365 True Things: 5/Creepiness

Not much creeps me out. Skittering cockroaches and earwigs do. Sticking my hand into a dark tree crevice and encountering slime or simply cold wetness does. A dead thing writhing with grubs does. Though death itself does not. Death may be sad, or harsh, but it's not creepy. The grubs on the other hand, ewwww. Tomato worms can be creepy if they're as big as my index finger and I have to pluck them off my tomato plant with my bare hands.

Not long ago I posted a photo that I thought was rather whimsical and sweet. It's the drinking fountain in the park at the end of the street. A little the worse for wear, sure, but just look at that happy blue eye! My sister-in-law Patty, however, objected that it's creepy. Plain creepy.

Not long before, I'd encountered a painting hanging in the forest that I found fascinatingly mysterious (who had painted it? who had left it there? why?), but my walking companion Annie said it creeped her out. She felt like she was being watched, stalked even.

Those experiences got me wondering about creepiness—and then actively looking for it. I soon started finding it in the form of dolls—discarded, out in the world; or not discarded, but carefully placed to (I can only assume) provide spook value. I started collecting the dolls in images. My gallery isn't large, but it's growing. It's surprising how often I come upon a creepy little doll.

The blank eyes, the severed body parts, the distorted positions, the hangings, the sad faces: they remind me of things that humans do to one another. I don't mean to get dark here. After all, I watch my share of police/mystery shows on TV—I'm just finishing up the first season of the BBC series Luther, and recently watched the Danish-Swedish show The Bridge—and at least in those fictional worlds (and I believe in real life also), the monsters are complex, exercising evil but having arrived there by paths I can't begin to imagine.

They also remind me of loneliness, neglect, being lost or estranged. Even the cute little jumping blonde in the lower left corner. Trying too hard and always failing. What brings us to despair?

Perhaps my creepy-doll imagery is an attempt to express my unease with both the darkness and the complexity of the world. All the stories that have gone off-kilter. Our ultimate lack of control. The ghosts that swirl around us. Our untetheredness.

I don't know.

But the next creepy doll I see, I will certainly be taking a photo of it.

[10/14/21: Today I ran across a Smithsonian article from 2015 devoted to this very subject, "The History of Creepy Dolls." It's definitely a thing.]

365 True Things: 4/Beauty

It is exceedingly rare that I wear makeup, but when I do it is simple mascara (brown-black) and lipstick. I have two tubes of lipstick (or "moisture whip," as Maybelline calls it): Toasted Almond and Rare Ruby. When I was young— high school and college (it was the '70s)— I might have added some eye shadow, powdery blue or shimmery gray, and eye liner, also dark brown. But these days, if I use anything, it's just a touch of lipstick. Hardly ever mascara.

I have nothing in particular against makeup. I just never learned how to use it. Never felt I needed it. Not that I'm any great beauty. But being a beauty wasn't in my repertoire. I was smart. Anyone who appreciated my brains would appreciate me for that, "beauty" or no.

My mother had about the same relationship to makeup as I do, though I do recall a shallow cardboard box full of lipstick tubes in the bathroom drawer when I was growing up. I'd sometimes pull the tubes open, twirl them out, inspect their colors. They tended to be nearly or mostly used up, rubbed flat by my mother's lips. Most were some variation of orange—dried apricot, coral, rust. A few pinks. Maybe she always wore lipstick and I never noticed, though I suspect these lipstick tubes were an accumulation from over the years; that she once wore lipstick more generally, and when I knew her, it was more of a special-occasion kind of thing. She never wore eye makeup. That I would have noticed.

I've since become more feminist (political) and/or philosophical, I suppose, about beauty. It's a cultural (commercial) creation, that's for sure. And it's utterly superficial: all about appearance. That said, there have been not a few occasions when I've seen a friend with and without her makeup, and I appreciate what the makeup does: it's like drawing a picture with charcoal, then adding a little contrast here, maybe a little Conte crayon color there, to give more body, more life. It's not to say that a face without makeup isn't beautiful. Of course it is. It's maybe to play up the beauty that's already there.

If you want to.

I never did.

365 True Things: 3/Poetry

I do not consider myself a poet, but I enjoy reading poetry (more and more), and I have dabbled in writing it. Several years ago I took a couple of wonderful online workshops with a poet in Washington State, Sarah Zale. One assignment involved writing a poem from a visual prompt. The prompt I chose was a postcard in my collection, a black-and-white photo by Mario Giacomelli (1925–2000), a self-taught Italian photographer whose work coincided, in time and emotion, with the gritty Neo-Realism of cinema directors Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. He did a wonderful series of landscapes—high contrast, minimalist, almost abstract—which occupied him from 1954 until his death, as well as a series documenting the everyday life of seminary priests, I Prestini (Little Priests, 1961–63). The photo I chose was in the latter series.

I recently reencountered the poem. It has promise. I think I'll continue to work on it. 

Gratia plena

We see them down here in the village from time to time,
in twos and threes,
cassocked ravens in shiny black shoes.
One carries a spiky armload of baguettes,
the second flagons of Chianti, encased in humble straw,
the third—if there is a third—
a scarred brown leather satchel,
out of which kraft-papered parcels peek, tied snug with twine.

They waft in from another world

through ours

dark angels.

My father grunts and hurries us to the opposite curb,
mutters about dogs and babies and hypocrites.
The cloth bag holding onions, tomatoes, and meat for polpette
knocks against my leg; I try to slow my pace,
to walk more evenly across the cobblestones,
so as not to bruise our meal.

I have ridden my bike up the hill, to the edge of their universe,
peered through the fence and seen them walking,
slowly, heads bent into their books.
As they walk, they speak:
Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam—
To God, the joy of my youth.
Deus, tu conversus vivificabis nos—
Turn to us, oh God, and bring us life.
Oramus te . . . Kyrie eleison—
We implore you . . . Lord, have mercy on us.

To my ears
the Latin words
are lead prunes
hollow walnuts
falling hard and coursing a path through the dust.

One steel November day as I cycle down the hill,
snow begins to fall—
flowing out of the sky
cloaking the land in sudden white.
When I reach their fence, I hear shouts.
And there, in the swirling flakes:
whirling black dancers, arms flung to the sky,
shiny black feet slipping and sliding,
out of control,
carving joyous patterns.
They embrace one another,
link arms, kick up cassocked legs.
Snowballs fly.
Alleluia! they cheer.
One stops, and a voice lofts upward, jasmine tenor:
Ave Maria, gratia plena . . .
The others stop too, turn their faces to the sky,
pink tongues thrust out of wide-open mouths.

I tilt my face up also, open my mouth.
Snowflakes whirl and spin,
cold
            sweet
                          angels
    
                                                   full of grace.

365 True Things: 2/Language

These are the languages I'm conversant with, in descending order of fluency:

English
German : because I attended tenth grade in Bavaria—and 15 is still a good age to acquire a second language
Dutch : because I lived a summer in Holland during graduate school, and English is halfway between German and Dutch—with a lot of Latin thrown in
French : because I've spent quite a bit of time with francophone Belgians
Spanish : because junior high, plus it's all around
Norwegian : because I seem to go to Norway with some frequency
Italian : because I love Italy and the sound of Italian
Russian : because mushrooms and the Soviet Union and a trip in August 1990 that combined the two (and a short-lived Monterey Peninsula College Russian class)
Japanese : because I lived in Japan when I was ten and went back for a three-month honeymoon, not to mention a summer-session fast-track course in Japanese—three quarters in one
Hebrew : because for a semester in college I thought I wanted to become an archeologist and dig up potsherds in the Negev 
Arabic : because if I was going to go to Israel . . .

I can speak German, more or less. The others, through Italian, I can read with varying degrees of ease (or dis-ease). Russian, Japanese, Hebrew, and Arabic are pretty much lost to me now, though I still have some of my old textbooks and dictionaries. Hard to let them go completely.

I also have tiny pocket dictionaries for Finnish and Turkish, and teach yourself Irish, Greek, and Danish books.

I love languages. I love funny alphabets. I love grammar with all its rules. I love verb tenses, aspects, and modalities. I love word order, and how changing it can change meaning. I love beautiful words. I love the different musics of spoken languages. (Most of them. I do not consider Chinese lovely to listen to.)

At the moment, I have five books in other languages on my stack: Flaggermusmannen by Jo Nesbø, or The Bat (Norwegian); Het Diner by Herman Koch, or The Dinner (Dutch); In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts by Eugen Ruge, or In Times of Fading Light (German);  Sulla sponda del fiume Piedra mi sono seduta e ho pianto by Paulo Coelho, or By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (Italian); and El inocente by Michael Connelly, or The Lincoln Lawyer (Spanish). I wouldn't say I'm actively reading any of them at present. Not so as to follow a story, at any rate. But sometimes I'll pick one up—along with a dictionary, and for when I'm really stuck, the English translation—and read a page or two or three. I figure it's good for my brain. It's like solving a puzzle.

And every Wednesday I sit down and do what I call Norwegian language torture with a friend. It's good to share the suffering! And the fun. And slowly by slowly, we agree that we're getting somewhere.

365 True Things: 1/The Start

I've been wondering all day if I really want to do this 365 nonsense. Well, what the hell—I'll give it a shot. No one but me will know if I follow through.

And who knows, maybe I'll learn something about myself. Or something about the world, generally. And who knows too, maybe after sufficient time has passed, I'll decide to publicize this blog. If I think I'm doing it right. By which I mean . . . something about packaging, concision, organization—insight maybe; wisdom; thoughtfulness at the very least.

By way of preparation—this being a new start—I looked up the day I was born to see if anything happened. Besides me. And I found one thing: The first Burger King was opened in Miami.

I also found an issue of the New Yorker from that momentous day, weighing in at 244 pages: the Christmas issue (lots of ads for Scotch; no table of contents). The two movies given short write-ups were The Last Time I Saw Paris, starring Van Johnson and Elizabeth Taylor, and An Inspector Calls, starring Alistair Sim, both of which the reviewer, John McCarten, panned. (Pauline Kael did not start writing for the New Yorker until 1968, when she was 49—though she'd been writing film reviews for other magazines since 1953.) The 12/4 issue is delightfully punctuated by those short takes that have since disappeared—making sport of published faux pas or oddities, often categorized and with caustic comments appended. Such as:

THE MYSTERIOUS EAST

[Adv. in the North Japan American News,

Sendai, Japan]

SOUVENIR SHOP

You shall be sear ched for the Japa-

nese splendid presents surely. Then to the

rare commodities are too many.

EBISUYA SHOP!

Tel—5366

*     *     *     *     *

So: something true about me . . . Although I have subscribed to the New Yorker most of my life, I rarely sit down and read the feature articles or short stories. But I always check the movie reviews. I suspect I would have opted not to see The Last Time I Saw Paris or An Inspector Calls.

I recently renewed our lapsed New Yorker subscription. I would like to resolve to sit down and read the short stories and feature articles, at least one per issue. I'm not going to lay any bets, though.

Project 365 in Words?

What if I revived this blog—which I haven't used in almost five years—to write "something true" about myself (or about the world, my choice), every day for a year. "Truth," of course, being a matter of interpretation. An acquaintance of mine is doing that, and her post for today puzzled me so much that I was reminded that I, too, have a blog, and the few times I used it, I'm pretty sure it made sense.

Thus far—in the nine posts I made between Easter Sunday (April 12) 2009 and May 7, 2010—I've always included a photo. Because that year, I was pursuing a Project 365 on Flickr: a photo a day for a year. I eventually completed four Projects, the last one on December 22, 2013. I enjoyed the consistency, the daily focus; the slight anxiety that tingled in my fingers each day until the shutter was pressed and, after usually minimal processing, the photo posted. (Since that time, I've gotten into iPhoneography, and processing can run wild.) I don't take a photo every day, or even every week, anymore. But I do miss the constancy. The discipline. The practice.

So what if I revived this blog and posted something—even if it's just a sentence, or possibly a photo?—each day. Something about me. Or simply something true.

No one need ever see it. This can be my secret face in a public place.

So, okay. Is this day one? No. Let's start tomorrow. But I will share a photo I took today, while out geocaching in Marina. The spike is the cache.

New technology

I’m not a huge fan of technology.

Well, that’s not true. I love technology. I’ve watched, even participated, in awe over my lifetime as it’s changed our very existence on this planet. For the better, I have to believe. No, I do believe.

So okay, technology is fine.

It’s figuring it out I’m not crazy about.

Because all too often, I can’t.

But nonetheless, last week I decided to take the plunge into G3-land. A new cell phone. A “smart” phone. One that may well be smarter than me. Even though I have a Ph.D. But that degree is from the 80s. And it is now a new millennium.

My old cell phone was also of this millennium. It was an LG “Dare”—as in, I dare you to use me to my full potential. It won that bet, hands down. I used it as a phone—easy enough—and eventually I got quite enamored of texting as well. The camera was good, and my friend Ruthanne in Boston and I would occasionally share photos out of the blue. (The best was on my last day in China two years ago, thirty-four floors above Shanghai: the shrill beep-beep-beep of a text message waking me to deep dark night. I fumbled for the phone, and up popped a bucolic scene of emerald green grass framed by a white picket fence, golden dandelions fluttering in the sunny breeze. “In Vermont: thinking of you,” read the text. Later that morning, in the back of the minivan on a clogged gray highway inching toward the airport, I turned and snapped a photo of the bunched cars behind us, and sent that off to Vermont.)

Although with the Dare I had the possibility (I dare you) of the internet, and email, and all that froofraw, all I really wanted was a phone. I got a fancy one for the camera—and because I like having the best. But I didn’t want to pay for the “frills.” So Just a Phone it stayed.

Since then, I’ve watched friends manipulate their iPhones, Palms, Blackberrys to conjure up pertinent information, fun facts, new leads, places to go, things to do—and felt, yes, pangs of envy. “Via Facebook for iPhone”: you’re sitting in a movie theater, waiting for the show to start, and oh—I can let everybody I know know that I’m, yes, sitting in a movie theater, waiting for the show to start!

I rather doubt that I’ll do that, but now . . . I can. It’s a new lease on life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So today, David and I are on our way to do some geocaching—five or six spots in Rip Van Winkle Park, Pacific Grove, plus one or two at Asilomar. We’ve just come from Verizon, where I got my phone activated and all my contacts transferred from “I Dare You” to “Incredible” (so much friendlier), and have decided to stop for a cup of coffee while we download a geocaching app or two, to test these babies out. (David got a new phone too—his first cell phone.) I decide on CacheMate ($8), whereas David goes for GeoBeagle (free). (There’s a theme here, but I’ll save that for another posting.) While I’m struggling to input all the data necessary to make my purchase—my fingers feel so cumbersome—David says, nonchalantly: “Hey, a cache was placed just today. And it’s only 167 feet from here.”

One hundred sixty-seven feet? Placed today?

“Finish that cappuccino,” I say. “We’re gonna get us a first-to-find!”

The last time—the only time—we got a first-to-find was a fluke: it happened to have been planted the day the weekly geoaching.com update arrived on my computer; and it happened to be a quarter mile away from our house. But this—167 feet? And we learn about it thanks to our droid? How much more serendipitous does it get? This was meant to be!

I dash to the car to get the GPS—since we haven’t gotten quite so far as to be able to use our phones as homing devices. We then head a short way up the street—a parking lot away—to a sparse stand of three struggling eucalyptus trees. And there, tied to a branch with fishing line, is our quarry: a seed that is not a seed: Corymbia ficifolia (was Eucalyptus until 1995, I’ve just learned—those taxonomers . . .)

If I’d been on my toes, I would have published our FTF then and there, but I waited until I got home to my computer—when what did I discover, but a posting by another geocacher (from his cell phone, of course) saying that he was second-to-find, which “isn’t too shabby.”

No, not shabby at all. And now I'm a little less shabby myself. If I can grasp the use of this new incredibleness I've harnessed, I might be making a few more FTF's.

At the very least, I'll be showing this new phone that it’s not smarter than me.