a film and a book

 

Dear Viewer,

I hope you have already read The Lover; I hadn't, and I always thought I would, it's just that a lot of years have passed since I first came across it- like, 35 or 40 years!  It's embarrassing, but I know you won't judge me, and I won't judge you, either; but I hope you do read it, I hope you read it in the next 30 days, let alone years, but whenever you get to it, you will want more from Marguerite Duras.  And so.  Let me offer you something that doesn't need you to turn the pages, but will give you some Marguerite Duras:  Hiroshima Mon Amour; your film assignment for this month!

PS  Now; not now, later, when you have read The Lover, or watched the film, you might want to read this, too.

a fall tune

 

The Dove, Pablo Picasso, 1949.

Dear Radio Dodo Listener,

What's new, you ask?  Lots of stuff, I guess.  It never seems quite worth the telling, all the new stuff.  I feel often tired from playing my same role in the pantomime, and it makes me feel like writing to you is just more of the same.  But I do think of you, and I want to send you some little token, something good.  Let it be Peace Piece, you song for today.

pool, bakery

 

Sunday

 

Dear Days,

Sunday is the best radio night on my public radio station.  The first show is Global Spin, which has, yes, World Music-  And if want to be a citizen of the World, you will want to listen to World Music!  Then comes the best show, Speak Low:  which is all kinds of good including French pop music.  It's a terrific two hours of radio.  Lastly, comes Citizen Sound, which is also good, sometimes even great.  The show is varied; I think interns run it, at 11 pm on Sunday eve, and I don't often listen past midnight.  This song, your song of the day, was played on the middle show, Speak Low, one recent Sunday.  It is great, no question; but if for some reason you are too old or too young to recognize that circular staircasing sample is coming from, it is from here, another peerless song.

the big wheel

 

read me

                                                    Untitled (Cat), watercolor on paper, Robert Smithson.                                                                       Check out more museum-worthy kitties at this Smithsonian link.

Dear Y'all,

You know it's bad when circumstances lead me to consider wearing a t-shirt as a sign to tell you what I think.  My body, my billboard is what they say, but I never quite like it.  It's possible that I am self conscious about people reading off the front of my chest, it might also be that I like form more than content; it's hard to say. 

I settled on a tee shirt that says Hell Cats on it.  I think I will get another.*  Read me and know what I am feeling, then go away.

*  If you don't want a shirt, you could get one of these.

nonwork (& delulu & skeuomorph)

 

Wonderbread, 1962, serigraph, Corita Kent.

Dear Y'all,

So many good new to me words lately!  Non-work, or nonwork is all over my mind right now.  See, I have long struggled to make what I do seem like work to that annoying voice in my head that suggests I am 'doing nothing.'  I defined my reading or thinking as my 'research;' my bed as my 'lab' - but I think, my up and doing* friends and the rest of you comrades in nonwork, that I have got it wrong- backwards, even.  It is the nonwork I should be cataloging and cherishing- which, yes, is just a matter of definition- all the work I do at making things and thinking things and writing and playing that is all now, from this day forward, officially, nonwork.  I am taking my research hours back and putting them into this other pile!  It's like moving your socks and underwear drawer from the second drawer down to the top!  I expect great things from this new definition.  

It should be said, it should be emphasized, that I don't think I could have gone directly from indoctrination in The Meritocracy to nonwork.  (Even though I have read a lot of French authors).  No, I think the roundabout arrival via research and lab work was the better way for me.  For you?  For you, for you! I wish the world of goodness!  I wish you to go directly to nonwork as your sustenance and paydirt, your bread and butter, your raison d'etre.  Go, go now!  While no one is looking!  Let us be honest about what gives us meaning, what love is, and where love is.

Let's meet again soon, to take a nonwork look at delulu and skeuomorph!  It's going to be fun!

a day in that blue month September

 

maquette III, Moon of Alabama, bronze, Lynn Chadwick

Dear Maria,

It's so funny to be seeing you after so long, girl!  I saw you in a book I was reading; The Quest for Christa T.  It was in German, but I looked at a translation and I remembered that I knew your song well!  It's your song of the day!*

* And if you also, first met Bertolt Brecht through your fervor for David Bowie, we should start a club!  Let's screen some shirts and start a zine!  How about we call it Zinzin?  Zinzin Zine!  It's another new word for me this year and one of my favorites!  The rest of you?  Well, you already know Bertolt Brecht only you don't know you know him!  For example, Mack the Knife.  Or Pirate Jenny  Or maybe you are a Doors fan?  Yeah, that's B. B. too!

who knows

 

Dear Time,

Here is your song for today.  It's unbearably beautiful, so if you aren't in the mood, in the space, for a further breaking of your trampled heart, don't listen to it.  I think I will even offer you an alternate track; here you go, my fragile ones!

another woman to love

 

Dear Lovers,

Oh!  This!  This is so good!  It's your song for today!  If you don't recognize it, that is the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, and my only question is, still, why haven't I been there yet?*

* Everytime I read the name, or see a photograph of the BBMT, I get a massive wave of déjà vu, which makes me think that I have been there.  The ice cream chairs, all the red....  Maybe when I was five years old?  No one can confirm or deny, which is a nice place to be, because it means I can write my own memories without any heckling or pesky factualities.

my year with the women

We Are All Alike, Eleanor Lowden.

Dear Books,

It's been about a year now, that I have been keeping track of the books I have read; in conjunction with a commitment to reading women authors.  I also include non-white writers (any gender), and trans or non-binary authors, but my favorites are from women like me*, writing about what it feels like to inhabit their bodies.

It isn't a total ban, either, I read some white men now and then; and, as I go along filling my head with predominately women's voices, or perhaps I should say: non male writers? I notice, I notice it hard, when I read one of these menwrit books that is trying to build a great castle, an empire, with words- all about their sex organs and oozing what have yous.  I know you think I am exaggerating, but try it- try 5 books in a row by women, and then pick up one of these men and see if you ken what I am getting at.

It's not that all the women (plus) are the same style/type of writing, and it isn't that I could pick them out in a blind taste test, it's something kind of small and ineffable.  Many women write in ways that have a very Male Voice, and some men write in a genderless way, too.  If I had to distill it all to one single difference, it might be a question mark.  The lack of definiteness, not authority or confidence, but a kind of inherent acknowledgement that the view is multiple, and this line, this sentence, can only be a snapshot.  Or, maybe the question mark is the sense of searching.  One thing, though, even if I cannot define it, it is there.

It's also not that I don't love, love a word castle, built out of strange and wonderous similes and inhabited by lonely princes of darkness and light.  No, I love that kind of thing, I really do.  I think what I am trying to tell you, is that I was surprised to find a such a definite feeling of difference.  

For the counters and statisticians, it has been 64 books by female and female-identifying writers, and 14 by men in 49 weeks- and that makes 88, and well, if I had counted sooner I'd have seen what a silly thing it was to start this calendar year off with a plan to try to read 50 books!  Oh, and I am not done with the women, not at all!  Check out this list of writers on my shelf still to be read:

Clarice Lispector

Han King

Lillian Hellman

Jenny Ditski

Dianna Athill

Maeve Brennan

Alice Munro

Lillian Faderman

Sara Ahmed

Eudora Welty

Donna Haraway

Eileen Chang

Jen Hatmaker

Samantha Harvey

Kathleen Hanna

Kate Zambreno

Ágota Kristóf

Saidiya Hartman

Tove Ditlevsen

Lydia Lunch

Kate Manne  

Barbara Comyns

Cristina Campo

Willa Cather

Janet Frame

Isabel Allende

Fleur Jaeggy

Inger Christensen

Esther Kinsky

Ellen Meloy

Eileen Chang

Agnes Smedley

Cookie Mueller

Claire Messud

Susana Kayson

Shirley Jackson

Margaret Drabble

Jean Rhys

Angela Carter

Anaïs Nin

If you are still wondering why anyone would read like this, well, let me put it this way:  These are my sisters, and they have millions of pages of wisdom to give me!  Who the hell am I to refuse such a gift?  

*  Like me, in this case, means a woman who writes.  It's also extra dear to my heart and enlivening when the women authors are within ten years or so of my age.

PS  If you want to hear a few favorites, well; The Price of Salt, The Quest for Christa T., What Kingdom, Astragal, To Throw Away Unopened, The Last Samurai, The Lady with the Little Fox Fur, The Old Child, All Passion Spent, Checkout 19, The Lover, Small Things Like These, and here is one old dead white guy for you:  A Room with a View.

ground plane XXI

 

fly away

Dear Jennies,

Jenny Lewis is a Radio Dodo regular, and you should put her on your playlist, too.  Here is your Jenny song of the day!  More Jenny Lewis, right here, whenever you are ready!  And you know what to do if you need even more: let your little fingers do the typing.

turn away

 

Dear Looking for a Song,

I sometimes listen to a radio station that does not have a DJ; which is awkward, because you don't always know what you heard. Which is fine and serendipity and all that; but sometimes you want to hear it again, and so you go to your great oracle and you enter some words & phrases and you get not what you want.  But, no worries, I found it for you!  Your absolutely fabulous song for today!!!

carried away

 

weather.gov*

Dear Dodoheads,

Here is a song, your song for today, that will carry you away with its airy vocals and lilting chords.  If you are like, maybe of a certain age, you will be carried to a time past as well; a time where the room was filled with paint fumes and pencil shavings; the deep concrete sill of the window is covered with bird seed, and pigeons have come to eat.  The sky is light but not blue, and very large.  The song is playing on a tape that a comrade has given you, and the swirling sounds suggest even more and further endlessnesses.

*  Am I allowed to use this image image without clear understanding of air pressure high in the atmosphere?  Yes, yes I can; and you can too!  Because, kittens, we are using it in appreciation of its formal beauty, its aesthetic qualities.

from far away

 

Dear Waiting, 

They say good things come to those who wait.  I dunno.  I do know, that some things have come to me, that I never expected to arrive.  For example, the Pine Siskin- it is a bird that is in my range, my area, but for years (like 16!) I never saw one at my feeder, but then I did see them!  

For a long time I searched the skies for a condor; I live near(ish) to their historical range and the range they set about recover the species in.  I first saw one at the Grand Canyon, and that was a delight, but then, after another wait, then I saw them in Pinnacles National Park.  They are always there in Pinnacles, from my experience, and one day, I will look out my window and see one here.  

But that is about further waiting.  My message today is about what has arrived, despite years of unlikely wait.  This year, the aurora arrived at my back porch!  No more hunting it, it came to me!  I can hardly believe my good luck.  

I took a long trip, like one does, to see Yellowstone National Park some years back- when you go there, you have a list of things you want to see so you can award yourself imaginary badges.  You might see bear, bison, geysers, mud pots, elk, bighorn sheep, moose, beaver, otter, and wolves.  We saw bison, geysers, and mud pots- I don't call it a failure, but it isn't all that many badges, considering.  I went to Alaska, too, where you are almost guaranteed an orca and a bear, but those badges will have to wait.  Also, you might see wolves.

Can you guess where I may next be going?  Well, I am not going anywhere, because now, the wolves, the darling wolves, the wolves of all your fairy tales and metaphorical fears, are coming to me!  I can't wait!

PS  You probably can't wait to hear that song again, either, and you don't have to!

b(l)ow away

 

Dear Magnetic,

I love this!  Love it!  I know you will too!  Maybe you will also want this.

Don't walk away, René

 

Dear Suzanne,

Here at the Dodo, we are very lucky to have a jimdandy public radio station with a bunch of great DJs that play things I would not hear anywhere else.  Here is such a song, your song of the day!  Whenever I am not writing to you here, I am listening there.

skate away

 

Dear Long-Time Viewers,

If you have been a regular reader you will know that it has been an age, an age!  Of over 5 years (January 11, 2020), since  I have added a new roller rink to my list!  Now, another thing you know already is that I live for a list, and if not for enumerating, inventorying, itemizing, cataloging, and tabulating I'd be in ever so much more of a dither and a pother.  

Oaks Park Roller Rink makes the 40th roller rink I have visited, and the 37th I have skated in.  (There are three that we did not skate in; in some ways they don't count but I count them in a parenthetical way.)

The Oaks Park Roller Rink is also the best rink I have been to- it has edged out the Sunrise Roller Rink in Citrus Heights- which maintained its preeminence for 10 or 12 years!  What Oaks Park and Sunrise have that makes them the best, is a rotunda wood floor.  This is where the boards are bent to follow the curve of the corner.  Wood skating floors can come in two other main types: all the boards running the same direction, or with a hex pattern, with boards set at angles in the corners.

Oaks Park is probably the oldest rink I have skated.  It has been there since 1905!  It has a huge skating area- 20,000 square feet!  And an amazing Wurlitzer that we happened to be there to hear for the Sunday organ skate session.  The floor is the smoothest thing ever; there are rinks named Paradise, but Oaks Park is Skate Heaven.  If you think it sounds good, it is!  If you go to only one rink in your life, let it be Oaks Park.  There is a little hand rail place for beginners, a space on the side of the rink for more practice, and at the back of the room, a place with wood moguls to skate!  Opposite the practice and organ key board side there is a big snack bar and nice seating for folks who want to rest or watch.  They have a skate shop, too, because Oaks Park Roller Rink has everything!

run away

 

Dear Listeners,

Here is your song for today- I am a big fan of these two people singing and playing as Birds on a Wire.  I am betting you will love them too.

the days away

 

twenty-six hundred

 

Dear Rollers,

Well, here we are again; another hundred days!  I had a few lessons in skating over these last100 days, and we learned a thing kind of like this, under another name.  When I say learned, I mean that I am working on it, and sometimes it comes out not too bad.  Summer is a good time to take a lesson in skating- here is a nearby place you can get lessons, and here is another.

If you feel grumpy and hot and don't want to see any other humans, well then, get yourself one of these (in one of many spiffing colors) and roll around your house and driveway in splendid isolation.  That's where I'll be.

you tangle my emotions

 

Tom Petty's boots.*

Dear Radio Dodo Listener,

Ooooh!  Today's song is so good!  If you have been tuning in for a while, you will see that Tom Petty is often played here; because I love his descriptions of how we feel.  And that is that.  But there is also, the fact that my favorite Petty songs are sung by women.  "Don't Come Around Here No More," is made more, made larger by Rhiannon Giddens.  You'll hear it.  It isn't an opinion, it is a fact.  There is also, as further evidence, Lucinda Williams singing "Changed the Locks."  These versions are peerless.

*  I wonder, too, as I imagine you do, what would it be like if we put our feet in those boots?  How would we walk and where to?  I think about this with the artifacts of other people too; Judy Garland's ruby slippers, Johnny Cash's big black Manuel Cueva's suits, Linda Ronstadt's cub scout uniform, the fantasy of inhabiting those people and places.  I know I'd want to wear these things into the Seven 11, and I would want to smoke heroin, and I wouldn't take any guff wearing these duds, not even from my relatives.

the power

 

   More raised fists.

Dear Comrades,

I have your song for today, and I have a lot of other suggestions, too, but I know you are weary, so let me make my points in bullet form:

Be radical.

Subvert.

Resist.

Speak up.

Don't worry too much about how, because it needs doing in every single possible way.  This is, I hope, The Day.  The day that we will look back on, in our memoirs, recollections, and histories, and we see that this was the day it began in earnest.  These past few months are the days leading up to the overthrow of our oppressive and murderous leaders.  Think forward to the victory; the Universal Basic Income, the housing, the healthcare, the social services, the open borders, the freedom of science, art, and education; the field of daisies that all this will be, must be.

just my way of saying: it's not all bad??

 

Dear Ones,

I have been sulking on The Situation; forgive my absence.  If I don't want to poison others with my desultory feelings of doom, what can I do but stay out of sight and earshot?  A question to be considered, but not to be answered right now, right here.  There are things going on all over, even as fascism continues to roll over us; it is  a slow march down into a deeper hell.

This little mouse is filled with lavender- I made a whole mess of them many years ago and this one was all moth eaten!  Yes, I made them to put in drawers and 'repel' moths!  This one was sitting on the bookshelf.  I decided to repair it with some really lovely sock yarn that I got for free from the wonderful Fiber & Fringe.  The wool it is made of was a from a coat I had made even longer ago, and the tail & ears are of the silk that lined the coat.

Additionally, the lavender was still very strong smelling, as it fell out continually as I repaired the holes, and you know what else?  This repaired one is so beautiful!