Stream of consciousness

Here’s a stream of consciousness-style post to show how my brain comes up with a blog post.


Watching an Instagram account where dolls are used to reenact scenes from TV shows and movies. Second customer in a fast food joint is portrayed by a BTS doll, Jimin. I remember the time I blogged a photo of one of my characters in the Neverending Saga as portrayed by a Jimin doll that I found on eBay for a few dollars. The doll came without any of his original clothes or accessories, so I had to make the outfit in the photo.

Sometime after that, I was in a Barnes & Noble close to my doctor’s office after an appointment, and there Jimin was again, all nice in the box, at a deeply discounted price. Even though I already had a Jimin doll, I really love this character, so I bought him.

Then I remembered that I’d since found the BTS dolls at Five Below, which means they were priced at $5 or less, except one of the dolls was missing. I got the ones they had, and Tom was kind enough to go to a couple of more Five Below stores closer to his workplace, but no luck. Sad face. Then I decided I couldn’t have everyone in the group except for one (even if I did have Jimin twins). Back to eBay, and I bought the doll I was missing at a reasonable price. Ordered, delivered, the group was reunited!

But I don’t think I ever blogged a photo of them, I thought. I should do that. But what kind of background would I give them?

I then wondered, as I do from time to time, whatever happened to the smoking jacket given as a gift to my father by his civilian staff, all Korean, after his last tour of duty in Korea. It would be a great background for the dolls but I don’t have it. But what DID ever happen to that smoking jacket…


I texted my brother. Yep, at some point after Daddy died, Mother gave it to David. He still has it. He even had a picture of it on his phone, and here’s a detail of the jacket. Funny that I remembered it as bright blue, but I’ve accumulated a lot more memories since the last time I saw it. Thanks, David! I told him I love that he has it.

[I briefly thought about a nap dream I had the other day that began with me dreaming I was taking a nap, woke up, turned over, and my father was standing in the room. He was in uniform, and he looked like he did when I was about seven, but I was adult me in the dream. The absolute joy I felt when I saw him there. “Daddy!” I said, jumped up, and hugged him. “You’re home!” The dream moved on to other things, but every time I think of it, I remember the happiness of seeing him.]

I told my brother that I, too, once had a sort of pajama jacket that Daddy brought back from Korea, and I had no idea where it went to over the years. Suddenly I was pretty sure I had a picture of one of my nieces wearing it in a silly photo shoot I did of nephews and nieces after they created costumes out of clothes from my closet (probably 1986). Here you see Billy Idol, Prince, and two babes who look like they could have been on “Mod Squad” in the 1970s. That babe on the far right is wearing the red and black PJ jacket I was talking about.

But I still hadn’t photographed the BTS crew. So I did, against some of the fabric Debby gave me at Christmas. The end.


BTS Idol K-Pop Dolls: Jin, Jimin, J-Hope, Jung Kook, Suga, V, and RM

Tiny Tuesday!

Time to browse the book that inspired this weekly feature, and today I chose this prompt:

 

 

I’ve recently taken out my wee keyboard to see if I can still play any of the easy piano music I learned WAY BACK WHEN. Turns out I can (falteringly); it’d probably be a lot easier on an actual piano. The electronic keyboard really is wee, having only 26 white keys (natural music notes) and 18 black keys (sharps and flats). For comparison, a standard piano of 88 keys has 52 white keys and 36 black keys.

Still a lot of fun though, and coincidentally, this favorite old classic my parents liked to dance to is in the music book, so I took a (very slow) run through it.

Sounds better when Ella sings it.

Where would your sentimental journey take you?

Mood: Monday

Art posted here previously was of The Fool, 1997, acrylic on canvas, Rolf Eichelmann, artist.

Happy April Fool’s Day, and happy birthday to our friend Geri! I hope her day is full of mischief and celebration, if those are what she seeks.

Are you in a foolish mood in honor of the date? Did you know that Mercury goes retrograde today? I hope that planet doesn’t toy with you.

Today, instead of shenanigans, I have the first section of the seventh book in the Neverending Saga to edit: around 82 pages, so that I can pass it to my two readers for comments and criticisms. Then I’ll shift from this brooding character’s point of view to a more lighthearted character–lighthearted FOR NOW. Can’t be fiction without conflict!

Button Sunday

I’ll just trot out my old Easter Beagle button that I’ve used before, along with a new photo of the bunny from the last Easter basket my mother ever gave me (it was in the early 2000s so clearly I was an adult, but you can’t be too old for an Easter basket or a parent’s kindness–and speaking of a parent’s kindness, some of these eggs were gifts from my mother-in-law, many of which she made herself).

Song Challenge: Day 30

From MJ Cullinane’s Urban Crow Oracle deck.


Today’s challenge–the last one!–is “a song that reminds you of yourself.” I’ve said Dan Fogelberg’s song “Scarecrow’s Dream” is my theme song since the first time I lay in front of the stereo and listened to the words in the late 1970s. In comments under this video on YouTube, someone says, “Thank you, kind spirit, for all of your wise words.” I will forever now think of Dan Fogelberg as “kind spirit.” And I, too, thank him.

Thank you, too, for sticking with me for the month, especially when/if you commented or shared your own artists and songs for the challenges. If I helped you remember some favorites of your own, I’m glad.

Seldom seen
A scarecrow’s dream
I hang in the hopes of replacement
Castles tall
I built them all
But I dream that I’m trapped in
The basement.
And if you ever hear me calling out
And if you’ve been by paupers crowned
Between the worlds of men and make-believe
I can be found.
Plans I’ve made
A masquerade
Fading in fear of the coming day
Heroes’ tales
Like nightingales
Wrestle the wind as they run away.
And if you ever hear them calling out
And if you’ve been by paupers crowned
Between the worlds of men and make-believe
I can be found.
Garden gate
An empty plate
Waiting for someone to come and fill
Scarecrow’s dreams
Like frozen streams
Thirst for the fall
But they’re running still.
And if you ever hear me calling out
And if you’ve been by paupers crowned
Between the worlds of men and make-believe
I can be found.

Photo Friday, No. 902

Current Photo Friday theme: Wet


Marina del Rey, California

This was shot on film in 1998, and I uploaded it and another photo from the same place to Flickr in 2008, but I don’t think I ever published either photo on my LiveJournal or this blog.

If there’s a place that haunts me, it’s this one. Maybe, as Stevie Nicks sings,

Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older, too

Maybe.

Song Challenge: Day 29

Riley, December 1980

Today’s song challenge is “a song someone sang to you once.” How about sang to me too many times to count? If I was in a bad mood or just feeling playful, and Riley was there with his guitar, I made the same request: “Play ‘Rocky Raccoon,’ please!” I’ve shared on here before how one time when I made that request, he gave me a reproachful look.

If I’ve never shared this before, it’s a picture from one of our high school yearbooks. I don’t have that yearbook, but Lynne does. I snapped a photo with my camera phone when I was at Half-Acre Wood a couple of years ago. Riley in his 1950s era raccoon coat.

Riley and other musicians were doing a tribute in a local bar to John Lennon in December 1980, days after the former Beatle was murdered. As much as everyone there loved playing and hearing the music, there was such a pervasive feeling of sadness among us. I couldn’t take it anymore and mouthed my request: “Rocky Raccoon.”

“That’s a McCartney song,” he answered off mic, not wanting to embarrass me.

“I know,” I said. “Please play it anyway. For me.”

He couldn’t refuse me. I don’t know about anyone else in the bar, but hearing Riley play and sing a song that always made me laugh was what I needed to keep my equilibrium that night. Whether or not John Lennon liked the song, as he once told us in a different song, Whatever gets you thru the night/It’s all right, it’s all right.

I thank Riley, always, for all the days and nights he got me through with his music and poetry, all the other artists’ music he introduced me to, his friendship and love, for sometimes testing me almost to the ends of my patience and endurance, his emotional support during my hardest times, and his ability to make me laugh.

In 2022, on the 42nd anniversary of John Lennon’s death, a group of musicians and fans gathered at the Strawberry Fields/Imagine memorial in Central Park, and there’s a video of them doing the song. I guess I’m not the only one. =)

Here’s the album version by the Beatles.

Song Challenge: Day 28


Today’s song challenge is “a song by an artist whose voice you love.” I was watching some television show one night a long time ago–I mean like 1970s or 1980s long time–I feel like it could have been a cop show–and they played Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” Even though the song was already familiar to me, maybe because of the show’s plot or the scene they showed while it played, who knows, it grabbed my attention that night. Despite all those other details having vanished, I’ve never forgotten how the song felt new and became a favorite from that point on.

I can’t say anything better about Sam Cooke’s voice than this quote from Wikipedia: Cooke is widely considered one of the greatest singers and most accomplished vocalists of all time. His incredibly pure tenor voice was big, velvety and expansive, with an instantly recognizable tone. His pitch was remarkable, and his manner of singing was effortlessly soulful. He could go as high as high C without losing purity or volume, and his upper mid-range was coated in a unique rasp. His vocal style was very adaptable, adopting a rather classical sound on jazz and pop songs while maintaining his trademark stylistic soulful hold on R&B, gospel, and soul music.

Song Challenge: Day 27

Today’s song challenge is “a song that breaks your heart.” For me, that song is the Carole King composition “You’ve Got a Friend.” I own it by at least three artists, and I no longer listen to it. There’s nothing at all wrong with the song; it’s as beautiful to me as it ever was. But a moment came in my life when hearing “You’ve Got a Friend” evoked a lyric from a different song, the Jackson Browne composition “These Days”: Please don’t confront me with my failures/I had not forgotten them.

I’m not linking to either song. I had a great birthday yesterday, and today I’d like to pick up where I was in my manuscript. I don’t want to be derailed by melancholy.

On a lighter note, in February, I received “The Beatles Coloring Book” from Nurse Lisa in Iowa. Below are a series of photos showing the evolution of the first picture I colored from it and finally finished this week (working on it sporadically for the last five-plus weeks).


The cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album.


The cover of the coloring book Lisa sent.


My first coloring included the title and the Volkswagen.


Finished page!


Framed and hanging on the wall in the writing sanctuary, a little birthday gift to myself yesterday.

When I wrote A Coventry Wedding, I scattered Easter eggs (an “Easter egg” is defined as “a little extra something that authors hide in their books for readers to find”) throughout the book. In A Coventry Wedding, the Easter eggs were allusions to Beatles’ lyrics meant as gifts for Riley to find when he read the novel. Sadly, Riley died before the book’s release, five months before my mother died in 2008. The novel came out later than scheduled because the editor gave me an extension so I could focus on Mother during her final months while I was also grieving Riley’s loss. It doesn’t require a therapist to recognize that I haven’t tried to get another full-length work of fiction published since 2009 or that it took me ten years to even begin writing novels again.

Some of the Easter eggs in A Coventry Wedding alluded to songs on Abbey Road. Off the top of my head, those include “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window” and “Mean Mr. Mustard.” From that album, here’s my deliberately-chosen song “Carry That Weight” (in which the Beatles sample another song from Abbey Road, “You Never Give Me Your Money”). All kinds of writers have a little fun with their work sometimes. In fact, I’ve just written a scene with a character analyzing Easter eggs in a screenwriter’s music video.

Tiny Tuesday and Song Challenge: Day 26

A pair of tiny heart-shaped ruby earrings Tom gave me on some occasion probably in the 1990s.

Here I am, celebrating another turn around the sun today, and the song challenge is “a song that makes you think of falling in love.”

At my birthday party many years ago, a joint event with two other women with birthdays that same week and an open invitation to a horde of friends and acquaintances, theirs, mine, and ours, I danced for the first time with a man I’d only recently met. He seemed like one of the good guys, but I was coming off one of the worst years of my life, with terrible losses in my family, a broken relationship, some friend betrayals, and the consequences of many, many bad choices and bad judgments on my part. The last thing I wanted or needed was a relationship with a man, no matter how nice he was. I needed to deal with my messy life and make hard decisions about what to do next.

Two years later, I’d marry that good guy, and a few months after that, we would move to Houston. We’ve had quite a life together–the good, the bad, and the ridiculous–and I can’t imagine celebrating all the birthdays since I met him with anyone else.

I think Fleetwood Mac’s “Crystal” is the first song Tom and I danced to at my birthday party that night. He may remember differently–that’s just part of having a few decades together. =)

ETA: Coming back after the fact because of the dreams I had last night–so vivid that after the dream began, I woke up briefly, went back to sleep immediately, and the same dream picked up where it left off. It was about a key person in my life story and evoked an array of memories and feelings. Mostly it reminded me that sometimes it’s good not to get what we think we want and that we–I–need to acknowledge, to myself, the better things about my nature instead of being hard on myself for my mistakes and flaws.