brain thoughts
Tuesday, oct. 10, 2006 | 0 comments
Most of my memories are fleeting things, a faint echo of a particular emotion, or a general impression of how something used to look—My Childhood Home—which is really just an amalgam of multiple days or moments all overlapping and blurring together into one faded mental snapshot.
But I also have this small collection of special memories that somehow always stay fresh and close to the surface. While regular memories take a smell or a sound to trigger them, all I have to do to access one of these super memories is close my eyes, and I’m right back in that moment, feeling and thinking and experiencing things exactly as though I was right in there. If it’s a childhood memory—and these kinds of memories usually are—my body even feels smaller. And I feel the smoothness of my worn flannel Lanz nightgown, the skin on my young knee actually feels tighter, sounds, smells, the quality of light in the room…it’s all so real, it doesn’t feel like a memory, it feels like time travel.
I wonder if it has something to do with the way memories are stored? Maybe these super memories exist right at the very core of the memory vault, or they’re like an elevator shaft running through a hotel with cheap walls: they’re accessible from many levels, and you can always feel, sense, hear, even smell their nearby rumbling.
watch that smile slowly fade: a tip about toothpaste
Tuesday, oct. 10, 2006 | 0 comments
If you find yourself drawn to Crest’s new “Refreshing Vanilla Mint” flavored toothpaste, I do not recommend you go through with it. It’s not that it doesn’t taste just as good as it smells (there is a scratch and sniff sample on the packaging), it’s just that brushing your teeth with its “whitening expressions” is very much like brushing with candy. And while that may sound like kind of a great idea, it really isn’t. It turns out. Unless you like going to bed with the essence of “queasy post-Halloween gorge” in your mouth.
whirlwind show and tell
Monday, oct. 9, 2006 | 0 comments
And now I present to you a sampling of photos (it is a small sampling; I am not so great at keeping my camera both adequately charged and at my side) from my journeys over the past month or so:
This (from the jaunt to Manton, CA, this past weekend) is bootmaker Jack’s handsome and very relaxed gentleman horse, Dandy.
I fed Dandy a handful of cherry tomatoes, which Kristin and I picked fresh from Jack’s garden, and those lips were huge and muscular and very soft, much like my heart.
A sample of the fine views and also the well-preserved Tule Elk, which Marco and I spied while hiking around Tomales Point last weekend. (Oh wait, I didn’t even take this photo, Marco did.) Not only do they have multiple harems of elk out there (for that is what they’re called, these clusters comprised of one bull elk and his many maidens: “harems”), but the trail is also home to an assortment of nice middleaged men (presumeably organized and sanctioned by Point Reyes National Seashore officials) who stand along the trail and ask you, in gentle tones, if you’d like to get a closer look at the elk via their pre-focused spotting scopes. It may pay to note that, contrary to the instict that may urge you, as a city person, to ignore or even walk briskly past a stranger who offers you a private viewing of an elk harem, these men are perfectly safe. They may even have an authentic elk antler for you to handle.
Marco and Piggy at the dog-friendly Pescadero Beach, sometime in September.
More Piggy at Pescadero.
And finally: the Elephant Super Carwash in Seattle, the one and only thing I photographed during that entire trip. And, as you can see from this Elephant Super Flickr cluster (sent to me by the lovely Inger), this really is a wildly snap-tempting subject.
jay mcyay!
Sunday, oct. 8, 2006 | 0 comments
I’m a huge, huge fan of Jay McCarroll, the Season 1 winner of Project Runway. I think he’s charming and funny, and self-effacing and insecure in a way that makes him seem extra likeable. Great fashion senses, too: I’m really into the way draws deep from his small-town quilting background to make such amazing and unusual clothing, stitchy things full of all kinds of interesting, beautiful fabric combinations.
You may have already seen these, but I just ran across the pics from his Spring 2007 show (which was sponsored by the Humane Society, more points for Jay) at the very important OLYMPUS FASHION WEEK, and hey there sure are some interesting things in there, cute and still very Jay-ish. Look it:
Put a Lucky mag love-it sticker on that blimp print skirt, please. (The bagel frame bracelet, too!)
A nice, simple dress, but note the exceptinally nutty and great bird-cage necklace.
Prooving he can do something clean and simple, but still preserve his bright eye for color.
A skirt loaded with all Jay’s fabric smarts, plus pockets!
I like all the graphic craziness going on here, plus the silver leggings, and how the tattoos pull it all together.
It doesn’t seem like a polkadot tubetop pantsuit and insane wireframe necklace would work, and yet somehow this manages to be weirdly awesome.
yoyos and chili and deer!
Saturday, oct. 7, 2006 | 0 comments
Right now, I am thumb-typing these words into my Sidekick as Kristin, her aunt Donna, and I drive back from a night of chili and beer and apple pie with Jack the bootmaker and all his friends. While at his house we picked tomatoes, I fed a horse, and there were chickens, two cats, a fleet of semi-tame deer, a dog named Joe, and even a drunk neighbor with a gun who cruised over on his ATV and dropped some science on us about landmines.
Today was also the big Manton apple festival (though all the apples and apple-related pies and things were SOLD OUT by the time we got there, what?, though I did get the very best glass of lemonade I’ve ever tasted), and we even caught a few hours of the National YoYo Championships in Chico.
To make room for all the many things we crammed and tucked into this day, we had to get up at 5am and drive and drive all over the place (well, Kristin has done all the driving), and now I feel like I’m going to melt into a puddle of sleep right here in my heated car seat. Photos to follow!
Also: another Desperate Housewives recap is live. This one took just eleven hours to complete, but it was also only 7,574 words long!