Brain Plastic

This is a (mildly belated) birthday card for a friend I haven't met yet. She's met me, kinda sorta, as her eyes & consciousness connected with the words in my novel Growing Wings. Her aunt told me her birthday was Tuesday, the day I flew back from Wiscon, & I am getting going now with sundry & various accomplishments, including this blog.

Wiscon & Madison & State Street & the farmer's market around the state capitol (someone told me it was the largest outdoor farmer's market in the country) & the food & the conversation & the friends new & old--I am very appreciative. I had fun reading poetry with 3 other poets & the panel I moderated on the workings of consciousness went VERY well. Richard Russell, who is an experienced moderator & was one of my panelists (the panel was his idea), later told me I used a technique for identifying 3 or 4 audience participants in advance that really let the conversation & information flow. He hadn't seen that used before & is planning on utilizing the technique himself. I brought art supplies (placemats & colored pencils) to the signing, so was very happy creating during lulls. Delia Sherman & Ellen Kushner sat at my table, so I had very good company indeed.

I am about to play some cards--a game that my business partner & I invented, which stimulates brain plasticity--so I shall ta ta for now.

Blog alternative:
173. Take a walk or a drive. Admire license plates that have cool numbers or letters on them. Make up a vanity plate for yourself.

From skull sutures to distal phalanges--I love thee so, dear skeleton

A few weeks ago I had a phone conference with a lovely bunch of girls in Nebraska, who read Growing Wings in their school book club. In appreciation for them & their attention, I offer this drawing! (I don't want to ignore Maryam & Nancy, the book club coordinators, but I didn't find out their favorite colors...)

It is absolutely gorgeous today. Sunny & breezy & brisk. (66 degrees as I write this in the midafternoon.) Just the sort of mountain day that lets you know it's still spring. I have nothing against summer, but one of the things I so love about living in the mountains is that even in summer, you get the cool-downs that let you appreciate the warm-ups more.

I just purchased an interesting thing--an iron creation with 12 large cups on it designed to hold bottles of wine. It hangs on the wall & looks like a vine. Now, currently I have just 1 bottle of wine in the house & I doubt I've ever had 12, so why did I buy it? Simple: art supplies! Paint brushes & colored pencils & markers & pen & glue sticks & scissors. Oh, what fun. I might even reserve 1 or 2 cups for tea lights, if I get some LONG matches to light them with. Probably cast some pretty fascinating flickers from deep inside the cups. It was on clearance because the top cup is very shaky & not wine-worthy, but a few paint brushes won't stress it out. I'll probably put cups of supplies inside the metal cups, so I can lift them out as a unit & set them on a table. Of course, a couple bottles of wine will be good to have as well....

(Yeah, I know, this is perhaps as deeply satisfying as a description of watching paint dry; but hey, remember my theory that you're better off doing something personally satisfying rather than reading blogs, so if I'm boring it's probably all to the good.)

Now it is time for me to go pack for Wiscon. Perhaps I shall see some of you there.

Ooh! I forgot to mention that Skritter has officially launched. Check out the website at skritter.com & be sure to look at the comic. (My connection with Skritter, which is a program that helps people learn to write Chinese characters, is that it is the brainchild of my offspring Nick.)

My other offspring, Zach, recently drove to Montana for the graduation of my lovely niece Crystal, who managed to be both valedictorian AND homecoming queen. Plus she's nice. So many beautiful people on the planet. (You among them. I'll claim you all as relatives.) The word on the street is that Zach represented us splendidly, which surprises me not at all.

Blog alternative:
171. Lie down in a quiet place (or sit in a noisy place, if that's what's available to you) & appreciate your bones. Think of them as the tree in the center of the garden that is you. Thank them for making your blood. Thank them for being a cosmic transmitter-receiver of energy. Thank them for making sure that you're not just a puddle of goo, blurping about on the floor, unable to throw a football or hold a paintbrush, unable to make love, unable even to make a sandwich. Rah, rah, rah, Yay Bones!
&
inspired by the word "Bones"
172. Go see the new Star Trek movie!

Busted Theramin Cherry--& Hi Mom!

The title refers to the fact that I--she blushes modestly--am no longer a theremin virgin. Yes, at Hatchfest Asheville a few weeks ago, I got up close & personal with a theremin. & it was fun!

In the last month I attended parts of 2 great festivals: the aforementioned Hatchfest (which was, btw, born in Bozeman, MT, where I went to college 30 years ago. Coincidence--well, maybe, but I doubt it) which is an innovation incubator, & Wordfest Asheville, which is a poetry festival. I was able to hear & speak with Li-Young Lee, who I have had the pleasure of hearing twice before (once in Rochester, Minnesota, during my birthday week when I was 25ish & at the National Federation of State Poetry Societies annual convention in Oregon in 2002) & other fabulous poets new to my now, including Valzhyna (kinda like Regina) Mort from Belarus. & the amazing Alan Wolf (who presented a workshop/reading for & by young poets, including his amazing son Simon, coincidentally at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Center.)

Today is Mother's Day. I was well-wished by my sons (one of whom had challenged his Skritter co-conspirator to think of a single other woman who would happily let her child eat off the floor) & I am about to do the same for my mother. But I would like to extend the well-wishing to you all, of whatever age or gender or parturition status. Happy Mothering Day. Congratulations on the daily (or momently, if you want to break it down further) birth & nurturing of you, yourself.

Blog alternative:
170. Appreciate yourself as your own child, & as your own mother. Make yourself a card. Buy yourself dinner or flowers. Take yourself to a movie. Thank yourself.

Five Point Ozone

Yesterday was the much-celebrated release of Laurel Version 5.0 & we dare say she is now even better than before. As with any new release, there is some debugging going on. 5.0 came with sniffles, which is not a feature we plan to support. Enhancements include clutter control & inspired organization. The piece de resistance, though, is superior self-centering, in which Laurel is increasingly aware of her own point of reference & preference & adjusts her course accordingly. This is not a standard upgrade, as many think it will take them out of the sphere of Love&Caring, but we find that Laurel fills up with Absolute Unconditional Love 17% faster than her previous (already high) rate, which then spills over onto her friends & relatives & relative strangers & the universe in general. In short, Laurel 5.0 is now more popular than ever with herself & it is possible--although not necessary--that 5.0 will be the preferred version worldwide.

Blog alternative:
169. Think of yourself as a piece of software. Plan a new release, perhaps scheduled to coincide with your next birthday. Cathy Version 4.4? Nikola Tesla Version 15.3? John Cusack Version 4.3? (You get the idea...)

Sense of Wonder Thunderstormy

Between Cusco & Machu Picchu, Peru trip 2004

April is one of my favorite months. In part because it's spring personified & in part because it contains my birthday. (April 22nd, Earthday, I become the 5.0 version of Laurel. Yee-haw.)

I am better at being me than I ever have been. That is something to celebrate. Really, I feel like every single day is my birthday, because every day is the new beginning of life.

Tonight is the second session of my screenwriting class. The text is Screenplay, by Syd Field, & I really LOVE this book. Not just for the practical screenwriting advice, but for the metaphorical metaphysics of it as well. For example, he tells us that if you don't know how to end the screenplay, write the ending you WANT to happen. He tells us that any action or dialogue should do one of two things: illuminate character or move the storyline forward. If it doesn't do one of those things, it doesn't belong in your screenplay. So, I extrapolate that into the realm of writing & creating a life & see the choice element: I'm going toward the ending I want & I get to pick the characteristics in my life that I would like to illuminate & if something isn't leading me toward what I want, well, why am I putting it there? Whining? Don't like that story. Worrying? Don't think so! Creative? Yep. Loving? Yep. (I could go on, but you get the picture. More importantly, I get the picture.) I'm the screenwriter & the director & central casting. I'm liking this movie. It's got magic & romance & adventure & peace & great scenery. & a thunderstorm. (But don't worry, I've unplugged my computer, so I won't get fried while bringing you these words.)

As a class, we came up with a character & her background, to start playing around with how to play around with screenplays. I have fallen in love with my ex-basketball player drug rep who has just moved back home with her parents at age 31. I might just keep working on this one for a while. (I got another really great idea, but it's more complicated so I think I might try to get one screenplay under my belt first.)

All righty then, time to go do something, anything, outside. One must take advantage of a good thunderstorm.

Blog alternative:
168. Imagine your life as a movie. What is the genre? Romantic comedy, action adventure, one of those real downers where you just know the main character is NOT going to get the good stuff? Remember, you're in charge. You can change the plot around (Hollywood does it all the time) & shoot new scenes & even go back & give old scenes new interpretation. If you don't like the genre, change it. Take creative control.

Dear Chaos, I'll never forget that weekend in Paris...

March is marching steadily toward completion. It came in like a lion (or perhaps more like a lamb if you consider that the white fluffy stuff that blanketed Asheville looked like lamb's wool), triskadekaphiled a second Friday the thirteenth for the year, skipped a merry Irish jig over St. Patrick's day & is now mere days from becoming an April Fool.



I bought a new salt crystal lamp (seen above, through 2 glass blocks) (have I mentioned how much I love glass blocks!) & took a class in dry stack stone. It's been a while since I've been so delightfully dusty. As "civilized" humans (these would be intentional airquotes if I were speaking this blog to you) we don't spend enough time messing around with the bones of our grandmother earth. I recommend it!

Chaos is my new love. As in fractals. Chaos theory. The butterfly effect. Not so much a new love as a deepening of an old crush. It's as if I had Miss/ter Chaos as a pin-up on my bulletin board & spent time fantasizing about it & then we had a chance to meet & talk. I have gazed into the eyes of Chaos & I didn't think, hmmm, you're curvier & more self-similar in your pictures... The Teaching Company course on Chaos is really fantastic. I recommend it highly. (Just finished lecture 17 of 24.)

I'm heading back to my apartment now. The property manager just finished installing a new washer on my bathroom sink--I had a serious drip of the faucet.

Blog alternative:
167. Get dirty. Play with mud. Stack some stones. Chop some wood. Help out at a branding. (When I was a kid, we got to wrestle the calves. Now that's some satisfying dirt &, well, um, shit.) Get down on your knees & pull some weeds.

Billy & Willy--can Milli Vanilli be far behind?

Dear Google Chrome, 

What's with the font stuff? You want to be the cool new kid on the block? Support fonts. (Georgia, Georgia, Georgia on my--oops, that's scheduled for later in the blog.) Heck, Blogger wants me to access my account with a Google email address, so y'all ought to be working together. I can get to my fonts in (polite cough) Mozilla Firefox. Need I say more? Now, please excuse me, for I must talk to my loyal blog followers (um, that would be Cathy & Bill & probably Sharon & Bruce & Helen & Nick & Chloe & Jeremiah & possibly Zach) so, Google Chrome, I say TTFN.

Semi-warmly,

Laurel Winter

Hi Everybody Else (Okay GChrome, you're included too),

Now this is weird. Georgia may have JUST started working. Not sure, because sometimes (in Chrome) it SAYS it's working & when I post it's a boring font, but we'll see... (When I started it wouldn't even pretend it was using Georgia.) ( p.s. I've posted & I see that it WAS just pretending to use Georgia.)

Okay,

Wow,

Shift in the universal energies anyone?

I've talked to several people, including myself (hey, I love talking to myself) about how it feels like a whole different universe since February started. Like time compresses & expands willy-nilly, that sort of thing.

I see that I am going to have to use a more concrete example of a dramatic change in the spacetime continuum:

I took a basket making class--2 of them, actually--out at the Arboretum. Involving needle & thread-substitute. (aka raffia) I only poked myself once. For those of you who have known me less long, you may be unfamiliar with the fact that the last time I played with needles, not-so-willingly, was high school home ec class, more than 30 years ago. Boy, did I not go to the head of the class for that! But I sat there &--under the tutelage of a wonderful Cherokee woman named Nancy Basket--made a cute little coiled pine needle basket. I'm not going to quit my day job (poetry, stories long & short, art, inventing stuff, designing stuff, guiding cosmic energy through people) anytime soon to make coiled baskets, but it was fun. Then, after a nice lunch break, we had a second class:

Freeform Kudzu Basket

I gave that a line of its own, because I am definitely going to have fun with kudzu again. & again. & etcetera. Talk about having the raw materials handy. & if my friend's yard runs out (not likely) pretty much anyone you go talk to & say, "Pardon me, but can I borrow a cup of kudzu? I brought my own clippers." will give you as much kudzu as you can carry & refrain from calling the mental hospital because they just hope you're crazy enough to come back for more.

little pine needle basket digesting

in belly of freeform kudzu basket

I've also been listening to some cds. (Yeah, I know, I'm probably one of the last 3 people on the planet to not own some sort of IPod or mp3 player--but that will change. I just got advice from my sons on which device I might want, so I can transfer songs & not be dealing with stacks of scratchable discs. [this is the camera speaking, I who still have complete control over her imaging capability. Don't hold your breath, cds.]

So, I got out my 2 disc Essential Willie Nelson & Billy Joel's Greatest Hits, vol. I & II (that's only good through 1985, so I bet there's more out there) &--because I have no Milli Vanilli to follow Willy & Billy--listened to The Proclaimers & John Denver & Don McLean (Bye, bye, Miss American Pie. Drove my chevy to...um, don't want to violate copyright here) & Neil Diamond.

& as Neil Diamond says, "Good times never seemed so good." Here I am in Sweet Carolina, with Georgia on my mind (at least as my font) & Wild Montana Skies in my heart &--well, none of the songs were about Minnesota or Wisconsin, the other 2 places I've lived, but I've been thinking them (& all you who live there) fondly as well. 

As Bobby McFerrin says (another recent companion of my ear) "Don't worry. Be happy." Good advice.

Blog alternative:

165. Listen to some music from your past. Bonus points if you dance around the living room.

&

a bonus:

166. Take a (short) class in something you used to hate/be-really-not-good-at/think-you-couldn't-do-so-never-ever-tried. Your single mission: to have fun playing with it. The great thing about this is if you're able to do it at ALL you're doing well. & it's good if you don't do it well the first time, because then there's nowhere to go but up.