666: The Mark of the Meme

Lee, in her unquinchable thirst for knowledge of me, has tagged me with the SIX meme.

The Rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Write six random things about you in your blog post.

4. Tag six people in your post.

5. Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

6. Let the tagger know your entry is up.

The Random Things:

1. The distance from my wrist to the base of my index finger is 4 inches.



2. My shoe size is 6 1/2.




3. My jugs are my own business, thank you.




4. I once injured my left medial meniscus while walking down these stairs in Via Spiga black suede stilettos. I was on my way to a rosary at the funeral home.





5. Yes, I can be a little flashy.




6. My favorite color is ALL OF THEM.



The Tagees:

1. Jo
2. Meanie
3. Rubye Jean
4. Ellie
5. Anna
6. Patty

I Am a Rubik's Cube: I Simply Do Not Know What I Am Doing

Oh no, Lee has tagged me for another quiz. This one tells you what kind of puzzle you are. Let the truth be out:

You are a Rubik's Cube

You are engaging and popular. People are drawn to your colorful personality. As much as they try, people can't stay away from you. And while you seem easy to understand, people can't figure out what direction you're coming from.

What Kind of Puzzle Are You?

Travel Tips for a New College Graduate

1. There will be lots of doors of opportunity. The trick is to find the right key to unlock one of them. If you don't put your finger on the key right away, keep looking. Success is 5% inspiration, 95% fumbling with your keyring.



2. When you've succeeded in unlocking a door, proceed with confidence and style, but don't forget to look back and reflect on the effort and focus that brought you to the place you are. It will intensify your enjoyment of accomplishment.



3. Standing on your own two feet takes strength, coordination, and a few falls. And sometimes you even need a little support.



4. Don't expect all of life to be neat. Some of the sweetest things create an absolute mess. Savor the sweetness. Celebrate the mess of it all.



5. When it comes to love, let your expectations be very high.



6. Scramble up to the challenges during rocky times. The enlarged view will amaze you.




7. The Wizard isn't approached by a yellow brick road. The Wizard is inside you.



8. When life gives you trash, turn it into a fashion statement.



9. The journey has many surprising turns. The learning curve is sometimes a hairpin, at other times a deeply relaxing stroll. Sharing it with others makes for rich travels.



10. Don't feel you have to reach for the stars. That will only give you a torn rotator cuff. Remember you are made from the very dust of the stars. You shine. Never shy away from your own radiance.

Flannery Leigh Merideth

Bachelor of Science, The University of New Mexico, May 2008
Summa Cum Laude
University of New Mexico Alumni Association Citizenship Award
Graduate with Honors in Psychology
Presidential Scholar
Mortar Board Honor Society
National Society of Collegiate Scholars
Who's Who in American Universities and Colleges
Dean's List
Two-time UNM IronChef Champion
Founder, Blue Plate Spectaculars Culinary Club
University of New Mexico Morning Runners
Finisher, P.F. Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Arizona Half-Marathon
Resident Advisor (two years)
Agora Crisis Center Volunteer (two and one-half years)
University Hospital Emergency Room Volunteer
University of New Mexico Trailblazers
Voices for Planned Parenthood Volunteer
University of New Mexico Community Experience Volunteer
Los Alamos National Laboratory Intern
Research Assistant, UNM Department of Psychology
Research Associate, Mind Research Network

Feel-Good Friday: The Physics of Encouragement

Most of us are clueless. At least that's the way we feel. We stumble around in a zone of unsureness, tripping on our own question marks. Should I? What if? What would they think? Who do I think I am? It helps to get a little encouragement now and again.

One rule of the BIG E is that it can be given to one who has already received it. There are those who collect pig figurines or Happy Meal toys or armadillo drawings (by or of I'm not sure.) I've even read of a collection of celebrity toast portraits. But today I am presenting the Excellence in Blogging Award to a person who's a collector of kudos. And blogging awards. My informants tell me he was a finalist for both a Rhodes scholarship and a Walkley, Australia's equivalent of the Pulitzer for journalism. He's authored several coffee table books of photography as well as at least two novels. His photographs never rely on gimmicky, after-the-fact photoshopping but reflect a painterly eye, one with an unerring sense of composition and color. Not surprising, since he used to be a painter. His first novel was a bestseller in India and his essays have appeared in various publications. Talk about a Renaissance Man, a Citizen of the World.

This character must be insufferable, right? I mean his next book is probably called Full of Myself. Then again, that would be too expected. And this is a fellow who loves a good plot twist as much as the rest of us. So he authors a blog featuring his exquisite photographs, his retelling of odd news events, peppered with his prodigious puns (I forgot to mention--he is a pun-meister's pun-meister), an occasional memoir, all kinds of photography tips, tips on manuscript preparation, etc. etc. Probably the most remarkable feature of his blog is Post of the Day, wherein he lists several blog posts by others which struck him, either for their excellence in writing or photography or art, or their level of honesty, or their hilarity, or their very uniqueness.

My efforts have been encouraged a few times. And yes, I've enjoyed this. But even more so, I've discovered great new blogs by following his tireless hyperlinks. My blogroll continues to swell, in part thanks to David McMahon and his authorblog. As if you didn't know whom I've been talking about!

David McMahon, the blogger who had to install atomic generators to power his site meter.

David McMahon, Encouragement Maven of the Highest Order.

David McMahon, genius in the Physics of Encouragement: pass the Encouragement on to others--they'll keep passing it--then those guys will pass it still farther. Encouragement, it's exponential. It's Einsteinian. It's a wave. It's a particle. It's a boomerang. Pass it on. It comes back.

My mother never washed her hands...

...that was the belief I held until I was seven years old. My mother never washed her hands because my mother was not dirty. No way. She was a perfect supernatural being, on the same astral plane as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. It was my neighbor, Margaret Veal, who shattered my cherished myth. Isn't there always a kid who serves as the Neighborhood Myth Shatterer?

Margaret was the kind of kid who loved to instruct the more sheltered among us in the ways of the world. She knew about Kotex and how babies are born (from their mother's navels, of course) and how to pronounce "deviled ham." She called it "d'villed." I found her rather sophisticated, but that afternoon, when she said, out of the blue, shifting the miniature pots on the stovetop of my Deluxe Dream Kitchen, "Now your mother has to wash her hands before she cooks supper because she could get germs on the bread," I flat out denied it.

"MY MOTHER DOES NOT WASH HER HANDS. MY MOTHER IS NOT DIRTY."

Later that evening, as I observed Mama placing pieces of flour-coated chicken into the hot oil of her electric skillet, I casually said, "Margaret is so stupid. She said you wash your hands before you cook supper."

"Well, San, of course I wash my hands before I cook supper."

Say it ain't so.

I grew up with a mother who poured her energies into raising my sisters and me, a mother who enjoyed mothering and passed on that legacy. Although she worked jobs in various locations in the years before I was born--in the catalog office of Montgomery Ward in Chicago, for example, then later, of all places, a chocolate factory in Georgia--she settled into life as that fairly common presence of the 50s and 60s, a stay-at-home mom. My sisters and I never rode the school bus. Mama picked us up. We never ate the disgusting cafeteria food. Mama packed a balanced, flavorful lunch for us. At home we seldom had any food from a can. Mama cooked garden-fresh green beans and cream corn in the summer and in the winter, we ate the corn and the peas she had "put up" (frozen) in the summer.

She was a "room mother" at school, which meant she provided coconut-embellished chocolate oatmeal drops for parties, and we got to eat the leftovers. At church she was elected to the office of congregational secretary, which meant we always had a stock of communion crackers in the bottom drawer of our mahogany china cabinet. That my mother was entrusted with the solemn duty of purchasing the symbolic body of Christ, by the case, from The Baptist Bookstore, I took as clear evidence of her supernatural status.

Yes, those crackers were off limits as snacks. And yet I recall stealing into the dining room, sliding open the drawer, rummaging around for an opened box, and peeling back the wax wrapper. As I nibbled on one (or two) communion wafers, I recited in my mind Proverbs 9:17. Stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

Bennie and I are flying to Alabama tomorrow morning. Sunday will be the first Mother's Day I have spent with Mama in...well...I don't remember how long. I visited her last May, but that visit was timed to coincide with her cancer surgery and recovery. Actually, I may have arrived on Mother's Day, but I arrived at night, and on the eve of major surgery, so that doesn't quite count, does it? I would love to take my mother out to dinner on Sunday, for the entire family to gather around a big table and laugh over excellent barbecue, but that won't happen. Mama is severely disabled with arthritis now, and car trips, even short ones, are an ordeal for her.

It's disconcerting the way life has a way of circling back. The mother who helped me learn to walk now needs considerable help in getting around herself. Even so, that mother from way back when, who held me lightly, balancing my small upright body over my grandmother's lawn, who coaxed me to take my first steps, continues to wish me well and egg me on. And that young and beautiful vessel of energy who never washed her hands in her ever-so-lovely flawlessness? She lives forever within.

To this day, I cherish her. When I'm feeling unsuccessful or dirty or unloved, I only have to call on the Perfect Mother Within and I feel lovable and successful and very, very clean. I'm one of the fortunate ones: I had a mother who loved me so much I believed she was God. And in her way, she was. She taught me how to love, and in my book, that's worthy of worship. That's worthy of eating a little stolen bread in secret, savoring the taste of unconditional love.

Saturday I had the pleasure of bringing a new painting to the gallery, one I'd labored over, and selling it within a few hours. And Sunday I had the sublime satisfaction of reporting the incident with pride to Mama. She was just as excited as the day I brought home my first hideous homemade Christmas ornament assembled from Styrofoam and toothpicks. (It looked a little like a Sputnik.) I may have honed my technique a bit, but my mother's enthusiasm for all things made by her children never changes.




I love you Mama! I always will.

Heart's Destiny: How a Painting Changed My Life

In 1983 I was the sales director of a large, rather commercial gallery at Union Square in San Francisco. We sold lots of slick limited-edition serigraphs by famous artists. Every evening when I got off work, I’d walk by the Academy of Art College. I enjoyed looking in the windows, which displayed the work of the students. Often the work was a little raw and unfinished. It was usually on canvas, and I loved looking at the surfaces of the paintings, which revealed, as they say, “the hand of the artist.” There were visible brushstrokes and little mounds of dried paint. So unlike the perfect, museum-mounted products under glass that I sold all day.

One day a large grayish canvas depicting some kind of canine creatures made me stop. What were these? Dogs? Although there was some blue pigment here and there, the overall impression was muddy gray. The perspective was odd. One of the dogs had its rear in the air. One of my mother's terms popped into my mind. Engagingly ugly. Something about this painting held my attention. Every day I found myself stopping and looking at this canvas. The head of the dog with its rear in the air disappeared into... what? A kind of gray rectangle, which suggested a subterranean passage. Were these prairie dogs?

Then one day the painting disappeared from the window. Oh well, I thought, it was odd while it lasted. For the next few days I found myself walking on the opposite side of the street from the art college. I was trying to avoid the window, now devoid of the gray dogs. Despite myself, I would look longingly across the street, expecting the dog painting to come back. A cable car, crammed with tourists, ground its way up Powell Street, its bell ringing in my ears. That celebratory sound always lifted my spirits, but today I was sad. I trudged up Powell, feeling foolish for being sad and nostalgic over a painting I hadn't even seen up close. My common sense said...There will be other, better paintings...

I nevertheless found myself calling the college gallery one afternoon. What had happened to the large gray painting of canines? I inquired.

“Ohhh!” an enthusiastic female voice responded, “You’re talking about Cindy’s ‘Blue Wolves.'"

Blue? Wolves?

“So what happened? Did somebody buy the gray dogs? I mean...the blue wolves?"

“Oh no, it was part of our B.F.A. exhibition, which came down last week, and Cindy took it home with her. Why don’t I give you her phone number?”

“Sure.”

Well, that was easy.

And so I purchased my first original work of art. I went to Cindy’s apartment in Bernal Heights and paid her the asking price of $300--even in those days that was pretty reasonable, but hefty enough to carry a certain significance for both of us. Even Cindy's art professor husband regarded this as a significant transaction. He helped me strap the six-foot canvas to the top of a friend’s Datsun and we drove it across town, where I would hang it in my tiny efficiency apartment overlooking the financial district. It gave my space what the decorators call “scale.” My apartment grew visually. What had been a twenty-by-fifteen-foot rectangle dominated by a view of the apartment building across the street, became a twenty-by-fifteen-foot space commanded by an expanse of textured canvas. Thanks to the abundant natural light provided by the windows, the blue surrounding the wolves jumped out from the shadows and gave the entire room a dreamy, soft-tinted, blue aspect. What I didn’t know was that this little purchase was already beginning to give my life a kind of “scale.”

I didn’t know that, even as my friend and I gingerly transported “Blue Wolves” up and down the hills of the San Francisco neighborhoods between Cindy’s home and mine, my administrative assistant at the gallery was looking dreamily into the eyes of her boyfriend and deciding to travel to Europe with him. The next morning she resigned from her job. On an impulse I called the young artist Cindy and asked her if she would like a part-time job. She already had a job but suggested her friend Leslie, a graduate student. Leslie took the job and was great. Leslie introduced me to her friend Bennie.

“You’ll like him,” she said. “He eats that offbeat Southern food, just like you do."

Bennie visited me in my efficiency apartment, and we sat under the painting "Blue Wolves." I looked into Bennie’s blue eyes. I was falling in love. He liked my poetry and he liked my black-eyed peas. Ours was a karmic connection set in motion by our Southern ancestors. Like a big pot of turnip greens that had been simmering for generations in some invisible, cosmic kitchen. It was time to eat. Bennie looked into my eyes and said he saw “the wolf." He too was falling in love. Together we watched the sunset reflected in the windows of the apartment building across the street.

I started going to punk clubs with names like The Sound of Music to hear Bennie’s band play. Bennie went to Macy’s to buy some ties. He got a job in a competing gallery. He too had a knack for selling art and became the sales director of his gallery. We saved our sales commissions. We opened our own gallery on Union Street, an elegant shopping district sandwiched between Pacific Heights and the Marina. It was high-rent but not staggering-rent as was Union Square. We discovered there was a market for paintings that revealed “the hand of the artist." We married...Ten months later our daughter was born...

27 months after that we had a son...


And so on...

...We now sell paintings in New Mexico. Through the years our customers have shared their own stories with us, stories of how the paintings they've bought have altered the scale of their lives, changing them in surprising ways. What's more, I took up painting several years ago. My latest painting, "Heart's Destiny," at the top of this post, is my painted acknowledgment of the way our destinies seem to be altered for the better when we listen to the urgings of our heart. And "Blue Wolves"? It still hangs in a place of honor in our home. People visit us and sometimes they comment on the painting.



“Hey, those gray coyotes are cool,” they say.

Feel Good Friday: Awards by the Truckload!

Someone on some wonderful blog--was it The Mother of This Lot?--reported that her blog awards situation is getting out of hand. She is now being followed by paparazzi. I can't say the same. I've left the building. Nobody cares. Yet.

But I do wonder who the hell that was lurking in the junipers behind the dead pinons this morning.

He wasn't snapping pictures, so I am operating under the assumption that he's a Hollywood talent scout.

And National Enquirer has been hounding both my kids, absolutely begging for exclusive interviews about their mother; apparently a Mommy Dearest slant is the intention and cash will change hands. Go for it, darlings. Tuition is high these days.

Yes, all of this started rather suspiciously the evening of April 10. That's the day, driving my weary buns into the driveway at 6 Lucero Road, I first spied that guy in the juniper. And that's the day Paula over at self taught artist and Kim over at Creating Space had awarded me this:

That's what I call one hell of a trophy. Liberace meets Winged Barbie with a teensy bit of art nouveau rolled in. Paula and I have both googled arte y pico and something is being lost in translation. Arte. That's easy. "Art." Y, pronounced "ee," means "and." I knew that. I mean I live in Nuevo Mexico. We're talking Spanish here. Espanol por favor. But pico??? Here in Nuevo Mexico we eat pico de gallo. That means "rooster's beak" and it's a salsa of fresh chopped veggies, heavy on the peppers. Es muy picante. Es muy delicioso. (And I'll admit that's not a very logical name either.) I went to the Arte y Pico blog, the creators of this award, and had Google translate their page. According to Google's automatic translation, Arte y Pico means "Art Peek" not "Art and Beak." OK. I'm still a bit confused, but some things you have to take on faith. That's why I'm taking Arte y Pico and displaying her proudly on my blog.

Here's the fine print associated with this award:

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogging community, no matter what language.2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her/him the award itself.4. The Award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte Y Pico" blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.5. To show these rules.

So now, as per preceding fine print, I distribute this award to five recipients, visual artists who, with their diversity of talents, make me green with envy.



Daphne, of Five Foot Under
Corrine (Do I have your name right?), of Jafabrit's Art
Andrea, of colouring outside the lines
Bridgette, of Contemplating the Moon
Lori, of Chatoyance

And of course, there's more...on that fateful April 10, Cath of Crazy Cath's Reflections awarded me this:

What I LOVE about this award is that Cath created it herself (with a little help from a Google image search) because she said that Daryl (the co-winner) and I are "beautiful on the outside and the inside." That made my day, Cath. And the day after that. And the day after that. And the day after...and well, the Hollywood talent scout continues to lurk in my juniper.

And of course, I want to pass this one on too. So I'm giving it to ten friends with the requisite inner/outer beauty. These are wizards of transformation. Dar brings gorgeous paintings out of the sweetest place inside her Charlie-Sheen-clad being. Patty wields the stylist's scissors, taming bad hair, one head at a time. Ellie teaches the young ones to climb out of their shells and sing! Jo and Lee are rising, phoenix-like, from the ashes of disappointment. Shrinky and Ms. Bones cast magic spells with words. Rubye Jean and Anna are passing on a legacy of beauty and love to their kids and grandkids. Adventuress Celine travels to exotic places and brings us back souvenirs in the form of lovingly crafted travel logs. And Cath, well Cath, got this whole thing started--she's the Fairy Godmother of Beauty. Shall we make that eleven recipients? The awardees, all of them smokin' babes of the highest order, are:

Ellie, of A Creek Runs Through It
Rubye Jean, of Somewhere over the Rainbow
Anna, of A.Bananna
Jo, of Celebration of Life
Lee, of Chrysalis Dreams
Chewy, of The Back of My Headboard
Celine, of Fugue
Ms. Bones, of Bones of the Sky
Patty, of Lost in Solitude
Shrinky, of Shrink-wrapped Scream
Cath, of Crazy Cath's Reflections

And in the spirit of efficiency, yeah right, I tag EVERYBODY for an easy meme, also courtesy of Cath: post a picture of what is on your computer screen. It's called the "I'll Show You Mine if You'll Show Me Yours" meme. Fun, huh? When you've posted your image, why don't you stop by here and let me know? Here's mine:



And, yes, he's beautiful on the inside too. Muy.