It's a full moon again. The Egg Moon. The sun is shining this month and the snow that stopped by late last fall and settled in for months and months, is finally gone. Carol called from Florida and it's warm and happy there, everyone in the throes of Easter with flip flops, light, bright tank tops and short skirts.

I'm going to try to photo the moon tonight as my Easter celebration. Besides going to mass. Angela seemed to think I would be relieved or reassured she's going to mass but it doesn't matter really. She, like me, has got to find the things that make her happy and then do them in an effort to feed her soul.

Maria my housekeeper just walked through the door with a loaf of bread she made me for Easter. Shaped like a big, big cupcake and frosted in white with sprinkles. Gave me a jar of blueberry jam, too. She says that's what their family used to eat on Easter morning in Russia. She feeds my soul with her devotion to her family. And to me.

I got out my mother's big white, ceramic bunny that she always put out for Easter. She loved that thing! I wrapped it up and will give it to my brother. It's been 13 years and I have never figured out how to have it in my house without getting sad. Gotta feed your soul with things that nourish you.

We are an Easter people and alleluia is our song.


JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

Op zoek naar Maria - Dans in het Centraal Station van Antwerpen

dare ya!

New moon in ten days. I feel a certain urgency to post again; I am making progress, aren't I?, despite my lack of posts?

There are so many stories I think about, that consume me and fill my heart in the waning of the last full moon. Went to a young client's wedding last summer--now, less than a year later, they may lose their house because they are three payments behind. My dear, dear friend is walking through lymphoma and the associated chemo/radiation with her lifelong best friend and sister. My special old friend is going to wrap up her 22 year marriage: domestic violence and lack of progress in court-ordered treatment. And of course, every one's holdings and earnings slashed in 2009. A new world order in less than six months! I look into the moon from my bedroom window, faint yet fierce, as it's slipped away from its late winter opaline fullness to only a tiny pale slit in the spring sky and think about my people. And their stories. And the stories of other people hungry, homeless, sick, addicted, disenfranchised and separated. Where is the hope in the new world order?

I find hope in the beautiful young bride who has yet to utter one word of frustration in regard to her husband who can't seem to make a go of his sales job; she just went out and got a second job. She now works days, nights, weekdays and weekends at two jobs and is confidant she can get the payments current by June, if the bank will hang on.

I find hope in my brave, stalwart friend who flies to the Bay Area nearly every weekend after work, to be with her sister. Her own son, the nephew, made the remark that it must be quite a spendy commitment, four plane tickets a month. My Hero, the big sister, snorted I don't care WHAT it costs. I don't care if my life's savings are reduced to nothing. Whatever happens, it will be worth it. I would never not be there. Her son looks away.

I find hope in my sweet, sweet faithful loyal friend who has undergone black eyes, facial rug burns, bruises, bruises, bruises, BRUISES, lies, betrayal and treachery. She had hoped that the flaming, festered prick she's married to would respond to therapy mandated by the court system and that somehow they could save their marriage. If not for them, maybe for their four children. Although it's not to be, she has been hopeful and faithful that Love Could Conquer All. She hung in there for an exhaustive run until she was positive her marriage had flat-lined. Only just now, despite the domestic violence that has been a mainstay in her life, has she called it. She touches my heart, and holds it, with her quivering perseverance and now, her truthful resignation and resolve. She's never been a big jewelry/vacation/car/clothes girl; but she was very big on the institution of marriage and she stayed faithful just beyond the bitter end. And has lost the one thing in her life beside her children that she valued. She inspires me deeply.

Inspires me to fight harder, to let myself feel deeper, not to remain resigned, to suit up for another inning and play hard. I don't know what curve is coming in my own life but I do know that if I can keep my people and their stories close, when my time comes, I can climb up inside them, lay my head on their hearts and rest.

Stay brave, my beloveds. Stay brave.


JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

For me, this is what journalism is all about. Two of my uberfaves. I'll stop doing anything to read either one. And on a very good day, I read them both.

Tim Egan

John Blanchette



JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

Moon woke me up last night. It was the middle of the night and I had been asleep for several hours. I sat up, fully awake, summoned by the pale,thin light of a full moon spilling across my bed in a wide swath. I looked into the light and listened to the night, wondering which oceans of the world were splashing tall and high against a weary beach, themselves turned into something they might not otherwise be at the bidding of the Lenten Moon. I thought of camels crossing the desert, limos on Las Vegas Boulevard, and the volcano at Kona all under the spell of the faint, yet unmistakably seductive full moon. Craziness.

Only a few moments passed before my big, woolly black dog began to bark. He, too, gets connected to things he can't quit shake off but being a dog, will get just a little more wild than an accountant might when the full moon calls him from a deep sleep.

He barks. And howls and cries. Then sleeps in the sun of the day that follows.

JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

How much are you, in your real life, like your online persona?

My blog buddy, daveo, over at HBO asked this question the other day and I pretty much invoked my 5th amendment rights. Didn't even have to consult an attorney. I've talked about this before a little bit; and from time to time, it comes up again.

What am I really like? Well, I'll tell you. It's not pretty. I am the kind of person who, in real life, hides from all her high school friends on Facebook.


I am ugly enough in real life to run up a credit card bill but to ride my children relentlessly when they do the same thing.


In real life, I wear the same socks twice. I have been known to have a horrendously messy office and a horrendously messy bedroom. My refrigerator is toxic. Quite often.


I can and have nursed a grudge.


I get really pissed off at my neighbors when they are impatient with me. Over my dogs. Those motherfuckers.

And there's the logger poetry.



I have no problem eating all the cheerios.
I lie about wanting to floss my teeth.
I have a temper that defies description and verbal skills and expression honed to unmeasurable degrees of fury and contempt.


I have been known not to leave my house for days. For days.
I'm not as pretty as I used to be. In a lot of different ways.



But I am who I am. And for now, this is the best I can do. I'm sure my online persona is a much tidier, more generous, beautiful and likable person.

That's show biz.



JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

A ST JOE RIVER GOTHIC

Joseph Nathan/North Bank of the St Joe

There are so many things that speak to me about this picture; yet I am almost helpless to comment. She was typical of all his babies, blond, blue eyed and beautiful. Yet she's out of place here in his lap, as most women were when they were with him on the St. Joe. He was a completely different person then as the Joe was his emotional and spiritual home, open to only a few. Typically it was his sons that were invited in but on this day, she of dimples and sweetness sat on his throne. Now days, she is a grown up girl's girl who loves pretty dresses and party shoes but says just the same that this picture proves that the St. Joe is in her blood.

We all feel the same; besides the AT&T stock he inherited from his father my dad's legacy to us was the cottonwoods and meadow grass, the high, fast, muddy water of Memorial Day, the huckleberries and the apples, the woodpeckers and hummingbirds and the fish, elk and deer. On the Joe, my dad was man of immense means and we benefited from a largess of clarity and spirit among pine trees and splashing streams as we tramped up and down the mountainsides of the St. Joe River.

You don't see tractors like these too much any more and you sure don't see the ingenuity that would place a plastic bucket on the exhaust stack to ward off rust. I miss my dad but I am rich, rich, rich in what he left here with me and in what he took with him when he left.

JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

It has to be fast and easy or I just don't get to it these days.

Almost another whole week has gone by without a disciplined effort to put thoughts into written word. The fact is, to write it down and extrapolate on the GPS and wanderings of my soul is quite a chore. First, it's completely inconsistent with much of my life. I have people around me all day; I can turn to the left or to the right and say "We need to do this and this and this" and it is done. I can sit in my chair at my desk, select a button and speak into thin air almost with my hands around my coffee cup or in my lap, and say, by noon, I'd want to see that, those, and a few of the others. It's done. I can mutter, lament, or opine over any done or undone task and chore on my way to the bathroom or for coffee, and almost by magic it gets done. So imagine my confusion when another week goes by, and my blog page remain blank. How can that happen when I want to get this done so badly? I just don't get it. (Insert The Rolling of the Eyes of a self-deprecating epiphanous moment.)

I write dozens and dozens and dozens of emails daily, these days until late at night. Somedays, I write a letter, sometimes TWO letters, print them, sign them and put them in a prescribed place outside my office door where they mysteriously disappear and according to legend, become mailed. I talk on the phone for one or two hours each day. And when it is extremely still and peace settles in around me, I actually put pencil and paper to work, well, keyboard and keystroke, and work with numbers and problems, which is what I truly like to do. I like long, complicated, difficult problems that demand my full attention and are too circuitous for people around me to enter into. I like solitude and challenge in solitude. Furious solitude.

And when I'm done for the day, I am done. I leave it all in my work product, turn out the lights and go home. So to speak. In this spent and sated state, I just cannot summon the muse to help me express myself about things that I continue to think about or things that are bothering me.

I am a note writer. At the moment, I estimate, conservatively, that I am behind by about 40 or 50 notes. Did not send one Valentine this year.


And so I look up and here I am at a crossroads; I am changing. And I don't know exactly what that means.


JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

If He Won't Post It, I Will

The Christ Child and Entourage with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Frank McCourt

February 12, 2009 New York, New York

JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

che bello indeed!

JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

Well, I am little confused this morning, tucked into the corner of the sofa with a down quilt and flannel pajamas. The last leisure time I had I was wearing flip flops and a shift and I was sipping coffee, nibbling ice cold pineapple and staring out over the mesmerizing Pacific Ocean, counting the shades of blue and watching the waves go out and come back in. Or maybe that was something I was reading. OR maybe I just dreamed all that?

But I'm awake now. Eating breakfast. Today's luxurious repast is one of my wintertime favorites: hot cocoa, wheatberry toast no butter and thick slabs of Tillamook medium cheddar cheese. This food is so primal, no satisfying, so ancient, I am positive my people were eating it ten thousand years ago. Bread and cheese and chocolate. Just doesn't get any better than that.

EXCEPT. Except for scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs were the very first thing I learned to cook. My mother taught me when I was in the first grade. They are my favorite still, any time of day, and in any country. With toast, they are the perfect protein/carb combo breakfast. With bacon or sausage, and an iced tea with double lemon, they make a tasty lunch. With a salad, a nice hard roll with cold butter and some really crispy Chardonnay, they are dinner for royalty. Or your very best friend. But they are guaranted to please, impress and sate the ravished soul.

Julia Child has no less than 13 pages of instruction on how to make a perfect omelette, the kissing cousin of scrambled eggs. Enjoy.

Happy Valentine's Day.


JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

I spent the last day in Hawai'i on the beach, doing the thing I love the very, very best. Watching the waves and the people. My theory is that people who love the sun lay by the pool but people who love the water lay on the sand. And there are few things I love more than big, fluffy white beach towels and the Pacific Ocean. The greatest ocean in the world.

JBelle
On Assignment
Waikoloa Beach, Hawai'i

It was as good as vacation adventure gets. I noticed a small note on a national parks service map that said lava flows can be viewed from Highway 130. The national park and the drive from the volcano crater down to the ocean, tracking the lava flow on Chain of Craters Road had already absolutely undone me. There is no amount of money Disney Co. can spend that can compete with Mother Nature; the entertainment that She provides cannot be duplicated anywhere. So seeing this little mention that if you want, drive out to the end of Highway 130 from town, where the road stops and no longer follows the ocean because of the lava flow and there you can see the lava flowing right into the Pacific Ocean made me think well, okay. Why not go on out to the end of the road that runs long the ocean? The Pacific Ocean. The Most Magnificent Ocean of all.

Went into Cronies in Hilo about 4:30 and had a burger and a beer and hung out with the locals watching the Mizzou game until I just couldn't stand it any longer. So got back into the Toyota and headed into a driving rain storm in rush hour traffic, heading for Highway 130 and a nighttime glimpse of the lava flows. Althought it was only about 50 miles, it took about two hours to get out there, in no small part due to the hellacious rush hour traffic. But finally made it to the road block, where there is no longer any road because the lava kept destroying it. Finally, the HDOT just quit rebuilding the road. It was an inky black Hawaiian night out there in the middle of no where so imagine my surprise to see at least 200 cars parked at the roadblock! Turns out seeing the lava at night is a huge happening, such a happening in fact, that Japanese tour buses go out there!

Well at this point, my competitive juices were completely fired up so I hopped out the car in Nike flip flops and a Balinese muumuu, not deterred in the least by the dark, black night, the rain or the lava field.

Yes, the lava field. Turns out you have to hike 40 minutes over a 2 mile stretch of lava in the pitch black darkness down to the ocean. Absolutely no problem for a child of North Idaho. It quit raining and started raining again twice before I reached the ocean. My muumuu, soaking wet at one point along the path, had completely dried itself by the time I reached the viewing platform that was adjacent to the lava dumping into the ocean. No rain poncho, fleece, water bottle, surgical mask, hiking boots or flashlight for meeee. No sir. Candy asses.

I stood for an hour in the darkness and watched some of Our Mother's finest work; I could only think of the glaciers in the Canadian Rockies and Ha Long Bay in the Gulf of Tonkin. And walking back over the black lava in the black night with the surf thundering in the background, I thought about the politics in Washington at the moment and the squabble over the stimulus bill. And I thought, you know, you just can't fool Mother Nature.

Once at the car, I looked back over the fields of black at the fire still in the sky, chuckled, got in and drove.


JBelle
On Assignment
Kilauea Caldera, Hawai'i

It's a luscious, full moon night over the beaches of Hawai'i tonight. The sun was warm and gentle today and the ocean at least 12 different shades of blue. There's still craziness in the air, though. I have to think it's full moon craziness. To wit:

Canadians on the beach bitching about people drinking beer poolside at 10 am.

Londoners on the elevator, remarking that they, too, have snow at home.

The guy snorkeling, with a metal detector and headphones.


JBelle
On Assignment
Waikoloa Beach, Hawai'i

Is there anything, anything?, more sensual and relaxing that sitting in the sun watching the ocean? I sat and pondered my problems and came to the following conclusions:

I do not have a blonde problem. But she is going to have one soon.

People who sit on the beach are after the same thing: a splash and a tickle, no matter their age.

Finally, sweetly. You want it sweetly.

I know you're reading, Vampire of Asia and Europe.

JBelle

On Assignment

Waikoloa Beach, Hawai'i

I love breakfast. You sit by the ocean as it laps in and out and the soft air moves in and around you as the morning light falls silky on your bare shoulders. It's a sensual time of the deep, lustful taste of strong coffee, the perfume of waffles rising to the trees, four different shades of blue water hugging and patting the black, crusty rocks, the sound of birds chirping in the morning sun and crisp linen napkins, firm against your mouth. There is a hodge podge of people whose only commonality is that they get up at the same time of day. As soon as you settle into it, breakfast is gone. It evaporates. The day awaits.

JBelle

On Assignment

Waikoloa, Hawai'i

JBelle
On Assignment
Waikoloa Beach, Hawai'i

First time I ever went to a swap meet was somewhere in Post Falls, Idaho. Bought a bunch of super cool junk that I didn't need or couldn't afford. I was struggling through a divorce at the time and that swap meet was the perfect tonic for a lonely Saturday afternoon without my kids. Things and times change and the next swap meet I went to, years later, was at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. Had to be the daddy of all swap meets. This time I was with both kids and the new kid and his own daddy and we bummed around that place all day, fingering each and every pair of $10 Nike runners and searching for that one elusive vendor that would give us 12 tee shirts for $6. God, what a day.
Wandered into the market at Kona today--they've gone back to the old school name, market. But by any name, it brought back a lot of sweet memories. The fierce feather face coconut hangie things were there. Piles and piles of flip flops and Crocs. Potholders, pineapples and pukkas. Wooden ceremonial masks, wooden Harley Davidsons, wooden bowls. And unique to the market in Hawai'i, beautiful flowers, intriguing fruit and exotic innovations in leis.

I think in my heart, like my immigrant grandparents, I am a shopkeeper. Wares carefully hung up and laid out for sale touch me in a place that's practically indescribable. Each and every table and booth of even a swap meet, MARKET, speaks to me in some manner and behooves me to respond with respect and appreciation. And I can know a people and an area by what they are selling and how they sell it. I can tell you in a about three glances, how over or under inventoried you are; how comparable your pricing is, what profits your pricing will yield given your inventory strategy. How do I know this? Because I am one hell of a shopper and an even better accountant. I have experience deep and wide in just this: shops and shopping.

But what sticks with me tonight is this: how come I have never had my own shop? Why have I never hung out my sign, only my shingle? Am I truly that monastic that I just watch, everything, and then write about it? Like Aquinas?

I don't know what this means, if anything. But the sun sets as the torches are lit for another inky night on the beach here in the Pacific and life, as one of my favorite buddies checked in today to report, is good.

JBelle
On Assignment
Waikoloa Beach, Hawai'i

I have always said that Hawai'i is a Polynesian Montana. Obviously, the spectacular mountains play into that observation. And the quirky, adorable people fold into that, too. But Hawai'i, like Montana, has a culture that is highly definable and unique only to them. Last night, at dusk, on the way home, there were Donkey Crossing signs. Apparently, they have feral donkeys in Hawai'i. Didn't know. Never been anywhere in the world where they have and warn you about feral donkeys.

About 10 years ago, you started seeing little tiny golden flip flops on chains for sale in the jewelry stores here. Now flip flop jewelry lives in a highly evolved state, crafted in platinum with diamond and ruby hibiscus flowers adorned with pearls. Paris has the most beautiful shoes of any place I have ever been, yet in Paris, they do not put beautiful, finely chiseled renditions of the world's most beautiful shoes on chains around their necks. They just don't do it. Here in Hawai'i, they do.

Last night, at the cash register at the Union 76, they had a little basket with little eggs, maybe hen's eggs, that were stamped with a letter configuration. You can get an egg at the cash register at the gas station in Hawai'i. Where else in the world, I ask, where else?


Aloha nui loa.

JBelle
On Assignment
Waikoloa Beach, Hawai'i

I'm on the Kona Coast, on a working vacation. For those of you who never really liked Social Studies or History, the Kona Coast is in the sublime Pacific, or as anyone who liked Social Studies and/or History can tell you, the best ocean in all of the world.

Our arrival was warm and soft, just like Hawai'i should be. It was gray and overcast, too; just like Hawai'i can be. The wind blows today and along with the gray and the soft, soft air, it leaves me uncertain, and a little anxious. It feels like the 'Pending' file is too big. Just too big. I went shopping, which always reassures me and helps me to get to know the locals. That didn't even help.

I answered emails, fired out new emails ( want everyone to know, really know, I am not slacking), sent Pandas and kidnapped unsuspecting friends on Facebook, and even worked on a tax return. But still that warm wind blows and blows.

Wonder what's coming....

JBelle
On Assignment
Waikoloa, HI