Elenabella is one year old

Hello! I can't let the clock strike midnight without noticing that elenabella was one year old this past Wednesday...begun on a whim one year ago, September 16th, 2008. It has been a fascinating process to be involved with this blog, and I intend to continue, despite these occasional lapses. So interesting – the lapses...the gaps...and then the intense involvement again with the daily practice.

I'm going to create a little "rhyme in time" and include the first image ever posted to this site, of my little crossword puzzle vase, the first effort of this writing/observing/and making things project. And here is John Ashbery's "Chutes and Ladders," as brilliant as ever.

Anyway, if you have been a regular reader, or even an occasional one, thank you for being my Always Already Ideal Reader, and for visiting (or even commenting) now and then!

Travels with Charley, and John Steinbeck

I haven't yet read John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America, but I love the (fiercely romantic) language I found on a friend's facebook info page, under favorite quotes:

For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage...

The next passage in my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it's difficult to analyze love when you're in it.

Steinbeck wrote the book about a road trip he made in 1960, with his French standard poodle Charley, in a specially-made camper named Rocinante, like Don Quixote's horse. The trip covered nearly 10,000 miles. I think it's a book for Mad Men's Don Draper. (I still need to read The Grapes of Wrath, too.)

Good Grief: the Pole Dancer Doll

Another trashy toy directed at children. (And purchased by, well – who buys this crap!?) Somehow, she doesn't seem out of place at a store like Toys "R" Us. No doubt she's made of toxic materials, too.

So many toxic toys out there, made by children for children (or made by mothers trying to feed their children), offering profits to people with no shame and no taste. She's a poor little soul killer doll.