Mobile Chowdown in The Junction

The Mobile Chowdown came to West Seattle last Sunday. Two blocks of California Avenue were closed to accommodate 23 food trucks that served everything from ethnic foods and donuts to burgers and ice cream. Take a look:

Trucks were parked down the middle of the street, giving people plenty of room to mill about. It's a good thing, because there was a huge turnout for this event.

The street food phenomenon is not just about food, it is also about the truck. The popular Maximus-Minimus truck is a rolling advertisement for its pulled pork sandwiches. 

And who could miss the colorful "big food" truck?

The Skillet airstream trailer is a classic in these parts. One of the first food trucks in Seattle, it has been serving up grass-fed burgers with bacon jam since 2007. 

There were long lines everywhere.

Pacific Rim cuisines were well represented, including Marination Mobile's Korean and Hawaiian food; Curry Now's Indian Food; and Kaosami's Thai Retaurant. 

There were buns on wheels...

... soul food from Where Ya At Matt's truck...

and Molly Moon's Ice Cream. Who could ask for anything more?

For more about Mobile Chowdown events visit their website.

What Lies Beneath at Alki Beach

I love living near the water, walking along the edge of the water, looking out across the water, but I do not love being in the water. My Alki Beach neighborhood is popular for scuba diving - an activity that doesn't appeal to me. However, I am very curious about what divers see when they are down there.

Now thanks to the skills of diver/videographer Laura James, landlubbers like me get to see what life is like underwater without having to get wet. Here are a few examples of her stunning work.






Want to see more? Laura has over 140 videos posted on YouTube. Go check them out!

Remembering the Alki Beach 9/11 Memorial

It is hard to believe that a decade has passed since the events of 9/11/2001. And yet, here we are. Today I went through photos that I took of the Alki memorial back then, and reflected on life since. Of the many things that have come out of that difficult time, perhaps the most positive has been a renewed sense that we are all in this together; that life is unpredictable; and that family, friends and neighbors are what matters. The phrase "building community" seems to echo across the country. 

Here at Alki, that sense of community rose up spontaneously on 9/11. The news seemed, at first, bewildering. Did this really happen? For some of us, the Orson Welles/War of the Worlds story came to mind. But this wasn't fiction. And as the reality of it sank in, whatever else we were doing seemed unimportant. It was as if we were all wondering, "well, what do we do now?" 
And so we came to the beach. As Isak Dinesen said, "The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears or the sea." Walking along the water's edge is soothing in a way that nothing else is. As we walked, our little Statue of Liberty seemed the natural destination. 

As people came, they brought candles, flowers, hand-written notes, teddy bears, and personal mementos that related somehow to the events or people they knew. For days, candles remained lit - when they burned down, people brought new ones. Wilted flowers were replaced with fresh ones. 
Someone brought a supply of brown paper lunch sacks and sharpie pens, and encouraged people to take a bag and write a message on the side. Volunteers then took the bags, put a bit of sand in the bottom of each one to weigh it down, and placed votive candles inside. At night the candles were lit. In the photo above, you can see the row of bags in along the seawall.
As the days went by, the flags, hats, notes and other memorabilia just kept coming. When the memorial wound down days later, the nearby Log House Museum collected something like 18 boxes of these treasures which they are preserving as part of local history.

Here are a few of the messages on the bags. 

"MAKE LOVE NOT WAR (after we get those bastards)"

From left: "THE LORD'S PRAYER ...'but deliver us from evil'" "AN EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES US ALL BLIND!" "STOP THE VIOLENCE! GOD BLESS AMERICA"

There was, of course, no formal program or agenda. During the day, people were quiet, either reading what others had written or lost in their own thoughts. At night, I remember that we held lit candles and sang a few songs. Some people read poems. What I remember most, though, was feeling grateful for my life and for the connection I felt with the people around me. 

There were many touching notes in the collection at the base of the statue. But this one stood out for me. In fact, I made copies of this photo and used them to make my holiday cards that year. Here's what it says:

"As long as you hate,

Hate is in the world.

As long as you love,

Love is in the world.

 As long as you have hope,

Hope is in the world.

Choose to face the light,

And let the shadows fall behind you.

Change yourself,

And you change the world."

A special exhibit will be held at the Log House Museum on Sunday, September 11. For more information about observances planned in the neighborhood, visit the West Seattle Blog.

Fiona, The Spy Cat

This is my neighbor, Fiona. She isn't allowed out of the house because her owners have had too many sad experiences with kitties being hurt while outside. So since she can't get out and hunt for birds and chase mice, she has to be content with - spying. 

She sits in this upstairs window and keeps an eye on the neighborhood. She tracks the movements of the raccoon family that makes its way through the yard every afternoon on its way to dinner at a neighbor's house. (I know, we wish the neighbor wouldn't feed them, but she does.) 

Fiona is startled when Harold the blue heron flies overhead, squawking on his way to the Douglas Fir he likes to hang out in. She is bewildered by hummingbirds. She is interested in squirrels. 

But mostly, Fiona likes to spy on me. From her perch on the windowsill, she looks into my kitchen window and down onto my deck. She watches intently as I rinse dishes or go outside to clip some herbs. Her eyes follow me as I walk back and forth in my kitchen. It makes me laugh to glance up and see the look on her face. 

Soon the weather will turn cool and Fiona's family will close the window for the season. From then until the first warm days in spring when the window is open again, I will miss my nosy little neighbor.

Alki Art Fair

For all the grousing people do about the weather around here, we've had some gorgeous weekends lately, allowing us to fully enjoy local events. We had a gorgeous 4th of July; perfect weather for the Seafair Pirate landing; and most recently, a magnificent weekend for the Art Fair at Alki Beach.

Look, not a cloud in the sky! Unusual for around here.

We had perfect weather and a perfect setting for an art show.

People got here any way they could.

No Seattle grey in evidence here.

Even a paddle boarder stopped by.

Another wonderful day in the neighborhood!

The Next 18 Years

In a few days I will be 62 years old. This isn't a big deal birthday. It isn't one of those landmark years like 60 was and 70 will be. It's just another birthday. The only thing new to report is that this year, for the first time, I have been thinking about how much life I have left.

This isn't a maudlin exercise. It is just a simple calculation. For whatever reason, I have thought for some time that I will probably live to the age of 80. I might change my mind in my late 70s, but for now, 80 seems about right. If that turns out to be the case, it means that I have 18 years left to live.

So now the question is, how do I want to spend those 18 years?

This has been a dilemma for me lately. I don't feel inspired to make a "bucket list" of things I want to do before I die. I have, in fact, done pretty much everything I set out to do, plus a few things I never dreamed I would. I don't feel like I have unfinished business. And yet, I don't want to just drift aimlessly across the finish line. I want these 18 years to mean something.

When I look back on my life, I see that most of it has been about "doing" something:

• Becoming educated
• Building careers
• Raising a family
• Starting businesses
• Rehabbing houses
• Renovating gardens
• Traveling
• Working, working, working

I have no interest in revisiting any of these things. I believe I am finished with the "doing" phase of my life. I am ready to explore the meaning of the saying: I am a human being, not a human doing.

And so I want the next 18 years to be about "being" something:

• Being engaged.
• Being useful.
• Being curious.
• Being happy.
• Being generous. 
• Being willing to be willing to consider new ideas.
• Being loving, and thus, being loved.

I don't know what will be in front of me as these years unfold. But I can use this "being" list to make decisions about what I want to do. For example: Will this activity engage my interest? Is it of any use to  myself or anyone else? Do I even care about it? Will I be happy doing it? Will this be something good to share? Will this expand my world view? And most importantly: Is this what love would do? 
This feels like a graceful and purposeful approach to the grand finale of this lifetime. As I wrote this post, I could feel myself relaxing into it.

Now I'm ready for some birthday cake. 

Picasso and the Divine Feminine

I wasn't going to go.
I don't even like him, I said to myself.
He was a misogynist.
I don't get most of his art.
My mind was made up. I wasn't going to go.

But then something changed my mind. Maybe it was the way my friend described the exhibit. And maybe it was -- the eyes.

With Picasso's personal collection of his work currently on display at the Seattle Art Museum (on loan from the Musee National Picasso in Paris), this photo of him staring out the window is being used as part of the publicity campaign. The first time I saw it, I felt like his eyes locked onto mine. I couldn't look away. And when I did, I knew I had to buy a ticket and go see the exhibit. Even though I had been SO sure I wasn't going to go.

I'm obviously not the first woman to be caught up in Picasso's spell. Almost as well known and studied as his accomplishments as an artist, his relationships with women have been the subject of much speculation and analysis. I will admit that the main reason for me to go to the exhibit was to see how his art was fueled by the power of those relationships.

Years ago, I read a book on sacred sexuality called "Intimate Communion," by David Deida. It forever changed the way I look at the dance between masculine and feminine energies. Deida's explanation of polarity sheds light on the mystery of relationships, regardless of whether they are heterosexual or same-sex. Polarity is not about "true love," it is about energetic attraction. Like a magnet, feminine energy is one pole; masculine, the other. The more energy is animated at one extreme, the greater the attraction to its opposite. From this perspective, Picasso and his women are fascinating studies.

Picasso is an example of masculine energy at the extreme. Focused, aggressive, ambitious, sexual, confident, analytical, on purpose, a master of many crafts (painting, sculpture, ceramics), extraordinarily productive -- and cruel.

Look at the photo of Picasso on the jacket of John Richardson's biography of the artist. There's a bit of a smile, more than a hint of charm. The eyes are piercing, taking in every detail, yet cold, detached. He is a man who knows what he wants, which is attractive to anyone with a lot of feminine energy (regardless of gender). But he is that "bad boy" our mamas warned us about. He can and will break our hearts.

And his women? They embodied feminine qualities of beauty, artistry, sensuality and emotionality, at times in the extreme. His first wife, Olga, was a beautiful ballerina with the Ballet Russes. It is said that Picasso fell in love with her the first time he saw her dance. She kept the magic going by refusing to sleep with him unless or until they married. This was a new experience for him - women didn't say "no" to Pablo (see explanation above). Nothing rouses masculine energy like a challenge, but try as he might, she stuck to her refusal.  They married a little over a year later. (Not that he was celibate during that time.) They were very happy in the beginning and his drawings and paintings of her, elegant and representational as they are, seem to honor her formal, traditional taste, even as he was experimenting with new ideas in painting.

After the birth of their son, Paulo, the relationship began to fall apart. One gets the sense that she was fragile emotionally and physically - qualities of the extreme feminine - and that her love of high living wore thin with Picasso's bohemian, workaholic nature. His paintings of her began to take on a more distorted edge.

Banner outside the Seattle Art Museum featuring a detail from one of Picasso's paintings of Marie-Therese Walter called "Reading."

About that time, Picasso met the woman who would be the next great love of his life, 17-year-old Marie-Therese Walter. Perhaps because of her age and most certainly because of his marriage, his early paintings of her were abstract so as not to give away their secret affair. His famous "Still Life on a Pedestal Table," on view now at SAM, is one of those. How much of his abstract work during those years was inspired by this need for secrecy? Without this catalyst, would he have explored abstract painting to the degree that he did? Over time, her face and body begin to emerge in his work - blonde, blue-eyed, lush, sensual, beautiful. Quintessential feminine.

This banner shows a detail from Picasso's  1937 "Portrait of Dora Maar."

However happy Picasso may have been with Marie-Therese, he was not cut out to be a one-woman man. In 1936, he began an affair with Dora Maar, a beautiful, talented photographer and painter. Sensitive and high-strung, she was deeply affected by Picasso's moodiness. Whatever sparkle their relationship may have had in the beginning quickly shifted to tears. In Picasso's art, she went from being the beautiful woman you see in the banner above to the famous, "Weeping Woman." 

In fact, Picasso did a series of Dora as the weeping woman as if depicting an archetype.  He said, "Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman....And it's important, because women are suffering machines." He seems never to have had empathy for his partners. 

Just as today's chefs engage in molecular gastronomy, taking apart the ingredients and cooking processes that create a meal, examining each one and reassembling it, a century ago, Picasso was doing a similar thing with his painting. The Dora Maar images, as well as many of his others, have the sense of having been taken apart, with the facial features, body parts and emotions separated and examined, then reassembled on the canvas. 

Picasso's detachment from his own feminine side allows him to observe Dora's pain without feeling it. It is as if he was a disinterested reporter filing a story from a crime scene. He needs Dora's extreme feminine emotionality in order to be anything more than a clever technician. Her drama provides the story. Without it, what shall he paint?  

In fact, without his women, I wonder how we would think of Picasso today. There's no question that he would be highly regarded. But without the ability to marry great technical expertise (masculine) with profound emotional depth (feminine), I'm not sure brilliance can be achieved. Picasso's incredible facility with technique of all sorts is not in doubt. But his emotional range appears to have been rather narrow, alternating between periods of tranquility and frequent bouts of rage and self-pity. To bring the full range of human feeling in all its nuance, color, vibrancy, joy and pain, into his painting, sculpture and pottery, he had to borrow the energy from his women. 

At the age of 61, Picasso left Dora for Francoise Gilot, a 20 year-old. Long a well-established painter, he was a mentor for the intelligent, gifted Francoise. Of all his partners, she had the emotional balance to hold her own through his mercurial moods. A talented painter in her own right, she was a keen observer of his creative process and her book, "Life with Picasso" offers great insight into his life and work.

After 10 years with Picasso, tired of his tantrums and other women, Francoise left him. She told him she was going to leave. He reportedly shouted, "No one leaves Picasso." But she did. 

After I saw the Picasso exhibit, I read her book. I can understand a woman being attracted to a man like Picasso, but why would any woman, especially one 40 years younger, choose to live with him? And have two children with him? I found her story thoughtful and fascinating, just as she is.

After Francoise, there were other women and then Jacqueline, his second wife. He continued to be a prolific artist, but his finest work was, for the most part, behind him. However, one particularly profound painting from this time is entitled, "The Kiss." Painted the day before his 88th birthday, it is a self-portrait of Pablo with Jacqueline. There is a look of anguish on both faces. After a lifetime of tumultuous relationships with women, Picasso was, at that point, impotent. 

There are 150 pieces in the remarkable exhibit at Seattle Art Museum, and it is well worth your time to see them. But time is running out. The show closes on Monday, January 17. Save money and time and get your tickets online.

If you are not able to visit this exhibit and want to know more about the artist's life and work, check out the DVD, "Picasso: Magic, Sex, Death,"which is available from Amazon or you can rent it from Netflix. John Richardson, author of a three-volume biography of Picasso and long time friend of the artist, narrates.