“Napkin holder” is close enough to “placeholder” and the images for these are way better. Photo: Wikipedia.
This post is a placeholder.
It is a placeholder for a post that I have been working on for almost two hours, now. Sometimes I bang out a post on the ol’ PG in no time; other posts take longer, some take much longer. But this one is killing me and it’s time to sleep. There are different moving parts in it, you see, and I’m afraid I’m more myopic than usual about the subject matter, so it’s best to tap out for now.
Me and Shizuko-san at the museum. Photo: A Nice Lady
I arrived in Iowa yesterday. My episodes of the TV show start taping on the 13th, but I’ve come early and am going to stay a day or so after we’re done. This is so I can watch spring come to small town Iowa and so Mom and I can sew. We work together in various quilt capacities, true, but we rarely have time to simply sew together. So we’ll do that when she gets back from a trip to DC.
Today, though, I am not in Winterset. I came to Lincoln, Nebraska so that I could attend the opening reception for a jaw-dropping exhibit at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum. The exhibit, Blue Echoes, features the work of Japanese studio quilter Shizuko Kuroha. I drove three hours to the museum, then I went around the world.
Around Christmastime, I was invited to join the board of the Study Center. I fell off my chair. Then I said yes. Then I told my loved ones. Then I wanted to shout it from the rafters but never did, because that’s not behavior becoming a board member of anything except The National Board of United Rafter Shouters.
There’s more to come about the Study Center and what it’s like to be on the board of something. I’ve never done it before. But the people I met tonight, the canapes I consumed, the ideas I had, the quilts I saw, the hands I shook, this all bodes well. While I was washing my hands in the ladies’ room, I thought of other boards it would be fun to serve on:
The Board of the Beard Association
The Board of Boar’s Head Meats Corporation
…and how much fun would it be to be the chairman of the board of the International Chair Board.
Performance in the Bolshoi Theatre,” print from the Alexander II Coronation Book of 1856. Image: Wikipedia.
I wrote recently in my column about public speaking and how I’m used to it. In the middle of writing that piece, I got sidetracked for hours by two eternal questions. Well, they’re eternal to me; I’m not sure the rest of the world is bothering with them, but maybe the world should. And if the world meditates on my questions and comes up with something, I would appreciate if the world provided those answers. I have other questions, too, but the world can start here:
1. If a performer presents to an audience, this is making theater. If the performer presents to no one, is theater still made?
2. Does my identity as a performer run so deep that if I were shipwrecked on an island, would I write and perform plays for the squirrels?
My answer to the first question remains, after many years: “I don’t know; go ask Peter Brook.” The answer to the second question is “Yes.”
Were I shipwrecked on a remote desert island, I would without question look for a way to build a little stage in the shade. I would memorize my lines — lines I couldn’t even write down because there is no paper on remote desert islands from what I understand — and I would rehearse hours each day. I would gather split coconuts, which could be used for costume purposes. Were I to choose to produce a puppet show, these coconuts could make excellent boats. I could perhaps train a squirrel to come in on cue for a little comic relief during one of my real downers. “Just eat a nut or something!” I’d yell, and he would never, ever, ever do it. Which would be funny.
Yes, the love for getting up and being on the performance side of that ancient line in the sand runs deep. I wouldn’t change it if I could.
I don’t actively make theater these days. I miss the Neo-Futurists all the time. And how about that: the first sentence of this paragraph has led to a third question: If a person who makes theater isn’t presently making theater, is she still a maker of theater?
Peanut butter and jelly sandwich in subway. Photo: Me
This photo was taken last night around 9:30pm at the Harrison red line el stop. It could be the best picture I’ve ever taken. As I’ve said, city living is the only kind of living for me, not the least because of things like this. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the recycle bin, just hanging out, is a welcome, funny surprise.
I meant to post this last night on my Instagram feed. If you like this picture, you may like the other pictures I share on that site. I have abandoned Twitter entirely, but Instagram continues to work for me and I enjoy it very much.
Combing Hair by Hashiguchi Goyo, Japan, 1920, Woodblock print, Honolulu Museum of Art. Image: Wikipedia
To celebrate Easter, Claus and I took a bike ride to the lakefront.
We rode for some time, then needed a snack. Since Claus had not seen Navy Pier yet, we steered our bikes that way. I was happy to see that Navy Pier has gotten at least a partial facelift since I was last there. There are many more food options and there was a mini-Tiffany glass exhibit courtesy of Chicago’s Driehaus family, a family that has an entire museum in the Gold Coast dedicated solely to exhibiting their Tiffany glass pieces. The Driehaus family probably owns Navy Pier, so maybe the exhibit today is there because they needed extra storage. Either way, it was great.
On the way home, we got caught in the cold wind and rain that hit around 5pm. That was hard, riding home in that. We arrived in soaked jeans. My hair was plastered to my head and my glasses were pointless. Now hungry for actual dinner, Claus and I decided to take time only to get dry and then go back out for a hamburger; we also decided to take umbrellas.
Claus put his jeans over a chair and dried them with my hairdryer. I came over and sat by him while he did it. It was funny: to get the legs dry he put the nose of the hairdryer into the cuff and the air blew up the leg like there was a real leg in there.
The German looked over at me and said, “Mary, your hair is still very wet.” And he turned the blowdryer on my hair. He used his fingers to ruffle it the way you do when you dry someone’s hair, tousling it this way and that. The warm air blew all over my head and it was bliss to feel it on my neck, blowing just under my collar.
Then something strange happened. Suddenly, my eyes teared up. And my chest hurt.
I realized it that what he was doing was what my mother — even my father, if we go back further — did when I was a little kid. The sense memory hit me like a truck. The warm air on my neck, the large hand on my head, and the feeling of being helped in getting warm after being cold from playing outside. Though people touch our heads and blow-dry our hair in a salon, there is none of this connection there. Night and day.
I turned to Claus and I swear my lip trembled as I said, “That feels really good. Can you keep doing it?” He was a little surprised and said of course he could and was I okay?
