The Bunny As Designer

Today, I'm going to create a creator.

The Bunny (well known to all of you) wants to be a living, breathing part of my present (and will you please not how THAT sounds!!! ) novel, and so, while editing said novel, I have changed one of my characters from being

1. male

2. Lebanese

3. jovial and garrulous

to

1. female

2. a Southern Belle

3. garrulous, but with a snarky humor

This character, the fashion designer Jamal, now Bunny, is going to outfit my heroine, Naomi, in the cream and gold dress she will be shot in during the Academy Awards.

I agree, it's a perfect waste of a very nice dress, but it gets a center role because, well, blood looks just SO good on white and gold.

The Bunny designer has strong views on why to wear which gown to which occasion.

She tells Naomi quite clearly, "NO white dress for the Grammy! You'll be standing in front of a white wall for the interviews, and no one will notice you. Now if you want them to look but not ask too many questions, wear something that will so burn in their eyes that they'll forget what they wanted to say!" and sells her a scarlet and plum silk creation.

At the same time she allows, albeit grudgingly, the cream dress for the Oscars because, "Honey, there will be so many colors on that red carpet, no one will give a damn anyway."

The Bunny's shop is as lush and colorful as an Oriental boudoir. There are the most wonderful things to discover.

You enter through the glass door from the noisy, hot and humid Hollywood pavement and step into a haven of scent, soft music and rainbows. Bunny loves colors, and she loves opulent.

All her clothes hand-made, and the materials she uses are unvaryingly silk or velvet, chiffon or the finest linen. She believes in embroidery and pearls on her robes, and she does not think small in jewelry, either.

"Take me to the Vogue, or take me to the morgue!" she cries at one time.

Well, she cries it at the Vogue party after the Grammy Awards, and she might as well, since she's there, and celebrated.

You see, I don't like losers, and I don't like writing about them, either.

My characters may have a rough patch in their lives, it may even take half their lives, but they never, ever give up. All of them, even Naomi's bad-ass father, has a dream, and a very hard time accepting that his daughter is stronger than him in realizing hers and consequently destroying his.

The Bunny, she wants a store on Rodeo Drive, somewhere between Armani and Valentino, and for her to be the first choice for big Hollywood events.

And I have a good guess that she's going to succeed.

Go, Bunny! It's Vogue!

For the Pea!

In this picture: Tom Hensley, in Hamburg, on June 2nd, 2008. Pic taken by me.

I posted this blog on mySpace in July after our bathroom was finally newly renovated and ready to be used, and at the same time, on the Diamondville Fan Forum. The reply below was posted by Tom Hensley, Neil Diamond's pianist.

Up until today, I had a very clear conception of what luxury in its finest form meant to me.
A Porsche convertible, black, with leather seats and a Bose sound system. Or maybe Bang and Olufsen.
Trips to London whenever I feel like it, with a suite at the Mandarin Oriental so that I would only have to drop off the steps to be in Brompton Road or Sloane street, and there's a Starbucks next door, too.
Carte Blanche for the ground floor of Selfridge's, the designer purse heaven.
Mauve silk Valentino evening slippers, the 1000$ shawl, same designer, that I saw at Harrods last spring, my own MacBook, a large house on the beach in Maryland.
And of course the ultimate luxury trip, attending the soundcheck and time before the concert backstage at my favorite singer's show, but please not here in Hamburg, make that Madison Square Garden or Hollywood Bowl. Or the O2 in London, because I LOVE London.
The sound- and lighting equipment that Neil lugs around, for my musical troupe.
Only it would bring down the ceiling in our old school hall, so no.
Ah, here's another nice one: a performance with my troupe at the Royal Albert Hall!!!!
Attending the Academy Awards, but not somewhere in the back row of a balcony, no, I want to sit up front, too!
The list could go on, of course, as you all know, forever.
But today, I found the ultimate, final, to-die-for luxury right here at home:
my own shower. My very own, newly renovated bathroom.
No more traipsing to the school gym every night for a quick dip, no more brushing my teeth and washing my face over the kitchen sink! A long, hot shower, warmed towels from the brand new heater, white tiles, and also a non-clinging shower curtain (Tom Hensley, cry your heart out!!!).
Nothing, folks, nothing beats that! Believe me!

And here the reply:

I'm afraid I have to quibble...

...with your inclusion of Bang & Olufsen in your fantasy. I once made the mistake of purchasing a B&O turntable which was the biggest piece of junk I ever owned. It destroyed more records than the 1994 earthquake. I finally put it out during a garage sale, attached to a hammer and a sign that read "Bang a Bang & Olufsen $1". A lot of people banged it, but not enough to make back the far-too-high price I had paid for it. Audiophiles, on the other hand, will surely quibble with your inclusion of Bose. The mantra on the audiophile message boards is: "No highs? No lows? It must be Bose." And, now that I think of it--the Mandarin Oriental in London currently has a big construction project going on next door, so unless you like the sound of heavy machinery, you might want to set your sights elsewhere. And as long as you're toting a MacBook, it might as well be a MacBook Pro. Aside from those caveats, feel free to carry on.

Your favorite band member

Nightmares And What They Mean

Not really a nightmare, but a recurring dream, sort of.

This happens: I dream I'm on a plane, which is not nice for me to start with because I really hate flying, but here I am: in a big plane, on the runway, motors humming, the thing vibrating with the will to take off, and yes, I'm WILLING it to take off, too.

Like hell I'm willing it to take off, because all the other times it never properly did.

Well, it actually does take off, every time, but only a little bit. It takes off just enough to make it to the end of the runway, and gain enough altitude to tumble into the forest at the end of it.

Mostly, in my dream, we have to land on a road a few kilometers beyond the airport, sometimes even in a village or small town, no one ever gets hurt, the inhabitants come to look what happened, and there we are: a dazed, helpless group of travelers who made it only just into the air for two minutes or so.

The hard part is not the unplanned landing on a street.

The hard part is being stranded, and the pilot telling us we have to return to the airport, and please take the plane along, so that we can try again.

So the other passengers and I have the chore to turn around the plane and push it back all the way to the terminal, and it somehow - of course - never gets done.

Stranded.

We get served coffee by the villagers, and something to eat, and we wait for the experts to come and get us and bring the plane back on track.

I know, right, that this is the silliest possible way to dream of an airplane crash.

But the point is not the crash in itself. The point is that every time, just before we take off, I'm really PUSHING the plane to take off, and I never manage. Big time fail, with no exception.

Now I've been wondering recently if there's a message here for me.

I'm not good at interpreting dreams, but this one here seems so obvious....

Maybe I'm not pushing hard enough. Maybe my will is not strong enough. Maybe my belief in the ability of the thing to truly fly is not good enough.

Not enough.

So I wonder: will this plane ever take off for me, will it take off the day someone tells me my book will be published?

Will I then, on that night, go to bed, fall asleep and finally, finally dream that the plane soars, and I can see the forest and that stupid village and its friendly people far down below me, while we are on our way to that far, unknown destination I'm heading for?

Trite, I know. And obvious, and pathetic. But it is true, and you know what they say:

No story ever invented is as wild as true life can be.

Fly, my plane. Fly.

Look Homeward, Angel

This is the house I grew up in.

It is one of maybe twenty such wooden, simple houses that were built just after WW II in the forest outside my hometown, for soldiers who entered civil service after the war, and their families. My maternal grandfather was one of them, and so we came to live here.

My father was not with us then, so it was only my Mom, my grandparents and my young uncles in that house.

One of my earliest memories is waking up on an early winter morning, when the grown ups were having breakfast before going off to work, and sitting with them in the warm kitchen, and being fed bites of bread with butter and honey by my grandfather. My Mom, who was working for the Weather Research Institute in Offenbach at that time, was wearing, I recall it clearly, a white blouse and a dark blue, plaited skirt that day. She and my grandfather went off to work and I stayed behind with my grandmother, who looked after the house. A while later, my friends came to pick me up for play. They could not reach the bell knob, so Peter would yell at the top of his lungs, "Frau Refke!!!!" which was my grandparents' family name.

We would romp around outside all day long.

I remember when I got m first set of Lego, and how we marveled that the stones stuck together, and I recall very clearly how I used to stand in front of my grandmother's book cabinet and stare at that one volume with the blue leather cover and vow to myself that I would read it one day, just as soon as I knew how.

It was "Gone With The Wind", and actually the first "real" book I did read, and I still have that same copy here with me.

I had a dog.

He was a big, black and white mongrel named "Tell" who would go with me everywhere, patient and friendly, and sleep under the kitchen bench so I could put my feet on his warm back.

There was no central heating, but wood stoves in every room and a cooking range that needed to be fired, too, and a big hot water boiler. In the basement, there was a huge tub for laundry, which my grandmother stirred with a wooden staff and, yes, boiled it. The laundry, I mean.

My grandfather used to chop the wood for that, and once every year the coal man delivered a mound of coals into the cellar.

I said basement earlier, but it was a cellar, with dirt floor and iron doors.

The garden was full of vegetable and fruit. My grandfather grew potatoes, tomatoes, leek, cabbage, onions, apples, pears, cherries, plums, strawberries and all kinds of other things, which my grandmom would conserve in jars for the winter. There was no freezer, no fridge and no TV.

No car, of course.

My father had decided to emigrate to Brazil and gone ahead to find a job and a home, and for a couple of years, before we joined him in San Paulo, I lived in that blissful childhood dream.

For me, as a kid, everything was easy and simple.

My grandmother cooked hearty, fabulous food, my Mom was pretty and always smelled good, my grandfather was a good singer and took me for long walks and bicycle rides, and somehow the weather was always good: either it was hot and sunny, or it was cold and there was snow.

We went to see that house last Friday when my sister and I went home to visit my parents.

The family moved out of there after we returned from Brazil and into modern apartments, but I love to return there once in a while and reassure myself that in that little nook of Germany, time has practically not moved at all.

Places That Belong To You...

Leslie and Pea had me thinking today about that Mimosa trip we are going to do next summer - and hearken well!!!! - I said "Going To Do". Not "What we dream about".

The travel dates are set, the route has been plotted, the sights picked out.

Leslie said, name the places you want to see! Make a plan!

And that got me to thinking about places that I've always longed to see for some reason or other, and probably never will.

Like this one here: Hollywood.

I've always, since I was a teenager, wanted to see Los Angeles, for obvious reasons. Nothing mysterious here: Santa Monica Pier, Malibu, the Greek Theater, Hollywood Boulevard. And Disneyland. And Neil Diamond's house, of course, but only a glimpse while driving by in a car, I'm NOT a stalker.

Or this one: Chesapeake Bay.

Because in 8th grade, I had an English teacher who had a sister living on the Chesapeake Bay, and she told us often how she went to visit with that sister, and how beautiful the United States were, and Maryland in particular. I think it was she who first directed my attention in that direction, and the image of that huge bay is connected with fond memories for me.

Or here: Roanoke Island, the Lost Colony in Virginia.

Why Roanoke?

I like "Matlock". Loved to watch those crime shows, and in one of them he goes to Roanoke for some reason or other, and I loved the atmosphere, even if it was only a silly TV episode. Also, William Least Heat Moon visited the island on his travel across America, and what he wrote about, I wanted to see.

Gloucester, Massachusetts, because of the movie with "a boat that goes out to Sea and never returns", as the director put it, "The Storm", and the atmosphere of that film, no other reason.

Oh, and this one is really important: The Shenandoah Valley, because the song is so haunting and beautiful. I don't even rightly know where it is, but a place that inspires such a lovely song must be extraordinary indeed.

Oh, and this one is really important: Savannah.

Again, atmosphere. "Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil". I wonder if that graveyard really exists....

About this place: hey, do you really need an explanation? I love fun, and people, and the show. Where else would that be?

Is there one place in the whole wide world as wonderful as New York City? That town has everything, simply everything. Including my love.

Okay, I lied about New York. I've been there, but I want to go there again, very badly.

Now that I'm torturing myself editing html and uploading pics, so many more places come to mind that I really want to see in the States.

Memphis, Nashville, Paducah, Chicago, Wabasha, Atlanta... have always wanted to go to Atlanta.

What's that? We're going there?

The dream goes on......