Thursday Drive

I’m borrowing this idea for a photo mosaic from Flutter and from Tysdaddy at Cheek of God. Theirs were so cool that I had to make one, too. What’s interesting about it is that even though some of my answers didn’t pull up a photo that correlated exactly, the mosaic still reflected an essence of my personality anyway.

Here’s how it works . . .

• Answer each of the questions below.
• Surf over to Flickr (set up an account if you don’t have one–it’s quick and easy) and type your answers (one at a time) into the search bar.
• From the choice of pictures shown only on the front page, click on the one that moves you.
• Once the page with your picture opens, copy the URL.
• Surf over to the Mosaic Maker, set up your mosaic, and paste your URLs.
• Click “Create!”

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. Where would you go on your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. Choose one word to describe you?
12. Your Flickr name? (I had to substitute for this one, since Flickr didn’t recognize my account name).

1. Jennifer in the Storm, 2. Crispy Risotto Balls with Truffle Honey, 3. Philosophical Hall of Strahov Monastery, 4. Bosque by Twilight Star Trails, 5. My cousin George!, 6. A postcard for the Margarita island, 7. Wish You were here (in Venice), 8. Creme Brulee, 9. “Timemachines”, 10. Before the sunset, the kids play in the sand, 11. From above…, 12. ~Ocean Playground~

So if you have some free time (c’mon, it’s the weekend), click on over to Mosaic Maker and make one of these for yourself. And then share it with me, please, because I’m curious and would love to see how yours would look.

I’m kind of bossy, aren’t I?

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Look who else made a mosaic:

Ron at RWorld

McSwain at Hildebrand Road

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Ladies, is there anything you would add to it?

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Two nights ago, at much too late an hour, I caught the first half of Out of Africa before falling asleep. And a few days before that, I turned it on somewhere in the middle. So, in my own backwards way, I managed to watch the whole movie in the last week, along with bits and pieces of it at other times over several days. (I know, I should just rent it, right? Heck, I should buy it.) Over the years, I must have watched it more than 20 times. Still counting.

I’m sure I’m in good company when I say that I love that movie beyond reason. It’s three hours of yearning and passion and hardship and loss. My kind of film.

And I love watching Robert Redford in it. (Sorry, Mr. H. I’ve made no secret of how I feel about him.)

Ladies, was there ever a better case made for lather, rinse, repeat?

Also, I wish I could dress like Karen Blixen. Maybe not all the time, but often. Except I should maybe live somewhere where it’s not 110 degrees every damn day in the summer. And I should probably find a way for Ralph Lauren to design and manage my wardrobe. (And get the girls from Work Out to manage the size of my ass.)

Could I also live in that house? Maybe there will be a replica of it at Women’s Colony. I call dibs on it, right here, right now. I might share, if you’re nice to me. And I’ll let you visit on Thursdays if you look like Robert Redford. Or are Robert Redford.

In one of my favorite scenes, Denys asks Karen for a story. She asks him to provide the first line, and he does. From there and on the spot, she invents a story, captivating the two men in her company as the tale unspools. Whenever I watch that scene, I wish for her ease and confidence in her gift for stories. (I also wish for Robert Redford to look at me, just once, like that.) I’ve always thought that Denys fell in love with Karen that night. And how could he not?

Out of Africa is a different movie to me now than it was when I watched it for the first time over 20 years ago. In this scene, now, I identify more with Denys than with Karen. In my 20s, I would have come down resolutely on her side of the argument. She makes some good points, though, and I do love the line, “I have learned a thing that you haven’t. There are things in life worth having, but they come at a price. I want to be one of them.”

Back when I was deciding what to do with my life, it’s a good thing I decided to become a famous, gifted actress. Otherwise, I would have missed out on this:

Fine. Don’t believe me.

All photos from Google images

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Over the last few days, a couple of stories about telling our stories have crossed my radar. The first was an article in Good Housekeeping titled “The Story That Can Change Your Life” (no link available), and the second was this article in the New York Times: This Is Your Life and How You Tell It. Both articles happen to quote the same expert, Dan P. McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and author of the 2006 book, The Redemptive Self. The emphasis of both articles is that those who are able to find the redemptive qualities in the narrative of their own lives are more resilient.

Tonight I bought these two books:

The books could not be more different from each other–except that the main characters (who, in Tiger Force, happen to be real people) have committed what appear to be (and maybe are) unforgivable acts. Tiger Force is an account of the controversial and horrifying actions of an elite special ops group in Vietnam called Tiger Force.

The second, The Outlander, begins in 1903, as a young widow runs deep into the wilderness to escape the wrath of two brothers of her husband. He died at her hand, and they are determined to avenge his death.

Surprisingly and to the authors’ credit, given the subject matter, Tiger Force reads like fiction. Its authors, Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss are journalists who won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story in 2003 in the pages of The Toledo Blade. They spent years researching and conducting interviews around the world, and also uncovered a staggering amount of classified information. Even if you never read the book, their series of articles gives you a thorough and (I believe) fair picture of the events and of the soldiers who were involved, and also of the cover-up that followed.

I became familiar with the story a few years ago when I was researching the Phoenix Program, which I’ve discussed before in another post. However, I didn’t know that Sallah and Weiss had expanded their research into a 400 page book. I found it tonight, very much by accident, and sat down to read the first pages. Despite the ease of its narrative style, I won’t enjoy reading this book–the subject matter is too dark and painful. Yet it is the sort of book that I feel like I have a responsibility to read, no matter what conclusions I draw at the end of it.

There was a massive burying of evidence. Everyone involved was under orders not to talk about what happened, and the cover-up led all the way back to the White House. Almost 40 years of public silence preceded the breaking of the story.

Far too long, if you ask me.

But there are other stories that simply take that much time to percolate, I think. Very personal stories, especially. It can take that long and maybe longer for them to get steady on their feet, like a foal struggling to stand. I know that to be true of my own stories. There wasn’t a day before the one on which I began to write about certain events in my childhood when it would have been possible for me to put it all down in the right words. That was the day, the day when enough time had passed and I had found enough perspective (and borrowed courage) to be able to tell what happened in the most honest and fair light.

And, yes, I managed to find a few redemptive qualities in those experiences.

I suspect that once I get a bit further into The Outlander, I will find out why the 19-year-old widow killed her husband, and I won’t judge her for it.

Maybe some of you will question my moral compass when I say that I might find it hard, in the end, to judge most (and maybe all) of the men of Tiger Force, after I look at all of the events and conditions and, especially, the chain of command. That doesn’t mean I dismiss or excuse what they did.

But I wasn’t there. And they were under orders, both specific and ambiguous, that flew in the face of the most basic humanity. Upon reading some of the stories, my most visceral reactions will take over, and (from what I know of the events already) I will be disgusted and my insides will coil tightly around things that are too awful to think about. But just after that, I will do what we should all do, as citizens of a country whose government acts in our name: I will ask questions about who is ultimately responsible for what happened, and those questions will link together like a chain, and that chain will lead me to a conclusion I can either live with, or not.

I do know that it’s a hell of a lot easier for me to find my way around that conclusion than it is for the people in Vietnam (or, insert country of choice and war of choice) who still live with their losses, and for the soldiers who, to this day, live with the demons that followed them home.

When it comes to war, there aren’t always redemptive qualities to be found, and sometimes none at all. I don’t have any platitudes to set down here like a tray of sweet cookies at the end of lunch. I can’t say that if we’re lucky, we live through it all and, after enough time has passed, we tell the stories. I won’t say that there is something to be learned from every story. Sometimes there’s nothing good to be found, not even under the very last rock we turn over.

Finding redemption can take a long time. Sometimes forever.

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The weekend was great. I have exactly zero complaints about any of it, including mopping the floor.

It was great to see my friend. After I spend time with her, which isn’t even close to often enough, I always feel more sure of myself and like there are more possibilities than before. She has that effect on I lot of people, I think. My kids love her (and call her Grandma L. Her husband is Papa J. But with their full names at the end, of course.) The conversation picks up as though no time has passed. I love that kind of ease between good friends.

The visit wasn’t long enough, but I’m glad for the time we had.

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This made my day week month:

The women at Good Mom/Bad Mom selected this post for Blog Share Sunday, and I couldn’t be more excited. A huge thank you to them!

See that little badge over there in the right sidebar? It looks like this:

I’ve been coveting it for weeks. Coveting it in a break-a-commandment, lust-in-my-heart kind of way. Oh, thou shalt not, you say? Watch me, I say.

I’m thrilled to find myself in such great company. If you don’t already read Good Mom/Bad Mom, you should.

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At this moment, 317 unread posts sit rather patiently in my reader. You are a prolific bunch, my friends. Can’t wait to get to it, but I think I should brew some coffee or pop some popcorn first. Oh, and put on some comfy jammies. Wait, I’m still in my comfy jammies. Don’t look at the time.

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Tonight is the first night of Vacation Bible School. I’m not the least bit religious (though I told Mr. H a long time ago that I would take Boy and Girl to Sunday School. It’s a concession that robs me of sleeping late on Sunday, but I do enjoy the hour I spend at Starbucks while the kids are at church.).

But if you think for one minute that I’m not handing my kids over for 2 1/2 hours, for five nights in a row for $40 TOTAL, you’re crazy.

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This idea makes me laugh: Today’s Million Dollar Idea from Ron at R World.

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I’m off to open up Google Reader. I feel like it’s a closet door that’s stuffed full of good things and all sorts of surprises. Can’t wait to see what you’ve all been up to this weekend.

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I won’t be around much today (Saturday) and tomorrow because my dear friend L will be in town. I’ll tell you about her sometime. But if I don’t go and mop my kitchen floor right now, I’ll be too embarrassed to let her in the door.

So for now, I’ll leave you with this:

Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can’t reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.
–Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Robert Bly

And this (I’ll get off my Steve Earle kick soon. Maybe.):

Steve Earle, Ft. Worth Blues

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Mr. H has been experiencing some kick-your-ass allergy symptoms for about a week.

Finally, he went to the urgent care clinic a couple of days ago. He had sent me off for the afternoon to play poker, and he had the kids with him. He thought it would be a fairly quick trip in and out of the clinic, maybe an hour, tops.

He was there for two and a half hours before they even saw him. He called me when he had been there for two hours, and said the kids were really bored and antsy.

I asked if he had brought anything along to entertain them. He hadn’t. Rookie mistake.

(In case any of you are questioning why I didn’t stay home with the kids so that he could go to the doctor…Mr. H insisted that he was feeling better, and just about put my car keys in my hand. I offered. I tried. He said he was fine. Besides, I can’t tell you how many doctor’s visits–my own or the kids’–that I’ve handled solo.)

Anyway, later on he asked the money question.

“Do you realize how hard it is to keep two children entertained when you feel like dirt?”

(I wrote it down, right then, to make sure I had it right.)

Uh, no. I have no idea how hard that is.

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Edited: I feel like I should add that it was really great that he pushed me out the door for an afternoon on my own, which does counterbalance the comment.  (Thanks, honey!)

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Yesterday , I promised you a look at the list of players I would choose for my fantasy poker table. If you click on the image below, you’ll get a better look at it (you’ll want one). In fact, when you get to the image on Photobucket, you can click it once more for the largest possible image.

Then come back here, and I’ll tell you my reasons for choosing each of them. Though, really, they hardly need explaining. (My only technical requirement was that they already know how to play poker.)

All photos borrowed from Google Images

The Lineup, by seat #

1. Kenna James , professional poker player. He may look all serious in this photo, but at the table he can be very funny. Also, he has the whole soft-lipped, twinkly-eye, cowboy thing going for him.

2. Lucky, lucky me.

3. Ah, George– How could I not include him? I was torn between sitting next to him (where he might totally on purpose accidentally brush up against my knee with his hand, or whisper a joke to me right against my ear, so quiet that only I could hear, and then we would laugh, all conspiratorially) and sitting across from him (so that I could stare at him). Tough call, but you can see the one I made.

4. Matt –He’s got that whole Sexiest Man Alive thing going, just like his friend George. I wanted the two of them on one side, making me laugh and want to kiss them , and then Kenna James on the other side, also making me laugh.

5. Oh, Sam. Just damn .

6. Robert , the hands-down frontrunner in number of appearances in my dreams.

7. James Woods –he’s smart and a solid poker player. He could hold his own in this group, too.

8. James Gandolfini –I have a bit of a thing for him as Tony Soprano. I know I’m not alone in this. Besides, do you want to be the one to tell him he can’t join my little poker game? Didn’t think so.

9. Doyle Brunson , the poker legend. This table wouldn’t be complete without him. I’ve purposely put both him and Kenna James on my right, which is just smart poker strategy.

Many poker tournaments are played with 10 players at a table, and I’ve only got nine. There’s a reason for that.

I’ve left room for Holly from June Cleaver Nirvana , who is welcome at any poker table of mine, anytime. Holly, there’s room to pull up a chair, and you can sit anywhere you want.

As long as you’re not between George and me.

One last thing…

I was able to locate ESPN’s 4 seconds of me in their coverage of the 2005 World Series of Poker. I can’t believe I’m posting it, for a couple of reasons…

1. I’m wearing a straw cowboy hat, that first day. Since then, I have not once worn that hat again to play poker. And I never wear sunglasses when I play anymore. What was I thinking? (Also, what’s with my hair?)

2. The cameraman got a fine look at, um, the girls as I was leaning over to rake in a pile of chips. Well done, sir. The girls may be the only reason I made the broadcast. If you must watch it, the clip that I’m in starts at 9:18. (Edited: You don’t need to watch the whole thing– just fast-forward to that point, unless you want to watch the entire 10 minutes of poker.) My hands show up at 9:33, and the rest of me follows. (File this under things I will regret posting.) But as my BFF Madge pointed out, this is a great way to put to rest any lingering doubts about The Man Photo.

You’re allowed to mock. I’m cool with it.

Oh, and I’ve promised all sorts of things (including but not limited to the regular appearance of pot roast on the menu) if Mr. H can make this poker table happen for my 40th birthday in November. Or ever .

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You probably all know by now that poker is my game. I started learning it when my dad’s side of the family would get together, and I played it very, very badly for years. In fact, up until about 10 years ago, I needed the rank of hands (what beats what) scribbled on a little piece of paper next to me at the table.

I’ve come a long way since then, at least in my confidence about the game, though I still don’t play as well as I wish.

Some of the most fun I’ve ever had at the table was when, upon winning an online tournament that paid for my seat, I got to play in the 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event.

I know that some of you play poker and will know the structure of that event, but for those of you who don’t play or haven’t watched endless hours of poker on TV, here’s the rundown: That year, there were 5619 entrants, and we were divided into three groups. Each group had a Day 1 of the event, separate from the others. Everyone starts with $10,000 in tournament chips. At the end of those three days, the number of remaining players had whittled down to somewhere between 1500 and 2000.

On my Day 1 (Day 1B), I had an excellent run of cards and managed to knock out 11 people. After playing for about 15 hours, I finished the day with $85,350 in chips, which placed me at 14th in chips out of the 560 remaining players from our group. That run of great cards helped me to last longer that day than Oliver Hudson (who famously lost his whole stack to Sammy Farha on the first hand), Tobey McGuire (yes, he’s cute in person, too), Mimi Rogers (story to follow), Cindy Violette (ditto), Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Annie Duke, Erick Lindgren, and Phil Gordon.

When the survivors of the three groups convened for the official Day 2, and all the counts were in, I started the day 39th in chips overall. I was feeling pretty damn good, if exhausted.

And then it all went to hell. Slowly, but that day was a long, steady decline. The run of cards I had enjoyed a couple of days earlier had moved on to some other lucky bastard. The good hands I did have didn’t hold up so well. But I managed to last until the end of the day, until 10:00 or 11:00, and finished in around 700th place.

As it is sometimes in life, the mistake I made that cost me my chance to continue happened about a half an hour before my final hand. I didn’t play a hand that would have tripled my stack (although it was probably the smart decision in the moment), and then later I pushed on a pair of 10s that ran up against pocket kings.

I was tired and disappointed to the point of tears (which I held in until we got at least to the car, and maybe to the hotel…there’s no crying in poker!), but I knew also that the whole experience was one for the books.

Though I finished just 140 spots out of the money (I didn’t need that stinking $18K anyway, maybe more…bah), I had a hell of a good time.

During the entire two days I played, I was never seated with a name pro, though Gus Hansen came over to my table to say hello to a friend, and I saw just about every pro there, both close up and from a distance.

But. I promised you a story about Mimi Rogers and Cindy Violette (a poker pro)…

I didn’t play with either one of them, but I did find myself in the ladies room with them somewhere around the middle of Day 1. They came in together. When Mimi (I can call her Mimi, right?) walked up to the sink, she smiled and said hi, and I asked her “How’s it going in there?” Because we poker chicks are, like, cool that way.

And then she’s all, “Oh pretty well. How’s it going for you?”

And I’m all, “Oh, all right. I’ve got about $35,000 right now.”

“Wow! That’s great. You’re ahead of me.”

I didn’t ask her what it was like to get it on with be married to Tom Cruise. I also didn’t ask how she stays so skinny (she was, very). And, goodgodno, I didn’t ask for an autograph. We wished each other good luck and went on. I mentioned that we poker chicks are cool like that, right?

Anyway, over the years, I’ve kept a running list of people with whom I would love to play poker sometime. And now, just for all of you, I’ve transformed the top of that list into Jennifer’s Fantasy Poker Tour.

It’s a good table.

But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to check it out. See you then!

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Last night, the four of us went swimming at one of our neighborhood pools. Evening is my favorite time for that. There are usually just a handful of others using the pool, and by the time we leave, we sometimes have it all to ourselves. An added bonus is that no one needs sunscreen.

The pool sits high on a hill, with a view of the valley and the city lights of Phoenix. When we get there in time, it’s the perfect place to watch the sunset. Last night, the sky was already dark, and a curve of moon, not quite new, leaned against the sky to the west.

The kids jumped in right away, and their squeals of laughter echoed in that way that sound does when it bounces off water, how it sounds both empty and full. We played a spirited game of tag, in which I was reminded just how tricky and smart my kids can be. We kicked around and treaded water and swam a few strokes. Waited for the next cannonball from Boy.

It’s been a long week. Plans have shifted and stirred up new concerns. I was tired from it all, from weighing things. From wondering what is the right thing for us, and rearranging plans in my head in order to accommodate different possibilities. Even though there’s no bad choice to make, we have to consider the lifestyle and financial ramifications of the options. Enough already, right? Just decide! you say? And I agree. (I think we have. Fingers crossed.)

Rilke said to “love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.” But what about the times when it all feels like questions? When I yearn for certainty? I used to like the unknown, the unplanned, the what-may-be. And I suppose I still flirt with it and give it my number sometimes. But while I know that nothing is certain and we can’t know what will happen one day to the next, I’ve been feeling that, for once, it would be nice to feel like a pioneer driving a stake into a parcel of land. To say, “Here. This is my place.”

So to be almost sure of what we’re going to do feels like (at the least) I’ve got the stake raised above me, ready to drive it into place.

But guess what? I let that all go last night. A whole hour or two unspooled without those worries invading my mind.

After we swam for a while, I asked Mr. H to keep an eye on both of the kids and went off by myself.

I lay back in the water, relaxed and weightless. Above me, the Big Dipper scooped its share of the sky. Birds (swallows, I think) swept through the air, dining on the bugs that were drawn to the lights around the pool. The moon sank by small degrees toward the horizon. I decided that my troubles could just fit into the curve of it, so I settled them there and watched the moon fall beneath the roof line.

For long minutes, I floated, looking at the sky. It’s something I don’t do enough, not at night. Our days here are like banners of blue (as long as you don’t look toward the fuzzy cloud of smog that hangs over downtown). And at night, we’re far enough out that we can see a decent batch of stars. The sky isn’t crowded with them, but we can find the constellations easily enough, and even see the brightest meteors when they come along.

If you want to know how I feel about the moon and the night sky, here’s a clue. On my right hand I wear a Jeanine Payer ring. Her jewelry is engraved with quotes, and I had my ring engraved to read:

Watching the moon at midnight, solitary, mid-sky, I knew myself completely, no part left out. –Izumi Shikubu

They are simple words, and true. True for me, at least. I’ve always gone weak-kneed at the come-ons of blinking stars and a slow moonrise, though my true love is a moonset.

So maybe I’m a liar, after all. As much as I cry after wanting roots, my soul seems to sing for things that are suspended, for things that orbit the planet or shoot through the sky. For birds that swoop and feast in midair. For the feeling of floating, as though the next current could change things.

Those feelings are self-indulgent and not the least bit practical. I know it. They’re a splurge, and I know that, too. But they cost nothing, and there’s no show-off to them at all. If I didn’t write this down just now, it would never come up in a conversation between us, these prizes I take for myself. (We all have things like that, small joys that seem too much, our naked hunger for beauty too embarrassing when said out loud.) But there’s enough for everyone when we keep it simple. When all it takes is to step outside and to let the sky take over.

Maybe all I need is a tether. A long bright shiny thread that holds me to my place and lets me wander as far as I need to, with the sound of my children’s laughter as my compass. I’ll plant the stake and tie myself to it, with lots of slack. Our roots will sink deep.

When I need to feel light, I will step outside. But I won’t go far, I think. I won’t need to.

Not when there are moments like last night. Not when I can find a way to float.

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