As usual, serendipity played a starring role here.  The back story: You may have noticed an uptick in poetry praise and consumption of late, given that April is National Poetry Month. For the more hard core, however, April is National Poetry Writing Month (fondly known as NaPoWriMo).  Those who choose to join in on the NaPoWriMo fun take on writing a poem a day for the entire month. 

I myself have not participated in NaPoWriMo, but I was among the enthusiastic bystanders cheering on some prolific poet friends who suited up for the marathon and delighted the rest of us with one fine poem after the next all month long.  Among them was Jim Howard, a friend I met back when we both worked in the Collaboratory writing studio at Hallmark.  (Jim is a multi-talented guy with screenplays and all sorts of creative notches in his belt, not to mention a cool blog called Spulge Nine.) 

But I digress. 

Jim’s first poem out of the NaPoWriMo chute was a surreal, swoopy piece called “Eccentric Heaven.” As soon as I read it, I knew I wanted to share it with my Zesty Artista  readers and friends, who are nothing if not appreciative of oddball impulses and idiosyncratic imaginations. My impulse to play with it myself came soon thereafter.  Here it is:  

ECCENTRIC HEAVEN 

Zappa said to Lennon,
“We got the noses, boy.
You wear four sets of glasses
And I smell like Illinois.” 

Lennon said to Trotsky,
“You fooled me way back when.
But Frida and Diego say
You’re not who you were then.” 

Trotsky said to Brodkey,
“All our souls are runaways.”
And Brodkey said to no one,
“I will miss me all my days.” 

And they gathered in the twilight
As the strangest voices called
Like livestock playing violins
Across a sky Chagalled 

And Dali’d, Dubuffeted,
Caravaggioed with crimson,
While fugues spun forward, Bachward,
Then Beethovened into hymns, and 

A spectral figure (whispers went,
“Nijinsky!” and “GodDAMN!”)
Leapt years of space and landed
In the lap of Martha Graham, 

While Kubrick in Wright-angled rooms
Met Monk, and Monk, Thoreau—
And Dickinson—who couldn’t stop—
And Yeats, Li Po, and Poe— 

And gathering meant scattering,
And heaven meant a home
For every oddball impulse,
Any stray, queer chromosome, 

All geekdom in its hermitage,
Each wild and wayward goof…
Death almost imitating life
And art, life’s living proof. 

–Jim Howard  

  

 As I went hunting for images in both my collection and on the internet, this photograph of Frida Kahlo holding a figurine was the immediate frontrunner as my central image.   Then I remembered a famous photograph of Martha Graham that seemed  right for perching on the palm of Frida’s outstretched hand. 

I needed a Caravaggio angel in the worst way for Frida’s shoulder, and this fellow fit the bill: 

Amor Victorious by Caravaggio

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I then went after images of some of the individuals mentioned in Jim’s poem, favoring those pictures that had some inherent oddball quality beyond the artists themselves.  Thus these three made the cut:

Salvador Dali

Frank Zappa

John Lennon

 

Thanks to Jim’s effervescent imagination, the trio decided on their own—without any intervention from me, I swear—to create a strange totem-pole like homage to eccentric genius:

 

Other things happened too, the most notable being that Emily Dickinson’s head wound up on an Henri Matisse cutout body. 

“But wait!” comes the refrain from alert readers.  “Matisse isn’t in the poem!” 

Well, my friends, that’s where we play the poetic license card.  All is fair in love, war and poem-inspired art. So if you feel like switching out Chagall for Matisse, well, that’s your prerogative. 

Here’s to wild and wayward souls everywhere—especially the unrecognized ones—and the delightful sparks that fly when we open ourselves up to the creations of others.   

Live lusciously, fellow oddballs. 

But I lost my head this time, and I’m woman enough to admit it. I was up in my studio with a glass of sauvignon blanc, poking around the old muffin tins, bowls and jars overflowing with stuff. Wasn’t looking for trouble, but trouble found me. Amidst the buttons, bottlecaps, partnerless earrings, faded dominos, doll parts, china shards—the smallish bits and oddities that accumulate thanks to any mixed-media artist’s magpie tendencies—my eye came to rest on some vintage board of education cafeteria tokens I’d forgotten I had.  Was it the wine talking, or were they really as seductively quirky as I told myself they were? I guess it doesn’t matter now, I’m just telling you what happened.

One thing led to another, and a few hours later, those cafeteria tokens had taken me down the path of no return. A small decorative dressmaker’s dummy became the body of my evening’s muse, and I found myself fashioning her a frock out of some pages of an early 1900s issue of “Woman’s Home Journal.” The page that really fanned the flames of my artistic lust was titled “Recipes From Our Readers conducted by Winifred Trafford.” Seriously, now, can you blame me? I daresay you would have reacted the same way.  The recipes painstakingly “conducted” by Winifred for her readers became this fetching creature’s dress, with the article’s title enhancing her backside.

Then things got really crazy. I’m not going to get into too much detail here, but let’s just say there was a glue gun involved and feathers flying. Two spoons got in on the act at one point—and the unusually long handles on those babies were obviously made for stirring up long, tall drinks of water (or iced tea), let me tell you. Now they were going to be arms, I decided, and so I set about attaching them to the half-dressed body in front of me. 

Wouldn’t you know, I was in the middle of this pretty intense spooning scene when I heard footsteps on the stairs. Damn! Caught red-handed. Boyfriend blinked sleepily at me.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Uh, no…”

“It’s 4 a.m. What are you doing?”

“Making this thing… I got a little carried away, and now I can’t stop until it plays itself out.”

Boyfriend took it all in, his gaze shifting from the shredded paper to the tangled glue gun cord to my flushed countenance. He nodded and scratched his nose.

“Righteeo then,” he said. “Have fun. See you in the morning.” And he shuffled back down the stairs, trusting, I’m sure, that our relationship was strong enough to withstand this all-nighter episode of mine.  I jumped back into the fray, by this time a woman possessed, and just before dawn, the object of my affections and ministrations stood complete before me: Lunch Lady Winifred.

Those cafeteria tokens that sparked this whole thing? They became Lunch Lady Winifred’s token breasts, which were set off by a couple of provocative rosebud buttons. Once she started flouncing around in her vintage lace sash and excessive hat, I realized this was no run-of-the-mill gal.  

I rarely speak of that night, but don’t think I’ve forgotten her. While she was gone within a week or two, every once in a while I run into the delightful woman here in Columbia, Missouri, who purchased her. She generously tells me what Winifred’s up to these days—apparently she’s jumped onto the secular goddess bandwagon, holds court in their kitchen, and has attracted even more danglies on her spoon arms than she left me with.

Sounds like a good life, and I’m happy for her.

Live lusciously, all you crazy lovers out there. And if that means spooning all night, then so be it. You won’t regret it.

“Food is what she wrote about, although to leave it at that is reductionist in the extreme. What she really wrote about was the passion, the importance of living boldly instead of cautiously; oh, what scorn she had for timid eaters, timid lovers, people who took timid stands, or none at all, on matters of principle.”

Cyra McFadden, San Francisco Examiner, on M.F.K. Fisher

Last Sunday afternoon, my man and I were lounging on the bed decadently devoting ourselves to watching a movie, when suddenly we both realized we were a bit peckish. I wandered out to the kitchen to forage and took great pleasure in creating a lovely little something for us: two steaming bowls of orzo mixed with bits of sauteed tomatoes, asparagus, prosciutto, fresh basil and garlic, topped with grated parmigiano, lemon juice, sea salt flakes and pepper. Simple, yes—but in that moment, no elaborate dish could have satisfied us more. We share a love of food, and that was most definitely the food of love.

Which reminds me: This Saturday marks both the first day of spring and my local farmer’s market—so love is in the air, and more fresh asparagus dressed up in flirty, buttery finery is in the offing.  It is, therefore, the perfect time of year to offer a small and humble tribute to the zesty genius of the late M.F.K. Fisher.

Mary Frances Katherine Fisher was a strange and brilliant food writer with a talent for living large (lots of lovers, husbands, dinner parties and travel, not to mention creative output that included two daughters and 26 books). A wicked good wordsmith, Fisher created prose so vivid and tantalizing, you want to lick the page.

Two of her volumes, as you can see, live in a place of honor in my kitchen. (That’s How to Cook a Wolf on the end there. I highly recommend it.) Another one, the delightful photographic biography, A Welcoming Life: The M.F.K. Fisher Scrapbook, lives in my bedroom bookcase. The kitchen and the boudoir are, it seems to me, perfect homes for books by and about a woman who, to quote the well-worn jacket of A Welcoming Life, ”wrote beautifully and wisely about the complex hungers and satisfactions of life.”

The complex hungers and satisfactions of life…you could spend a lifetime making art using that one phrase as your springboard. Last fall, when the organizers of Slow Food Katy Trail asked me to again participate in their annual art auction and fund raiser, I was happy to oblige. I pulled out two tin recipe boxes I’d had in my collection for some time and played around with them. Nothing was quite coming together for me, however, until I found two images of topless, ripe maidens wielding equally ripe and juicy-looking fruit. Perfect!

But words, I needed some tasty words…. And so I turned first, of course, to M.F.K. Fisher and chose this quote of hers to write in the lid of the first box: “When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.”

Thus the resulting mixed media piece, “Hunger for Love,” came together and was sold for a good cause.

I like to think our Mary Frances would have approved of the sister piece I created, “The Fruits of Your Passion.” This box featured a George Santayana quote: “To be happy, you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.”

I don’t know who bought these pieces but trust they are in good homes with people who, just as M.F.K. before them, happily take their place at the table of life and feast with great gusto.

Incidentally, if you’d like to get better acquainted with M.F.K. Fisher, there are wonderful stories to be found on the “Her Friends Remember” section of the all-things-M.F.K. web site. 

And as my parting gift to you, I offer a delicious slice of M.F.K. prose, served with a dollop of love and the invitation to treat yourself to something very, very good today:

 

Almost every person has something secret he likes to eat.

…It was then that I discovered little dried sections of tangerine. My pleasure in them is subtle and voluptuous and quite inexplicable. I can only write how they are prepared.

In the morning, in the soft sultry chamber, sit in the window peeling tangerines, three or four. Peel them gently; do not bruise them, as you watch soldiers pour past and past the corner and over the canal towards the watched Rhine. Separate each plump little pregnant crescent. If you find the Kiss, the secret section, save it for Al.

Listen to the chambermaid thumping up the pillows, and murmur encouragement to her thick Alsatian tales of l’interieure. That’s Paris, the interior, Paris or anywhere west of Strasbourg or maybe the Vosges. While she mutters of seduction and French bicyclists who ride more than wheels, tear delicately from the soft pile of sections each velvet string. You know those white pulpy strings that hold tangerines into their skins? Tear them off. Be careful.

Take yesterday’s paper (when we were in Strasbourg L’Ami du Peuple was best, because when it got hot the ink stayed on it) and spread it on top of the radiator. The maid has gone, of course—it might be hard to ignore her bellligerent Alsatian glare of astonishment.

After you have put the pieces of tangerine on the paper on the hot radiator, it is best to forget about them. Al comes home, you go to a long noon dinner in the brown dining-room, afterwards maybe you have a little nip of guetsch from the bottle on the armoire. Finally he goes. You are sorry, but—

On the radiator the sections of tangerines have grown even plumper, hot and full. You carry them to the window, pull it open, and leave them for a few minutes on the packed snow of the sill. They are ready.

All afternoon you can sit, then, looking down on the corner. Afternoon papers are delivered to the kiosk. Children come home from school just as three lovely whores mince smartly into the pension’s chic tearoom. A basketful of Dutch tulips stations itself by the tram-stop, ready to tempt tired clerks at six o’clock. Finally the soldiers stump back from the Rhine. It is dark.

The sections of the tangerine are gone, and I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell.

There must be someone, though, who understands what I mean. Probably everyone does, because of his own secret eatings.

–M.F.K. Fisher in Serve It Forth

Hope you enjoyed that.  Live lusciously, friends.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m a little prone to wanting to hang onto things as they are.

That might come as a surprise to some who know me.  “You?” I can imagine them saying, hands on hips like a row of skeptical Rockettes, their left eyebrows all cocked in unison.  I have, after all, developed something of a reputation for changing course in life the way some people change their knickers – one jaunty kick and it’s into the basket, on with the new, and away I go.

And yet…

There are moments I wish I could re-experience.  Places I’ll likely never see again.  People I love who have drifted out of my life or are no longer with us.  Life’s like that.  But I resist it.  It shouldn’t be that way, I think.  It just shouldn’t.

But it is.

I am happiest when I just let all that in. And have it be the way it’s meant to be. When I dive fully into the moment and swim in it and gulp the air and rub up against life like a happy pup rolling in the grass for no reason.  I can remember the instant I got that years ago, when my younger daughter, Simone, was just a wee tyke and we were having a perfectly ordinary morning – or so I thought – and something extraordinary happened for me, thanks to her:

Scribble Singing

—for Simone

We’re minutes from the preschool, my head abuzz

with all the wrong words, my brain straining

for a better way to say what it is that needs to be said

in this poem trying to push its way out of me,

and I jump, startled, when Simone, face pressed

to her window, gazing at the sour man in the car

idling next to ours, takes a sharp breath and breaks out

in song, her voice clear and fearless, a four-year-old

lark serenading stalled traffic with her other-world dialect,

the lyrics all sounds never sung before.

The words using her as their instrument are so fragile,

so dragonfly-wing transparent, seconds later I’m

unable to hear in my mind just what the secret syllables were.

What was that little song, sweetie? I wait for the pre-K,

crayoned title: Kittens, or My Best Friend, Ashley.

Scribble singing, she answers, with a small bird-chest sigh,

as if she were telling me something I’d been told

many times.  Scribble singing, of course, how is it I didn’t

know that? An unspoiled soul’s magic scat, private sky-writing,

beyond-language smoke rings let fly in soprano puffs,

their soul aspiration the brief pleasure of feeling the lips

shape strange, loopy sweetness, tickling the unprepared ear

with their bright, radiating noise, the tired heart

treated to a comforting pat, a good-natured nudge, a childlike

kiss.  And then the libretto’s erased forever, of course,

its brilliant, ringing vapor dissipated as it must be,

its transitory thrill distilled to an ebbing echo

in the car.  So quiet.  My daughter, having long since moved

on to other wonders, looks heavenward, puzzled, then

to me with the question:  Why are the clouds closing?

Because it’s going to rain, I say, disappointed, back-ended

by grief there on the highway, the foggy smudges

of my own scribble songs too faint now to make out,

though I’m fairly certain I can almost recall what it’s like

to know that goombah-mah-cha-cha is chewy and tart,

whereas a booley-looley, as any fool knows, will coat

your tongue like thick honey.  I wish

I were like her, I wish I could love the impermanence,

the ghostiness, the slip-slidiness of words, of things,

of people, and I hope for her sake

she holds off that untamable love’s flight

as long as her wise, brave self is able, that it will be

lifetimes before she loses her scribble-singing voice,

before she’s indifferent, unmindful, forgets the poetry—

God-years before she’s unable to find the words

she turns and recites to me now: I want to go

to a parade today, please, or a fair.

I’m growing! Look how big my feet are this morning!

If you grew, mama, you’d be a giant, bump your head

on the ceiling.  You’d be taller than trees, too big for the sky.

—by Deborah Beroset

May your scribble-singing voice be ever at the ready, and may you sing many joyful songs with it, however out of tune.  And come happy hour, have a booley-looley on me.

Live lusciously.

Have you seen Coco Before Chanel yet? I finally got my chance this week, happy as a clam at high tide in the south of France at the prospect of going to a movie with one of my daughters, and even more delighted to be doing so in a theatre that serves vinho verde.

I loved Audrey Tautou in Amelie, figured I’d like her in this, and I was right. The film is, as you would expect, a sweet confection for the eyes, and our little Audrey has gone from winsome sprite to tres formidable. And oh, that Coco. Don’t know how much you know about the woman and her life, but I’m here to tell you, she was most definitely a Zesty Artista.

And so, my lovelies, I have gathered here for your amusement and inspiration some Coco-inspired takeaways for Zesty Artistas everywhere. (And before any Chanel scholars in the crowd get their lingerie in a bunch, let me disclaim: These are drawn from the movie, which is of course a Hollywood studio version of what happened, but so what. We’re just having fun here, so lighten up.)

1. Allow yourself to be restless and dissatisfied. When you’re clear you’re boring yourself to death, that’s a powerful motivator to shake things up and reinvent.

2. Make bold requests. It takes some moxie to ask for what you want, doesn’t it? But being comfortable is overrated. Put it out there. Sometimes people say yes. (And what’s more, you’d be surprised how inspiring it can be for others when we ask big things of them and they come through.

3. Be willing to do things badly. Did Coco let it stop her when she didn’t know which end of a horse was which? Mais non. She simply climbed up there and took off, bouncing and flailing for all the world to see. Over time she developed mastery – because she was willing to look like a beginner.

4. Show your true colors. When all the women around her were going for brightly-colored finery and frippery, Coco went out on the town in an elegant little all-black number. She pleased herself with her designs and didn’t pretend to like something she didn’t.

5. Work with what you’ve got. It’s too easy to wait to begin something important until all the circumstances are just so. Instead, pull a Coco: When life gives you your boyfriend’s sweaty old polo pants, make haute couture.

6. Give yourself room to breathe. Quicker than you can say “pass moi la scissors,” our young, struggling heroine becomes Coco the Corset Ripper.  Away with all those constrictions and uncomfortable bits!  A gal needs a little freedom to move.

 7. Be opinionated. Women didn’t come to Coco Chanel for flattery.  They came to her for fabulousness.  She trusted her own eye, her own vision, and she wasn’t afraid to express it.  Right on.

8. Admit you’re afraid… then jump anyway.   How about that scene where Coco’s leaving behind her wealthy socialite lover, heading off to Paris to make her fortune?  He wants his exotic paramour to stick around, and she knows it.  Yet still she is willing to admit to him (according to the movie script, anyway), “I’m frightened.”  And then off she goes.  Pretty great that she doesn’t feel like she has to put on a brave, confident face all the time.

 9. Be willing to be heartbroken.   Your heart is like good china – if you keep it tucked away for safekeeping, you’ll wind up with pristine, chip-free dishes that never got to give you pleasure.

10. Live (and love) with gusto and abandon.  Playing it safe is not the Zesty Artista way, ladies, as you know.  So get out there with your zesty selves and tear it up.  Roll around in life, learn some new dance steps, make some messes, have some fun. 

Live lusciously as only you can.

O, the dithering.
The wondering.

The choir in my head singing yeah-buts and what-ifs in four-part harmony.  Shall I hum a few bars for you?  I’ll bet you know it:  “Don’t have enough time for this…Don’t have enough money…Don’t have it all figured out…My ideas are crummy….” And on it went.

Until the day I simply chose.

It was October 30, 2009 –  the eve of Halloween, when we’re given permission to be any outrageous dang thing we want, and then we’re rewarded with candy.  Boyfriend and I were tooling along the highway headed toward Iowa to visit my mother for the weekend.  And at some point during that drive, I chose to forge ahead with the time I have.  The money I have.  The ideas I have.  I chose not to re-think and analyze everything a thousand different ways.  You could say I chose to make some mistakes in the interest of making something happen.

On that day, Zesty Artista was born. Because I said so.  I turned to Boyfriend and announced, “I’m doing it.”

All right then,” he said. “That’s good.”  (Insert devilishly handsome smile here.)

And in that moment, life altered.

What I accomplished in the next week astonished me.  Zesty Artista became an entity recognized by the State of Missouri.  Zesty Artista got her very own tax ID.  Then came the city business license.  The bank account with its tiny-but-mighty seed money.  And lo and behold, a debit card with the Zesty Artista moniker on it.   I called an incredibly talented graphic designer friend and asked her to design my logo and web site, and then she enlisted the services of yet another amazing woman to pull all the levers and dials to get the pretty stuff safely launched into cyberspace.

There have been so many creative decisions to make, so many opportunities to revert to analysis paralysis.  But once things are set in motion, there are deadlines, and promises to keep, and you just take a small step…and then another…until suddenly you look up, and you’re in a whole different place.

Will there be decisions I make that I’ll regret?  Sure. Are some of the initial roads I go down going to turn into dead ends? Probably.  Will this involve late nights and weekends of work while ignoring the dust bunnies and unfolded laundry taking over my house?  Already happening.  But who cares?

I’m on the road, baby.  I’ve got the top down, and the wind is whippin’ my hair around and the music’s turned up way loud and I’ve got big love in my life and I’m excited.

So, my friend, I ask you this: What’s the thing that’s gnawing at you, wanting to happen?  Where are you dithering when you could be driving?  What makes your heart beat faster, makes you a little nervous, gives you that thrilling little zing?

Perhaps it’s time to get behind the wheel and just go…time to get your zesty on. You get to say.

And so I raise a virtual glass of bubbly in honor of the Zesty Artista in us all – the wild, bold creative spirit with its infinite array of expressions.  And as my toast, I offer this quotation, which is right up there amongst my all-time-favorites and never fails to stir me deep down where I live.  Thank you for sharing this moment with me.

Until Committed

…Until one is committed, there is hesitancy,

the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation),

there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which

kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

that the moment one definitely commits oneself,

then providence moves, too.

All sorts of things occur to help one

that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision,

raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents

and meetings and material assistance

which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

Whatever you can do,

or dream you can,

begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

- W. H. Murray
from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

Here’s to the genius, power and magic in us all.

Live lusciously.