Molly Goatwax

Triggers

Anyone who has quit or managed an addiction can attest that many factors act as triggers in creating strong yearnings for the substance formerly abused. Today I missed the cigarettes acutely as one deal after another fell through at the office. I was angry at the people who caused the failures. Then the 4:38 bus failed to show up and the 4:58 was late. The second hand smoke from the alkies who were passing a bag-wrapped bottle and smelled like dirty underpants at the bus stop nearly drove me to break my resolve. I still have to wrap up some messy ends at work, but now I can sublimate some issues with paper and glue. To the studio! Some crayons!

Good clean fun

Every once in a while the Quakers offer us a really fun Family Service Opportunity. In this instance, I signed the twelve year old and myself up to help in some reefball construction. There are two phases. There is the building of the mold and pouring the concrete, then a week later, the unmolding and clean-up of the set product. Unmolding sounded more fun, so in a few weeks we will join the other volunteers behind the maintenance building of the school to bust up. Here follows is a photo from the Reefball Foundation.

The healing powers of chiles

It often hits me this time of year, a sadness set off by the wearing of sweaters and yellowing garden that makes me lonely and restless, like I'm missing something. It's hard to pin down what I feel sad for though. It could be a person, a tradition or a way of life or all of those mixed together with a tinge of regret for what I never had. I went to visit a friend who was also feeling a bit weepy around the edges with the gift of peppers. I laid out a pallet of green hot bananas with a hungarian wax pepper and some red super chiles with a yellow tomato. She put them in her window to let the sunlight deepen their colors for a few days. I hope they give her a nice dinner.

the window

This is what I see over my desk at the office. Today a man paddled away in a kayak to the distance. If I go to the water's edge across the street, I can say hello to some teal ducks. Their future holds a bag of stale bread ends.

the screamed in porch

I need to close the door to the sun room and block my ears so that Hubby can complete the improvements.

sage advice

You can almost always find a can of cat food fallen to the bottom of the pantry.

four chairs by the side of the road

Cosmic Joke

When it was first installed in front of our train station, the 51 foot tall monolithic sculpture, Male/Female by Jonathan Borofsky caused a lot of controversy. I decided to reserve my judgement for awhile, until I came across some tracing templates with those exact human shapes. It made me feel that the idea and the execution were too facile and glib. This morning I looked at it from the window of the bus I was riding as it passed the train station across the expessway valley. Backlit by the rising sun diffused by mist, the shine of aluminum as it dwarfed the train station that was once the passenger hub of the East Coast evoked the surreal. I felt like I was one of those ant-like people in a Sci-Fi movie as they run from a giant monster. Then I got it.

Photo by Jefferson Jackson Steele

up to our old tricks

Hubby and I have been looking at houses in every state of disrepair, and some that have been tarted up! The one we went to see today had all the layers of wall paper, dropped ceiling and linoleum on the floors peeled back to look at the old surfaces...and pressed against the southern window of the dining room was a fig tree in full glory. I went outside and plucked a couple of them in as perfect a state of ripeness as you could wish. Soft, dark and purple as a bruise on the outside, a delicate melon colour on the inside, they didn't taste like much. It just re-inforced my dislike of fresh figs.

speaking of which

I need a two inch tall Wonder Woman. The game store by my office had other small D.C. comic figures, but not this super heroine.