You know, it occurs to me that if you’re enjoying browsing around here, you might also enjoy my music. It’s a thought, right?
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Read the March newsletter
Listen here, time change
More light later’s no good now
Give me back my hour
-efr
P.S. (and here’s why)
Here are your choices.
1) Healthy (but delicious!)
Cucumber yogurt yumminess
2) Significantly less healthy. (And, let’s be honest, more delicious.)
most of my favorite fats, all in one sandwich
3) Liquid:
It’s a refreshing clear beverage. How bad for you can it be?
It’s been checkup time in Elainelandia recently, on accounta I have new health insurance. I’m trying to use it as much as possible before they realize I am not Their Kind, and give me the boot.
Apparently – and this is truly extraordinary – people with employment that includes benefits are encouraged to go to preventive healthcare appointments! In fact, to make it attractive, health insurance companies cover most or all of the cost. So you can get checked out for free! (Or free-ish.)
I tell you: it’s like being on a WHOLE NOTHER PLANET. I’ve been on both sides of many sets of fences in my life, but this is my strongest experience yet of Seeing How The Other Half Lives.
My half — artists, the self-employed, and poor people (draw your own overlapping Venn diagrams) — waits in lines, goes to clinics, applies for programs, and sort of begs to get preventive care.
It’s a giant time- and soul-sucking hassle, and hard to manage at all unless you have big stretches of flexible time during the weekday, several days a week. As a result, most of us don’t see doctors unless we are brought to them on a stretcher.
Whereas, on the other side of the fence: if you do ‘wellness visits’, they not only pay for it, they send you a $50 gift card to someplace like Marhsall’s, to thank you for going to your own doctor’s appointment.
That’s crazy, right! Can you believe it?!?! Who knew!
Wait… seriously? You did? You *have* that?
WHAT?!
Have you had this the whole time?
No way. Really? How have we been friends this whole time and you never told me? I guess that explains all the Marshall’s giftcards I get for my birthday. (I do like Marshall’s… okay, we’re cool.)
Anyway. I digress.
The point is, I have this now, so I have been on a Spend Their Money spree. I went to everything I could think of… and the results are in, and it makes me feel like a goddess.
Yes, my neck hurts, I’d like to lose a few pounds, and my sleep is not what it could be, but on the other hand: rock star blood pressure, 20/15 vision (fighter pilot eyes, my friends), and no cavities!
I am invincible! Beware my stern glance and cuffs of gold! I am WONDER WOMAN.
I am going to lasso giftcards from this side of the fence, hop in my invisible plane, fly back to the other side, and work out healthcare deals for everyone! Wonder Woman to the rescue! How cool would that be?
The point is… well I’ve forgotten the point entirely by now, but it’s good to be able to see a doctor before you’re neck-deep in the soup. So if you have that, take advantage, fer cryin’ out loud.
And if you don’t, feel free to give me a holler. I got some ideas. I am rock star goddess Wonder Woman, after all. Plane, lasso, cuffs — and nearly unlimited access to Marshall’s.
It’s been an amazing tour so far here on the west coast. (I know it sounds like it wasn’t off to a great start from the whole ruined keyboard case story, but things have been lookin’ up ever since.)
I’ve met some terrific folks, had scintillating conversations, reconnected with dear friends, and, of course have been eating well. : )
If you’re not signed up for my newsletter I still love you. You can catch up on the news in it all the same…
Read February’s Newsletter
Raise your hand if you love Mary Oliver! You know her beautiful poems, yes?
Of course you do.
Wait: NO?! Seriously?
Well then! Glad I got to you!
Here’s my second favorite of them:
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
? Mary Oliver
The west coast tour started not so auspiciously, with a ride on a shuttle headed to the wrong airport. (I mean, I *could* have walked back from New Jersey. Eventually.)
But I figured it out before we crossed the river, and all was well, and it was such a beautiful day out my spirits were buoyant. The knowledgeable driver kept a running commentary; there’s Grand Central, there’s the Helmsley building now owned by a dog… it was fun to be a tourist in my own town. (Look! It’s the trolley to Roosevelt island! Quick, get out your cameras!)
The shuttle driver was so nice that I didn’t even mind when he dropped me at the wrong terminal.
But then this happened:
This may be hard to see, but the strip of fabric across the middle used to have backpack straps attached to it. Unfortunately the canvass that held them ripped off.
Problematic. Especially what with the hike to the correct terminal.
But that’s okay! There’s more than one way to make this work! I jury-rigged the straps to go to another part of the bag. All’s well!
Until this happened:
I’ll take my bag broken three ways, please
So there was some gripping and griping, and at the waiting room quite a few urgent phone calls looking for replacement keyboard cases that could get to Portland by the next evening. (Got one in the nick of time.)
The whole thing combined to create a travel experience rather more stressful than anticipated.
As a result, once on board, this happened:
a wee bottle of equilibrium restorer
I fully expected a wing to fall off the plane, or at least a small engine fire, but except for the plane taking off an hour late, nothing else went wrong.
So hurrah, huzzah, thanks be for overnight shipping — and for wee tiny bottles of All’s Well that Ends Well.
About once a year, I make it to a Broadway show. This year (thanks to my brother) it was the musical Once (based on the movie Once).
It was terrific. It was also oddly like watching a scene from my own life, full of musical jams, moments of doubt, relationships and recording sessions that start off rocky but miraculously right themselves.
The singing and playing is great throughout, but my favorite moment is one in which the instruments are put down, and the whole cast sings an a cappella version of a song we heard earlier in the show (‘Gold‘).
Nothing happens on the stage; they sit and sing, we sit and listen. It’s gorgeous.
You may think you don’t know what the heck Once is, but I bet you do. The famous song you probably know (despite not knowing you know it) is Falling Slowly. Have a listen.
Yes. It *is* beautiful. You’re welcome.
Hello all!
In case you’re not signed up for my newsletter (which you can remedy with the form on the right side bar), you can click through to FanBridge (my newsletter hosting service) to see the latest news:
It includes lots of photos, a fun video, and all the tour dates for Feb 1 – 10th on the west coast. Have a look!
It looks long if you scroll through, but you can read it soup to nuts in 45 seconds, honest to Betsy.
However: I suggest you linger. Especially at this part:
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.
‘The fluid dream of the Thames.” Yes, that is lovely, isn’t it? (You’re welcome.) Here is the rest:
Monet Refuses the Operation
By Lisel Mueller
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
