Away in a Strip Mall ...

Tea: Hot Chocolate Cinnamon.

Music: Everclear, "Amphetamine"

Time: Night.

It is the end of a long day, filled with holiday preparations. Tomorrow will be the same. And then it's off to the other end of the state, to see family and friends at Christmas.

With all of that, sometimes it's hard to remember just to stop and breathe -- to be open to detours and laughter and to listen to what's being said instead of leaping ahead to what has to be done.

With this many people rushing around, doing their penultimate-minute shopping, it's easy to be ruled by what my late father called "the tyranny of the urgent." Instead of "peace on Earth, good will to men," we find ourselves singing (okay, I find myself singing) "God rest ye merry knuckleheads, now get out of my way ..." Instead of following a star, we follow the message of "Only (insert number here) shopping days left." Instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh, we have Visa, MasterCard and Discover.

But there's peace in all of the chaos, if we just take the time to find it. Or maybe it's more a matter of taking time to show it ...

Santa's Not So Little Helper

Tea: Black Fruit

Music: Veggie Tales, "Angels We Have Heard on High"

Time: Night.

My family has long been into making Christmas gifts.

Four-fifths of my family, that is. Until this year, I've been the lone exception. The last time I made a Christmas present for anyone, I wasn't even old enough for a learner's permit. But for the first time in decades, there's going to be a bit of me under a few Christmas trees.

And you know what? I'm loving it.

Part of it is that I know I'm giving something nobody else can. But mostly, I've discovered that doing things this way -- and participating in the selection process for the family's other homemade presents -- has helped me be more aware that giving any gift should be about more than "I have an obligation and a credit card. Time to hit the mall."

I'm not advocating the overthrow of the retail system. But as harried as Christmas seasons always are -- with programs, traffic and the like -- this one feels merrier than it has in a long time.

Now, the challenge is to carry that over to the rest of the year -- to look for ways to give of myself, not just give stuff. Here's hoping ...

Tea: Ti Kuan Yin Oolong (morning)/Fruit Medley (night)

Music: Carols, carols everywhere.

Time: Night.

Yet another tea-infused post.

The day began at 5:30, helping one child after another with end of the semester papers. (No, I didn't write them. I proofread. That's it.)

That's where the Ti Kuan Yin came in. (Kuan Yin is the Chinese goddess of mercy, hence the alternative name for the tea: "Iron Goddess of Mercy.") That's not my theology, but a cup of wakefulness -- aromatic with flowers and grass -- that early in the morning is indeed a grace and a mercy.

Friend/collaborator/undefinable kindred spirit Seánan Forbes recommended the Fruit Medley for my son, who is nursing a nasty cough. She had me steep it with cloves, add honey, put in a cinnamon stick and have him sip it through the night.

Sounded good, so I made the second steeping for myself. Medicine has never tasted so good -- not that I was coughing, mind you. But an ounce of prevention ...

So Be Good, for Goodness' Sake!

Tea: Vanilla Caramel

Music: Poe, "Hey Pretty"

Time: Night.

I'm revising my theology. If you're good, when you die you get to go to a heaven filled with used bookstores and good places to eat. (There is no Mickey D's in heaven, nor Starbucks. There is, however, a Zabar's on every corner.)

If you're bad, you go to the mall on a Saturday in December. And it's snowing. And slushy. And there's no place to park.

Oh, and one more thing:

If you're really bad ... really, really bad ...

You're the Mall's Santa.

Forever.

An Arts Scene Hiding in Plain Sight

Tea: Lapsang Vanilla

Music: Various jazz pieces for keyboard, bass and guitar.

Time: Night.

I love Fridays. I especially love Friday nights. One reason out of several: That's when the new art exhibits go up.

Around here, that's usually First Friday. But one place, the Saucy Hound Gallery on Westport Road, celebrates Second Friday. So far as the people there know, it's the only place that does.

The Saucy Hound isn't your typical art space. It's a real estate office. But for the past two years, on the second Friday night of each month, it opens a new showing of art.

This time, the featured artist is Todd Lawrence, whose drawings can be seen on his website (and also should be seen in person to get the full effect).

I love the idea of real estate offices, coffeehouses (independent, of course), even dentist's offices doubling as galleries. Art should be a part of everyday life, not partitioned off from it. And the more places that showcase original art, the better. Not that there's anything wrong with prints -- but does the world really need one more framed "Starry Night" poster on pubic display when there's a world of one-of-a-kinds out there?

Rewinding a Rant.

Tea: Mandarin Orange with Honey.

Music: Seasonal selections for high school chorale, orchestra and band.

Time: Night.

This started off as a diatribe on one of my favorite rant topics. I'm not even going to go into it.

The sun came out today. The ice melted. The day has been full of life and love and productivity, beauty in places and forms both familiar and unexpected.

So you know what? Forget ranting. It's been, as Bill Withers would say, "a lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay."

Here's to another one tomorrow.

Levi-Tea

Tea: Mandarin Green

Music: Roxy Music, "Avalon"

Time: Night.

Wow, two straight days of tea posts in a tea blog. I must be slipping.

But this tea ... wow.

Mandarin Green, which arrived yesterday as part of a tea-themed care package from friend/collaborator/undefinable kindred spirit Seánan Forbes (which package also included a really cool electric teakettle), has leaped to a high spot on the favorites list.

It's loaded (but not overloaded) with orange flavor, which really suits this time of year. I'm no synesthete, but this tea is full of candles.

And today, I've filled and refilled myself with the glow. It's made for some giddy moments (picture a caffeinated cartoon bunny on a pogo stick) ... but after seven cups by my (lost) count, I'm hitting crash point.

Tomorrow's another day, though. And there's still more Mandarin Orange.

(Boing, boing, boing ...)

The Art of Tea Trading

Tea: Chocolate Cherry

Music: Lara Supan, "Be Here to Love Me"

Time: Afternoon.

It's icy but not iced over, if that makes sense, so I got out for a photowalk late this morning. When I got in, I brewed a cup of the chocolate cherry tea -- a hand blend from friend/collaborator/undefinable kindred spirit Seánan Forbes -- and began editing images.

My youngest, who loves hot tea (and has high regard for Seánan, who spirited her away to New York for a sleepover at the American Museum of Natural History), came in to watch. She saw the tea.

"I'll say nice things about your art if you give me that tea," she said. (It's a small packet, perhaps three brewings' worth.)

"I've already started it," I said.

"So give me the rest of it."

"I'll give you one cup."

"Give me half and I'll say something nice about one of your pictures."

"Fine," I said.

"I like that one," she said, pointing at the screen. Then she walked out.

So, yeah, I gave up tea for approval. I know what that says about me. I'm okay with that.

I just wish I could remember which piece she said she liked ...

Tea: Yunnan Gold

Music: Bing Crosby, "White Christmas"

Time: Night.

There's snow on the ground, but only a dusting -- and that's on its way to being covered by a sheet of ice.

I have thought deeply today. Steeply, I'm not sure I can manage.

Now I'm thinking sleepily.

And since tomorrow's a weather day for the kids, I might not get out of my pajamas until three in the afternoon. There will be popcorn and cheesy monster movies. I'll probably eat cereal out of the box.

That is, of course, if the power stays on.

So ... 'night, everyone. Stay warm.

And I call dibs on the futon, for watching "The Giant Gila Monster."

I Spy with My Unblocked Eye ...

(Image Copyright 2007 Steve Brisendine)

Tea: Lapsang Souchong

Music: Waterboys, "The Whole of the Moon"

Time: Night.

Okay, let's see if this works.

I mentioned photography and a certain purple leaf a couple of days ago, but I didn't give the backstory on how I came to be out on photo walks in the first place.

Friend/co-writer/undefinable kindred spirit Seánan Forbes gave me a digital camera some time back. I confess, it was a long time before I unlimbered it in earnest. A snap here, a snap there. Nothing serious.

Part of it was that I used to have a fairly decent photographer's eye, back when I had to do a lot of shooting for work. (My hometown newspaper had one fulltime shutterbug, at best.) But I'd lost it over the years, for whatever reasons, and couldn't seem to get it back.

I took photos, but the composition was off. Or the image was just enough out of focus to be annoying but not enough to be "artistic." Everything that couldn't work ... didn't.

Still, I took the camera to New York when I visited last month. And something, pardon the expression, clicked.

And, knock on a whole forest, it's still clicking -- but the eye is seeing things it's never seen before.

Found patterns, curves, lines -- they're everywhere. And so while most sane people walk along the street looking at whole things, I'm the one looking for just the right angle and framing for a smear of easement paint or a rusty manhole cover (one on the other, if I'm really lucky).

I haven't lost sight of entireties entirely, but -- well, the Picture at the Top of This Post (sorry, it just makes me think of "The Monster At the End of This Book") is the sort of thing that's been finding its way onto my hard drive of late.

So I guess this is my first public showing, as it were. Hope you like it. And please don't run over me when I'm standing in the middle of the street (because sometimes, that's where the most interesting tar squiggles are).

Stet One, Dele Two ...

Tea: Pu Erh Poe

Music: King Crimson, "Sleepless" (Tony Levin Mix)

Time: Night.

The theme of the past several days has been "do-overs" -- rewrites and revisions and retoolings, oh my!

Tearing something up -- or down -- and starting over from half-scratch is never a pleasant undertaking. Sometimes, though, it has to be done -- and it's better to hear, "There's good material here that needs reworking," than, "This is crap. Go away."

Nothing is ever truly unwritten or rewritten, once someone else has read it. Human memories don't erase as easily as computer memories. If they did, I'd carry around a reallllllllllllllllllly big magnet all the time. ("Dude, you still owe me 20 bucks. No, you never paid me back. What magnet?")

But if all falls right ("the Lord willin' and the creek don't rise," which is Midwestern for "inshallah"), what emerges will maximize the strengths and shore up the weaknesses of what went before.

Time for more tea, typing and Tony.

The Art of ...

Tea: Cherry Vanilla

Music: "Blackbird," performed by a duo of vocal (female) and guitar

Time: Night.

It's been a long, art-themed day for me, workwise. Deadline in the afternoon, a piece for a local arts magazine, and First Friday tonight in the Crossroads.

I can't complain. I met some interesting people tonight, got several story ideas, saw some pieces that stopped me in my tracks -- and it beats writing about people killing each other or having their houses blown away by tornadoes. It positively thrashes sitting at a desk, rewriting other people's stories about death and disaster.

But a long day doing something you love is still a long day, and long days bring stresses, and stresses bring cracks.

So I'm going to keep this short tonight, and wish you a weekend in which at least one piece of someone else's creativity buckles your knees (in a good way, of course).

Good Night, Alexander Supertramp

Tea: Assam Melody

Music: Eddie Vedder, selections from the "Into the Wild" soundtrack

Time: Night.

Started out to see a play tonight. It was weathered out, so plans shifted. We went to see "Into the Wild." (Warning: Spoilers follow.)

I knew nothing about the film beyond that it's based on Jon Krakauer's book of the same title, which is about a young idealist's trip to Alaska -- shedding his life savings beforehand and his wordly possessions along the way -- and his death there.

Loved the book when I read it a couple of years ago -- which, of course, meant a bit of trepidation at seeing the film, wondering if it could measure up. It does. There's not a false note among the performances, and the cinematography is gorgeous.

But what Sean Penn (who directed and wrote the screenplay) did best was let the story speak for itself without augmentation.

There is music, yes (and Eddie Vedder's voice sounds great, playing against a mandolin), but it's for punctuation and not to prod the audience into this or that emotion.

There is violence, in spots, but it's not done in freeze-frame detail. Ditto the nudity, which comes off as anything but prurient.

And there is sudden, sickening horror, when the protagonist realizes that he has fatally poisoned himself by eating the wrong tubers (despite his best precautions; he didn't mindlessly begin eating flora right and left, but the poisonous plant very closely resembled an edible one). But even after that realization, there are moments of grace in his fading life.

Penn doesn't tell people "Wow, this is sad. Feel sad," or, "Wow, this is inspiring. You should want to be just like this guy." And so, because we're not being hammered over the head with how we should feel, we're allowed to feel the whole range: the soaring, the heartbreaking and the downright funny.

The film doesn't suggest that people chuck off their day-to-day lives -- and the people in those lives --and hit the road. As much living as Christopher McCandless did, in not a lot of time, he figured out too late that life's in the relationships, not just in the experiences. His unexplained absence devastated his parents, who begin the film as unsympathetic characters but soften as they are worn down by waiting for words that never came. I can't even imagine what the news of his death did to them and to his sister.

I suppose if there is a message, it's both simple and complex.

We live most fully when there is still something to pursue. But while you're out chasing those dreams, remember those who wait for you to come back from the hunt.

Not Turning Over an Old Leaf

Tea: Cherry Vanilla.

Music: Eric Johnson, "Cliffs of Dover"

Time: Night.

Took the digital camera out for a photo walk today. There's a construction project going on about a mile from the house -- lots of cool lines to be photographed, with all those concrete culverts waiting to go below ground.

Plus, there's a ton of new easement paint on the streets and it's fall, so lots of good dead leaves are just lying around waiting to be photographed -- like the one I saw on the sidewalk alongside Nall, about halfway through the walk.

It was face down when I first saw it -- almost gray, with dark pink veins. Then the wind flipped it over, and it was purple. There weren't any others around like it.

The wind flipped it back to gray-and-pink. I took a few pictures of that side, then waited to see the purple side again. My rules, you see, don't allow me to arrange anything. I had to wait for it to turn over again -- and it wouldn't, for five minutes.

I sat and watched. I wandered to the end of the block to get a few snaps of a likely-looking surveying stake. Still no luck. (Did I mention it was cold today?)

Finally, the wind caught the leaf just right, and onto its back it went. And there, once again, was that glorious purple.

I took nearly a dozen shots in all, from both sides. Tonight, I popped the memory card into the computer, feeling like a kid about to tear into a Christmas parcel.

And you know what? Only one of those blessed shots came out -- the smallest of the purple-side pieces. All the rest had focus issues. Two had entire focus subscriptions.

I'll never get another chance to photograph that leaf. By now, it's blown away or trampled or ... or ... or.

I could be upset about that. Or I could be glad for the ten minutes or so I had with that leaf, its lines and patterns and colors.

It was a brief love, but it won't be forgotten.

Loose Words

Tea: Lapsang Souchong

Music: Nik Kershaw, "Wouldn't It Be Good"

Time: Night.

Occasionally, I find myself bereft of original thought. Good thing there's this little thing called "other people's poetry."

So, tonight, I give you Allen Heinrich, the Poet of Loose Park.

Company Man

Much as I make
of being moved
by the way light
will bend around
a certain curve
you possess;
of being animated
to the point of
aerodynamics
by a specific
shifting muscle
stress or shiver
of skin, I’m no
anatomist within,
as every minute
of your absence
has plainly shown—

It’s your company
I miss
most whenever
I breathe alone:
in essence:
an intimacy
too large, too warm,
too bright to rest
in merest flesh
and bone …

-Allen Heinrich

Want to see more? Allen writes on the sidewalks at Loose Park, usually on the east side near the ponds, and on the blackboard at Muddy's Coffeehouse.

And if you ever get a chance to hear him recite ... take it.

Here's to Hooks.

Tea: Assam with Ginger.

Music: Ace Frehley, "New York Groove"

Time: Night.

I had this song -- heck, the whole LP (remember those?) -- back in high school. (And yeah, I had the Ace poster with the smoking guitar on my headboard. Drove my parents crazy.)

Been years since I heard it, though. Until tonight, when I looked it up on (surprise!) YouTube. And there it was, in all its Russ Ballard-penned cheesy glory.

Timeless classic? Maybe not. Got to admit, though, that opening hook's a killer. And if you can hook 'em up front, you can make 'em sing along with just about anything.