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Something Strange in the 'Hair'

It's much easier to find dubious UFO or ET content on the internet than it is to find neutral, straight forward reporting on the matters. I enjoy this segment for the reason that it's well-done: it lets the witnesses speak for the story, and the witnesses do not come to any conclusions. Coming to a conclusion about the unexplained sounds dangerous to me.

Meanwhile, OMG the hair on the Hillsdale College witnesses! To 'dye' for! I like learning about UFO and ET stories, but I might love 60s style more! Oh yes, that hair!!!

The Enchanted Outsider

Carlow University convent, Pittsburgh, PA Image via: Carlow archives

As I retrieved my new pack of birth control pills from my nightstand this evening, I noticed my third stash of knitting shoved into the drawer. I have three stashes, and this is the least sought probably because the other two are easily accessible among my other craft supplies. This third and often forgotten stash includes two spools of a sock weight wool-acrylic blend, a partially done lace sample from Kool Aid dyed wool yarn, and a nearly completed prayer shawl of Red Heart acrylic. The US size 15 bamboo needles used in knitting this prayer shawl were removed and many of the exposed, sage green stitches threatened to unravel. Tangled among the knotted skein was my new pack of bills.

This shawl began in a magical place. When I tell you what this place is, you may think it's ironic or funny that my birth control pills were found wrapped up in the undone shawl. It's a little ironic, but only a little. The Sisters of Mercy at Carlow wouldn't judge me for using the pills. The group I interacted with for about two months in the spring of 2008 didn't judge me for anything. I never felt more welcomed and more like I could simply be (not even just be myself, but just be), than when I would meet the sisters on Saturday mornings at Carlow.

I went to college at Carlow, lived in the dorm all four years. There is only one dorm building, and only women can live in it. My deepest, best friends lived with me in that building. Our hall on the 9th floor had bras decorating the emergency lights and a carpet stained with spray paint, thanks to us. I loved it there very much.

Since I majored in creative writing, finding a job in my field in Pittsburgh wasn't very possible. What did I do? I went back to Carlow! They gave me a job assisting the Registrar. I printed out class rosters way too many reams of paper and produced new student packets for Freshmen. I took long lunches and  took many breaks wandering the grounds that my friends and I had. On the top of Grace Library, you can see all of South Oakland and a tip of the South Side. I sat there so much all seven years I was associated with Carlow. It's not the best school in Pittsburgh for sure, but it certainly has a lot of charm and spirit. The best way I can describe my connection to it is to say "Carlow is my Rushmore." If you've never seen the movie Rushmore, you should and then you will get it. You should just watch the movie anyway.

Above is the second shawl I worked on. It's three-quarters of the way finished, and I can easily finish it within the week. Though I can keep it or donate it, I kind of want to mail it to Carlow. There, Carol, the convent volunteer who organized the shawl group, would be so excited and gracious to receive it. She'd pick what she believes are just the right charms and prayer card to add to it. She would comment on how lovely she thinks it is. The sisters would nod in agreement. I'm not sure if they'd all remember me, or if there even still there. If they got a random-seeming shawl from a girl in California who says she used to knit with them Saturday mornings, they'd appreciate it no matter what.

I was explaining my enthusiasm for the sisters to Jeremy while I fixed the unraveling line of knitting. I think that they might have thought I was a little strange. What kind of 24 year old woman, gets up at 8 AM, travels on the bus, and knits with a bunch of old Catholic nuns? Well, if you know me, the answer is simple: Angela Bayout would. I barely spoke while there in the craft activity room, which has a window facing out to the campus green and an idol of St Francis.

The sisters, all of whom crocheted by the way, would joke among themselves and reminisce, usually filling me in on necessary details. A favorite story includes a sister who refused to say "breast" when it came to ordering chicken at the butcher. She would ask for "chicken chests." One of the sisters told a story about a funny experience she had as she was falling asleep. She swore it wasn't a dream because, well, she just knew. You know how you just know? She was lying in bed relaxing and in her ear she heard the name "Lucinda" clear as a bell. It was very beautiful, she said, and she had never heard of that name before then. Ever since then, she always liked that name.

They often talked about beauty, beauty in art that they studied, beauty in each other's shawl-in-progress, and just the natural beauty all around them. The stories and subjects were always positive, but most of all they were always honest and genuine. And, they rarely asked me any questions.

I suppose it's a sister's job to simply accept. It didn't matter why I was there or how I got there or what, they always expressed that they were simply glad that I was there. They never asked me if I went to church or even if I was religious in any way. They never asked anything of me or expected anything of me. They never ever asked me, "Why are you so quiet!?" They just expressed a gratitude for my knitting and an appreciation for my presence. It is so stunningly simple how easy it is to make a person feel good.

Being in the convent with them was always both calming and invigorating at the same time. When entering or exiting, I would often get confused since all of the halls sort of looked the same. I always seemed to turn left instead of right or right instead of left and I would end up in the lobby outside of the main chapel. The first time this happened, I was walking quickly so as not to be caught as a strange wanderer, I would almost run right into an idol of The Virgin Mary. She was chalk white, and though I would never have touched her, she looked feather soft. The air in that lobby was light but not thin. I'm stuck on trying to describe it as anything but just peaceful. But, also powerful. But, also completely good and accepting. I don't know, I just found myself caught off guard in this warmly lit, incredibly quiet (like, too quiet) room and I was totally awe struck by the sensation I got.

I might have been taken by the atmosphere, but even in the florescent-lighted craft room I felt that positivity. I think that the women there are just so kind and so loving of "all God's creatures" and all things under the sun, that their positivity fills that building and lifts it up like a flame on a hot air balloon. I think that if they could, they should give themselves more credit.

I am unwilling to say that it was actually, literally the spirit of God I sensed. I suppose I can say that it was the spirit, but I think that the spirit of God is another way of saying that these women exuded so much goodness that it produced some sort of affect on me. The fact that it happened to me at all is good enough for me.

I wasn't ever a Catholic and probably won't be. I don't want to be part of an organization where men do and say some of the worst possible things men can do and say. Most of my experiences with religion have been negative, so I'm not going to join the club. I'm just sort of dazzled by Catholic stuff. I like their grand architecture and Pagan way of things. I don't like that they sometimes feign humbleness with this grand architecture and ignore the obvious Paganism. Mostly, I love their organization of women, very good women. Not all of the sisters at Carlow were this way, but many of the individuals that I encountered over my seven years there were. I don't see them as Catholic nuns who are part of the aforementioned organization that I wish not to be a part of (especially in light of this), but I see them as inspiring women that go beyond aspirations.

Do you personally know a group of people who have or have had a deep affect on you?

One Great Brunch in San Francisco

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of dining at Foreign Cinema with my lady friend Sarah over at The Year of Sexy. We share an obsession for brunch, and as you know from my last week's post, my obsession has a specific shape. She has great taste in restaurants, and this was the best choice yet! Making us reservations four weeks ago, Sarah assured me it was worth the wait. Yes, they were booked four weeks in advance for Saturday brunch. I felt like I was part of a scene in American Psycho, but without too much psycho.

Though, I have to say that I'm crazy for this place! Outdoor seating, simple decor, and sophisticated but unpretentious food. This is a classy place, but not too classy, and that's comforting considering you really just want to stuff your face once you see the menu.

Speaking of which, here's what we had!

I'm not a very good day drinker, but I couldn't resist the cocktail options. Unfortunately I don't recall the name of Sarah's drink, but I'm pretty sure it's a blood orange mimosa that may contain another ingredient other than champagne. Whatever, it was good! I had a St Germain, a refreshing mix of sparkling wine, elderflower liqueur, and a lemon twist. If you like Jasmine tea, this is way better and I'm not just referring to the booze. The elderflower liqueur, which I never knew existed until yesterday, was almost candy sweet. Wow, it was good.

I never thought of having an appetizer with brunch, but I sure had one yesterday. We ordered the strawberry "pop tart." I will be thinking about it next time I have a real Pop Tart. We tried to show the scale of the 'tart in this picture. It's big! It was also flaky and light with a fresh strawberry filling. The top of the tart was encrusted with Turbinado sugar and dusted with powdered sugar. I have a feeling I would be able to make this at home easily, and I will get to enjoy it any time I want.

Main courses. You may see three in the above image, yet there was just two of us. Well, we ordered three entrees, what? We had to have our eggs for brunch, but that french toast had a reputation. Basically, everything, including the third entree, was spectacular. Sarah had the lobster and Dungeness crab frittata, seen at the top of the image. It was topped with fresh greens and outlined with a red pepper sauce. Usually I don't love crab, lobster, nor red pepper things, but damn. The frittata was so moist and plump with fresh seafood, and the mild sauce added a lovely velvety texture. 

My champagne porcini omelet, at the bottom of the image, was wonderful, but I have to say that I enjoyed the few bites of the frittata I snagged more. The omelet was very good, but the frittata was GOOD! 

French toast=glad we ordered it. What made it super special was the fresh mango and fruit creamy thing (the pink, serbert-looking substance on the plate in the center). Yeah, I'm not sure what the pink stuff was other than a type of fruit salad dip. I feel silly calling it that, but I don't feel silly raving about it.

So, the entrees were obviously filling, but I still had a hunger. I wanted to try it all at this point. We indulged in a small goat milk, herbed cheese plate with dried cheeries and walnut bread. The cheese was nice, but those cherries... They were not too sweet, not tart at all, and had a tinge of cinnamon! I wonder how I can make them so that I can put them on every bagel and cream cheese ever.

While Sarah likes her liquor, as I said above, I'm not always up for it in the morning unless I want to sleep the afternoon away. In fact, I'm not always up for it in general for the unfortunate belly ache and heart burn that results from it. Though, the sun was shining and I was wearing a sundress without a jacket in San Francisco on a Saturday at a beautiful restaurant. I'm glad that I took the chance on cocktails here. Perhaps it was the bedding of brunch in my tummy, but I felt fabulous after! Actually, it might really be because the used good liquor in the right quantities. I know I used to down overloaded, $4 gin and tonics, but today that doesn't do me good. These cocktails were delicious, refreshing, and well made. 

So, what did I treat myself to above? After sipping Sarah's Steel Magnolia (ginger beer, bourbon, and something called Snap), I couldn't resist. Halfway through my own, I felt transported to a veranda in Tennessee. It was that good. 

Overall, I had a wonderful Saturday brunch with my buddy Sarah. I'm a little bit in love with this place, and soon I will be taking Jeremy there for dinner under the stars—and for a movie! If you haven't figured it out, the outdoor dinner experience includes a film, and there are renovated drive-in speakers between tables. How fun. This is definitely a place for a special occasion, be it an actual event birthday or just "Life is good." Be prepared to pay a pretty penny, but every cent is worth it. 

Have you gone? Do you love it? 

Lost & Found: "Antiquarian" things...

If you read last week's brief post, you know that this blog had a six-year dormancy. I found four drafts that must have been forgotten—like dollars in a spring jacket. This was the most interesting of the four. I have a vague recollection of writing this and talking about it in a college poetry workshop. I have another vague recollection of writing it while working at the library's microfilm desk. I'm not sure what the line breaks are all about, but I'm pleased with the language. Usually I'm embarrassed by my old poetry, but I kinda like this! It's sweet.


Have you found forgotten art lately? How did you react to it?

________________


"Antiquarian" things...

Dear Lisbon-

Thank you for your last letter. Yes, I agree- taking walks are entertaining and healthy. Sometimes, I like nothing more than to be

Outside, steadily walking, it neither tires nor bores me. I am trying to think of my favorite place to walk around here. Perhaps near

the university and the library, both forms of antiquity among the new, impersonal, corporate square monsters sharpening the blocks since I've been in school here.

But, the Cathedral is a rock. It will still stand with in its Neo-Gothic lovely until another melted ice age wears it as sand.

Yours, Majourie


***

Dearest Majourie-

Walking is healthy, but mostly sweet. On a walk today I thought of you. Along the route that I took there are yellow, laughing

daffodils. Though, when I’m in Wordsworth’s “vacant or pensive mood,” it is not the daffodils that fill my heart with pleasure

but a loose sheet of paper with petals of hand writing remnant of you. Now, I stare at the wall as if the closing of this letter will

bleed out of the matte fading peach paint. I hope that you will be obliged to

walk with me when I see you?
Love, Lisbon

"From Outer Space To You"

Image from 1950s Contactees

Recently on my morning train, I became engrossed by this Wired interview with anthropologist Kathryn Denning, in which she talks about her findings on the "very human way" we think about space exploration and alien life. Many of her statements described the popular fantasy of us, namely Americans, being greeted by extraterrestrials who will help us solve our massive world problems. This reminded me think of the Contactees.

After WWII and into the 50s, pop culture and pulp fiction trended on heavily on UFO and ET encounters. Enjoyed by those entertained and inspired by it, shunned by the unimaginative and the unwilling to speculate, this subgenre of sci fi developed at an apt time, after WWII. To put it in modern slang, that's when "shit got real." 

Imagine having been born sometime between the late 19th century to the 1930s. You would have witnessed the introduction of cars, radio and/or television, maybe even the introduction of 20th century technology into the 19th century tactics of WWI. Perhaps you came of age during the Depression, passing the Kraft macaroni and cheese powder packet around the table like it's $10 Fleur de Gris. Then the explosion of nuclear science just in time for WWII. 

Shit got real. Image: First News

You might be a little depressed with the outcome of things so far. I feel that way sometimes about the last few years (state of Arizona I'm looking at you). Last few years? Maybe since I've been a legal voter. Maybe since my dad first explained prejudice to me while in the drive-thru line at Wendy's after a grade school play. Personally, I turn to things like yoga, art, and Hello Kitty to make sense of existence. 

Hello Kitty wasn't born until 1974, though. In the late 1940s and 1950s, some people turned to the stars seeking wisdom on how to live in a world—namely America—that created destruction out of the fundamental bits of all matter. And, by stars I mean things like "the planet Jupiter or one of the moons," as stated by George King in the documentary Farewell Good Brothers. You can watch the full film below, lucky you. I recommend you do!


This film features King, founder of the Aetherius Society, and other names and faces in the Contactee movement. While King comes off as an insincere self-appointed leader who puffs himself up by regularly speaking to Shakespeare with his powers of telepathic communication with the dead, some of the other individuals seem "for real." I personally enjoy the segment where a gentlemen being interviewed says that the aliens come every so often and pick him up in a car. He seems dead serious. Howard Menger,  author of From Outer Space To You, is very passionate about his experiences flying with Venusians around the moon before the 1960 NASA moon landing. He seems sincere. 


I like to be open to strange stories and unbelievable possibilities because I don't think I have an ego that tethers me from that openness. I don't really want to say I don't believe these Contactees (psst, I'm thinking it). It's not really what they're saying. They can wax poetic about their seat on the intergalactic version of the UN all day, but it's never less outrageous to me than a board of religious men attempting to put a value and claim ownership on my body and every other woman's body.  

This is more outrageous than extraterrestrial visitation no matter what you believe.

It's not what the Contactees say at all. It's how the really sincere, passionate ones say it. You really, really think that you have flown to Jupiter in a spaceship? It's no use asking how that is even possible. They believe it. And, whether or not it's true, I'm assuming it got them through the rest of the nifty fifties and beyond. 


Is believing that you take regular trips through the solar system with non-human beings harmful to the public? I'm not qualified to answer that, but I'm going to anyway and say, "Yes. No! Maybe?" 


Going back to the Wired piece, interviewer Adam Mann asks anthropologist Denning to expand on the  alien contact story arc—we meet, we fall in love, we get married and live happily ever after. (In case my smart ass is getting in the way, the story is more like: We make contact with aliens, humanity freaks out and forgets its differences. Poverty, abuse, power, and all the baddest of the bad things are gone from then on.) Contactees almost always thrive on this idea, adding that the aliens themselves tell them that humans must to forget their differences or else they will destroy themselves. It's curious that aliens are telling us this, because, well, isn't it obvious? If that's all the aliens have to offer, then so what?


Denning's explanation for the alien encounter narrative is this: 

"One way to read that, in the most general sense, is that it’s a narrative that makes us feel better.One of the things that astronomy and space exploration in the 20th century has done is force us to confront the universe in a way that we never did before. We had to start understanding that, yeah, asteroids impact the earth and can wipe out a vast proportion of life, and our planet is a fragile spaceship Earth.I think this has given us this sort of kind of cosmic anxiety. And it would make us feel a whole lot better if we had neighbors and they were friendly and they could enlighten us."

Making ourselves feel better may not only be the MO of the Contactee. Do we only make ourselves feel better by buying what I like to call "Al Gore brand" light bulbs? Is it the least or the most we can do when polar bears starve and drown? For those of us like me, who have a nice bed to type away our thoughts, is it really that easy to sit and poke fun and speculate? I don't really know what to say to that, even though I brought it up. 

Denning's reaction to the encounter narrative here is elegant. To me it means that it's not what people like the Contactees are saying, or even how they're saying it. It's the fact they they are saying it at all. They are not speaking for an esoteric community off the lunatic fringe. The Contactees' outspoken desire to receive and share (mundane) answers from the aliens with the general public's focus on and shunning of the "science fiction" aspect of the Contactees exposes a mokita—that humanity knows it has "effed" up and that shit has gotten real and that we don't really know what to do about it. 

What do you think?

Wax, Or the Movie I'm Not Afraid of Anymore

from mubi.com

Saturday it had been decided: We are going to be beekeepers for real.

Beekeeping is something I've wanted to do since I realized how delicious honey is. I was eating honey straight from a bear-shaped bottle. When I started reading more about honey and began trying different types of honey, I wasn't so afraid of bees anymore, as I had been as a kid. Beekeeping is something Jeremy has always wanted to do since he began learning more about the idiosyncrasies of bees.

After brunch Saturday we visited Independent Nature, a plant store inside of a garage on Church. At the desk was a guide to beekeeping. The notion that buzzes in our brains every so often, along with our dream of having a garden plot and chickens, popped up then. It took until Sunday night for us to do a little research on San Francisco urban beekeeping. Hopefully I will follow up on developments there.

All that talk about bees made me think of Wax, Or the Discovery of Television Among Bees. The very first time I saw any of it, Jeremy and I had just eaten a pancake, bacon, and eggs dinner at his old place in Pittsburgh. Noting that Wax is the first film to be watch-able on the internet, Jeremy started playing the file before it fully loaded on the screen. The all-too-calm narration didn't grab me, and I lost interest quickly in favor for a game of Dr. Mario.

The second time I watched it, I had the patience and attention span to follow the narrative. I became increasingly engrossed as the narrator became increasingly engrossed in his bees. His thoughts grow stranger and stranger. He says things and I thought, "He must be stressed out." He then says more things and I thought with concern, "He must be a little crazy." Then he says very dark things and I thought, "He is dangerous." Though, his tone never changes.

"What?" you ask. Watch the movie! Image from Freaky Flicks.

At one point, he is wearing his bee suit, lying on the floor of a cave in New Mexico. He mentions, as a matter of fact, that he's now dead. This part disturbed me very much. There wasn't any apparent death, nor any apparent death after he mentions he's dead. At that point I was very worried for this man who seems to have wandered into the desert and is now lying on a cave floor. I wondered if this was a documentary or a fiction. It occurred to me only at this point that the genre was never presented to me.

I dozed off right after this part and woke to more desert wandering and cave meandering, and yet still more lying dead on the floor. It was very freaky, and I felt very strange. I felt similar to the way I felt during one of the only ghost encounters I think I've had.

That night I had some sort of dream that stuck with me, though I don't remember it. That next day, I felt like a sticky dream film wouldn't lift from my skin, and I felt a nebulous stinging of mild paranoia. I just felt funky, and I blamed it solely on that terrifying fucking movie.

This past Sunday night, not only did I have bees on the mind, but craved something "out there," to watch. I just wanted to hear a new kooky story about visitations from the Pleiades or a diatribe about the invisible animals that live in the sky. I put on my brave suit and said,

"Jeremy, I know you want to read," he looks up from Only Revolutions, "but I feel like I can watch Wax."

He hops up, says "Okay!" and begins chanting "Bees! Bees! Bees! Bees!" playfully.

The film is lead by Jacob Maker, the disturbingly-calm narrator I've been referring to. He writes programs for computerized military weapons at work, and cares for black Mesopotamian bees at home. These bees were inherited from his grandfather, "Hive" Maker mentioned in the excerpt above. "Hive" combines Spiritualism with early 20th century electronics, which together form a flavor that's better than honey and graham crackers. From there, a series of serendipitous events lead up to Jacob and his wife, Melissa living together in New Mexico with the bees.

So, the movie isn't just about bees or wax or television. It's about one thing, I think, that I figured out while finishing the movie Sunday night. I figured it out and so I wasn't afraid anymore. What I think the movie "means" is something I will keep to myself because I'd rather you watch it yourself and make your own determination first. You can watch the whole film for free online via the link below. If you do, let me know what you thought!

Watch: WAX, OR THE DISCOVERY OF TELEVISION AMONG BEES

Eggs

One fun thing about moving to a new neighborhood is finding all new places to eat. I love eating! Yesterday we tried Toast, a breakfast and lunch eatery on Church St.

They have a second location in Nob Hill, but we're lucky to be near the 29th and Church location. It was a lovely walk in the sun to get there and a short wait for the two of us to get a seat. Before too long, we were chowing down on one of the better simple brunches I've had in SF!

I got their breakfast burrito (pictured above), a favorite dish of mine. It was my usual at The Grind in the Lower Haight before we moved. Toast's breakfast burrito is comparable in price and offering to The Grind, but it's way tastier if I even thought that was possible. The tortilla was nice and crispy, not gummy. The eggs were fresh and fluffy and accompanied by the perfect amount of sour cream and salsa fresca. It comes with hash browns, which I was apathetic about until I ate them. They were light and crispy on the outside and soft, steamy, and flavorful on the inside. A+ brunch. Go there!

Something I've not covered in this blog yet: Eggs. I really love them. I might be a little obsessed with them. I might talk about brunch a lot in this blog, and I love brunch so much because it almost always includes eggs.

At this point in my life with eggs (specifically our typical leghorn chicken eggs), I've grown to love them prepared many ways: scrambled light, poached, sunny-side-up, frittata, omelet, hard boiled, bird's nest, quiche... I've recently made my own eggs blackstone at home. I'm working on egg salad sandwiches as a substitute for tuna salad. Next steps: master the soft boiled egg and find the perfect egg cup for me, and try preserved eggs in Chinese cuisine. I gotta try it all.

My favorite eggs to buy at the store now are Rock Island's fertile brown eggs. They're usually $3 to $4 a dozen. They're cage free—which is important to me. I also have a biased to brown eggs for no reason but they give me a false sense of "real" farm eggs. I also enjoy the different shades of creamy light brown found in each carton. 

I will probably speak more of my egg-cellent adventures in the future, but now I want to leave you with one last egg affection. Below is a drawing of my imaginary hens I will have someday. They are Lulu and Miss Davis and they will be our friends. They'll *cluck cluck cluck* in the backyard in the sunshine. Each day, I'll go outside and ask permission to add their little presents to our collection. It will be paradise! :P

Project: Twin Peaks anthology essay

Just popping over to borrow a cup of sugar, black lodge.

When Jeremy and I first checked out our current home on Google Street View, we noticed this two story apartment building across the street.

In one of the two top front windows, a dream catcher hung. It surely catches dreams from the dreaming inhabitant and while it makes me wonder if a tripped out old man lives there who plays guitar. In the other front top window, red curtains blared from the blue window frame. We both exclaimed "Zomfg, it's the black lodge! We must face ourselves there or never escape! Ah!"

When I notice that window, I think of this:

I should use that red curtain-ed window as inspiration for writing my Twin Peaks essay. About a month ago, I was lucky enough to stumble upon this announcement. The day before the deadline I pumped out the below proposal and sent it off. To my appreciation and excitement, it got accepted! You can look for me in the anthology Fan Phenomena: Twin Peaks out by winter (I think). I have a month and a half to complete my final 3000-3500 word essay. So far...well so far I have nothing!

I should give myself more credit. I do have something. I have my proposal. I have a nifty little scribbled outline in my journal. I have my intentions and aspirations. I have a bit of the black lodge across the street. I don't think it's time yet to consider a vision quest, but if I don't start getting down anything by mid-May you can find me across the street. I do not recommend you coming after me as this is something I must face alone with my doppelganger.

Please do read my proposal. I've got a path plotted out for the final piece, but I'd rather hear your ideas and feedback before explaining myself further. Have yourself a doughnut and coffee whilst doing so.

View the May 7, 1990 magazine here.

There is an entire Tumblr dedicated to Audrey Horne’s saddle shoes, fitted sweaters, and rouged pout. The internet’s fairly recent swell of social media and visual communication came right in time for Audrey Horne to be officially declared a style icon by twenty to thirty year old fashionistas. And, when I share web pages splashed with her feisty fifties-inspired ensembles to a friend who was eighteen when Twin Peaks first aired, she says “No one even dressed that way in the early 90s.”


Fashion in Fan Phenomena: Twin Peaks must start with Audrey. Her look-alike, Donna Hayward, plays sleuth in over-sized down vests. However, Audrey wins the proverbial “walk-off” in the Packard Mill. Have you ever seen an over-sized down vest worn by an incredulous teenager on the cover of a naughty pulp novel? Maybe you’ve discretely picked up a tattered copy of one of those books at a yard sale to find an Audrey Horne prototype on the cover. You’ve delighted in her lipstick red heels tapping to dreamy music only heard in her head, and surely you paid for that cheeky novel.

David Lynch dresses this heroine in nostalgia and escapism so that the pain of Laura’s modern murder pinches us deeper than a zipper on a snug pencil skirt. Fans who first viewed her fashions in the early 90s didn’t have the internet’s vast fastness at their fingertips. We can assume that they would have amassed screen stills, styleboards, and outfit inspiration photos on their Tumblrs if they had them, because Audrey isn’t just a young, pretty girl, she’s a mystery and a fantasy wearing what style-philes only wish they could find at a thrift store.

Thank you!

Shoes of San Francisco: One

A rolling rumble shook the front windows.

"What was that noise?" I whispered like the doomed girl in a horror flick.

"I don't know," Jeremy replied without much thought.

"There is it again!" I say with a jump. It's a guttural sound, like a monster-bomb had imploded over the hill in South San Francisco.

"I think it was thunder," Jeremy replied.

Before I could answer "No way," it hit me like lightning. Duh. Of course it's thunder you East coast poseur.

No, no, I'm still a true East coaster. Don't worry, Pittsburgh. But you know what? I haven't experienced a thunderstorm since summer 2010, almost two years ago. I forgot about those.

As I type the social media outlets are bursting with accounts of the storm. Many of my friends are not natives of California—where thunderstorms seldom strike. In fact, I just read this today:

"In his books, Angelucci says he was particularly terrified of thunderstorms and was attracted to California because he heard thunderstorms were very rare there."

c/o fellow writer Maggie in the Mission

Jeremy and I sometimes tease people here when they freak out during a 70+ degree day. They don't know heat, we'd boast, they don't know what it's like to sweat through a shower. Likewise, I don't know how to deal with nearly 365 days of comfortable jacket weather. 

The kind of rain that happens here is something with which I had to learn to deal. When it rains, it just rains. It's an all day event, unlike places where storms blow in unexpectedly when you're in a tank and sandals. I appreciate a solid day of rain, and so do my plants. They're currently getting drenched on the front steps.

I purchased the above Hunter shin-height boots last December during my first bout of endless Bay Area rain. These are my first "big girl" rainboots, as they cost more than $20 and do not have hot pink stars printed all over them. And, they do not let the water in. With a sturdy pair of real galoshes, I'm much happier in the rain. 

Usually when I write, I close myself up with headphones and my writing playlist. At the moment, I'm enjoying Jeremy practicing parts of "This Charming Man" on his Epiphone guitar and the novelty of thunder. 

Here I am again

It's just so much easier to pick up where we left off than to start all over again. By "we" I mean "me" and where I left off was a project that I abandoned six years ago almost to the day.

To the day? Whoa! I didn't realize that until I was about to type it. Serendipity is visiting me.

Until next time...

A.