Echoes in a Hollow Space

★ I have an herb garden and periodically I gather herbs to hang them from the rafters so they can dry and I can bottle them. I usually hang these in the entryway to the house because that's the lowest part of the ceiling and, well, it does make for some interesting conversations when guests come over. I hung some dill weed quite some time ago and I've been trying to remember to take the durned thing down and bottle it, but yanno: lax.

I felt something brush my hair last night and realized one sprig had detached itself from the bunch and was hanging way down. "I should do something about that," I said, and promptly forgot about it. I had the same experience this morning with the same results. When it happened again as I was rushing to get out of the house, I didn't even bother to look up at it—just hurried out the door.

When I got to work my colleague asked, "What's that in your hair?" Yes, that's right: it was that selfsame piece of a dried dill weed. That last snag had detached it and I wore it like a jaunty beret in my hair. I walked through the corporate lobby like that. ::sigh::

★ And speaking of hopeless geeks crying in the wilderness, I've begun submitting corrections to thinkexist.com's quote collection when I find their errors. Like they're going to pay any attention! At least they have a corrections form. So called brainyquote.com didn't. Nor did the quotationspage.com. I was, however, gratified to see that the quotationspage had gotten the quote I was correcting correct. I don't recommend any of these pages, btw. They all have a tendency towards misquotes and rarely have sources.

★ All week Min has been coming into the bedroom at about 3:30 a.m. to meow loudly and insistently until I wake up. Once she sees I'm conscious, she lays down on top of me and starts purring loudly, ready for sleep. It's as if she's saying, "Hey, did you know that you were asleep? Just wondered." Fortunately, I'm able to go right back to sleep or she would be a deceased kitty by this time.

★ I am not in Montreal this week. I will, however, be going to lovely seaside San Pedro tomorrow evening for a picnic and Shakespeare in the park (Point Fermin). We're going to see As You Like It. Last year when we did this it was great fun. Ann is bringing a wee bit of champagne because all three of us have something to celebrate this year.

★ Since I gave up writing for publication, the writing is going much better.

What I did this weekend of the day: Cooked and cleaned and read.

What I cooked: Saturday I made some roasted root vegetables—some wee, darling little baby yellow potatoes, young carrots and parsnips, onion, dredged in EV olive oil, minced garlic, salt, pepper, and fresh thyme from the herb garden. To. Die. For. I also made a nice salad with baby butter lettuce (yes, I eat babies), feta, walnuts, green onion, and these wee, adorable little grape tomatoes from the vine in the back yard. Also. To. Die. For. Vegetarians don't read this bit: I served this with some lovely six ounce steaks grilled to perfection.

It was happy tummies all around.

Yesterday I did a stir fry with chicken. That was good, too, though no babies were consumed.

What I cleaned: My closet. I washed all my fat pants and stuffed them into a bag for the Goodwill, et al. I put some of my fat shirts/blouses in there, too, but not as many. It's possible to "make do" with blouses that are two sizes too big, but not so much with pants.

What I read: Part of a lovely pirate novel, and The Passion of Mary Magdalen by Elizabeth Cunningham, a pagan-feminist version of the Magdalen story which I'm thoroughly enjoying. But it's huge, like 700 pages with small print huge. And I don't read as fast as I used to, or don't have as much time as I used to, or something. It's taking me forever.

What I did not do this weekend of the day: Write.

There were several things I wanted to write, but time seemed quite elusive, as in everything I was doing took much longer than expected. There were some short stories I wanted to work on as a countermeasure to The Novel, but that didn't happen. My word count on The Novel is decent one week, lousy the next. Last week was not one of the decent weeks. I did 1000 words at lunch today, but realized that most of that, and what I'd done on chapter 27 last week was actually the real end of chapter 26.

I'll see if I can kill everybody off this week and have done with it. Kidding. I'm such a kidder.

What do you know of the day: Clearly, my Monday Pollers do not have Seinfeld episodes memorized.

Yahoo is still eating my mail, but now I can not get it so much faster! And for $10 cheaper a month! The cable internet guy showed up an hour and a half early and the broadband was all hooked up by 2. Min only took an hour to crawl out from under the bed this time.

I've got a nice plump chicken roasting in the oven with fresh herbs from the garden under the skin, plus onions and garlic—and up it's wazoo, too. Smells divine.

Also, I had a good writing week and that slow-moving airship of a novel has finally made it's ponderous turn and will be heading north within a page or two.

You poet-y types might want to check out this contest run by lit agent Jenny Rappaport:

http://litsoup.blogspot.com/2007/04/lit-soups-birthday-contest.html

I was told at work that they're happy with the job I'm doing and I can probably expect a raise. Of course, I won't know until June if that prophecy has come to pass, but it's nice to know they don't think I suck.

And I'm reading a sensational book right now. I can hardly wait for things to settle down so I can get back to Kate, Curran, and Crest.

Quote of the day:

"Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness."

—George Jean Nathan


I can verify from personal experience that [un-]great art is mad with its own [perceived] loveliness.


Writing talk of the day: And speaking of low-brow art, I had one of those nice surprises today that keeps me in this godawful game. I've had this gnarly plot point, see, right at the end of the story that's bothered me for ever-so-long. I had no idea how I was going to fix the bastard, but I kept writing towards it hoping some idea would come to me. Last week I started the chapter where I was pretty sure that plot point was going to come into play (because, like, I'm running out of things to write, so yanno). I still had no idea how to fix it, so I just let go of it and said, "I'll have to fix it in the rewrites."

Then today, out of the blue, as these things often hit me, I suddenly knew how to fix it. Ha. I love it when that happens.

What's up in the yard of the day:

The daffodils are still a presence. Though the earliest of them have faded, more have popped up. The purple iris are coming on strong, and one bright yellow one. A lovely mauve-peach gladiola has struggled up beside the lush, thick crimson leaves of the bougainvillea. The periwinkle and that other ground cover that I don't know the name of with the small, pink flower globes, are going ape squanto. The tea tree and Scotch broom that we put into the ground are very happy, as are the herbs out back. And, of course, the calla lilies are in bloom again. (Impossible to say that without doing the Katherine Hepburn imitation, although she never actually said that except in Warners Brothers cartoons.) We have white and rose-tipped calla lilies scattered here and there throughout the front and back yards. The stephanotis also remains happy.

On the drive home, one house has planted scores of multi-colored runuculas around the bases of the trees planted by the city on the grass beside the curb.

"You need a hobby," my friend said. "Get you outside your own head more."

"Besides my hobby of writing?"

"That's too important to you to be a hobby. You need to do something just for the hell of it. You used to do stuff."

"I didn't have room in my apartment to do artwork."

"You have access to a garage now."

"It's full of boxes."

"You're creative. You'll think of something."

I unpacked my wood carving tools the other day, but I haven't found the bone pieces I was working on before the move.

I've always wanted to do one of those David Hockney photo assemblages, ever since I saw an exhibit at the gallery, L.A. Louver. But I never wanted to "waste" a roll of film like that. Now, thanks to the digital camera, I can waste shots and...nuthin's really wasted.

Here's my homage to Hockney, plus some plant pix.

( Pix. )