The things that I do...

don’t want to lose it // it must be worth losing // if it is worth something
(Tori Amos – ‘Talula’)


don’t want to lose it

She loved regardless of the possible foolishness involved. She loved completely, with her whole self. She did what she had been raised to believe she shouldn’t, disregarding the restrictions placed on her by others. It also freed her in ways most people will never imagine or even comprehend. To this end, love was the tool that allowed her to become.

it must be worth losing

The second time it was a different kind of love. Love in progress, on the move. In the process of changing and attempting to define herself. A mother to her child—a child she would never know. The only way she could bring herself to feel, to care. She let it go, gave it away. Her choice, her decision, their acceptance. Love was a gift that allowed her to share.

if it is worth something

She found love again, halfway around the world. Love of herself, her passion and talent. Love of a new language and land. The simple act of creation and in destruction. Discipline and control, in escape and frivolity. She learned from the best, flourished under tutelage, made the knowledge her own. Love was a lesson in mastery and contradiction.


Pippa Kerr//Last Call//188 (not including lyrics)

Her mother was still trying to keep up appearances, uphold the pretense of a perfect family. Pippa wasn’t. Hadn’t been since she’d returned from college, brokenhearted and pregnant. By November, her normally slight frame had begun to already show signs of pregnancy: fuller breasts, a swell to the curve of her belly, thicker, shinier hair.

Her mother’s solution had been to tell people that it was the dreaded freshman ten that refused to leave, and on this particular occasion, had forced Pippa into a body restricting, breath stealing corseted affair of a dress. It was physically uncomfortable, something she suspected her mother intended from the outset, and emotionally painful. She was hated and more, the child she was carrying was abhorred.

And yet, at just nineteen, Pippa hadn’t quite been pushed to the point of not wanting to redeem herself in the eyes of her parents. She meekly went along with the dress, the angry looks and accusatory tones, agreed to the dinner party and the show of wanting a birthday party.

The guest list had been typical of her mother’s soirees: business partners belonging to her father’s firm and their spouses, women she played bridge with at the country club, the minor local celebrity of the day…no one from Pippa’s so-called circle of friends. Not that it mattered; she hadn’t spoken to any of them in months, most of them still away a school. Where she should have been. Another point her mother belabored at every turn.

It had been a tiring bore, a formal dinner affair with multiple courses of foods that turned her stomach. Not that she had much room to eat what with the bodice of her dress cutting her in half, but Pippa attempted to choke down the caviar, the lamb, the nauseating snails in garlic sauce. She did refuse to so much as sip her drink during the champagne toast in her honor. Some things she just wouldn’t be a party to.

Under the guise of feeling overwhelmed she excused herself, taking brief refuge in the kitchen and accepting the only genuine well wishes of the night—the ones from the house staff. Her reprieve was short-lived, her mother fast on her heels, coming into the kitchen only moments later, needing to be a conscientious hostess and assure that the cake would be served on time.

Or more to the point, to take yet another shot at her daughter.

They had stood on opposite sides of the kitchen island, perfectly decorated cake situated between them, candles yet to be lit. It wasn’t until she dared meet her mother’s cold gaze that the older woman spoke.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, would you look at that?” She gestured to the standard birthday wishes written on the cake’s surface, “They misspelled ‘whore’.”

Shattered in the annealing oven. Besides being a mess to clean up, I feel like I spent my entire morning working for nothing. I think this is why I refuse to work on commission or make anything other than for myself.

Or at least, this is the excuse I like to use.

(Editors – ‘Blood’)

“” Alessandro murmured in quiet approval as he stood behind Pippa, absently twisting and turning her curly red locks in his hands, tucking them into the back of her shirt to keep the hair from being further singed in the fire’s heat. He was like that, gentle and quiet when she did something right. One little mistake and he’d be screaming in her ear, gesticulating wildly and cursing her into the next decade. He had a flair for the dramatic, to say the least. “, Pippa…keep going, do not take the time to think, just feel it, . Feel the pull…let gravity, , like that. .”

She’d been there, in Italy, apprenticing with this man for nearly two years. So much learned and still feeling like so much more she needed to know. She had the basics, understood the process but now came the hard part. Learning to trust her instincts, knowing when to break the rules to let creativity rein.

“ Faster, hurry…” He was reaching for the pipe then, not controlling, merely assisting as she spun the heavy rod. Keeping it balanced for her, his hands so much larger and stronger. Calluses thicker. His sense of timing perfected. “Look at it, Pippa! See what you make here, !”

Pippa laughed at the praise, laughed more at grin on the old man’s face as they worked in tandem, watching as the glass thinned and flared, fanned out from the centrifugal force they were creating in the sweltering studio. Faster, they turned the pontil, hand over hand hers and his, moving in sync. “ You’re crazy!”

Later that evening, hours later, they sat on the terrazzo steps that made up the front of Alessandro’s home. Drinking wine bottled from vineyards belonging to his sister in Tuscany. Sharing a loaf of bread baked fresh by his neighbor. Between them sat the vessel she had been spinning. A platter of vibrant colors, the process of marvering it—rolling it over a marble slab layered in chemicals to add color to the glass, all Pippa’s own doing. She’d done it all herself: the initial gathering of molten glass, forming the first bubbled shape with breath from her own lungs, the following gathers, back and forth to the marver, reheating it in the glory hole. All he had done was watch. Watch and spin as her second pair of hands.

That had been her job for the longest time. Today, master handed over the reins to the apprentice and let her take control. And she’d done . He was proud, she could tell by the speculative glances he kept giving the platter. It had only been in the annealing oven for a few hours, the glass so thin that it didn’t take long for it to gradually cool. Very tricky, what she had done. Avoided the stress fractures common to a piece so delicate.

“…you have the touch. A gift. It’s not only a talent, not just a skill. A gift. ” He took her hands in his, thumbs rubbing over the rough skin of her palms before lifting each, in turn, to his lips for a tender kiss. “A gift.”

“, Alessandro…thank you. I couldn’t possibly—“

“No, no. You do not thank me for this, Phillipa. You thank the Mother Mary, you thank the Holy Father. You thank these.” He lifted her hands again, squeezed them tightly. “This gift I did not give to you, you had it all along. I see it. I knew. When you came around my shop. When you with that awful American Italian asked me for work. When you didn’t cry every time I yell at you. When you get burned and you kept working. I knew, .”

She smiled at him then, always picking on her Italian even as his English sometimes left something to be desired. She never once commented on it. “I had a good teacher.”

“The best.” Oh, that machismo. He had it in spades. He dropped one of her hands to run a finger along the rim of her glass. “This is very good. Very lovely.”

Releasing her other hand he lifted the platter and looked her right in the eye. “But is only one piece. Promise you can do it again, just the same.”

She bit her bottom lip as she returned his gaze, blue eyes fixed on dark brown. It was a challenge; she recognized it. She had been flying high all evening with a sense of accomplishment but he’d never let her get too full of herself. He was a good teacher for a reason. “I promise.”

“.” He let go of her platter and watched it shatter across the terrazzo, a million glimmering slivers catching the moonlight. “Tomorrow.”

“I promise.”


Pippa Kerr//Last Call//802

I'm weak. And a big, total softy. While I was out today this guy was trying to find a home for this little guy. I picked him up and just couldn't hand him back. He's mine. He's so sweet. And no, I will not be clipping his ears and tail. I like them floppy and wagging.

I named him Mr. Beaker. Say hi. I love him.

There are days when I really despise the hoi polli and having to pretend to be just like one of them. Today would be one of those days.

And knowing this, I'm completely disgusted with myself. I'm no better than they are even if I find certain things about blue collar lifestyles to be completely gauche.

I'm a snob, an effete snob.

And am eating dinner out of a Tupperware bowl with a plastic spork.

I should be flogged.

I've been listening to this one a lot lately.

I turned this:




Into this:



What did you do this week?

1. Britney Spears
2. American Idol
3. BUGS
4. My iPod being dead
5. Barstool butt crack
6. Creepy old men hitting on me at work
7. Brussel Sprouts
8. Cup O' Noodles
9. Fast Food
10. Never getting a date for anything because I'm always working weekend nights.

I have this thing. Compulsion. Addiction. I have no self-restraint whatsoever when it comes to those vending machines at the grocery store. You know the ones, with the tacky little metal rings that will turn your finger green. Stickers. Slime. Bouncy balls. Just…stuff. For quarters.

When I was growing up my mother absolutely forbade, on the rare chance that we were any place that had them, me from having any of that wonderful junk in the machines. We all know what that does to a kid, right? Makes them want it even more. Need it, even.

I once snuck out of a hotel room to get my mitts on a jelly bracelet from a vending machine across the street in this greasy little deli. My parents would have been struck with horror if they knew I went into such a place, never mind the rubber hoop I was after. I got it though. It was semi-transparent and neon pink. I kept it in my pocket for months.

You’d think I’d have grown out of that, right? Nope. I absolutely cannot walk past a bank of those things without putting at least one quarter in them to get something. I once used an entire roll of quarters to get the exact color bouncy ball I wanted out of a machine. I have an entire bucket of little treasures sitting in my apartment. One of those big twenty gallon buckets janitors use to mop the floors with.

I make jewelry out of some of it; sometimes I just give people random little gifts. Who doesn’t like a red sticky hand? Ball of silly putty? Sometimes I’ll just give whatever it is to any kids standing at the machines with me. It’s fun.

Something I look for in a significant other? Oh, well…I guess it would have to be something uh…significant because I haven’t had one of those yet. I’ve had dates. I’ve had boyfriends but no one I’d ever think of as my ‘other’. No one special enough, no one that makes me think, ‘hey, this is what I’ve been missing in my life’. No one that just gets me, I guess.

Know what I’d really like in that significant other, significantly? He’d never call my art a hobby. He’d never accuse me of ‘playing with glass’ or tell me to find a real career. He wouldn’t refer to the time I spent in Venice as ‘a wasteful indulgence’ and he wouldn’t mock my decision to stick with it despite…oh, never mind. Now I’m just ranting about my parents and this isn’t what any of this should be about.

I want someone who has a passion in life for something. Whatever it is that they do. I want someone who likes to laugh and have fun, not take everything so seriously. I want someone who will dance in the rain and have pillow fights with me. I want someone who will take a chance, isn’t afraid of risk and maybe, just maybe isn’t scared to fall on their face while they’re at it.

Someone handsome wouldn’t be bad either.

Ten Childhood Memories

1. Piano lessons…my instructor was a wrinkled old stiff-lace man, but once my nanny deposited me and left? We’d play chopsticks and Heart and Soul instead of boring old Bach. Plus he always wore bowties instead of neckties. I liked that.

2. Fishing a frog out of the pond and putting it in the teapot before mother’s bridge game. Pearl clutching and screaming, oh my!

3. Nana always having peppermints in the bottom of her couture handbags.

4. Being fitted for a new riding habit every time I grew an inch.

5. Jumping the crossties without a horse.

6. Summers in Martha’s Vineyard. I saw Jackie Onassis once and thought I’d met bone fide royalty.

7. Culpepper, my pony.

8. Playing with dripping candle wax and using the hot liquid to make new shapes. I guess it was inevitable that I’d be making glass some day.

9. My first tour of Europe. Western of course. I don’t remember much but I do like looking at all of the stamps in my passport. And I remember everything seeming so large and looming, grand in scale.

10. Reading Jane Eyre for the first time.

Roaring fire and heat almost unbearable, flames licking at metal rods and molten glass. It sounds almost alive with its low grumble and crackling pops. She has sweat dripping from her brow. And down the side of her neck, too. It puddles in the small of her back. Her skin itches from sweat falling, drying on the surface. Baked back into those slender muscled arms.

The only break in her concentration as she continues to turn, spin, roll the tools of her trade is a quirking of one eyebrow. Just enough action to indicate that she’s not oblivious to her body’s response to the environment. The acrid, overpoweringly sharp smells of hot metals and burning chemicals mixing with human sweat and the occasional bit of singed hair mingle and make her want to wrinkle her nose, sneeze. But she won’t. Can’t. Her hand is well trained ignoring the impulse to reach, rub at the irritation.

There is so much discipline and control, rigidity and precision that it seems almost contrary to the fluid melt she is gathering on a hot pontil. Curving and flowing, it looks something like sugary ribbon candy as she joins it to the lip of a curved vessel already blown out and rounded. Pulls and loops it with a pair of pliers, and constantly pushing it back into a flame to keep it hot, malleable.

There now; perfection.

She switches tools again, this time a file she dips into a container of cold water then with a steady hand, brings it to the neck of her vase, touches it where warm pipe meets hot glass. A sizzle and a sharp crack as she strikes the file with a mallet and the vessel is free. Lying on asbestos lined pad. With a practiced act of grace, she slides her hands into a pair of mitts and carries her creation to an annealing oven, the final process in cooling, curing her work.

She takes the chairs, one by one, from the tabletops and turns them right side up.



Plugs in the juke box and selects a few songs, letting canned music fill the empty bar.



Ties an apron around her waist.



Her hair gets pulled back from her face even if a few wild ringlets refuse to be tamed.



Notepad is tucked into a pocket, pen just beside.



Wipes down tray after tray of clean glasses, ensuring there are no spots and streaks.



Someone else is adjusting the lighting, making her laugh with the playful strobe light effects on the bar.



Citrus fruits are washed and then sliced into wedges, placed in bins full of ice.



She sorts the cash register drawer, makes sure there is tape and ink in the printer.



Plasters a smile upon her pretty face, unlocks the front doors.



It’s going to be a good night.

Last Call, Staten Island, New York

You can find me here five or six nights a week, most weeks. I love my job. Lately people have been accusing me of working PR for a certain band, and yeah sure I may mention them a lot but that's only because I've listened to them play twice a week for almost a year now. They are amazing. But they aren't the only good act we book, and even on nights when it's just the juke box playing we have a fun crowd of regulars and love seeing new faces too. I promise the service is top notch.

You haunt me in my dreams
Everywhere it’s you I see
Trying not to think so much about you
Can't you ever just let me be?
I want to stop this maddening slow dance
The twisted, one-sided romance
My back is turned on you
Now please stop calling to me
In that gentle easy way you always do

Lover that’s not meant for me
You’re the one I’ve been looking for
You’re the one I adore
Lover that keeps tormenting me
Don’t you see I’m the one for you

The fantasy fell apart at the seams
Everything beautiful I imagined
My lifetime of happiness with you
Failed, it never would have happened
If you would have given us the chance
Given me more than just a passing glance
All those things I loved about you
You turned out not to be
And still my heart won’t believe it’s true

Lover that’s not meant for me
You’re the one I’ve been looking for
You’re the one I adore
Lover that keeps tormenting me
Don’t you see I’m the one for you

Lover that’s not meant for me
You’re the one I’ve been looking for
You’re the one I adore
Lover that keeps tormenting me
Don’t you see I’m the one for you

~~Phillipa Kerr 2008

Trust is a funny thing, isn’t it? Just look at the definitions there. There’s one event in my life that all five of those meanings brings to mind. It’s not something I speak about to anyone. Not that it’s a great secret, it isn’t. It’s simply a private thing. A choice I made that isn’t up for debate so I think it’s better to not volunteer information about it for the most part. If you need to know, I’ve surely told you.

[locked from everyone ]

1. I trusted them with the most precious part of me: a child that was created, at least on my part, from an act of love and selflessness. I met them (and so many other prospective parents) long before I gave birth to that six pound, three ounce baby girl. There was just something about them from that first meeting that struck me, let me know I was doing the right thing in selecting them out of the sea of virtual strangers.

2. This one really goes without saying. They adopted her. Made her theirs. Gave her a family and the home she deserves.

3. I hope that she gives them the same. The loving bond between parent and child that they so longed for.

4. Me. I had to trust myself. And I do. I know I made the right, best, decision when I decided to continue the pregnancy. I know I did the right thing by giving her up as well. I’m happy that something beautiful and perfect came out of what turned into a lot of heartache. I’m so happy that I could change the lives of that couple for the better, that I could give that to a baby as well. And I know I did the best thing for myself by letting go and giving myself permission to start my life anew.

5. I trust that one day she’ll understand my choice, that I did it for her. Should her parents ever choose to tell her that she’s adopted, I trust that they will also tell her that she was special enough, loved enough by me to be given the best life I could assure for her. And that was the one she has now, with the people that wanted a child more than anything else and they wanted mine.

“It hurts! Oh, my God…make it just stop!” Completely undone and screaming in pain, eyes wide with fear. All the prep schools, private lessons, moneyed friends and world travel couldn’t change the fact that child birth was a messy, painful and at times terrifying undertaking.

Especially if you were a nineteen year old girl who was facing this head on and alone.

Her choice, of course. This had been her choice. Pippa tried to remember that as a nurse slid an arm behind her back, pulled her into a half seated position. Another one was pushing Pippa’s leg back even as the girl grabbed at her own knees.



A scream, a wail, a primal grunt and then a gasp as she collapsed back against the sweat-soaked sheets—it was done. She knew because she suddenly felt hollow. She hurt but it wasn’t with fierce intensity. And there was a baby crying somewhere in the room.

She kept her eyes closed, didn’t want to see. But oh, she could hear. Angry. That’s what Pippa thought, the baby sounded angry. She. It was a girl. That much could be gathered from the other voices. She was angry.



And Pippa was very sorry. Sorry that she was here, that her life had turned out this way and sorry that she wasn’t keeping this angry, screaming girl. That’s why she didn’t want to look at the child; afraid she’d renege on the adoption that had been put in place months prior. Maybe she was sorry for that too.

And then it was quiet, the baby gone. Taken to the nursery perhaps or to meet her new parents. Pippa didn’t know and she didn’t ask. She was tired, bone-weary and emotionally drained, and yet she wasn’t done here. Not yet. She gave in and followed the nurse’s commands, the doctor’s instructions. One more push to deliver the after birth.

What comes after the birth? No more. That’s what Pippa decided. No. More. No one would tell her what to do any more. No one would take away her choices, paint her into corners and nobody was going to take anything else away from her.