Category Archives: Stories

Senility isn’t a Second Childhood If You Never Left the First One

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It’s pretty simple, really. I’m planning to carry on a long tradition (I won’t name names) of remaining not just childlike but completely immature in every way possible. That way no one will catch on as I slide on down into full dementia.

One of the things that makes this so wonderfully easy for me is artistic license, naturally. But another is simply that I’ve never shaken the innocence of the young and naive twerp and am happy to continuously wallow in my ignorance and the fantasies it engenders. I’ll try to be a realist as far as required, sure, when it comes to stuff like keeping my teeth brushed and taxes paid and not subsisting entirely on quiescently frozen treats, no matter how alluring that may be. Beyond that, no promises.

photos + text

What good can come of being overly adult when there's still so much mischief to make?

I can pull up the ol’ Big Kid Underpants with the best of ’em, but much of the time I don’t really see the point. Far preferable to frolic the halcyon meadows of silliness for as long as I can get away with it.

parakeets in car + text

If you're not ready to just jump in and hit the road, step aside!

Too responsible or distracted by Real Life to get on board with that? See you later, pal!

Stories without Words

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I may have mentioned–some few blog entries ago–that the visual world is full of stories for me. It’s not just me, though. You’ve heard it plenty yourself: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” There’s no end of people inspired to find tales, ideas, inspirations of every kind in things seen, in the real world and in all sorts of visual images, and what we like to imagine they mean, or could mean. So have at it. I give you now a digital collage and know that no one else will see precisely the same collection of Stuff or relationships between the things collected here exactly the way I see them. You might guess why I put some of this together in a single image, maybe even could see some of my motivation more clearly than I do myself (you shrink you), but the fun of the whole thing is the same as what I love experiencing when I have an art exhibition: seeing my own work through others’ lenses and knowing that they always bring something different to it than I did either in looking at the finished piece or in revisiting any part of its birthing.

digital collage of Things

All these things together . . .

Every sighted person “reads” the world through his or her own filters, and for the most part, that’s good. It’s not only what helps us to be ourselves fully in the world but what gives us a large measure of pleasure in existence: we can create the world in which we find ourselves as well. Imagination and interpretation are colorful ways of coping with reality and reshaping it as we go. We can be horribly misled by our crazy or wrongheaded or under-informed explication and conceptualization, and that usually leads to trouble of one sort or another (not least of all making one be a chump, a dimbulb or even a full-fledged jerk). But really, isn’t there a lot of fun in just giving ourselves a moment of fiction to stretch our boundaries and enlarge our existence in some small measure?

Storytime must Never End

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If we are to maintain our liveliness and sense of adventure at all, we’d better be sure to keep listening in on storytellers and manufacturing plenty of good yarns ourselves. Living some great yarns is the best option, since then the story hour emerges naturally from merely answering “how was your day?” or having an ordinary session of reminiscence with friends. However it flies, keep finding the next installment of your serial epic whether by living it or by inventing it or by having it spoon-fed to you by experts. Here are a few mini episodes just to get you started. I’m helpful that way.

Creamy flowers & text

Be prepared! Wherever the adventures take you, you might as well be ready for them . . .

murder mystery collage

If you happen to get bumped off, it's especially important to present yourself in your best light--someone will comment!

squirrels & text

No matter how nutty you are, the world will remember you as The One with the Great Stories. Gotta like that!

Lest Anyone Think I’d Reform

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Fear not! The earlier post is only a ruse to lull you into complacency and think I’m capable of improvement. I will never surrender my crown as drama queen, nor stint in my whinging self-absorption, just because I’m privileged and sunk up to my eyebrows in splendor. If the temperature actually descends into temperate territory again, rest assured I will find plenty of other sources for topping up my tank of curmudgeonly crankiness.

Brian James Fosnick

I'm often thrown by the littlest things . . .

And I will equally pursue the limits of saccharine sanguinity and dive right over them, so beware of the syrupy swamp as well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

How Moby-Dick Sank the Reader Ship

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kids outside the office door--BW graphite

Tell me I CAN'T do something and I'm more inclined to do it . .

attach a sense of duty to

a thing I used to like to do

and in a flash, a dash, a blink

I like it less than I used to think

Thank You Very Much

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I won’t be speechifying in acceptance of any Oscars or Nobel Prizes or Pompanula County Radish Queen tiaras any time soon, so if I want to let anyone know how much they’ve meant to me it’s incumbent on me to just say so here and now.

Let’s face it, my manners are plenty peccable. I’m probably most often shamefaced because of failing to show proper gratitude. I have, after all, lived a charmed life and a large part of that is being spoiled with kindnesses of every sort without my particularly deserving any of it. I am grateful. I just fail too often to send the card, give the handshake or hug, or broadcast the news as the occasion demands.

So I’ll take this small occasion to publicly genuflect and say Thank You–with great sincerity, mind you–to all those benefactors who have made my life so rich. To do so by individual names would require more space than is currently available on the worldwide whatsis, so a generalized wash of goodwill must suffice.

The obvious first thanks are due to my immediate family and closest friends, unfailing in their love and succor and general exceeding-nice-ositude, who tell me how swell I am despite all evidence to the contrary and show admiration for my slightest accomplishment as though I had cured cancer or at least plantar warts. I’ve seen how other social circles operate, and while it might seem like it’s the job of one’s if&cf to slather one with undeserved buttercream icing, few really do with any regularity. So believe me when I say that I’m deeply grateful to you, O spouse and multi-parents, siblings born and married, niece and nephews and assorted close compatriots across the globe.

Not so obvious to outside observers are the cloud of wondrous beings surrounding me in person and spirit beyond the call of familial duty. Teachers: Mrs Clavey, an ideal encourager and educational springboard for kindergartners of every stripe; Messrs. Hartwell and Hartley and Cunningham and Keyes; Ms Watts, a teaching colleague who gave me the strength to keep practicing teaching myself when I could barely keep head above water. My physician Dr Larsen, who cured me of my fear of doctors by becoming a friend above and beyond the call of the Hippocratic oath. Neighbors willing to take time to answer the blue-sky questions of goofy little kids, strangers opting to pull over and change a flat tire, shopkeepers sharing their insider advice and jokes of the day.

I’m cognizant too of the many graces showered on me by exemplars past and present whom I’ll never meet face to face, the famous, the infamous (these, one hopes, generally teaching me How NOT to Do It) and those whose tracks I stumble upon out of sheer good luck. I thank you all for the parts of my life you’ve filled in with music, wit, flashes of brilliance, foodie joys, beauty, fortitude and other such extravagant gifts.

Buck O'Neil and Richard Feynman

Buck O'Neil and Richard Feynman

Given my mediocre track record in proper expression of gratitude when the occasion demands it, I can promise only that I’ll continue to know in my heart how ridiculously fortunate I am. Maybe if I’m additionally lucky, I’ll manage to pass along some of your generosity to someone else somewhere along my way.

When Wonderfulness Jumps Up and Bites You

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. . . you can’t be ready for a surprise, beyond living as close to ‘expect-the-unexpected’ as you can manage at all times. But it pays to give attention when the serendipitous does happen. In a magical used-book store, I was enjoying as much as all of the great tomes and illustrated wonders and history-breathing music scores the antics of the shop cat, a rambunctious adolescent intent on caroming like a pinball off of every available surface of the building and its contents. His determined hyperkinetics and failed stealth resulted in more pratfalls than the king of the jungle magnificence through whose lens I suspect he saw himself: it was hard not to anthropomorphize and laugh. I may have irritated him a little with my own self-important patronizing–whatever the inspiration, when I leaned near him as I was headed for the counter, he jumped up blithely and bit me on the eyebrow.

Not that I’ve learned my lesson in any way, but that little moment of being put in my place by an upstart juvenile feline reminded me that despite being myself a creature of a parallel universe in some ways, I operate within the confines of the real one on a quotidian basis and so I constantly carom off of it (and its varied denizens) in unexpected ways too. At the least, I should be happy to find wisdom and inspiration in the results.

One such collision-of-worlds that frequently cheers my existence is the translation of text from foreign languages to English, or often, of bad English into worse English, that occurs in commercial and public applications. So I made a digital collage as homage to that gift.

digital collage of happily mis-translated malaprops

Good cheer comes in imported packages

Tetched by Texas

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As a Seattle native, moving to Texas two years ago was far less culture shock than I expected. Yes, it’s decidedly a new planet, but hey–it’s a friendly one, dadgummit. We’re in a university town, so it’s got great used bookstores and welcoming watering-holes and a hint of Bohemia around the edges, and while the new terrain is ocean-free here in the north part of the state and the closest I’ll get to mountain hiking nearby will be if I sneak up a water tower to survey the rolling flats, it’s countryside with its own kind of beauty.

Still, having family and friends visit us here is a fine excuse to explore a little of the legendary Texas and larn me some wild-west history along the way. Naturally, I find I’m inclined to play with the yarns of yore in my imagery as well, so I shall present you with a glimpse of the same herewith.

Trick roper & longhorn

Lassoed by the Lone Star

A Truly Happy Day

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This is an easy one to celebrate.

My beloved had a successful outpatient set of surgeries this morning and was declared clean of the cancer at the end of it and came home with me by suppertime. In honor of the newly mended end of his nose I present a nose-centric artwork:

BW peering guy

I Smell a Happy Outcome

Second great thing about the day, though equally superb: my beloved has been my husband for lo, these fifteen years now, and I delight in the arrangement as much as I did in the first moment of it. Lucky, lucky me. Happy anniversary, R.

I celebrate the latter by posting a poem that, while ostensibly about dying peacefully, is really for me about joyful repose, the sweet state in which I find myself suspended in my marriage. Much preferable to dying at this point in my existence, to be sure, though if I kipped out in the next twenty seconds it could at least be legitimately said that I had lived a full and fantastic life. I’m fortunate in being one of those rare creatures content to go on living as long as I possibly can but aware always that what I’ve already had is more than many can ever hope for in quantity and quality of happy life episodes and an incredibly loving, supportive and cheering cloud of family and friends. Sign me out as the Richest Woman in the World. Sorry, Oprah and Queen Elizabeth and all of you other wannabes!Clouds and poetry

In which dying can be a metaphor for easeful bliss . . .

Inspirational Moments

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Digital collage of brains, hands and other fun stuff

Ooh, I just thought of something!

There’s nothing more scintillating than having a bout of true inspiration. But it’s so ridiculously rare in real life! That’s what good work habits and persistence are for. Me, I am decidedly against hard work and persevering in general–but I have at least learned that not only are those the only ways by which I can summon the muse if I don’t happen to have a boatload of inspiration dumped on me at random. Further, I’ve discovered that the actual process, the journey, can be a pleasant one if I let go of the assumption that labor is inherently nasty and only the end product makes it worthwhile. After all, if that’s the case, and the product turns out to be a disappointing flop, then I really feel like I’ve wasted my time in Sisyphean grinding. So I’m learning to find my fun in smaller increments and take all possible pleasure from the everyday parts of being who and what I am. It’s my amygdala, and I’ll spoil it as much as I please.

Out of the process-as-entertainment approach sprang a new medium and form for this artist in the last year: learning to play with my digital images as collage elements [thank you, Photoshop]. The image here is from a series of such experiments and represents a little of both my artistic and my mental processes, appropriately enough. I didn’t throw any pencils into the mix, but you can see that I’ve not entirely shaken old habits by learning new ones.