A bizarre dream, brought on, perhaps

...by central heating?

I dreamed I was staying with my mother, played by Catherine Deneuve, in a two-story villa. At the first of the movie-dream, she was standing nude on the balcony enjoying the sun (like a scene in an old Sophia Loren movie, the title of which I cannot recall).

When I came downstairs to the kitchen where she was making coffee, she informed me that my former great love had just appeared and pushed his way past her, insisting that he had to see me because I had a pair of red panties and a red bra that belonged to him (!). That made me think, "Little Red Riding Hood." She said he had claimed to work in publishing, but she was sure it was him and that he was lying. She made her distaste for him clear to me.

Then I was suddenly in a room with a number of elderly people -- most of them married couples -- who were very sweet and I was trying to "make nice" with them as if it were a job duty to schmooze with them. They were talking about rental properties they owned and renovations they'd done to them. One part of the conversation was about a renovation that resulted in second, identically shaped and sized room being added on to mirror a kitchen, but without any appliances or sink, etc. So, in essence, they were speaking of a kitchen that wasn't a kitchen.

My goodness! What was this reflection on femininity and domesticity all about?!

Happy new year!

I've totally neglected this blog, my real one. Sorry, friends in real life. The "other project" has totally taken over every moment of my time when I'm not at work. I'm loving every moment of it, but it's taking up so much of my life that I have no free time left to blog here. And there's nothing going on with me except for that enterprise. But I'm not complaining. I'm following my bliss these days and I am so, so grateful for the opportunity.

Wishing you a lovely Christmas Eve, and a wonderful Christmas morning.

I must admit, one of my guilty pleasure Christmas Eve traditions is getting a slight toot on, then viewing Umbrellas of Cherbourg. And weeping copiously as the movie ends. It always seems like the perfect cathartic activity for the evening to me!

I've been off work all week and have enjoyed putzing around organizing art materials, spending time with family and friends and doing some photo shoots and videos for one of my performance persona's web presence. There's loads more to do before I return to work in January, so I guess I just need to make a to-do list and stay on track. The temptation is pretty great just to watch back-to-back movies from the couch with two sweet little dogs curled up beside me.

I have a canine houseguest! My younger child left her wonderful little guy with Buster and me for the holidays. He's beautiful -- part Pharoah hound and part something else, judging by his appearance. He has amber eyes and vocalizes a lot. He and Buster get along really well and I'm enjoying dog novelty!

I'm sending you my warm wishes for a wonderful evening and tomorrow. I hope you are well and happy and surrounded by those you love and those who love you tonight!

Got my 1940's glamour on...

including the seamed vintage stockings and went out for cocktails to celebrate my birthday. Now it's sleepy time. What a great day! Many thanks to everyone who puts up with me and my antics, and, more than that, loves me.

Yeah, today's my birthday.

Yep, it's my 55th.

I wonder what the day has in store for me?

Hmmmm.

Thrilling!

In a few moments it will be my fifty-fifth birthday.

Wow. What a year my fifty-fourth was. And it's nearly the end of 2009 also. 53-54 and 2008-9 will go down as one of the most intense emotional/psychically demanding years I've ever lived. 54 was really a landmark year for me. It was, without doubt, my most artistically productive year ever. I feel as if I found my voice this year without any artificial limits or constrictions imposed from outside myself. I felt as if I had nothing to hide, as if I were standing utterly naked in a fully-clothed world, and that's the position I made art from. It's been intense, scary and freeing. It's been the year I finally let my mother see what exactly it is I make, and that, too, has been quite intense and not without its own troubles.

But here I stand, on the edge of my fifty-fifth year, an utterly free woman artist.

At my hair-dresser's Friday I was reflecting on my own wild half-century ride. It is truly extraordinary, I think, when a person can say he or she has fulfilled every single entry on a lifetime "to-do" list, especially one written, like mine, when one was an adolescent and knew no limits practicality might impose on one's dreams. I was extremely fortunate to have crossed off every single item on my lifetime to-do list by the age of forty-four.

This last decade of my life has seemed improvised in a way the decades that went before it didn't. In a way, I've been drifting more than I ever did before in my life, swept along by the tides of life. I've been less goal-oriented and much more experience-oriented this last decade. In a very real way I've understood that my time now is limited, that I've certainly lived longer than I have left to live. And so I've consciously tried to pack more into each of my days, weeks and months. Not living with and taking care of others has freed me to pursue my own interests in a way I never, ever before was able to do. And THAT freedom, I must admit, I have enjoyed.

And in the final moments of my fifty-fourth year I realize that beginning tomorrow I will be closer to sixty than to fifty. It's like climbing a ladder that stretches up into the sky. When I glance down to assess my progress, I realize I'm breath-takingly high up now. So I won't look down. I will just continue my ascent.

What does my fifty-fifth year hold in store? I don't know. But I'm planning for it to be the year of a new drawing series I'll start over the holidays, a year of three dance classes a week, a year of more public performances, a year of launching new web projects, a year of dancing tango at milongas. Maybe it will be less emotional and less dramatic than was my fifty-fourth. Calm might be good, as long as it's not boring. I have been happier than I've ever been in my entire life these last couple of years, even with the profound setbacks from which I recovered.

That I may have the good fortune to enjoy another year of happiness and artistic productivity -- and good health -- is the secret birthday wish I make as I blow out an imaginary candle.

Poof.

Went to my second milonga tonight

...after one of my fairy grand-daughters' birthday parties. Danced the tango for four hours. Learned to do ochos tonight, finally -- one of the "ornaments" you see women do with their feet that made you want to learn to dance the tango in the first place.

It's like a psychic kinetic chess game, dancing the tango. You almost have to have mental telepathy with whoever you're dancing with. But the man -- or whoever's leading -- gives his partner subtle pressure on the hand or the back that signals some things, I'm learning. It's like the collaboration between horse and rider. The subtle hand pressure is like what the horse feels on the reigns -- the tension, the change of direction that "steers" you. FASCINATING. Tango has all kinds of etiquette and culture I'm learning also.

I love it. I might have known I would. I always loved the music, but it's even more beautiful when you're interpreting it as you dance the tango. It has to be the most musical of all social dances.

What I gave myself for my upcoming birthday...

courtesy of my loving mother, who is in Hawaii and so sent me cash before her departure to buy something nice for myself.

Silk stockings.

I've never owned a pair. Never made that splurge -- or investment, depending upon how one views it -- before. Not even when I could buy them in Paris and save the shipping. But the company in England I order my seamed nylons from was running a Christmas sale, and there was no VAT added, and, well...

They're made by Cervin, on the same looms they were using in the 1920's. They're the only company left in the world, supposedly, that does so. I ordered the white lady skin color daytime shade, not the sultry off-black you'd want for evening. They arrived today.

And, oh! Dear readers, they are exquisite. Sheer poetry embodied in ephemeral material. And, enclosed in the lovely packaging was a note from their manufacturer in French that went something like this: "My silkworms have made the silk for you. My looms have woven them into the finest stockings in the world, made in France as they have been for a hundred years. I believe that every woman in the world deserves to wear a pair of my silk stockings once in her lifetime."

I put them on, and suddenly I understand why women's legs photograph the way they do in the 1920's. Silk stockings have a sheen, they give off a glow that is nothing like nylons, even vintage ones. They are very, very stretchy. Although sized to one's legs and feet, immediately I see the little lines and sags of the exquisite, supple veil of silk. And my legs look exactly like Zelda Fitzgerald's and Norma Shearer's and Lilian Gish's in the mirror.

Paradise. I just want to go take a hot bath, shave my legs, put the stockings back on and rub my legs together under the bedsheets all night. They are like a veil of honey. They are so soft. And now I understand how flappers rolled their stockings down -- something I never had a true, kinetic feel for before, even with vintage nylons. I have insight into Fitzgerald's characters and into silent movies I never had until just now.

So, thank you, Mother, for the most exquisite, evocative, time-transporting birthday gift you ever gave me in my over half-century of living! I love them.

Weather is still miserable.

But I went and got a long, luxurious pedicure, manicure (red Christmas nails!) and massage to pamper my poor performance-wrecked body. If you know my performance identity, a few photos up on my professional sites.

And I just had to go out, brave the weather and buy a pair of sensible, weather appropriate shoes. All my boots are suede or metallic or some other impractical material, or else they have 4" heels for performing. Just got some adorable black patent leather spectator oxfords on a gum sole -- kind of like Doc Marten wingtips, only shiny. They should keep me up out of the puddles, I think. And I can wear them with tights and skirts. And I can wear them when I want to do my Marlene Dietrich drag clothes at work.

Yikes! My birthday is in a few days!

And I have to brave the weather for two dance classes this week, now that I've also started up tango. But I'm guessing there's some kind of two week hiatus planned between Christmas and New Year's?

Show was great. Weather was beastly.

I'm exhausted! That's all for now.

This is pretty exciting.

I've been through every closet, drawer, shelf and box in my entire house today. I love to organize during holidays. And I find I have finally, at the age of fifty-four, achieved a goal I set for myself thirty years ago.

EVERYTHING I OWN IS PERFECT.
I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING I DO NOT WANT OR NEED.

I am incredibly grateful to the universe for allowing me to achieve this goal! I am so fortunate to have arrived at the position in my life where this is possible! And I am so grateful to my family and friends who gave me some of my perfect objects as gifts!

When I was young, I was always irritated by having to acquire imperfect objects just to get a specific task done, for a special occasion, and so forth. You know, things like those plastic bowls you have to pick up at Target because you're having guests over for Thanksgiving. They aren't perfect, but you have to have *something* so you cave and settle for whatever does the job that you can afford at that moment. Then they hang out in your drawers or cabinets and irritate you with their imperfection for twenty years.

There is nothing left in my house like that. Every single thing I have, I chose because it seems perfect to me functionally and aesthetically. Every single thing is now exactly to my taste. And all of it works. Nothing is broken or needs repair. Wow! Do I get a lifetime achievement award?!

And the things I love most are my perfect tools: my 1944 Singer sewing machine, my 1930's Italian accordion, my expensive sewing scissors. I love my hammers. I love my Dremel.

In answer to the question, "What do you want for your birthday/Christmas?" here's all I can come up with that I want or need and don't have:
1. Elegantly designed bicycle tire pump made for American tires.
2. One of those vintage clear glass rolling pins that has a cap on one end you unscrew to put ice water in for making pastry. You can get them on e-bay. I don't want to make pastry with it. I have something else in mind.
3. A number 2 galvanized wash tub. The kind I used to use as a wading pool as a small child.
4. An Amish-style black bonnet -- the kind they really sew by hand out of organza and starch.

Am I not a simple woman?
That is, for one who is probably a hyper-aesthete (is that a word)?

Making Christmas ornaments to give as little gifts.

Organizing the costume closet for Sunday's costume and mask-heavy photo shoot.

Practicing for next Friday's performance for the first time with everyone else in the number. We have two more rehearsals, then technical. YIKES.

Seriously, I am more than just a little nervous. I know once I'm in front of a live audience I'll have a great time. But more than that, I did want my dance technique to be really good. But I can see we are not going to rehearse as much as would have been my normal preference. The other performers are just fine with showing up and basically just doing it. One said, "Usually I'm about 75% rehearsed and it's always fine." I replied, "Usually I rehearse about 70 times."

It's not my preference to work this way. But I just have to surrender. It's not my show, I'm a guest artist. I can't control them, and I need them in my piece. Let's just hope they get out of my way at the critical moments :) so I don't trip over them.

Thanksgiving. And the seasonal depression has begun.

I'm alone today on Thanksgiving, for the very first time in my entire fifty-four years. One child lives half a continent away and isn't coming "home," and the other and her entire clan accepted an invitation from her father and his wife to go there. He's never before made this invitation to host her, her partner and the grandbabies at his place and evidently felt snubbed that she has always spent Thanksgiving with me all these years. So I kept quiet, and let everyone else assume I was doing Thanksgiving with my family as usual and so no invitations to join another family or group of "orphans" were extended to me. Of course, my own mother invited me to her home, but having gone there only one time since I left home at eighteen -- on the heels of divorce, with small children in tow -- hers is really only a "ceremonial" invitation; she knows I won't actually accept.

And I must admit, I am sad today. But I'll take the dog for a long work, rehearse and work in the studio today. And eat just what I would normally, alone, this evening.

I went to Target yesterday for what I hope will be the very last time until after Christmas to get it out of the way because of the Christmas music that will now start playing there. I cannot listen to Christmas carols or songs on Muzak or on the radio. I have to avoid any environment where they will be playing. My heart hurts me, a lump rises in my throat and tears flood my eyes. It all goes back to my father's death in October when I was eight, and the Christmas following. I cannot "have myself a merry little Christmas." The holiday season is incredibly hard for me and I'm sad, usually, from Thanksgiving right through New Year's Day. Without small children of my own to make the holiday bright for as I did all those years, my true feelings surface. My heart hurts, literally. It's a time for me, always, of reflection and regret and longing. It's a time to wonder what might have been if the course of my own life had not been forever altered that fall long ago. The feeling I have is roughly equivalent to most people's emotional reaction to the ending of the movie The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. So I have to protect myself during the holiday season.

And then, the dreams start.

It's especially excruciating this year because of what my life was like at this time one year ago. I was madly in love, had just returned from my lover in Italy, and was preparing to return to him there for my birthday, Christmas and New Year's -- to live a fairy tale. I was buying him a million little gifts and wrapping them. He confessed he loved to sing Christmas carols around the house when no one was there, so I had even burned half a dozen Christmas music CD's for us to sing together while I was there. And I was able to tolerate the Christmas music, even enjoy it, because it was for HIM. My love for him enabled me to transcend the loss and sadness the music had always before triggered. My love for him inspired a desire for Christmas in me I hadn't felt in my heart since 1962. It had been too difficult. The hurt had been too great.

And here I am, one year later. Alone.

Last night I dreamed of him for the first time in many months. In my dream, I confronted him about how very much he had hurt me and confessed about the Christmas music CD's -- about how uncharacteristic an action that had been for me, how untrue to my own natural preferences, but how joyful a gift it had been for me to make them for him because I loved him so and wanted to please him. I told him he had no idea how much our love affair -- or how it ended, really -- has harmed me emotionally. I asked him if he has ever cried over me, as I have cried over him. He nodded his head vigorously up and down in a funny, childish gesture he sometimes makes. I told him since the ending of our affair early this year I've been all over the place psychically -- but the positive outcome has been that I have thrown myself into all kinds of experiences and creative activity as if chased by the devil. And then I lay face down on my bed, where my dream confrontation was set, and wept. He made no attempt to console me, and I woke myself up. Too painful.

Have yourself a happy little Thanksgiving and treasure those with whom you'll spend this day. Do not take it for granted. Even if you've been up cooking since 5:00 a.m. this morning, it's worth it. And say a little prayer for those who are all alone today, whether of their own devising, the twists of their own fates or by necessity. We were all born alone, and we will die alone. Some of us just start practicing early.

...and I miss you most of all, my darling, when Autumn leaves start to fall.

Masks are coming along very, very well.

It appears I am going to have to build an 18th century dress soon, however, for this project.

But we'll start on a more modest scale. And there is, of course, the Christmas holiday for making the dress. If I can just get my research done in advance.

I'm actually really excited about this project and my imagination is running wild with it.

Making Venetian masks

for upcoming photo shoot. Very, very happy with how they're turning out. Not making one of those velvet "bit" masks as in the Pietro Longhi paintings, however. But they are kinky. One can't speak while holding the "bit" in one's mouth. I read it was sometimes a button held between the teeth.

Thank you, Pietro Longhi.

I have to make more masks and costumes for an upcoming photo shoot. I love these paintings so much! Do an image search and look at them large. Sigh. So, so beautiful. I'm glad I thought about them suddenly, as they may also inform a drawing series I'll start over the holidays.

And thank you, Venice.

Birthday presents. Christmas presents.

Since my birthday and Christmas are both approaching next month, I find myself thinking on these things.

Because of the economy, my first Christmas impulse was to find out what intensely practical things -- although they might be quite inexpensive (Woolite for black clothes is an example) -- people wanted and give a Great Depression Christmas party. But I'll probably give gift certificates. I don't want to give any one anything they don't really need and want, so gift certificates or cash it is, it appears. What's the conventional wisdom? A "present" is something you have to give on an occasion and it's something YOU want to give that the recipient may or may not want. A "gift," however, is something the recipient wants and has already chosen and you just get it for them. In these hard economic times, it seems there's no need for presents. Gifts are what's needed.

One of my friends asked what I wanted for my birthday and that's not something that's easy to answer. I told her "services" -- meaning I'd rather have more dance classes paid for, pedicures, or massage. But it made me start to think about material possessions and what I have finally managed to acquire in my middle age. Most of the things I have that I wanted I had wanted since I was fourteen or so. And I've only finally had the means to get some of them over the last couple of years.

Some Things I Want or Wanted, A Checklist
1. A couch I chose myself, that didn't come from Goodwill. Check: at age 45.
2. A nice "Turkish" carpet. Check: at age 50 or so. And a very small one at that.
3. An antique armoire. Check: three of them at last count, in my 30's and the last one three years ago.
4. A Victrola. Check: at 40.
5. A good camera. Check: at 24, after a year of lay-away. And this year, a good digital camera.
6. Power tools. Check: a drill, a sander and a Dremel over the last decade.
7. A samovar. Check: at age 44.
8. An accordion. Check: at age 35, thanks to my second husband.
9. A bezel-set, diamond solitaire necklace in white gold. Check: this summer, thanks to me.
10. High quality pearl earrings and graduated pearl necklace, short length. No. Do not have $4K and have not won the lottery. And will not inherit them.
11. Missoni towels. Check: at 50.
12. A Waterman pen. Check: at 47, because of a small bequest when my grandmother died. Lapis blue.
13. Souleiado bedding. Check: at 53.
14. A Louis Vuitton wallet. Check: at 54. Still would like the vintage steamer trunk to match it, but that won't be happening in this lifetime. Hatbox for $2,500 is, I think, my only hope if I win the lottery.
15. A real Hermès scarf, purchased at the original Paris store. Check: last month. The others I ordered from them on-line, but all this year. Before that I bought (shh!) copies when I was in Europe.
16. Shalimar from the Guerlain Champs-Elysèes store. Check: when I was 45 the first time.
17. Kelly bag. No. And it won't happen in this lifetime. However, I do have a very nice alligator copy purchased when I was 40 that will just have to do. And even the copy is probably going to hold up the rest of my life!
18. Antique French opera glasses. Well, kind of. Purchased when I was 50 off e-bay. Mother-of-pearl. But the optics could be way better. Will have to try again. Cobalt blue enamel next time.
19. Duchampian French wine bottle drying rack. Check: this summer.
20. Jaeger-Lecoultre Reverso watch from the 1930's. Do not have $11K or more to spend on it. Will not happen in this lifetime.
21. Repetto Brigitte Bardot black calf ballet flats. Check: at 53.
22. Liberty of London Ianthe handkerchiefs, lingerie drawer fittings, etc. Check: in London at the flagship store when I was 50.

Bottom line: it looks like there's really nothing left I want in the entire world that doesn't cost upwards of 4 Grand. My desires are so simple, my needs are few. (Smile.)

Wait! If those nuns who sewed Rebecca de Winter's lingerie are still making it, maybe I want a teddy out of handkerchief linen or peach-colored charmeuse.

What an idle, ridiculous fantasy -- luxury goods -- to have when everyone's broke and the economy is in this sorry state. But it makes me feel better. Like watching a Fred and Ginger movie must have done back in those days.

There is

...no great sorrow than to recall happiness in the time of misery.

Dante

Tango.

I love the music. Piazzola, Gardel, Tanghetto, Gotan Project. I play the music, even, on accordion. But I never danced the tango, because no one ever taught me how and I never had the opportunity. And I never traveled to Argentina.

But, tonight, all that changed. In four hours, with gentle, expert partners, I've begun to learn. I had no idea there was a tango underground culture here. I can do it. You close your eyes, you surrender, you wear high heels.

Yes, I'm into this. This blessed evening is definitely not the end of dancing the tango for me.

I am really, really pleased

with this photo series I'm working on.

I am doing a whole series of souvenirs, memento mori, ricordi. They're cards. And emotionally a little tough.