Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

It's been several years since I first read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.  I am a devoted Tom Robbins fan and have decided, this summer, to reread all of his novels.  I just finished this one, his 1976 masterpiece about a woman with oversized thumbs, a Countess who owns a ranch named after a brand of women's hygiene products, and whooping cranes among a host of other subjects.  


I have always liked the circular way Robbins writes, weaving social, religious, political, and cultural commentary into the usually complex and hilarious narrative of his stories.  This time through Cowgirls, I found myself more enamored than the first time I read it.  Perhaps it is my age--the heroine turns thirty in the novel and I, soon, will be on the other side of that marker.  The last time I read the book, I was way south of that line.  But, this time, I see several of the passages that--before--had lacked meaning, now resonate with me in the most internal and personal ways.


These are a few of my favorites.  If you haven't read it, it's my recommendation of the month.


“Poetry is nothing more than an intensification or illumination of common objects and everyday events until they shine with their singular nature, until we can experience their power, until we can follow their steps in the dance, until we can discern what parts they play in the Great Order of Love. How is this done? By fucking around with syntax.”


“A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let’s not kid ourselves—all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.”



"Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need. Perhaps there are times when the contradictions of love are so intermingled that the only way to see the truth of love is to pit it against the irreducible reality of lust. Of course, love can never be stripped bare of illusion, but simply to arrive at an awareness of illusion is to hold hands with the truth -- and sometimes the hard light of lust affords just such an awareness."


"A woman without her opposite, or a man without his, can exist but cannot live. Existence may be beautiful, but it's never whole."


"Kissing is man's greatest invention. All animals copulate, but only humans kiss. Kissing is the supreme achievement of the Western world. Orientals, including those who tended the North American continent before the ravagement, rubbed noses, and thousands still do. Yet despite the golden fruit of their millennia -- they gave us yoga and gun powder, Buddha and corn on the cob -- they, their multitudes, their saints and sages, never produced a kiss. The greatest discovery of civilized man is kissing."

Hope

"We judge man's wisdom by his hope."--Ralph Waldo Emerson


I am trying to sow seeds of hope in an effort be as wise as I can.  Here's the effort from today.

Backyard: lavender Bougainvillea, blue Plumbago, gold Hibiscus

Side of the house: tall Daisies

Purple butterfly bush and orange...I can't remember what.  Front fence by gate.

Pink butterfly bush, NW corner--I wish I could flip the image.

Native grass on the north side of the house.

Light pink baby knock out roses next to the front door.

Father's Day

My parent's may have the most beautiful property in all of central KS.  You be the judge.

Steps to what my parents call 'the back 40.'

View down driveway from the house.

Being home makes me happy.

RIver Festival

These are from the Smoky Hill River Festival--and yes: Salina really is as lovely as you have always imagined.

Eva is too precious for words.  This is the last picture I managed to take with the old camera--right before she reached up and yanked the strap out of my hand causing the whole thing to land face down on its lens.  Never fear, though: Target and some well spent money later ensures more photos to come.

No idea what this was, some weird sculpture thing.  I thought it was cool until I realized it had a really cheesy name--Windmills of My Mind or something equally tragic.  I tried to block it out.

Keep it classy, River Festival.

Crowd at the Main Stage for The Steel Wheels show.  If you haven't heard them, you should check them out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnNd0rSCX9U

Yep, that's arty for Salina.

Holly's first Cozy Inn experience.  She was nervous at first, but took to the little grease bombs like a pro.

I Shall Use My Time

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

~ Jack London

My father taught me to be a woman who wants to live rather than exist, to feel things passionately even if that passion is sometimes irrational, and to want to make a difference.  


Here we are when I was two.  I may never have entered another beauty pageant, but I have never doubted myself because he believed in me then, and he does now. 

Happy Father's Day, Papa.  Thank you for teaching me that choosing to be happy isn't about being selfish, it's about having the best life I can.  I promise not to waste my days: I shall use my time.

Finality

The Finality of a Poem, MICHAEL ANANIA

(after Albert Cook) 

All day, that   

is forever,

they fall, leaves,   

pine needles,

as blindly as   

hours into hours

colliding,   

and the chill

rain—what else   

do you expect

of October?—

spilling from one

roof to another,   

like words from

lips to lips, your   

long incertain

say in all of this   

unsure of where

the camera is

and how the light

is placed and what   

it is that’s ending.

Delicious Ambuiguity

“Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity…” 


– Gilda Radner


If I can convince myself that the above words are true, the next few months will be infinitely easier.

Failure

This morning at church the message, printed in the bulletin, was supposed to be about God's abundance in our lives but the minister pointed out that sometimes what's printed on Tuesday changes by Sunday based on what he needs to speak about.  The change this morning brought the sermon to the topic of failure....an odd thing for a preacher to discuss, right?


It's not particularly uplifting to tell a congregation full of people that failure is an inevitable part of life, but that's exactly what he said.  He spoke of society's need to vilify failure, to "shroud it in silence" and relegate it to secrecy.  He spoke of how many people embark on new journeys, fully believing they'll turn out perfectly, that the fairy tale they'd planned would indeed pan out that way, but that failure is not only possible, it is certain.  But then he spoke of our failures as an opportunity for God to work miracles, to--through our failing in one way--open to us another way, one we would never have seen before had we not failed.  A better, brilliant, more perfect way than we could have ever appreciated had we not failed.


As has been the case each time I have attended this church, the message of the day has resonated with me, with things happening in my life, and not in the way that vague horoscopes resonate in their complete transparency, but in a real, applicable, tangible way.  Just last night a good friend and I were discussing failures, our own in particular.  We were trying to determine exactly why we have both reached a near identical crossroads that allows us no agency, no ability to choose, but instead asks only patience to see where the road will take us.  And then, this morning, I hear of Jacob and of Peter, both biblical powerhouses whose successes were born from their failures.  Serendipitous?  Coincidence?  Divine intervention?  Whatever you call it, I needed to hear it.


It is hard to admit to failure, past, present, or future, but we will all fail.  Spectacularly.  There is no way to escape it, but there is a way to navigate that failure.  Perhaps the job you dreamt of did not turn out the way you'd hoped, that dress you ordered online looks awful on you, the life you imagined yourself having turns out to be absolutely impossible.  At the end of the day, there is a night and in the morning a new day.  At the end of every failure, there is the white blank page of a beginning...when something falls apart, the pieces must either be destroyed or recycled.


Many days, I want to burn everything in the wake of my failures.  Set a brilliant fire and fan the flames straight on til morning when all that's left is ash and smoke and the acrid smell of what was.  Today, though, with thanks to the minister who made me see failure as a universal experience rather than an intensely painful and personal one, today I want to believe in blank page, in beginnings, and in building something new.

Happy Birthday, Marilyn

Today would have been Marilyn Monroe's 84th birthday.  I've been thinking about her a lot recently in light of a book of her writings and poems coming out this September (Fragments).  I'm fascinated by the title, Fragments, because so much of what I know of her is relegated to the term.  The public image of her as a daffy blonde doesn't fit at all with her marriage, for instance, to Arthur Miller, a man far too brilliant--one hopes--to only have married for lust.


And then there are these photos of her.  A friend has the one of her reading Leaves of Grass, and I have always loved it.  It got me to wondering how many other photos of her reading were out there and I was surprised to see there were several.  Not just of her reading scripts, but novels, too, including Ulysses.  She must have had a far stronger spirit than I because I don't want to use that thing as a doorstop let alone read it.


At any rate, in celebration of her birthday and in honor of women everywhere who are a whole helluva lot more than they might seem, here she is.