Category Archives: Human Nature

Naturally

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Along with all of the other, perfectly legitimate and obvious, reasons that I celebrate every year when I am remembering the arrival of my next-younger sister on her birthday–the first one remembered mostly anecdotally given my tender years on the occasion, and all of the subsequent ones fitting days for delighting in the gifts with which her continued presence graces me and all of her circle of influence so consistently–I rejoice in the greater sense of appreciation for nature that she has given me.photoShe is something of a bouquet herself. Indeed, she is beautiful in the way of pretty things throughout nature, and also filled with liveliness and energy and purpose and growth that inspire me and amaze me regularly. I look on her as an enhancement of the world a little like a human bloom in its garden, unfolding each day and year with new surprises and joys that reinforce the very image of goodness in life.photoIn a more concrete way, with her love of the outdoors and its grand presents, pleasures and promises she has taught me and continues to teach me to appreciate the natural world as well. As much as our garden-genie mother shared her love of interacting with the created spaces in nature and even getting outdoors appreciatively on day hikes, in parks and on strolls wherever we could, the number-three sister in our quartet has given me yet greater love and sympathy for the breadth and depth of possibility in all those realms of nature and more. I will never keep up with my sister’s skill and prowess when it comes to being physically ‘outdoorsy’ as athlete, gardener or explorer, but every time I step out any door into the untrammeled world, I do and will see much of it as a living bouquet paying tribute in return to one of nature’s loveliest flowers.photoHappy birthday, my dear sister, and I send you these little pictures and words in token of my love that spans from your first blooming in the world to the end of my seasons.

Little Dragon with a Big Appetite

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Ever feel tiny? Like everyone and everything else in the world is, by comparison, huge and powerful and towering and you can’t begin to compare, let alone compete? Have you let yourself be measured in comparison with anyone or anything else? Yeah, me too.graphite drawingBut isn’t it worthwhile to break out of that miniscule self-containment somehow? Isn’t the most valid measure of my worth found more truly in what I do as my best self, in what I become over time by growing into a finer and grander version of me? What you see is what you get–for now. And then I plan on continuing my progress as well as I can manage, for as long as I live. That’s all I can promise. With one little [ahem] caveat: I know that the best defense against seeing myself as inadequate to any task is the blessed ignorance of my true inadequacy. So I promise as a small [ahem] part of the larger issue that I will do my best to forget that there is such a thing as the improbable, let alone the impossible, and just get on with living my life, however insignificant it may seem likely to be. [Come on along.]

I’m No Coward

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Would that I had the blithe wit and urbane persona of a Noël Coward, but alas, I operate on a lower and more plebeian plane. And for those who are keeping score, yes, I am a big chicken, if that’s what you were reading in today’s title. Still and all, I think of myself as being less than hideously fearful when it comes to self-exposure as an artist.graphite drawingThough the upshot of all this may be that my audiences become unwitting consumers of drivel and bilge at least part of the time, I also remind myself that there is some credible evidence, historically speaking, that the greatest masters of the many forms of art are represented in the present age only by those portions of their respective oeuvres that they or others chose to retain. Long have I wished that I might gain access to, if you will, the Rubbish Bins of the Old Masters to see something more accurately representing the whole of the bodies of work that led to the known and treasured glories. So here I am, letting all and sundry look into the underwear drawer of my art closet, so to speak. After all, I think that I’m merely admitting to what my betters may have left to the imagination.digital artworkSo I’ll keep showing off process and behind-the-curtain action from time to time, knowing as I do that not only are folk wonderfully gracious and patient with me even when critiquing but also , and more importantly, that I appreciate those of my fellow artists who are willing to share the same access to their gifts with me. We all have our weaknesses. But when it comes to showing off my work, I’m no coward.

O Ye Subversive Saints

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digital artworkRebels, radicals and reformers of the human superhero type are rare enough that we need to remember them and recognize the astounding things that they have accomplished despite their mortality. In those who–whether born to the task, having climbed to it willfully, or even having pretty much fallen backward into it–manage to effect positive change in the world, we are not only given an example but the encouragement to believe that we can and should attempt our own reforms and renewal, however small. Remembering today the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we are in turn reminded of the activist for whom he was eventually made namesake, Martin Luther, and of all the other agents of change who have marked our history by following, or better yet, setting, such grand examples.digital artwork from a photoThat Dr. King’s life in some surprising ways echoed that of his historic predecessor, from his questioning of not only social norms and civil authority but also the very early challenge he made as an astute youth to the principles of the very faith that later helped shape his determination to work for reforms. This should perhaps be true of each of us in some small degree: that we take it as our birthright and perhaps even our very nature to challenge any sort of thing, small or large, that smacks of injustice, of cruelty, of greed, or any other of the constant failings of humanity, and that we dare to speak out on it, if not act. To do so is best made possible when we know that we tread in the footprints of many who seem to us far mightier than ourselves, but who in their own turns very likely sought out the same comfort and encouragement from their own forebears, as we all must.digital artworkI, for one, am deeply thankful that there have been, and are, so many exemplars whom we can name our guides and helpers in this, because the need is never-ending. Peacemakers and healers and all of those who in their ways both magnificent and minute seek to better the lives of those around them will always be in high demand. May we all show our gratitude by heeding the same call as well as we are able.digital artwork from a photo

The Waiting Game

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Life as we know it in the present day is characterized as a hurry-up-and-wait proposition. We tend to bemoan the pressures at both ends of the spectrum with something like a sense of martyrdom, thinking this push-pull unique to our era. But it’s always been so. One only has to study a smidgen of history to recognize the same complexities of speed and sluggishness, and note the same anxiety regarding both, in our predecessors.

Now, I’ve never been pregnant or had a child of my own, but I have it on reliable authority that that process is rife with opportunity to experience the perfect distillation of both forms of anxiety. I can say, from my years of babysitting and cousin-watching and then a couple of decades of teaching, that regardless of the legal or moral or biological relationship, the ties we have with those younger than ourselves bring out such parental fears, anticipation, dread and excitement with greater intensity than pretty much any other kind of connection can do. Terror and hope will always intermingle in the heart if we have any concern for the young, filling the stasis of Waiting from the moment of their first cellular appearance and well beyond into full adulthood.graphite drawingLife and safety and comfort are all such tenuous things, it’s a wonder we don’t all burst into spontaneous flame from the sheer tension of our worries and our desires. The only assurance we have is the history demonstrating that our forebears somehow survived their concerns over us, and theirs in turn for them, back into the far reaches of historic memory. The tipping away from apprehension and toward faith in what lies ahead is the gift that enables us to wait, no matter how illogical and impossible it may seem.

Were My Eyes Red!

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I think I had a deer-in-the-headlights moment on a recent morning. When I went to wash my hands and looked up into the mirror, a bizarre monster was looking back at me and I froze. I stared uncomprehendingly, quite unable to make sense of the world for a moment, what glared back at me from the looking-glass was a creature with the strangest pair of burgundy wine-colored eyes I’d ever seen.

digital image from a photo

BOO! [artist’s rendition of conjunctival googly eye]

A quick assessment–possibly including a bit of arm-waving to see if the monster waved back at me in perfect sync or, rather, in reply to my advances–convinced me that I was looking at myself after all. An inexplicably unrecognizable self, but mine all the same.

I wasn’t in pain. There was no horrible itching, no creepy gunk running down my face. None of my limbs seemed to have detached themselves from my torso. I could feel no symptoms of anything untoward at all, and had awakened feeling perfectly dandy, with no sense of impending doom whatsoever.

As it transpired, the red-eyed madness was evidently a friendly reminder that I’d slept the night on a hotel pillow unlike mine. Perhaps the pillow’s stuffing or even, I suppose, the detergent with which the bed linens were laundered, bestowed upon my freakish new beauty by the agency of an allergic spasm of hyper-chromatic hilarity.

The really surprising thing about this whole episode is the series of alarms it set off in recognition that I often, well, don’t recognize the perfectly obvious in front of me until its moment has already passed. Ah yes, those many times when I’ve sat talking with a person and not realized until later just whose presence I’d taken for granted–whether an acquaintance I’d not recognized thanks to my prosopagnosia, a celebrity I’d not recognized by failing to connect name or title or other clues, or any other person I’d not fully appreciated in the moment. It’s a pity we are sometimes so blind to who or what is right in front of us that we don’t recognize how fantastic our lives really are, and how much richer for the company we keep.

If I need further periodic reminders, I hope the great people who are around me will kindly give me the needed nudge. So very much kinder and cheerier a nudge than, say, the appearance of an alien in the mirror. And lest I have failed to make it clear to you, this is also my time to say Thank You and express my appreciation to all of you good people who do give me the time of day, regardless of my thick-headedness or my bleary red eyes.

graphite drawing

Oh deer, what can the matter be?

My Train of Thought is Always Derailing

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photoWhen I’m out and about, I find my little brain spinning around and fiddling with every inspiration that appears before me. Since I’m such a visually oriented person, that often means that any random object appearing before me might suddenly spur a train of thought that is tangential to the previous one–sometimes to an extreme. Sometimes that simply gives me some screwy ideas in a general way, good for a laugh but soon swatted away like a loose bit so I can return to my more purposeful track. Sometimes it just plain sends me off a mental cliff into worlds of frivolous, unrelated thoughts. After my many years of this, I’ve fully embraced the process: it’s entertaining in and of itself, as long as it’s not horridly disruptive of important stuff, and occasionally, it brings truly useful things into play and finally into focus.

Mostly, I don’t let this wackiness out fully in public. Ordinary sane people might be quite bemused by it, if not frightened. But in good company (y’all), it can be fun to share the wordplay that, often, becomes invention. Lately I’ve found myself seeing a lot of things that inspired me to wonder at the meanings of words one might ordinarily attach to them.photoIs a person who brings constant frivolous lawsuits a suer? Or is that person a suitor, because he loves to sue? Or is a person who sews suits for the wearing: is that a suitor? Maybe a suitor instead would be a person who has romantic feelings about clothing (you clotheshorses know who you are). What, then, is a sewer? Is it a person who sews? Is it a place where excrement flows? Maybe it’s both: a person who sews crappy stuff?photoWhat is an iron maiden? Is it a person who irons, or is it a tough woman? Is it a strong lady who wields an iron? Or is it, in fact, a powerful female who uses an iron to smooth out the spiny coffin wherein she resides? Perhaps it is, ironically, a superwoman who (despite being both strong and pure) is a rotten seamstress who only comes out of her spike-lined residential case occasionally to iron her handiwork.photoI suppose it’s just possible that all of this is silly and convoluted speculation. That would be true, but you have to admit that those objects I saw did invite some sort of speculation. And hey: pointless ridiculousness is my gift. You’re welcome.

Uniquely Me

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graphite drawingBe Not Ill at Ease

Around my sprockets and my spleen lurk what no doctor’s ever seen,

a plethora of arcane ills impossible to treat with pills

or pessaries, with tinctures, teas, or magic potions for disease–

not curable by overhaul of engine, tune-up, electrol-

ysis, electric shock–it’s thought by some I will infect them; not

true, though, for what seems to be feared is not contagious–

I’m just weird.

The Sound of Inner Peace

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photoSilence is both elusive and therefore, golden in this life. Even when we can escape the ambient clamor of our everyday existence it’s rather rare to achieve the sort of true silence that’s found in deep contemplation, deeper meditation or deepest sleep. Our own brains make an immense quantity of distracting and sometimes just plain disconcerting noise so much of the time that it’s rather remarkable we even know what silence is or can be.photoIt’s almost ironic, then, that what makes inner calm and silence possible for me is often music. The way that music can clear my mind of mess and detritus, allow me to empty myself of unproductive or unpleasant things and focus on things of grace and beauty until my mind opens up so wide that it can embrace genuine calm, peace, contentment and meaningful introspection, achieve a kind of silence that transcends nothingness and surpasses quietude. Music makes me whole.photo

Airy-Fairy

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graphite drawingPossibilities

I think I have a hankering for things both rich and strange

To the degree that anything I love requires a change

From normalcy into a state you might consider odd

Or simply having no real weight upon the native sod

Of humankind–that is, not kin to mortals and their sort–

And if you find my life herein just makes you give a snort

Of disbelief (maybe disdain), I’ll not call it affront,

But pity you the sad refrain of living such a blunt

And circumscribed existence as mere ‘normalcy’ implies,

While I, adorned in fairy dust, take to the endless skies.