Category Archives: Humor

It Finally Dawned on Me

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Another completely open secret: I am one of the world’s chief exponents of that special breed known as Not A Morning Person. Everyone who knows me even a little is well aware that it’s my firm belief that I am thoroughly Anti-ante-meridian. And that if the world should happen to come perilously close to its end before noonish wherever I happen to be, I will not be prepared to put on my cape and tights, grab my magic wand and zip off to the rescue. So sorry, y’all.

Yippee Skippy for me, I married a man who, despite being unable himself to hibernate for the long periods I require on a constant basis, is sympathetic to my pathetic plight and leaves me untormented, bedding yanked up around my ears, in my mummified position of contentedly deep sleep when he arises.

Except for emergencies and Sundays.

On Sundays, one of the six days a week that he works long hours, if I sleep my Required Daily Allowance, I’d either better’ve gone to bed by about 8 pm on Saturday–not often convenient for those married to guys who conduct, and whose many colleagues and students conduct, concerts at, say, 8 pm on Saturdays and such–or if I sleep in Sunday morning the next time I’ll see him is, well, Monday. That’s how it works for a church choirmaster, at least one with a can’t-dash-home-between length of commute and Evensong on the docket.

The remaining Sunday option for me is to get over myself. So I haul my carcass off of the oh-so-magnetic mattress in the pre-dawn dark and crawl around until I can find my way to join him in the car for the trek SSE toward the Big City. And guess what: I found out there’s pretty stuff all over the sky at sunrise.photoSometimes it’s just the coloration of the dawn that’s so painterly. Marked at the horizon with the lace edging of silhouetted trees and hedges and power transformers, it stretches violet and rose and salmon and gold as far as the bleary eye can see. Almost always, there are thousands of birds taking to the skies en route to their own day jobs, the egrets flapping like clean sheets on the laundry line as they head out fishing and the grackles peppering the air as they look for actual clean laundry to besmirch, the pigeons heading for delicious night shift dinner garbage for their breakfast and the hawks remaining puffed up in their patrician dignity on lampposts while watching for the first ambulatory happy-meal to scurry by below. Even the traffic, being sparser and lit up with twinkly head- and taillights, looks far less plebeian and grubby.photoI like the scenery next to me, too.

I can look around at all the glories of an awakening sky and be amazed and awed (yes, odd) and impressed and moved by this stuff I’d never see if I stayed abed. But really, I could get all that gushy admiration going by looking at a great sunset, right? Or if it has to be dawn, by ogling some nice Impressionist paintings or a super-duper set of postcards or some dandy cinematographer’s artwork on the big screen, and I’d never have to pry myself out of that come-hither blanket and pillow nest I so admire. Then I look at the scenery next to me again. I really like that scenery.

And it dawns on me. Seeing the sun rise may be all it’s cracked up to be, but so are NASCAR driving and alligator tagging and ice fishing, to those born to love those activities, and who am I to deprive them of their fill? No reason for me to compete for what I do not desire. I’m happy to report that I do, it turns out, appreciate a beautiful sunrise, but I have no particular need to reaffirm my appreciation except when it’s built into my limited opportunities to spend time with the man who, kinder chronographical conditions permitting, doesn’t harass me when I’m sleeping, even if the sun is getting a bit distant over the yardarm. Now, he is a sight for sorely sleepless eyes.photo

No Worries, Everything’s Okay Here! I’m doing Just Great! (Twitch, Twitch, Giggle)

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sketchbook

But my noodle is full of doodles!

Being and Nuttiness

Origami boats and hats

And frogs and swans

And paper cats

And chicken frills

And snowflake cuts:

These little pieces

Drive me nuts—

It’s not the cut-

And-paste, you see,

That makes me

Shake the acorn tree;

It’s just that

They should

Have the guts,

Barefaced, to call it

Therapy.

sketchbook

I mean, oodles of doodles!

 

Going Buggy

I wouldn’t say it bugs me

All that much to be indoors,

For after all my place is not

Much awfuller than yours,

Both having small enclosures and

These windows that won’t open,

And both beset with folks who have

Rude ways of interlopin’

Whenever you might think you’ve got

A chance to set things right

By putting forward fine ideas

Or going home at night,

But if it comes right down to choose,

I guess I’ll stick right here—

My rubber room; your office—

‘Least I’ll get reprieved next year.

The Red Shoes Dairy

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mixed media illustration

The Human Animal strikes again. And if you recognize the tune, I'm not using it to *blame* anyone, mind you, just to say we're all in this together . . .

Since I’ve already allowed as to how I’m pretty much a farm animal at heart, doing what comes naturally to me and without excessive amounts of couth or savoir-faire, I’m constantly amazed at the ever-so-much-cooler people who deign to hang around with me. Maybe my rare moments of actual and impressive wonderfulness have sufficiently inured them to my shortcomings so that they can kindly turn a blind eye when despite my wanting to be on my best behavior and attempting refinement I fail, sometimes spectacularly, to do so. I dress up in my prettiest red high-heeled shoes and yet I still go and Step in It. And if you don’t know what I mean by It, you have clearly not been paying attention around here.

photo

My own Ruby Slippers have taken me to many an Oz . . .

Yet despite my persistent trippings-up and fallings-down, somehow I have thus far not only always ended up right back on my red-shod feet but in the midst of this great, forgiving, and ever so friendly good company, wherever in this world or my own universe I’ve happened to land. So I have ceased to be surprised when people come knocking at my door bearing presents and kisses and kindness of every sort. It’s not my deserving, you see, nor any prowess I’ve shown for being dignified and distinguished, so much as the boundless goodwill and generosity of spirit in those around me. While I may not be fabulously tasteful myself, I do have fabulous taste in other people.

Thus it comes as less of a shock than a delightful piece of exceeding niceness when my admirable and ever-sparkling muse over at Year-Struck has popped by with another glamorous pair of red heels for me to try on and admire. Maybe even to grow into, if I can. It’s not that my feet are so dainty in size but that my Educator skills are pretty itty-bitty and underdeveloped. However, if the award allows for conferral upon those who are getting a superb education here ourselves, why then I’m your woman.

With that, I will gratefully and happily accept the challenge. My wish is to share the award further, however, with some blogging friends who are educator-bloggers. I bow to those who have been particularly good at educating me and others, both with the content of their posts in which they teach us great and useful and desirable things and in their mentoring commentaries and the supportive role they play for those of us who follow in their admirable footsteps. Please rise and sing a hymn of happiness with me for these guardian angels in our midst:

Cecilia (thekitchensgarden), Marie (mylittlecornerofrhodeisland), Claire (promenadeplantings), Steve (portraitsofwildflowers and wordconnections), and John (fromthebartolinikitchens). The only rule I’ve been able to ascertain as purportedly attached to this award is to use it to recognize five of my most supportive commenters from recent posts, and as it happens, these folk are not only stupendous teaching mavens in their respective areas of expertise but are just that sort of supportive commenters referred to in that single shining rubric. So I can fulfill my own agenda whilst pretending to comply with the award’s original intent. Pretty much the way your Miss Passive-Aggressive correspondent tends to behave most of the time. I wink at you in your newly conferred complicity.

The Lovely Lauren Scott, meanwhile, has also graciously extended One Lovely Blog Award to reach me over here in my gift-strewn cubbyhole. As her blog is simply shimmering with genuine loveliness, I can easily ascertain why she would be a recipient herself, and can only assume that she is able to accomplish such a beautiful environment there by wearing some nearly-purple-they’re-so-rose-colored glasses, whereby I appear worthy of the award myself. Another excellent reason for me to be thankful I surround myself with such fine companions!

This award does ask that we share a little bit about ourselves once again in order to ‘earn’ the honor, which I think is only fair. To me. Not so much to those of you who have sat through over half a year of my yammering about myself, but bear with me.

What haven’t I already revealed to you about my inner workings (or playings, if we’re to be realistic about it)?

Did you know that:

I love a good thunder-and-lightning storm. Throw in some hail and I’m entertained for a long time. But don’t get it on my car or happening with me stuck under a big tree with my umbrella up, please.

When I try to wear ‘warm’ colors, especially a good deep yellow, I look just like I have severe jaundice and must be rushed immediately to the emergency ward. People who have to look at me when I wear such colors should also be treated with some kindness, to help them recover from the horror of my appearance.

I took an Archery class in college and enjoyed it quite a bit; I was even fairly decent at it. I probably couldn’t even draw a 60-pound bowstring nowadays. But give me a half hour and I’ll give it a try.

Dante Alighieri wasn’t quite thorough enough for my taste as he missed describing a particularly subterranean Level where Bullies should take up their eternal residence.

Being near natural water sources–oceans, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, ponds, and all of their cousins–is a source, also, of tremendous pleasure and comfort to me.

I would like to have the resources to design any object, from buildings to clothing, tools, pieces of furniture, vehicles, jewelry, gardens, hardware, housewares–you name it–and then hand off the plans to world-class craftspeople and see the designs realized. And then put to use, hither and yon.

Funny sounding words make me happy. Blubber! Flabbergasted! Cooties! Marsupial! Splurge! Glyptography! Carbuncle!

One Lovely Blog Award logo

This is my chance to recognize some really lovely blogs and their creators, those who fill each post with heart. I know a whole lot of people who are especially gifted at creating an environment that, for sometimes very different reasons from one blog to another–or even from one post on the same blog to another–compel me to return again and again. These are bloggers who make magic on a regular basis, with words and images and ideas that carry me along and fill me with amazement and inspiration, dark reflection and introspection and great measures of pleasure. I commend to your attention these marvelous and yes, truly lovely bloggers.

Barbara (just a smidgen)

Desi (The valentine 4)

B. (Just Add Attitude)

Raymund (Ang Sarap)

Geni (Sweet and Crumby)

Dennis (The Bard on the Hill)

Cyndi (Cfbookchick)

Caroline (sweetcarolinescooking)

Eve (Redwater Ramblings)

Eden (litrato-ngayon)

Allison (“Il Faut Goûter”)

Bella (winsomebella)

Nors (Foodtrip)

Sawsan (Chef in disguise)

‘Nessa (Stronghold)

David (DFB Poetry and Painting)

Lindy Lee (Poetic Licensee)

Teri (Images by T. Dashfield)

Tanya (Chica Andaluza)

Belle (belleofthecarnival)

Geraldine (Alternative Poet)

I was just reminded by one of my ‘honorees’ of the many fine reasons for politely declining blogging awards, not least of which is the duty imposed by response and acceptance. While one of the excellent reasons for declining would clearly be modesty or humility, as you all know I have neither. But I was also taught that accepting an undeserved gift with good grace is a certain sort of return gift in itself.

Furthermore, as I told my correspondent in this instance, the real reason I perpetuate any of these awards is simply to bring the standouts among my blogging compatriots to others’ attention. If not for that, I would indeed have declined all of these kindly meant notices myself, but this gives an unknown like me the chance to showcase some of the other writers and thinkers whose work I really admire for one reason or another, or for many reasons. Having responded to a number of these awards, I know that simply responding properly is in fact quite a bit harder than making up one’s usual post, because the content is externally dictated, and let’s face it, even a mathematical dullard like me can do enough basic sequential thinking to realize not only that the passing out of the laurels to new honorees becomes an obvious exponential impossibility but that merely fulfilling the self-revelatory or self-evaluative portion of the requirement becomes onerous when repeated. Especially when all I ever talk about on my blog is All Me All the Time anyhow!

Therefore I refuse to enforce any “rules” among the honorees I choose, hoping only that you and your companions will accept my personal admiration and accolades and feel free to bask privately, if that’s not anathema. So there are no chains requiring the smiting, nor any other attachments except the one of hoping that each of you will allow me to trumpet your blogs to my modest yet lively readership because I know others will appreciate what you offer! If you like to ‘play the game’–why, that’s another thing entirely! Passing along gifts in blog-dom is not the same as Re-gifting in the wrapping-and-ribbons world, so my real gift to you, since I believe you all earned the recognition, is that I don’t require you to respond in any particular way, or at all, if you don’t wish.

photo

Having Red Shoes has never turned me into a dancer, alas, but only a vain creature . . . this is an instance when I greatly prefer my own sort of amusing fantasy to the dark old fairytales . . .

PS–I wasn’t (entirely) trying to be cruel, tricking you with that post title and all, so if you are here just hoping to catch a glimpse of David Duchovny, I’ll give you something to ameliorate my sins if you’ll forgive me once again. The Red Shoe Diaries aren’t exactly my sort of thing, but you know how my frivolous mind works, and when I see a pair of red shoes, no matter how Educational they’re meant to be, well . . .

And Now Let Us Pause for a Commercial Break, or at Least Some Blessed Radio Silence

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photoIf You Must be Tedious,

at Least be Mellifluous about It

In the immortal poet’s phrase,

No matter if the topic strays

From strictly epic or romantic

Off to something dull, pedantic

Or illogical, it sounds

Quite lovely in the swooping rounds

And swinging curvature of thought

The poet’s pretty words have got,

So if you must tell boring tales,

At least make sure that each regales

Us with its language so we won’t

Care if you say great things, or don’t.photo

Zero in, Zero out: I’m Done Thinking, Now

Vast emptiness and silence and that sucking black-hole sound,

Sheer nihilistic nothingness and open space abound,

But nothing has prepared me yet to deal with absent thought

So far as getting something Meaningful from it; I’ve not.

So, Nothing, nothing, nothing: that’s all I have to say.

If you want more, you’ll have to come back on another day.

I’ve spent my great invention quite completely and prefer

To take a break, relax, sit back, and hope you will concur.photo

Thoughtless Thursday

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Since a number of Web Wanderers post wonderful Wordless Wednesday items, and I’m always behind the times in oh-so-many ways, I’m posting my own version a day late (and undoubtedly a dollar short), giving you here a highly abbreviated visual history of my life as an artist. Since I’m only middle-aged, I let it end at the Middle Ages for now, though you’ll notice from some of the costumes in the last frame that I’m looking for a Renaissance to appear fairly soon. Can’t hurt to hope, can it?

P&I

I was no prodigy, and I certainly took an early interest in shortcuts and easy techniques when it came to making images, but I did always have an eye for a good juicy and dramatic storyline . . . P&IAs I grew more seriously interested in art, I was also reaching an age where one wants to Fit In, so I did my part of stylizing my imagery and making it seem, I thought, more palatable to the critics (teachers, relatives) . . .P&IThen, of course, there was that awkward age when I started to think for myself, to develop my own philosophy of what my art should or could be, and what I wanted it to be. Presumably, the reason I lost my reason entirely. You just can’t make your own art without giving up at least a little of your already tenuous hold on reality . . .P&I. . . and here you find me, wandering from village to village in the vast land of Internet, telling my tales and making my pictures without much regard for the safety and comfort of those around me, but perhaps in that most of all being at last quite true to myself, the mildly crazed artist in your midst . . .

I was Going to Write the Great American Novel, but I Looked out the Window for a Second and . . .

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My attention has drifted awry once again,

Has shifted from matters of weight among men

To things of no import, exceedingly tiny

And so insignificant–Hey! Look! It’s shiny!

I set out to do some magnificent thing,

But what it was? I can’t remember. The sting

Of memory loss in old age will be naught

Compared to the blank Inattention has wrought,

Distraction, and phantasmagorical dreams;

To focus and think is more work than it seems,

So, though I’d meant well and begun my great task,

My progress dried up like a sot’s whiskey flask,

And instead of inventing great stuff, plodding darkly,

I did something else–Hey! Look there! Something sparkly!

mixed media on glass

Look! Up in the air! It's a bird! It's a plane! Hey, it's my attention flying way off course again!

Arithmetic, Thou art No Friend of Mine

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photoAnd lo, how my thoughts go round and round upon the subject.

It must come as no surprise whatsoever that I am among the multitudinous math-phobes peopling (pimpling?) the world of the creative soul. Why do you think we really all took those arty, wondrous, supposedly “Easy-A” classes, eh? Escape Route, we thought, freedom from the horrors that lie between the covers of every arithmetic text known to humankind. Only to find out we’d been hoodwinked and were expected to know how to disassemble and reassemble an ellipsoidal reflector in under ten minutes and with fewer than two “nonessential” parts left over after completion (what is this word “two”?), or whether one could type 200 words of dazzling script per minute while trying not to be hopelessly hypnotized by Mr. Young’s* blindingly mustard-colored toupee. I was able to accomplish the former task, by the way, but the latter, not quite so fully. However, I only lost consciousness for a split second and did not actually fall off of my chair.

*Name has been changed to protect someone vain’s glabrous secret.

In fact, by taking uni-approved ‘alternative’ courses (“I’ll take the class behind Door Number, uhhh, B, Dave!”) I managed to go all the way from 9th grade algebra, passed mainly by babysitting for the teacher’s kids on the weekends, to grad school without having taken a single other mathematics class. Then I got stuck: first those lousy entrance exams, which are now a blissful blank in my memory bank, followed by Graduate Statistics for Pedagogy, or whatever they called it. Hell, I tells ya! The only thing that saved me was that my older sister had survived the same course with the same prof a year earlier and coached me every cotton picking minute of the way through it. While I wept copious and bitter tears. I squeeeeeeeaked by with the B grade needed to pass the course and ran screaming all the way to graduation. Which commencement ceremony I skipped to go to Mt. Rainier with friends from Australia, because once you’ve paraded down the catwalk in those hot mortarboard and gown get-ups, never mind adding a hotter yet academic hood, on a sweltering summer day, in an auditorium full of people you don’t care to know, to grip that rolled-up piece of parchment that says “Redeem for Actual Diploma at Registrar‘s Office on Tuesday after 4 pm or for a Free Pizza at Gianni’s on Main after 5 pm”–well, once you’ve gone that route there’s really no need for a repeat, is there.

Although come to think of it, skipping The Forced March may mean that I didn’t in fact officially graduate and so taught college for two decades under false pretenses, and what’s not to like about that! In any event, I did finally, truly knock down that last class on the looming list, if without particular distinction or panache.photoMath, though, remained a bane. It was hideously disappointing to realize that a grasp of basic functional math was the only thing that stood between me and, say, a growling, slavering pack of credit card representatives or perhaps the growling stomach of starvation after having demolished the pantry stores by reversing the quantities of salt and sugar in yet another foolproof recipe. On the other hand, it was something of a relief when I finally realized that I was worrying needlessly about something I could never, ever fix. Between my dyslexia (or more accurately in this instance, dysnumerica) and my utter disinterest in getting better at math for the sheer unfathomable pleasure of it, I could see that this was something I should learn to put aside and compartmentalize safely to keep it away from unnecessarily pestering me in my everyday Happy Place.

Not to say that I didn’t have to find some truly inventive ways to do a (cough!) number of things. Balance my bank accounts. Figure out the current time/date in another time zone. Calculate the distance and ETA to work locations. Without GPS and Google Maps, because I do predate plenty of Modern Miracles by a significant margin. Teach drawing students how to draw in two-point perspective. Memorize ridiculous chains of randomly generated numbers to have even the remote hope of regaining access to umpteen kinds of personal accounts, not least of all ones containing personal information or money.

That is where you find me today, where numbers serve only the most rudimentary decorative purposes in my quotidian existence, for the most part (some of them being visually pleasing as abstract shapes, at least), but still occasionally rising up to help me remember my home telephone number so that I can call my more numerically astute husband to solve all of my more knotty mathematical problems. Because no matter how crummy my skills and how limited my knowledge when it comes to things numerical, I have what is for me a far more useful piece of wisdom, which is: one should always have great resource persons to call upon when one lacks the required smarts, information and/or tool handling artistry to accomplish the task of the moment. Stand ready, y’all.photoThe only sort of geometry at which I am expert, apparently, is circular thinking. But look where it’s gotten me thus far!

We are Feline Fine, Thank You

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graphite drawingTransubstantiation

Fish-eyes ogles us, just to say

in that slippery longing way of his,

that sidelong gaping staring way,

‘I envy the cat that milady is.’

We ponder his liquid love, his fins,

and the way each turn makes him squirm and sink

in the tank (predicament for his sins?),

and we sit and groom ourself and think . . .

Can’t help but pity and love the poor

fish-eyes in turn; think biology,

its cycles, return of what’s been before,

carbon reclamation, and all that we,

with wizard knowledge, learned to admire

and along the way, to recognize

as an opportunity to acquire

matter remade thus if one only tries . . .

what we think is this: that a little fish

could become a cat, graceful, sleek and slim,

by means of becoming a dinner dish–

and on thinking that, we devour him.

Tools and Techniques, Ingredients and Inspirations

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ink drawingSometimes the best way to get started with something new is to jump into something old and rethink it. Writing letters–really, reeeeeeally long and extravagantly detailed letters–to my friends and loved ones was a favored pastime for me in my youth, and only transmuted (rather than muted) over time. It’s not necessarily that I had so much to say, nor that it was terribly original, it was simply a pleasant way to keep my sense of the connection between us open and flowing freely. It was Relationship Anticoagulant for me, in its way. Most particularly because I happened to have friends and loved ones who indulged me by writing letters back in my direction.

Yes, the telephone had already been invented when I was young. (I heard that!) My letters weren’t even delivered by Pony Express, let alone chiseled on stone tablets, though those would’ve made nice doorstops, once read. But as I have never liked telephone chitchat overmuch and have always had a slight tendency toward commentary that could perhaps stand a little more editorial restraint, and most of all because I am so defined by my visual experiences, a written, tangible and yes, correctable medium like a letter suited my personality more.

I think it was at least partly that that led to my downhill slide into essays, poems, short stories and the various other Dark Magicks of creative writing. Maybe I thought that developing my fictional skills would make my long letters more entertaining and excuse their verbosity. But of course, when the mystical world of the internet appeared before me, it was inevitable that I should embrace its friendliness towards the mass production of verbiage and the speedy transport thereof unto all and sundry. “All” being my actual known connexions and “sundry” being anybody else who was incidentally caught in the overspray. The latter being people who, if they foolishly responded to my wildly flung words, were likely to get sucked right into the vast vacuum of joining my poor captive audience if I could manage it at all.

ink drawingWhen I figured out how to put visual images along with all of the wordy wonders, then Boy Howdy, I was off on a new tangent. And you’ve all seen just how tangential I can become. Why, just the other day . . . oh, see, there I go again. The additional enhancement of putting pictures with stories need not be examined here. You and I know that the telling of a tale not only frequently requires images for completeness and clarity but sometimes is enhanced and enriched by the presence of visual cues that lead the reader to start thinking about the stories tangentially as well.

I was of course drawn* in immediately by artists’, photographers’, designers’ and other visually rich websites and blogs (*this pun’s for you, yearstricken). Then I felt the magnetic, hypnotic pull of foodie blogs, with their perniciously gorgeous food photography. Glorious gardens and magnificent architectural edifices reached out of the ether to grasp at my ankles as I passed. Tripping, I dropped into the well of travelogues and vehicle- and furniture-restoration sites and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! It was the beginning of the end for this visually obsessed fool. Pretty soon I was swapping recipes and anecdotes, recitations and antidotes with all of my new Old Friends. I almost made a Freudian typo there and wrote Fiends, because of course I have been enchanted and enslaved by you all and am now helplessly in thrall, thirsting after the goodies you dangle in front of me on your every post until I succumb and retaliate with posts of my own.

ink drawing

So here we all are, the relatively new digital tools in hand, cooking up marvelous messes of every sort and, far from being penitent, diving ever deeper into the strange and cheerfully dangerous tangles of what we are collectively wreaking upon the unsuspecting of the world. What began as relatively innocent missives to sisters and schoolmates, great aunts and great mentors has evolved into a different sort of Post that explodes with the weird and whimsical, the frightening or florid or sometimes just plain fishy, and whether factual or fictional, wanders the globe and the magnificent bubble of nonsense surrounding it, and the old urge to write a letter is made new again.

Now, I’ll readily admit that it’s every bit as possible to create fodder for the dustbin as it was all those centuries ago when I began writing my small-world tall tales and detailing them with quaint and creaky little scratches of “art”, and I’m quite certain that there’s no more sense and treasure sneaking in the hidden corners of my productions than there ever was. But I do find that the wider range of correspondents who really do have something to say in return, and the pleasures of the process of learning and using new and different tools for the conversation, immensely entertaining, energizing and inspiring. And I’d say that’s a paint pot of a different color.

ink drawing

Mrs. Sparkly’s Ten Commandments, I Mean Ten Questions. And More.

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photoI am “It”. No, really, that’s not just my Godzilla-sized ego talking: I’ve been tagged, and I didn’t even know there was a game going on. So very like me to be caught unawares. Least I was wearing more than just my “underwears”!

Among the activities in which the denizens of Bloggervania indulge are those through which we unmask various bits and bobs of our selves for mutual edification or at least amusement. This can be dangerous or great fun, depending upon whom you ask what, but then that’s the way it always goes, isn’t it. The promise of a nice sunny afternoon swapping gossip over a cuppa suddenly turns into a sword-fighting bloodbath. Oh, no, that was the murder mystery I was reading last night. Never mind!photo

Here’s what I got asked, followed by my to-the-best-of-my-knowledge-true answers.

1.  Describe yourself in seven words.

I can do it in 1: Rich. Okay, here are six others, but they’re all extrapolations of the first: loved, happy, curious, privileged, encouraged, playful.

2.  What keeps you up at night?

Brain-spin. I’m a very good sleeper generally speaking, but if I don’t quiet my mind by bedtime and shut down the wacky-factory, there’s no telling how long it’ll keep me too busy to sleep.

3.  Whom would you like to be?

The best version of me I can manage. Too much work to figure out how to be anyone else!

4.  What are you wearing now?

Jeans and a comfy shirt suitable for doing chores between bouts of typing.

5.  What scares you?

Other people’s drama.

6.  What are the best and worst things about blogging?

In my circle, we all seem to experience the same basic risks and rewards: the risk of losing ourselves completely in the effort and time of dedicated blogging, and the reward of working amid and coming to respect and love such stellar folk as populate the blogging community. Come to think of it, that pretty much encapsulates what I think is good or bad about any activity for which one has a passion.

7.  What was the last website you looked at?

Retire Early Lifestyle, a travel, food, culture and off-the-beaten-path-living journal produced by the only friends I’ve acquired through online conversation before I began blogging, and a site that is simply a joy to visit.

8.  If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

Let go of fear.

9.  Slankets, yes or no?

I have three perfectly excellent reasons to Just Say No to Slankets: 1-The skill a perpetually freezing person develops for dressing in layers more numerous and impressive than those boasted by the best millefoglie, 2-A really cuddly husband, and 3-What, I need to make a bonfire out of my money because I don’t know how to wrap up in a plain blanket to get warm?

10. Tell us something about the person who tagged you.

John comes from good stock. By that I mean that he has great familial roots, and that they are such natural foodies that he learned early to appreciate and make excellent soups, among many other classic Italian dream-foods. He documents all of this, and much more, on the wonderfully warm, witty, artful and delicious pages of From the Bartolini Kitchens, all while being himself ever the debonair gentleman-about-town and as sweet as fragole.

Whom are you going to tag to join the quiz?

I hope I’ve not “double-tagged” anyone. I’ll just go alphabetically here, for fun:

  1. Antoinette at cooking-spree
  2. Bella at winsomebella
  3. Cyndi at cfbookchick
  4. Dennis at thebardonthehill
  5. Eden at litrato-ngayon

photoMy blogging friend Antoinette, she of the wonderful aforementioned site where you can learn from her expertise how to put “Love on the Table” but more importantly, the myriad ways she expands that love into a multitude of life’s little nooks and crannies, all with a measure of mindfulness and gentle good humor–this lady asked me yesterday the perfectly innocent question “how . . . do you do this?” Since the bellissima Bella (also tagged above) soon thereafter made a comment that begged the same question, and I have fielded a few inquiries in a similar vein over the last six months of blogging, I am going to take the self-indulgent opportunity to spout off a bit on the topic today.

Many folk simply wonder how it’s possible for me to post a new and (mostly) different essay, poem, story or combination of them, illustrated with my own art and photography, every single day. They politely edge up to the corollary question of whether I don’t have a big closet full of old stuff that I’m just pinning up in public as I go. If it’s any consolation, yes, I have been producing things like this for a rather long time. Yesterday’s post (https://kiwsparks.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/what-were-you-born-in-a-barn/) is a perfect example: the cow sketch is from some doodling in a notebook nearly 30 years ago (and digitally doctored yesterday); the rooster and hens scratched their way into my sketchbook last year; the birds were among many sketched multi-panel proposals for a set of organ pipeshade carvings around 7 or 8 years ago; and the pastel of the Cheviot ewe and the Highland cow is from about two years ago.

Some of the illustrations I use (photographic or drawn/painted) are completely, hot-off-the-pencil new, a few are practically archeological finds from my vast trove, and some are oldies that have been digitally “remastered” (dolled up or changed) to fit the occasion. Almost every visual image requires some tweaking or re-formatting for the blog medium or to better reflect and expand upon the text in some way. Regular readers will have noticed that I am not averse to using the images’ captions to try to intensify the relationship and relevance, ‘specially if the connection was a little tenuous or artificially-imposed at the start.

In addition, I do have a (digital) reserve of hundreds and hundreds of picture + text images like the ones I used on Tuesday (https://kiwsparks.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/its-foodie-tuesday-and-i-havent-eaten-yet/), set up like book pages, where I guess without knowing it I was practicing a variant of the sort of combined word and image that I’m now putting in this blog. I try not to dip into that storage much, if nothing else to prevent my getting lazy or stale or not producing anything strictly new. There is a remote possibility that they will someday in fact be used to produce actual books, but realistically, publishers are inundated with stuff they find much more relevant and exciting, and like most artist-types I hate the drudgery of trying to sort out the whole business end of book production. Hence my standing on this soapbox handing out free samples daily. And I thank you all for coming by Speakers’ Corner (though since I live in Texas I suppose I should pretend it’s in Rawhide Park) here for visits so I don’t die of neglect and boredom.

digital compositionThe prose of my posts is never older than a few days (and that, only if I happen to have gotten a day or two ahead in writing), but nearly always written on the same day the posts go online. The poems are a mix of old and new. I started wading in poetic and essayist waters as a mere stripling, and as long as twenty years ago spent a twelvemonth writing five poems a day for discipline. Yes, mostly short forms! A couple of years ago, I did a one-drawing-a-day year, and I’m gearing up to get back to somewhat more regular drawing and art-making, so hopefully I’ll be posting more ‘fresh produce’ soon, but having unused images in storage takes an nth of the pressure off of the blog production. As it is, the process takes me several hours of the day to get through both creating the post itself and the related correspondence.

graphite drawing + textAnd it does take time. I wouldn’t be able to do this other than extremely sporadically if I had a “real” job, that’s for sure. Working from home, I can keep up with laundry and cooking and housekeeping and that sort of thing without losing the flexible hours it takes to do this. That’s the big issue for me: I have a husband who values my art and writing enough to have supported my leaving my previous employment and kept us in financial safety with his own work, and that is a rare and fabulous gift indeed. Or a cruelty to you, if you happen to think I should have kept it to myself. But then, I like to think you’re all smart enough to not show up here if I weary you with my nattering.

Having noted that, I suppose it’s time to address the Why of it all. But that’s embedded in the whole Who-What-When-Where-How of it all, isn’t it. I do this because it gives me joy to play with words and pictures, and because I’m not necessarily cut out to do something else, and most especially because by sharing stories I find new marvelous and inspiring friendships and loves, and renew the best of those I already have, all of which serve to infinitely reinforce my knowledge that I am Rich.

mixed media collage

Gold, Mine (detail from a mixed media collage)