The Wild Winds of Fortune

Diego Rivera was a Communist.

The members of the Pacific Stock Exchange were not.

That the latter should have commissioned the former to paint a mural for its sumptuously appointed building at 155 Sansome Street in San Francisco (now home to the City Club of San Francisco) in 1930 is one of those odd mysteries that aren’t.*   In America we don’t have royalty to become the patrons of great artists; we have the captains of industry and commerce.  The PSE paying  to have the first fresco in the United States by the great Mexican muralist might on first blush seem to be not much different than Napoleon paying Jacques-Louis David to record his apotheosis.

One good look at the mural that resulted, “The Allegory of California,” throws that analogy into question. If nothing else, David kept any contempt he felt for his patron well hidden.  Rivera only barely did.

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.  H.L. Mencken.

Some days, I wonder if Sweeney Todd wasn’t on to something.*

*Mrs. Lovett, on the other hand, was just evil. 

I feel… I’m not sure.  Not quite professional (no pantyhose, no skirt), but maybe businesslike.  I am wearing my black sweater (sleeves pushed up to show I am a serious person), black cords, a faux-pearl and sterling silver necklace, and sterling silver knot earrings of my own design.* Not to mention makeup. As close to power dressing as I am likely to get these days.

Consequently, I was at least somewhat productive.  I dealt with a child crisis this morning. I took the Not-So-Little Drummer Boy to get the replacement phone which he sorely needed. I called the Billing Department for the clinic which handles the kids. I had a very long talk with the NSLDB.  I drove Railfan and the Red-Headed Menace home from school.  Most importantly, I hammered out a cover letter and a resume for a job that my employment specialist had sent me which would in fact be a very good fit for my skill set.  (It took me over three hours; I don’t think that’s normal.)  I didn’t even talk myself out of applying.

I feel considerably less powerful now, probably because since breakfast I have only had Nonfat No-Whip Salted Carmel Mochas for sustenance.  Eating a relatively early dinner may not be a bad idea.

Speaking of power, there is nothing quite so cathartic as driving along singing obscenities loudly.  Thank you, Cee-Lo Green.

It’s Friday.  I am restless.  This is unusual. I don’t know what to do.  One of the disadvantages of not working (aside from the isolation and lack of a paycheck) is that for the most part Fridays are insignificant.

My cartoon of the month is running around Facebook.  I do not know the origin, although it looks like it may have been cribbed from The New Yorker.  In it, a woman says to her companion,  “My desire to be well-informed is at odds with my desire to be sane.”  Boy, howdy is that true.

I keep thinking I need to write about what is going on in the world, especially the contraception/abortion debate in several states, but just as I get over my shock at the idiocy shown by the politicians in one state, some other new and more horrible idiocy is proposed.  I am rapidly descending into numbed disbelief at some of these people.  I am ashamed to admit it, but I am glad I am not twenty, and that all my children were boys.  I will still fight this fight, but at least I will not be dealing with the fear I would have had were I younger and unmarried, or if I were watching my daughters facing the “war on women” (and what else can you call it?) being waged in some quarters.

Then there is the Trayvon Martin travesty.  I consider myself a Floridian, but sometimes I am heartily ashamed of my home state.

Allowing people to “stand their ground” without any obligation to retreat from potentially dangerous situations is one thing — not a good one either.  But a law stating that if the police find the actions of the assailant “reasonable” they cannot even arrest him is insanity.  Such a law provides cover for corrupt, uncaring, or incompetent cops. All they have to do is state that they find that the potential defendant acted reasonably to avoid making an arrest.  The determination of reasonableness is — or should be — a matter to be determined at trial by a jury, not by a police force potentially subject to political pressures.

Furthermore, the argument that because Zimmerman is (at least partially) Hispanic and therefore would not be racist is ridiculous.  In Florida, tensions between Hispanics and blacks can run high indeed, although as I recall that tends to be more in South Florida rather than in mid-Central Florida where Sanford is located.

This whole episode is tragic and infuriating.  It is also the logical end to a mindset that says that honor and “not being pushed around” and being able to do what you want to are more important than civil responsibility or even common sense, damn the consequences.  You see this in “stand your grounds” laws and anti-vaxers.

Idiots.  Dangerous idiots.

Well, all the idiocy in the world notwithstanding, here’s hoping all of you have a pleasant weekend.

*And a new bluetooth headpiece.**  I’ve never had a bluetooth before; I get calls all the time while I am driving, so this is a good idea.  Or so I keep telling myself.  I would hate to think it would be to be cool.  The NSLDB complained that people who wear Bluetooths (Blueteeth?) looked like they were talking to themselves.  I responded that I talk to myself all the time anyway; at least this way people will think I am talking on the phone instead of simply crazy.


**Yes, I have seen the Doctor Who episode “Rise of the Cybermen,” where all of the people in the world are controlled using Bluetooth-like devices.  Somehow, I don’t think I run the risk of being turned into a large metal killing machine..

I play trivia almost every Tuesday.  Over half the time I play by myself.  This leaves a lot of empty time between rounds — sometimes even between questions.

I find myself writing.  Those of you have seen my handwriting know that, except for times when my hand is tired or I have to write in a hurry, it is quite beautiful.  (Even my signature is extravagant, one John Hancock would have been proud to own.)

I do not write for content, but for the sensual feeling of the ink flowing over the paper.  I write my name. I write song lyrics.  I write the questions out. I write random phrases, I write letters or parts of letters to people, I write things I desperately need to say to other people that know I will never have the courage to speak aloud.  Sometimes I write automatically, with my hand reaching into my subconscious to find words and phrases that immediately tell me things about myself — not always things I want to know. Sometimes, the writing becomes more important than the game.

I play with the forms of the letters, my smooth script giving way to experiments in calligraphy.  I become absorbed in what it feels like to watch the shapes of the letters as my hand creates them.  I become the writing.

I write knowing this is an ephemeral art: all the papers are collected to be thrown out or recycled at the end of the evening.  This makes the writing possible: as I said, sometimes I write things I do not want to know or things which I am too cowardly to tell other people, so I tell them to myself.

This is abstract expressionism.  The lines mean nothing.  The purpose is only incidentally to convey information to myself (as I said, no one else will ever see this) but more to record the experience and joy of the physical act of literally putting pen to paper. It is purely art: art for nothing more than the pleasure of its creation.

It is a small art indeed, but mine own.

Before I say anything else, I am compelled to remind you that I am the daughter and niece of Marines, and the granddaughter of a Navy pilot. I count members or former members of all four branches of the armed forces among my friends and relatives. I honor the service they do for our country, which is a real and important one.

I find that statement troublesome.

They protect our country. Yes, there was the Civil War. And yes, the National Guard was sent in during the civil rights movement in some cases to help protect people. And yes, every member of the armed forces swears to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

But I don’t have the Marines to thank for me being able to walk into a voting booth as much as I have Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and a lot of other women (and men) who worked long and hard — in some cases facing imprisonment and physical punishment — for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. And what about the civil rights workers in Mississippi? Many of them paid a very heavy price so that voting would be available to citizens across the state, not just whites. It was not the Army going into those county courthouses helping people to register.

I don’t have the Navy to thank for being able to stand on a soapbox — even electronically — and spout whatever unpopular opinion comes into my head. I have the Framers of the Constitution, and many Supreme Court Justices throughout the past 200 years to thank for creating and then protecting that right.

As I said, do not misunderstand me. Members of the armed services perform invaluable duties in keeping the nation physically safe, and I recognize that. I think as a nation we give lip service to how much we value our veterans but treat them like dirt through inadequate funding of veterans’ services.

However, the job of “protecting freedom” belongs to every citizen of the realm. Subcontracting that job to the military is irresponsible.  It is also unfair.

Don’t they have enough to do already?

[Yes, it’s another Sondheim post.]

I have always loved the song “Move On” from Sunday in the Park with George.  It is beautiful, it is moving.

It is also incredibly well-crafted, without being ostentatious.  So much so that one of the evidences of that craft eluded me until the past few days, even though I have heard the song many, many times.

In the song, Dot (George’s former lover) is advising his grandson (also named George) how to deal with the fear he has that he can no longer create anything new.  George expresses frustration and yearning to create “something new, something of my own.” Dot tells him to “move on.”

She sings briefly of her own decisions.  Until the past few days, I thought her line was “I chose and my world was shaken, so what?  The choice may have been mistaken, but choosing was not.”  It personalizes her advice to him.

The line in fact is “The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not.”  It might seem like an insignificant difference.  It is not.

The change from “but” to “the” makes the language of the song more formal, more distanced.  This is apposite: the song is not about Dot, except incidentally, but about George and his future. (It is also a resolution of the relationship between Dot and (the first) George.) “Choosing” in the line as I first understood it is a verb.  The way that Sondheim wrote the line, “choosing” is a noun, an object, a choice in and of itself to be made.

Choosing versus not choosing.  Movement versus stagnation.  Hope versus fear.

As the Not-So-Little Drummer Boy observed to me when we were discussing this song, we cannot know whether we have chosen wisely or poorly until we in fact choose.  If we stay still we may not fail, but neither will we grow. Sondheim captured that idea perfectly.

In Finishing the Hat, Sondheim states that “God is in the details.”  It is indeed.  Something as simple as the change of one three letter word to another can deepen the meaning of a song.  Sondheim is nothing if not a master of the details.

One of the reasons I have always loved this song is that it encapsulates a recurring issue in my own life:  where do I go?  How can I grow?  I come to my own creative and personal crossroads, and far too often I am paralyzed by what seems like the panopoly of possible directions.

Maybe you simply need to pick a direction and go. Maybe you simply need to make a choice without obsessing whether it would be the best possible choice in all possible universes.

Maybe you simply need to move on.

Growing up in Florida, I was always curious about snow.  Intellectually, I understood it, but experientially I did not.  I went to the Northeast in part because of that curiosity.

A few months ago I went to Muir Woods.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Muir Woods, it is a National Monument, one of the best preserved remaining stands of virgin, old-growth redwoods.

It was a beautiful day.  The sun shone, yet it was not too hot.  Strolling slowly along the paths, you could hear people speaking all sorts of languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and others that I cannot recognize other than as being none of those.  You could see young couples, retirees and families with young children.  It was heartening to see how very small children are the same across cultures.

The sun shone on the tops of the trees.  When you looked up, you could see the tops of the stands of redwood illuminated fully in the strong sunlight.  When you looked down, you saw the gloom of the forest floor.

The most beautiful to see were the areas at the margins.  The dark boughs and trunks were silhouetted starkly against the bright blue sky.  The leaves were lit up like gold from shafts of light breaking through the canopy.

I kept thinking that a lot of the world is like that.  The most interesting things happen in the change from one thing to another.  Where the shore meets the sea.  Where forests give way to meadows.

At the changing of guards, of eras.   Of states of being.

Not always, of course.  The changes in this country the past few years have been often ugly, to say the least. The leading edge is facing backwards, as we become a society in retreat in many areas.

But still… watching children become adults.  Meeting new people. Changing and growing yourself.

Finding where my margins are, where I gleam the most, where I can grow, may well be my next task in life.

I hope I like what I find when I get there.  I hope others do, too.

[No, this is not the most scintillating of posts.  I am a bear of very little brain this afternoon, at least now, probably because great nervousness takes a lot of concentration to hold in check.  I was better earlier.  I am writing this primarily because I had talked about the interview last night, and in the sheepish hope that people whose information I have lost will spontaneously send it to me without me having to email them.  Of course, if I don’t email them, how will they know I have lost their information…]

It has been one of those days.  At least, up until 3:00.

I discovered that my backpack, which had been in the van, was missing.  I can’t find it around the house, either.  I had been using it in lieu of a purse for a while, since I had books to carry.  At this point, there was not anything in it to speak of, except several Games magazines and my card case.

The card case is a real loss.  I have cards for a quite a number of people, both professional and personal.  When my phone died at the end of last year, I discovered that for some reason the contact information of several of those people (people who mattered)  had not been saved.  In addition, I had gotten cards from a few people since then; again, people whose contact information (especially phone numbers) I wanted to hang on to.  I had been intending to take the cards and transfer them to my new phone, but had been procrastinating doing so.  I really regret that now.

Edited to add: Hurrah! Calloo callay!  I found the backpack! Tonight’s task: transfer contacts into phone and computer address book.

As far as my cards… I have three different cards, a lot of them.  One of them my business card, one for jewelry design, and a “blog card.”  Vistaprint is a lot of fun.  (I had also once had a hat with my blog information on it.)

While discovering that it wasn’t in the house, I tripped in the garage.  In addition to skinning my shins, the trip did my pulled rib no good.

On the other hand, I got a new purse, sort of.  It is a tote of one particular design (black, with pockets large enough to hold a collapsing folder) — I buy them and use them until they fall apart.  I got my first one in 2007. This is number three.  What makes it special is the hot pink interior.

I do the same with work shoes; this time I actually *gasp* chose a different black flat. This was only because the shoe store was out of my usual design.

But my mock interview went very well.  The interviewer thought I was personable, confident (!), and responded well to questions.    She particularly liked my answer to “You have a potential client in front of you and the phone starts ringing off the hook.  What do you do?”  With absolutely no hesitation I replied, “The person in front of you is always the first priority.  You hit the button which sends the caller to voicemail.”*  (I was a little surprised that impressed her; to me, it seems completely obvious.) She said I need to work on my “tell me about yourself” elevator speech, however, and make a few changes to my resume.

So here I am again, in my home-away-from-home, sipping my Grande Peppermint Mocha, treating myself to madeleines and listening to Broadway, watching the rain fall.  And writing, even if all I am writing is a silly little synopsis of my day.

Not such a bad day after all.

*This, like all things in life, depends upon context: if you are working a crisis line, it might well be more important to answer the phone.

There is so much to write about.  But after 48 hours which included one six hour ER visit (kid’s okay; nothing lasting), an emergency dentist appointment (another kid, is okay), a badly pulled rib muscle (me — I was on Vicodin last night) and now being able to only keep down Cream of Wheat and Coke,*  I just want to go to bed and re-re-re-rewatch the Sondheim birthday video.  (I have now figured out where I have seen Jason Danieley before — he was in the San Francisco production of Next To Normal.)


Especially since I have an appointment with my job coach for a mock interview tomorrow. I hate interviews — even practice ones.  Experience tells me that, unless I know people well, I am at my best when I don’t expect to ever see the other person again and really don’t care if they like me or not.  I have been told by trusted observers that, under those conditions, I can be actually quite charming.  (A couple of hurricanes don’t hurt, either, but they are not necessary.) Really. I am as surprised by this as you are.**

Once I have decided I like someone and therefore care if they like me, but do not yet know them well enough to relax, I tend get self-conscious and self-critical; not a good thing when you are trying to convince people to hire you.

Note: I am fine in a work context. I have a reputation at the places I have worked and volunteered for having exceptional people skills.

Time for more Coke and “A Little Priest.”  On second thought, given the subject of the song, maybe not.

*I was going to write about all the anti-contraception legislation going around on a state and national level, but I am already nauseated.  I don’t need to make myself more so.


**There is an ongoing argument between me and a couple of my friends as to whether I flirt or not.  They claim I do, and I steadfastly claim I do not.  All I can figure out is that I do not flirt consciously and with intent, but on rare occasions I am unnaturally effervescent.  I am really very shy and retiring.  Really, truly. For some reason, people seem very skeptical when I say this.

Today the Red-Headed Menace and I went to lunch following his doctor’s appointment.  I introduced him to my favorite pizza, the deep dish “Untouchables” at P’izza Chicago in Palo Alto. It is a wonder, with barbecue sauce, red onions, cilantro, smoked gouda and chicken. (In deference to his vegetarian sensibilities we got half of it with no chicken.)

After his first bite, he commented “This is one of the great achievements of human civilization.”

I think he liked it.

Okay, here’s the deal.  There was this post.  I was not ready to make it public, because I questioned whether it was fair.  (Yes, believe it or not, those considerations do matter to me.)

I accidentally published it. Well, not exactly. I was backing this blog up to my WordPress.com mirror blog, and I wanted it there, so I published it, thinking that as soon as the import was done, I would revert to draft.

And then I went, “Oh, crap.  Google Reader.”

My brain has left the building.

So, if this works, in Google Reader this text will replace the long post I had written. I may, after some discussion, repost here at WWF, but for now it is in draft form (backed up in an Open Office text file).

If you feel really motivated, please feel free to write your own post about the nature of love and fear and Sondheim’s “Finishing the Hat.”

Me: It’s cold out here.
Red-Headed Menace:  No, it’s not.
Me: You ate, what, 4000 calories yesterday?*
Red-Headed Menace: I prefer to measure it in joules.

*He is in track — he runs middle and long distance, and throws discus.  He can run 10 miles at a stretch.  He routinely wipes the house out of food.  He also does not gain a pound.  This is annoying.