quote of the day & grandmother-thoughts

Finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude this morning. Thought I'd share this great quote that's in the final pages:

"The world must be all fucked up...when men travel first class and literature goes as freight."

Right on, brother.

Been thinking lots about both my grandmothers, Lilly and Nellie. Grandma Lilly would be 100 years old on December 11th, if she hadn't passed away earlier this year. Can you believe she lived on her own until about six months before she died? I think she's in a good place now, and she's much more aware of everything that transpired with my family. The veils are lifted. As for Grandma Nellie, who left this realm when I was only eight or nine, I'm suspecting more and more that she's my muse, channeling herself -- her invisible energy -- into me, through my fingertips, even through Cassandra, my Queen Diva mannequin, whom I always say is my "main muse." Sometimes I think that Luna, my Jack Russell Terrier, may even be Grandma Nellie reincarnated....they certainly have the same personality, from what I remember and from what Mom tells me, and I think maybe she came back as a white, curly mass of one-eyed pirate bliss to look out for us. Mom and I were talking about Grandma Nellie recently, about her final days when the cancer was eating her up, and how she was skin and bones and light as a feather, and how Mom had to help her in and out of the tub. Then my mind drifted to Grandma Nellie's wake and how my father wasn't there because he had "an important work golf outing that he 'needed' to be at so he could cinch the deal." And then my mind drifted to slippery slopes, how in this world we need to demand respect because if we let people start to walk all over us, they will turn us into threadbare doormats.

I write all this while in a good mood. (Granted, I am tired. Bad insomnia last night.) But I'm eating coffee cake and drinking coffee, and just got a great hug from Kay, and the sun is shining into my work space and the sky is bright and blue and briskly crisp, like an early winter day back in Chicago.