Category Archives: Human Nature

We Imagine Ourselves Great

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Digital illo from a photo: MonumentHow did We Get Here?

In our dreams, we were hip-deep in cotton picked by willing, happy, high-paid underlings and we smiled with satisfied benevolence

We were standing in the shade of magnolias and wearing our widest-brimmed Sunday hats and crisp seersucker and poplin even on Tuesday

We nibbled tiny toast points dabbed with pimiento cheese while a string quartet hummed like honeybees up at the portico

We fanned ourselves to keep cool as the sun sank, listening to mourning-doves serenade the arrival of the winking fireflies

We drank our bourbon out of snifters, neat, and never got more than a little bit hazy, what with having well padded ourselves with roast pheasant over a very long suppertime

We spoke in soft, lilting tones and said kind words to our mothers and children just because that’s how it was done

In our hearts, we were the pathfinders, the athletes who carved a road of freedom and justice across the plains to make new territories ring with accomplishment

We stood tall in the evergreens and set down mighty roots of dedication in lines running from the lakes to the mountaintops

We shipped on the seas and shouted joy with the birds of the air, and of an evening we were wont to watch the stars for signs of adventure yet ahead

We called ourselves hardy stock for braving the cold and wrapped our red-cheeked children in woolen blankets after a day spent in the bracing light of education

We wrestled with bears for the salmon that we ate, but then sat down to dine on it with all the gentility of our many foreign forefathers

We called our politics piety and our egalitarian philosophies a revelation even if everyone who didn’t qualify might not agree

And here we are today, being All-American but half-savage…

We live in the same states of grace but relish our superiority with self-congratulatory rudeness that would shame our imagined selves

We sneer at gentility as outmoded and write polemical pieces about each other with no sense of irony left in the spaces between the hard-edged words

We forget the flaws that taught us our cultured best’s fragility and instead of learning from the mistakes, we widen them as far as our waistbands and pockets can stretch

We turn a critical eye on the wounded world and manage to keep it keen despite the moral blind-spot toward our contributory, if not our sometimes causal, role

We are a nation of would-be saints dressed in brutes’ clothing…but perhaps in that, we may not be entirely alone…

If there is hope, it’s that we’ve gotten here at all, for surely those in our hearts and dreams must have been real somewhere to seem so tangible in imagination

We might still embrace the justice and benevolence we thought we had, if we are willing to strip away delusions of grandeur and the lust for power

We could take a moment, while nibbling our toast points and standing conqueror on our latest promontories of success, to offer a meal to the hungry and a foothold to the poor

We ought to care less about self-image, and more about wholeness and devotion to the betterment of those people and privileges we say we love so well

We are capable, if we watch the exemplars before and around us whose courage and kindness walk arm in arm instead of standing on opposing distant shores

We may yet become the greats that we imagine we should be, if only we stop pretending we are so and humbly take to walking toward it on the faint horizon instead…

Foodie Tuesday: I was Just Mincing Around the Kitchen, Looking for Something to Eat

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Photo: Rice, Lamb & PeasSeasoned minced lamb, rice, and peas. This hardly constitutes a recipe. But if I’m to be honest—and I should, especially since you all know this full well anyway—not much that I do in the kitchen is what anybody would mistake for culinary sophistication. What I prefer is ease of preparation, a tasty and uncomplicated ingredient list, and food that pleases my mood as much as my palate.

So the recent dish of seasoned lamb mixed with broth-cooked rice and green peas met all of my qualifications, especially as the ground meat in question was the other half of that batch I’d cooked up to fill the Jiaozi-of-Mystery some weeks back, and it had been lurking around the darker regions of my freezer ever since. Lacking great inspiration or quantities of time, I did as I often do…

I made a quick survey of the contents of my pantry: hey, a fresh jar of avocado-oil mayonnaise! I could make a plain mayo-and-honey dressing with a sprinkling of ground cardamom from the shelf next to them, zinged with one little jot of lime juice from the fridge, lightly coating an apple-and-celery salad.

I checked the fridge for the apples and celery: Check! Oh, goody. There’s still some of the rice I cooked up the other day, and it’d be a shame to let that go to waste by waiting for me too long. Guess I might just have to crack open one of the last two bottles of beer, too, while I’m at this Fridge Cleaning thing. Of course that’s the main purpose of all this action. What, you think I do this just because I’m a hungry looter?

I looted (oops!) the freezer next, because after all, I was already right next to it and it would be a terrible pity not to clean that out a little as well. What do you know. Minced lamb. It says Jiaozi Filling on the wrapping, which as you know is the virtual equivalent of telling me  not to make jiaozi with it when I am almost morally opposed to following recipes to the letter. Must be intended for, oh, I don’t know, something…with rice and…look! Over there! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Nah, different storyline. It’s frozen peas! Yes. I can use peas in this.

I decided a quick return trip to the fridge and pantry stock was in order. Something liquid but not heavy, to tie up the loose ends of a lamb-rice-peas dish that would otherwise taste a little too haphazardly crumbly perhaps. A sort of teriyaki-ish blend of Tamari, lime juice, and ginger syrup? Yeah, that’ll do it. Done and done.

And that’s how a completely nonsensical trip around the kitchen when I’m already hungry and not in the mood to fuss with food prep goes from rummaging to happily eating in about ten or fifteen minutes, give or take an empty cupboard shelf. That’s also how, I’m glad to say, a slightly late post for Foodie Tuesday gets wrapped up when I remember the meal with a certain middle-of-the-night nostalgia that knows it’s too late for snacking. That’s definitely how a lazy cook keeps from starving, and pretends to clean the kitchen at the same time. We all win. Right?Photo: Apples & Celery

Bibelots and the Backwoods

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What’s considered high or low culture—or utterly lacking in it—is, like so many of the constructs we imbue with value, determined by our own experiences and beliefs and preferences. We’re all so ready to tout the stuff we do and we like as the world’s best, and to condemn as inferior, ugly, stupid, reprehensible, or outright evil whatever is unfamiliar or not to our taste. A raffish bunch of spray-painting ruffians bring street art to the masses and it expands upward and outward to legitimize graffiti as fine art. Nameless folk art masters labor for decades in their continued anonymity, carving and building pieces out of recycled materials, ragtag odds and ends, and found objects, and some eventually are “discovered” by high-end curators of Outsider Art and get gallery representation, some dying still unknown while their work changes hands until it’s decorating some rich collector’s mansion. Much never comes to light at all. Meanwhile, other artists make millions in a few short, meteoric years despite making works that not every critic respects or every art-lover craves.

Digital illo: Abstract Thinking

Abstract thinking allows us to each see and experience all potential cultural riches in our own ways. Thankfully.

Do we admire and praise a song, a dance, a play, or a novel because it is inherently Good and meaningful, life-affirming, unique, intellectually challenging, or universally considered beautiful? Certainly, there are people who feel that definition applies to one that they prefer themselves, but there is no circumstance in which I could possibly imagine a large sector of any given population agreeing fully on such a thing, let alone the whole world. Our loves must inevitably be seen as provincial or peculiar to those who don’t have an identical context for them. Which is nearly everybody, by nature. I may come from a small farming town in an area with a still vital native American population, set in a highly varied natural landscape and a relatively liberal-leaning political region, and you may come from an urban center where classical and jazz music rule the scene, big business drives the economy, and the artistic trend is funded and heavily influenced by the conservative suburbs where the business moguls’ next underlings and their families live.

Educated or not, religious or secular, youthful or antiquated; every iteration of society and the individuals in it tends to affect the view of what culture is, and what within it is valued. I will admit to being provincial enough myself that I wish everybody on earth generally had the tasteful idea that my creative output is the highest form of written, drawn, sculpted, photographed, invented, designed, and painted culture ever, anywhere. But even I am not delusional and foolish enough to think that the remotest possibility, and short of it, I’d far rather delight in the great range of possibilities that exist in our unbelievably different wishes and tastes and expectations, instead.

Sunlight and Shadow

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Photo montage: Sun & ShadowThe last few weeks of unaccustomed rain serve as the perfect reminder, if I should need one, of how quickly change is upon us at all times and in every way. Stormy weather and lower than average temperatures notwithstanding, the volatile fluctuation between cloud and clarity, bursts of sunlight and swiftly falling curtains of darkness, wind and rain, continue to amaze me.

The visiting children in our house right now confirm in their own way that the weather is not the only source of constantly astonishing change. The three year old swings between sleepy and energetic, bored and fascinated, sober and delightedly giggling as if sprinkled with fairy dust. Her one year old sister, teething, fusses for a while in frustrated pain, not wanting to be placated—wanting relief instead—until her naturally irrepressible sunny nature wins out and she breaks into a grin like the sun bursts through those nagging, lagging clouds.

Here, the forecast has switched from yet another week of storms to one of sunshine, and that sounds welcome at the moment. But if the weather pivots suddenly again, no worries.  Sun shines more brightly in contrast to deep shadows anyhow.

Fix-It Fixations

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Any homeowner or even mildly obsessed apartment-dweller who likes customizing his or her nest, office, cubicle, or living space knows that there are numerous ‘projects’ that are never officially finished. Most DIY projects of any sort, in fact, are only satisfying right about the time they’re in their last stages of preparation and very, very newly finished. Then we’re on to the next change or update we’ve been itching to see transform our spaces. For me, the Next Big Thing is perpetual: I never quite settle down and stop having new ideas and fantasies. My now-spousal partner knew even before my dad jokingly warned him when we sprang the (not especially surprising) news of our intent to marry that it was not merely in jest Dad told him to expect to come home virtually any day of the week and find the furniture moved all over the place, half the house painted, or the chairs reupholstered. Thank goodness he’s a very flexible, tolerant guy…of course, he wouldn’t be with me in the first place if that weren’t true.Photo: The '70s Called...

Nowadays I’m lazier and less willing to spend much money on concrete Stuff if I can save it instead for our various retirement plots and plans or spend on current doings. But the urge never dies; there’s always some little tweak or To Do lurking in the back corners of my brain’s attic. The one thing I’ve learned to appreciate better about the process is the slowness of it all that used to irk me immensely. Over the intervening time between idea and execution, the possibility of improving both process and product grows, and in many instances, the availability of a better set of materials and solutions arrives as well. Though I had in mind a nifty reboot of the existing dining room fixture that was, sadly, thwarted by the outdated wiring’s channels being too narrow for me to fit the necessary updated wiring through them, my time pulling apart and cleaning and fiddling with  the entire fixture in an unsuccessful attempt to bypass the problem was long enough for a more suitable modern fixture to at last appear on the market at a price I was willing to pay.Photo: Let There be Better Light!

Likewise, the wildflower and sapling “nursery” meadow I made out of half our backyard a couple of years ago has taken that long to begin coming to recognizable fruition as such a space instead of merely a raggedy weed patch. The time spent waiting for the (semi-dead, weak little one-dollar end of season) plants I picked up here and there to take root enough to survive longer term, let alone bloom, was well worth it, since those were not seasons of rich encouragement. This year’s mild winter and spring and its extraordinarily generous rainfall are providing a much friendlier environment for the plants now old and established enough for bloom to make their first appearances. So, though you can’t see it behind the blast of rose blooms in the last photo, there have been much more encouraging bursts of growth on a number of patches of chrysanthemums, Echinacea leaves, and myriad wild cousins, with some Salvia and Cynoglossom amabile (Chinese forget-me-not) throwing bright blue sparkles into the mix of pink primroses and green leafy things even before others come into bud.Photo: A Long Winter's Nap

Kind of the way that one new idea breaks in upon the muddle of all the old ones stirring in the brain while they wait to be put in order for becoming DIY projects and household fixes.Photo: Spring has Sprung

Writing, Wandering, Wondering, and World Peace

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I dream of being a better writer and artist. Of being a lyricist or maybe even librettist. Of taking many of my designs for furniture, clothing, sets and costumes, building materials, architectural elements, jewelry, inventions, and any number of the other concepts that constantly float around in my skull into the realm of actual production and use. Oh, yeah, and I dream of World Peace, too. Really.

Some people dream of simply having a healthy child with the average odds of survival and success in an average-length life. That was not my dream, but I know that it’s one shared by millions, not least of all by the author of an outstanding blog, The Hartley Hooligans. Gwen is always a superb writer and a tremendously insightful amateur sociologist-cum-psychologist with a wicked sense of humor. She outdid herself in one recent post. It’s a spectacularly beautiful meditation on how, in general, to live life boldly, fully, and richly. The article is ostensibly aimed at mothers or parents of special needs children (the author is mother to two profoundly ‘challenged’ kids and one who’s not), but I realized as I was reading it that it’s perfect advice for anyone, anywhere. (Note: Unless you’re a self-employed home-dude like me, reading The Hartley Hooligans may occasionally prove NSFW! But never, never dull.)

I don’t ordinarily publish anything that I didn’t write or illustrate myself, but in writing, supposedly, to the parents of special needs kids, Gwen offers insights so universally applicable to any of us who find ourselves with different realities than we had fantasized or expected in life, I think others should hear her uniquely graceful, bracing, hilarious, and touching take on the how-to and why-not of holding fast to our hopes and keeping up with the business-busywork tasks that make them possible.

For myself, I just substitute for her discussion of [special needs children] with the concept of any deeply felt, long-held dreams that I’ve felt unable to achieve or too intimidated or ill-equipped to accomplish, or have thought would be forever out of my reach for any reason.  I replace her talk about [doctors and caregivers] with those advisors and companions of any kind whom I assemble to support me in my life. The advice this wonderful, earthy, real woman gives on how to make the most of any situation; to give myself permission to be human, not superhuman; to credit myself with what I do accomplish and build on it; to surround myself with real, two-way relationships of love, respect, challenge, and support; and to make the most of everything I have with gratitude, is inspiring and pretty priceless.

I’m not one for sharing others’ work on my blog often, but this really spoke to me in a direct way that I think is far more broadly applicable than the already impressive comfort and wisdom of its intended point. I suspect we can all learn from it, so I feel compelled to share it here. Enjoy.

Many heartfelt thanks to Gwen for permission to share this epically useful, sane, marvelous insight of hers with my friends here in Bloglandia!

Digital illo from a photo: Everyday Superheroes

What do superheroes look like? Ordinary people who believe, and persist. No masks and capes required. Halos optional.

A Philosophy of Orange

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Photo + text: Color Theory Revised

Photo montage: Odes to Orange

Hard Living

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A short meditation on difficulties and those who help each other survive them. Guardians and heroes aren’t always so imposing and impressive in appearance. Angels do seem to exist among us in disguise.Text: Amelioration

 

Digitally altered photo: Angel of Mercy

Angels of mercy come in all shapes and descriptions.

Between Worlds

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Photo: Not the Last RainThis strange new climate we’ve been experiencing in north Texas lately, never mind on the west coast where drought has reentered the vocabulary for the first time in eons and the northeast where winter and massive storms have ruled in a newly lengthy way, makes me think I’m on another planet. Or perhaps a parallel reality. Whatever it is, it seems a bit surreal and decidedly unfamiliar.

In the last number of days we’ve had more rain, more thunder-and-lightning, and more windstorms—even a small tornado or two touching down not far from our home—than many past years have seen altogether locally. We’ve driven along what are normally pastures and meadows and bone-dry fields and low runoff gullies and seen what looks like  it should have the iconic airboats of the southern swamps speeding through: trees and brush sticking out intermittently from extensive marshes where we’ve only ever seen dry land. The phenomenal density and lushness of the grasses and trees, wildflowers in rampant carpets blooming for weeks on end instead of days, and swarms of early insect madness all explode around us in unprecedented extremes.

Then, today, a brilliantly sunny, rather hot, almost cloudless day; it was exactly as I would expect here in a typical mid-May. The rosebush behind the kitchen, shorn before the last storm of its spectacular but doomed bucket full of blooms lest they be beaten to death by the ongoing rain and hail, decides to pop out a couple of fireworks to celebrate the sun’s return. The birds are sunning themselves on every branch and power line as though to soak up rays as quickly as they can. The local lawn crews dash madly from house to house.

Because the weather forecast says we should expect about 7 or 8 days, at least, of rain and thunderstorms to begin again tomorrow.

And isn’t that the way things go? We decide we know how the world will operate, how we expect life to move forward, what we will do within it, and immediately we are given a firm reminder that nature will do as it pleases, that change is inevitable, and that we are small jots on the map of history. The sun will blast its way through a wall of weeks-long storming and then the storms will drop their dousing movable sea back down over the landscape for another round. We make our predictions and forecasts and duck and weave to move through it all as best we can guess we should, and it all changes again.

For now, I am content to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. All of it is rather exciting and surprising and even, welcome. And there’s nothing I can do to stop change. So I’ll just enjoy the weird phenomena as best I can, soak up the rain and then stop and smell the roses between times again when the opportunity arises.Photo: Not the Last Rose

Rosemary, that’s for Remembrance

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Photo: RemembranceBecause its distinctive and elegant, resinous perfume and flavor are so potent, the herb rosemary is intimidating to use. Hyper-sensory persons like my spouse can be reluctant to choose dishes when they detect a larger presence of herbs, and this beauty is among the most extroverted and easy-to-spot on that list. It can overpower extra delicate ingredients if used heavy-handedly.

But, like many accomplished and self-assured characters, when this fabulous herb is showcased to its best advantage, it’s the life of the party, the belle of the ball. With such a unique, recognizable scent and flavor profile, it’s easy for me to see how it would be the obvious choice as a symbol, and indeed, stimulant, of memory. Whenever I pass a rosemary plant I am compelled to stroke its incense-laden leaves, their odorous stickiness seeming to hold my hand in a reciprocal grasp. I inhale a long, deep draught of that alluring oil and am transported hither and yon in time and space. Of course, I was thinking about this unusually potent attraction when I wrote about the garden just last Tuesday.

Then, last night, I was reminded of how long the name has had a special resonance for me as well. My email held a little note informing me that my great-aunt Rosemary had just arrived at my blog as a subscriber, and without the aid of any herbal catalyst to take me there, I was transported back in time to when I first remember her, when I was very young and small. This Rosemary, too, has always had for me great beauty both inwardly and outwardly, not least of all because she was kind to little me and my siblings and our young cousins and friends and, especially, to my great-uncle, but also because she was eagerly intelligent, thoughtful, and full of quiet strength.

My great-uncle, her husband and companion of so many years, died just recently, and I can only imagine what a sea change this makes in her life. It’s a strange thing when relatives we have rarely been near in person for great lengths of time, whether the distance was one of miles, ages, life paths, or a combination of these as in our case, die. My great-uncle’s sister, my grandmother, left this world in an entirely different way, having been usurped by Alzheimer’s some years before she died and thus becoming a wholly different person than the one I’d known, while still living in a place where I could manage to see her occasionally without crossing the country. Two different sorts of separation, but in both instances, the person I knew from my youth had effectively been removed from my sight and my daily life for a long time; yet when each died, I was surprised to find I experienced the loss afresh. I suppose it’s partly being able, now, to mentally return to the place and conditions in which I felt I knew them best. Memory, yes, it is a strange and magical thing.

No more icebox cookies while reading in Grandma’s living room, or watching her crochet her perfectly aligned tiny rows to make the best potholders on earth while we visited. No more leafing together through Uncle Ralph’s gorgeous black-and-white photos of a full life and all of our relatives looking ever so much younger and more mysterious and glamorous in them, or hearing him discuss anything from nature’s beauty to what was on the table to psychology with avid, probing attention. Heaven knows there are enough quirks in our extended family to have kept his keen and trained mind busy with this last topic to the degree that I can only imagine it will continue to entertain him equally in the afterlife. He’s probably our there having a good laugh over my having said so.

But as for Rosemary, both the herb and my great-aunt, the preciosity lies, not just in the beauties of memory but also in being stalwart, graceful, and remarkably unassuming for such strong and lovely creations. It is truly good to reconnect with and be blessed by those gifts. One chapter of the story ends and a new and sweet one begins.