JanePoet interviews The Fabricated Goddess

The brilliant Neilochka, over at Citzen of the Month, has once again facilitated the Great Interview Experiment wherein bloggers worldwide interview one another and post those interviews on their own blogs as a way to introduce them to their readers. I was fortunate to interview Michelle over at The Fabricated Goddess. She's funny, interesting and talented ... so, without further ado, here is my interview with the Fabricated Goddess:

I thoroughly enjoyed the March 24, 2006 post in which you revealed why you are a “Fabricated” goddess. I love your self-deprecating humor! Have you always had the ability to laugh at yourself and love yourself through the gaffs and blunders?

Oh, boy, did you dig deep! That's one of my favourite posts, I have to say. I guess I've always been able to laugh at myself. I don't really get why, but the sillier the situation the more funny it seems to me - as in I crack myself up. Of course, sometimes I'm completely mortified. Like the time at a theatre festival banquet that I miscalculated the hug a very nice young man was about to give me (I went for polite, he went in for a full hug) and managed to simultaneously spill red wine over his right shoulder, down his white dress shirt, onto my own face and the front of my shirt. Also, he had given me a polite cheek kiss, and I was slow in my reciprocating, so my polite kiss managed to land on his neck. OH GOD!! I was totally and utterly mortified for days! But you know, it was also stupid funny, so I can't help but laugh.

I love your self-portraits – are you ever surprised by the woman staring back at you in the photo?

YES! constantly in fact. It's sort of like discovering yourself - different angles, different light, different mood. You have to accept the good and the bad. I worry sometimes that it tad vain to be taking pictures of myself, but in all honesty it's a humbling project. It's made me much more accepting - I like a lot more about myself than I did before I started the project. I started doing them because I was figuring out how my camera settings worked and got hooked. In 2007 I got a MacBook and started using Photo Booth. I like when I can see whatever I was feeling in the self portrait. I have been trying in without success (oh the humanity!) to get my flickr selfie set up to date, but alas it is not.

It’s been 3 years and I’m betting Finn outgrew his flashing phase? Did you buy the raincoat? Inquiring minds want to know! What’s the craziest thing Ethan has ever done?

Gosh, no! Sadly the child loves his body. A lot. And he likes the thrill of shocking people. Thankfully we have managed to get across to him the absolute inappropriateness of EVER flashing ANY part of his body normally covered with clothes in public. Or, for that matter at Nana's. But it's not at all unusual to hear one or the other of us shout (exasperatedly) "Finn, put your pants back on. Nobody wants to see you dance naked." I still can't bring myself to buy him a raincoat. Although these days I think there's a better chance he'll be a streaker than a flasher. Streaking is hilarious to him.

Ethan does some crazy things. He used to fall asleep in all different contorted positions as a 3 and 4 year old. We would find him under his bed, beside his dresser, in his closet. One time we found him asleep, standing beside his bed with his head on the mattress. But the craziest thing he's ever done would have to be the two weeks one summer when he was about 6 or so. For whatever reason (I still don't know) he wore a life jacket everywhere he went, including to bed. He also carried a note pad and pencil, while wearing glasses with an attached mustache and insisting his name was Lewis, the reporter.

These kids is kooky!

I liked reading about when you got the part of Lady Montague in Romeo and Juliet? How did you first get involved with acting? Any other plays on the horizon?

I've been acting since I was 12. I went to an audition because, well, everyone else in my school was auditioning, and got the part of Amaryllis in The Music Man, much to my parents amazement. It's been an obsession ever since. It's sort of hard to shake once you get theatre under your skin. I took a really long break from it between going to university and then having kids. Lady Montague was my first foray back into theatre and I haven't looked back since. This past Summer I was Hermia in Midsummer Night's Dream and in February I'm tackling Hamlet's Ophelia. This simultaneously scares the crap out of me and thrills me to death. On one hand, wow, it's pressure to fulfill an important role. On the other hand, when the show closes I will be two weeks from my 39th birthday, thus making me the oldest Ophelia ever.

You and Erin traveled to Seattle back in ’06 … what did you think of our fair city?

I.Love.Seattle. No question, it's my kind of city. I would move there in a heartbeat. Seriously, I spent two days wandering around down by the waterfront, and through Pike's Place Market and all through the city centre. Beautiful city. Friendly people. Great food. The ocean. We had the best time there. Can't wait to go back. It's in the works for sure.

How did you come up with the nickname Solace?

It was actually the name we had picked out for a girl when I was pregnant for Finn. But alas, no girl was in our future so I decided to use it as a forum user name when I used to contribute regularly at the Broken Saints fan forum. It sort of stuck, and well I like it. I'd change my name if I could bring myself to do it. I've never felt like a 'Michelle'. Is that the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?

You mentioned awhile back that you’ve never had a job you love. Do you love your new job? What is your dream job/career?

I love parts of my job. And I love the people I work with. But I tend to get cabin fever whenever I'm stuck inside day after day. My dream job would probably involve teaching drama or art, which I have done bits of in the past. Sadly no one wants to pay me ridiculous amounts of money to teach acting part time. Go figure.

I say “Oy Vey” all the time too, but can no longer remember how it started … can you?

You know, I can't really remember when I started saying it, but I say it a lot. It's probably from watching too much Seinfeld. But it just fit's so many situations. And it cracked me up when the kids would say it when they were really little.

How do you handle the “pressure” to blog when you know you have an audience?

I find it a bit hard. And in the past two years I've taken ridiculously long breaks. I often feel like I've got nothing to say, that people won't read, that I whine too much, that I am not smart enough to write stuff and put it out there. The list of insecurities is endless. In the end I guess I keep coming back to it because secretly I love writing and not so secretly I like the attention of knowing that someone is reading my stuff and once in a while likes it. You know, all three of my readers.

You mentioned that you didn’t start sewing until age 32, what prompted you to start and did it come easily or did you have to work at it?

I was pregnant for Finn and the infant carseat cover that we had was a wreck. And of course, you can't buy that kind of thing. You have to buy a whole new carseat. My mother-in-law had just given me her old portable sewing machine and in a fit of indignant 'I could make something better with my eyes closed' rage I decided to take it apart and recover it on my own. And it turned out great. About a year and a half later, I bought my first pattern and was utterly stunned that I knew what I was doing. My mother sewed a lot and I guess I had picked it up without knowing it. Either that or I'm a sewing savant. Who knew?

Thanks!

The Oracle of Thirsty Poets Reincarnated as You and Me

Photo: Omphalos and the Tree of Life, taken by JP, on the shore at Golden Garden beach, Seattle, Nov. 09

“There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usage of man's life: "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much"; and upon these all other precepts depend.”
~ Plutarch (AD 46 – 120) Greek historian, biographer and essayist.

“And if the truth of all things always existed in the soul, than the soul is immortal. Wherefore be of good cheer, and try to recollect what you do not know, or rather what you do not remember.”
~ Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) Greek philosopher, author, mathematician, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world; from “Meno” by Plato; translated by Benjamin Jowett.

"My life often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was an historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had been born again because I had not fulfilled the task given to me."
~ Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.

Approximately three hours Northwest of Athens lays Delphi which is home to the famous Delphic oracle and, according to ancient Greek mythology, is the center of the world. As the story goes, two eagles were released by Zeus from opposite ends of the universe world to find the navel of the world. This location, in Delphi, was marked by the omphalos stone.

This omphalos stone (meaning 'center of the earth' to the ancient Greeks) later became the center of the inner sanctum of the shrine of the Delphic oracle. The site was originally called Pytho, after the guardian serpent. It was renamed Delphi after the dolphin (delphis in Greek), whose form Apollo took in order to bring Cretan sailors to Delphi so that they might become priests in his new temple. Regarding the omphalos, one legend tells that the original stone, now lost, was a large meteorite fallen from the sky in deepest antiquity, while another legend says it was the first physical object to emerge on dry land after the waters of the Deluge had settled. [Places of Peace and Power]

That Greek religion was polytheistic is clear, but it also incorporated concepts that could be said to resemble an Ultimate Reality. Even Zeus, the mightiest of all gods, was subject to the powerful force of Destiny or Fate. The Delphic Oracle told Lyidan inquirers that "no one, not even the god, can escape his appointed fate."

The notion that the human soul enters another body upon death, though unfamiliar in popular Greek religion, was widespread in Greek philosophy. The doctrine of transmigration is first associated with the Pythagoreans and Orphics and was later taught by Plato (Phaedo, Republic) and Pindar (Olympian). For the former groups, the soul retained its identity throughout its reincarnations; Plato indicated that souls do not remember their previous experiences. Although Herodotus claims that the Greeks learned this idea from Egypt, most scholars do not believe it came either from Egypt or from India, but developed independently. [Religion Facts]

Today’s poem is dedicated to finding the center of who we really are.

Thirsty roots reach deep
Grow strong in the seep of time
Long arms of chance gathering
Each unto its own –
The stones and the earth.

Chance times, chance tides -
What brought us to these shores?
Life twisted and clutching
My salty branches meeting yours.

In perfect abandon
Wash up with me love -
Make them stop.
And stare.
And wonder.

No longer grounded
I am the navel of Earth
Wrapped in your swaddling arms
Carried like an oracle
In this immortal life.

We will travel once again
In the seep of time.

Today’s poem is a collaboration between my lovely partner, A, and me. For more thoughts on Reincarnation, visit this week’s One Single Impression. For more thoughts on Oracle, visit this week’s Sunday Scribblings.

Interview of the Departed Soul

Image: "Departed Angels" book cover, available at Amazon.com

“So it is that Departed Angels is necessary reading for anyone wanting to understand the legacy of Jack Kerouac. It offers “revealing glimpses” into an American prose saint who never yawned, wrote, or painted a commonplace thing.”
~ Douglas Brinkley (b. 1960) American author and a professor of history at Rice University; from the Preface of “Departed angels: the lost paintings,” by Jack Kerouac, Edward J. Adler.

“Lost boy!- -depart! do not haunt my soul, I have done well forgetting you.”
~ Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) from “On the road: the original scroll,” by Jack Kerouac; edited by Howard Cunnell.

“Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.”
~ Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) from The Paris Review Interview, 1966, in the book “The beats: a literary reference,” by Matt Theado.

“When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art.”

~ Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) German-born American abstract expressionist painter.

When profound emotion is manifested through art the result is that we feel the soul of the creator. The author Dinah Maria Mulock once said that “an author departs, he does not die” and I think authors or artists who live and create with the most feeling are the ones who leave the deepest imprint on our souls.

These artists FEEL; and they feel deeply. Many led lives of great highs and lows. The stereotype of tortured artist was birthed through stories of great personal pain and hardships – Kerouac, Hemingway, Plath, Dostoyevsky, Cobain, Kahlo, Poe, Van Gogh, Thompson – to name a few. Interestingly, the term "stereotype" derives from Greek στερεός (stereos) "solid, firm" + τύπος (tupos) "blow, impression, engraved mark" hence "solid impression”. [wikipedia]

Departed souls who left a solid impression.

How I would love to interview them all.

Today’s poem is dedicated to the interview of the departed soul.

Hemingway walked the vascular streets of Paris
Frayed his mind with their details
Carried words like blood to the heart
Kerouac danced with his ancestors
Tattered history and illumination
Shot up in the veins of Paris
Were shadows to appear

With fluid for words

I would fill this vessel and carry-on.

~for more thoughts on Departed, please visit this week's One Single Impression
~for more thoughts on Interview, please visit this week's Sunday Scribblings

Elusive Truth and Shame

Photo: Down the Road, taken by JP, Seattle, Oct. 09

"The enlightened man calls himself: the animal with red cheeks. How did this happen to man? Is it not because he has had to be ashamed too often?
Oh my friends! Thus speaks the enlightened man: ‘Shame, shame, shame – that is the history of man!’ And for that reason the noble man resolves not to make others ashamed: he resolves to feel shame before all sufferers.
Truly, I do not like them, the compassionate who are happy in their compassion: they are too lacking in shame."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844-1900) German philosopher, from “Thus spoke Zarathustra: a book for everyone and no one” by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale.

“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi, (1869-1948) the pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian independence movement.

The Truth of life, has been the subject of many a philosopher, theologian, scientist, artist and the quest of many scholars.

We are all students in this study of Life. And in our studies, objective truth seems an elusive matter. Does it even exist? Or does it constitute itself in a moment in time, only later to be reincarnated in another form?

In the history of civilization we have held certain truths to be self evident, but even so, the interpretation of those truths makes them inherently elusive. In this country our Declaration of Independence asserts that it is a self evident truth that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This philosophy has been notoriously elusive in application. Who are “all men?” Are they white men, do they include people of color, women, or gay and lesbian people … who is included and more importantly, who is excluded, and how are they excluded.

How do we reconcile our shame and complicity when the truth of our ancestors is discovered to be a lie? What do we do with injustice today? Do we remain happy in our compassion or are we motivated by our shame?

Here in Washington State we are fighting to ensure that same sex families maintain their right to visit each other in the hospital, take family and medical leave when a loved one is seriously ill, and have insurance coverage.

"Referendum 71 is a ballot referendum that asks Washington state voters to re-confirm the expansion of domestic partnership rights and obligations in Washington's originally limited domestic partnership legislation. The expansion (SB 5688) was signed by Governor Christine Gregoire on May 18, 2009. Proponents of holding the referendum hope to head off same sex marriage, by rescinding the expansion legislation." [wikipedia]

Can we quiet the rhetoric and listen for the truth. Is it shame or fear or self-loathing that promotes intolerance and inequality?

Today’s poem is dedicated to the Elusive nature of truth and the Shame of compassion without action.

History is a tap root
Stealing deep waters to survive
at another’s expense

Hard and pungent
Compassion is a well
of sorrow and shame

Truth like varnished wood
slept through the years
Such a simple thing: not waking.

Register to vote. And, if you are a Washington State citizen, vote to Approve Ref. 71. Peace, JP/deb

Junk to Create and Conquer

Photo: Autumn Junk, taken by JP, Seattle, 10.09

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”
~ Thomas A. Edison, (1847-1931) US inventor, scientist and businessman

Now hung with Pearls the dropping Trees appear,
Their faded Honours scatter’d here and there.
Behold the Groves that shine with silver Frost,
Their Beauty wither’d, and their Verdure lost.
Sharp Boreas blows, and Nature feels Decay,
Time conquers all and we must Time obey.
~ Benjamin Franklin, (1706-1790), US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer; from “Poor Richard, 1745. An Almanack For the Year of Christ 1745”

The leaves are falling since Autumn walked in with his boyish sandalwood hair, rust woolen trousers, and cashmere scarf flowing amber woven thoughts. His breezy presence belied the intensity of emotion he wore beneath the surface.

Time demanded his entrance and he would not disappoint. Now dropping trees scatter their 'faded Honours' which lay in discarded piles, bits and pieces, the junk of speckled dreams.

Summer kissed him goodbye and Winter held her cool, pale arm out for him to take.

Today’s poem is dedicated the junk that serves as ingredients to create and conquer.

When the green disappears
The riot of yellow, red and orange
Collide like the temple of an emperor
Crimson

These days are not heavy, nor
Light they are painted scenes
In a Universe we invent
Water

Shapes stone and bathes the world
When the sun disappears
I will hold your gray like moon
Light


~for more thoughts on Junk, visit this week's Sunday Scribblings
~for more thoughts on Conquer, visit this week's One Single Impression

First Kiss Descent

Photo, Lumen, taken by JP, Seattle Jul '09

“The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender.”

~ Emil Ludwig, (1881-1948) German writer and journalist

“Entry, descent and landing are very complex, and a lot of things have to go correctly. That's just part of the risk associated with the mission.”
~ Richard Cook, operations project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, speaking about the Mars Polar Lander, Dec. '99

I remember our first kiss. I remember the energy, the music in my head, the thrill (which will never be gone) and the surrender … the relinquishment of control.

A lot of things had to go correctly for this to happen.

When we fall in love the “entry, descent and landing are very complex …”

When I fell the entry was paved with lessons learned; which turned out to be very good because we had a rapid, ear-popping descent. But baby, now we’ve landed and the earth has never felt firmer.

And I’ve never felt (simultaneously) lighter and more grounded.

Tonight’s poem is dedicated to descending into that first kiss of surrender.

no reverse thrust here;
I am
Buoyant

with desire

velocity is no capitulation
but your eyes are

falling leaves

inventing amber and luminance
wanting for tomorrow
dripping

through today

there is no past here
we are

we. are.

we
are

sidewalk dreams
landing


For more thoughts on First Kiss, visit this week’s Sunday Scribblings.
For more thoughts on Descent, visit this week’s One Single Impression.

Friends & Lovers

Photo: Fry it up in a Pan, taken by JP, Seattle, Sept. 09

“All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.”

~ Marc Chagall, (1887-1985) Russian-Jewish artist, born in Belarus and naturalized French in 1937.

“Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.”

~ Pablo Picasso, (1881-1973) Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor.

“I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious as to pray for his daily biscuits.”
~ Gilbert K. Chesterton, (1874-1936) English writer; from “Alarms and Discursions” (1910)

“Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.”

~ M. F. K. Fisher, (1908-1992) American U.S. culinary writer and autobiographer; from her introduction in “Vin et Fromage: An Odyssey for Wine and Cheese Lovers,” Scavarda & Sater (1981)

This week’s Sunday Scribblings’ prompt is Cheese … that lovely derivative of milk that has hundreds (or thousands) of incarnations. James Joyce called cheese milk’s “corpse” in his novel Ulysses; but I prefer Chesterton’s tongue in cheek homage to cheese in his aptly titled chapter, Cheese, from “Alarms and Discursions.”

I miss cheese.

Cheese and bread. Cheese and wine. Cheese and cheese.

My partner and I are on a six-week vegan diet. No cheese. After the six week’s we can reincorporate (small) portions of cheese. The other day we let ourselves “slip” and went out for dinner … I stuck to the no-meat part of our regime, but decided to splurge and have a goat cheese and zucchini quesadilla. Sadly I got b.a.d. cheese. Which resulted in a very unpleasant 16 hours of e.f.f.e.c.t.s. of bad cheese.

Now I’m not missing it so much.

This week’s One Single Impression prompt is Colors. The colors of our current diet are vibrant with veggies, beans, legumes and fruit. These vibrant colors are the friends (and sometimes lovers) that dance on our palates.

With the change in our diet I appreciate more the colors of our food and take delight in different combinations and hues.

Today’s poem is dedicated to the foods that keep us vibrant.

Tribal gourds; fleshy orange; leather potatoed membrane
savory. pigment. skin.

Red lusting tomatoes; bruised purple boysenberries
vine. trees. earth.

Swollen ovary zucchini blossom; red nippled legumes
stems. seeds. buds.

Lily white onions; sturdy firm spined lettuce
bulbs. veins. leaves.

Rainbow nourished flesh; sun ripened skin
body. i. love.