i had visions of rosie trying our homemade pad thai and putting her fork down to raise her fists in the air with appreciation. pad thai like at the restaurants! she is a great appreciator, but no such luck. still, it was very good. i have been getting so much joy out of trying new recipes to understand how they tick. i tried pad thai with tamarind and then with vinegar, and i learned about the chinese wok and its ability to heat food quickly. i’m learning about proteins, which i have forsaken for too long. tonight: a simple meal of rice with vegetables and portabella mushrooms. tomorrow: sage soup with proscuitto. last night i made oatmeal raisin cookies, but i used spelt flour instead and i added in cloves: i am almost paralyzed with physical pain, i can’t burn much energy, but i seem to be very good at taking in more and more food. i grow soft like a stereotype of a mother instead of becoming a real one.

March 10th, 2009 | Category: house | Leave a comment

(feeling the fever)

March 10th, 2009 | Category: photograph | Leave a comment

(it’s a traditional chinese medicine technique.)

March 10th, 2009 | Category: photograph | Leave a comment

friday we went to tracklements in kerrytown and bought more than enough fresh seafood, then walked two steps to sparrow for our linguine and tomato sauce, then ten steps to everyday wines for a bottle of red and a bottle of white. then home to our date night in. (the town was hopping, it really seemed like there was no recession and like the beauty of ann arbor could possibly stay intact through this difficult time.)

we made the most delicious fruit of the sea. i wasn’t feeling well, which is the theme lately, and staying in was ideal. we lit candles and lowered the lights. after dinner we sat on our porch and listened to the beginnings of spring in the dark. (those moments when you do not feel well enough to appreciate each second, but still you are gathering, collecting these feelings of love to express and articulate later, later.)

March 8th, 2009 | Category: house | Leave a comment

listening to antony and the johnson’s “epilepsy is dancing” (which i rigged to be my ringtone: call me on my beautiful iphone, do it) on repeat.

(epilepsy is dancing / she’s the christ now departing / and i’m finding my rhythm / as i twist in the snow.)

the black dog is in the hallway with his huge dog bed, which is naked, its fluffy part unzipped because this morning i sewed it for the third time — after he had gnawed a hole and an unlikely mint-green stuffing poured out. he has just come in to find another fluffy blanket and dragged it out to sit on.

the brown dog is with me in the bed, sleeping under the covers, her head sticking out, her eyes twitching.

i am sitting on the bed unable to turn my head to the right or left or look down. though i can look up. the pain is enough that i want to disappear, so i sleep. the reproductive doctors will not give me any more medication because they are worried, i presume, that i am a drug-addled hysteric.

the white cat is perched on steve’s dresser, staring at me but mostly staring at the brown dog to make sure that i don’t love it more than i love him.

the christmas quilt is still on our bed because it is just so warm, but it is sad in march to see it all the same. the curtains are drawn but to undraw them would mean pain. it is sad and dark in here.

steve spent the last two weeks tiling our laundry room in real slate, and it is truly gorgeous. we have not been able to wash our clothes for these two weeks. steve bought more underwear instead of washing them by hand or going to a laundromat. this morning he reassembled the washer and dryer, and now the house is filled with the whishing rumbling whirring sounds of progress.

March 8th, 2009 | Category: right now | Leave a comment

i finally found a lucky penny today after a drought. once i found them all the time, and then the book wouldn’t sell and the baby wouldn’t start and i stopped looking. but i could divine them, i swear. and i was sure that the end of winter would mean a jackpot — all those pennies that have been buried all winter, i thought they were waiting for me, but we’ve found almost none. today it was over sixty degrees and there was my penny waiting for me in the middle of an unpaved parking lot.

..

silhouettes: like shadows. fabric: a chance to have color inside shadows. color and its symbolism. i like muted color, but i can’t seem to get enough saffron or chamomile.

March 6th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment

i’ve been thinking about shadows as objects. shadows cut out and put on the wall create their own shadows. many shadows are simple gradations of color inside a fading shape. some shadows fall on cloth, and then they get more complex inside. i like the idea that light falling on an object creates a new object. and i like the idea of very carefully looking at shadows, which is something, though i’ve drawn a lot, i’ve not actually studied as much as i would have liked to. jennifer came to the studio last week and she said that shadows are sometimes the most complicated thing to paint — translating something intangible on a two-dimensional surface can end up making the shadow look like its own object, or like someone smeared grease on the countertop. the subtlety can get lost, and the evidence of the brushwork circling the shadow can give away its process–then the illusion hiccups. i like the idea of giving into that mis-translation.

March 5th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment

I was wanting to link to this photo earlier, and I just this morning found a copy online. It is a photograph by Tim Walker, “Otis Ferry and his Hunting Hounds.” So many dogs! It makes me claustrophobic even as I want to dive in. The dogs mostly look calm even as they are awkwardly stuffed together. And the television’s on! And the triptych of red, one 3-d and two 2-d on the wall. How beautiful and inexplicable. (This photograph won the National Portrait Gallery’s Photographic Portrait Prize in 2007.)

March 5th, 2009 | Category: overheard | Leave a comment

but at least in e.r. we had my new pretty iphone, which played forest rain sounds and the new antony and the johnsons album (the crying light), and which texted my mom, and gave me the phone number to thai food take-out as well as the address, and which took pictures.

March 5th, 2009 | Category: photograph | Leave a comment