Category Archives: Humor

Attention to Detail in All Things

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digital illustrationI’m far from being the world’s best gardener. I may have the perfect skill set as a lazy dilettante, loving the design process and having a tremendous appreciation for all of the non-laborious joys of a garden, whether it’s well tended or not. A bark-boring beetle or a sculptural skeletonized leaf can be as beautiful as any spectacular, pristine lily or a lilac’s heady bloom. A moss-choked stone path is as glorious as a graceful fountain encircled by perfect tea roses and rosemary. And I have had quite the aversion to trench digging, rock picking and weeding ever since I was old enough to be conscripted by my parents for the purpose.

But I also know that if a garden is to have any hope of continuity and flourishing in flower, it needs occasional attention to such details, at the least, from Nature’s seemingly random hand. The gusts and waterings, composting and tillage performed by her weather and her handyman crew of creatures all do their parts in keeping the landscape in beautiful form. Even better chance of thriving if I do my part, too, having noticed what details might better prosper under my attentions, however slight they might be.

I was reminded of it recently as I watched a family make their valiant attempt at getting a group portrait. Flanked by grandparents, the parents stood holding their two little boys: Dad, in back, held the eight month old and Mom, ahead, wrangled the three-year-old. No one seemed able to get the normally placid toddler in front to hold still for even one quick photo, or to understand why he was so unusually squirmy, until someone finally noticed what I could see better from my side angle: that the baby was cheerily leaning forward at intervals and yanking his big brother’s hair. Detail noticed, problem solved. Had that adorable little scalawag been able to keep up the practice, I have little doubt there would’ve been need, eventually, for an expulsion from that particular little Eden.

I, meanwhile, must try to keep after my own gardens, the real and the metaphorical, and make sure the little buzzing creatures and weeds don’t get too far out of hand.digital illustration

The Menace Above

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The Bird Gets the Last Word

You stay down there, and I’ll just sit

Up on my perch, whistle and chirp

And warble ’til you throw a fit

Because I’m being such a twerp—

I’ll flap and flutter, cheep and caw

And drive you right out of your tree

Until you want to break the law

And take a shot or two at me—

But I, no matter how you squirm,

Won’t quit my pestering; so far,

I’m winning, you poor lowly worm,

And soon I’ll also strafe your car.
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Remind Me/Rewind Me

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For a person who considers herself happily immature relative to her age, I am sometimes caught off guard when I realize how little of my youthful pleasures I’ve continued to pursue with appropriate enthusiasm into the present. Why on earth would I forego standing on a big plank swing, grasping the chains that hold it and me up, and pumping my legs until I feel like I could fly right on over the top steel bar of the swing set with the greatest of ease? Why not kick off my shoes and socks, abandon them in the dirt, and plunge into the cold river’s slippery, rock-strewn flow without regard for getting the legs of my pants all soaking wet? Is there any law that says a 52-year-old is no longer allowed to slurp her fruit punch noisily through a straw just because it’s so wonderfully refreshing and sugary?

Why, indeed, is the common phrase seemingly always about youthful enthusiasm, yet we tacitly agree to let only actual youths embrace it?

Remind me how being childlike and impulsively happy is so dangerous.photo

Despite being of an age where my childhood version of the high swing was of rock-hard rubber on a steel pipe frame and underlaid with gravel-strewn dirt, I am—well—still alive at this age. I never broke a single bone or chipped a tooth, and my only stitches derived from an indoor activity, a school game of floor hockey. Though I wandered recklessly through many a stream and ocean’s shallows, without regard for my pants or my tender soles, and even drank from the occasional icy mountain brook, the worst that ever came of it was a cut from beach glass, soon enough cleansed with stinging but healing salt water. No clothes were ruined, and I got bit by nothing bigger than a sand- or horse-fly or two. I failed to contract Giardia or E. coli from those wild rivulets I sipped. Even the vast quantities of evil cyclamates in my childhood fruit drink binges failed to kill me off.

So how is it that I lost my ability to plunge ahead without caution to where I seemed, nearly always, to find joyful things? Remind me how always being responsible and mature and playing it safe is better for me.

But write it in a note and slip it under my door. I feel the need to go out and look for a little happy trouble.

It’s All in the Mustache…Beard…Eyebrows…Toupee…

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I’m neutral about facial hair. Well, on males, at least (sorry, Tante Anna!). My spouse had a short goatee when we got together, and while I thought it handsome on him I not only didn’t mourn its demise when he shaved it but realized afterward that it was light-colored enough that some people were apparently not only unaware he’d removed his beard but that he’d had one in the first place. Guess he didn’t go around kissing and nuzzling just anybody.digital illustrationI’m now so used to his being clean-shaven that I imagine it’d seem outright weird to readjust if he opted to grow a beard again, or a mustache. On the other hand, it is intriguing to see the major resurgence of popularity that all sorts of hair-raising acts are undergoing these days. It’s a great time, in my opinion, that it’s not only quite common to see people in the same place dressed in pants or skirts of all different lengths and heels of widely varying heights but also hairstyles ranging right from shaved heads (men’s and women’s) to dreads or super-‘fros (black, white and brown people’s). Curly or straight, short or not, natural-colored or wildly dyed, it can be anything that suits the heart or the head of the wearer. I like that.

digital illustrationWhat’s probably the most entertaining aspect of all this to me is seeing so many guys of a twenty-ish vintage looking so distinctly like those photos that can be unearthed of my great-great grandfathers and their brethren. I suppose that shouldn’t be entirely shocking in an era where baby names have also trended back to that generation’s. Can the bustle (you’ll pardon the pun) be far behind? Not to worry…I probably won’t be able to see what anyone’s wearing through the thicket of beards by then, anyway.

 

An Extremely High Note

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I’m like that guy who can very nearly hit his high B-flat.digital illustration

I’m reasonably useful in my little bitty part of the world, but my imperfections are both ever-present and well known to me. I have learned, long since, that as in real (physical/aural) life, in the metaphorical sense I am far better used as a chorister than as a soloist. My ego is neither too big nor too fragile for me to know that I make much better Filler in either setting than I do star material. Anybody with any sense knows that it takes a whole bunch of us to sing backup for the marquee artists, to act as support staff and cheering section and general-dogsbodies for the persons who are better designed for leadership roles. There are rare occasions when I’m the most experienced or skilled in the necessary ways for the task at hand, but as that’s mostly by default and by dint of the odds, I take no cue that it should become the norm.

I’d much rather stick contentedly to my supporting roles, humming along quietly as best I can, and perform no unintentional solos. If I ever get up that high B-flat, I’ll let you know; until then, I’d appreciate if those of you with the proper pipes carry on, and you can count on me for that low undercurrent of pretty-fair tones to fill in around your excellence. I’m excellent enough at my own, non-flashy, kind of stuff.

One Egg, Over Medium

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Ah, the elegance of simplicity. There’s little I find more beautiful than very simple things, excellently performed, made, or executed. Even the commonest thing, in a rather average way, can be fabulous in its simplicity if it’s perfect in its common averageness. Odd, but true. Let me give you an example.

I love eggs. They are delicious to eat, and fairly easy to prepare in a wide number of lovely ways. They are pretty. Their extremely uncomplicated ovals come in a relatively narrow range of colors and textures by nature, each of them marvelous and precious in its own way. They make an outstanding subject for artworks, for this very reason.

As the sole or central subject of any number of artworks in any medium, or as the medium in itself by virtue of being decorated or carved or sculpted upon, an egg is delightfully fine. But even as a supporting player in a larger cast, the humble egg in its unfettered simplicity always pleases my mind as well as my eyes.

If it sneaks into some of my artworks where it really doesn’t have any particular purpose, can I really be blamed? I think not. You may try, but you might well be left with egg on your face. If you know what I mean.digital illustration

The Intersection

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Lacking, as I do (see yesterday’s post!) any real sense of direction, physically or otherwise, in my life’s journey, I kind of live it in the middle of the intersection. You know, when the traffic slows down and the smog clears, it’s kind of exciting and always interesting here at the crossroads.digitally doctored photo

There are not only all of the events and incidents that brought me to the place where I stand at any given moment, but so much more that enriches life in the intersection. All of the peripheral things that I didn’t do—yet, anyway—lie somewhere nearby, should I change course or take notice and choose to move accordingly. There are all of the other people who come and go up and down the same roads and walkways, and there are all of those who cross my path at any given intersection, and all of their lives and adventures are influences on my own travel, even on my moments of standing absolutely still there.

And then I move on, often without any greater sense of direction than before, but also, often enough, with an optimistic sense that I will soon find myself having yet another unexpected, very unplanned trip through yet another unknown intersection.

Signs of Things to Come

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I’m so far from being clairvoyant that one could hardly accuse me of even knowing what’s happening right in front of me. I’m not even all that hot at figuring out my own history, let alone any that’s larger than me or mine. I’m just plain not very observant.

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Even familiar places can lead me astray.

I do have an interested and curious eye for colorful details, don’t get me wrong. Mostly, I’m intrigued by the arcane and eccentric, so it’s inherently unlikely that what catches my attention is useful, meaningful or significant. The reality of my frivolous and shallow frame of mind is that it is easily filled up with trivia and obscure oddities.

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If you walk a mile in *my* shoes, you just might get really, really lost.

So forgive me if I’m clueless about what is in my future, or anyone else’s. I can barely find my way from one end of my own house to the other without a map, and I sure as heck don’t have better skills for figuring out how to get from one point in my own history to the next, let alone the history of the larger world. Great reason for me to avoid messing around in history and just enjoy the smaller victories over my little reality. I mean, here I am in the den and I found my way here from the garage when we got home. And I enjoyed all sorts of details along the way, signs and all. See you around!

What is Essential

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How the concept of “necessary” tools changes! I can hardly remember how I managed to survive a full day without my laptop, despite the fact that when I was young, personal computers were strictly the stuff of fantasy, and most computers were, in fact, whole rooms full of refrigerated, card-punching machinery. And no, whatever anyone may tell you, I am not a million years old.

Yet here I am, forgetting how to send letters via snail mail when I can email them; wondering how I can Get a Signal in some remote place so I can wirelessly post my daily blog missive off to readers from India to Ireland, from Kansas to Katmandu. All of this, I expect to happen in the blink of an eye—and mostly, it does.

Strange that things so recently thought utter luxuries become so quickly apparent necessities for survival. So quickly we think the newly acquired stuff can no longer be done without. How do we get so spoiled by our wealth that it seems as important as life itself?

It’s not that I lack appropriate appreciation for my many privileges. It’s not even that I don’t think I could keep living a happy and healthy and contented life if I had to give them all up suddenly, let alone that I’d think myself suffering upon losing my high-powered towns and tools for a short while. I will recover, and probably even rediscover some good things about myself and my world if I am smart enough to pay attention.

In the meantime, I am ever so happy to have a clothes washing machine and dryer, running water, a houseful of LED light, flush toilets, central heating, and yes, all of the little electronic goodies that make it possible for me to blog and email, not to mention talk to family and friends overseas, make artworks in space that are able to be brought into the real world as physical entities, and keep other parts of my life in a semblance of order. I do enjoy the privileges of my office!

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The original desktop.

A Mythical Beast

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I love James Thurber’s deviously funny little modern fable The Unicorn in the Garden. His way of being so blandly subversive gets me every time. But I also admire the tale, as I always have, primarily because in it, the dreamer wins out over the hard-nosed pragmatist who thinks she can crush his foolishness and browbeat the fantasy out of him. I would far rather be the silly imaginative kid, the one who remains boldly hopeful when all signs point to apocalypse, than live in a grim real world. In fact, if I had my druthers, I might just be not only the frivolous guy seeing the unicorn in the garden but the unicorn itself.

What’s Fact, after all, when faced with the Fantastic?

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Would-be debunkers can chase me around all they want, but they’ll find I am galloping ahead of them on the track more steadily than they think!