Old Flames & French Fries

'House I' by Roy Lichtenstein

It wasn't intentional... I didn't mean to burn down our house or break someone's heart.

I never gave it much thought, the place where I lived on Flower Lane in East Meadow, with idyllic sounding names well suited for a children's book of fairytales. Until at a teen dance, when I was swept away by a James Dean look-alike who asked me out on a date and for my address and phone number.

'IV3-6802'... was the number I gave him.

I could've been more precise and said, 'Ivanhoe' 3-6802, when 'exchanges' came with names and little explanation, but we weren't Saxons living in medieval times or related to Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest. In fact, our newly constructed home, built on barren soil, was previously potato farmlands with just one or two trees... hardly a forest.

Besides, I liked the ring of the shortened alphanumeric version... the way it involuntarily rolled off my tongue when recited.

Only no one I know would answer "Hello" if I dialed that number today; we left the suburbs of New York, Long Island, a lifetime ago.

And how could I have known that my address, sounding of 'flowers in a meadow', would be taken by 'J.D.' as a fabrication of an actual place to avoid seeing him again.

"If you didn't want to go out with me, why didn't you just say so in the first place?"... his words not mine.

Photo of James Dean

But I was interested, very interested, in going out with him, and managed to convince him of this and that Flower Lane in East Meadow was honestly, and truly, the place where I lived.

The crazy stuff our brains hold on to leaving little room for anything else... no wonder as adults, we have trouble, at times, remembering what we ate for breakfast.

But it was lunch, not breakfast, at the age of eleven or twelve, years before 'J.D.', when my troubles started... home, alone, craving a burger and fries with McDonalds miles away.

Fortunately, I found a box of crinkle-cut fries in the freezer.

Unfortunately, I knew nothing about cooking.

So I phoned a friend, my best friend, who lived down the block and across the street. Amy was a year older and had kitchen skills. Once she made us a chocolate milkshake in a blender, all by herself, and added an egg. Curious, I never questioned her about the egg; the drink tasted too good. And I wasn't questioning her now on how best to cook French fries... just called to chat while I poured oil in a pan and waited for it to boil.

It's true what they say... that a watched pot never boils.

Thirty minutes later, still on the phone, with no action in the pan, I tossed in a fry to test out the oil.

Unaware of the subtleties in cooking terminology between boiling and heating, I now know, water gets boiled while oil gets heated. There is a difference.

A SWOOSH AND ROAR DIFFERENCE!

' Fallen Blossoms' by Cai Guo Qiang

FLASH FIRE IN A PAN!... WITH FLAMES NEARING THE CEILING!

I DROPPED the phone, SCREAMED for neighbors, and did the next stupidest thing...

PLUNGED the fiery pan of oil with one blackened French fry into a sink-full of soapy water and dirty dishes.

Mom always soaked her glassware, plates, and silverware. I never understood the concept, but likened it to..."I've got more important things to do, let them wash themselves."

Honestly, I'm not joking and neither were the flames of hot oil that instantly shot above the dishwater.

NOT the result I was expecting, but the Gods were with me. Instead of the fire RAGING, ESCAPING, and BURNING DOWN OUR HOUSE, as Chemistry 101 would have predicted, that oil and water don't mix, the fire 'floated' among the dishes and miraculously put itself out! 

'Smoke Bombs' by Olaf Breuning

Extinguished too, were the sparks ignited after one night out with James, whose real name I still can't recall. It was an objection from my parents over our different religions that broke our hearts when they told us our first date would also be our last. Last, but not forgotten.

Since James there have been numerous 'Flames', but thankfully no 'Flaming Fries'. My husband and I prefer our French fries extra crispy, without salt, cooked by chefs in restaurants, who know not to wait for their oil to boil.

'OLD FLAMES' and 'FLAMING FRIES' - I survived both.

What memories do you have of an 'Old Flame' or a first kiss?

Any unusual surprises in the kitchen while cooking?

Here are a few links you might find interesting:

Video: "First Kiss" here and 30 "First Kiss" stories here.

"Old Flames Reunited Make The Most Lasting Marriages" here.

Olaf Breuning's "Smoke" performance here.

Cai Guo Qiang's "Fallen Blossoms" performed outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art here and his "Painting With Gunpowder" here.

If your house was burning, what would you take with you? Photos here.

Scroll down to view telephone 'exchange' names here.

Scroll down to "bonus facts" on French fries here.

Music: Talking Heads, "Burning Down The House" here and The Beatles, "I've Just Seen a Face" here.

"Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames."

~ Rumi

XOX... Dyan

Love, Luck, & Pennies

Robert Wechsler

"See a penny, pick it up... all the day you'll have good luck."

When it comes to finding pennies, I'm like two sides of a coin. The rational side believes "A penny saved is a penny earned" while the flip side, foolishly thinks...  "Oh goodie, today's the day I win the lottery!"

And while I've yet to win the 'Powerball' or 'Mega Millions', except for small change, I still consider myself fortunate... "Knock on Wood".

I touch wood often, on purpose, to avoid tempting fate and to keep any luck I do have from disappearing. I also cross my fingers, carry charms, and perform quirky rituals in order to win the favor of Lady Luck, also known as Fortuna, the goddess shown blindfolded, holding a wheel, or standing on or juggling a ball, to explain her unpredictable benevolence.

Some people are born lucky. Others create their own luck by cultivating opportunities and following their tuition, and then there are those with no luck at all... like Maureen Wilcox, who in 1980, had the winning numbers to both the Massachusetts and Rhode Island lotteries, but didn't win a penny. Her Massachusetts numbers won the Rhode Island lottery and her Rhode Island numbers won the Massachusetts lottery.

As Calvin said to Hobbes in the comic strip 'Calvin and Hobbes'... "You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help."

You win, you lose, and in between there's superstition.

I suppose I inherited my superstitious ways from my dad, who inherited his from who knows where.

I grew up hearing idioms like... "Never walk under a ladder", "Beware of black cats crossing your path", "Step on a crack, break your mother's back", frightful thoughts.

And I was shown by example: when salt spills, some of it gets tossed over your left shoulder, when someone dies, mirrors are covered, and when moving into a new home, the male carries bread and salt into the house for prosperity while everyone else, my mother, two-year old brother and I, age five, lean against the car, a big black Buick, and wait.

Olimpia Cerda

I knew of these superstitions but understood little. They were mysteries... like the pennies in every drawer of our house sprinkled among the functional clutter of string, batteries, tape, pencils and more.

Dad liked pennies. Besides the ones he put in drawers for good luck, he also collected wheat pennies and hid them away, while the ordinary copper pieces, saved for a rainy day, were kept in one of those gigantic water-cooler bottles.

When bored, my dad would pour the contents of this less than half-full container onto the kitchen table and sort his pennies into stacks, ten pennies high. I'd sneak in, sit down beside him, and hear him say, "Who asked you?", which in 'dad talk' meant "Stay... I love you."

We'd sit silently stacking pennies, opening paper rolls from the bank, and with index fingers wedged inside the paper wrappers, load our coins, 50 pennies to a roll. Then we'd fold the open ends closed and begin the packing process again and again, until done.

Years later, while on a plane from San Francisco to New York, our flight attendant held up a bottle of Möet champagne, a prize to be awarded to the passenger with the most pennies. I looked at Michael, and he at me, knowing we had this contest in the bag... literally. For on board, in our carryon, among our other valuables, were several bank rolls filled with wheat pennies.

As fast as people began rummaging for coins in their pockets and purses, I held up the pennies saved for my dad. I suppose the contest looked rigged as we appeared to be unbeatable contestants, but things changed fast when everyone onboard started pooling their pennies. It became us versus an entire plane-load of people, with Michael and I finally declared the winners!

It wasn't long before the grumbles and dissension among 'losers' turned to cheer and good wishes when they learned we were flying home to be married.

Luck? Fate? Opportunity? Coincidence?

I like to think of the penny contest and the prized champagne as a sign, gifts from the gods, the 'Universe' approving of our union bestowing blessings upon us lasting beyond this lifetime.

"Knock on Wood!"

"A penny for your thoughts"

Pennies... Pick them up? Toss them in a fountain? Save them in a piggy bank? What do you do with your pennies?

Are you superstitious? Do you have a good luck charm?

What's your good luck story?

Here are a few links you might find interesting:

Robert Wechsler's short video on the making of his 'Penny Sculptures' here.

83 Things You Can Do With a Penny here.

Richard Wiseman's short video on 'The Luck Factor' here.

How Superstitions Work here.

Superstitions Under The Big Top / Circus here.

10 Bizarre Celebrity Superstitions here.

Well... that's my two cents worth.

Best of luck to you in whatever you do.

XOX... Dyan

Boredom & Grammar

Mel Bochner "Blah, Blah, Blah"

Q:  What has seven letters

      Is impossible to do

      And if you eat it, it will kill you?

A:  'Nothing'.

And it's the desire to do 'something'

But with a lack of motivation to try 'anything'

That has us slowly dying of this 'nothing' called boredom.

Boredom, like the answer to the above riddle, also contains seven letters and two syllables, but sounds royal like the word kingdom, a place where we too could be the rulers of our own boring worlds. Only it's 'dumb', the homonym of the suffix 'dom', to believe any of us have control of our lives, or world, when bored.

One minute we're movin' and a-groovin' to the beat, and the next, we're a metaphor, a boat, afloat, without the velocity to propel forward.

Overnight, clear skies turn to fog, and the clarity of our thoughts, energy, desire, and all meaning are gone. All we can do is wait... wait for the clouds to lift.

Henrik Sorensen from his video 'Smoke, Dust, and Dancers'

"As if  everything I owned had left me, and as if it would scarcely be sufficient if all of it returned." ~Franz Kafka

Us, we... I use these personal pronouns loosely.

Grammar aside... I'm bored and hopefully you're not.

It's not a permanent condition, just feels that way... eternally lost in search of something interesting to do.

And it was in those moments of nothing happening that I'd stand inside our tiny ranch home on Long Island, as a kid, and sigh out loud, "I'm bored." Occasionally interjecting the word 'mom' into the mix, as in... "Mom I'm bored", "Mom I'm bored", "Mom I'm bored" like a broken record. Then I'd shuffle off to my room, lay on the bed, and listen to music... records on a record player with a skate key taped to the arm of the needle to keep it from skating across the grooves of the vinyl... a literal but creative solution.

I was full of ideas, as now, only then I was the one friends came to whenever they got bored. But like some professionals, the house painter whose own home looks shabby, or the auto mechanic who drives a clunker, I was, and still am, the motivator who sometimes, when alone, can't get moving.

At twenty-three, I moved from Pennsylvania to California with my boyfriend, now husband, where I put in twelve-hour days teaching nursery school and traveling between San Francisco and Berkeley while Michael got his Masters from the Art Institute. On weekends, with energy depleted, I'd stare into space and drag about the studio with the bottom of my lime green terry cloth robe flipped over my head.

I was a zombie in a hoodie.

It didn't matter that I had a camera, a darkroom, and a colorful city with near perfect weather to explore. I was bored.

Bored then and now... only now I have some energy, but the weather here in Philadelphia is far from perfect. January arrived but winter came early. November brought the snow and frigid temps that linger, and it's this constant effort to stay warm, too much time indoors, and fighting the clock before dark that has me feeling unsettled.

David Foster Wallace, just before his death, left a note with his incomplete manuscript, 'The Pale King', and these words:

"Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (tax returns, televised golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you've never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it's like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom." 

So I'm riding it out.

I bought flowers, hydrangeas dyed neon orange and yellow, to shock my senses and replicate the effects of an actual sun.

I'm paying attention to the ordinary in hopes of finding the extraordinary: condensation forming on a window, shadows flickering on a wall, paper fluttering on a cardboard roll. 

And I'm looking to others for motivation, those who manage to create rather than wait for inspiration to rise above boredom.

Artists like Nina Katchadourian and her project 'Seat Assignment', "born from an investment in thinking on your feet, from optimism about the artistic potential that lurks within the mundane, and from the curiosity about the productive tension between freedom and constraint."

Her 'Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style', a series from 'Seat Assignment' 2010 and ongoing, was created while on a 14-hour flight from San Francisco to Auckland using only the lavatory's own lighting, materials close at hand, and a camera phone.

Anything but boring!... a reference to the artwork but a grammatical error, a fragment, lacking a subject and verb.

Good grammar is essential, keeps everyone on the same page. The abstract becomes concrete and the chaos becomes ordered. But writing correctly isn't easy; the rules are confusing. I hardly know when to use 'me or my', 'lay or lie' commas or no commas. I question my tenses, if my participles are dangling, and is punctuation placed inside or outside of quotations?

I rarely use semi-colons; (parentheses) or the em—dash. My favorite punctuation mark, as you can tell from my overuse of it, is the ellipsis... 3 dots. Besides being partial to things that come in 3's, like a beginning, middle, and an end, ellipses allow me to ramble a bit, interjecting and connecting thoughts without appearing to be the queen of the 'run on sentence'.

Speaking of sentences...

"A run on sentence walks into a bar it was thirsty."

Perhaps a difficult joke to get at first, but putting punctuation where it's needed between the words 'bar' & 'it', would just kill the punch line.

Here's a riddle that's bit more obvious...

Q: "Why did the comma break up with the exclamation point?"

A:  "It was always yelling!"

And this clever one...

Q: "What's a prisoner's favorite punctuation mark?"

A: "A period. It marks the end of his sentence."

And these for my Italian, Zen friend Joe...

Q: "What's spaghetti's favorite punctuation?"

A: "An Apastarophe!"

"The past, the present, and the future walk into a bar. It was tense!"

Grammar rules. Grammar rules!

See what I mean?

I can almost sense the boredom lifting.

Boredom... how do you handle it?

What's your take on grammar?

Do you have a favorite punctuation mark?

Here are some links you might find interesting:

7 Tips To Fight Boredom here.

Silly Things To Do When Bored here.

An Interesting History of Boredom here.

A Discovery About Boredom here.

What Your Favorite Punctuation Mark Says About You here.

Writer's Favorite Punctuation Marks here.

Henrik Sorensen: 'Smoke, Dust, and Dancers' here.

Nina Katchadourian: 'Seat Assignment' Photos here.

Sakir Gokcebag: Art With Toilet Paper here.

O- blah- di, O- blah- da, life goes on, 

La la la la life goes on.

 And if you want some fun... sing 

O BLAH-DI  BLAH-DA!

My take on the lyrics by The Beatles

Listen and watch The Beatles sing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da here.

Denisee P...  Thanks for being my muse on this 'HERE and NEXT' post. 

XOX... Dyan

Travel: To & From Florida... Part 2

Greetings!... from Florida, the land of swaying palms and pink flamingoes.

Actually we're home... been back for a while.

Came home to two mailboxes jam-packed with letters, magazines, and circulars  meant to be collected upon our return. Obviously, someone missed the memo... the one mistakenly delivered with the rest of our mail.

And in the mail were official notices... two from the courts, federal and county, for jury duty, and another from the township, about a water main project beginning on our block the very next day!

Welcome Home!... to life and its many surprises.

Much like our trip to Florida, where our biggest surprise was winning the lottery!

That would be the TSA precheck airport lottery, traveling in both directions, when we were randomly selected to forgo the crazy rituals of removing our shoes, belts, metal objects and having our carry-ons and electronic devices overly scrutinized. Instead, we were given quick passes to our terminals without any delay... well maybe just one, when at the last minute, Michael was also chosen by security to have his hands swiped for explosives. Twice!

Random or deliberate? That would be Michael, my husband, the once suspected 'alarm'-ticking terrorist (for details see 'Travel: To & From Florida... Part 1).

And once on-board, there were more surprises... roses and fluted glasses filled with champagne served to those of us in Coach!... while someone in First Class knelt down on one knee, and with confidence proposed marriage! Talk about long distance relationships and commitment! This engaged couple had been taking turns flying USAIR, every weekend, between Philadelphia and Fort Lauderdale for the past year... just to be together!

Here's the 'bride to be' walking down the aisle collecting roses and congratulations from passengers and crew after saying yes to her in-flight proposal.

What entertainment!... Better than watching a movie! Do they still show movies on planes or did that disappear with free meals?

Speaking of meals, we had some good ones once we landed... upscale French, authentic Italian, classic American. Besides tasting good, the prices were crazy good too!... early bird specials (full-sized meals at reduced prices) and 2 for 1's (two meals for the price of one)!

Here's my down-home favorite... the Moonlite Diner.

I could eat there day and night, which obviously we did. Besides the super-friendly staff, really good food, milkshakes to die for, they had vending machines filled with plastic toys!

Here are some little Domos I got for 25 cents apiece. Cheap thrills... a quarter in the slot and turn... even the colorful capsules are cute. The xylophone caught my eye while shopping for bottled water at Publix, the local supermarket. For a teeny toy, the small sound is surprisingly good.

For big sound... we attended a four-hour musical event with two films and a lecture at the main branch of the Fort Lauderdale Library... a library with its own theater and a budget to produce a free six-week series focusing on great American musical genres. Our genre, the last in the series, was from Mambo to Hip Hop with performances by Miguelangel Estampa, 'Flamenca: Music of Cuba and Rumba Flamenca' and a Hip Hop performance by VerseWon.

At least once, I'd like to be in Florida during the annual International art exhibitions of Art Miami and Art Basel. Unfortunately, during this visit, all the museums were closed in preparation for these upcoming events, but to our surprise, the Wynwood Walls and nearby galleries in Miami were open.

Here's a bit of what we saw...

Here's some street art from the surrounding Wynwood area. For more about the Wynwood Walls go here and for their website go here.

Here's work from a couple of Wynwood galleries. The first two pieces are by Fedrico Uribe from his installation at the Now Contemporary Art Gallery. For a video by Uribe go here.

These two works are by Carlito Dalceggio shown at the Ricart Gallery Miami. Mickey was in the gallery while Pinocchio was on the building's rooftop. The making of an installation by Dalceggio here and an article about him in the Miami New Times here.

What we didn't get to see was the ocean... never walked the beach, never collected seashells or colored, polished glass. We ran out of time. Besides, we weren't on vacation. We were here to spend time with my mother, who resides in Florida.

So when we weren't all running around eating and doing a few cultural events, we were busy with mom and her new iPad, a gift we gave her. For someone with no computer skills, my mom is sharp!... both smart and youthful beyond her years. She can now download apps, email, use the internet, take photos, read newspapers online, play Scrabble and win, and decipher an iPad manual!

Here's a photo of mom's condo pool taken with her iPad.

Here's a photo of our pool at the Westin Hotel, Cypress Creek, taken with my camera moments before heading to the airport on our way home.

Goodbye palm trees... hello home... and time for poetry!

Welcome Home

Welcome home

to all things familiar

of walls and doors,

tables and chairs, beds and drawers

easily navigated

with eyes closed.

Welcome home

to the absence

of heartbeats

and the presence

of objects

still standing

where you left them.

Welcome home

to the place

that knows

your name,

supports, comforts and sustains you,

and beams, creaks and brightens

with your every return.

Welcome Home!

Safe travels and may all your returns be welcomed.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

XOX... Dyan