Category Archives: Humor

Daring to Live the Adventure of Life is Its Own Reward

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The wonderful Eve Redwater (http://everedwater.wordpress.com/) gave me a generous gift on my birthday. I’m not sure it was intended specifically as a birthday present, but it was aptly timed so I’m certain there was at least some synchronicity at work in the event. See, I operate under a very contentedly delusional science system in which I, the sun, am always finding ways that the universe and all of the wild diversity in it revolve around me and conspire to do good to me and for my benefit. On the heels of Lady Eve’s kind gift, I was contemplating how to respond appropriately to receiving the Versatile Blogger Award from her and, virtually simultaneously, both got into a discussion via several posts and comments on my blog and those of several friends (thank you, CF, Smidge and Co.) about the roots and responsibilities of our creative lives and was reminded by my own birthday that my late godmother’s birthday was imminent. And yes, they are all interconnected–what a coincidence, eh?–in and through me.

It all meets at that point of origins + inspirations once again.

Getting involved in blogging was quite a milestone in my progress as an artist: the culmination of a large push I’ve been making toward steady, committed practice and broader sharing of my work, and also a starting point for working with a marvelous new community of inspiring and educated peers and mentors in the online community to expand my horizons to places I can’t yet imagine. No surprise, then, that it also begs the questions of where I started, where I am now, and where I might possibly be heading. That’s what’s on my mind a lot lately.

A significant part of the whole equation is that I have parents who raised all four of their kids to be unabashedly themselves and do their own thing. Of course, being semi-normal mortals, we all had our periods of self-doubt, frustration with finding out just what our own ‘thing’ might be, and any number of other growing-up issues. Having loved to draw and write and do any number of similar, incredibly unworldly things from very early, I was haunted fairly often–not least of all in my undergraduate days–by worry about how ridiculously impractical and selfish it seemed to study, then major in, and commit to a life’s work involved with the arts. I mean, really. Mom and Dad patiently assured me at all points that I should do what I felt called to do and be who I thought I was made to be, and I thwarted all of their efforts with equal stubborn force of hemming, hawing and hunkering fearfully behind innumerable university requirement courses before I would willingly and publicly admit to my addiction to art. [Ed: I like that when I typed ‘art’ just now, my computer offered to “correct” the word by writing “artichokes“, so it apparently recognized that I was in such denial it wanted to help me by disguising my intentions even from you, faithful readers!]photo

The upshot of all of this muddling around and foot-dragging is that I approached my junior year of college without having dared to declare a major, and I skulked around like a sneak-thief in the hallways of the art building and spent significant amounts of time maundering and mewling about the whole ordeal when I really ought to have been simply plunging in and getting soaked in all of the art I could lay my grubby little hands upon there and then.

Oh, woe is me! Boo Hoo, and all that. I thought I was supremely talented at evasion, but of course my parents had a secret weapon trained on me from the very beginning, and it was activated during these very tenuous years of my faltering development. It was a pair of super-agents they called my Godparents. My parents, it happens, besides being nifty talents in the parenting department, had the smarts and/or temerity to choose as godparents for their children some people that took the whole parental-surrogacy aspect of the job quite seriously. Mine were a couple of Mom and Dad’s closest friends from the quartet’s days together attending (you may be beginning to feel the frisson of familiarity, the sting of synchronicity, here already) the very same uni where I was now paddling around in a diminishing spiral of destiny-denial. Furthermore, my Godma, as I called her, and The Godfather, as he was known to me (for being, thankfully, the polar opposite of that fictional character), had long since taken up employment at said institution as a Business Office administrator and head of the department of Radio and Television, respectively. So I could go and see my Godma when I was paying my tuition or trying to find out where my last scholarship had wandered, or just when I needed some bucking up, because she was seriously skilled in dealing with all of those aspects of my college life. Her estimable spouse was housed in another building, across Red Square from her digs, and I had a little journey through the catacombs of the old dustbin to drop in on him, which trek I gladly undertook on certain occasions when I wanted a different flavor of encouragement from hers, or–gasp!–artistic advice.

See, with The Godfather, I could go all clandestine and it seemed right in character, so I didn’t try to pretend with him that I wasn’t heading in an art-ish direction, though which one of many directions was still quite cloudy in my crystal ball. After all, there was that James-Bondish crawl through dusty and dimly lit corridors in a faintly creaky building just to find him in his office. And of course there was the visiting, during which he would puff away on his pipe and I would pretend not to see or smell it, because Officially he had “quit smoking” and his wife “didn’t know” he still did it. Apparently he thought that her willingness to admit to relation of any sort with me proved she was non compos mentis, and I was certainly in no position to argue that, so he pretended not to smoke and I pretended not to be coming in every time to whine that I couldn’t sign up as an Art Major because that was just plain irresponsible and stupid. I would go ahead, maybe, with an English degree and get ready to teach, because at least that might lead to, oh, I don’t know, a paycheck or something like one. My godparents, bless their dear departed craziness, never once chastised me overtly for being, oh, I don’t know, irresponsible and stupid by not doing what I really felt called to do and exercising what little native wit or talent I might dig up in my education to do what I was perhaps meant to do. But somewhere along the line the gentleman with the invisible pipe neatly skirted the issue of what-to-do by saying, in effect, Never mind what you think you’re supposed to do, or even what you want, this is about who you ARE. He proceeded to clarify by telling me that it was perfectly obvious to him and to anyone else that might have spent thirty seconds or so in my company that there were certain compulsions and eccentricities that I couldn’t exactly gloss over that earmarked me plainly as an Artist.

I won’t say that I never questioned the whole thing again, but somehow Mr Wise Guy pressed the right button at the right moment so that what my parents and sisters and friends had all been eternally encouraging me to do and be suddenly was revealed as so much more dazzlingly clear and excellent than when I had been studiously ignoring them and covering my ears and singing LA-LA-LA-LA! at the top of my voice to drown them out the whole time.

This is all a mighty stretched-out way of telling you that I still believe life and all of the fine creatures surrounding me in it work pretty hard to steer me in happy directions and plunk dandy gifts in my path all the time. That many supportive people and useful events in confluence led me down the primrose path of Art; that a life lived in the midst of said art connected me to a whole lot of additional supportive folk and dropped me amid numerous other grand gifts; not least of all, that opening up the stubbornly barred gate to my own artistic playground was one of the really great gifts life has given me and I can’t imagine not living life surrounded by all sorts of ARTICHOKES! ARTICHOKES! ARTICHOKES!

Oh, you know what I mean: Art.photo + text

Foodie Tuesday: Some Assembly Required

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The way to maintain my vegetative state of bliss is to keep dissimilar food parts from dangerous intermingling . . .

My dinner table usually resembles an early automobile factory, or at least the aftermath of an IKEA shopping spree. I’ve gotten in the habit, over years of feeding guests with allergies and dietary needs that are unpredictable and widely varied across the board, as well as supertasters like my husband, of presenting the various parts of a meal as separately as possible. In many cases, the segregation extends to dividing the ingredients of a single dish into many serving containers so that salad becomes a salad bar and entrees become DIY designer projects to be customized on every plate. I don’t mind helping people put their food together or serving it to them to order, but I have long since learned that one dish does not suit all eaters and it’s silly and wasteful to force the issue. It may seem like a foolish extreme, but it’s become comfortable for me. Two year olds should, in fact, also like dining chez moi. And since I’m often prone to thinking rather like a two year old, I suspect any such event could be quite the adventure all ’round.

Thus, whether we all work our way through a buffet line and create our culinary variations on our own plates as we go, or we sit at table with an assemblage of small containers sprinkled around like so many car or furniture parts in every available spot, everybody had better be hungry enough to fend for themselves, or get a helping hand from someone else who’s able to build them their ideal dishes from the bits provided there. It makes for a whole lot more dishing-and-passing of a whole lot more little bowls, plates, platters and jars, but then–well, being at table with me is bound to be something of a project, anyway.

Last night’s dinner was somewhat typical in that way. Small parts of the meal like side dishes and condiments are so easily omitted when one is serving oneself that I never fear to go ahead and serve them as-is. So we have haricots vert already slathered in beurre noisette, a relish of ground cranberries and mandarins in maple syrup, bakery croissants and butter all ready for the taking. Or yes, for the ignoring. I made up last evening’s main dish as a whole before putting it out to serve, because it has so few ingredients the removal of any of them would amount quite nearly to asking the diners to make the whole meal themselves. Which I am not in the least averse to doing, in principle, but didn’t feel was necessary in this case.

So the pasta–wide egg noodles–emerged from the kitchen fully dressed in their cream, lemon juice and zest, pepper and smoked salmon. Mom and Dad S having shipped us a succulent Washington Christmas present early, we thought it prudent to dive right into those tender, moist pieces of Sockeye and pink salmon before they tortured and tantalized us for too long. Since our guests brought us a bottle of superb champagne, this was clearly the destined dish to accompany it! Also, as it goes almost without saying, it’s one of the world’s simplest entrees to make, and therefore a favorite in the arsenal of the Kath of Least Resistance at any time when such great smoked salmon is available. I did go so far as to serve the garnish of fried sage leaves separately, knowing my spouse’s disdain for “Green Stuff”; he’d be quite happy if all herbs just disappeared from the face of the earth, or would be at least until he realized that some of his favorite foods actually do rely on them for their distinctive flavors.

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. . . no offense to you Green vegetables and ((shudder!)) Herbs!

It was the salad’s turn, as is often the case, to be divided and conquered by the individual diners last night. In keeping with my fetish for combinations sweet and savory, I chose to accompany a bowl of freshly torn romaine lettuce with the following, from which everyone could pick and choose their proprietary blends: a bowl of cubed red Bartlett pear and super-sweet mandarin oranges–the seediest, by the way, that I’ve chopped up in years, but as fresh and bright and juicy and candy-like as any I’ve ever had, to make up for the inconvenience; toasted pine nuts; diced and candied orange peel; crumbled feta cheese. The dressing, also to be added or bypassed at will, was an easy blend of two parts of blood orange infused olive oil (fabulous stuff from Stonehouse) with one part each of mixed mandarin/lemon juice (leftovers from the salad fruit and pasta sauce), soy sauce and maple syrup, plus a healthy shot of fresh ginger juice. Easy peasy.

Now, lest you imagine that I am some sort of cruel beast that would make all of my guests take care of themselves completely . . . oh, wait, I am. My idea of being in a hospitable environment is someone else’s idea of being left alone.

I am quite happy to spend time with friends and family, as long as they are tolerant of my not being an attentive hostess in the any sort of normal waiting-on-you-hand-and-foot mode and know that I crave large quantities of time to spend not honing my admittedly limited set of social skills. I keep strict private ‘office hours’ between bedtime and late morning so that most people needn’t be exposed to my internal dragon lady, she who rules whenever I should be recharging my emotional batteries in silence. At bedtime, I’ll gladly show y’all where to find any breakfast groceries, pots and pans, clean linens and spare toiletries in the house, have my husband train you how to use the TV remote, hand you the house key and the garage door opener, load up your bookshelf, keep the newspaper out for you on the kitchen table and the coffeemaker stocked on the counter, hunt you up a crossword puzzle collection or a pack of playing cards for solitaire, and give you my spare coat, hat and gloves to borrow for a cool-weather walk, but please wait until I emerge from my cave before attempting any interaction.

And know that I’m just not very good at reading minds when it comes to culinary preferences. Even if I know you’re a vegan or keep Kosher or are deathly allergic to whole grain toast, I don’t necessarily know what you really love or hate to eat or how you like it served. If you can choose your own food and manage assembling your own meal out of the provided parts, we’ll get along swimmingly. Even the Generalissimo, the Duchess and the Dalai Lama would have to fend for themselves at my table. I bet you’ll do well enough too.

Get Out Your Super-Spy Gear: the Future is Inscrutable Yet Inviting

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graphite drawingWhen my sisters and I were kids, the Cold War was still chilling the spines of two cranky paranoid continents to pretty much the polar-offset temperature of today’s heated heights regarding relations between, say, anywhere in the middle east and the US. So we regularly crouched under our little school desks in Cold War air-raid drill positions that would’ve made us a whole new and much more crouch-y Herculaneum if Da Bomb had ever actually been dropped on our noggins. The fact that my early heartthrob Morgan M [name redacted to protect his dignity, if any] had vomited all over our shared desk when the Hong Kong flu swept through our school might’ve made my particular spot-de-crouch that much more stalactite-covered and sculptural, had I dared to look upward, but really, there was no greater sense of danger in those classrooms than the one that some teacher might decide my huddling wasn’t taken seriously enough, so crouch I did.

I also, along with my sisters, considered playing cowboys-and-Indians pretty generally passe, so 1950s, don’t you know, and eschewed that popular pastime for the much better use of our coolness in playing Secret Agents. That we never actually spied on anything more exotic than our own basement Rec Room or went on any mission more hair-raising than to demand a pitcher of green Kool-Aid from Mom to take out to the backyard where we would guzzle it until we were bursting and then run around in sugar-high mania having our Spy-vs-Spy battles (only slightly less ludicrous than those in Mad Magazine) was irrelevant; being Secret Agents was cool, was jazzy, was scintillating and ever so grown up. Naturally, we didn’t have the remotest idea what a spy was or what secret agents of any sort did for a living/dying.

What we did have was a whole lot of green-sugar-water-fueled shrimpy persons’ fun. And then, on a really good day, we’d come inside and have nuclear-orange macaroni and cheese for dinner and some outstanding stories from Dr Seuss or perhaps the infinite child-rearing wisdom of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle to top it all off. We were surrounded by the unspeakable dangers not only of the Cold War but of playground equipment made of heavy steel pipes and undergirded by solid concrete; by houses full of asbestos insulation and lead paint, foods crammed with deadly cyclamates and Red Dye No. 2; and of freely roaming streets full of unlocked houses with total strangers living in them and packs of mainly-unsupervised neighborhood kids playing Kick the Can on the same roads where cars full of seatbelt-repellant maniacs tore around smoking unfiltered cigarettes and spewing plumes of black exhaust every which way.

In my current glorious old age, I am quite delighted that I never had to be rescued from the depredations of cigarettes on either lungs or bank account, that I have a car with seatbelts and airbags and GPS (not a chance in the universe that I’d find my way around the old neighborhood without that), and that I have apparently lived to this advanced vintage with my teeth and internal organs basically intact and not even artificially dyed red. I’m pretty darn delighted to be, let alone to be healthy, well off, surrounded by wonderful people, and even able to remember some of those youthful dangers. But I’m still amazed by the will of modern, educated people to believe in all sorts of dangerous fictions. (I will leave my political commentary at that for today!)

Can’t say whether my love of more benign–designed for entertainment– forms of fiction, fantasy and mystery stemmed from that wilderness of seen and unseen ‘hazards’ menacing my youth, but all of that inherent excitement surely must have had some influence, on the whole. So I thank my parents for not over-protecting me from woodland fort-building and steel-wheel roller skating and river inner-tubing and from meeting the neighbors and all of that reckless craziness. And I thank my lucky stars and guardian angels and many random strangers that I have come through all of it so remarkably well that I look forward quite enthusiastically to the second of my half-centuries from here. No matter how completely that entire range of years is wrapped in mystery at this point.

So for my self-gifting and self-congratulating (I’m very good at both, as you know) on this my 51st birthday, I’m posting a couple of self-indulgent (also a talent of mine) fond and foolish reminiscences and a couple of my mystery story drawings. And wishing all of YOU a very happy day and a marvelous, surprisingly excellent year to follow: I’ll share my day with you if you promise to make it a grand year too, as best you can!

graphite drawing

No doubt the clues are all there, but there's something to be said for just continuing to go along on the adventure and seeing what happens . . .

Our Hard-Earned Inurnments

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photo + textInurnment

Don’t let the dignified patina

Lent by old age fool you—

Dead is dead, decay, decay:

One day it too will rule you;

Just because it may look pretty

On an object in decline

Doesn’t mean I’ll like the gritty

Feel of dust when it is mine!

photo + textSurprise, I’m Dead

I never thought to see so soon

My death, when I am scarce past noon,

Yet though it seems a little odd,

I find me snoozing in the sod.

photo + textGone But Not Forgotten

Lily Rivington has gone

And found eternal respite;

We don’t begrudge it, for we too

Gain peace and lose a despot.

Do not speak ill of those who’ve died,

We’re told, whate’er is said,

So let us kindly leave it that

We thank her that she’s dead.

Yes, Rest in Peace, Miss Rivington,

Enjoy eternal slumber;

At last you did do one good deed:

You left our earthly number.

photo + textWish You were Here

I am having so much fun

It doesn’t seem quite fair

That I’m relaxing underground

And you are stuck

Up there.

In the Red-Dyed Greenery

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photocollageGreen Thumb Caught Red-Handed

In the great garden of Madame Roussel

There grew, to her horror, a lingering smell

Somewhat out of keeping with feelings genteel,

Good graces and manners, and painfully real;

There came to her notice the knowledge that she

Was the harborer of a bold monstrosity

Fertilizing her flowers by means quite disgusting,

A potent decoction so grossly encrusting

Her sweet Potentilla and Rosa rugosa,

So gamey its stench went from here to Formosa;

Such a shame that the corpses kept coming unburied,

But this was the farthest that they could be carried;

Madame’s predilection for lilies and roses

Was matched by the murders done under the noses

Of neighbors and garden-fanatics and friends,

Some of whom, by the way, met their untimely ends;

In short, the career, the vocation, the loves

Of the dame with the blood-engorged gardening gloves

Could have gone on forever, and borne her much fruit,

Were it not that weight-lifting was not her long suit,

Nor was thorough disposal or digging deep ditches;

Who knew that her roses held such fertile riches?

Exposure, at last, was inevitable

When the soil in the garden grew just over-full;

Then “pushing up daisies” took on a new meaning

And oxidized bodies with fumes overweening

Began their announcements of odorous presence

In a way that Madame found to be an unpleasance;

It was nice while it lasted, a gardener’s thrill;

But for cheap fertilizer, it was overkill.mixed media drawing

Gone in an Instant–or Maybe Not . . .

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Since some of you have inquired about the possibility of seeing a portrait of Watch-Cat, I shall oblige. But let me tell you, being as stealthy as he is in his work, he is mighty elusive. The following is the only sort of glimpse we get of him most of the time, and certainly the best I’m ever likely to capture with the camera–he’s much too methodical in his rounds to hang around waiting to pose for the paparazzi.

Isn’t that how we all are in life, somewhat? Set on our appointed paths, head down, moving forward with only the rare thought given to change or breaking out of the known and predictable, even rarer the courage and spirit of adventure to follow through on the thought. Why not surprise yourself with one deviation from your expected path today, doing just one small thing that will bring greater enjoyment or move you toward an alluring new horizon?

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With a twitch of his tail, he's gone again . . .

He Who Never Overdid It

Howard, a fine, well-rounded cat,

was neither skeletal nor fat,

nor was he far too forceful or

behindhand, coming through a door–

not garrulous but neither mute,

nor glabrous, yet not too hirsute,

and when the milk poured, as you’d think,

was neither fast nor slow to drink.

The strange thing, you may be amazed

to know, knowing that he was praised

as a feline so fine, well-rounded

and refined–you’ll be astounded

–and I say it not in jest–

old Howard died, like all the rest.

So, if it means no jot or tittle,

I say: rock the boat a little!

photo (Calendula)

When the Crumpet Hits the Fan

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What to do, what to do? Oh, how shall I ever master the art of propriety in prim company? How could I possibly survive tea with the Queen unscathed? A party with the pope?

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What a to-do!

I am gravely impaired when it comes to knowing the correct fork to use for each course, and even worse at knowing what to say among polite folk when moments of acute stress arise. Sadly, the first phrases that come to mind tend to be blurted out with a certain Anglo-Saxon bluntness at best, and I’ve not yet met any such bell that could be un-rung. I sigh.

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Is it possible to evade the blades?

There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to Be Myself without descending into silliness and horrendously incorrect Be-havior when I think the stakes are high. Need to impress the boss, make points with a priest, or conquer the king? I’m a lost little sheep. Yes, sheepish I can do. But I do crave approval enough that sometimes I’d really love to be able to gloss over that talent of mine for being a goofball and the unintentional class clown and show a bit more couth and culture, now, wouldn’t I.

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Looking foolish, yes, I can do that quite well, but maybe it's just not my cup of tea!

Etiquette coaching? Charm school? Ah, yes, that could all be useful. A kick in the trousers, oh, certainly. A severe talking-to by the headmistress, a careful and thorough study of the Encyclopedia of How to be Apropos, and perhaps a stint in niceness boot camp? Surely all fine and superb ideas and likely to make some improvements in my movements, so to speak. That’s all well and good, but it’s still not going to cure my natural awkwardness and inclination to curl up in a little pill-bug defense pose when faced with imperfection at the exact moment when I wanted to pose as little-miss-perfect. What!!

digitally doctored photo

I believe it's time to get the spinning to stop.

As it happens, I suspect the solution is pretty simple, after all. First step: how about getting over the idea that I can or should be perfect? Hmmm, I think maybe I could do that. I don’t doubt it’d be a healthy approach. Then there’s the useful thought of getting over the whole idea that I can or should convince others that I’m perfect. Aha. A very useful thing to do. What are they going to do, disown me? Refuse to be in the same room? Ha! Crotchety critics and conditional friends? Those are people I don’t want or need in my life! Good for me, if they don’t want to be in it in the first place.

Funny, but when I get thinking straight on the whole topic, it’s not I but rather the focal point that shifts. I realize that what worries me is not whether I can be perfect, not how to be perfect, certainly not how to convince anyone else I’m perfect–especially when I’ve already responded to my frequent-flyer-faux-pas by blurting out the perfectly outlandish verbal proof that reality is so otherwise. It’s more important to me, after all, to let go of all those improbable if not impossible perfectionist worries and know that being my ordinary, fallible, perfectly acceptable plain old self is a better prophylactic against embarrassment and rejection than any other, because it will help insure that I’m in the best company–for me. And I thank you all! [ . . . she cried out with a deep curtsey, tripping on the hem of her gown and cartwheeling down the grand staircase with that massive arrangement of stargazer lilies that she’d knocked over shooting out right over the top of her, and she, all the while, swearing in the most violent purple terms before finally coming to rest in a mangled and guffawing heap, upright and cross-legged, on the marble floor of the foyer, a chipped Limoges teacup improbably perched on top of her once-coiffed head . . . .]

Dude, You’re Harshing My Mellow

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I was darning my husband’s sweater (they were only small holes, so not worthy of being damned) and in mid-stitch, was thinking that perhaps this is one of those many things that tells my age on me. As it is, I will readily admit to my advancing age–a thing of neutral value in my estimation, balancing fairly comfortably so far between worthwhile accumulations of experience and adventure and the brink of crepitation that will begin my final free-fall towards oblivion. So it’s not a touchy subject.photos x2What really struck me during this little bit of mending was that however cloddish my technique, it was still a very antique skill that I had learned from Mom in my youth and she, in her turn, from hers, and right on back into the impenetrable fog of history. Furthermore, a skill that you’d think a truly slothful person like I am at heart would find just a teeny bit repellant; you’d honestly expect something more like my flinging the sweater in a pile of give-away items as I slouched by on my way to the nearest chaise longue. I live in a disposable and spoiled society and it would be quite conceivable that I would far prefer to go with the flow of self-indulgence, lean back in the shade comfortably sipping sweet tea, and buy a new sweater with no untoward holes in it.

But along with that darning bit of old-fashioned fashion in me are a few other quirks of age. It’s clear that my multiple personalities are coming out of the woodwork in all of their glorious contradiction as I grow older. I am more able, for example, to recognize what would be the more mature thing to think, say or do in a given circumstance, but less willing to conform to that with every day that slithers by. I grow lazier–I would say by leaps and bounds, but that would imply energy being exerted to do so, obviously a misrepresentation, so let’s say by exponential expansion–that’s another thing, coincidentally, that I’m doing along with age, since I eat more and exercise less whenever I think I can get away with it. Even when I know I can’t. And yet another of these oddities is that while I grow lazier as quickly and surely as long blue-green hair grows on expiring vegetables, I also grow more stubborn about getting some things repaired in ways that will last longer and prevent my having to repair them next week yet once more. So I darn the darn things.

Everyone and everything else continues to age right along with me, so I feel safe in assuming a certain amount of knowing sympathy among my crinkled compadres, as well as understanding when I say that I am also simultaneously getting more profligate and more tight-fisted with my money. There are so many things that in days gone by I would have continently held in heart-thrumming abeyance as long as I could stand, both to see if I truly craved them enough for the sizable expenditure and because I thought it more fiscally prudent and Mature. Now, I’m often apt to shrug with a rich Gallic moue and say to myself, But Darling, you could, howcanIsayitdelicately, CROAK tomorrow! And POP! goes the wallet.

Some things I have learned actually do fall under the get-what-you-pay-for rubric, making up in the long term what they scared out of me in the present expense. Such, for example, is this cashmere sweater I mended. I am quite fond of bragging that I’ve bagged most of my non-shoe wardrobe for under USD $10, but on a couple of rare occasions I have seen one of a kind items either at surprise availability or better yet, on sale (perhaps resembling in this my brother-in-law, whose middle name we have occasionally joked should have been HalPris, or Half Price, for his amazing zest and gift for finding bargains)–when those moments come, it’s time to pony up and make the grand purchase. Because (a) high quality does last longer and (b) some outrageous things are just too jolly fun to have. So as I’m loath to cast off a slightly moth-eaten cashmere, it was worth the effort of the purchase enough that I’m willing to undergo the momentary exertion of actually mending and maintaining such a thing. It’s like a smaller and less complicated version of the relationship I have with a house: I know that things will constantly require attention and maintenance, and what falls within my limited skill range must be determined to be either worth the trouble or not, destined to be cheaply slicked over or staring me down with the necessity and value of genuine, if expensive, care and improvement.photoAs for the sweater with the holes in it, I just did the best I could making them disappear with some discreet back stitching and re-weaving of the threads. It deserved to be darned. The moth that munched the wool, him I did damn to perdition for his maleficence in undoing the pristineness of my husband’s only nice and slightly expensive sweater. Go back to your weed patch and chew on a rabid squirrel’s ankle or something, you mean MothMonster, why don’t you! And then I’d blow him away on a dandelion parachute, while lying back once again on my chaise as the sun drifts gradually down the afternoon sky.photo

Skipping thro’ the Birchen Wood, I Thought I Spied a Whale

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acrylic on canvas

Here in the forests of my imagination . . .

What wondrous light through yonder branches gleams? Would that it were the opalescent glow of glimmering brilliance coming to infiltrate my idle brain. Or perhaps, an itinerant faerie spirit heading my way, jeweled sceptre alit with inspirational powers to be bestowed on my waiting brow with only the lightest of touches. Even the wan incandescent light that flickers in welcome warmth when someone stops by and drawls, ‘Whooooa, cool poem, dude!‘ is an apparition that I welcome in these woods.

But left to my own devices, I am often content to play hide-and-seek with the absurd and ridiculous denizens with whom I myself people the copses and clearings. It’s hard to be bored when in the world of my imaginings I might just as well see a party of rhinoceri dining daintily on macarons and sipping mimosas as find the standard woodland chirpy-birds and curly-tailed possums. And of course I can find plenty of entertainment in the latter, should my rare white rhino friends fail to materialize on the occasion.

The who-what-when-where-why approach of old-time journalism is hardly limited, but so often is put to service in creating dull worlds that have no scintillation or silver-lined possibility of their own. Why should I merely recount the facts, if my friends and compatriots have the same at their own fingertips or floating in the ether encircling their own fevered brows? I feel much more compelled, drawn (and quartered) by the fantastical and unreal, and that doesn’t mean that I must limit my contact with the quotidian. In my view, the real world and everyday experience are both bursting with nonsense and bizarre occurrences that would challenge the sanity of anyone willing to look just slightly under the surface, a tiny bit off of the center of the frame. It’s this singing netherworld of oddity and mystery, of hilarity and not-yet-discovered realms of the heart and mind, that pulls me into its mystical swirl and mesmerizes me.

I am astounded when I hear tell of people admonishing artists and creative folk to give up their wastrel ways and do something Productive. Where these same critics expect inventions or discoveries of import, let alone life-enhancing pleasures and spiritual inspirations, to emerge if not from creative work and play I am unable to guess.

I’ve long since left it to others to describe what they tout as Fact and confirmed Truth. There are endless phalanxes of politicians and scientists and religious leaders, hover-parents and bosses, dictators and dullards, all of whom readily offer their convictions of reality whether I ask them to or not, so I learned that I’d much rather stick to my own version of reality and just see where it takes me.

Does this approach expose me to ridicule and censure? Of course it does. Anything anyone else tells you ought to be taken with an entire inland sea of salt, if it keeps you from swallowing nonsense wholesale. I certainly don’t believe everything I say!

But I did learn, when I bundled up my outsized cravings for outside affirmation in the dense wrappings of uneasy reality and flung them all out the casement, that any reality is somewhat overrated. That the lilac scented porpoises leaping in my own candy-colored seas were not only good company but sometimes took me along to actual places of learning and wholesome connection with genuine people willing to dive into alternate worlds too. And that I grew more deeply convinced that nobody is in such dire need of the strictly factual that their lives can’t be enriched, like mine, by the meandering, iridescent, depthless, deathless joys of curiosity and invention and hope.

acrylic on canvas

. . . and away I swam, bathing in the limpid phosphorescence of wonderment . . .

Lowbrow Criminal Activity for Fun and Profit

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I confess, I would make a terrible criminal. See that? I already confessed, and I hadn’t even done anything underhanded yet. My mother is the one we kids always said would be the ideal wicked-mastermind, because she’s so incredibly good and kind and nice, nobody would ever suspect her. Of course, there’s the problem of getting anyone so genuinely nice and kind and good to actually Do Bad Deeds, so you can see that in practical terms our family is just not cut out for skillful bad-deed-doing.

So it’s conceivably a somewhat sympathetic chord being struck that makes me kind of like tales of really inept criminality. Yes, it’s also that the stories all end with comeuppance for miscreants, because if you’re really a clod among crooks, you will get caught, and I am after all a great goody two-shoes at heart. But maybe one with a hint of a mean streak, because it’s probably pure Schadenfreude that makes me truly enjoy tales of ineptitude among the nefarious.

photos + textHey, Who’s the Real Bad Guy Here?

One day I was evading the police pursuing me,

And by a mere coincidence, I bumped into a tree

That happened, oddly, by surprise, to tip onto a house

And through its roof, which crumpled down, startling a rabid mouse

That shot across the neighbors’ lawn and bit their Shih Tzu dog,

Upon which, he upended, deathlike, in aphasic fog;

The neighbor lady found him lying stiff-legged on the lawn

And started in with CPR* to save him, thereupon

Shocking the Shih Tzu back to action, sending him a-pounce,

As though he squirted from her arms, to give the mouse a trounce

That sent the rodent racing back to its familiar haunts,

And by the tree, it spotted me, quite startled for the nonce—

The both of us, indeed, taken aback for just that blink,

Until a second later it occurred to me to think

There were some coppers on my tail, and if I didn’t scram

They’d find me gaping at a mouse, and clever as I am,

I reached instead and grabbed the little critter by the tail

And strapped him in my seatbelt, so if any went to jail

It would be one that, anyhow, had terrorized a pet,

Whereas I’m just a burglar, and I ain’t bit no one yet.

[Note for my Canadian friends: not referencing the Canadian Pacific Railway here, although I suppose one could make the argument that running a train over an unconscious being might forcibly restart his heart with a powerful squashing, if it didn’t kill him outright]

photo

Rumors

Mellie’s tidy garden

Upon the gatehouse roof

Is rumored to conceal some things

Of which we have no proof.

It’s pretty for its own sake, yes,

With dainty flowering plants

But the idea it’s secretive

Is really what enchants

Roof gardens are quite magical

All of their own accord,

But we like thinking Mellie’s

Best, for hiding untoward,

Suspicious things not seen at first,

Perceived among the flowers,

But only yet imagine

In our impish idle hours.photo