love & empire

This article is just one of a hundred other like it – this grand announcement that investing in real estate isn’t a good option anymore. No really? Also. Was it ever?

The whole conversation – the horror of ridiculously rising real estate values and inflated mortgages that has shorted middle class families;  the decade-long  American hard-on for square footage and that crashed without delivering satisfaction;  the maiming of sub-prime mortgages – an idea that was meant to help put the people into reasonably priced, much-needed homes  – all of it makes me nauseated. When did everyone start thinking of their home as real estate?  When did every single thing we do in this world become some sort of investment.  I bought a name brand purse last week – told myself it wouldn’t “lose its value.”

This is bullsh*t.   Read Louise Erdrich’s The Bingo Palace.  Money can’t buy love or luck or identity or sense of place. Money doesn’t make us grounded. We say we know this, but we don’t.  And what we need are homes, all of us – and not investment options.  Where will our children live when we can’t house them? Where will we live when we are old? Who are we if where we live is just another declining investment option?

Share on Facebook

I feel like the more organized I am, the better I get at using tiny slices of time, the more effectively I multitask, the more adept I get at working anywhere – a basement, a hallway, a train, stopped in traffic, an empty school playing field at twilight – the less time I have. I swear it’s a conspiracy of some kind – a post-industrial, global economy fueled conspiracy. Like somebody’s out there adding mor and more uturns in my ratrace maze.  I’m stronger, smarter and better than I’ve ever been, and I have never felt such a lack of time, such a need to scurry. Where’s the time for friends, for rest, for watching the light fall over the buildings? I want to stare at the walls, shop for a new shirt, write a real letter on real paper. I want to write something beautiful for the families at Fort Hood, say wise and useful things to my children. I want to sip something, and not gulp it. No more running.  No more honking.

And one more thing. It’s not more time that I want, but fewer things to do.

Share on Facebook

roof of the met, originally uploaded by courtney.

I don’t like hybrid words. A derivative of landscape. Right? Land had to come first. It’s not a horizon either. A horizon is a 300 mile sweep, nothing to see but dirt and sky. This one is representative, though. All glory. All chaos.

Share on Facebook

On the day we got married, we stepped out of City Hall and hailed a cab. Our driver had a broken meter, and a cab stand to get to, and he was going to set a record. He took us uptown all right, he took us in and out of the bus lanes and the pedestrian lanes, in and out and around, fast, faster than cabs go, faster than anyone in New York goes, for a hundred blocks he did this, and the two of us, newly married, thrown together in the middle of the back seat, clutching at each other as the car swung from side to side, trying to hold on to the sweet I do and I do, failing, catching sight of the other, green gilled. “Have you ever been in a cab like—“ “no” “is he?” “I don’t think so” “it’s sort of fun” “I’m going to–” “did you see how close that bus–” “maybe two inches?” “I love you” “I love you,” we said.  The kind of thing you say when you are moments from dying.  A car crash just after marrying – just another irony. Or maybe it was us, and not the cab driver or his broken meter, remember that time when we tried to drive to Carmel and there was a rock slide, remember the time there was a blizzard when we went to the symphony, and we’d had to sleep on Steve’s couch, and he brought us coffee in bed in the morning and our car got buried in a giant drift? Maybe we’d ripped some cosmic curtain, tripped and fallen into a new time and place, or a tilt-a-whirl, or where only angels were supposed to tread.

Share on Facebook

photographer, originally uploaded by courtney.

She had a game yesterday. I’d never been to a field hockey match before this year. I’ve been to four of them now, stayed the whole game. This is constitutes more kid sporting event time put in than for the last 18 years combined. Almost. I went to 1/2 of two or three regattas. I went to a dozen softball games in Sydney, but I didn’t watch, and I whined about it. When V had indoor soccer I pawned her off on the other moms for “car pool” only I never had to take my turn b/c the other moms were going anyway. When JM had football and his dad was in Iraq, I got my dad to take him. I was the chess mom, but I don’t think that counts.  I wasn’t just neutral about their sporting events, I dreaded it.

Yet, I don’t actually hate watching sports. I lived for sporting events in high school, had peak experiences every year at the State basketball final in Casper, screamed myself hoarse at a double overtime MSU game in Bozeman. I still remember the glory of watching SHS football from the old skool bleachers when it was still being played at Central Junior High School. Friday Night Lights. I have lived it. I loved it. It’s not that games aren’t fun.  It’s that I feel so lonely when I’m watching my own kids. They don’t need me.  They don’t even know I’m there.  I feel a bit competitive around the other parents.  I get really moved too. I think that’s the real reason. That beautiful child. Racing around a bright field in open air.  Hair flying.  Knees dirty.  She knows what to do and where to go!  How did she learn these things? Hand-work, foot-work. A play? A shot on goal? When did this happen? Where was I when she was learning it all.  The glory of it. To see your child so.

Children can run without getting weary. Can you imagine? It makes me weep. I’m no good at small talk, can’t stand too near the sideline.

Share on Facebook

Every once in awhile one of the other of us will try to have the “Why Art Matters” conversation with one or more of the kids.

Sometimes the conversations are sort of fun, the kind of talking that makes you feel like you are a supercool bo/ho type parent who is both hip and educative. It usually happens in the car when you’re on your way to do something that they think is positive—like going for ice cream. As in:

“Picasso cut off his ear.” “Why?” “It was Van Gogh.” “I think it was Picasso.” “Definitely Van Gogh.” “Why?” “He was nuts.” “Did it bleed?” “Of course it bled. It was his ear.” “He wasn’t exactly nuts…” “Dude, he cut off his ear.” “Well, yeah, but he was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century and he had to live his whole life without anyone recognizing his talent.” “So?” “Well, if you got a little weird from that maybe that’s a healthy response, not a crazy response.” “How is cutting off your ear healthy.” “It’s not. But if you do crazy things because people are putting the squeeze on you, it seems to me that maybe there is a way to see those responses as appropriate—or at least sort of understandable.” “What does appropriate mean?” “The right response. Like if you cry when you’re sad. Tears are appropriate response to being sad.” “Dude, ear cutting is not—“ “I’m not saying it is, I’m just saying he wasn’t necessarily crazy, but just different, and had a life that was, because of his difference, full of suffering, and if he’d been understood and appreciated he probably wouldn’t have acted crazy, or to put it another way, maybe he wasn’t crazy, maybe everyone around him was crazy for not seeing what a genius he was.” “Huh?” “Is this one of those conversations about how artists get a bad break?” “Yes.” “Mom you are so lame.” “I’m just saying that crazy is a matter of perspective.” “No it’s not.” “Yes it is.” “You’re not making sense.” “yes I am.” “No you’re not.” “See, it’s a matter of perspective—whether or not I am crazy. “Whatever.” “Like when your brother was pinching you and you screamed and stuck your foot out of the window you weren’t crazy, right? There was a reason why you acted that way, but I didn’t know it and said you were bad and ugly and naughty.” “Oh.” “Did Van Gogh’s brother torture him?” “Actually he was his only friend.” “So what did he have to worry about.” “Never mind.” “Can we get the ice cream now?”

Sometimes it comes out of desperation, as in one or the other of us saying, again, “no I am not an unemployed teacher, I’m a writer,” or “artist’s make art, it’s their work, and it doesn’t look like other people’s work, it doesn’t fit inside a 9 – 5 day, you don’t really commute to it, or have an office, but it’s just as important as other kinds of work even though often times you don’t make any money, and it’s really really hard and maybe more important. So can you please stop interrupting me. Please Please Please. For an hour. Give me one uninterrupted hour.”

And then sometimes it just comes out of nowhere and stays there and you can really only stand there, wondering.

Scout, pissed as all get out because she’s being made to go see a Hopper exhibit: NO ONE CARES ABOUT ART EXCEPT YOU AND COURTNEY!

Share on Facebook

It’s the one insane taboo left: sex as a natural and vital thing. They won’t have it, and they’ll kill you before they’ll let you have it.

D.H. Lawrence

Share on Facebook

At its best monogamy may be the wish to find someone to die with; at its worst it is a cure for the terrors of aliveness. They are easily confused.  Adam Phillips “Monogamy”

Share on Facebook

sidewalkchalk, originally uploaded by courtney

I was shooting this photo at the aforementioned playground and a little old lady who was also holding a camera came up to me. I like to take photos too, she said, only I like to shoot spider webs. Then she gestured to a spray bottle in her other hand. Sometimes you gotta help nature a little bit, she said, bring your own dew and sparkle.

Share on Facebook

i love my imac. i wish i could keep it.

Share on Facebook