While we were drawing in the studio where I taught—years ago—there were difficulties that came as much from my frustrated and inadequate attempts to teach as from the normal technical complexities of drawing well and the imperfect ability of any non-superhuman to master them instantly even if I had been a great teacher. But there were also moments of surprisingly peaceful, encouraging, engaging grace. A fair microcosm in this way, I suppose, of learning throughout life.
How did We Get Here?
In our dreams, we were hip-deep in cotton picked by willing, happy, high-paid underlings and we smiled with satisfied benevolence
We were standing in the shade of magnolias and wearing our widest-brimmed Sunday hats and crisp seersucker and poplin even on Tuesday
We nibbled tiny toast points dabbed with pimiento cheese while a string quartet hummed like honeybees up at the portico
We fanned ourselves to keep cool as the sun sank, listening to mourning-doves serenade the arrival of the winking fireflies
We drank our bourbon out of snifters, neat, and never got more than a little bit hazy, what with having well padded ourselves with roast pheasant over a very long suppertime
We spoke in soft, lilting tones and said kind words to our mothers and children just because that’s how it was done
In our hearts, we were the pathfinders, the athletes who carved a road of freedom and justice across the plains to make new territories ring with accomplishment
We stood tall in the evergreens and set down mighty roots of dedication in lines running from the lakes to the mountaintops
We shipped on the seas and shouted joy with the birds of the air, and of an evening we were wont to watch the stars for signs of adventure yet ahead
We called ourselves hardy stock for braving the cold and wrapped our red-cheeked children in woolen blankets after a day spent in the bracing light of education
We wrestled with bears for the salmon that we ate, but then sat down to dine on it with all the gentility of our many foreign forefathers
We called our politics piety and our egalitarian philosophies a revelation even if everyone who didn’t qualify might not agree
And here we are today, being All-American but half-savage…
We live in the same states of grace but relish our superiority with self-congratulatory rudeness that would shame our imagined selves
We sneer at gentility as outmoded and write polemical pieces about each other with no sense of irony left in the spaces between the hard-edged words
We forget the flaws that taught us our cultured best’s fragility and instead of learning from the mistakes, we widen them as far as our waistbands and pockets can stretch
We turn a critical eye on the wounded world and manage to keep it keen despite the moral blind-spot toward our contributory, if not our sometimes causal, role
We are a nation of would-be saints dressed in brutes’ clothing…but perhaps in that, we may not be entirely alone…
If there is hope, it’s that we’ve gotten here at all, for surely those in our hearts and dreams must have been real somewhere to seem so tangible in imagination
We might still embrace the justice and benevolence we thought we had, if we are willing to strip away delusions of grandeur and the lust for power
We could take a moment, while nibbling our toast points and standing conqueror on our latest promontories of success, to offer a meal to the hungry and a foothold to the poor
We ought to care less about self-image, and more about wholeness and devotion to the betterment of those people and privileges we say we love so well
We are capable, if we watch the exemplars before and around us whose courage and kindness walk arm in arm instead of standing on opposing distant shores
We may yet become the greats that we imagine we should be, if only we stop pretending we are so and humbly take to walking toward it on the faint horizon instead…
What’s considered high or low culture—or utterly lacking in it—is, like so many of the constructs we imbue with value, determined by our own experiences and beliefs and preferences. We’re all so ready to tout the stuff we do and we like as the world’s best, and to condemn as inferior, ugly, stupid, reprehensible, or outright evil whatever is unfamiliar or not to our taste. A raffish bunch of spray-painting ruffians bring street art to the masses and it expands upward and outward to legitimize graffiti as fine art. Nameless folk art masters labor for decades in their continued anonymity, carving and building pieces out of recycled materials, ragtag odds and ends, and found objects, and some eventually are “discovered” by high-end curators of Outsider Art and get gallery representation, some dying still unknown while their work changes hands until it’s decorating some rich collector’s mansion. Much never comes to light at all. Meanwhile, other artists make millions in a few short, meteoric years despite making works that not every critic respects or every art-lover craves.
Abstract thinking allows us to each see and experience all potential cultural riches in our own ways. Thankfully.
Do we admire and praise a song, a dance, a play, or a novel because it is inherently Good and meaningful, life-affirming, unique, intellectually challenging, or universally considered beautiful? Certainly, there are people who feel that definition applies to one that they prefer themselves, but there is no circumstance in which I could possibly imagine a large sector of any given population agreeing fully on such a thing, let alone the whole world. Our loves must inevitably be seen as provincial or peculiar to those who don’t have an identical context for them. Which is nearly everybody, by nature. I may come from a small farming town in an area with a still vital native American population, set in a highly varied natural landscape and a relatively liberal-leaning political region, and you may come from an urban center where classical and jazz music rule the scene, big business drives the economy, and the artistic trend is funded and heavily influenced by the conservative suburbs where the business moguls’ next underlings and their families live.
Educated or not, religious or secular, youthful or antiquated; every iteration of society and the individuals in it tends to affect the view of what culture is, and what within it is valued. I will admit to being provincial enough myself that I wish everybody on earth generally had the tasteful idea that my creative output is the highest form of written, drawn, sculpted, photographed, invented, designed, and painted culture ever, anywhere. But even I am not delusional and foolish enough to think that the remotest possibility, and short of it, I’d far rather delight in the great range of possibilities that exist in our unbelievably different wishes and tastes and expectations, instead.
The last few weeks of unaccustomed rain serve as the perfect reminder, if I should need one, of how quickly change is upon us at all times and in every way. Stormy weather and lower than average temperatures notwithstanding, the volatile fluctuation between cloud and clarity, bursts of sunlight and swiftly falling curtains of darkness, wind and rain, continue to amaze me.
The visiting children in our house right now confirm in their own way that the weather is not the only source of constantly astonishing change. The three year old swings between sleepy and energetic, bored and fascinated, sober and delightedly giggling as if sprinkled with fairy dust. Her one year old sister, teething, fusses for a while in frustrated pain, not wanting to be placated—wanting relief instead—until her naturally irrepressible sunny nature wins out and she breaks into a grin like the sun bursts through those nagging, lagging clouds.
Here, the forecast has switched from yet another week of storms to one of sunshine, and that sounds welcome at the moment. But if the weather pivots suddenly again, no worries. Sun shines more brightly in contrast to deep shadows anyhow.
For people like me who aren’t naturally brave, just getting up in the morning and leaving the house has its challenges and scary elements. I’m not talking about agoraphobia or even my formerly much higher state of perpetual anxiety, but rather the knowledge that on any ordinary day unexpectedly bad things can happen at any random moment. I know, too, that fabulous and gloriously good things can occur without any apparent reason or preface. And among the many, many things I worry about, even if I don’t outright fear them, are the unknown and loss of an undoubtedly false sense of control.
So when I get the courage to pop out of my cozy little life nest, that place wherever I feel safest and most comfortable and contented, I can have moments of feeling like some little hatchling hopping out off the ledge for the first time, not entirely sure whether my wings work yet or not, let alone whether I will know what to do with them when the time comes. Walking the last mile or so to my doctor’s appointment the other day and seeing a handsome trio of vultures lounging overhead on the telephone poles, I was inclined to make a quick inward note that I hoped the three amigos relaxing up there weren’t also considering me a potentially delicious traveling snack. My hike was, after all, only for a conversational and informational visit to the doctor, so I hoped I wasn’t looking invitingly unwell to their shiny little eyebulbs.
Heading along the highway today and seeing, conversely, the half-flattened remains of some other poor vulture where it had unexpectedly been taught its expiration date by a passing vehicle, I thought the reverse: I wish I could undo your doom, once-graceful bird. The truth is somewhere in between for me, on an average day. Whether I am predator or prey, the day will do with me—and the birds soaring around me—as it wishes. Whether any of us leaving our perches will soar or crash isn’t entirely a matter of choice and will, nor is it wholly chance, but most likely it is someplace in between on an ordinary day. I am so glad that the forces governing us all aren’t utterly capricious but are generally more benign and kindly. Even toward those of us destined to be either road kill or the ones dining on it.
A short meditation on difficulties and those who help each other survive them. Guardians and heroes aren’t always so imposing and impressive in appearance. Angels do seem to exist among us in disguise.
Angels of mercy come in all shapes and descriptions.
Color is just one of the infinite constellation of mysteries that make up my world, my life. What looks like nothing but the fabric of my black corduroy pants has a surprising amount of what looks like non-black color in it when I look very closely. A bit of digital exaggeration and enhancement to bring out the colors I see either heightens the illusion or tells me, once again, that color is far more than meets the eye!
I’ve been taught that color, or at least our perceptions of it, might be manageable. As an artist, I try my best to take advantage of that possibility. But I know my limitations. Even rather experienced and advanced color theorists in this day and age come up against problems with explaining and understanding precisely what color is and how it acts, despite knowing the differences between additive and subtractive mixing, knowing how the retina and brain perceive and communicate color ideas to us, or knowing how the environment and context of what we see affects our perceptions of color.
What does it really mean if I say that Black is a construct that represents the absence of color and White, one representing all colors combined? Or if I tell you that an orange is, well, orange, but in deep shadow it might appear brown or black, or light yellow? Or that humans have white or black or red skin! What gives a single one of these concepts any credence at all? Color, it seems to me, is a matter of faith as much as of science—like so many things we think of as immutable Fact in our little universe. What both science and faith seek to explain, it seems to me, is beyond the scope of human understanding no matter how brilliantly we study and how majestic and divine our inspiration would appear. What is all around us is supremely complex and beautiful and, to my mind, needs no understandable explanation to be so glorious.
No matter what color it is.
This strange new climate we’ve been experiencing in north Texas lately, never mind on the west coast where drought has reentered the vocabulary for the first time in eons and the northeast where winter and massive storms have ruled in a newly lengthy way, makes me think I’m on another planet. Or perhaps a parallel reality. Whatever it is, it seems a bit surreal and decidedly unfamiliar.
In the last number of days we’ve had more rain, more thunder-and-lightning, and more windstorms—even a small tornado or two touching down not far from our home—than many past years have seen altogether locally. We’ve driven along what are normally pastures and meadows and bone-dry fields and low runoff gullies and seen what looks like it should have the iconic airboats of the southern swamps speeding through: trees and brush sticking out intermittently from extensive marshes where we’ve only ever seen dry land. The phenomenal density and lushness of the grasses and trees, wildflowers in rampant carpets blooming for weeks on end instead of days, and swarms of early insect madness all explode around us in unprecedented extremes.
Then, today, a brilliantly sunny, rather hot, almost cloudless day; it was exactly as I would expect here in a typical mid-May. The rosebush behind the kitchen, shorn before the last storm of its spectacular but doomed bucket full of blooms lest they be beaten to death by the ongoing rain and hail, decides to pop out a couple of fireworks to celebrate the sun’s return. The birds are sunning themselves on every branch and power line as though to soak up rays as quickly as they can. The local lawn crews dash madly from house to house.
Because the weather forecast says we should expect about 7 or 8 days, at least, of rain and thunderstorms to begin again tomorrow.
And isn’t that the way things go? We decide we know how the world will operate, how we expect life to move forward, what we will do within it, and immediately we are given a firm reminder that nature will do as it pleases, that change is inevitable, and that we are small jots on the map of history. The sun will blast its way through a wall of weeks-long storming and then the storms will drop their dousing movable sea back down over the landscape for another round. We make our predictions and forecasts and duck and weave to move through it all as best we can guess we should, and it all changes again.
For now, I am content to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. All of it is rather exciting and surprising and even, welcome. And there’s nothing I can do to stop change. So I’ll just enjoy the weird phenomena as best I can, soak up the rain and then stop and smell the roses between times again when the opportunity arises.
Because its distinctive and elegant, resinous perfume and flavor are so potent, the herb rosemary is intimidating to use. Hyper-sensory persons like my spouse can be reluctant to choose dishes when they detect a larger presence of herbs, and this beauty is among the most extroverted and easy-to-spot on that list. It can overpower extra delicate ingredients if used heavy-handedly.
But, like many accomplished and self-assured characters, when this fabulous herb is showcased to its best advantage, it’s the life of the party, the belle of the ball. With such a unique, recognizable scent and flavor profile, it’s easy for me to see how it would be the obvious choice as a symbol, and indeed, stimulant, of memory. Whenever I pass a rosemary plant I am compelled to stroke its incense-laden leaves, their odorous stickiness seeming to hold my hand in a reciprocal grasp. I inhale a long, deep draught of that alluring oil and am transported hither and yon in time and space. Of course, I was thinking about this unusually potent attraction when I wrote about the garden just last Tuesday.
Then, last night, I was reminded of how long the name has had a special resonance for me as well. My email held a little note informing me that my great-aunt Rosemary had just arrived at my blog as a subscriber, and without the aid of any herbal catalyst to take me there, I was transported back in time to when I first remember her, when I was very young and small. This Rosemary, too, has always had for me great beauty both inwardly and outwardly, not least of all because she was kind to little me and my siblings and our young cousins and friends and, especially, to my great-uncle, but also because she was eagerly intelligent, thoughtful, and full of quiet strength.
My great-uncle, her husband and companion of so many years, died just recently, and I can only imagine what a sea change this makes in her life. It’s a strange thing when relatives we have rarely been near in person for great lengths of time, whether the distance was one of miles, ages, life paths, or a combination of these as in our case, die. My great-uncle’s sister, my grandmother, left this world in an entirely different way, having been usurped by Alzheimer’s some years before she died and thus becoming a wholly different person than the one I’d known, while still living in a place where I could manage to see her occasionally without crossing the country. Two different sorts of separation, but in both instances, the person I knew from my youth had effectively been removed from my sight and my daily life for a long time; yet when each died, I was surprised to find I experienced the loss afresh. I suppose it’s partly being able, now, to mentally return to the place and conditions in which I felt I knew them best. Memory, yes, it is a strange and magical thing.
No more icebox cookies while reading in Grandma’s living room, or watching her crochet her perfectly aligned tiny rows to make the best potholders on earth while we visited. No more leafing together through Uncle Ralph’s gorgeous black-and-white photos of a full life and all of our relatives looking ever so much younger and more mysterious and glamorous in them, or hearing him discuss anything from nature’s beauty to what was on the table to psychology with avid, probing attention. Heaven knows there are enough quirks in our extended family to have kept his keen and trained mind busy with this last topic to the degree that I can only imagine it will continue to entertain him equally in the afterlife. He’s probably our there having a good laugh over my having said so.
But as for Rosemary, both the herb and my great-aunt, the preciosity lies, not just in the beauties of memory but also in being stalwart, graceful, and remarkably unassuming for such strong and lovely creations. It is truly good to reconnect with and be blessed by those gifts. One chapter of the story ends and a new and sweet one begins.
Ever wonder where little children get their surprisingly sophisticated or apropos neologisms from when they pop up with those odd comments seemingly out of the blue? I know I do. I’ve spent enough time pondering the verbal magicks of the offspring sprung from sisters, friends, and relatives, to think that there is something more than mere chance at work some of the time…but, what? Sheer serendipity seems inadequate to explain how logical or fitting or uniquely unlike what one ought to expect from these kids such prodigious pronouncements can be. From what ineffable sources does infant etymology spring?
There’s one goofy expression long used in my family that makes a fine example, I think; I hadn’t even thought about the oddity of the word and concept in ever so long, but when it came to mind as suited to an occasion arising just the other day, I pondered yet again how such things can arise. The story behind the word/idea is that my youngest uncle, at the time still sleeping in a crib but definitely speaking—as the youngest of six children in a not-very-wealthy household, I can imagine this was a useful space-saving device as much as anything else—was heard to be stirring one morning but hadn’t clambered out of the crib. So his mama, my grandmother, made her way in to see whether her boy was actually up and about or had merely made a sound in his sleep.
It seems he was in an intermediate state, still not fully ready to get up and attack the day, but not deep in dreams anymore either. When asked what he was doing, his response was that he was “just Swissin’.” That seemed to require a bit of clarification. “What?” His response: “I’m not asleep and I’m not awake; I’m just Swissin’.” For the longest time, I thought of this invention as being the equivalent of behaving like the Swiss—existing at neither extreme but in a neutral space between the two. But later, it seemed to me that if he’d had the slightest contact with a real Swiss person, he could well have had a different reason for coining the word. In German, the similar-sounding word “zwischen” means “between,” and what could possibly be a better way to describe the state in which one is neither waking nor sleeping, but in that suspended animation reaching from one state toward the other?
The problem with this delightful theory’s seeming perfection is that if that little boy who became my uncle was hearing anything other than English spoken around him in his American home, it was most likely Norwegian spoken between his parents or other older relatives and friends, given their roots. So how did he invent and name that neat little idea of his? I can’t begin to fathom. But after having made that unexpected connection myself, long after the fact, I relish all the more our continued family use of the word Swissin’, and I thoroughly enjoy knowing that it is even better suited to the status of being neither-here-nor-there than any other single word I can recall. Is it the work of a brilliant linguist or the most excellent of accidents in speech? Neither; it’s just Swissin’.
Art-Colored Glasses 