Ooh la la.

Venus on the half court. Venus goddess of 40-Love. Venus the Olympian. Venus French-kiss Open. Ah, Venus Venus Venus. Never did tennis look so—Sting, could you strike up "Roxanne" about now?—red-light a.k.a. "Take all that white, proper, stiff upper lip, gracious tennis wear and wipe my pretty rear end with it." Yowza.

What do you suppose it's like to play against that? What do you think it measures on the richter scale of "psyching out your opponent"? And what will be next? Topless? Bottomless? The mind can only wonder. Which is, I'm sure, exactly what it's supposed to do.

Where have we been?

Well, the conventional answer would be, "We've been to London to visit the Queen" or something like that. But we haven't. We've done something far more monumental. We've been to Florence to see each other.

I trained down from Milan with my two girls in tow. And Janet and Rick bussed up from Siena, taking a break in their vacation to do what we don't get to do enough: be together.

I won't go into details. Suffice it to say that four hours when you haven't seen someone in oh-nine-years-give-or-take is a phenomenally emotional ride. I kept staring at Janet thinking: Is that really you, in the flesh? Can this be?

And through the veil of years and distance I must say that Janet is more beautiful than ever. More full of heart. More gracious. More chocolatey. I could have eaten her up on the spot.

And then, before it began, it was over. And all those fragments of conversation desperate to weave over the gaping hole that an ocean and two continents have dealt us came to a final teary hug. A kiss on that softest of cheeks. Arms that want to grasp something that should never be let go of. A goodbye that musn't be a goodbye, at least not for long. (Promise?)

Yesterday, I had the good fortune of hearing Florence and the Machine's The Dog Days Are Over..."Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back"...and I thought: yes, that is exactly what it was like. A bullet. That giveth and taketh away.

Here's till the next time, Janet. Love, Me

Florence and the Machine "DOG DAYS ARE OVER" Music Video from LEGS MEDIA on Vimeo.

Art & Artificial Blondes are such Beautiful Things

I paint because I am a woman.

(It's a logical necessity.)

If painting is female and insanity is a female malady, then all women painters are mad and all male painters are women.
I paint because I am an artificial blonde woman.
(Brunettes have no excuse.)
If all good painting is about color then bad painting is about having the wrong color. But bad things can be good excuses. As Sharon Stone said, “Being blonde is a great excuse. When you’re having a bad day you can say, I can’t help it, I’m just feeling very blonde today.”
I paint because I am a country girl.
(Clever, talented big-city girls don’t paint.)
I paint because I am a religious woman.
(I believe in eternity.)
Painting doesn’t freeze time. It circulates and recycles time like a wheel that turns. Those who were first might well be last. Painting is a very slow art. It doesn’t travel with the speed of light. That’s why dead painters shine so bright.
It’s okay to be the second sex.
It’s okay to be second best.
- Marlene Dumas

And I write because I'm an insane woman living in the woods staring at the ocean who quite often feels like an artificial blonde & who wants so badly to believe in some kind of eternity. And a writer who now adores the painter Marlene Dumas. She makes me, for a moment at least, stop thinking about oil spills, hypocrisy, and snow falling in May. - Janet