skip to main |
skip to sidebar
and a surprise on the inside...
i'm making valentine cards at the last minute for a valentine card sale at:barbara anderson gallery2243 fifth street, berkeley 94710show opens feb. 5 and cards range from $5-$15. apparently this show/sale has been happening for about 25 years. can't wait to see all the cards. i'm a sucker for v day despite the fact that it's so commercial and heterocentric and tends to make people who aren't partnered off feel shitty. i like red and pink and hearts and cards and romance. what can i say. here is a sneak peak.
go here to listen to some groovy music by jonas lindgren, found on sara's site. and speaking of music, i received a great cd mix (just the kind of music i like) from lovely mati, a fellow SF blogger. mati and i went to cafe gratitude yesterday. it was a delicious (the food and the company!) time. i am so happy to have met mati through blogging. her words and her art i read/see on her blog and her way of being are so inspiring. now off to make some more cards and then to hear sean hayes. perfect rainy day activities.
i'm writing this tonight, instead of Tuesday because it seems apt to write this before going to see Willie Nelson at the Fillmore. my dad introduced me to Willie as a child. i have always enjoyed Willie and am excited to hear him and see his bright smile very soon! this here is from the trip my family took to Lake Arrowhead to pick up Blitz, the second Schnauzer in our family history of Schnauzers. (it went Salt, a min. schnau., Blitz, a standard, Bjorn, a giant, Savannah, Reggie, Payton, and Rolf, all giants.) we usually had 2 dogs at a time. anyhow, this is in Lake Arrowhead, one of my first memories of snow. i think we did some sledding on this trip too. i like how crazy happy (which you can't really see in the scan) and tiny i look and the way the snow is flying down and how far away from the camera we are. also blitz was one of my favorite dogs (course i can pretty much say that about all of them...)
well, this is a fuzzy picture of a picture that hangs in my parents' house. it's me and hez, my best friend from ages 3-13. i actually have a lot of cute, clearer pics, but i kinda love this one. (that's me on the left.) hez and i met in preschool. i actually only remember one thing from preschool - the incident when my teacher asked me to put some stuff away in a shelf before going to play outside. i started putting stuff away while all the other kids filed out. i think the teacher must have forgotten that i was still putting stuff away, because she turned the lights out and left! i think i tried the door and it was locked (or seemed locked). i freaked out. i had been left all alone in the (relative) dark (two extremely frightening conditions all at once!) anyhow, i went into the bathroom that my classroom shared with hez's classroom, crying, and she came over and saved me. i don't remember if she took me outside through her door or what, but i remember i was saved. our friendship was pretty formative for me. hez and i were generally inseparable. at one point i think her mom suggested hez get some fall back friends, just in case. i wonder if she thought we were too close. anyhow it didn't faze us. we continued to eat lunch together, sitting crosslegged on the pavement, sipping capri suns...and to spend summers together in her family's pool or chasing/talking to the animals at my house. we slept (and were naughty!) over at each other's houses and hid when our parents came to pick us up. near the end of middle school, hez got more into boys and i got more into drawing, or something. we both hung out with some other friends. then she left to go to a private high school... my first heartbreak i'd say. she is still breakin' hearts as far as i can tell, (huh hez ;-)P ?). but 10 years of growing up with someone, of learning about who you are with someone, talking, dreaming, giggling, dancing, and running around and being wild and crazy is certainly worth the heartbreak. other spt folks
some new fabrics
mondo beyondo list (this list is always changing. funny how this particular one seems to get more and more mondo and beyondo as it goes on. who am i kidding, get a dog that gets along smashingly with Pinky Leon!)
and a recent idea i forgot to write on this list is for my housemate erica and i to do a housing swap one spring/summer with some people in stockholm (preferably people with a really cool apartment with nice light)happy MLK day!
so went to see brokeback mountain last night. what a painfully beautiful and beautifully painful story and film. my stomach is still aching from all that largely unspoken longing in that movie. all that tension. i had decided that 2006 was going to be a year of letting go of some impossible and paralyzing longings for me. start living more instead. for starters, i was going to stop listening almost exclusively to death cab for cutie. it's been four months of dcfc for heaven's sake. anyhow, with the movie still fresh and my stomach still aching, i figure i have one or two more days of sitting with the beautifully painful. am now listening to old edie brickell. that song just me by the sea. a couple links:the k bearmotvind (for swedes. i like this young woman's writing and lovely pics. and she has one cute dog.)i think i will enjoy writing out/posting my mondo beyondo list this weekend.i think i have an exciting card project/opportunity in the works too thanks to a certain monica. will share more soon.
some of you were interested in seeing more swedish tomten (santas). you're probably over xmas stuff by now, but if not, here is a flickr set of some of my mom's tomten. and you can see a set from snowy sweden. and a set from the flight over to sweden (we were mysteriously upgraded to business class on the way there. it is everything you hear about and more. boy does sitting on the way back in the middle of the middle row, squished next to a track and field guy with long legs and a bad cold, who coughs on you for 12 hours suck after having experienced a business class upgrade.)
since my mormor is much in my thoughts these days, thought i'd share 2 more photos of her for this month's self portrait tuesday personal history theme. (unfortunately lots of good pics are at my parents' house.)
me and mormor. this is back in the days of the perm., circa 1986?
one of my favorites of my grandparents. thank you all for your nice thoughts/comments on my last post.
other spt folks
i've just come back from sweden where my mormor died dec. 26, 2005. there are so many thoughts in my head and heart about the trip, the funeral, my many memories of mormor and the kind of person she was and what she meant/means to me and to others. i know i have a lot to write down about all this, but right now the web doesn't seem like the place. maybe later it will. i have a picture, which for some reason i don't want to post here but will describe instead. it was taken before i was born i think, or shortly thereafter. it is of the dirt, gravel road/path leading up to my grandparents' vallsta summer house, where my family spent many summers. the forest and mossy ground is in silhouette on either side of the narrow road. at the top of the road's incline lies vallsta, but because of the way the sun is shining on it, one can barely make out its outline, just the peak of its roof is visible. walking up the road, their backs to the picturetaker, are my grandparents, whose figures are small and a bit faint, but are so clearly them. i look at this picture and think of a poem mormor told me morfar (grandfather) asked mormor to read to him near the end of his life. it is a love poem written by sten selander called luftslott. (directly translated luftslott means air castle. not knowing exactly how swedes read this, i read it as castle in the air, or heavenly castle.) in the poem, the poet writes in his old age to his wife about their growing old together and about their loved summer house where they will soon go (their luftslott), far from reality where everything is beautiful. he describes the house in a way that one can tell it is a real place, but at the same time it might also be heaven. when i look at the picture of my grandparents walking up the road to vallsta with the bright summer light ahead of them, i see them walking to their luftslott and feel like they are together there now. the below picture is of my grandparents, in the early 70's i'd guess, in front of vallsta.
(for swedes, you can read sten selander's luftslott poem here.)
