A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm!

Two Hundred Seventy-One

So many numbers to mark so many occasions.  Well, today is day number two hundred seventy-one out of three hundred sixty-five, and today I feel proud of having made it this far into my Project 365.  So here I am sharing a slideshow of my pictures with you.

As my own curator, I am biased about the content; however I can see the evolution of my picture-taking and of the year itself.  The darker, more jeweled-toned winter months are contrasted with the sparkle and saturated color of the summer months, and yet the spectrum kind of wraps around itself and comes full-circle.

Um yeah.  Okay so here-- enjoy:

 

The Ballad of Pot and Kettle

Vignette, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Chances are, if you stare at something long enough, you will find something.

What those former and latter "somethings" are can depend on the situation, and on who you are as a person.

If you're a regular person, minding your own business, you may give up after a few college-try moments. You may find a few somethings; turn them over in your head; ponder; and then go back to whatever it was you were doing before.

If you are more of a Torquemada type, well... chances are we're all going to get screwed over.

What You See, What You Get

Dog In Yard (Day one hundred ninety-six), originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Sometimes, there is real value in knowing what you're getting yourself into, or out of.
Sometimes, people are not straightforward. Situations are not straightforward.

People lie. People deceive you. Circumstances help hide the truth from you. And the truth, fickle, eel-like thing that it is, finds a way to slip around any and all constructs. And if you don't watch it, it electrocutes you on its way to freedom.

So this is perhaps why I can really appreciate this situation and this picture, and the friendly dog who allowed me to take her picture more than once without growling or becoming agitated.

Thank you, Paisley, you darling dog in the yard, for being you.

Three Hundred and Sixty-One to Go

Gutter Lace (Day four), originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to my first post of 2010!

Incidentally, I'm still getting used to typing 2010. It's a little odd, and my fingers still want to place two zeroes side by side. How weird to think that the decade is, at least numerically, over, right?

Anyway, this is just a little intro to my year of pictures. I am trying to broaden my view of things and even though I have all the stick-to-it-iveness of a slug drinking a Margarita, I thought it would be fun to try to take a picture every day.

I've made it to day four. I am impressed with myself.

How about you out there? Any resolutions or exhilarating new plans? I would love to hear from you!

Much love, blogworld.

María/Madame Meow

Up the Escalator

Up the Escalator, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Bad blogger.

It's been two weeks and I have been silent. BlogHer noticed-- they just sent a little email.

I just don't know what to say-- I keep dreaming up blog posts but they get shelved. Naughty me.

Here is a picture I like. I took it going up the escalator at Eastern Market Metro two weeks ago (how very ironic!) and I realize that several things appeal to me about it, which are a little like self discovery:

1. I like high contrast scenes.
2. And I like that time of morning where the sun is still new and the day feels fresh.
3. I like taking pictures of strangers.
4. Looking into the sun can be dangerous, but it's a lot of fun.

I will be posting more often, partly to avoid surprising little emails --and partly because sometimes you just have to run with something: you never know when you'll hit that moment of self-discovery where you find a little bit of yourself reflected in the lives of others.

Eat your heart out, Edward Cullen

Eat your heart out, Edward Cullen, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

So by now I assume that most of my readership has at least picked up one of the volumes from the vampire oeuvre by that mensch of kitsch, Stephenie Meyer: the Twilight Saga.

(Aside: Her name bothers me. Why must she spell "Stephanie" with an E?)

And yes, I have swooned over Edward and have tried to put out of my mind the whole freaky obsessive, stalkeresque, folie à deux quality of their love and have just enjoyed the swoon for what it is.

But I refuse to suspend my disbelief for a Volvo S60. I mean, a VOLVO?! The car of choice of hippies, broke college students, and eternal adolescents the world over is the car that the man of girly womanhood's collective dreams drives?

How is that possible?

I mean, with the possible exception of The Saint's Volvo P1800 --the very Volvo portrayed here, which we Meows got to see in person at Barracks Row's Oktoberfest today-- and perhaps the little Volvo that was actually picked out for the Twilight movie (thank goodness for consultants), I cannot think of a more soporific car for anyone to drive.

Seriously. Volvos are dependable and supposedly great in a crash, but I just don't get all starry-eyed thinking about them. I tend to associate Sweden with unfailingly polite people, meatballs, and an evil den of terribly chic and affordable home furnishings; and not associate them with sexy and precise automotive engineering.

Funny thing is, I've just been to Stephenie (grr) Meyer's website,  where she discusses her car choices for her characters. Amazingly enough, she discloses that she cut the Aston Martin Vanquish that Edward drove as his "special occasion" car from Twilight.

Aston. Martin.

One could make the argument that perhaps a Volvo is the right choice for understated Edward, who just wants to blend in.

Alas, how can he blend in if he's gorgeous and sparkly and surrounded by his weird family, AND if his family drives BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes?

So now you know: it's not the part about the vampires and the werewolves roaming the earth and being deadly enemies that makes my suspension of disbelief go AWOL: it's the Volvo.

Two Hundred and Thirty-Three

AC, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Happy birthday, dear adoptive country. You are loved.

_______

Right now, as Monsieur Meow reads Herr Meow a little book about America's birthday ("Daddy, what is "tax"?), and the sirens wail throughout the city, rescuing the hapless and the possibly burned, and our local PBS affiliate gets cheesy with the background music while the sky lights up my screen periodically from all the fireworks displays around, I am happy.

Happy, because birthdays are happy (even mine, exactly two months away).

Happy, because if some fireworks are good, then MORE fireworks are just awesome.

Happy, because it was a lovely, cool, wonderful day today.

Happy, because I no longer have a raging headache.

Happy, because some gentlemen some time ago decided that stupid over-taxation from far away reeeeeeally sucked.

Happy, because this truly is the best country in the world, and there is no other place I would be as honored or happy to call my home.

I love you, United States of America, from California to the New York island.

And There Was Much Merriment, and Bread Pudding

Glorious Ceiling, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

In case you're not familiar with DC's Eastern Market, it is a lovely little building tucked in the heart of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, an anchor of bricks holding down 7th street SE, C street SE and North Carolina Avenue SE.

It was built in 1873 and designed by Adolph Cluss --no doubt, a man who was so named because he was born in a time where the name was just another Scandinavian name, and no more.

The building, though much loved, had become dilapidated and dirty.  And in the early hours of April 30th, 2007, it burned down, leaving little left but a smoldering hull of bricks, glass and debris.

Our collective community hearts broke.  Here is something I wrote that morning.

The picture above was taken on June 26th, the day that Eastern Market rose like a salmon-colored phoenix from the ashes of that fire two years ago. Shortly after taking it, I paused to wipe my face and a fellow patron, equally moved but not nearly as embarrassingly so asked me, "Are you crying?"

"Tears of joy," I grinned.

I am so glad you're back, dear friend.

__________

Some friends go away and come back --sometimes even better than when they left us, as is the case with Eastern Market, which is now air-conditioned, basemented, sky-lighted, properly-toileted, and originally-salmon-pinked on the inside.

And sometimes friends go away forever.

Last week we lost several famous people -- Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and even OxiClean guru Billy Mays (I love OxiClean.  I will forever remember Billy Mays's rough, loud voice whenever I make my laundry cleaner and brighter). In a local accident last week, we also lost nine lives in a senseless and preventable collision on the Red line.

Although death is an intrinsic part of life, it always catches us by surprise. Frankly, the responses to Michael Jackson's death to me have been a little over the top as it is my honest opinion that the genius who dazzled and entertained back in the eighties and early nineties was dead and gone almost ten years ago, and had been replaced by a ghostlike, eccentric and truly pathetic man-child who didn't see anything wrong with wearing pajamas to court after arriving three hours late.   But it is still sad to see someone go at only 50 years of age, with so much wasted potential. 

In my heart and mind, however, the deaths that made me saddest were those of the ordinary citizens of this adopted city with which I fell in love --a couple of whom happened to be neighbors; not the kind of close neighbors who may pick up your mail for a day or two, but the kind of neighbors you see parking their car and coming and going-- the kind that you probably take for granted and may view as background, until the day you realize that a freak accident means you'll never see them driving down the street ever again or waving a warm hello at you as you unload your grocery shopping.

I don't like to think that those mourning could have been us, as Rev. Mom happened to also be using the Red Line that day.  When death is truly close --not just fanatic-close-- your emotions become selfish and self-preserving and complicated.  It's no longer wistful or just plain emotional; suddenly, there is the mind-racing and the feeling that life will never be the same.

That is the thing about death: it's not personal, and yet it is extremely personal.  And as a friend said, death is only sad to those left behind. 

_________

But the upside of death is that, along with the sadness, new life comes along. This is not always obvious when a person, a beloved, or a friend is the one who passes away. But in the case of a building, it can be easy to see what happens when we are able to turn the corner and find there is much to celebrate and much to be grateful for.

I am grateful that Eastern Market is back.  And I am glad that I knew our neighbors, even if faintly.  And I am glad that there were kind and brave people who were willing to help or, in the case of the very brave Metro operator who applied the emergency brake that failed, willing to stare death down doing what was right.

And so I mourn and celebrate this June of 2009, which will never again come, and I remember all the good that came of it.

__________

Celebrate with me: what were some notable things that happened to you this June?

Happy Day-The-Mexicans-Kicked-French-Ass Day

AvoDiptych, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

...so you can see why "Cinco de Mayo" is a catchier cognomen.

Anyhoo, I do like Cinco de Mayo, and it's primarily because it's kind of a Western holiday, as funny as that sounds. Mexico itself doesn't celebrate the Battle of Puebla as heartily and happily as it celebrates its own independence; however, the western part of the United States --united also in the love of Mexican food-- seems to really take to the holiday.

Because, let us face it: there is nothing quite like a good Mexican feast and several good Mexican beers as an excuse to celebrate and perhaps break up the monotony of everyday with vibrant red, white and green. Much like St. Patrick's day gives everyone license to be Irish for a day, so it seems that Cinco de Mayo gives everyone a little Mexicanness-- or at least helps them drink and eat that way.

How can you not like holidays where there is no obligation other than eating and drinking, anyway?

As for me, nothing says "fiesta' quite like guacamole.

How did you (or didn't you) celebrate May fifth?

Magically Delicious, and Some Such

Cereal Killer, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Nobody warned me about the craziness that mornings with preschoolers entail.

Nobody told me to watch out for the monsters and the dinosaurs lurking overhead and underfoot.

And nobody mentioned the rapacious beasts that consume massive amounts of Lucky Charms in the morning.

I didn't know mornings could be this much fun.

_________

By the by, this is my April Greeblepix contest entry. Whee!

Blooming Fool, At Least Once a Year

Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) Petals, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

If you're at all into plants, you may be lightly wondering why I'm posting a picture of an Amaryllis on April Fools' Day.

Simple: my Amaryllis bulb was planning this lovely joke all along.

________

It was planning to bloom once, take a year break, and then stunningly bloom again today, laughing squarely in the face of the twelfth day of spring and as a practical joke on  Smith and Hawken; on the Target that sold me the bulb three years ago; on the year it stubbornly remained dormant and refused to rebloom; and on me, who almost gave up on the stubborn little bulb which was lovingly watered and carried around and pruned off its leaves back in August and which was placed in a cool dry place until it was brought out on Herr Meow's birthday because it's about four weeks away from the Christmastide and hey! Amaryllises are supposed to bloom around Christmas, right?

But I didn't expect that it would take it three more months to produce a flowering spike, and then another month to grace us with the gorgeous orange-red flowers it gracefully decided to unfurl today on this day of practical jokes, trickery, and many fools.

And to think I almost threw the poor bulb away.

I could not have asked for a better April Fool.

_________

When I was a child, I was fascinated by the Tarot.

Some of the cards were pretty --like the Sun (19) and the Moon (18) and the Star (17), of course. Some seemed exciting, like the Wheel of Fortune (10), and some seemed plain badass, like the Magician (1).

The scariest one to me was the Hanged Man (12)-- scarier even than Death (13) itself, looking so pitifully busy with that overpowering scythe. (How is it possible for Death to wield that thing about without getting it confused with one of its bones anyway?). Being hanged upside down by one foot seems to me, to this day, not only inconvenient but extremely painful.

And then there was The Fool (0), and it didn't make much sense.

After all, in most tarot decks, the poor Fool is just taking a leisurely stroll, hobo-style. What makes him a fool? What gives the tarot deck the right to insult one card and not the other 77 anyway?

But The Fool is not only a trump card-- making it one of the 22 important cards in a Tarot deck-- but it's also the grandpappy of what we know in our scrubbed-clean cards as The Joker.

It's a card without meaning until you give it meaning, in other words-- a cipher (hence its number being zero in the tarot order) waiting for you to fill in the blank or produce three other aces so you can have a chance to win it all.

The Fool is what you make of it. He is the vagabond and the nomad and the hapless naïf in your soul, waiting to be placed wherever he can be the catalyst.

We are all fools in some way or another. But maybe all we need to do is to be given a little time, space, sun and water, and just maybe we'll make fools out of those who didn't believe in what we could do.

Or maybe we can just trash the whole thing and buy a new bulb.

But then the joke is doubly on us.

Preamble

Mon Petit Chou, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

As onerous as winter can become, it makes the warmer days that start to burst forth like tiny flower buds that much more well earned.

Also, it's beautiful.

There is something about how things look in memories that makes them sometimes brighter or cozier or fuzzier. We've been talking very much about perceived memory Chez Meow lately-- how three years can make a difference in how you remember the experience of having a baby, and how some things seem so memorable while others hang back unearthed altogether until a receipt or a picture or someone else's more vivid recollection thrusts it into the forefront of your own mind and makes you go, "OooOooOoooh!"

And so, with this little cabbage.
Many years from now, I may run into this picture of it, as it looked during a snowstorm the winter I became a mother for the second time, and until I do so, it may not hit me just how pale and delicate and otherwordly a plant can look under winter's delicate and deadly mantle.

And maybe I'll also remember how fuzzy and loving and naïve those earliest days of motherhood for two also looked under that particular cloak of happy, scared shitless, and tired from which I may one day emerge, ready to photosynthesize.

Or, you know, live.

Antepartum Pedicure

Antepartum Pedicure, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

I realize you, dear reader, may not want to hear about my cervix.

I empathize with you: I'm not entirely sure I wanted to hear about my cervix either, but since the little squashy bugger kind of belongs to me, there I was, being told that it was effacing and dilating.

That it was 75% disappeared. That it was opening. And this was this afternoon.

I realize this means little: there are women who walk around in such a state for weeks before their bodies decide to expel the tenant in question.

But there is still that ring of alarm that gets set off inside your head and won't leave, as if you'd wandered into a very large bell and someone had struck it while you admired its insides and now you have this weird ringy tingling all over you.

Anticipation. Expectation. Abject and utter fear.

So this is why it was nice to have also been able to relax and allowed someone to make a small yet important part of me feel pretty and polished and put together.

Because at this point, the expectation (um... pun intended?) is slowly driving me insane.

A Morsel of Morcilla

A Morsel of Morcilla, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Behold my lunch today: black pudding, a.k.a. morcilla.

A.k.a. boudin noir. A.k.a. blood sausage.

I ate it and I LOVED it. I used to eat it when I was a kid and didn't know I was eating rice soaked in pig's blood, really. So now that I know, I try not to think about it and instead enjoy the deliciousness that is.

Overthinking is the enemy.

Although if you over-overthink, you realize that if you eat any kind of animal, you're eating blood by default just because there is no way you can remove every single blood cell from every single microscopic capillary in your dinner.

But yes, I realize that most people don't think about eating blood as something good, or even remotely sane. But oh.... you have no idea of what you're missing. Especially when that something is a bridge to a small part of your cultural identity.

And especially when that something can connect you to yourself AND gross people out.

The inner twelve-year old never evolves, after all.

Snow Day

Ford Tough, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

It snowed all day today and it was truly magical.

One of my favorite things about snow is the sounds it makes-- the soft, plopping pops that float above your head.

But another one of my favorite things is seeing the kinds of things that are only revealed when the whole world is covered in white powder, such as the beauty of an iced-over grille or the haunting sight of a completely blanketed street, untouched by feet or tires.

Hope you enjoyed the snow (if you had it) wherever you were.

Cat Wishes, Fancy Feasts

Green Eyed Lady, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Sometimes I wish I were like my cat.

I wish I could command the kind of breathless admiration that follows a feline around a room, and I wish I could be comfortable enough in my own skin and fur to just be, in all my glory, staring at the sun and knowing with every fiber of my being that I am truly all that I can possibly be, and that it is all good, and well, and okay.

I wish I had nothing but good angles; and if good can't be had, at least cute or droll or amusing would suffice.

I wish I had a downy head that would entice even the most finicky person into nuzzling me.

I wish I had gorgeous green eyes that glimmered in the sun.

And I sometimes wish I had the supreme capacity for indifference that makes it possible for my cat to walk wherever she wants, lick her own ass, and ask for deep affection only when she wants it.

Either that, or the smaller cerebral cortex that makes lack of caring as easy as breathing.

Sometimes being a human sucks.

Excitement

Decked Out , originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Today is an exciting day. The photo above I snapped a few days ago, when the Capitol was not teeming with the activity that surges around it and on it today.

The guns are still smoking, having just welcomed our forty-fourth President. I could hear them by opening my window, and it was a wonderfully, thrillingly surreal moment.

No matter what your political penchant, hailing a new chief is an exciting event, and further proof that our country is a country of the people, and of change.

May we look upon this day with happiness be able to recall it when we hear our wonderful, strong country criticized or slandered.

May there be forgiveness in our heart, and may today's crisp air and blue skies prove a winsome herald to our new Commander in Chief.

Bounty

Bounty, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

We're in cautious economic times. People are getting laid off; savings have been cut back dramatically, some to the point of nonexistence, because the financial markets have taken such a blindsided, downward tumble.

The Christmas/holiday season did not see as aggressive a crowd buying everything their grubby, greedy hands could get ahold of, and this past year saw the demise of those delightful doppelganger stores such as Linens 'N' Things and the Sharper Image (doubles of Bed, Bath and Beyond and Hammacher Schlemmer, or perhaps Brookstone-- oh-oh).

And yet, for all the paucity and feeling of recession, there is nothing quite like seeing the impressive display of a supermarket's produce bay.

To me, there is nothing quite as awe-inspiring yet unsettling to walk through a supermarket and see the solid walls and mountains of apples and oranges and onions and potatoes and all manner of edibles-- all of them fresh, or else. All of them available for pennies on the dollar, enticing with their colorful displays and their promises of bounty and health.

All that produce, grown in all those fields, crowding all those supermarkets all over the town. All over the area.

All over the state, and the country.

To focus merely on the negative economy when one is shopping for produce seems dangerously ungrateful; filled with hubris, even.

So my little weird piece of advice to you is this: if you're feeling down on your luck and poor, go buy yourself some produce and rejoice that we live in these modern times where there is an oasis of plenty, ready when you are, around the corner from where you live.