Aubrey’s blog

I take whatever chance I can to look into the sky and observe what mischief goes on there.  Recently I saw an example of waywardness that could only be described as shocking.

That particular day, the sun was frosted and white.  In an act of sheer lunacy, he was trying to disguise himself as the moon, his cold, glittering rival. He had discarded his burnished glow and in a fit of pique had denied the earth his radiance.  He didn't feel like setting in a bath of colors - no.  He was tired of his dreary afternoons, hanging alone in an empty blue arc; or of having his golden face swathed in capricious clouds, ready to take flight at the merest tickle of wind.

He envied the moon so many things - her starry handmaidens, arrayed around her like a crown floating in the sky; her opaque glow, her cool grace of pearls.  He had grown weary of his heat, and the sweat on his brow.  The people, so far below, would never look at him, and it was depressing.  He wished he could change shapes, become a half, a quarter, a crescent...crescents which were carved out of gems and worn in ladies' hair, crescents which were embroidered into Diana's cloak as she hunted across the sky of shadows.

The sun was jealous.  He wanted the moon's authority - she controlled the tides, the oceans of the world.  She could catch the waves in her illuminated net and pull them onto shore; or she could demand that the water be patient and wait for her call.  The moon had the feminine audacity to cross the path between sun and earth; so he would merely flare in futility around her eclipsing edges.  She even exerted a strange power over human women every month.

The moon cascaded across the sky.  She paraded in a shining orbit, bowing in front of a black curtain made bright by galaxies, planets and stars.  The sun felt immobile and foolish, wavering slightly on his axis, condemned to be an undefined and stationary glare.

So on that day, the sun decided to make the bold move and steal the moon's pale robes, hoping that no one would notice.  I did.

My mother is as dainty as a teacup, as colorful as a tapestry, as rare as an alchemist's recipe for gold, as valuable as...nothing this word holds, voluminous as its pockets may be.

Her delicate profile tempered my features, made my lower lip full, kept my nose from spiting my face.  If I had any aspirations to grace, it was through her.

When she had me, I made the birthing rather difficult, and for that I apologize.  Large shoulders will get stuck, but that's hardly an excuse for a most disconcerting debut.  She loved me unconditionally, and I believed I howled like a monkey in return.

Her style is not the style of comfort or resignation.  Like the person it adorns, it is witty and sophisticated.  And out of gratitude to one who wears it so well, Beauty has decided to stay.  My mother is beautiful.

She battles age on its own terms - any gauntlet it cares to throw down, she picks up and slaps it across its barren face.  The years are pointless, meaningless.  They do not order her around; in fact they are roundly defeated.  Time has not been able to change her, and it retreats in disgust, shaking its hands which have been left inexorably ited.

Our friendship is profound.  We are the best of sisters. 

Many times I've reflected on my spectacular good fortune to have such a companion.  We know each others' thoughts:  they travel side by side, and the drivers - mother and daughter - lean out the windows, waving to each other with happy recognition.

Mom, wishing you a happy Mother's Day barely scratches the surface.  I love you. 

"The morning beckon
       With water praying and call of seagull and rook..."
             - Dylan Thomas

I am a devoted admirer of seagulls.  I find them humorous, charming, ridiculous, beautiful, clumsy, graceful and full of webbed aplomb.

I know that many people disagree with me.  I remember visiting Hastings, an ancient town crowned with battlements, tumbling into the English Channel.  Every morning I would join our group for breakfast, and inevitably the conversation would lead off with bitter complaints about the gulls' crying throughout the night.  I had to disagree.  I enjoy being reminded that the ocean is near; that if I were to open a window I would be embraced by the sea with a veil of salt, dappled with scales and starfish.  I enjoy listening to their forlorn voices threading through the briny fog and sea clouds.

When they are grounded, their dignity is absurd.  They stare intently into the horizon, looking for the forests that grow beneath the waves and the islands shrouded with maritime breath; for the pock-marked hides of whales; for rainbow-colored grottos.  They sense the tides, they hear the currents.  They gather in serious groups - an open invitation for children to invade and scatter their numbers.

And when that times comes, they run into space, taking a leap into its invisible rivers - swimming higher and higher.  The wings extend so wide and fine, each feather ruffled by the airy fingers holding their host aloft.  Then, like a kite flying itself, after much maneuvering, the seagull becomes a stationary ship on its sea of wind:  staring down with benign interest on the curling waves and the stippled shore.

Sometimes I see their chevron-shaped shadows circling over the rocks and hillsides.  Calm and leisured, they are messages drifting down from their madcap owners.

I occasionally see them in the city, several miles inlland.  Now, I know that seagulls are opportunisitc feeders with a powerfully developed sense of smell, and that they can smell a rancid banana 50 miles away.  But I always liked to think that they were there to remind me - as they did many years ago in southern England - of coastlines, patterned shells and creatures shining beneath the waves.

That coy minx, emily sears, has tagged me. I now walk through the city with a dart in my shoulder, the tranquilizer calming me and encouraging me to:

1. Share a list of songs that defined you during at least eight significant years of your life beginning in early childhood.

2. There could be more than one song for each year, if you like, and and they should be songs that were released or popular in that year (but if there was one important to you that year which was released earlier, that is acceptable).

3. Please tag your post 'playgroup' and then tag four other people to do the same. 

 

1.  When I was in junior high school, I was very busy.  Busy creating the Aubrey that types this very post.  All that I am was either polished, researched or dreamed about during those years.  Those were also the years when I seemed to be incurably sad.  And I considered music to be the pool to reflect my thoughts.

Paul Simon, "American Tune".  This is a political song.  But in 1975 all I heard were these words,

"Many's the time I've been mistaken,
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I'm alright, I'm alright
I'm just weary to my bones..."

And they meant all the world to someone who was badly in need of comfort.

2/3.  Then there were the years in the mid-1980's when I was a romantic, waiting patiently to be disappointed.  I wanted to hear the same yearning, and to hear the beat of someone else's broken heart:

The Smiths, "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side"
The Smiths, "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out"

4/5.  But during those same years, I also harbored a wish for unabashed joy - untouched by cynicism or irony.  And I wanted it beat over my head by a tirade of guitars.

Big Country, "Fields of Fire"

"The shining eye will never cry
The beating heart will never die
The house on fire holds no shame
I will be coming home again"

Big Country, "In A Big Country"

"I never took the smile away from anybody's face
And that's a desparate way to look
For someone who is still a child" 

I remember playing my Big Country records at full blast - at 11, actually - with my ears smeared across the speakers, my heart and emotions racing.

6.  I was a college graduate when I first heard this (released in 1978).  I was a secretary in a collections agency.  I was not happy with my job, or with other people.  I expressed myself clumsily and oddly.  But I had the wit to lose myself in a song that I then didn't completely understand.  It was like taking a walk in the darkness, enjoying the directions that just exceeded my grasp.

The Only Ones, "Another Girl, Another Planet"

7.  In the late 1970's, I also carefully stepped into the lava pool that was punk rock.  There was a lot of muck to step over, before discovering a passion so virulent that it could lift you off the ground.

The Clash, "Tommy Gun"

8.  This is the one.

1965.  A madness of words, somehow linking together to convey a message.  I bless the chemical, the intelligence, the truths, the lies that whispered the lyrics to this song in his ear.  Dylan in the mid 1960's was unexplainable, undecipherable; he was as exotic and unreachable as a unicorn.

Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"

I invite everyone to take part in this little musical exercise.  During the course of this composition I did more thinking and remembering than I thought myself capable of.

Many years ago the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held an exhibit that occupied an embarrassed corner of one of its galleries.

It was a showing of German art, from that pocket of time between the World Wars.  No one wanted to see those pictures.  Art that carries its truth like an unextracted knife is not popular.  What I saw were reminders of the green-hued visions the artists saw in the trenches, or the equally gangrenous sights trapped inside their minds like a poisonous fog.  Those memories could only be faced if they bled onto the canvas, or were torn from a lithographer's stone.

I visited this collection five times.

One artist interested me in particular.  His name was Otto Dix.  He treated his disturbing subjects with skill and delicacy.  Like Egon Schiele's twisted nudes, they were shocking and magnificent.

In 1924, Dix unleashed a portfolio of rabid dogs struggling in their restraints; he called the series of drawings 'Der Krieg' ('The War').  At this time, carousing in her perfumed mud, Germany was daring and suicidal - pressing a razorblade to her jugular, tapping it with her bloody claws to see how far she could go before the pale skin broke.

I was stunned by the lines that knitted a blanket of lunar architecture:  craters ripped out of a protesting earth by iron fists roaring out of the howitzers and tearing handfuls of dirt from the meek crust before throwing it into the black sky.

 There was a small etching of a fearsome sculpture:  a skull - all hair, skin and cartilage melted into the earth.  Its expression had evaporated into the atmosphere.  And yet it lived:  sprouting from a cracked jaw, through a destroyed mouth, over teeth that slanted like a rotted fence, inside wriggling orbits, were worms.  Vibrant and hungry, symbolic and hated - they hinted at the afterlife that the missing skeleton was experiencing, as they waited to be harvested from their field of bone. 

Nothing was easy to look at.  I feel awkward posting these two examples here.  I think I was aware of the slender, yet powerful lines, the charismatic contrasts, the scumptural dark - before I noticed the corpses, the landscapes:  the entire grisaille of hopelessness.

People are inclined to ignore misery.  It is a human tendency.  But at this eloquent exhibit, art stepped in...not to make the war to end all wars palatable, but to make sure it remained unforgettable.

Our Lady of Bovine Mystery, AmyH, has tagged me.  And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large ch...

Skip a bit, Aubrey.

OK.  Here are the rules:

1.  Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.

2.  People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post the rules.

3.  At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.

4.  Don't forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they've been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story:

 

1. At work, in the late 1980's, I was the subject of some gossip.  When I found out about it, frankly, I was delighted.  I didn't mind - terribly - who knew; I was kind of hoping it would get me the sympathy vote, actually.

2.  I can eat any salad lettuce-side first, finishing with the croutons and all the yummy bits.  It's a talent that requires a steady fork and a focused mind, and it has taken many years to develop.  Now, at the snowy summit of my talent, I can look down on the diners laboring at their Caesars and Chop-Chops and Cobbs and say Carpe Dinner, my friends, continue fighting the good bite.

3.  Don't you ever, EVER, serve me a martini with a lemon twist.

4.  Modern music for the most part bores me.  To be honest, I'm more interested in what the band members are wearing.  Got your own MySpace page?  Got your video on iPhone?  That's nice.  Now go away.

5.  I had the chicken pox when I was 29.  On the day that my face erupted with all its pent-up poxy force, I unwisely looked in the mirror.  And I let out a yelp of dismay that could be heard throughout the neighborhood.  For the next two weeks I laid in bed with a cold, (oh, did I mention that it was high summer?) wet rag on my throbbing face, listening to Billie Holiday.

6.  I hate tomatoes.  Their taste, their smell, their texture, their dripping intestines - they all add up to vegetable/fruit hell.  Tomatoes destroy salads, sauces, sandwiches, omlettes - wrecking havoc across the edible horizon.

7.  Boyfriend and I visit Monterey every year, as close to Halloween as we can.  The reason for this is that many years ago, while we were walking along the wharf one Halloween day, we saw someone dressed as Dracula - unless it was the dark Count himself - visiting the wharf as well, inspecting the morning's catch.  We now go every year, hoping to see him again.

     7a.  Boyfriend and I have been together for over ten years.

8.  When I was tiny, my pediatrician told my mother that for her baby's health, I should have one hour of sunshine and one piece of bacon each day.

 

Long ago, I was tagged with a meme demanding that I reveal 8 interesting things about myself.  Please note that this time the things are random, not interesting.

But perhaps you've already figured this out yourself.

Since I believe that this is the flank end of this meme, I beg that all those who have not yet joined in the revels do so with all speed.

I'm not sure.

It might have been that I haven't visited her in nearly six months.

It might have been that she was feeling flippant - as I watched her flip surfers into the air.

It might have been because she was appreciative of the respect I give her.

It might have been because she knew I loved her.

I just wasn't exactly sure why the ocean saw fit to give up one of her jewels, and leave it - poised and pretty - for me to find:

Much has been written about this child and her admirer.  Speculations from each passing decade are layered like sediment, creating a geology of conjecture.  These two are caught in amber, her eyes dark requests, his eyes pale and lowered...relics of Victorian affection.

England in the 1860's was romantic and foolish.  The little girl who possessed beauty and innocence was treasured as a charm to protect an adult against the black-cloaked world.  She was the reminder that a diminutive land still existed; where perfection lived, unquestioned and swathed in happiness.  She was a dainty cherub, demanding and bold, charming and spoiled.  She questioned the world and waited, a cloud in lace and ribbons, for the marvelous answer she knew would come.

Alice Liddell was such a child.  As a woman her features lengthened and solidified, but when she was young they were fluid and petulant.  Her face was broad, a suitable platform for eyes that were probing shades.  Dark and demanding, they provided both questions and answers.  Beneath her eyes were wisps of shadow - as if the scarlet fever that carried away two of her brothers had once cupped her chin in his burning hands and looked deep into those eyes.

Her profile was graceful, with a delicate nose forming as refined a slope as you would find anywhere in Switzerland.  Her fragile body seems lost in the multitudes of petticoats...she can barely lift her head over the avalanche of fabric.  The billowing folds of cotton could be hiding air; her frame is so subtle.

Yet for all her ethereal prettiness, she was a starry force; blazing and blinding.  Hers was a determined light - now stilled and sepia-bound - but once alive and insistent.  It was strong and delightful.  It was persuasive enough to inspire a shy Oxford don to write for her...a fairy tale living inside a Bosch painting.  It was a tale of rabbits with pocketwatches, caterpillers breathing in the honeyed tobacco of their hookahs, cats that purred through the dimensions, a tea party where no one poured, a croquet game where no one played.  It was a tale of mangled songs, poems and dances; a tale where the English language was tickled, tweaked and twisted.  And when the breathless adventure was done, he laid it at this little girl's feet.

"Alice!  A childish story take,
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood's dreams are
Twined
In Memory's mystic band,
Like a pilgrim's withered wreath of
Flowers
Pluck'd in a far-off land."

...who seeks the answers in the depths of her father's coat.

Boyfriend's garage has suddenly become a nursery.  Three children are blinking at the world from the safety and warmth of their mother's sides.

There are two families.  Their homes are ramshackle and the real estate they've chosen is not of the finest.  However, only a handful of twigs are necessary to house little beating hearts and comforting feathers.

The doves are back.

We believe that Ms. Dove from last year has returned to her former site.  Her furnishings are just as opulent.  She has given to the trees and to the sky, one baby:

It's on the small side, as you can see.  But as you can also see, Ms. Dove is especially concerned and delicate in her ministrations:  a soft ruff of cloudy lavender feathers rest protectively over the little one.

Now, in addition to this pretty friend, a new one has moved in.  Ms. Dove #2 lives further back in the garage.  She chose a bed of coiled tubing and not much else to raise her family.  Comfort was clearly not an option.  Rather, a safe and dark hiding place to rest motionless, waiting for the stirring and cracking of her eggs.

She has two fine, healthy babies - twin images foretelling a benign, gentle adulthood.  On the day that I took this photo, it was nearly 100 degrees, and as there wasn't much cool air circulating that far back in the garage Mother took a powder, leaving her children silent and staring.

Since then, they have ventured out of the nest, stretching their new wings, wondering at the breeze filtering through the pinions.  They'll be gone in a couple of days.