welcome, harlem

going home, 12.22.11

I got home from a lovely dinner last night with friends Courtney & Matt, flipped open my cell phone, and found this rather cryptic text message from an unknown number:  "Hey, this is your e."

Visions started dancing through my head of disappointed teenagers frantically looking for little bags of ecstasy, not knowing that a friend had it thanks to messaging gone awry.

Evan, being oh so pragmatic and recognizing the area code for a Seattle number, said it was probably Stepbrother Erik just wanting to make sure I had his number since he'll be picking us up at SeaTac tomorrow afternoon.

Hours later, and from the same number, a follow-up text message clarifying that indeed e was he, Erik, my brother, and that he will see us tomorrow.

It made me smile so, the simplicity of his first message, and it made me think of Pooh and Piglet and one of my favorite moments in literature ever.

And I suppose, in the reciprocal way these things go, that I must be his e, too. And am so very, very glad of it.

in which emma enters the modern age

I was rambling to Nick at a friend's party the other night about recently making a mix, and about how it involved compressing songs into a zipfile and then uploading said zipfile to Dropbox and then sending people the URL so they could listen to this mix I'd been so arduously putting together. I was very pleased with myself over my grasp of this alien vocabulary, but as I rambled on I noticed Nick beginning to look at me rather oddly.  Finally, after I'd run out of words, he just said, "Yes, that's how it's done these days. Why are you talking as if every word is underlined?"

I, abashed, went in search of another round of drinks.

bridge, 12.17.11

'observing her mother...'

"Observing her mother with her adopted daughter at the beach one day, the author muses: 'It made me think of girls -- little girls, teenage girls, even old girls like me -- who at one point or another discover, like all girls do, their sadness.'"
(Hilton Als, New Yorker, on Diane Keaton's new book Then Again)

going home, 12.9.11

(This did not bode well for 11:30pm on a Friday, though we lucked 
out and the A came within five minutes.)

'pokey the tortoise rings the bell on the transom...'

Some Cats I know

Pokey the tortoise

Rings the bell on the transom

Runs away laughing.

Nora the buzz

Nail in the coffin of love

Under cover in a ball.

Ernest the tub

Knocks over a jar of water

Steps daintily in broken glass.

Olive the small

Asleep, face in food dish

Wakes up for a homemade racecar.

Zora the elemental

Observes bubbles rising

As the dishwasher hums below.

Adelaide, minicat

Head cocked always,

Vietnamese or simply thoughtful?

Milo the stretch

Peeks out the window

But he wasn’t looking for me.

Zeke the kitten

Held up by a gauzy curtain

Gnawing at its threads.

Duncan the elder

Died at 21, was replaced

By a strapping tabby.

Llama causes trouble

Only when the knits come out,

Lying on the blocked yarn.

Ericat is me,

Cat with thumbs and

Restless sleepy spirit.

(Erica Sklar, 2011)

woolish things

Firstly, two new pieces finished and available in my Etsy shop:

beaded burgundy lace shawl

ruby red lace wrap

Lastly, and most excitingly, I was chosen as a featured artist today on Misanthropy Creations!

spotify, or, yet another stick in the craw of romance

Evan asked me over dinner last night what I was smiling about, and I had to confess that I'd been writing a blog post in my head. I had been thinking about what a lovely evening we were having, and what a treat it was to come home to the smell of bread baking in the oven, a glass of home-fermented hard cider, and Gillian Welch playing on the radio.

Except of course she wasn't playing on the radio, and somehow the thought of writing about the loveliness of her dulcet tones playing on Spotify just didn't have the same ring to it.

And this is what was making me smile as I munched on the most delicious grilled cheese sandwich ever.

"and the radio is counting down the top 20 country songs..."

"like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays..."

meeting molly, or, what's in a name (take II)

An old friend of mine recently relocated once again to New York City, this time hopefully for good (or at least for more than a month or two). He asked if we'd like to meet him and his friend Molly for dinner yesterday evening, and we said yes, we would like to very much.

After making these dinner arrangements it occurred to me that I have known two Mollies in my life, and that they have both been incredible women, and that I was ridiculously excited at the thought of meeting a brand new person at least in part because of her name.

Well, my excitement was well-founded, as it turns out, and clearly Mollies are just inherently interesting people. It didn't hurt that this particular Molly loves the Muppets, plays the fiddle, and practically crawled under the table to admire my new boots, about which I was rhapsodizing.

Also, she and Gary really seem to like each other, and that's enough to make anyone happy.