The Right Hat

There is a photograph on the wall of one of the coffee shops I spend time at that fascinates me. It is a black and white photo from what I believe is the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s of four women in dark, one piece bathing suits and straw hats. They rest on the sand, three of them with their knees drawn up to their chests, their backs to the camera, their faces completely hidden by the large straw hats they are wearing. The fourth is kneeling in front of the other three. She is smiling, her lips parted and her teeth partially showing, though the rest of her face is obscured by the straw fringe of her hat. I imagine her lipstick must have been a rich shade of red since her lips are so dark in this picture.

Because she is kneeling, and the others are seated, the one facing the camera is taller by about a foot, the heads of the other three tipped up to look at her. Each woman is wearing a different bathing suit, and perhaps they were even different colors, though it's impossible to know this now. The hats are different too, and I can't help but think they have put on the wrong ones. Only the woman who is smiling and turned towards the camera seems to have the right hat; the narrow palm fronds that it is woven from corkscrewing from the crown into a brim much like a lampshade hat with the pointed fringe spiraling counter-clockwise, hanging low enough to hide her eyes, but not her smile. I get the feeling that if you ran your hand along the flow of fronds it would feel momentarily stiff and then give way gently as you followed the curve of the weave. Try to stroke the fibers in the opposite direction and learn what a sharp edge soft can actually have when forced into an unnatural direction.

The woman on the left is wearing a modified Chinese peasant hat, the weave not as tight, since only the sun must be avoided in this instance. She wears a one piece bathing suit with a bow tied at the middle of her lower back. The suit hugs her curving frame, a body that seems to have lived 40 or more years, had children, eaten just a few too many slices of dessert from time to time, but not enough to hurt her. This softer, curving shape, the bow at her waist, is incongruent with the hat. I want her to have the hat on the woman in the middle. It is a tightly woven, softly curving, typical straw sunhat with a wide patterned ribbon around the crown and a bow with long tails flowing off the back.

The middle woman, also in a one piece bathing suit, is thin. Her shoulder blades stick out and her vertebra undulated like a small rise of worn down mountains under her skin. Her suit cuts a straight line across her lower back. No frills, no decoration, clean cut. She seems older than the other women, her body feels to me like it has fought life or fought for life and she is harder because of this. She should have the hat of the woman on the right. It has sharp lines and definite points to the fringe that sticks out defiantly from the brim. This hat is certain, unbending, absolute. It does not flex, even in high wind, but resists and endures and maintains its shape at all costs. Even if that means being pulled violently from the head of the one wearing it and being tossed recklessly in a gale. When it lands it will still look much as it does now. It could still be worn, still be useful, still exist out of shear tenacity.

The woman on the right should be wearing the Chinese peasant hat. The stiff, sharpness of the hat she currently wears doesn't quite fit her. Almost, but not quite. She is wearing a bathing suit that wraps, halter-style, around the back of her neck and then leaves the majority of her back bare. The lines and edges of her body are somewhere between those of the other two seated women, softness and angles intermingled. It is hard to tell her age, the flow of skin over bone coy. The slightly open weave of this particular Chinese peasant hat, completely ineffective for keeping off the rain, is intricate enough to allow snatches of sunlight to flash through and sparkle around her face. It is a weave that reminds me of the beautiful caning of an antique chair my mother once restored, open and fine and strong, the beauty of it lying in the pattern and not requiring extra decoration to catch and hold the eye.

I want to change the hats around, want to set things to the way I see them. But I can't. This moment is long past. The women now exist in some other way. And there is also the fact that I have only seen them from behind. What of the faces that were hidden from my view? If I were privileged enough to have witnessed the curve of their cheeks, the line of their noses, the tip of their smiles, would I have chosen a different hat again? Or, would I have left them as they are in the photo? Then I wonder, did each one chose the hat she wears or was it chosen for her, in some way, through some impulse, after some moment of knowing? And then I think, Who am I to say these hats are the wrong ones at all?

The Compelling Blank Page

I sit here at my desk, the keyboard staring me in the face – yes, I look at the keys. I have no clue how to actually type – and the screen casting a white glow over the letters and I wait. Inspiration is a real b*tch. It often hits me when I can’t reach the computer, like while I’m washing the dishes, driving the car, using the..uh…facilities. My mind fills with a multitude of things, related and unrelated, that I can hardly contain, begin almost immediately to lose, and I ache for the keys to save my thoughts from the void that exists just this side of the screen.

Then there are moments like this one. Moments where it almost hurts not to write, not to compose, not to tell some tale, any tale, and I can’t. The words, even though they must be there somewhere, refuse to come. And I sit, fingers on the keys, the right ones only because I know to put certain fingers on the letters with the raised spots, and wait. It’s like having restless legs in your head and your fingers. I want to write. I need to write. If I don’t write something I am pretty sure I’ll do some thing desperate in order to make the words come.

I will let the dishes pile up, the laundry go unwashed, unfolded, and scattered on the couch. I will forget to buy groceries. I will sit in an awkward position at a non-ergonomic desk and torture my back waiting. I will snarl at my kids and growl at my husband and foam at the mouth with this need and I will not apologize.

It’s like needing to breathe. I’m quite certain that brain cells would die if I were forced to stop writing, made to refrain from trying. To refuse this drive would be akin to suicide. Is that too strong a comparison? I don’t think so. My creative drive is such an essential part of who I am that if I were stripped of it, stripped of my ability to express it, then I don’t know how I could put one foot in front of the other on a day-to-day basis. It would be like trying to breathe without lungs. Impossible.

~ Peace and passion

Abundance

Every once in a while I am struck by the sheer abundance that surrounds me. While driving home at the end of our summer vacation, staring out the passenger window and watching farm after farm pass by, I found myself overwhelmed by emotion. I was surrounded on all sides by a sea of feed corn, soy beans, wheat, and pastures dotted with livestock. We were traveling in a minivan, and yet, we were so small in comparison to the greenery and life all around us. And yet, all I could see, perhaps three miles in any given direction, was only a small fraction of what exists in the state I was traveling through. Add this to all the states that have similar landscapes and then to all the countries in the world and the entire thing becomes unimaginable. It’s a bit like trying to wrap your head around a trillion – 1,000,000,000,000.

I do this in the grocery store, especially in the produce section. I am standing there examining the tomatoes, or the lettuce, or the apples and I think, There are maybe 150 apples here and those are just the ones on display in the Braeburn section. There are probably at least that many in the stockroom waiting to come out to the floor. I am standing in one grocery store in one city in one state. There are at least 6 grocery stores in 3 miles of my home and each one has Braeburn apples. 6 stores x300 apples =1800 Braeburn apples. If I really think about it I can come up with 20 cities surrounding mine that have these same grocery stores in them. 20 cities x1800 Braeburn apples = 36,000 Braeburn apples. If I reach back into my 5th grade social studies lessons I come up with something like 900 cities in Minnesota. 900 cities x an average of 4 grocery stores per city = 3200 grocery stores x 300 apples = 960,000 Braeburn apples. On display today. The population of Minneapolis/St. Paul is something like 600,000. That’s one and a half Braeburn apples for everyone. Today.

Then I think, How many apples does an average apple tree grow in a season? Say 1000. 960,000 Braeburn apples / 1000 = 960 trees needed to grow all the Braeburn apples that were available for purchase in all the grocery stores in Minnesota today. Next week there will be that many Braeburns again available for purchase. There are at least 10 commonly available apple types at grocery stores. 10 types x 960,000 apples available in all the cities in Minnesota = 9,600,000 apples of all varieties available today in all the grocery stores in all the cities in Minnesota. There are 50 states in the union. 50 states x 9,600,000 apples = 480,000,000 apples of at least 10 types of apples available in the US for purchase today. There are 305,000,000 people in the US. 480,000,000 apples / 305,000,000 people = 1 ½ apples for everyone in the US today.

And that was just apples. When I look at the green beans and then the corn and then the peppers, I pop a fuse. How is it possible that anyone is starving when there is so much today. And there will be that much again and again and again.

~ Peace and abundance

Kitty Fix

When I was young, about 6 years old, my family and I were adopted by a stray female American Short-haired Calico. She came out of the garden my mother had planted in our backyard, one that was supposed to produce vegetables but instead grew a flourishing variety of weeds and one young cat.

I was amazed to see her. I hadn't seen her before and we had lived in the house for about a year and a half. She meowed as she came, her tail high in the air, and headed straight for me. My heart raced and I could hardly believe my luck. Before I knew what else, she was rubbing her cheek and side against my legs, winding in and out in between them and purring. I reached out a tentative hand and stroked her back and she rose up on her hind legs and thumped her head into my palm. I remember the smile that filled my face and the joy that I had been picked by this cat to be her friend.

That was nearly 30 years ago. She was the first and last cat that I had and I missed her when our time together was over. Today I have my own home with a husband who is curious about what a cat is and what makes it tick, but is not interested in the company of one on a long term basis. Kitty fixes are few and hard to come by. Now I must travel west to Washington to visit Abby, my best friend's cat, or east to Maryland to knock heads and purr with Phantom. my brother's cat. I have one other cat that I visit when I can. His name is Maru and he lives in Japan. I wish that I could say I know him on a face-to-face basis, but I am not wealthy enough to travel to his home, nor do I know his person. I do, however, know his URL and am a fan of his videos.

Here is the one that introduced me to Maru and his wonderful light:



Maru's blog is mainly in Japanese, but his person has kindly added English to many of the pictures and videos posted there. Here is his URL:
http://sisinmaru.blog17.fc2.com/blog-category-1.html

So I have my kitty fix when I need it, though the lack of fur beneath my fingers is hard to accept. In time I may find myself adopted again, but for now I hop a plane and head for one of the coasts when the need gets serious and settle into a chair with a pile of fur and purr in my lap and breathe.

~ Peace and purring

What's in a Name

My brother got married a week ago Saturday and his fiance has taken his surname. A friend of mine took his wife's surname and dropped his own, and another friend dropped her middle name and slid her surname into the vacant spot while adding her husband's surname to the end. My husband and I added each other's surnames to the ones we were born with, but we use these new additions in very different ways. My in-laws only have an initial for a middle name and another friend simply has space in that position. All of this makes me think.

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare wrote: "... a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet", but I wonder - how many of us would smell the rose, if robbed of our ability to see its beauty clearly, if it carried the name of, say, bog posy? Would we risk our sense of smell, allow the possible lingering scent to invade our sinuses for hours after the experience, if the item in question carried such a less than pleasing moniker?

Perhaps I am wrong, though. One of the most visited flowers in the world, when they are blooming and filling the surrounding air with their fragrance, is the Corpse Flower. It cannot be possible that anyone seeing this name, hearing this name, could mistake the probable outcome of an olfactory encounter, and yet, thousands of people will flock to the plant to experience it for themselves.

Do we search for the things because of their names or do we search for the names because of the things? And once we have the name and the thing, do they fit together?

It took my husband and me 24 hours to be sure of our first child's name. It took 2 1/2 days to settle on our second child's. How long did it take Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin (whom I both adore) to decide on Apple as their first child's name? I am certain that our children are named correctly. My second lives up to the name given on a daily basis, much to our joy, irritation, delight, and amazement. I cannot imagine another name that would suit. Perhaps Apple does this as well, is the apple of their eye, is showing that she does not fall far from the tree, so to speak.

I sat forever trying to name this blog. Not only could I not find the right name, when I thought I had it was already taken by someone else. This frustrated me greatly. Not only could I not find the right words to say what I wanted, but when I stumbled upon a few that might do the trick they were no longer mine to have. It is an evil thing to be a writer without access to words, yet filled with words that need release. And so, trying to think clearly about what I want to say while I hear my husband reading to my children before putting them to bed, I type in what I want - a writing life - and begin to play with the words that I love.

~ Peace and words