Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

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The canna lilies are in bloom again.

Such a pretty flower.

Actually, they bloom pretty much all the time around here.  There is, however, a brief few weeks when they die back and look all brown and scraggly.  Then, their foliage turns green again.

And then!

All of a sudden!

Flowers!

Mine look like this, all orange and white.

Where yesterday there was nothing but green leaves, today there are exuberant open blooms.  And I hear Katharine Hepburn’s voice in my head:

The canna lilies are in bloom again.  Such a strange flower!

In that odd, magnificent, Connecticut Yankee, Hepburn voice.  (The line is actually “calla lilies,” but who are you to quibble with the voices I hear in my head?)

The cannas are not strange except in so far as I have not killed any of them yet.  (Not much of a green thumb.  I may have mentioned it.)  I haven’t even been able to kill the ones I’ve tried.

My cannas are meant to be tastefully confined to the flowerbeds within their concrete borders.  A few of them didn’t get the memo.

I mow them down.  They come back up.  I dig them up.  They sprout again.  They are an unrestrained flower, if not strange.

But, I am thankful, thankful, thankful for something that blooms far beyond my poor power to ignore, neglect and actively thwart it.  I have blossoms out my office window for at least six months of the year, if not more.

The grasshoppers, touch wood, don’t seem to like them.  Occasionally, a little brown lizard will pretend to be the dried out center of a bloom—dangerous to my blood pressure and his life if I happen to be deadheading the old ones to make way for the new.  But, generally speaking, they are maintenance-free.  They don’t care if I water them or not.  They don’t care if they get any sun or not.

They just go on being bright and cheerful.

I am thankful.

What is it with these dreams?

And can we make them stop?

I am not a person with a strong belief in the predictive power of dreams.  I don’t think they are premonitions or portents.

Thankfully.

Because I have been having some very odd ones lately, and I’d hate to think what they presaged if I gave any credence to that idea.

Usually, I think dreams are sort of a mash-up of images from your waking life.  With the exception of the Actor’s Nightmare—where you can’t remember what play you are doing or everybody else is speaking lines from a different play or in a different language or, worse, your costume is missing.

That one is an anxiety dream.

I have, in my life, had it in various other incarnations as well.  The Director’s Nightmare—where you are at tech rehearsal and no one—not the actors, not the stage manager, not the designers—will do what you ask.  The Playwright’s Nightmare—where your reading is starting and you realize you forgot to tell your leading lady and there’s no way she can fly in from the Coast in the next 15 minutes.

Fortunately, those stress-related imaginings are just that.  Imaginings.  None of them have ever come true.  (Although I have stood on stages and watched fellow actors’ eyes go blank and known something perilously similar to the Actor’s Nightmare.)

The thing I am wondering about today is why, all of a sudden, I am having these Grand Guignol horror movie-like dreams.  For the last couple of days.

Mafia hit men.

Axe murderers.

It’s not like I’ve been watching horror movies recently.  Or even the news.

I’ve been spending my time with BBC period pieces.  Edward VII.  Downton Abbey.  Edward & Mrs. Simpson.  (Just as a side note, imagine my surprise to find Sylvia Buchman’s (Paul Reiser’s mother on Mad About You) younger days were spent, in part, as Wallis Simpson!)

And when I haven’t been enjoying tea cups and crown jewels, I have been trekking to the Delta Quadrant with the crew of Voyager.  (Someday, I will get even with my niece for this whole Netflix thing, but that is a subject for another time.)

So, I haven’t been basking in terror.  And nothing particularly stressful is going on just now that would translate into a fear of getting killed.

I’m just having these horrible dreams.  And I’m not enjoying them, and I’d like them to stop, please.

A happy medium

Marry one, if you can.

A little trouble with the washing machine today.

Water on the floor.

Not all over the floor, the which no amount of optimism or understatement could legitimately describe as “a little trouble,” but enough to be noticeable.  As in, a certain dampness manifested itself around my toes as I transferred the latest load to the dryer.

My mild “uh-oh” brought the MotH* running.

And this is where my Tuesday Tip of the day begins to walk the tightrope.

My dad was not a handy man, as my mother will be the first to tell you.  It is questionable whether he really had any idea of the proper way to hold a hammer.  (There’s no question at all that he didn’t know anything about power tools.)

It was a source of friction, since my mom grew up on a farm with four brothers fixing and building things and a father who was a carpenter.  Officially.  With a sticker in a union book and everything.

So, you don’t want to marry somebody who doesn’t know what to do if you need a nail driven or a light fixture installed.

On the other hand….

Before I drew the next breath after the “uh-oh,” the washing machine was on its side, three big clamps were removed from its innards, and I was being admonished to get out of the way!

Had I not put my foot down (damp toes and all), the whole machine would be in pieces right now.

See, I’m fairly certain this is not a huge mechanical failure.

I think it may just be residual splashing as the machine empties into the sink.  (We’re still using, “temporarily,” a portable apartment-sized washing machine we acquired when we had an apartment.)  That has happened once previously.

Anyway, I think a little more observation is in order.

And I know that disassembly of a decades-old, stop-gap machine is not something you want to undertake when you’ve already agreed that you’re going to get a new machine someday and are just using this one in the meantime.

I appreciate the skills and inventiveness and sheer willingness to experiment of my stagehand husband.

But, sometimes, “uh-oh” is more applicable to his tendency to dive right in than to the actual problem.

So, when you are choosing a spouse, I suggest a happy medium in the Mr. or Ms. Fixit department.

Because, you know, I find it hard to believe those  three big clamps don’t have a purpose that isn’t going to be served by their current location up on a shelf.

But we’ll see.

 

* MotH = Man of the House

Non-functional function

Beauty for no reason.

Today, I am thankful for the human impulse to create beauty even when it serves no other purpose but itself.

We seem to have drifted from that impulse as we become more enamored of efficiency and utilitarianism, but once upon a time—and I think it still lurks within us—we took the time to make even the most useful things beautiful.

As testimony to this impulse, I bring you:

Manhole-covers.net

This website is a gallery of old French manhole covers.

What could possibly be more functional than the cover to the access point to the sewers?

And yet, craftsmen designed and metalworkers created works of art—to lay down in the street and be trodden on.

Nowadays, here in the United States, our manhole covers are relatively plain.  A manufacturer’s name stamped into the metal, perhaps a numeric code allowing workers to identify the location.

Less expensive, I’m sure.  Functional.  Doing what it needs to do and no more.

(Trivia question:  Do you know why manhole covers are round?  It makes it impossible for them to fall through the hole.)

So, we gain speed on the assembly line and we lose a bit of beauty out of the world.

The impulse is still there, though.  Watch any of the decorating programs on HGTV.   If you ever get the chance, take a look at the main building of the Jacksonville Public Library.  There are people who still believe in beautifying the utilitarian and manage to buck the system and carve out enough time and money to do so.

And today, I am thankful for them—and wishing for a more developed sense of visual creativity so that I could be like them.

Ideas for you

For free!

I’m talking about TED Talks.

TED started in 1984 as a conference to bring together people from three disciplines:  Technology, Entertainment, and Design.  It has since grown to include experts from almost every field of human endeavor in two annual conferences.

More than 1400 TED Talks are available online and have been viewed over a billion times.  They are posted under a Creative Commons license, so they are free to re-post and share.

Participants in TED are challenged to give the talk of their lives.  Scary, huh?  What’s so amazing is that most of them do.

Fascinating, informative, moving.

There is something there for everyone, and everything on the website merits your investment of your twenty-or-so minutes to listen.

I, myself, am partial to Brene Brown’s talk on vulnerability.  And I love poet and teacher Sarah Kay’s If I should have a daughter.  You can find links to both of them on the introductory page New to TED?

There are various other compilations of recommended talks.

12 TED Talks that Every Human Should Watch

Five Key TED Talks

and lots more you can find by googling.

You can just go to the TED site and work your way through everything there.  (I keep meaning to do that.  Maybe one a day—like a vitamin!)

But, what a miracle!

These marvelous thinkers and speakers, sharing their ideas with us.  Costing nothing more than a few minutes of our time.  A bigger investment than scanning a Facebook meme or a 140-character Tweet—and with a much bigger payoff.

These are the ideas our best minds are considering.  These are the things our best speakers are talking about.

These are conferences that happen far from most of us, and we get to participate.  No admission charge, no airline ticket, no hotel fee.

What a miracle!

Putting the end of the ham

on your car’s wheels.

Apparently, we’re all doing it.

It’s a billion dollar business.

(Well, that might be an exaggeration.  The truth is I don’t know the actual figures for the profit in the hubcap industry, but I’m betting—given the number of cars on the road and the fact that most of them have at least four tires—that it is a significant sector of the economy.)

You may remember, a few weeks ago, a post wherein I was wishing for the Star Trek computer to record a moment by moment account of my life so that I could find the source of used hubcaps we bought some years ago.

Well, along the way to getting that replacement hubcap, I began to wonder why we have hubcaps at all.

I now refer you to Car Talk wherein a valiant attempt is made to justify the existence of hubcaps, but it turns out to be mostly like that old story about the end of the ham.

There are plenty of versions of it floating around.  In essence, it goes something like this:

A new husband asked his bride why she was cutting the end off the ham prior to cooking it.

She replied that she didn’t know.  Her mother had always done it that way, so she assumed it was the right thing to do.

Mom, when asked, replied the same.  Her mother had always done it, so she had carried on discarding a portion of the ham prior to cooking.

Grandma was approached.

Yes, she confirmed.  She had always cut off the end of the ham.

Why?

Because, otherwise, it didn’t fit in her pan.

This, of course, is a cautionary tale about doing things just because they’ve always been done that way.

And, it turns out, that the raison d’être of the hubcap is similar.

Hand-tightened wheel nuts might, if they fell off, clang around in a metal hubcap and alert you to a problem before you lost the actual wheel.  (Many hubcaps today are plastic, so good luck with that.  Plus, most wheel nuts are machine-tightened these days.  Good luck with changing that flat yourself, too.)

Hubcaps might help prevent the nuts from rusting to a point where they are too difficult to remove (assuming you’re going to be able to loosen those machine-tightened things anyway).  The Car Talk boys point out, however, that wheel rotation and brake inspection generally take care of that in a well-maintained vehicle.

That leaves them with the slippery slope argument.  The ‘for want of a nail’ sort of thing.  Missing hubcaps are the first step on a downward spiral where you don’t get the brakes inspected or change the oil.

Generally, however, it sounds like the end of the ham to me.

I wonder on what other things we are spending time and money for some ancient and now irrelevant tradition.  I believe I’ll try to be re-thinking things as I go along.  Sort of wondering on more than Wednesdays, so to speak.

Get in the river.

And let the river roll.

We’ve got such a linear society.

Enter kindergarten at the age of five.  Exit the school system 13, 17, 19 years later with an education (maybe) and a diploma (probably).  Get a job.  Work your way up the ladder.  Go to weddings in your youth, christenings in your middle age, and funerals in your elder years.

We’re sort of conditioned to know how things turn out.

Even the television that we watch tends to support the idea that things get solved within 42 minutes of air time plus commercials.

It can make us reluctant to embark on journeys where the destination is unclear.  Even scarier, there are journeys where we don’t even know if there is a destination.

It might be interesting to try approaching life like the explorers of old.

Henry Hudson didn’t know where the Hudson river came out.  He didn’t even know if it did.  He just set sail to see what he could see.

It’s amazing the things that happen if you just get in the river.

The current catches you.  You move along, sometimes through rapids, sometimes through shallows, but always advancing.  There are moments of great beauty and times when the current holds you up and moves you forward with unexpected support.  There are moments when the flood tide is against you and you wonder what possessed you to get started.

But it’s like the old story about the lady who resisted learning to play the piano in later life.

Do you know how old I will be when I finally learn?, she demanded.

Yes, came the answer.  Exactly the same age as you’ll be if you don’t.

So, today’s tip is to stop waiting to start.  We don’t always know how things come out.

Leap, and the net will appear.  ~ John Burroughs

Get in the river.

 

Look at what we can do!

 Baffling, but cool!

I don’t understand how it works, but it’s fascinating.

Panorama of London

Also, a little scary, as you realize that whatever took these pictures can actually see in the windows.  Big Brother is watching.

So, I don’t know whether this is something to celebrate, but I think it’s inevitable.  The privacy issues, as always, are lagging behind the technology.  At some point, we will probably have to deal with them.  Although, I suspect, the ship has sailed.  I don’t think I can recall any single instance of humanity deciding not to use some technology we have invented.  The show-and-tell gene is too dominant in our species, I think.

At least, this has the possibility of benign and beneficial applications.  Imagine real time web cams at Picadilly Circus.  The Acropolis.

We can already watch manatees at Blue Spring State Park, falcon cams in Ohio, and countless tourist locations at EarthCam.  (It appears to be raining in Times Square as I write this.)

Most of these shots seem a little grainy, and some are more active than others.  For instance, there are more people out and about near the Miami News Cafe than there seem to be in Chios, Greece just now.  Personally, I am rather fond of the giraffe cam.  And I look forward to checking out the penguin cam (too dark in California just now).

The possibilities for eyedropping (I know it’s not a word, but “spying” just seems loaded with more evil intent) seem to be endless.

Really, it’s amazing what we can do!

And, I hope, that someday we can celebrate the miracle of careful consideration about whether we should do all the things we can.

 

You never know

When, where, how and by whom you’re gonna get inspired.

How cool is that?!

So, today, I am thankful for unexpected inspiration.

I’m not talking about inspiration for my next play or novel—although, Universe, if you’re listening—bring it on!

I’m talking about inspiration for how to live better, how to bring more joy into our lives, how to increase our sense of connection.

It’s not like these are not things that most of us know on some level.  But it is true that we tend to forget.  We get busy.  We get anxious.  We get stuck.

The thing that is so great is that we run into reminders everywhere.

I’m thinking right now about this post by Brené Brown, scholar and author, about rebranding  Valentine’s Day into a day of generosity.  The idea is to take the Hallmark holiday and make it meaningful by practicing random acts of kindness and generosity.

Even better, you don’t have to wait for Valentine’s Day.

I re-read the post just now, and I see no reason to wait.  I can give it a shot any time.

Just thinking about it makes the sun shine a little brighter.  A sense of mischief and interest has entered my day.

So, that’s all well and good, and if you have similar thoughts, more power to you.  The point, however, is that I wasn’t looking for this the day I logged into Facebook and followed a link to Brené Brown’s TED talk.  (Watch it below for yourself.)

I just found the little blurb intriguing, listened to the talk, thought it was very interesting and subscribed to her blog.

And out of that, this.

Not a new idea.

Just a good one.

You never know.

 

 

What in the world?!

Or, to be less politically correct…

WTF?!

There are people who just have too much time on their hands.

Which is fine.

Most of us do, really, now that we have achieved the 40 hour work week and vacuum cleaners.

I guess I’m just wondering today about what some people choose to do with it.

I’m not sure whether to call this wild originality (it is), or total ridiculousness (also true).

But, seriously.  Which is stranger?  That somebody actually came up with these two ideas for web pages, or that I found them, or that I am spending time writing about them, and…let’s be honest…you are spending time looking at them.

I do apologize.  But it’s like a train wreck.  You can’t help but look.

I am a Turtle

and

Postbox or Cheese?

If you have any explanation, any, that doesn’t involve the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), feel free to attempt to explain it.

In the meantime:

Saya kura-kura.*

Or, I wish I were, anyway. Then I would get some use out of that website.

 

*”I am a turtle” in Indonesian.


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