My smallish ego is smiling right now (I know, I know - it's just one tiny win). I received a call late yesterday that my essay will be running on the presses tonight for Friday's paper. Ahhhhhhh. I didn't get a proof, so I'm anxious to see if there are any errors (I sent it in with none, but it was reset for the press). Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
On the "interesting shit" front, my hella cool artist friend SK and I have decided it would be fun to collaborate. We're scratching our heads to put together some form of painting and prose/poetry in hopes that some non-nose thumbing small gallery looking for one (1) solid artist and one (1) renegade/feral writer will have our crazy asses. Then, the plan is to seal the deal with publishing the lot of stuff in a smallish book (on a print-on-demand deal most likely). The battle before us now is rounding out a theme and then the age-old chicken/egg question. Artwork then writing or vice versa? And being that I'm type A, this is the annoying, oh-the-hell-with-it-all question.
That being said, we've got some themes in the development stage. I'm curious, though. What theme/idea sticks out in your mind as interesting to view from the perspective of 2 mom creative-types? BRAINSTORM WITH US! First things that pop into your head. WRITE IN THE COMMENTS (please)!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Holy Street Cred!!!
WOW! Just got the following notice:
Congratulations! You are one of the top three winners in the Wired Art Essay Contest, sponsored by South County Times, Art World Association, St. Louis Writers Guild, and Wired Coffee cafe.
We hope you are able to attend St. Louis Writers Guild's Open Mic night at Wired Coffee next Tuesday, March 11, from 7-9 p.m., where you will have an opportunity to read your winning entry at the beginning of the program. If you submitted more than one essay, you won't find out which one placed in the contest until that evening. Don't worry--we'll have copies of the winning entries on hand.
Please let me know whether you'll be able to attend and participate in Open Mic on March 11 ... and again, Congratulations!
Congratulations! You are one of the top three winners in the Wired Art Essay Contest, sponsored by South County Times, Art World Association, St. Louis Writers Guild, and Wired Coffee cafe.
We hope you are able to attend St. Louis Writers Guild's Open Mic night at Wired Coffee next Tuesday, March 11, from 7-9 p.m., where you will have an opportunity to read your winning entry at the beginning of the program. If you submitted more than one essay, you won't find out which one placed in the contest until that evening. Don't worry--we'll have copies of the winning entries on hand.
Please let me know whether you'll be able to attend and participate in Open Mic on March 11 ... and again, Congratulations!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Seasons of Wisdom
I am entering a contest sponsored locally here. This is the second-round version of an essay inspired by an oil painting of two large hibiscus blooms. Comment away!
*********************************************
It’s almost time.
After the final winter freeze has laid its icy blanket upon the ground, I’ll impatiently watch rows of flawlessly aligned seeds shoot up to present their annual flowering performances like an organic version of Las Vegas showgirls. The days will lengthen, a garden pot will appear on the stoop, and I’ll discover more about the workings of life.
I moved in next door to Ms. June seven years ago on a chilly fall day – the kind of day when a jacket isn’t quite enough to keep one warm. She and I spent the winter months exchanging simple neighborly greetings and smiles as we passed each other on the street or scraped frost from the frozen windshields of our cars.
Spring came and blended with signs of the coming summer, the days still short on humidity. I stepped outside one Saturday afternoon, and my eyes caught sight of a bulky, nondescript garden pot newly situated between Ms. June’s stoop and my own. The vessel held a woody plant with sturdy green leaves and deep pink buds like fuchsia lipsticks half-turned up from their bright green tubes. A hibiscus, I beamed – my favorite summer foliage.
I stood eyeing the flourishing plant as Ms. June, in pedal pushers and a t-shirt picturing a sleeping kitten, emerged through a screen door. As she knelt and turned the soil of her flowerbed with a hand spade, she spoke of the care a hibiscus required indoors until the season was right to bring it outside. The chat turned to her black plastic trays of mottled annuals, the stockpile of plants in her extra bedroom, and then – somewhere between the begonias and impatiens - to life.
Our conversation has never ended.
Over six summers of Ms. June’s eternally-thriving hibiscus, we’ve cultivated a relationship, like that of a mentor and a protégé. Sometimes Ms. June’s lessons for me come as simple thoughts. Strawberries aren’t good this week. Kirkwood Farmer’s Market has the best pies. The war has gone on too long. Other times her teaching is more spiritual. A parent’s love endures even when a child’s does not. The loss of two husbands and a son is soul-rattling, but survivable. Surely God exists.
The current temperature is a glacial 22 degrees. I anxiously mark red X’s across my calendar as winter draws to a close. My seventh summer learning across Ms. June’s hibiscus is imminent. I eagerly anticipate the return of the pot and the humid nights I will spend on the stoop with Ms. June in whisps of citronella smoke, swatting mosquitoes. I have much to learn, yet I’m acutely aware that our front-stoop talks may be numbered. Just as a bright hibiscus bloom withers away when summer fades, so does one’s lifetime.
Then again, my other neighbor has seen 95 summers. And the thriving hibiscus? Well, it could live another 40 years.
*********************************************
It’s almost time.
After the final winter freeze has laid its icy blanket upon the ground, I’ll impatiently watch rows of flawlessly aligned seeds shoot up to present their annual flowering performances like an organic version of Las Vegas showgirls. The days will lengthen, a garden pot will appear on the stoop, and I’ll discover more about the workings of life.
I moved in next door to Ms. June seven years ago on a chilly fall day – the kind of day when a jacket isn’t quite enough to keep one warm. She and I spent the winter months exchanging simple neighborly greetings and smiles as we passed each other on the street or scraped frost from the frozen windshields of our cars.
Spring came and blended with signs of the coming summer, the days still short on humidity. I stepped outside one Saturday afternoon, and my eyes caught sight of a bulky, nondescript garden pot newly situated between Ms. June’s stoop and my own. The vessel held a woody plant with sturdy green leaves and deep pink buds like fuchsia lipsticks half-turned up from their bright green tubes. A hibiscus, I beamed – my favorite summer foliage.
I stood eyeing the flourishing plant as Ms. June, in pedal pushers and a t-shirt picturing a sleeping kitten, emerged through a screen door. As she knelt and turned the soil of her flowerbed with a hand spade, she spoke of the care a hibiscus required indoors until the season was right to bring it outside. The chat turned to her black plastic trays of mottled annuals, the stockpile of plants in her extra bedroom, and then – somewhere between the begonias and impatiens - to life.
Our conversation has never ended.
Over six summers of Ms. June’s eternally-thriving hibiscus, we’ve cultivated a relationship, like that of a mentor and a protégé. Sometimes Ms. June’s lessons for me come as simple thoughts. Strawberries aren’t good this week. Kirkwood Farmer’s Market has the best pies. The war has gone on too long. Other times her teaching is more spiritual. A parent’s love endures even when a child’s does not. The loss of two husbands and a son is soul-rattling, but survivable. Surely God exists.
The current temperature is a glacial 22 degrees. I anxiously mark red X’s across my calendar as winter draws to a close. My seventh summer learning across Ms. June’s hibiscus is imminent. I eagerly anticipate the return of the pot and the humid nights I will spend on the stoop with Ms. June in whisps of citronella smoke, swatting mosquitoes. I have much to learn, yet I’m acutely aware that our front-stoop talks may be numbered. Just as a bright hibiscus bloom withers away when summer fades, so does one’s lifetime.
Then again, my other neighbor has seen 95 summers. And the thriving hibiscus? Well, it could live another 40 years.
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