I Interview my Visitors, no. 2

Lori, the woman who ought to be a Bigwit instead of a Witzel, has a passionate curiosity that drives her to see and to say what and how she sees in words, drawings, photographs, and poems. Her primary blog, Chatoyance, flings a seemingly infinite number of tendrils into the aether of the internet, making connections with me and you and somebody with a laptop who is sitting under alien leaves on the other side of the world. Lori Witzel is curious about the way light tosses a glimmering, insubstantial banner into an auto repair shop, about the way decreptitude takes a a plaster wall, about the stuttered reflections on a ribbon of windows in the city.

She is a metaphysical dreamer and eavesdropper. Look: right now she’s leaning over her Starbuck’s coffee, listening to those two women with their heads bent together. She’s sketching the acanthion above the scroll of a lip and jotting down notes in the margin. She plunks down in the dirt, staring at sun through tattered leaf, camera in hand. She’s pausing in an alley to take in the weird poetry of rust on a hand-welded gate and metal rooster. Out of a clear blue Texas sky, cats are dropping onto her legs and back, sniffing behind her ear. A husband is calling from the background. But Lori just laughs and doesn’t turn her head as she steadies the camera: she’s alive, and she’s looking, and she sees.

Marly:
What’s the most interesting swap you’ve seen on your worldwide swap blog, Gimme Your Stuff? And is your blog, I’m Sorry I Haven’t Posted, really a form of metafiction—since you never (“no, not ever—hardly ever”) post?

Lori:
Unfortunately, I haven’t been monitoring Gimme as much as I used to when it was just a Teeny Lil’ Blog looking for swap-friends. My role is very peripheral—I’m sort of a departed founding partner of Gimme Your Stuff, and the people who really keep it growing and fun are Rikki and ThomP.

But rather than answer “the most interesting swap,” if I may I’ll share the back-story on how that blog came to be.

My friend Andy Spiegel’s friend Willie Baronet left a comment on Rikki’s blog during a debate about “Milo vs. Nestles,” rather insistently pushing to get Rikki and company to send him some Milo so he could experience Australian chocolate drink mix nirvana. I countered with a much more charming approach to wheedling Milo, and Rikki took pity upon Milo-less me and sent it to me, not Willie. (And while I thoroughly enjoyed “neener neener nearer”-ing Willie, I did share the Milo with him.)

Well, I loooooooooved the Milo. It was what Ovaltine wants to be when it grows up. And, being a woman who doesn’t have much sense of proportion at times, I decided to extend a big-as-Texas thank you to my Aussie blog-friends by getting and shipping them the fixings for a Tex-Mex party. Lots of chips, salsas, a cookbook and various other sundries were packed and sent off, and Rikki and ThomP were completely surprised (and maybe mildly alarmed.)

The Tex-Mex love made an impression, all right—the next thing I knew, I was getting mysterious emails telling me They Had Something Big Afoot as a result of our food-swap. Clever, creative people they are, they built a whole Web infrastructure to make it possible for random strangers to build bridges of fun, trust and cultural exchange.

I helped for a while, but my job and my art (not to mention cats and hubby) made me a poor partner in Gimme. They’re very kind to keep me on the roster of ringleaders.

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Yes, I’m Sorry is now metafiction, and that amuses me almost as much as my red plastic Mary Janes. It did start as a trawl for those sorts of posts; I decided it would be funnier if I just stopped. (I wonder how many metafiction writers simply drove down a plot cul de sac and became post-modern by accident?)

Marly:
In your many photographs on your primary blog, Chatoyance, you demonstrate a passion for the overlooked, the decaying, the peeling, the faded, the rusted, the on-the-edge, the weird-in-the-mundane, the back lot, strange layered elements in nature, skewed visions via reflections, and a look that we might call Accidental Folk Art. Is this a tendency that evolved from a mode less devoted to the world’s broken and entropic self, or was it part of your “eye” and predilection from the start?

Lori:
A friend once told me, years ago, that I was drawn to “the wreck of beauty.” Although she was referring to an at-that-time-boyfriend’s physiognomy, I suppose I’ve always been drawn to the liminal and transitional. There are qualities in the mystical notion of tikkun, bringing the broken shards of creation back together, that attract me—and there are qualities in old fairy tales, where the shadowy and broken hold the key to wholeness, which I also find compelling. And as far back as I can remember, even as a little girl, I was like this. (Oh, my poor parents!)

Marly:
You take photographs, sketch, write poems (earlier it was more poems, fewer sketches I note), keep multiple blogs and generally frolic about the world of blogdom, meeting people. (Where did you encounter me, I wonder? Laurelines?) I am quite sure that this is merely the iceberg’s tip. How would Miss Jocelyn Bell describe you, were she a human adolescent, and not a hair-on-end cat about to pounce?

You are so right about finding you through Laurelines—your comments were so darn well-thought and well-wrought I had to see who that Marly person was!

Jossie, if a human teenager, would probably say (were she not texting and squealing about boys with her girlfriends), “Oh, HER. She’s always doing something, and oh my gosh, I never saw anyone so curious about EVERYTHING. I mean, Lori’s nice and all, but she just reads and does stuff and I wish she would just chill and go shopping and pay more attention to me me ME!”

And a cat-tale: Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a part-Siamese who I adopted from a young woman, a science major studying at the University of Texas. This young woman named every kitten in the feral litter she rescued after a woman scientist she felt deserved more attention. Hence, our lovely youngest cat is named after the woman who discovered the pulsar.

Marly:
Thinking about your pictures, I note that you have a penchant for the overwhelming sky that reduces birds to pinheads, granaries to stubs, us to vanishing point. Is this you and Texas? Is time and space just different there? I lived in Louisiana as a child, and I recall (perhaps wrongly) the utter martyrdom of crossing Texas—the occasional joy of an armadillo football booted into the air, or a bird slashing by, or a tumbleweed catching and freeing itself and rolling on.

Lori:
I think it is me and Texas—or perhaps me and the American West.

I was born and raised in New York, but when I was very little I ran away to become a cowgirl and live in Texas. Although I turned back at the first street crossing (and oh, did I get the spanking of my life) I finally make it back.

I cannot ride a horse well, but Texas is just “west” enough to feed some open, wandering part of me. Going to college in Northern Arizona left me with a thirst for open sky and land, places where people are scarce enough to make every stranger a harbinger of something mysterious. That’s not quite where I live, but it’s close enough for now.

Marly:
You’re involved with four blogs (although involvement with I’m Sorry I Haven’t Posted seems rather metaphysical, or perhaps merely whimsical!) What have you found to be the most fun—or the most curious, or the most inspiring—about your links to places like The Art Blog Challenge? (And is it what prompted, in part, a return to sketching?)

Lori:
I think it was Willie who linked me/invited me to The Art Blog Challenge, but that didn’t spark the return to sketching. Rather, it was a camping trip I took a little over a year ago that set me sketching again.

Friends said they wanted to travel vicariously with me and see things through my eyes. Andy lent me a digital camera, which I was quite nervous about taking (I had no love of photography, and tended to break even the simplest cameras.) Beth (the blog-less and shy) suggested I take a sketchbook, and write/draw what I saw and felt.

Their wildly enthusiastic and supportive response to what I did while traveling set me back on that path, and Laura consolidated my efforts in her gentle, double-dog-dare way by hoping I’d sketch more and more.

Although I’ve found some amazing artists through links to blogs like The Art Blog Challenge, the most gratifying thing has been the one-to-one neighborliness and support I’ve been lucky enough to experience. The generosity of people like yourself, and Dave Bonta, and Laura, and many many others in supporting creative growth amazes me.

Marly:
In the sketch and notes of “Self-portrait Marathon: Take 2,” you are shown wandering and waiting for “a surprise, a wonder, a befuddlement.” You seem to be a person of much energy, and yet you are frequently very, very still—and, camera in hand, you are “waiting” on the universe to show itself. Explain yourself!

Lori:
Hah! I wish I could—and goodness knows my husband wishes I could as well!

I guess I’ve been blessed with a large helping of paradox.

One of my favorite approaches to walking along a hiking trail? Stepping just off the trail, just to one side, and waiting. And waiting. Deer come close, mistaking me for a shrub (as long as they can’t sense my human scent.) People walk by and do not see me at all. Lacey little bugs flitter by. And it’s all such a delight for the eye and heart, my mantra through those moments can only be “thank you, thank you, thank you.”

And a heartfelt “thank you” to you, Marly, for asking—it’s good to reflect on all these things, before I pop up and see what I need and want to do next…

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Chatoyancy,
a definition from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia:

In gemology, chatoyancy (or chatoyance) is an optical reflectance effect seen in certain gemstones. Coined from the French, meaning "cat's eye," chatoyancy arises either from the fibrous structure of a material, as in tiger eye quartz, or from fibrous inclusions or cavities within the stone, as in cat's eye chrysoberyl. The effect can be likened to the sheen off a spool of silk; the mobile, wavering reflection always being perpendicular to the direction of the fibres. For a gemstone to show this effect it must be cut en cabochon, with the fibers or fibrous structures parallel to the base of the finished stone.

Some gem species known for this phenomenon include the aforementioned quartz, chrysoberyl, beryl (especially var. aquamarine), tourmaline, apatite, and scapolite.

Chatoyancy can also be used to refer to a similar effect in woodworking, where certain finishes will cause the wood grain to achieve a striking three-dimensional appearance.

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I Interview my Visitors, no. 1

My bonnet pic
here
just for fun
here

I Interview My Visitors, no. 1

One of the troublesome areas for a writer is an insatiable interest in people and their foibles, secret wishes, inner and outer selves, and so on. For me, one of the most entertaining parts of having a blog is those brief collisions with Persons Unknown that occur in the Comments. Often one has only a bare sense of who that person is—it might be someone out of the past, wearing a wig and moustachio, or someone who stumbled into the door by a wild series of accidents. Occasionally someone shows up and then returns who strikes me as a character beyond my own invention.

Such is Susanna Leberman, a.k.a. susangalique of Lacey's Spring, Alabama. She has a blog and writes impetuously and rather carelessly on it, and she cannot spell. Her typos and spelling innovations often seem to make a weird sense. Her attire and writing suggest that she should have lived in the Good Old Days Before Spelling Reform came in, and I suggest that her words be read in a pre-30's spirit by any neat and precise speller who happens by.

Susanna participates in strange Southern rites that I do not understand, even though I am a dyed-in-the-high-cotton Southerner and was destined to be so by my stubborn South Carolina and Georgia ancestors for about 300 years or thereabouts. She is terribly opinionated, loves history and her Mike, has gusto, and wears wonderfully outlandish hats.

The instructions to Susanna for this interview were: Please answer all just as you would write on your blog, without puzzling it over much or rooting through the dictionary for spellings, and send them back to me! It should be "you," not you gussied up.

*************

Marly:
Susanna, could you explain (without worrying about the spelling!) how you toppled or tumbled or deliberately came in at the e-door of The Palace at 2:00 a.m.?

Susanna:
Wow, I m honored that I would be the first to be interviewd, and just for you I will make this stream on conciousness with no spell check. I am writing it as a private post. I am hopping it wont be to rough because I have no excuses. I just got through walking around Target with a large latte and have not had a cocktail or a glass of wine.

how did I find your site. I was googling Howard Bahr to see if he had any new books out and your blog came up. You had been speakers together at a writing festival. I was drunk typing and contacted you. I had never contacted a random blog before and was estatic when you responded.

Marly:
From comments, I know that Professor Cross introduced you to the books of his friend Howard Bahr. What did Randy Cross say about your spelling? (Sheerest curiosity at work.)

Susanna:
Well, he never said anything to me about it. He was really concerned about comma splices and that one I pretty much have under control. In class I always made a go of proof reading, but I was always slow and in a rush to finish tests and writing assignements. I am not sure what Dr. Cross thought about me. He thought I was very good and once I remember I was crying in his office over something, I think someone got mad at me about something and he told me that if someone knew me they would know I would never knowingly hurt anyone. I think I was outshined by my brilliant partner in crime Greg. We both had the hugest crush on him and got coaught looking through the backseat window of his car trying to see what music he was listening to and Dr. C walked up in his swarthy way and said, "Well Hello!" We wanted to die. But but but! The best Dr. Cross story occured the night my car was stolen. We were performing in 1700s costume and ran down the street in the rain to his house because we were in the historical district and didnt have phone or money. We couldnt have planned it better if we tried. He did make sure I would say Lacey's Spring instead of Lacey Springs.

the night my car got stolen and we got to see into Dr. Crosses house. This was what I looked like. I thought I was ugly and never realized how beautiful I was. Its strange too look back
here
here

Marly:
You are a devotee of strange rites. Could you kindly explain what Eastern Star is, and why you find it so attractive?

Susanna:
Well, lets see. Its something you have to grow up in. I became a rainbow girl when I was 11. We got to wear ball gowns and memorize beautiful speaches about girlhood. It is a service organization set up by the masons for the girls of masonic families. The eastern star is the adult counter part of Rainbow. They are also a service organization where you get to wear sequins and be intoduced to other Eastern Stars. Buisness meetings are structuered around speaches about the different phases of womanhood represented by bible heroins. The speaches are called the ritualistic work and I always took to it. I am the product of an Episcopallian father and a southern baptist mother. My father left the episcopalion church and I was denied all the ritual pomp that inner self loves. I first realised how fabulous religious ritual was when I went to a catholic wedding when I was a child. I enjoy the phraternal fellowship of other women, and I feel that I am covered by a protective umbrella of the masonic family. I stood at an alter and took an obligation, and so did they. I feel like if I was in great need a mason or someone in the masonic family would be bound by the same obligation to protect me and I find that in some way to be comforting.

On the war to an Eastern Star meeting
here

Marly:
What is the difference between women who wear outlandish hats and women who will not wear hats at all? Did you, in fact, wear a red velvet hat with burning candles? If not, what is the most radical hat you have worn?

Susanna:
Well, I think the real distinction is those that wear hats to be obnocious (like the red hat society) and those that wear hats for purpose. All my hats have purpose. Thats why I actually wear them out and about.

I have worn costumy hats at the musem I worked at, but the hats I have for real that I wear were easter hats with white feathery plooms, winter hats for warmth, cowboy hats for wearing on the tractor (because we do have a large family farm of my mothers people where we grow hay about 10 miles from our house on the edge of Huntsville). Often I wear whats called a mop cap under my working hats. This is something I learned at the museum to protect the delicate skin on your brow/forhead, so its almost always goes aong with straw hats.

I fear I am going on and on, but I seldom get the chance to actually talk about this shit and the fact that it is thought out, which makes it all the funnier I guess.

I have a two baseball caps that wear to make me feel tough, one that stole from my brother that is black and has the emblum of the sun on the forhead. Its a dominican cigar hat, but it makes me feel like Lara on Dark Shadows who is a powerful phoenix and she destroys anyone who gets in her way. The opther is a pink Dixie Girl hat with a strong bill. My most outlandish hat is a 200 dollar hat that was hand died, hand made by a Huntsville milliner. I like it because the brim is so wide and protective that I can controll who gets to see my face and who doesnt.

I feel like the stupidist person in my department and its a constant struggle of telling myself that I desrveto be there, that I desrve to have the means to support my family just like anybody else there does...by the end of the school year I always have to suck it up and go in for some sort of meeting and have just scrapped by. By August it is miserably hot and sunny in Alabama and I have very white skin. I burn easily and have no desire to tan. I grew up hearing about how my Gran always took care to cover up the face even in short exposure to keep it nice and she looked fabulous till the day she died, so I wear these hats. I have worn the wide brimmed hats to meeting that I thought would be important or embarrasing and I do not remove it because when a hat is part of an outfit a woman is not expected to remove it. SO in the meetingswith a careful tilt of the head they dont get to see anything but my lips and when I am ready they can see my eyes. I think its sad that todays woman has lost the power and pleasure of the lead curl and the wide brimmed hat.

Marly:
Aside from your own interesting presence, is there any reason to visit the crossroads, hamlet, town, or small city (which?) of Lacey's Spring, Alabama?

Susanna:
Well, I dont know. Lacey is about 5 min outside Huntsville where NASA and Redstone aresenal is so there interesting loners that live in Lacey. We are on the Tennessee river and there are alwyas things to see on the river bank. We always liked this one place that we would read poetry at called the bluff, but it was the bottom of a bluff intsead of the top. Its a hard to reach place but beautiful and magical. We have a great Christmas tree farm in Lacey and there are really weird homesteads and family compounds. There might be a million dollar mansion next to family shanty compound and trailers. We have a complex network of river beads and mountain streams that you can go hunting for arrowheads. Laceys Spring is a nice place to live because its cheap and makes a great home base. There are a wide varitey of people that live here. It is close to several different citys that offer different things and there are always great yard sales and good eating.

on the waterfront: out and about in Lacey's Spring
here

Marly:
You appear to be an extremely lively and passionate young woman, possibly a bit tempestuous. How do you think that your husband would describe you and your interests to a stranger--in order to keep a bit of reticence, let's say to an amusing elderly lady of 77, a grand high potentate (surely there is such a thing!) of Eastern Star?

Susanna:
He would say that was the singest little thing you ever saw and I had an amazing memory for movies and literature. He would say I liked him. I think he would say something about my ability to befrind people and accept people for who they were and not expect anything. He would tell them about my blog and "my readers." He told someone in Detroit how this famous author reads my journal to see my spelling errors and he would say I was special and that he never met anyone like me. He had to drink and drug himself into the ground before becomming powerless and nonjudgemental. He finds my acceptance of others amazing. He was the first man to be in the womens studies program at University of Alabama in Huntsvile.

When asked about our age difference, I would say that I was an old soul and he was a young soul. We found each other across time and space :o)

me and Mike: looks a little bit like an album cover from the 1970s
here

Happy New Year!

my new years eve pic. I call it blowing out the candles
here

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