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Charlotte Rains Dixon  

Stop The World, I Want To Get Off

I don’t really, but remember that old movie?  Or was it a musical?  Or just a joke?  I don’t know, I think it was a little before my time, but it is such a great sentence.  And it kinda describes how I feel today.  Or how I felt this morning.  I’m feeling better now, having completed a couple of assignments today and dug around in one of my in-boxes for missing emails.

But I still have not told you what ekphrastic means and it has been so long I’ve probably forgotten myself.  And I have over 100 message pertaining to my blog in my gmail account.  And comments to respond to.  And nary a post from these hands in days. Arrrggghhh.

A quick recap:  I got home from the great state of Tennessee on Friday night.  Linda and I left Gatlinburg that morning, and she handed me off to Candace at the O’Charley’s parking lot at the Lebanon exit off I-40.  Now some of y’all know right where that is.  Right across the freeway is yet another meat and three called the Sunset Diner, and Candace insisted on taking me there, even though I had made a solemn vow never, ever to eat at a meat and three before getting on an airplane.

But this one had coconut pie.  Which is almost, but not quite, as good as coconut cake. 

While the pie digested Candace drove me around and around and around and around the airport telling me about the play she is going to write.  And, I am happy to report that she is actually writing again.  She better keep it up, too, or there is going to be hell to pay.

Anyway, my plane stopped in Ontario, California, and then I had to change planes in Oakland and that plane was late and so by the time I got home to Portland and got in bed in was almost midnight and I realized I’d been up nearly 24 hours.  I fell asleep on the plane for awhile, which I just hate the thought of because I was probably snoring or at the very least my mouth was no doubt hanging open in an unattractive way. 

The next day, despite spirit lag, that weird state that happens when your spirit is still in the place you left but your body is in the place you’ve arrived, I worked all day at the Centennial Celebration of OCAC.  The beloved daughter organized the event.  She is probably the only human on the planet who could have convinced me to do that in the state I was in.

Actually, it was a blast and incredibly successful.  For those of you who don’t know, OCAC is the Oregon College of Art and Craft, an amazing private art college tucked away in the west hills of Portland.  It really is 100 years old, and in the middle of a capital campaign to update the campus, and on Thursday night at the chi-chi party for donors and board members, they were able to announce a $1.5 million donation.  Nice, huh?

Just two days earlier, I’d been perusing the gift shop at Arrowmont, another well-known craft school located in Gatlinburg, so the week definitely had a craft theme.  As well as a musical comedy and country music theme.  I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I kinda fell in love with Gatlinburg.  I mean, you just have to love a place where gorgeous crafts, tacky t-shirt shops, trout streams and Ripley’s Believe It or Not all exist side by side.  And let us not forget the stores named "God’s World," and the wedding chapels.

If the bottom falls out of the writing market, I’m moving to Gatlinburg and starting a wedding chapel.  You think I’m kidding, but I am an ordained minister with three weddings under my belt, so I could so do that.

So, all this is by way of saying, forgive me for being gone?  And I promise I’ll be back to my regular self now.  First up will be the post you’ve all been waiting for:  the explanation of ekphrastic. 

Don’t jump up and down quite so high, you’ll hurt the ceilings.

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