REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

"Loving Frank" and Ken Burn's Documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright

Who among us does not know of the work of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright? Though I have various architects whose work I’ve admired over the years, it’s his that has fascinated me the most. I knew little about his life, however, until I read Nancy Horan’s “Loving Frank” this week.

Mamah Borthwick Cheney was FLW’s mistress for several years and this novel is written from her point of view. Mamah and her husband, Edwin Cheney, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them in 1903 in Oak Park, IL. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives. You'll love the Random House website for this book which even uses the fonts Wright liked when he incorporated sayings in his buildings.

"Loving Frank" was a very compelling read and immediately afterwards I went to the library and checked out Ken Burn’s 1998 PBS documentary “Frank Lloyd Wright” and now I want to read his autobiography and his biography. Though I have seen some of his buildings over the years, my interest is piqued to see even more. I’ve seen the Guggenheim in New York (but haven’t been inside), Hollyhock House in Hollywood, and Taliesin West outside Phoenix. 

I see there is a whole array of documentaries available about him at the library and about specific houses and buildings he designed.

As an older person myself, it was amazing to see how creative and bright he remained until the end of his life. He died at 92 in 1959. He also had some deep flaws and an ego a mile wide, but most highly creative people I've known are far from perfect.

I’m a sponge for learning new things so this novel has started me out on a journey. It helps that my two young grandsons love to build things, too, and that Fritz, who will be five this fall, wants to be an architect, he says. He loves to show me a book with many architectural styles in it and he knows most of them by name already. I sure as heck wasn't remotely interested in architecture at that age. 

Incidentally, for those of you who live in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, the famous Wayfarer's Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes was designed by his son Lloyd Wright. I often go there to write. 

What I Did During the Power Outage

When I got home from work last night about 6 p.m., the garage door wouldn’t open. Frustrated, I assumed my battery had died.

So, I parked Sophia on the street and came in through the front door for a change. That morning I had put chicken breasts in the Crockpot to make Cookies’s personalized dog food  and she was barking her readiness for a meal. The Crockpot was cold and the chicken uncooked. My Inner Critic loudly said, "Dumbo." Hmmm.

Next I flipped the on button to the kitchen TV and nothing happened. Then I looked around the room and saw that none of the clocks were on and the refrigerator was off. So was the stove. Now and then switches will pop off on the electrical panel, but everything looked OK. I did a general trip and reset just in case. Nada.

I tried to phone my neighbor to see if it was just me, but the phone didn’t work. I rang her doorbell and it didn’t ring. I banged on it. When she came to the door, she reminded me that the electric company had sent a warning that the power would be off until 4. There were trucks working in the next block and Cookie and I trotted up and asked the guys what was up. The old transformer they were replacing ended up being problematic and we were in for the long haul. 1200 customers were affected and they hoped to have it on by 11 p.m.

That’s when I remembered that I was going to update the earthquake kit after our latest shaker and other than buying the water, I hadn’t  done anything. Next I thought about New Orleans during Katrina and the big New York/Northeast power blackouts in 1965 and 2003. Our two decades of camping came to mind when we used a campfire and a Coleman lantern for light.

I have a flashlight in every room of the house, so that’s where I started knowing dusk would be coming before long. I could only locate two. I found the stash of batteries but couldn’t find the portable radio. I love candlelight so I rounded up a dozen candles to light the bedroom when dark came and got out my B&N booklight and “Loving Frank,” the current book I’m reading. I got my journal and pens out—and then it was dark. I walked Cookie and there were no streetlights, but the power company had generators going at the traffic signals. It was eerily quiet except for the guys next door listening to a ball game on their car radio. I could have gotten out my MacBook and run the computer on battery, but I decided to really experience the solitude.

So, now I’m ready to get serious about the earthquake kit. I need to replenish all the flashlights, get a new battery for the Coleman lantern, make sure the Coleman stove has propane, and get the battery-operated radio up and running.

I fell asleep reading by candlelight, and jerked awake when the power came on at 10:30 p.m. I walked the house and was happy I wasn’t going to have to dump the stuff in the freezer, but I didn’t turn on the TV or computer. At a time when I have been observing my personal behavior, it was a real wake-up call to see how much I depend on the power grid—how much we all do.

Writing Block? Create Your Own ABC Poem

I've got writer's block and wouldn't you know, I pulled up a several-years-old file and found the following:

Create a Poem Using the 26 letters of the alphabet and give up your need to understand. After you have created the poem, picture yourself dressed in a certain kind of costume, in a setting of your choice, speaking your poem.

 Here’s mine. I wear an Elizabethan gown, empire-waisted, with decolletage, and a crown of jasmine and heather woven in my long, black, frizzed hair. I stand in the Paris Opera House, backed up by a 100 piece orchestra and chorus. I sing in Italian:

 Affectation behind closed doors,

Every faithful gentleman

huddling inside jaded knowledge.

 Leave me nothing

Obligatory, purposeful, quintessential.

Romance seized thirsting,

Under valued, wasting.

Yoked xanthene zealots

--------------------

Want to play? 

Reintroduction to Anthony de Mello: Awareness

The terms of awakening or awareness are used by all the world's major religions and belief systems, and even though I "know" the importance of "staying awake", I often fall asleep for long periods of time--sometimes years. When the pupil is ready, the teacher comes--again. Today she came in the form of a spiritual directee I see occasionally and she was very excited by the writings of the late Fr. Anthony J. de Mello, S.J., particularly his book, "Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality."

In 1984, I was first introduced to de Mello by my long-time spiritual friend Sr. Brigid when she gave me a book called, "Sadhana: A Way to God, Christian Exercises in Eastern Form." Sr. B. is in a nursing home now, but I often reflect how ahead of her time she was and how many people she influenced over the years. Then a Jesuit priest friend gave me a birthday present in 1988: Anthony de Mello's "One Minute Wisdom."

I have been on a spiritual path my entire life, but the journey gets way-laid periodically and I fall asleep even though I regularly attend a church. In an effort to back-burner my own aging process, I've fallen into finding meaning in work and in volunteering, which gives me "purpose", but I'm not sure it isn't because I'm afraid I will become invisible. I also find pleasure (or distraction) in fiction, film, and the Internet, as well as family and friends. I collect books and have hundreds of really good spiritual titles, but my "study phase" seems to have passed.I have a good life. But, at least for today, I'm awake. Not bad on a beautiful warm, spring day.

When I Googled de Mello, I was surprised to learn that he died unexpectedly in 1987 of a heart attack at Fordham University as he was about to start a U.S. speaking/reteat tour--and yes, there are conspiracy theories, as there are about Thomas Merton's untimely death in 1967. Then I found out that in 1998, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and now Pope, issued an official notification "Concerning the Writings of Father Anthony de Mello, S.J.," warning us of the direness of his heretical teachings. Well, I'll be darned. Maybe the inquisition is alive and well in a different form. Maybe Dan Brown isn't that far off with his books.

Here's a taste of de Mello from "Awareness", pp. 150-151. I am finding that being re-introduced to his work has jolted me awake, at least for today. There's nothing new here, but a reminder that I have been awake in the past and I have hope I'll stay awake longer. What that means to me is setting intention of seeing the sacred in the ordinary more often than I have been lately.

Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that. The only tragedy there is in the world is unwakefulness and unawareness. From them comes fear, and from fear comes comes everything else, but death is not a tragedy at all. Dying is wonderful; it's only horrible to people who have never understood life. It's only when you're afraid of life that you fear death. It's only dead people who fear death.

One of your American authors put it so well. He said awakening is the death of your belief in injustice and tragedy. The end of the world for a caterpillar is a butterfly for the master. Death is resurrection. We're talking not about some resurrection that will happen but about one that is happening right now. If you would die to the past, if you would die to every minute, you would be the person who is fully alive, because a fully alive person is one who is full of death.

We're always dying to things. We're always shedding everything in order to be fully alive and to be resurrected at every moment. The mystics, saints, and others make great efforts to wake people up. If they don't wake up, they're always going to have these other minor ills like hunger, wars, and violence. The greatest evil is sleeping people, ignorant people.

Musings on Having Purpose Later in Life

Having a purpose in life is something that I--and almost everyone I know--longs for. When one grows older, finding purpose is sometimes problematic. In my years of being a journal keeping consultant I have heard this lament over and over again. I have agonized with this--until I finally decided that as long as I have intent in doing what I do, or don't do, I have purpose.

I have a tendency to equate "doing" with "being" and I am not feeling so guilty about that as I used to do. I enjoy my part-time job and my volunteer activities, being a mom, a grandma, a sister, a friend. Redondowriter's current purpose. 

 

“The true joy of life [is] being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one ... being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown to the scrap heap ... being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances.” -- George Bernard Shaw 

What is your take on finding purpose in your life? When I was a wife and mother, as well as a working professional, I KNEW my purpose. My current purpose is not a mighty one, as Shaw quotes, so I suppose my decision to declare intention in my activities might be an escape mechanism. Hmmm. 

Anne Lindbergh's Gift From the Sea Still Relevant Today

Only those of us who are a "certain age" probably recall air pioneers Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In my growing up years, however, both of them were household words. My dad worked in the aircraft industry and the kidnapping and subsequent murder of their first child in 1932 was a piece of history every American who lived in those times knew about. 

In 1955 Anne wrote Gift From the Sea--and in 1955 I graduated from high school, but I was too young to appreciate this book then. I never read it seriously until the early 1970s when I was raising three young children and wondering if I would ever have any private time again; the book really helped me clarify myself, motherhood, marriage and my relationships with others. I reread it periodically; I have a paperback, underlined, grungy to the max, from 1965. I often give this book to young women just entering the middle years of marriage. 

So, I was delighted when my book club chose this book for today. My book club is an unusual one; it was started by several young women as a spin off from my school's formation of The Friends of the Library in the mid-1990s. When I partially retired, I was invited to join. I am the oldest woman in the group. Today was a walk through the 1950s with several women dressing the part; all the snacks were '50s appropriate, and the beverages were served in those metal tumblers we all used then. The moderator had checked out several 1950s cultural books and we heard the highlights of those years, including the top literature of that decade. Another woman had done research on Anne and gave us the timeline of her life. Then we launched into the book. 

If you haven't read it, Anne shares her meditations on youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea. Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh’s musings on the shape of a woman’s life is relevant to men and women at any stage of life, but I suppose mostly women.

I was delighted to find an old NPR All Things Considered interview with Anne's youngest daughter Reeve after her mom's death in 2001 which was deeply touching to me. Half of my book is underlined, but in the section called Oyster, she writes about long-term marriages. This passage has stayed with me:

I am very fond of the oyster shell. It is humble and awkward and ugly. it is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional...

But is it the permanent symbol of marriage? Should it -- any more than the double-sunrise shell -- last forever? The tide of life recedes. The house, with its bulging sleeping porches and sheds, begins little by little to empty. The children go away to school and then to marriage and lives of their own... What is one to do -- die of atrophy in an outstripped form? Or move on to another form, other experiences?

Married 27 years, divorced 23 years, I still mourn the idealism of what I thought marriage was. I still wonder if I just moved on to another form, or if I had been more patient, our problems would have ultimately resolved. But--I don't dwell on this a lot. I've had such a wonderful life, but a very different life than I had expected.

Gift From the Sea was written well over 50 years ago, but all of us in book group today were amazed at how relevant the book still is today. 

One Never Gets Used to Earthquakes

I was sorting bills in my bedroom and watching the home make over show when the Lennox earthquake hit tonight at 8.39 p.m. That's about 8.5 miles from my house in Redondo Beach. Having been born here, I've felt many, but each one is very, very scary! I headed instantly for a doorway and Cookie was running wildly barking--about 15 seconds.

All our neighbors gathered in the courtyard afterward and other than being rattled, we were OK although one family's bookcase tipped over. We have had two aftershocks so far and now comes the waiting. There's only a 5% chance this is a foreshock, but we always wonder if "the big one" is coming next. The local Redondo Beach Galleria sustained damage in the AMC theaters, but it's all I've heard about so far.

OK, two earthquakes in this area in two weeks. Tomorrow I'm going to check my earthquake kit and replenish everything and get more water stored.

 

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

A few months ago I read John Boyne's "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" and though it was a difficult read, I was mesmerized by the tension of innocence and evil as it is a story of the holocaust from a child's point of view. The librarians at school had talked about it and I knew I had to read it. I read a few chapters and put the book aside for a full week; I wasn't sure I was up to it. Then I dived in and read it to the very end. It has haunted me ever since. 

Tonight I watched the 2008 film version of the book as I was curious how film makers would create the film. It followed the book pretty closely, but I'm glad I read the book first even though it was a spoiler. You can check it an IMDB if you haven't seen it and want to. I rented it from Netflix. The film was done remarkably well and I go to bed with such sadness tonight. But the holocaust is history and it is important that young people today continue to know the truth about a very dark period for humanity. I have been to Berlin once, only two days after the wall came down, but I have never been to Auschwitz or any of the death camps. 

This work was set in Berlin, 1942. When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But, Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than what meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences. 

I highly recommend both the book and the film and would be very curious to hear what you thought if you have already read it and/or seen the movie. 

I just keep thinking about the January reinstatement of a holocaust denying clergyman, Bishop Richard Williamson, by the current Pope. When I first read about this in the Huffington Post I felt deep shame and anger. After sitting with "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," I feel really outraged. In fact, I didn't follow the news about the Pope's visit to Israel and Palestine recently. I know he has apologized for the Church's behavior during World War II, but I'm not sure I believe it when he supports someone like Bishop Williamson. 

 

 

 

CAPTION THIS PHOTO

OK, this is me and I am obviously engaged in a conversation on Mother's Day about something, but I leave it to your imagination what it is. Remember that there were children present. I KNOW what you were thinking. Can you share your caption? 

By the way, right after this was snapped, my food plate fell on the grass. In my heart of hearts I still see myself in my mind's eye as about 30, but this photo proves that I'm more than that. But, hey, get used to it, girlfriend, I tell myself. You're an elder now.

Beauty Queens, Baseball Players, Politicians, and Hero Dogs

Newspapers are going under as we speak, but I will always read them as long as they exist. It's the tradition, the feel of newsprint, the way the ink smudges on my hands. My bachelor's degree is in journalism and I was a long time advisor of a student newspaper. In fact, I have a special affinity for my local newspaper, The South Bay Daily Breeze.  I especially like the columnists. Yesterday, Breeze columnist John Bogert, wrote the following article which I wish I had written. You can e-mail him at john.bogert@dailybreeze.com if you want to comment on what he wrote. I did note that Donald Trump let Prejean keep her crown today.

If you read to the end, you'll see why I've enticed you in with a photo of Hoagie the Hero Dog.

By the way, Rain at Rainy Day Thoughts blog wrote an excellent entry yesterday on Elizabeth Edwards. Check it out.

Here's Bogert's article. 

Totally stunned, but why should we be?

What is the world coming to when we can't even believe in beauty contests?

Or baseball players? Or politicians? Or, worse, Hoagie the hero dog?

I don't know about you, but my world was shaken as tawdry revelation followed silly revelation out of a low-end intellectual dual between Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean and blogger Perez "Mario Lavadeira" Hilton.

In a dramatic, semi-articulate, OMG! moment, Lavadeira interjected a question that, in the Barbie world of beauty pageants, was akin to asking one of these gussied up kids to describe the function of beryllium in a thermonuclear explosion.

Perez, who is usually described as "openly gay" in the same way that I am "openly who-the-heck cares," asked Prejean about (what else?) gay marriage.

Naturally, this reminded me of the day I heard a reporter ask a clearly homicidal Frank Sinatra a question, only to be told that he wasn't answering "no stupid damn questions from no stupid damn punk!"

In truth, I prefer Frank's world to one where a snot like Lavadeira asks a "hard question" in the most dumbed-down corner of our dumbed-down world and gets an answer that somehow leads to the contestant's breasts (reportedly financed by the pageant) being discussed on TV like they are grapefruit.

In Frank's world, a lot of people would have been mysteriously injured for talking like that about somebody's daughter.