The Waist

Last night, I watched a program featuring Cathie Jung.  She holds the record for having the smallest waist in the world (for an otherwise normal-sized woman).  She stands 5 foot 6 inches tall.  Her waist measures 15 inches—the same size as a jar of mayonnaise.  According to www.worldrecordacademey.com, her measurements are 39-15-39. 

Cathie “created” her waist by wearing corsets 24 hours a day and gradually drawing them tighter.  Over the course of years she had smaller and smaller corsets custom made so she could force herself down to and ever-smaller waist size.  In the process, her internal organs have shifted to accommodate the change.

Posted are a couple photographs I gathered of Cathie.  Honestly, when I see Cathie all I can think about are those long circus balloons clowns twist into wiener dogs.

--Mitchell Hegman

Back in the Atmosphere

The lyrics “back in the atmosphere” came to Pat Monahan in a dream.  At the time, he was a man suffering from the loss of his mother.  He had, in fact, retreated to his home, deeply saddened by the loss of his mother to Cancer.  By his own admission, she was the most important person in his life.

After waking from the dream, Pat wrote a song you likely know very well.  The song is Drops of Jupiter and is entirely about Pat’s mother.  He had in mind that she would always be with him as he composed the song.

I always liked the song.  But knowing the place where the song came from makes a difference.  

Today, I have posted a video of Drops of Jupiter with lyrics.

--Mitchell Hegman

New Year’s Resolutions

Welcome to the 2017!  This year, like a lot of other people, I have decided to adopt a few New Year’s resolutions as a way to make myself a better person.  The key to successful resolutions is not making them too ambitious.  With that in mind, here are my five resolutions for 2017.

1.  I intend to be nicer to ducks.  I am not sure what that looks like, exactly, but I am going to do it.

2.  I am going to buy some fireworks for the turn of next year because the fireworks we touched-off at midnight last night were spectacular!

3.  I am going to eat one less potato chip in 2017 than I ate in 2016.  Okay.  You got me here.  I did not actually count how many chips I ate last year.  I intend to achieve this intuitively.

4.  This year, I am going to learn the name of the weedy creeper thing with tiny purple flowers that grows in places where the earth has been disturbed.

5.  I am going to be more adult in the way I eat spaghetti this year.

--Mitchell Hegman

Color Diary: Day 3

Yesterday, I hiked and then snowshoed through over two feet of snow to reach my cabin.  Heavy snow fell for the whole time.  The entire Rocky Mountain landscape around me—top to bottom and side to side—was white and silent.  Trees, mountains, and sky dissolved into the immediate curtains of snowfall sweeping past me. 

White is not exactly a color.  Not in the same way as, say, yellow.  Yellow has a specific wavelength—a naming song, if you will.  White, on the other hand, is a compendium of all colors.  White is a mass of noise in that regard.

Yet, most of us perceive in white a certain purity.  Maybe that’s because white can also be overwhelming.  Consider how you must sometimes shade your eyes when you enter a white room filled with white light or open the door on a sunny snowscape. 

Yesterday, white snowflakes overwhelmed me as they sifted down from a white sky, waltzed through white ghost trees and swept by me, white on white as I trudged on.  The entire surround gone chill and soft and utterly flat, if not beautiful, in perfectly diffused daylight.  A kind of slow motion overtook the countryside.  For the whole time, I heard but a single brief sound.  That, a soft murmur of running water when I crossed the mostly snowed-over creek and finally saw my cabin emerge from the snow.

--Mitchell Hegman

Color Diary: Day 2

Why feelin’ down gotta be blue?

What man say that first?

Why ain’t the blue goin’ up?

We cranked them blues, fillin’ yellow pool halls with dancin’

and old men with slick women under red light.

Them old men know the black guitars ain’t weepin.’

They just hummin’ low.

And why don’t them bluebells ring

when grey wind blowin’ cross the fields?

Why them blue fish so quiet?

All we know is deep voices feel right

and night after playin,

bring warm mornin’ with sky same color as ripe apples.

--Mitchell Hegman

Color Diary: Day 1

I don’t want to live entirely in white.  Give me aquamarine waves breaking against a white beach.  Release a pure white horse into a green pasture and watch the horse gallop away so smoothly it seems made entirely of liquid.  Allow me a broad valley filled with white snow and occasional stands of green pines.  Give me snowy white hills gradually assembling themselves into distant blue mountains.

White is contradictory.

Here, we begin with white.  Born into soft white blankets.  Married in white gowns and white dress collars under white arbors filled with red roses.  In the East, beginnings are red.  Red dresses for weddings.  Red for prosperity.  White is reserved for mourning.  White for the family of the deceased.

Presented with an option, I prefer a white bird over a black one.

--Mitchell Hegman

The New

—Keep a diary where all entries are about colors.

—Learn to say “I love you” in a dozen languages.

—Fashion your own kite from fine paper and willow twigs.

—Learn the names of all the parts of a fancy wooden chair.

—Stop using poison of any kind.

—Post children’s drawings in every room.

—Whistle softly.

--Mitchell Hegman