Cape-Abilities

Back in the seventeen hundreds somewhere, guy named Capability Brown, landscape architect, used to walk onto English country estates and declare: “Place has capabilities!” Transformed the formal French garden into what we now revere as the English countryside, vast lawns and trees and lakes, the beauty of the natural England, aesthetic of a golf course. He didn’t wear a cape, but he revived the pretty of what was already there.

Stretch of road between Grandin and Florahome, short stretch between two small places, is where I came upon a dead man. He wasn’t really dead, turns out he was just a drunken epileptic whose wife had thrown him out of a car while they were having a fight. I try to look for the place in the road where it happened, how I came around the bend on a new moon night, no street lights. There was a rise just beyond where the man lay, one arm in the lane, place where I stopped my car. I can pick out three places where it happened. One of them has got to be right. I’m unaccustomed to rescues. I fail the details.

An auto accident makes very little noise. Perhaps it makes no noise at all if I hadn’t been there to witness it. Saw it coming a quarter of a mile before it happened: a delivery van accelerating, weaving. The guy smashed his job right into a guardrail, ran the engine block square into the blunt end of the rail as if he were aiming for a clenched fist. The van bounced back and slowly rolled off on its rims toward the opposite shoulder. The driver wasn’t hurt, but he’d sure lost his job. And he knew it. Big man. Wept. Nothing I could do about it.

After, I drove to the end of the earth, but the beach was crowded with spring breakers. I imagined I was some spectacle to them, fully clothed and surrounded by families of bathing suits. Still, it felt good to put my toes in the cold ocean, to know there’s something bigger out there than I am.

Superman dated Lois Lane, “Low Us Lain.” I watched his movie again recently. It’s back from when Gene Hackman had hair, before Marlon Brando became a Godfather, and when a white man could still get away with a name “Jor-El”. It’s when Christopher Reeve was still alive and could fly.

The movie was filmed on grand stages before sets were digitized into virtuity, filmed when the term “green room” meant “area of refreshment.” Director Richard Donner takes his time to show us the grandeur of the ice palace and the wonder of Superman’s abilities. We go through minutes of flying dreams, when flying was new, and those were the best dreams anyone could ever have. My gosh the movie is slow, slow motion super powers, slow, seductive Hollywood, won’t you sleep in my crypt-tonight? The only thing Superman does quickly is change clothes, and even then he’s got his briefs on the outside.

Solving the Y2K problem was supposed to keep airplanes in the air and businesses grounded. Yet the exact opposite has happened. The word “sublime” became confused with “subprime” in the same way you could reverse “focus” and “fuck us”. This place, this economy, this market needs something out there bigger than I am, bigger than my mortgage, bigger than a thousand other mortgages, someone with cape-abilities…Ben Bernanke in tights!

In the meantime, here are emoticons to express what you can’t bring words to.

EMOTICONS for today’s economy by C. J. Godwin

:-) No new subprime lenders went bust today

:-( Another mortgage lender filed for bankruptcy

=I:-)= The Fed is going to adjust the rate

*:o) Bernanke is a bozo

:(=) Jimmy Carter led a better oil crisis

+<:-) The Pope to make an appeal for economic stability

}:- Bullshit market

~~ 8 Bearshit market

:-o Uh-oh, what was that?

:-@ I hear screaming

B) Now donning protective goggles

.-) Tell me when it’s safe to open both eyes

:- # Kiss your ass good-bye

Conservation Peace

Stand just in the right place in my yard and all the trees align. They’re not trained to do that. They were planted that way. Row by row, column by column, past my yard, beyond the neighbors’ to the very edges of the development they form a grid like soldiers at attention, watchful over the houses in their ranks. I live in a recycled neighborhood, an old pulpwood farm, where land had already been cleared by humans for one use, and now has a residential zoning. Despite the carbon Sasquatch that I drive, I’m proud of where I dwell.

Furthermore, I am a garbage snob. I play a little game with myself every week. I try to get my recycle bin to hold more items than my garbage can. Everything is disposable when you come down to it, and perhaps the ability to waste is what has made this country truly great. I don’t care. I like the challenge to see how many things I can recycle. This little contest often starts with the grocery story about avoiding telltale signs of the big bad non-biodegradable containers.

I’m not greenwashing here. I’ll give you my disclosures so I don’t get caught in some biohazardous scandal. Yes, I made the conscious decision to use disposable diapers, and I swore I’d teach my babies to recycle. Triangle formed with arrows was the first shape that they learned. Thank the Lord for disposable diapers and may we find a more environmentally acceptable way to deal with them.

I throw away glass. One of the most recyclable substances there is and I pitch it in the garbage, yes, I do that. Glass is not picked up curbside in my neighborhood. If you try to sneak it in the recycle bin, the crew will throw beer bottles all over your yard. I shun the extra effort to store the glass and haul it for appropriate disposal. My bottles are providing necessary air pockets in the overcrowded landfill to allow aerobic decay.

I do not, however, put grease down the sink. Anybody with a septic system knows not to do that. And I am not running a prostitution ring nor have I ever propositioned sex in a public bathroom. Not that these things are inherently bad for the environment, but they do create a lot of wood sacrifice for the sake of newsprint.

God bless those of you who read this off your computer screens without making a hard copy. Your carbon emission credit will surely be used by some less worthy country.

The apostle, Paul, was the first Christian to champion paper-reduction practices. He wrote e-pistles, no?

Unlike Paul, I am the most unpublished writer on the planet. My ratio of production to publication is very out of balance, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t try. Oh I try all right, and computer technology has enabled me to try at a faster pace.

The absolute fasted way to get rejected is to send an e-query. I did a multiple electronic query over Christmas. I got e-jected within the hour, some within two minutes. It was outside the business day. It was a holiday. It was depressing.

Yet I hadn’t spent a stamp to get rejected and I hadn’t butchered a tree for someone to write bad news on it. (No one’s ever stood up for the free rights of electrons and I burden them without consciousness.)

E-submission gives me a larger scale on which to multiple query and I can readily manipulate my package to the individual preferences of the recipients, for instance whether they accept writing samples attached or only in the body of the e-mail. Printed cover letters, postage stamps, mailboxes, SASE’s become obsolete. I have increased e-missions for a better environment!

So far, the results are still the same.

ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST April 2008 - Review

I know when the placement of a piece of furniture works because it is invariably adopted by the cat, who has excruciatingly picky taste. However, when I’m not consulting the cat on matters of interior design, I do look to such sources as professional design books available in the public library and that ever faithful subscription to ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST.

Now ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST, or “AD” as its intimates know it, is the most pompous, bombastic-perpetrator-of-style magazine you’re likely to run into on a casual graze of the magazine rack. It is the glossy tabloid of the rich and the infamous, or those affluent enough to afford a complete lack of taste.

I truly do love AD, you must understand this, its thick pages, the heavy weight like money in my hand. It is the best over-priced subject of my pot shots, and I have annotated the April 2008 issue for pure pleasure. Feel free to follow along in your own copy, as I will reference page numbers.

Photo front cover – light, airy, tropical. You can’t really “swing” on those couches because they’re suspended by FOUR ropes to the ceiling, instead of two, but they must be easy to clean under. Furthermore, look at the view out the window—it’s a freaking bridge! This real estate is half way built under a causeway!

The Connecticut house design by Susan Green (pp. 84-90) – she is hideous and has done nothing new or remarkable. It’s a study in conservatism.

Mongolian yurts in the Serengeti (pp. 114-120) with bed coverings from India? Everything is foldable, everything is moveable, okay, this is innovative and practical. Thank goodness they didn’t try to picture the army of servants it takes to actually fold up one of these yurts and pack it in an umbrella case. Still, here is creation spawned from amino acids. Here is world-wide cross pollination of style and practicality informing at a new level. It works. As long as you have that army of servants, it works.

Meat Loaf house – Nice tones. Same as everywhere. Who cares? It is unremarkable, except to know that it’s Meat Loaf’s, who has specifically non-decorated the interior as rock and roll. Come on! This is Bat out of Hell, how interesting is it to rebel against that? Sports memorabilia? His house is a study in squandered opportunity; it looks like the reflection of unwasted youth. Furthermore, look at page 140, then flip back to page 138—it’s the same damn table! Well, not the exact piece of furniture, but it’s two candle sticks, a plant and a bowl, same arrangement, even same angle of the photograph!

Scandinavian heights over Central Park (pp. 164-235) is warm and delicate. I like. You could complain that because the wall and ceiling surfaces are painted white on white that the interest of the architecture is hidden; however, for the context that the designers create, the effect is like layers of a snow drift.

D. C. house renewal (pp. 172-179) is summed up by the motto pictured in the library above the fireplace: “Remember the Dead.”

I’d love to write a story about a person who lives in that glass house in California (pp. 182-191), a fish tank overlooking the Pacific. Of course the story would end when an earthquake brings all pretension smashing down in shards of lethal edges.

Thai died at Bangkok House (pp. 192-197) in Bangkok, Thailand. This was probably a really gorgeous dark wood interior, which now looks like an over-sized bird cage for humans. Is that like a giant stadium looking over the trees onto the grounds? See the turret on the left, page 192? Maybe they rent out the yard for game day parking.

New York glamour (pp. 198-203) looks like it was highlighted in lipstick. I love New York. X. That couch with the heavy teal curtaining…what do they DO on that couch?

Found modern and unlikely art in San Francisco (pp. 206-213) – I wasn’t going to make any comments at all about this magazine, about this issue…I was going to keep quiet, keep my thoughts to myself, be polite until I came upon this article, at which point I must, I really must express some opinions. First, it is illegal to possess any remains of a marine mammal without special permitting. Exhibit A, mounted on pedestal page 207 is a bleached whale vertebra, as identified by the magazine’s captioner. If it isn’t bad enough that AD condones use fur fabrics and leather upholstery! All of Greenpeace and whale watchers should descend upon this dwelling and demand the proper curation of this ecofact. Furthermore, and next to a leather chair I might add, is a cobbler’s bench, probably the symbol of oppression for some poor generations of shoe menders, which here becomes a side table to the effluent (yes, that’s the word I meant). Monet’s self portrait? Good gracious I’d like to have a portion of these people’s credit line, though I must say, even Monet looks bored with them. And the culinary studio—aren’t we over the checkerboard kitchen? This is the pinnacle of pretension.

Bora Bora looks just like Disney Disney (pp. 214-219), still I wouldn’t mind a few nights booked there, charged to that resident in San Francisco.

I like the wild craziness of the style in Manhattitude (pp. 222-227), except I could do without the trunks, especially the bashed damaged one that keeps appearing—it’s pictured in the sitting room and the living room, watch closely.

Interesting reflections in Belgravia (pp. 228-233). Did they move that mirror from the entrance hall into the library, or did the house come with identical images? The couches of the library are vibrant rather than relaxing. Those must be some pretty boring books on the shelves. And why is there a lamp on the floor by the window? Okay, I’m really not sure what a lot of the art is in here, but the big black bug thing framed on the wall in the study looks like the portrait of a black widow spider, just the subject for a husband’s office, no?

So here are harmony and irony replete within the pages of this April issue of AD. Ah, and here is May’s.

Cutting Edge

I told my husband if he didn’t sharpen the knives I’d cut his heart out with them. This is a gruesome threat considering how dull those knives are. I was mutilating healthy fresh vegetables with dull blades, juicing more than I was dicing. He gave me a chopper chopper thing instead.

It’s not a Cuisinart that you plug in (I’m not allowed with power tools) and it’s not the nice little housewifely thing with the alligator jaws that give you the ease of leverage against the hardest of carrots. No. I didn’t get that one. This is a man’s invention, a big, strong, mean, angry man, one who likes to pound his fists against frustration, the kind of guy who’d kill for a vegetable stew. You press down hard with quick, deliberate jabs. It’s like jack-hammering by hand, and just that loud. You have to strike with such force as would bring Annie back to life.

It’s a simple, ingenious mechanical design. A zigzag of blades comes down each time you strike the top, and the zigzag changes direction when you let up, ready to come down at a new angle. Not easy to clean, probably meant for a mechanized dishwasher rather than our Amish technique. But this device does achieve the critical increase of surface area exposed; thereby, maximizing flavor output for any given material you’re working with. If I ever do off my husband, I’ll use it to disseminate the body.