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workable kitchen

The interconnection thing is definitely for real.

About Me


Ringing the Bells
by Anne Sexton
And this is the way they ring
the bells in Bedlam
and this is the bell-lady
who comes each Tuesday morning
to give us a music lesson
and because the attendants make you go
and because we mind by instinct,
like bees caught in the wrong hive,
we are the circle of the crazy ladies
who sit in the lounge of the mental house
and smile at the smiling woman
who passes us each a bell,
who points at my hand
that holds my bell, E flat,
and this is the gray dress next to me
who grumbles as if it were special
to be old, to be old,
and this is the small hunched squirrel girl
on the other side of me
who picks at the hairs over her lip,
who picks at the hairs over her lip all day,
and this is how the bells really sound,
as untroubled and clean
as a workable kitchen,
and this is always my bell responding
to my hand that responds to the lady
who points at me, E flat;
and although we are no better for it,
they tell you to go. And you do.
From The Complete Poems (1960; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999) 28-29.
____________________________________________________________ ____Sometimes the slideshow below takes a minute to load--sometimes it doesn't work at all--sometimes you have to refresh the page. Stoopid technology. It's lovely when it's working, though.
I am currently hard at work on my PhD in cultural studies at Claremont Graduate University. The concentration in museum studies I had thought was in my future is diminishing, to be replaced, at least for now, by food studies. Somehow I think I'm on the verge of figuring out my academic home, although I expect it's still going to take quite some time.I also teach a course in the School of Fine Arts at USC. Teaching is wonderfully engaging and deeply rewarding--not in the hallmark way, but in the radical way, where you actually get to see people change and grow, right in front of your eyes.
I pay attention to what's going on in the world, turning increasingly to Air America and KPFK, and away from the soft, reasonable chortles and chat of NPR. I'm an ENFP. I love books, and will always be in my heart of hearts an English major, a reader and lover of words for their own sake. I also have two cats I adore: Emily and Jane (yes, it's dopey to name your cats after Dickinson and Austen, but incredibly apt). Some of my favorite past times include film-watching, people-watching, blueberry-consuming, driving long spontaneous distances, imagining alternate realities in which Barbara Boxer is president, blogging, Bikram's yoga (when I can force myself to do it regularly I can't believe how rewarding it is), cooking, magazine-reading, and window-shopping. I love good conversation, and can't seem to get enough of it.
You are George Orwell
Paranoid and Cynical. You are able to understand society and the human psyche quickly and easily. You are depressed a lot of the time, because you are clever enough to see what is really going on in the world.
Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com
THE LINK IS BROKEN, BUT CHECK OUT THIS SITE: MyGen Profile Generator

My Interests

Bicycling around my 'hood after dark, blueberries in the morning, still slightly wet from washing and cold, film, cultural/art/literary theory, Quakerism, fooood, good wine/beer, old friends, public art, revolution, radio, travel, reviving the flaneur, all things French and the francophiles who love them, walking along the proverbial beach, driving, silly television shows, growing things, queer-ness.

I'd like to meet:

For general conversation, art-making, do-gooding, gossip, etc.: anyone who is interested in the world and how it's changing, who cares about their own mind and feelings, who is engaged and creative and reasonably happy with themselves.

Connections on higher planes are also welcome.

If you need an editor for fiction or nonfiction, long or short, clean or dirty--real editing or just proofing--drop me a line because I am always looking for new work.

****Unless you represent a group with a progressive political cause, DO NOT send me a friend request without sending me a message first.****

Music:

Autour de Lucie (especially "immobile"), Le Tigre, Yo La Tengo, Django Reinhardt, Gustav Mahler, The Sundays, Camera Obscura, Butterfly Boucher, Peaches, k. d. lang, Stereolab, Bert Jansch, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Keren Ann, Jolie Holland, A Girl Called Eddy, Robinella, M. Ward, Wild Strawberries, The Ditty Bops, The Be Good Tanyas, The Turtles, Sun Kil Moon, Joni Mitchell, Cat Power, The Beatles, Charles Trenet, Iron & Wine, Merrick, Gwen Farrar and Norah Blaney (if you've heard of them you'd better drop me a line), Maria Taylor, Joan Baez, The Lovin' Spoonful, Gillian Welch, Rachel Yamagata, Melissa Ferrick, Luna, Jens Lekman, Thelonius Monk, Jim White, Charlie Parker, Jill Sobule, Nellie Mckay, Moby, Emiliana Torrini, George Jones, Laura Nyro, Rilo Kiley, Teitur, Blossom Dearie, Air, Johnny Cash, Nick Drake, Judy Garland, Ane Brun, Handsome Boy Modeling School, The Indigo Girls, Ani Difranco, Peggy Lee, Nicola Hitchcock, Hazel Dickens--obviously, these are in no particular order, and there are lots more, and many embarrassing choices I am too cool to reveal on the internet.

Movies:

The Incredibles, Rivers and Tides, The Corporation, The Sticky Fingers of Time, Afterlife, School of Rock, Spellbound (the documentary and the Hitchcock), Addams Family Values, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Babette's Feast, Goodbye Lenin, Mildred Pierce, The Hanging Garden, Entre Nous, Ma Vie en Rose, Big Eden, All About Eve, L.A. Story, Wings of Desire, In the Mood for Love, secretary (near the top of the list, if there is such a thing), Best in Show, Harold and Maude, The Graduate, Waking Ned Devine, Supersize Me, Far From Heaven, I'm the One That I Want, Psycho, Marnie, Rear Window, Waking Life, Sunset Boulevard, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise, One or Two Things I Know About Her, Belle de Jour, Being John Malkovich, The Virgin Suicides, I Heart Huckabees, Bowling for Columbine, The Celluloid Closet, Chocolat, Mostly Martha, Amelie, Some Like It Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Secrets & Lies, Strait-Jacket, Possessed, The Big Lebowski, The Five Obstructions, My Father is Coming, What's Cooking?, Northfork--so many more where these came from!
Dawn Finley's Random Movie Quote:
'I feel like the floor of a taxi cab.'
- Dr. Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters
Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com
What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Television:

Guilty--sometimes very guilty--pleasures: The Simpsons, American Dad, South Park, Rosemary & Thyme, Dharma & Greg, R.R., French & Saunders, Frontline, The French Chef, Jacques Pépin's "Fast Food My Way," America's Test Kitchen, Grey's Anatomy, Roseanne, Desperate Housewives, King of the Hill, Keeping Up Appearances, Waiting for God, Are You Being Served?. Six Feet Under (when it comes out on DVD), The Sopranos (same thing), Golden Girls. And I will admit to the occassional indulgence in the outrageous but moderately amusing episodes of any one of the Law & Order franchises.

Books:

Brief sampling of authors: Jeanette Winterson, Virginia Woolf, Michael Cunningham, David Sedaris, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Rosalin Deutsche, Anne Sexton, Italo Calvino, Jeffrey Eugenides, Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami, Flannery O'connor, Adrienne Rich, Gerald Stern, Aimee Bender, bell hooks, Steve Martin (yes, *that* Steve Martin), David Markson, Kurt Vonnegut, Marion Nestle, Robert Hass, Lucy Lippard, Angela Carter, Maxine Hong Kingston, Margaret Atwood, Katha Pollit, Gore Vidal

Heroes:

People who can walk and talk like grown-ups but retain their sense of humor, of the absurd and fragile nature of things.

My Blog

Leave yer high-falutin’ theories at the door

The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. Deuteronomy 30:14It's cooling down in the city. Autumn is coming in its strange subtle way.Today after meeting b...
Posted by workable kitchen on Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:13:00 PST

One more shot


Posted by workable kitchen on Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:23:00 PST

Dream 77 in brief

Friday night, it must've been. Something about another woman's kitchen, and me simultaneously cleaning it and making a bigger mess. Flour everywhere, all over the wooden floors and counters. The kitch...
Posted by workable kitchen on Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:48:00 PST

Mamas got a brand new . . .

camera!Miss L invested some rather big bucks today in a fancy new camera. It's super-cool, except she hadn't noticed that the LCD display doesn't swivel around so she can take those self-portraits she...
Posted by workable kitchen on Sun, 23 Sep 2007 06:40:00 PST

Little stuff

Love does not die easily. It is a living thing. It thrives in the face of all of life's hazards, save one -- neglect. James D. BrydenOkay, so this quotation is one of a huge list I found somewhere or ...
Posted by workable kitchen on Wed, 19 Sep 2007 05:31:00 PST

Dreams 55-56

Fragments from last night and the night before.On a boat with a younger woman, someone I am supposed to mentor. As we are talking about the past, past loves and sex, I pull my hair around to the side ...
Posted by workable kitchen on Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:45:00 PST

Dream 92

In part of the dream I am living in a new house, with several other women (this corresponds a bit to a party I went to last weekend). There are huge parts of the house that need major cleaning, and we...
Posted by workable kitchen on Sat, 15 Sep 2007 12:57:00 PST

Morning miscellany

Two women standing outside a car double-parked, one pulling clothes and shoes and plastic bags from the back seat, shouting at the other, "How could you do that? How could you listen to me talk and ta...
Posted by workable kitchen on Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:12:00 PST

Coda

A couple of things Richard said. When I mentioned my escapist fantasy of leaving it all for natural medicine and becoming a healer and a masseuse: "But you're a thinker. You can't avoid that. You're g...
Posted by workable kitchen on Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:08:00 PST

Dream 2

Fragments.Me looking in the mirror, a large round mirror. My face is my own but distorted, exaggerated. My eyes especially are larger and the irises greener. I am wearing a good deal of make-up, eyela...
Posted by workable kitchen on Tue, 11 Sep 2007 11:30:00 PST