Slice of Heaven

The warmer weather here in SoFLA and the full moon have certainly combined to bring out the people. Just a week ago, the silence was fairly staggering, but tonight we’ve had a full house most of the night, and not much sign of a slow-down yet. I’m sitting outside the pie shop, just watching the balls arc up into the air, and listening to the washer spit out bucket after bucket after bucket. Life is good.

For some reason, while I was practicing my swing earlier, I kept hearing Frank Zappa’s song, Go Cry on Somebody Else’s Shoulder. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s just a Zappa carryover from a conversation with a friend who shared the news that he wished he’d been named Moon Unit. Knowing his father, though, I’m a little surprised that he wasn’t named Moon Unit.

After that song faded away, it was replaced by Bonnie Raitt’s You gotta know how, which is always a good soundtrack for homemade video greeting cards. At least I think so. I’ll have to add both of those to the pie shop juke box. We haven’t had any new tunes for a while, and we are over due.

Funny, but with such a crowd out tonight, I found that I talked less, concentrated more, and let quite a few thoughts roll around my head. Sue Ten has been away for a while, but called in on video to let me know she’s alive and well. She always asks what great Zen thoughts I’m having, and I often think I should be writing them down on my hand so I don’t forget when she asks. Yes, I do have great thoughts, but then I get hungry, and a large chocolate shake usually chases them away.

Tonight, though, I made a serious effort to try to hold on to a few, and I was doing pretty well until your second-cousin Darnell came by and distracted me completely with the news that he had just finished reading A Beautiful Mind, the biography of mathematician John Nash.

“It was much more interesting then the movie,” he said. “In the movie, I got the idea that John Nash was a pretty smart guy, and he saw things that weren’t there, but who doesn’t do that?” I waited for more. “In the book though, I really couldn’t understand what he was doing most of the time, so I figure he has to be a whole lot smarter than anyone I know, even you.” Again I waited.

Darnell went on. “Another thing that I didn’t get from the movie was how sad it was for him not to be crazy any more, how sad it must have been for him to give up all the magical stuff that was going on when he was nuts. I don’t know. I just think it must have been sad, just like the way Boyd acts when he’s sober.”

Darnell, of course, was referring to my ex-husband Pretty Boy Boyd, and I’ll say Darnell made a good point there. I, personally, got so I couldn’t stand Pretty Boy’s alcoholic flights of fancy, but he certainly was never alone when he was drunk. He always had his selfs (himselfs?) to talk to, and he was certainly a legend in his own mind.

With John Nash, and Pretty Boyd, too, the difference between perceived reality and “normal” reality seems fairly clear to observers, but who are we kidding? Most of us are on the inside looking out, deciding how we want to present ourselves to the world, but a few of us have that decision already made for us in advance.

Me, I live in a world of pie and insomnia where clowns drop by to play golf, your second-cousin Darnell lives with a goat, and my best friend keeps her semi-comatose husband alive by hooking him up to potato-powered batteries. I’m certainly not in any position to argue about reality with anyone.

Sometimes, too, I think maybe there’s an alternative universe in which The Morning Guy has come to his senses and is not vacationing in Key West with his Stepford Girlfriend. Yes, I’m sure there’s a place where he and I are living happily ever after. But if that’s true, there’s probably also an alternate universe in which he’s carried off by a pack of Fem-Bots, and I never see him again.

That makes me sad, too, and what can I do but . . . go cry on somebody else’s shoulder?

Mixtape from http://favtape.com/search/zappa shoulder

Tags: Books, Fantasies, Jukebox Suggestions, Sue Ten, The Morning Guy by Bjean
No Comments »

Once again, it’s too bad that I already bought bookshelves for the pie shop. Still, I’m drawn to these since they look so much like the way I store my own book in the turquoise conch cottage down the lane. Maybe it’s a reaction to all those years that I spent in libraries doing one thing or another, but now I tend to stack books in odd ways, in seemingly random groups. Of course, I do know what’s where, and maybe that comes from working at one time in such a small library that we really didn’t need a card catalog. We could just say, “You’re looking for the blue one, over there.”

I think most small-small-town librarians would spend their time better taking memory classes rather than cataloging classes. I’ve also voiced my feeling that fledgling librarians need better mind-reading skills, rather than training in the hideous “reference interview.”  Or maybe that’s all past us now, with so many people searching for the information they want via Google and other online tools. I hope that trend has helped to free up librarians to answer their own questions.  I know I always had plenty of those, and I still do. Truth be told, I don’t really care what other people want to know. I’d rather have them answer MY questions.

And maybe that’s why I do so much better behind the counter of the pie shop than I ever did behind the reference desk. Ha!

Recently, a friend tried to tell me “Once a librarian, always a librarian,” and I asserted that I am happy to be an ex-librarian. I am free, I tell you, free free free.

Bring on the pie, turn up the jukebox, and add those books to the pile. What are you reading these days, anyway?

Graffititek

by hellokarl

Graffititek is the latest piece by young French designer Charles Kalpakian.  Based on Parisian Graffiti art, the bookcase aims to offer new perspective on the craft by reinterpreting it in a three-dimensional way.

Trading as hellokarl, Kalpakian has built his career working within the areas of interior and product design from his studio in Paris.

When asked about his work, Kalpakian summerises, ‘i like to think of my work as dreams that inspire briefly but allow us to endure on’.

www.hellokarl.com

graffititek by Hello Karl 2008

graffititek by Hello Karl 2008

Tags: Books, Eternal Happiness, Gadgets by Bjean
No Comments »

Can zombies play golf? Or should they?

I just finished reading World War Z, which is am impressive “oral history” of the zombie apocalypse. I say impressive because Max Brooks has done such a meticulous job of imagining and describing what aspects of life and civilization would be affected, and how, should the entire globe ever be infected by a zombie ‘virus.’

I especially liked the concept that zombies are too dumb to open door or crawl through windows, so a human bitten by a zombie in his or her car will most likely end up spending eternity in that very car, or at least until the car or the new zombie turns to dust.

Note to vampire fans: Read some of Jemiah Jefferson’s stuff if you really want a taste of the downside of immortality.

So, I’ve got to wonder, would a golfer bitten by a zombie live forever more on the links? If a being is not smart enough to open a door, can that creature still hit a ball? Or will it just follow its bloodlust over to the Swing Barn and wait for a drunk to roll out? What about a zombie bitten in a golf cart?

My world is pretty small these days, so I tend to take any little thing — like the zombie apocalypse — and try to apply it to my own life. I can pretty easily imagine Joe Sparkle Junior unrunning the zombie horde on the E-Z cart, but I’d worry about The Clown. She does tend to shuffle and she also does try to please, perhaps too much, and so does the Stepford Girlfriend. Yes, I’m afraid they’d be among the first to go. I’ll miss The Clown, but Steppie really gets on my nerves.

I’m not really clear, either, on how long it takes for a new zombie to go from dead to re-animated. What if The Morning Guy were bitten while putting up Christmas decorations? Would he crash to the ground, wrapped in tinsel, and become the most festive zombie on earth? That’s something to consider, too.

I was never a big zombie-fiction fan before reading this book, but now I find that there’s a real void in the Pie Shop bookshelves. So remember us if you received some horrific story as a gift under your tree. We’ll be glad to take it off your hands.

Meanwhile, I keep reminding myself that the undead can’t open doors, but damn our doors are open much of the time. Twenty-four hours a day.

Tags: Books by Bjean
No Comments »

I think I will have to put my new apprentice Prentiss to work on this one, since I will just barely be done with International Pie Day before I’d need to get ready for the festival. I hope you will send us your recommendations for book-related pies. I’ll give you bonus points for ideas for golf-book related pies:

The International Edible Book Festival is held annually around April 1st. To date, the following countries have held this festival: Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, United States of America, Russia. Hong Kong has just announced its participation in 2007.

April 1st is the birthday of French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), famous for his book Physiologie du goût, a witty meditation on food. April Fools’ Day is also the perfect day to eat your words and play with them as the “books” are consumed on the day of the event. This ephemeral global banquet, in which anyone can participate, is shared by all on the internet and allows everyone to preserve and discover unique bookish nourishments. This festival is a celebration of the ingestion of culture and a way to concretely share a book; it is also a deeper reflexion on our attachment to food and our cultural differences.

The International Edible Book Festival is a creation of Judith A. Hoffberg and Béatrice Coron. Judith got the idea over a Thanksgiving turkey with book artists in 1999, and Béatrice created Books2Eat website where despite the distances everybody can enjoy worldwide’s creations. They contacted friends and colleagues; their first event happened in 2000. Since then the festival continues as an annual sensation. The current Web Site Manager for the festival is Adage (www.diffusionadage.com).

Everyone is invited, individually and collectively, to this world banquet where delicious, surprising bookish foods will be consumed.

Participation rules are as follows:

1 The event must be held on April 1st (or close to that date)

2 All edible books must be “bookish” through the integration of text, literary inspiration or, quite simply, the form.

3 Organizations or individual participants must register with the festival’s organization (go to Registration) and see to it that the event is immortalized on the international festival website (www.books2eat.com).

Tags: Events, Pie Art by Bjean
No Comments »

Besides, this figure-eight set would take up the whole pie shop, but I do love the idea as well as the concept that books, and shelving, can be infinite. As a former librarian, I can also tell you that shelving books is also infinite, but pie is a fleeting pleasure, and you should get some while you can. Remember, at the Slice of Heaven Pie Shop and Driving Range, we are open 24-hours a day.

NOTE: The following is excerpted from the Book Patrol blog, and was posted by Michael Lieberman:

Dutch conceptual artist Job Koelewijn’s new work Sanctuary includes this life-size gas station made entirely from the covers of books.

In 2005 Koelewijn produced another major book work. He created a bookshelf in the form of a lemniscate, or figure 8, symbolizing the infinite nature of knowledge and the infinite power of books.

Untitled (lemniscaat)

From the introduction to the 2006 exhibition Continuing Performances at Galerie Fons Welters.

“In the beginning was the word, the written word is unto eternity. A bookcase in the form of a lemniscate (the mathematical sign for infinity), full of books, words, shows the cycle of art. The way in which artworks endure, sometimes concealed, sometimes at eye level, close enough to touch, then forgotten for years, pushed away behind other books. The eternal performance of art. The public constantly changes in age and era. The words remain the same, and yet what is read changes from one age to the next.”

Tags: Books, Gadgets, Pie Shop Stuff by Bjean
No Comments »

The bookshelves in the pie shop are still looking a little sparse, so I’m adding a few volumes to them today, starting with anything written by Martin Cruz Smith. Everywhere in Cuba, especially when we were near the Malecon, I saw scenes out of Havana Bay with Russian Investigator Arkady Renko continuing his tortured comprehension of good and evil. Arkady would never be one to say, “It’s all good.” I always liked that about him.

I’m also going to donate my copy of Slim and None by Dan Jenkins, mostly for his character Grady Don whose flatstick had health problems, starting with diabetes-meningitis: “‘Flat stick.’ The putter. Putters can catch other things, as Grady Don saw it. Heart trouble, flu, ulcers, constipation. He claimed he once owned a mallet-head putter that actually spoke to him one day after it rimmed out a one-foot putt. I was aware that the putter is the most independent club in the bag. At times you can hardly talk to it in a civil tone. The best thing you can do with a putter that betrays you is kill the sumbitch. But you have to make sure it’s dead. Drowning may not do it. Grady Don insists that putters can swim, and some can grow into sharks and work their way into the oceans where they cruise close to beaches and wait to bite the leg off a vacationing golfer when he goes in for a dip.”

The description goes on from there, with Grady Don concluding that “nobody could manufacture a putter that wouldn’t catch syphilis eventually.”

I stand forewarned.

My golf instructor Sandy recently gave me a putter, and I bought another one at Goodwill. In either case, I need to have one or the other re-gripped, which is not a problem since my sister Melbie gave me a gift certificate at the “Putter Around” golf shop for just such a project. The question I have now is, “Why bother? It’s just going to betray me or die an untimely death anyway.”

Another book that I am adding to the Pie Shop shelves is The Things That They Carried by Tim O’Brien. What I’ve always loved about that book is the chapter listing quite precisely what they — a platoon of soldier in Vietnam — carried in their packs. O’Brien created a litany from what might have been a mundane list, and now college freshmen everywhere are challenged to figure out how he did it.

Having finally retrieved my errant luggage from BahamasAir, I find myself creating my own catalog of things, no where as poignant as O’Brien’s, but a tribute nonetheless as I mull over “the things that they took.” I can’t claim to know who “they” might be in this case, and I’ve already written about tossing my pink hat into the stream of commerce in Havana. That was choice. Inventorying the items missing from my luggage has been another exercise altogether, a last chance to remember some articles that I will never see again, and never replace.

So, what were the things that they took?

They took all the jewelry out of a ziplock bag, one I’d tossed into my so-called carry-on as an after thought. They left they bag but took the necklaces, four that I can recall: a hand carved dolphin that my former boss Chris gave me before I left Maine for my ill-fated move to Missouri, a silver square cross from Argentina, a blue glass pendant from last summer’s trip to Burano, and a bit of Roman glass that I bought on our cruise. They took my fake gold Chinese Rolex, one of three that I brought back from Zhuhai. Can you believe it still worked?

They took two sterling rings, each depicting a dragon of sorts, one Celtic, one more abstract. My dragon rings served to remind me of the protective dragons that had started to visit me in meditations during a bad time, years ago. I still have those dragons, I don’t really need the rings anymore.

I’ll miss the bracelets they took, one made of Venetian glass beads and one that was a cheap “wishing bracelet,” a twin of one I’d given Little Peach when taking a cruise in Europe was on our minds but not yet in our reality. Now it’s a memory.

They took a copy of World War Z, a birthday gift from a surprising colleague. A year ago, he gave me a gift for the the first time, a copy of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, saying “I hope you haven’t read this.” I had read it, in tandem with The Tipping Point, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it a second time, following up with two more Gibson books during the next few months. I didn’t even get to browse World War Z, but I’ll buy a new copy and read it soon. It won’t be the same.

They took the birthday card that was with the book. They left the envelope.

They took my new prescription sunglasses. I suspect they’ll have to knock out the lenses for them to be of any use, my eyesight is so peculiar. They also took a pair of red-framed computer glasses, the ones that I am wearing in my Beast Empress portrait by James Harvey as part of his “100 Pirates in 100 Days Project.” They left the oversized glasses case, and inside I found a fortune that I’d gotten from a cookie a few weeks ago: “A big fortune will descend upon you this year.” I just can’t remember where I got the cookie.

They took a black bra, the first one I bought after losing weight and discovering I’d been wearing the wrong size, too big in girth, too small in mass. They took my orange bra, an impulse buy at Victoria’s Secret, expensive and satisfying, one I’d worn on every trip, short or long, since May. And they took the straps to a beige convertible bra, but left the bra itself, which shall now be forever strapless.

They took a folder of papers, bills and other documents that I fully intended to address on vacation. At least, I think that’s what became of them.

They took my New Zealand hat, the one that inspired the gift of the pink hat.

And lastly, they took my little six-dollar alarm clock from Walgreen’s. I suspect that they were after the batteries. Now when I wake up in the night, I have to look at the phone to see what time it is. I can’t tell you how wrong that is. I liked that clock since it didn’t glow or warble or tick. It just was. And now it is. Somewhere else.

Perhaps, I shall have to call on the allegiance of the Beast Empress’s legions and go get it all back. Perhaps not.

The Beast Empress

Tags: Books, Cuba, Golf Clubs, Golfers, Pie Shop Stuff by Bjean
No Comments »

We’re having a regular summer deluge here in SoFLA. Sue Ten reports that the IntraCoastal Waterway has overflowed, but the fisherfolk are still in place, with their aluminum folding chairs and bare feet just ever so slightly under water, and the snapper still biting.

The pie shop is having busy morning. The lightning is keeping people off the range, so they come in to eat pie, instead, and they do admire our new step-stool bookshelves. I’m still stocking the shelves, carrying books down from the crawlspace where some of them have been stored for years.

When I was in the library trade, we had some basic rules for accepting book donations: If they’ve been stored in a basesment or garage, forget it. If they’ve been in an attic, maybe. If they’ve been on “living shelves,” go for it. Books do better when they have a lot of human contact, and that’s a big part of why I want to bring mine out and set them free.

I believe, very sincerely, that private ownership of books is counter-revolutionary, and books lose value when they are locked up. I always cringe a little when people show me their hordes of bookish treasure. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. Books die if they aren’t handled and loved, and the best way to keep them healthy is to keep them moving.

Accordingly, this little collection in the Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range will change pretty steadily as people find just the right thing to read, and as they take my books, they’ll bring me the ones they’ve been keeping under grow lights in their own back rooms. I’ve never worked in a library — or pie shop — where I didn’t come out ahead on this kind of proposal.

I’m starting, of course, with some of my favorite golf stories — The Legend of Bagger Vance, Golf in the Kingdom, and even Slim and None, as soon as I’m done reading it. Slim and None is a Dan Jenkins’ story, and although it’s not as much fun as Jenkins’ Baja Oklahoma, or as pithy as Semi-Tough, it does shine with that good old boy brand of humor. Taking that into consideration, I’ve got to wonder why I like it so much, but I do.

I rate Jenkins high as an entertaining writer, and I feel the same way about Peter Gent (North Dallas 40), and William Kinsella (whose Shoeless Joe later became Field of Dreams).

Personally, I find men to be the great mystery of life, and, although I do like chick-lit stories like Bridget Jones and the Shopaholic series, I have never especially enjoyed reading vaunted feminist writers. You see, I know how women think. That’s easy. But how men think? Now that is fascinating to me, and it’s certainly easier to read about them than to have to go through the painful process of trying to get them to explain in their own words how and why they’ve chosen a particular path or made a specific decision.

My research on this subject has gone on for years, as I have sought clues in spy novels and crime novels and fiction by James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, and John Grisham. I like trashy books about men, and I like well-written books about men. I’m not ashamed to admit it at all. Sea stories? Pirate tales? Bring them on. Maybe I’ll learn something new. Maybe I’ll solve the puzzle and find eternal happiness. I am, if nothing else, an optimist.

All that aside, I’m sure our bookshelves will have no shortage of golf titles, or cook books. Those, I’m sure, will show up on their own. Myself, I’m bringing in a lot of paperback copies of William Faulkner, too, since I consider him and Henry James to be our greatest American writers. I know a lot of the guys still think Ernie Hemingway is the best of the best, but really? Are they talking about his writing or his lifestyle? No, not for me. It’s the Deep South of Faulkner that talks to me, and carries me into the kitchen to bake sweet-potato pie.

I’ve always liked to read about the South, and not just for the food. And not just Faulkner, but Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, and so many others. They offer a combination of lushness and decay, not unlike the vegetation that once encroached the pie shop’s back door. You know, I think building the driving range was one of the best things I ever did, just to clear the vines and god damn night-blooming jasmine away from the back porch. I think it probably saved my life, or at least set me free, just the way that I like to set books free so they can breathe again.

Yes, the natural world is lovely, and all that, but these days I find the most intense beauty in the arc of the golf balls at night. As as soon as it stops raining, I’ll grab a book or two, and a big glass of lemonade, and head out to the back porch. Sparkle Junior is behind the counter serving pie, and if anyone wants to come out and practice, they can just hand me ten bucks for all the balls that they can hit.

No problem, no problem at all. I hope you’ll join me soon.

Tags: Books, Eternal Happiness, Pie Shop Stuff by Bjean
No Comments »