The Container

The container

that once held me 

is gone. 

My sanctuary 

devastated.

The ring that 

held my fire

that kept me safe

does not exist.

Now I need 

to hold myself. 

How to Collect Art

A few nights ago. I was at sitting at the counter at my favorite neighborhood restaurant, when Jenny from Atlanta started a conversation with me. I had just told Marcel the owner that I needed a break after painting my living room.

"What color?" Marcel asked.

"White," I replied. He rolled his eyes. "It isn't that bad... really!" I protested, He didn't know that all of the walls in my apartment are saturated with heavy colors. These are the first walls I am painting white in my condo.

I explained to Jenny from Atlanta that AI had helped me pick the color, and I showed her my saved search results.

"See," I said pointing to the cream, greige, and ivory options. "It doesn't look that bad."

She wasn't looking at my wall color options. She was looking at my artwork.

"You have a great eye," she said. "I would love to have art. How did you starting collecting?"

Great question. Here are my thoughts.

1. Love art. This is the crux of collecting art. You have to love what you are getting, otherwise what is the point? This is an activity of the heart. How does this painting or sculpture make you feel? If it makes you think, that is nice but art should moves us emotionally. I bought a giant painting of a red Kitchen Aid mixer. When I saw it, I giggled. It was the craziest and loveliest thing I had seen. Plus, I own that exact same Kitchen Aid mixer. My friends and kids either love it or hate it. It doesn't matter what they think, because I love it.
2. Study art. I took the History of Modern Art in college, and I loved it. I learned about Impressionism in high school. 
3. See art. Visit museums and galleries and art fairs. When I was in high school, my friend Betty and I would go gallery hopping in the Short North. We clearly could not afford to buy anything, but it was fun to be part of the night life of people looking at what local artists created. You might  not be shopping today, but you could be a customer in twenty years.
4. Create your own art. I took a watercolors class with my friend H at the Art Institute in Chicago, and I took an oil painting class a few years ago. I struggled deeply, which means I rarely see a painting and think  "I could do that." I appreciate how hard it is to look at a blank piece of paper and think of lines and colors and a theme.
5. Buy prints of famous art you love. Before you buy original art, it is perfectly cool to buy prints of famous works. In college, I had a posters of works buy Cezanne, Magritte, and Renoir.
6. Support local artists. It doesn't need to be expensive or fancy. Local arts & crafts fairs can have fun stuff.
7. Visit local galleries. Talk to the gallerists and artists about their work. They are people, too. Gallerists love to talk about their artists, and artists love to talk about their work.
8. Don't buy art as an investment. I am not in New York buying well-known paintings from well known artists. (See this article from the New Yorker. Wild stuff: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/31/larry-gagosian-profile) I am buying local stuff that I love, but I am not expecting to turn a profit on any of it ever. 
9. Consider it a donation (of sorts). I bought a painting at the Fremont Abbey Art Fair that was painted by a third grade teacher. It was a whimsical piece of a rainbow robot that tickled me. It looks like it belongs in a nursery, and I bought it for my first grandchild, whenever he or she arrives in the future. A friend saw it after I bought it and said, "You would have been better off making a donation to charity than spending money on that!" Buying that art was a donation. I was supporting someone's dream for being an artist. The artist was delighted that someone bought her painting -- it was as it were better than if she had just won the lottery.
10. Consider what you pay compensation for a working artist. The painting I bought from the third grade teacher was not expensive. Other paintings I've bought have been expensive. I am supporting the careers of working artists in those cases, and I am fine with that.
11. Don't feel bad about buying art. We all need beautiful things in our lives. When I was vexing to a friend about how much I was spending on art after my divorce, a friend helped me chill out: "This is what you are spending money on post-divorce instead of a sports car." I felt a million times better.) It stung a lot when I bought my most expensive piece, but it is one of a kind. Every day, I look at it and I love it.
12. Remember point one. Love art. Love is the real ROI.

Deja Voodoo

Today, I met with an orthopedic surgeon.

(Lots of fun.)

Ten and a half years ago, I had an ACL repair from surgeon at the University of Washington Sports Medicine Clinic based in the basement of Husky Stadium. (Sidebar: I've been in stadium basement more then fifty times for physical therapy, but I have never seen one football game there.)

Walking in the UW Sports Medicine clinic was surreal. The clinic looks pretty much the same -- even the promotional poster of a woman running is still there.

Dr Greene did my first knee surgery ten years ago, but a few weeks after my procedure, he moved to Austin, Texas. Some of my follow-up appointments were with another doctor, Doctor K. I met with him today. He called it out that we had met before years ago. 

Not only have I been to this clinic before, but Pedro and Jack have been as well. We should have gotten a family discount.

As I sat in the same examination room I had been in before, I was transported emotionally back ten years. I felt like when I left the place, I should head back to Ravenna, make dinner and then drive Pedro to soccer practice. 

It was weird.

Then I wondered what would have happened if I showed up a Jack's house and acted as if nothing had changed in the past ten years, if I walked in, asked where the kids were and where we should go for dinner, as if the year was 2016, not 2026. What would he say? What would he do? Would he call the loony bin and book me a place?

I didn't go back to my old home, fortunately. I went back to my new home, my condo. I texted my new friends. Sanity prevailed.

The Sun & The Son

My son Pedro has more or less lived in Montana since 2019, give or take a bit of time back in Seattle. He currently lives in the Flathead Valley reasonably close to Glacier National Park, one of the crown jewels in the system. People all over the world travel to Glacier. The highlight of Glacier is the "Going to the Sun Road."

In all of the years my son has lived in Montana, I have visited him there at least a dozen times. I have never gone on the "Going to the Sun Road."

Last Friday when I was in Montana, I did it. I made a dream that I didn't even really know I had come true. I drove the "Going to the Sun Road." 

It was awesome.

It was so awesome, I wondered why I had never done it before. A few reasons:

• Sometimes when you have family that lives in a cool place, you visit them and skip the fun stuff.
• "Going to the Sun Road" is only open a few months a year. It is mountain road in a park called Glacier. As such, it can be covered with snow almost all of the year. In 2026, the road opened on June 23. It closes on October 3, which means it is open for a little more than three months.
• We did other cool stuff besides go to the National Park. Pedro is a magnificent fishing guide, and he knows lots of cool spots. It is hard to refuse a jaunt to hidden fly fishing river spot in Montana. 
• Lack of will? I dunno.

I did the drive, and I felt so much joy. If I hadn't taken the drive, I could have spent the day noodling around the cute shops (see: The Toggery where I have previously bought multiple pairs of shoes, including hiking boots, water shoes, and dress boots) on Main Street, which I have done a dozen times before. But do I really need another pair of shoes?

No.

I needed to see "Going to the Sun."

The Tik Tok, Brain Rot, and the New Opium War

The New York Times recently had an article about brain rot, the phenomena of young people (and not so young people) scrolling through social media watching videos of nonsense, and how this contributes to lower cognitive function. Brain rotters are not watching "how-to" videos to learn to cook, do yoga or fly fish. They are watching stuff with little to no content value. They are living their lives online, not IRL.

As I was pondering brain rot, I remembered Babel by R.F. Kuang, a speculative fiction novel that takes place it 1830 at Oxford University. A small group of international students are part of a special group that can translate many languages. The main purpose of this group was to facilitate international relations and trade during the time of the Opium War. The Opium War was when England dropped opium from India on China to make the Chinese addicted and therefore more docile and feeble and whatnot so they were easier to control. (Even though I was a history major, I learned more about the Opium War in this book than I did in college.)

Is brain rot the new Opium War, but a problem we are inflicting upon ourselves? 

My ex is a physician and he talked about the narcotic effects screen time has on children. The "pings" we get from likes and winning games and whatnot hit the same part of our brain as cocaine. Years ago, he had a burn patient -- a young child -- who was not allowed screen time. In the hospital, they gave the kid an iPad to play with when the health care team changed the burn dressings. To be clear, having burn dressings changed are one of the most painful things a person can experience. The kid with the iPad was able to get the burn dressings changed without painkillers, which is both cool and terrifying. It is cool that the kid didn't need narcotics to get the burn dressing changed, but terrifying that kids are zoning on screens with the power of cocaine after school.

As history often repeats itself, is this where we are today?

Best Medicine

I am binge watching a regular tv show called "Best Medicine." It is an American knock-off the British "Doc Martin," a show about a grumpy/autistic surgeon whose fear of blood sends him to be a GP in a small town. 

I watched a few episodes of the British version back when it was on Netflix years ago. It was a cute show in a quaint town, but I was at the time living with my own person Doc Martin, and I lost interest. I didn't realize at the time it was a show about an automaton evolving into a regular human.

The American version with Josh Charles has snagged my attention. I have friends who also watch, just because it is a sweet show and couldn't we all use a little sweetness?

I am on episode 6 or 7, and I don't think I'd want to live in a cozy town where the big city doctor moves in. I am feeling sorry for the cast, especially this guy who plays Mark, the town cop and the ex of the doc's love interest. In just a few episodes, all kinds of crazy shit happens to him. He had a dramatic allergic reaction to Red Dye 40, then he was impaled by a rod at a school party. In the first episode, the love interest has had a rare eye problem. A few episodes later, she had a rare blood disorder where she has too much iron and needs blood letting once a week. One character has marfan syndrome. The town needs to be in the Guiness Book of World Records of the most number of people per capita with odd diseases. Half the population has rare conditions, and statistically, that isn't possible.

I imagine being a writer on the show, where their main job is to look up obscure illnesses and inflict them on the poor cast members. It is also odd that no one on the show is overweight. They are all thin and fit. No one has garden variety diabetes, or bad knees. How much can these otherwise healthy characters endure? 

Ode to the Mozzie

Fuck you 

Mosquito!

How dare you keep 

Me

Awake 

For two hours last night

Biting my arm

Biting my hand

Buzzing in my ear

You tiny 

Tiny

Tiny

Piece of shit.

I can’t see you

But damn you are loud

For something so 

Small.

You hide when the light turns on.

Please 

Please 

Please 

Leave me alone.

Oh

And Apple Sleep App--

You don't need to tell me

"You had a poor night's sleep

Last night,"

No shit, Sherlock.

I was

awake for most 

of 

it.

And could you 

at least maybe ask,

"Are you 

Okay?"

Adulting 5.7

I've been doing a lot of adulting lately, and it kind of sucks. The only good thing about it is that all of my friends are going through this too, like these are rites of passage for the mid-fifties. 

There are three main categories I am dealing with:

• Health
• Retirement
• Death

Health

All of the cool kids are getting their shingles vaccinations and colonoscopies, in addition to mammograms.  I just got a personal trainer so I can remain strong as I age.

Retirement

While I believe I have done a fantastic job of saving money for retirement, I now need extra help getting all of my shit in order. Like, will I have enough cash on hand to retire? Will I have stacked Roth IRAs? What are my investment allocations? Yeah. I am glad I am paying someone else to figure this out.

Death

Yep, writing up my will. My divorce lawyer gave me a simple will, but I needed to make some changes and my new lawyer is asking me a thousand questions, not just "give me the names of your kids" and we are done.

All of this is like the Bermuda Triangle -- I need to get my health checkups so I can stay healthy, and I need my retirement accounts so I have money as I age, and then I need plan for when I kick it, but I don't want to kick it anytime soon, so I am exercising and getting all of my health check-ups. See the fun here?

The funny thing is that I don't feel old. I feel like I am still sixteen and entering a new phase, like getting my drivers license so I can go wherever I want. And everyone I know is tracking at least one of these categories.

Judy and Margaret

On my way back to my car from playing pickleball Sunday afternoon, I saw a Little Library, a box where people leave books they have finished reading for others to take. 

There, I found a copy of "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" by Judy Blume, the insanely popular author of teen and tween fiction in the 1970's. I devoured her novels fourth, fifth and sixth grades. 

I picked up "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." I wondered how it would hold up over time. Would it be a classic? Would it have aged well? Would I cringe at what I thought was brilliant as a child?

I am halfway done, and yes, yes, no. 

Yes it is a classic.

Yes it aged well.

No I didn't cringe at my younger self.

Margaret is a sixth grader in her last year in elementary school. She just moved from NYC to suburban New Jersey with her Jewish dad and her Christian mom. Her new friend Nancy asks her if she is going to join the YMCA or the Jewish Community Center. Margaret -- raised without religion -- doesn't have a clue. In addition to navigating her first crush, first bra, first kiss, and getting her period, she tries to figure out where religion fits in her life. Spoiler: She doesn't find what is she looking for in the organized religions she explores. (This isn't to bash organized religion -- it serves many people.)

What does Margaret do? She prays "to her own personal God," said one review. 

Isn't that an answer to some of the big questions of life? How do we find peace? What should we do when we are lost or confused? What does Margaret do? She prays in her own way to her own God. I spent the last ten years trying to figure it out with meditation and therapy and twelve steps programs and reading Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest with a radical and gentle interpretation of Christianity.

All of those things have been helpful in letting me find peace with a complicated and complex past (and to be honest, complicated and complex present.) 

Here was the answer, in a book I adored when I was twelve. 

Stalling

I am trying to launch a new creative project, but I am stalling.

I came up with an idea in April of last year, and I've been working on it since then. I got a solid draft of the project up, and I got some feedback that was direct, honest and a little harsh. Not harsh in a bad way because most of it was true, but harsh in the sense that it wasn't balanced with enough positive feedback to keep me going.

I've workshopped lots of writing pieces before, and there is a simple pattern to it: You say what you liked, and then you say what you struggled with or didn't understand. A simple version would be "I liked the plot, but I don't understand why Mary would rob a bank. Perhaps a better explanation of her motivation would help..."

And then you give feedback back to the other person. This works because it is a two way street. You give the feedback you want to get -- you want to someone to point out your blindspots, but also honor the intention of your project. 

Without that mutual feedback, I got lost in the soup. 

In my stall, I have been needlepointing up a storm. These projects are infinite. I could take these on a forty hour flight and still have work left at the end. 

This is just a sample. I have way more craft projects in my stash.

The challenge with my new pet creative project is that it is loaded with uncertainty, unlike these needlepoint projects. Each stitch gets me closer to completion. Each stitch brings me a tiny sense of peace. 

With my creative project, I have no idea where each step will take me. Will it lead to garbage? Will it lead to something messy and confusing? Will it lead to something beautiful and wonderful and inspire people to see themselves in a way they didn't before? 

I don't know, and "I don't know" can be very hard to say. 

"Elle," or Is Seattle the new Hollywood?

This past week, I started watching Elle, the prequel to Legally Blonde, on Amazon Prime. My daughter loves Legally Blonde, the Reese Witherspoon movie about a fashion obsessed sorority girl who goes to Harvard Law School. When I saw the prequel, I was curious.

In Elle, Elle Woods is a junior in high school when her plastic surgeon father botches a nose job and they have to leave Bel Air and move to Seattle.

Elle takes place in 1995, and Seattle is a full-blown character in this streaming series. 

But why Seattle? Why didn't the Woods family move to San Francisco or New York or Chicago? Why move a pink loving girl to gray and grungy Seattle, with its anti-superficiality stance?

Why Seattle? I love seeing my adopted hometown played out on a show where the city isn't just a backdrop, but why?

Could it be because Amazon is based in Seattle, and pitching a show to Amazon that takes place there might scratch an itch for people choosing series for Amazon? I know Amazon video has offices in Southern California, but still the mothership is down the street from where I live.

Of course, no one show can completely capture a city, just as each person experiences a city just as they experience it. Nevertheless, I find the Seattle/Los Angeles clash interesting, and I think the show does a decent job of showing the Pacific Northwest. One of my favorite scenes is when Elle walks through the lunch room and one of the students points out the jocks table, the bank geeks, the stoners, the rich kids, etc., and they all look exactly the same. I had to laugh because it is so true, even for the adults.

So many shows and movies are made in L.A., but I never really considered how much of SoCal vibe slips into shows without my even noticing. Frasier took place in Seattle, but it could have taken place anywhere. The writers could have thrown a dart at a map and picked a place. Frasier could have been filmed anywhere. No one comes to Seattle looking for Cafe Nervosa. 

Elle is different. Cross country is a high school big sport (true). There is even a theme on the mountain being out. Only in Seattle do people talk about the mountain being out. Frasier has the Space Needle in the logo, but Rainier looms larger. 

The best part is watching Elle and her family slowly fall in love with this quirky town, as did I twenty years ago.

Will Amazon's influence mean more shows based in Seattle? Even if they don't film here, could we become a new branch of Hollywood?

I hope so.

Oh Mary! and Walter Mitty

Maya Rudolph is taking a turn playing Mary Todd Lincoln on Broadway in "Oh Mary!," a campy send up of the famous First Lady. It sounds ridiculous and hilarious and wild.

I've never aspired to be an actress, but I would love to play Mary and I haven't even seen the play yet. I want to be a one-show Broadway actress. I don't want to do Chekov. I don't want to do Shakespeare. 

I want to play Mary Todd Lincoln. 

I've been involved in politics, surely I can play a politician's wife? I'd pay to see Hilary play the role. She might be hilarious. 

This would be my Walter Mitty moment, where I dream of marching on stage with a black dress and head of curls, and playing deep physical comedy about a woman who wants to break free from her cage. I want to embody the unhinged First Lady.

That's all. I'll keep you posted on my Broadway dream.