Category Archives: Nature

Viewfinder

Posted on by
25
digitally doctored soft pastel and colored pencil

Home is located on Cloud Eight.

You will not be the least bit surprised to know that my lifelong residence on Cloud Eight is situated as close as possible to the proverbial Cloud Nine, where all is perfection and the joys of every ideal are quite simply the norm. You may not even be shocked to hear that I have no need, intention or desire to relocate permanently to Cloud Nine. Frankly, I’m afraid that living there full time would blow my gaskets. Too much ecstasy, constant adrenaline and a permanent state of bliss sound dangerously close to hysteria and collapse. Further, I fear that such excess would find some way to become dull, lacking the contrast of subtler and more refined things.

I have no desire for pain and suffering, mind you; I am very well adapted to my happy and near-perfect life, and I am far too un-evolved to handle the demands of a trying existence. I am quite content to be, well, contented. And on Cloud Eight, there are just enough unforeseen twists of the road, moments of sorrow or fear or illness or what-have-you that, when they have passed, become salt: a seasoning valued so highly because in addition to its own flavors it highlights and enhances the other flavors around it. The piquancy and clarity and intensity of joy is only fully possible, I suspect, if one knows a hint of contrast. Maybe that’s just another iteration of my love of black and white imagery.

In the meantime, as I say, goodness and happiness have their own complications, not least of all a jaded or surfeited attitude brought on by over-indulgence. I find pessimism and paranoia dreary and tiresome companions, but a little part of me needs to stand at attention and be alert to their opposites so that I don’t drift along, bleary, blind to the beauty and inspirations all around me. If I fail to see the marvels in my own (albeit somewhat raggedy) garden, the humor in a child’s uninhibited playfulness, the drama and magisterial artistry in a lightning-streaked sky–why, then, there’s no point in lounging around on the everyday cloud most proximal to the place of perfection, let alone taking the occasional jaunt over ‘next door’ for that welcome hit of delirium, is there!

With that in mind, I make it a point to revisit my own environs with a different point of view or a revitalized attitude whenever I can, lest I lose sight of the wonders all around. If I should lack for a blog post idea for a moment, what’s to blame but my own failure to adjust the lens, to improve my focus. To see and revel in what’s right in front of me. I should take every opportunity to pause and refresh my senses, and then I can’t imagine that there won’t always be a new idea, a dazzling insight or maybe just a friendly reminder of how great the seeming old-familiar can be if I let it.

soft pastel on paper

If I tire of the view, I ought to change my perspective . . .

The Latest Dance Craze, and I Do Mean Latest

Posted on by
15

photoTarantella* for Arachnophobes

I’m told a lizard ought to find

small creatures of arachnid-kind

as tasty and desirable

a treat to make the tummy full

as anyone could wish to munch–

but I hate them, that horrid bunch!

Spiders, to me, are crawly, creepy

creatures; make me frightened, weepy,

send me under my bed, my couch,

in a zipping zing or a crunching crouch;

they make me itch in my lizard pants,

in my reptile rooms, until I prance

around the house in a manic dance!

I try to shake my whole belief

that they’re attacking; no relief

is found when I am faced with grief

from eight-legg’d monsters or their kin,

and then such dancing must begin!

I’m forced to writhe and wriggle madly,

spin and struggle wildly (sadly),

and last, because the fear remains,

tromp out a tarantella, badly!

O, would that I could simply snap

my jaws on that small hairy chap

the spider, show no fear of death;

instead, I lose my very breath

and shrivel, like the brink of doom

has entered in my living room!

What was my fateful youthful sinning

set my head and heart to spinning

like a dervish when one shows,

to tearing my poor lizard clothes,

sneezing out of my reptile nose

and stretching like a garden hose

to flee arachnids; why do those

bring fear into my scaly soul?

I only know my utter goal

when spiders enter into view

is: dance until they set on you.

* Just so’s you know, I do realize that this poem in no way conforms to any of the traditional Tarantella forms, nor will dancing whilst reciting it actually cure you if you should be gnawed on by a spider, but it might possibly frighten away any proximal tarantulas–as well as humans–if you dance in an appropriately bizarre fashion during your recitation.

digital photo-collageTotentanz

I shall sing you a ditty, you fine dead folk;

dance along to it if you like; no joke:

for naught’s so right in my heart and head

as to pay respect to the honored dead,

who have earned the ease of their Late condition,

but also deserve deep recognition,

and might be glad to take part, perchance,

in a little postmortem song and dance.

In limpid blue and livid red

but nary a drop of gloom or dread

I’ll dress my act for each measured measure,

creating a funerary pleasure

to honor the love, in my death-knell song,

of those dear departed, the moved-along,

and move, if I can, each girl and boy

to dance a jig of unceasing joy,

remembering all you dead-and-done

with fond frivolity, every one,

dancing our socks off, slow or fast,

as we sing and swing to the very last,

and when ghost-persons join, their haunts

bring cheer to the perfect Totentanz.

Pressing the Reset Button (A Walk in the Park)

Posted on by
12
photo

To take a moment to savor serenity . . .

Sometimes I’m taken aback, when I not only have but actually take advantage of a quiet interval, a space for introspection . . . and realize how rarely I do this simple exercise that I ought to do consistently. Stop. Think. Breathe slowly and deeply. Imagine. And let everything else just go. Let it flow away, sink out of sight.

Life in general is not (for most of us) the proverbial Walk in the Park. But is that because it’s how it has to be, or because we let it be so? Will the earth really fall off its axis and life as we know it end because I took an hour to do nothing except regroup silently and maybe take a stroll around the building, around the neighborhood? Of course not. There are moments of life-and-death drama for us all–for some, every single day. But if we let those be all that we have, what do we sacrifice in the exchange? Whom do we allow ourselves to be, and how does that affect all of the people around us whom we profess to treasure so?

I think I know. And in moments like this, when I do allow myself to slow down and take that healing inspiration of a meditative calm, of a purposeful emptying of my busy heart and brain to open up space for something less frantic and a little less fixed–I find beauty. Not because all of the Stuff stops mattering; I’ll return to the buzzing hive soon enough and take up my part in the foolishness once again. Because I find just enough renewal in the smallest pause to sustain me through that next onslaught of outrageousness, the incoming demands and the overwhelming sense of Things That Must Be Done. And then I will try my best to remember from time to time to reboot, to hit Pause again. To purposefully do nothing at all.

If only for a moment.

photo

I'll allow little spaces for larger beauties to come into view . . .

High Heels and Long Underwear

Posted on by
16

photoThe change of seasons, whenever and however it happens, always leads me to revisit the idea that we humans are mighty changeable creatures ourselves. This week it suddenly started to act like Autumn here in Texas, after stubbornly refusing to budge from sunny sameness for-seemingly-ever, and instantly there appeared on the public horizon a whole shift of attentions and fashions to go along for the ride. It reminds me as always of what will o’the wisps we are, how fickle and full of silly fancies and steered by every faint current into yet another direction entirely tangential to purpose and meaning, but gripping to us all when we are in it just the same.

Our concepts of beauty and usefulness and value are so mutable, so flexible, it’s a miracle we can find any consensus in our own hearts let alone in the larger community to define what’s important and desirable in our lives from day to day, year to year. I would include most “hard-liners” of any sort in this human whirlpool of constant shift and adjustment too. They will argue that their political or religious or societal stance never alters, but in fact it must if its context is constantly flickering and wriggling uncontrollably, just to maintain the semblance of fixity: the language, tactics, audience-targeting, tools to be used and even reasons for being considered an Immovable Object all have to adjust to the surrounding circumstances and forces in order to keep the believer’s sense of continuity and commitment firm. And that’s both a good and a very scary thing for both sides of the conversation. The Believer side, because it’s really not open to discussion and therefore should neither be questioned nor called to adjust, and the Other-Views side because it’s sometimes hard not only to consider whether we have become fixed in our own ways but also to consider which ways we can and should be going.

That idea alone can veer off into far deeper waters than the initial premise of this rumination warrants, so I’ll leave it by saying that I think of myself as being fairly comfortable with uncertainty and rather not so certain when it comes to taking sides. There isn’t much in the world I know that I see in clearly demarcated black and white, practically speaking. Maybe that’s why I do like to make black and white artworks as much as I do, after all.

mixed media B/W illustrationIn the meantime, the changing of the seasons and its concomitant change of more frivolous things teases me into enjoying the oddity of how easily we are steered in matters of taste and pleasure. The college cuties rambling off-campus are still wearing the same few molecules of skirts and spray-painted tops, but in a faint nod to the changing wind and temperature, suddenly they’re accessorized with bigger than ever Sasquatch boots, long-fringed fake-fur (though still sleeveless) hoodies and, when the males of the species are out of gawking range, garments that look suspiciously like emergency-rescue wrappings used to save hypothermia victims from impending death. I presume these latter items reside, in male-proximal moments, in the depths of those Volkswagen-sized handbags so prevalent nowadays.

Certainly, you can see just from the way I use of the word “nowadays” that I’m old enough to be wearing underpants that could be mistaken for a parachute, holding my socks up with garters, and wearing clothespins on the back of my neck to keep my facial features more reliably in place. To be fair, I was a geezer in many ways from about when I hit the age of ten, so although I eschew such age-appropriate gear myself, I have never quite been what anyone would call At One with the trends. Fortunately for me, I find myself quite fabulous as-is, and apparently those around me have either built up serious tolerance or agree with my skewed view.

So I’m quite happy to live-and-let-live when it comes to personal decoration, even if it means watching delusional dames dress like teenagers, teenagers dress like trashy skanks, and grown men unable to recognize that their comb-overs neither fool anyone other than themselves nor do they remain hugging the skull as insulation when the wind arises but rather take sail and remain vertical until alighting after the storm passes or the gents go indoors, whichever comes first. After all, what would be the excitement, the entertainment value, if we all decorated ourselves well or sensibly or beautifully?

What, especially, would be the fun in all of us considering the same things beautiful? I know one thing: all species would die out shortly after becoming severely inbred if every creature were attracted to only one form of every feature of that creature. And don’t get me started on the likelihood that a handsome sawfish would find a cyclamen pretty or a person who loves to grow prizewinning turnips would like to date a person who looks like a really fine turnip. When it comes to beauty, I’m all for letting you keep your ridiculous prejudices as long as you let me keep my equally ridiculous ones, my friends.

photos x2

Into Each Life a Little Rain *Should* Fall

Posted on by
5
photo

The spring rains near where I spent much of my youth watered many a tulip or daffodil right along with me . . .

I come from waterlogged stock, I suppose. Born and bred in western Washington, where it is rumored that children are born with webbed feet and mildew is every basement’s middle name, I grew up accustomed to the proprietary blend of intense green and hazy grey that is the trademark of the region, a badge of honor of its own kind. The Evergreen State was not called that for nothing and earned the moniker by the bucketful; as a child, I may have feared that the immensity of the rain’s reach might require us all to develop gills, especially if Mount Rainier also decided her geologic pregnancy was complete and blew off the entire west coast into the ocean. There were times when, of course, I doubted the mountain‘s very existence because it had disappeared behind a rain-cloud bank so persistent that we hadn’t seen that glorious white diadem on the state’s brow in ages, but eventually a good shaker or at least a seismic cough would confirm that behind the cumulonimbus wall somewhere lay the spectacle of the mountain in wait for the return of drier skies.

Don’t mistake, as much of the Outside World has done, that this is indeed the whole Northwest experience. Children, perhaps, would contend that there is nothing but rain their entire lives, but I know from a much longer stretch of years, not to mention a gradually shifting climate over the last number of decades that has seen a skew toward somewhat later seasonal changes all ’round and definitely a degree-or-two of push in the direction of both the warm and cold extremes (among other things): the northwest is gorgeous, The Mountain does grace us with its presence pretty often, and the sun DOES shine. With true shimmering spectacle, in exaggeratedly cerulean skies. Sometimes whip-creamed with piles of white landscape-painterly clouds and sometimes just in that fabulous bowl of uninterrupted enameled sky inviting eagles to slide across it if they dare.

As a transplant in Texas, I’m learning a whole new vocabulary of extremes when it comes to things meteorological and geological. I spent a couple of brief, mountain-less years living near Chicago in my youth and had made enough family road trips to know a bit about how much terrain and weather could vary even over short distances. Moving to Texas, even north Texas, proved something of a paradigm shift in that regard, especially as we arrived seemingly on the cusp of some rather spectacular worldwide change when it comes to things weather-related. So it was an intriguing and, well, oven-crisped adventure to face a summer where our county officially slipped into drought right on the heels of all the other counties in the state, most of them throughout the region as well. My roots, accustomed to their abundant if not excessive access to cool clean water, began to protest. The arrival of the first low enough temperatures, accompanied by the first blessed misting of rain, well into October, and the appearance then of early summer blooms as though they thought it was just hitting mid-May seemed slightly ludicrous but nonetheless as welcome as a long-awaited prison pardon.

Today the temperature dropped, thanks to a sudden “cold front”–sorry, I just had to put it in quotes when it referred to 12C/52F degrees at the end of October; that’s the Northwest in me talking. Since we had had pretty solidly insistent summer temperatures until yesterday, this seems like rather high drama! It’s a firm reminder, if we really needed one, of our being composed of such a high percentage of H2O ourselves and having not just an inborn affinity then but a core-deep need for water, water everywhere. The problem is distribution. There’s so often too much of it in one part of the world and too little in another. Balance, by planetary measure, is not the same thing as our sense of balance as tiny little individuals and groups upon that planet, so we’re almost always wishing, wherever we are, that Ma Nature would set up a much fairer sharing system. Least she could do is let one of us kids divvy up the water and the others choose which glasses to grab for our shares.

That’s what makes it seem like such a benison when the floodwaters recede, the monsoon season ends or the hurricane relents and dissipates. When the parched clay gets a sip of rain, the stream-bed feels that first trickling, slaking return, and the blurry looking cloud that’s been hovering just a hair too far off by the horizon finally acquiesces, rolling in with its bellyful of soothing eau-de-vie. Today we’ve had a bit of rain again at last, and the grey lid over the oaks looks promisingly like the skies I knew in my “northwet” youth, and I am comforted by it all. Sun fills me with hope much of the time, I’m moved by the legendary promises of rainbows whenever they bend across my view, but when it’s been long enough between squalls and spritzers for me to miss them so, nothing is more beautiful than the dirty mashup of colliding clouds as they commence spitting their payload of rain on house and garden and me, umbrella or no umbrella. Let it rain!

oil on canvas

When I am thirsty, let it rain . . .

Hunk of Burning Lady-Love

Posted on by
14
photo

I'm in the full bloom of my life . . .

A Real Hottie

O radiant beauty, dost thou know

What microwaves thine innards so–

Pray, can it be that bane of men

And women both, yea, estrogen?

photo

Go ahead, my man, and throw me bouquets!

Tree Hugging Hippie

Posted on by
17
photo

Holy Tree Trunks, Batman! It's public housing for critters!

We got the good news yesterday: we’re expecting! No, come down off the ceiling you guys, this is not a midlife-crisis pregnancy I’m talking about. I’m not having any obstetrics and ultrasounds–will gladly leave that to much better suited (and -aged) women, thankyouverymuch–and I haven’t got a pretty heifer on hand and headed for calving either, like Celi’s beautiful bossy Daisy (she is rather independent-minded, that cow).

We’re having a baby tree.

Our city has a pretty nifty organization dedicated to ecological soundness and progress, and they sponsor an annual tree giveaway, a free young sapling to any homeowner in the city. They give away hundreds a year to first-come-first-served applicants who can choose between a handful of varieties each time and hope they asked early enough to get their first choice. Last year we had just moved into our house and were delighted to be granted a five-foot redbud “stick” in a three gallon pot, a baby that as I’m looking out the window now has about three slender branches starting to give it a little less strictly vertical look, and big heart-shaped leaves fluttering in the midday breeze.

This year I’m happy to learn we get our first choice again and will become proud parents of a Mexican Plum sapling. I’m going to add it to our front yard along with the redbud, where I hope that the two modest flowering trees will grow in to eventually be mature enough to together fill the gap that will inevitably be left when the big, beautiful flowering pear out there gives up the ghost, as I’m told they tend to do in a rather moderate lifespan of 25 or 30 years (this one, given its size and the age of the house, may well have about 20 years under its bark already). Then I’ll still have blooming trees to complement the fabulous old Post Oaks in the front garden.

Can you tell we’re big fans of trees here? When you know that both my husband and I grew up in the Evergreen State, surrounded by Douglas firs and a kazillion other varieties of trees, and that we moved to a state we knew full well would have hot summers (though we couldn’t have guessed quite how relentlessly and blisteringly hot this year), you can’t be surprised to hear that we house-hunted by tree. That is, houses without sufficient trees around them were instantly crossed off our list, while even a so-so prospect as a building might get a go at least temporarily if it ‘gave great tree’. So we were over the moon at finding a nice place set among three old oaks (the one in the back is a Red Oak) and two mature flowering Bradford pears, and fronting a small ravine that is packed with a mix of wonderful trees. Not only do we get the heat-and-light filtering of these beauties, but we get a constant stream of birds and all of the other creatures to which the trees offer shelter and food and comfort.

This summer was extraordinarily stressful for the trees around here, and many, even in our mostly automated watering neighborhood, died. It’s inevitable but a heartrending sight, a rusty brown pine amid the hardier green oaks, letting its long silky needles stiffen and hang lower and lower as if in mourning for its own loss. A big magnolia and oak, standing side by side with their branches now utterly winter-bare and their bark peeling back and pulling away from the trunks that can no longer feed themselves. It’s a bitter thing, dying, for an ancient tree as well as for all of the birds and beasts and bugs that suffer for its loss. And for the people who lose just that much more fresh, filtered air, that spot of shade, that green-roofed place of peace.

So I am doubly happy when I hear we’re getting this new tree. A different kind than those I’ve known, a little adventure in seeing and growing something out of my ordinary ken. One that will show us that it’s spring with a splash of bloom as it grows up, even if the Texas weather trends forbid that we should figure out it’s spring in other ways. One that will someday set fruit fit for jam or juice, or maybe just bejeweled gifts for the birds and beasts and bugs that celebrate the finding of another tree.

I love that despite the sometimes arid and definitely less plant-diverse region here than what I used to know, my home’s embraced by such a wealth of trees. Oaks of many kinds, ornamental pears, a soapberry sapling that I hope will also rise up into a great feeding station for the birds, magnolias and mulberries and pines around the block; trees that make me think for just a moment that even a place of drought remembers its fecundity and grace give me a kind of nourishment that all the birds and beasts and bugs can take for granted but I hope that I do not. An infant human is a lovely thing, to be sure, as is a newborn calf. But for me, for now, nothing is better news than that I’ll soon have another tree to plant and someday sit beneath.

photo
Worth more than its weight in gold

The Supercooled Liquid that is Far More than Smoke and Mirrors

Posted on by
13
photo

How does the mind conceive of things that defy logic--and then proceed to make them real?

Glass Passages

Strange enough that someone saw at hand,

amid a million million grains of sand,

the only water truly born of fire–

that clarity, deep brilliant light and flow,

refractory and sharp and sweet, desire

that stops in time complete and whole, as though

to freeze all thought and memory and time–

and then took flame to capture its sublime

pure rectitude and stillness; who could know

the alchemy that could and would be wrought

by taming elements to strengthen, stain

and shape anew the crystal, blazing hot

sand silicates and yet somehow retain

such potency, such power that a strand

of history would through it then be drawn

to tell the stories, made so much more grand

in glass by tying evening back to dawn,

and in the light transmitted through that glass,

commemorate the ages as they pass.

photo

Even in the perception of what Is, if it's a discovery of the strange inherent beauty and potential of it, there can be art . . .

Leading Me down the Primrose Path

Posted on by
Reply
2 photos

Amid the fragile glories of a garden . . .

I am as gullible and easily ensnared as they come. When the weather is just perfect (however that may be defined by me on the day) and the blooms begin to go off like temperate fireworks and all of the insects are humming benignly in delight, I am easily convinced that the garden is the only place on earth to be.

It’s not that I’m quite in the league of those master gardeners and other addicts that find true solace in being elbow-deep in dirt, for everyone who’s not been nodding off like Rip Van Winkle knows I rarely get the urge to work that hard, and gardening can be truly heavy labor. But the smell of deep loam mixed with mouldering pine or fir needles and crisp fallen leaves, blended expertly by Ma Nature with top notes of any sort of sweet flora, and perhaps just a splash of wet pavement to finish–this is the perfume of a kind of happiness found nowhere but in a garden and in the heart of a garden-lover.

The lovely rustle of leaves, the metallic buzz of a sonorous cicada, perhaps the musical flow of water over stone, this is the soundtrack of contentment. Birds can sing to it with ease, and their choruses may interweave with a depth and beauty seldom heard in the most sophisticated counterpoint and polyphony devised by human composers. Even the neighborhood dogs and cats seem inclined to dance when passing by in these marvelous moments of song. A far distant lawnmower’s roar is softened by the miles to a point where it almost has the same romance as the sound of the passing train.

Every one of the gorgeous growing things is lovely in its own peculiar way as well. Grasses stretched to bristling brushy heights in wild bursts of growth may be just brown to those not tutored in a garden’s joys, but on a close inspection can reveal a magical array of brown and yellow, ruddy, rusty, tan and bronze, and silver and gold tones in every shade. Leaves and blooms in colors ignored by all but the most discerning eyes in a rainbow’s arc are suddenly broadcast with prodigality in all the craziness and grace a garden’s bed can possibly begin to hold. Somehow even the spots that might look bare at first hide secret gifts if one has patience just to take a closer look and see what moves among the bits of soil, the scattered rocks, to lean in far enough to find that velvet dust left by a butterfly, the drifted petals of a rose. I am enchanted, too, by the silky feel of a the bold tissue-paper blooms of a tree peony or the rough warmth of a sun-baked cedar trunk, by the taste of the honeyed air when I breathe in the sweet perfections of a summer afternoon.

2 photos

There is beauty enough for all the senses . . .

Here in Texas it has been a fairly brutal summer for such things to thrive. Only the profligate expenditure of water where there has been none could possibly allow for garden prettiness of such a delicate sort to live and grow. Other than trying to help our venerable oaks and full-sized Bradford pears survive with dignity intact, I’ve not been generous with water, knowing that there are more urgent uses for it at the moment than for personal pleasure’s sake. I have been working all the while to devise an appropriate native-planting-x-xeriscape new landscape plan with which to revise our yard for the long term–when we can afford to do it. I’m building a rather nice new scheme for it, I think!

Meanwhile, there came a little rain. In the last few days there’s been a little respite from the drought. It hasn’t ended the drought, of course, nor anywhere near undone the damage that’s been wrought. The dire dryness will likely continue for some time, and we know that droughts, historically, have shown the power to last for decades in a place, but for this little point in time it’s heavenly to get a sip.

So even though I know this hint of watering is likely only to lead me down some primrose path if I believe it means it’s garden time for real, I still give in. I’ll acquiesce to the false sense of springlike play this water brings and go, I’m sure, to the garden once again, only to be chased back by another wave of heat. But for this little time I cannot lie: the roses tentatively opening after a splash of rain make me want to believe in them, make me want to head out to the yard. There’s life in the old lady yet.

Correct Me If I’m Wrong (and I Never am . . . )

Posted on by
3
spurs & windmill photos

EVERYTHING is research, no? Put on your spurs, head into the wind, and file this, baby!

I think of life as one big information-expedition. Whatever we do or sense or observe gets filed for future reference. Some things are instantly obvious candidates for the Circular File, yes, but everything else should potentially be of interest in one fashion or another. Call it ‘learning from experience’ or fodder for future tall tales to the great-grandkids or simply useful stuff to know, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t, shouldn’t or can’t inform the future self if stored and processed thoughtfully.

Anu Garg‘s wonderful resource website and newsletter A.Word.A.Day (http://wordsmith.org/awad/) is full of marvels: offering the etymology of a word (or more) each day, it seeks to broaden not only our vocabularies but our exposure to and, hopefully, understanding of the history, culture, politics, religions, biology, biography, and so forth–not only of our immediate surrounding population and geographic areas but all of the world’s intertwining ones as well. In addition, the site includes quoted wisdom, pathos and humor from great thinkers and writers. Today’s quotation was one that especially resonated in me:

A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. –Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)

I’ve long felt that, whatever other good bad or indifferent qualities I impute to my life experiences, they shape not only how I think and act afterward but also what directions my creative life is bound to take. I have not even remotely achieved the Buddhist ideal of absolute presence in the moment or a fully and minutely examined life. In my case, though, I attempt most to apply that special rigor to the sensory experiences of my existence, since it is the use of the senses in interpreting and expressing my thoughts and ideas as art that gives me my best self-expression in its broader meaning.

Thankfully, my immediate circle is famously patient with such things. When my partner and I go for a walk, he is enjoying the movement and the tour through a place. I am spending some of the outing walking right along with him, but it’s usually interrupted from time to time by my stopping to investigate and/or photograph whatever intriguing distraction has caught my Miss Magpie eye. I call our walks ‘interval training’ on my part, because while my spouse has continued at his regular pace and I’ve been playing amateur researcher-inspector-scientist, the gap has widened from arm’s length and I must either speed up a little or hit a dead run to catch up for another bit of close-up strolling. Whether it’s now stored in my digital memory as a snapshot or not, whatever caught my attention is filed as quickly as possible–preferably while I catch up to my walking partner, since he may well have continued our conversation without noticing that I’d dropped behind and it would make for some disconcerting non-sequiturs indeed if I interjected with commentary on the beetle wing I just hurriedly stuffed in my pocket or the Art Deco cornice I paused to photograph.

Certainly I have found the digital mini-camera a boon when it comes to those fleeting moments of ideation and inspiration. More often than not, it’s long after the fact that I find the meaning and particular interests in whatever had diverted my attention, frequently because, upon seeing the photograph I’d hastily taken, I’m now noticing something new of interest. That’s usually when I spot similarities of appearance or type, or affinities that put this new tidbit into the context of some story I’d intended to tell or that make it a ‘good fit’ for grouping with other found treasures in my endless stream of visual-mental comparisons and meta-matches, these usually leading to yet another story or stream-of-consciousness ramble. Thus go the meanderings of the trackless mind.

The special appeal, for me, of such unplanned and serendipitous findings is that nothing goes to waste. There are no Wrong Answers in this class. Mistakes and griefs, misfires and tragedies, ugly things and scary things and unbelievably stupid things all have as much possibility for conversion into a good story or a fine piece of art as any happy or pretty thing can have. Even MY mistakes and griefs. With a bit of perspective, at least. So, whenever I can unfurl from the fetal position after having been hit by or created a disaster, I teach myself yet again to spring up with the cartoon-like enthusiasm of those eensy-weensy Olympians popping over the vaulting horse, throw my hands triumphantly in the air, and yell, “I meant to do that!” and then do my best to incorporate the most useful elements of what’s left of me after the experience into an even better me.

Or at the least, into a pretty cool piece of creative art.

aquarium photos + text

It takes some courage, to be sure . . .

And it’s particularly helpful to remind myself that, even if I’m not quite up to that task, maybe the Artist character that I play could do it . . .