was one of the first semi-automatic 35mm cameras on the market. It offered a manual focus only, but my father was especially proud of the fact that he could switch it to "auto" and let the camera calculate the best shutter speed and aperture for the shot.

When I received the Rebel, I found myself taking photos of everything. Photos of my breakfast cereal, photos of my shoes, photos of the power lines criss-crossing the horizon. I felt like a six-year-old who had just been cut out of a full-body cast. I was all over the place. I swore I'd never go back to film; digital was so freeing! I held onto the Pentax for sentimental reasons, but shoved it carelessly back into its ugly gray camera bag, then carted it around from one apartment to another, falling deeper and deeper in love with that slick little digital camera.

Well, I'm not sure how to say this, but all of a sudden, I'm thinking about film again. Well, of course. You saw that coming, didn't you?

Last weekend, I shot a roll of old BW film—expired, naturally—last weekend while walking around town with my friend David (above). Then we paid a visit to The Camera Doctor, and got my camera all checked out.

At the store, I laid my digital camera on the counter, and placed the old Pentax next to it. The Doctor, Steve, hardly gave the digital camera a second glance. But picked up the Pentax, cradled it lovingly in his hands.

"Now, this is a very nice camera," he said. He opened up the camera, and held it up to the light, fiddled around with the aperture. He clicked away on the shutter. "All metal parts. That's real good. This is worth a lot of money."

The walls of The Camera Doctor's store are lined with old cameras from almost every age of photography. There are rows of medium-format cameras with crinkled old bellows, glass cases of boxy Brownies, pyramids of Holgas, and democratic 35mms just like mine lining all the shelves behind the register.

It had felt good to shoot a roll of film again. There is so much about photography that is very physical, and film cameras help you remember that. I had forgotten about the sound that a film camera makes when you press the shutter button, and the small pleasure of pausing to advance the film lever with your thumb. (A little gesture that says, I just took a photograph. And now I believe I will take another photograph.)

It's very different from taking digital photos. The film camera is so slow and thoughtful and deliberate. It has a slender little profile, weighing even less than the Rebel. None of those dense mysterious microchips hiding inside. Just real physical moving parts. Glass, mirrors, metal. As I shot the roll of film, I remembered how it felt to hear the click of the shutter as it physically opened in the darkest parts of the camera body, letting in just the right amount of light.

Trying to be cute, I teased Steve about being a purist. He did not smile. He looked at my digital camera. "No, I'm not being a purist. Listen to the words. That thing is not really photography. It is electronic communication." He held up the Pentax. "This is photography."

About Me

2006-11-18T02:38:00.002-05:00

I go by the name Grace on this site. Even after four or five years of writing write on the web, I still struggle with how much is right to say online about my life. So Grace is a pseudonym that allows me feel vaguely in control of what happens here.

I'm 34 and I live in Atlanta.

Atlanta is a decent place to be from. It is A City. Some suggest it doesn't have much personality. I just find its personality quite subtle. I work as a graphic designer. I'm grateful for my work; any day where I get paid to play with nice colors and fonts ends up being a pretty nice day.

A brief list of things you'll hear me discussing around here: (1) belief and meaning; (2) poetry; (3) photography and art; (4) the search for self; (5) Love, Beauty, Truth and the surprising ways they intersect.

I was raised as a Christian and was very involved in some sort of religious practice for my first 30 years, but currently I am not engaged in any sort of formal religious practice.

Things that help me make sense of the world include Ira Glass and This American Life; yoga classes down at the local YMCA; my amateur photography; the beauty of contradance; the poetry of people like Mary Oliver and Rainer Maria Rilke; the music of Andrew Bird and Rufus Wainwright; the writing of Annie Dillard and Anne Lamott. I have a great deal of faith in the healing power of words.