Lucy Simpson's Open Salon Blog

Charicatures

Tue, 29 May 2012 16:05:58 -0400

The Gossip

Black Cat

Mrs. Minotaur

A Smile Not Part of a Pattern

Fri, 25 May 2012 18:05:49 -0400

In fourth grade, Sister Catherine Anne, ruled the homeroom. Big as a tank and as unlovable, she taught us our basics, calling us names and humiliating us. It was in a lovely brick suburban Catholic school that we were imprisoned for six hours of our day, save for PE, art and music.

We walked with our hands folded, as if in prayer. This was how we walked in the line. I went to the left, when told to go to the right, just to be contrary. I thought the devil was in me. I gave the wrong answers just to be contrary. I didn't want to be there. I never wanted to be there.

We walked from the concrete playground to the red brick school, through the heavy fire doors, doors that could chop off our fingers if we weren't careful. The gym teacher held the door. She was tall and stout, really built like a brick house, with light blond hair. I imagined her to be German, because I thought, at that age, that all Germans had ice-blue eyes and blond hair and that they were all stout frauleins or stout herr so and sos in leiderhosen with beer steins in their hands.

Our desks lined up perfectly for they must. My skinny butt always ached against the wood. Sister Catherine Anne i\was our tormentor. Woe to the child who missed going to the bathroom during lunch. She or he would not be allowed out all day. If he or she should piss skirt or pants, the unfortunate wretch would be made to stand in front of the class and the other kids ordered to laugh.

The most peculiar thing about Sister Catherine Anne was that she never smiled. It was not so odd in the school, that she called the slower kids like me, stupid. All the other nuns and lay teachers smiled a few times a day. She never even moved her mouth much when she spoke, but talked through clenched teeth, as if she were always angry.

The most chilling moment was the day before the beginning of Christmas break when she broke with her usual pattern. Right before the dismissal bell, she smiled and through this smile she said Merry Christmas. It was an unwholesome grin, one like the witch gave when she lured in Hansel and Gretel. I wished she hadn't done it, for it chilled me to the marrow.

Perhaps as children, we took comfort in the routine, however fucked up. Her nastiness was expected. A smile and a good wish for a Merry Christmas was certainly out of character. No, she was not visited by three ghosts the night before. She was the same old mean, clench-mouthed, nun when we returned to school in January. Perhaps that smile grew once a year like a sickly, malnourished bloom. Maybe she forced her face to crack into that unfamiliar form for Jesus.

My mother told me to forgive the mean nuns, but not the mean lay teachers. She told me that many of them had been forced to accept the veil, because their families were poor or because they were ugly. Those older nuns may not have chosen their lives and may have felt bitterness toward their young charges, who would likely be able to choose their own paths, being born in a freer time.

Sister Catherine Anne is probably dead by now. I will never know if she ever smiled again.

Manic Depression

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:05:57 -0400

Listening to Manic Depression
I hide behind my shades
eat salade nicoise in the sun

Take in a woman spilling out
of her red cowgirl
dress – her boots up to her
dimpled knees

She sings Jimi's song slow
Bipolar - the frenetic notes
in my family anthem

One that probably began
on an Ethiopian plain
when gods still
sang to man

Lucy Simpson, 8/2011

Peak to Prairie: a Photo Essay

Mon, 7 May 2012 11:05:44 -0400

An area is more than its landscape, more than its buildings, more than numbers in a survey. The people are dynamic, are changing their enviroments, are creating.

Yesterday the family and I went downtown to Colorado Springs. I love to watch people and enjoy conversations with strangers on a regular basis, but I have always been shy about taking photos.

I realized yesterday that my camera gave me a ticket to talk to anyone who looked interesting to me. Halfway through the day, I was feeling enriched not only visually, but spiritually and emotionally. I felt if there is a god or a goddess or some hermaphrodite up in the sky, he-she-it was surely smiling down on me.

This fabulous woman was the first one I noticed when we got to Acacia park. She was strutting to the music, flinging her fabulous pink boa this way and that.

This lovely girl's mother said I could take her picture. It was a joy to see her dancing away in the grass.

I met this man, who was panhandling the corner. He asked me if I appreciated all I had. Told him I did, because I almsot didn't have it. He let me take his picture, but said it was worthless, because he was just a tramp. When I said "no one is just a tramp," he started to cry.

A very short while later he collapsed from too much drink. I wanted to stroke his forehead to soothe him as I did my alcoholic mother. We are really all part of the same family. An ambulance took him away. He probably will never get sober and will die soon.

These leaves in the coffee shop seem so human with their veins, their reaching up to the light.

These two friends, wearing furry hats, protest recent legislation regarding reproctive services.

A Unitarian reverend and her wife are a beautiful couple!

A young make-up artist from the UK, who is expecting her first child, a baby girl. I was struck by her classical pose for the camera.

As we walked to the van, we saw this beautiful woman with silk flowers in her hair. She could've stepped out of a Renaissance painting, a Botticelli maiden. I lobrf her wry smile and her strong sense of self.

A Pacifist Shops in a Military Town

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:04:12 -0400

I

Wolf spiders hop between the knuckles
of a thirsty Chinese Elm

Her hair is perched on her head like a well-oiled cat
in this blue-holy-hour-chapel-quiet
Sleep the murmuring noon bees

Little children are dying somewhere
as sky tallow melts over red rocks
The keys to the garden are out of reach

Our leaders, should they get a splinter,
they kill a forest, while we continue to
to watch children chase ice-cream trucks

These soldiers once were
children seated in the crooks of trees
the whorl imprint of bark on their legs

the wood of grandmother's bones
Their own bones were green saplings
They loved the dry husk of a grandfather's kiss

This is the same story differently dressed
The bones of the whales in the corsets
still carry the song

Tin blue light with a bit of copper gone green
as the old washboard sits in the basement, rusting
Each one mourned a youth

She wears a dress, purple as a newly-hatched eggplant,
as she rings up my purchase of bearded parsnip roots.
The soldiers in desert fatigues are coming or going.

This also was a dream of my childhood,
to see the world.

Ditties came over in steerage with the taste of brine in them
withers of brindled light in afternoon
Remember your green youth-suit

that sacristy of wild birds
you held in your rib cage
until night came and
you could dream-fly
past the rafters

If grandmother could stitch you together, she would
sew back on your arms and legs
Your lover would lick the apple from your lips

Bomb blasts creep note by note up each your vertebrae
as lark buntings flit past
I want to tell you
that you shall be the bear who marries the maiden
as the old tale goes

Your mother smelled of bic pens and the ocean
You carry that with you
as the tawny dry grasses softy sing

Lucy Simpson, 4/2012