Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

I Left My Car in San Francisco

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Edmonton

Many cities are best appreciated on foot. No matter how plush or sexy a car you have, sitting in it immobile in ugly traffic is just as unattractive as ever–maybe more so, if you’re thinking that somewhere in the next six blocks, if you can ever traverse them, is the bling-swinging pedestrian, high-speed messenger’s bicycle or runaway shopping cart with your pretty car’s number on it, and nowhere in the next eighteen blocks is there such a thing as a parking space for under $40, should you negotiate the next six unscathed. Life in a car is rough enough.

But there’s so much you can see and do on foot anyway that is unattainable or at least seldom noticed from inside a car. Window shopping while driving is no safer or more successfully accomplished than texting at the steering wheel. People watching, one of the best entertainments and learning tools known to observant persons, is at best a fleeting glimpse while driving past, not like the pedestrian’s opportunity to slow down and say hello or, more covertly, sit on the nearest bench and watch the whole human show parade along its way. Some cities, like San Francisco and Prague, Seattle and Stockholm, have enough narrow hilly streets that you can’t see halfway along the block, let alone what’s up over the hill’s crest or down around the next curve.

But if you were trying to operate automotively anyway, how would you be close enough to smell the smoke of a wood-fired oven drifting out a cafe window, to peer in and notice a gilt coffered ceiling behind the revolving door of an old bank building, to catch the eye of the shop proprietor who winks at you out of the dim interior so slyly that you can’t resist going in to see the hand-woven silks so ravishingly gleaming under the curved glass of that ancient mahogany display cabinet? What chance would you have of getting ever so slightly jostled off your straight walking path so that you notice that in the almost invisible gap next to you, between the bent copper drainpipe on the left and the broken rusty post-box on the right, a narrow cobbled alley appears, with sunlight spilling into it in ragged patterns created by its tiny balconies swathed in brilliant yellow and red and purple flowers?

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Denton

I’ve always preferred in-town meanders of the bipedal variety over wheeled ones, especially those exploratory ones in a new town or just a new part of a familiar town. If there’s not too much ground to cover, I covet the freedom I have to stop and gape, to slow down, take sudden unplanned tours and detours, to take pictures of the quirky oddity that almostescaped my eye. The fitness that comes from walking certainly beats that of planting my posterior in a car seat, no matter how tensely city traffic might make me perch there, and if I do get weary there are not only refurbished old trams, pedicabs, monorails and water taxis to deliver me from my exhausted state to my actual destination if necessary, or better yet, a nice leisurely cafe break at a sidewalk table with a sparkling mineral water in hand and dark sunglasses on so I can see all of the action nearby without appearing to stare too disconcertingly while I catch my breath and give my aging parts a little welcome recovery time. I’m just grateful to have two functional legs, no matter how modest my fitness level happens to be.

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Casco Viejo

Since my dyslexic gifts (yes, I just spelled it dsylexic before editing) include complete lack of an inner compass, one of the particularities of strolling wanders for me is that I must always allow plenty of time, and assume a fair likelihood that I will be well and truly lost at least once per outing. Including in my home town. Possibly in my own yard. But so far I’ve always found my way back again, like the proverbial Bad Penny, and remained alive and unharmed. I’m reasonably canny about not going into dicey areas alone or after dusk, taking off without an emergency cell phone (now that I finally have one, though it really is strictly for emergencies thankfully), or going for a genuine who-knows-where expedition without telling someone. But beyond that, plus some welcome good luck and guardian angel accompaniments, I can say with a certain amount of pleasure, surprise and/or pride that many of my best adventures have happened as a direct result of just staying close to the ground and taking advantage of the fortuitous events that occurred along the way, embracing the goodness of the fun and fascinating people who cross paths with me in those fine and serendipitous ways that happen when you let them. They can’t put that stuff in tourist guidebooks.

So I’m glad that I got out and left behind any car in so many grand places, or I’d never have loved them so well. Munich, New York, Verona, Chicago, London .. . would any of them have been a tenth as lovely from a car as on foot? It’s possible, I suppose, but I wouldn’t take back a single pair of my worn-out soles to find out for certain. I suspect more truly that it’s because I get up and leave my car in all those wonderful, fantastic places that I end up leaving my heart in all of them too.

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Boston

Order & Disorder

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P&IMost of us seek order in our lives, or at least a sense of order. We want to believe that there are things we can assume and expect and even, if we’re really fortunate, control. Yes, those whose lives full of action and unpredictability and chaos would seem to exclude the possibility–extreme sports aficionados, high-powered businesspeople, rodeo clowns, astronauts, oil-rig roughnecks and those raising toddlers–look for order in their own ways so as make sense of their place in the universe. It might be in simple things like organizing the spice cabinet or sock drawer with obsessive neatness; it might be in the form of how they interact with people outside of the job, or it may be entirely internalized because inside is the only place they can see where they can exert their own opinions and desires and beliefs to the fullest extent.

In art, it’s often what differentiates in its subtle ways between the immature and the mature artist or designer or craftsman. It’s expressed as the creation of thoughtful balances or deliberate imbalances that succeed in creating the visual unity or tension in a composition, between colors, textures, distinct subjects and objects, or other elements of the work. While it’s undeniably true when disgruntled viewers look at abstract and non-objective artworks or some kinds of highly quirky contemporary designs and say “My five-year-old could’ve done that”, it’s equally true that the most sophisticated five-year-old will likely only do so by chance, and then only once, whereas the mature artist usually had a purpose, a process by which he was tweaking the tools and techniques to achieve something that might have as little chance of connecting with any individual viewer as that smarty-pants kid’s work but has a thousand times better the chance to succeed in what the artist intended and is, to boot, repeatable. To live on the less visibly ordered side of the equation is to risk losing communication with a potential audience, but for some artists, that is a worthy risk, most especially because the audience they do reach will be the more attuned to their visual language and will respond in kind.

In truth, the most conventional and marketable of artists and designers may have broader appeal, but can be just as off-putting to some viewers and would-be customers as any avant-garde members of the species. Order, as it happens, is in the eye of the beholder at least as much as is attractiveness in art.P&IConsider the Desk. Nearly everybody who owns or works at one creates his own environment there, because it’s somewhat controlled, controllable space. For some, the orderly desk is a perfect puzzle, each single item in a particular position on a particular bit of real estate thereon or therein. Some are always en route to that Ideal but never entirely there. And some have desks that look remarkably like bomb sights. Yet never assume that this is truly disorder. I have known people with desks whose archaeological depths of debris and deconstructivist demolition could easily hide the crown jewels, a body, or a small automobile and yet who, when they wanted a particular piece of paper or the mini-stapler, instantly knew the precise spot from whence it could be excavated. That’s order of a higher order.

What all of this means in the grand scheme of things is that it’s merely a set of constructs or ideals that varies so greatly from person to person and time to time that we’re all probably best served by finding whatever forms work for us individually and then allowing ourselves the flexibility to understand and tolerate others’ sense of order or disorder, whether we approve of it or not. Mostly, it won’t lead to apocalypse–and if it does, who among us will remain to worry about it? Maybe the ones with the monstrous, mountainous desks, if they can duck and cover under them fast enough. More likely, we will all muddle along as we’ve always done, some of us fascinated with baskets and boxes and cubbyholes and patterns and polish and others delighting in their weirdly convoluted and inscrutable tangles of Stuff.

And nobody Wins or Loses–except if you count losing that one danged Thing that you’ve been hunting for in the pile forever and ever (usually until realizing it is in your left hand pocket).

Remember the Living

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I had meant to post this later, but given my earlier note to you this morning I think it’s the right one for today after all. Food posting can wait.

A little while ago I posted a pair of poems memorializing our beloved friend Jim, one of them (Keyboard Position) honoring a fine teacher of his, whose graceful playing as accompanist to a vocal colleague, when I heard them, was so evocative of Jim’s that I was instantly flooded with remembrance–and a few fond tears–on recognizing the source of so much of his comportment at the piano: his posture on the bench, the curve of his hands, the distinctive action in his wrists and arms. The second poem (Nocturne) was more specifically about Jim’s playing and, especially, the powerful sense that his music lingers around us, as evidenced of course, in that earlier performance of his professor’s.

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The Organ at Trinity Chapel, one of the many we heard Jim play so magnificently.

Some folk were understandably curious about the backstory of those poems. I’ll start with the “front-story”, if you will. It was a decidedly more recent performance of keyboard magic that brought all of these simmering memories bubbling so actively to the surface. I chronicled it in another poem, posted here slightly earlier. While my husband, as Interim Choirmaster of an Episcopal church, was preparing a pair of Lessons and Carols services in December with choir and strings and organ, the guest organist who had already been engaged for the occasion by my spouse’s predecessor arrived and began both rehearsing and endearing his charming, avuncular self to us. We had some foreknowledge of this guest, and were prepared to hear his spectacular playing, not least of all the amazing improvisational skills for which he gained much of his fame, so it wasn’t terribly shocking that hearing him play was so powerfully evocative of our late friend Jim, also a gifted organist and improvisational artist. What we weren’t prepared for was this dear guest organist Gerre Hancock’s death a few days ago. Needless to say, we are saddened by his loss but immensely grateful we had the chance to spend a little precious time with him and hear him play.

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Jim commissioned some Bach portraits from me for a program we did together, music and readings and projected artworks, chronicling the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach.

There are so many unfathomable mysteries in life and death. How is it that our paths in life cross with those of just these particular people at just these particular moments and have such unimaginable depth in just these particular ways?

I can’t begin to believe that it’s all coincidental or purposeless, most of all because I know how much I myself have gained from knowing all three of these magnificent keyboard artists. I am deeply glad that Jim’s beloved mentor and professor, subject of Keyboard Position, is still among us. He is a kind, gentle and wise spirit whose mere presence in the community still infuses us with the warmth of his long service as a fine educator and the depth of his skills at the keyboard. Gerre, though not so very old at his death, had a long and celebrated career and rich life.

Jim didn’t get so many years to accomplish any of this. He was murdered at 40 by a suicidal gunman. There can be no sense made of it at all. Like so many horrors in this world, it ought never to have happened. That it happened to a man my husband and I both considered an intimate friend as well as colleague, one who indeed played a part in bringing us together and then stood up as a member of our wedding party while also acting as organist and hymn-writer for it; who with his wife joined us on our honeymoon; who collaborated on projects with each of us at the university and elsewhere professionally and who celebrated together with my spouse when they both finished their doctorates–needless to say, his cruel death was earth-shaking.

But that is precisely how terrible things unfold in the real world, time and again. For some of us there are mercifully few such monstrous events, and for others they seem a constant deluge. One or a thousand, there is no pretty way to decorate such grief and darkness and make them logical and palatable, or even tolerable. So how to do we go on living?

Jim taught me the answer as much as anyone ever did. He had had his share of sorrows and trials in his own brief life, but he also managed to live one of the fullest and richest lives, in his 40 years, of any person I’ve ever known because his constant focus was on seeking, embodying, and passing around every form of goodness he could encompass. His almost limitless capacity for loving and sharing those gifts with others was clearly reflected in an enormous host of dearly loved friends, people whom he claimed as family and who took to heart his lessons of generosity, hospitality, inclusiveness, and determined hope. He created an army of sorts, and one more powerful in its quiet, almost stealthy, way than most, of people like me who, while we remember him every day with both love and loss, move forward through it more determined to embody some little part of the wisdom and patience he had at his best, the passion, persistence, and relentless efforts to better not only himself and his own considerable skills but the lives of the people around him.

charcoal on paper

Among the artworks Jim commissioned from me over the years were a series of lighthouse images because he was captivated by the idea of lighting the way for those in need.

So when I think of him, I don’t constantly revisit the hideous memory of his death and grief at the gaping wound left in this world by his loss–no good comes of lying deep in those fixed, implacable sorrows. I am moved to remember, to be immersed in, the deathless love of a friend and companion; his admiration for lighthouses, which for him symbolized the shedding of more important kinds of light than the mere incandescent; in the many graces he worked so hard to polish to excellence* and what they ought to do for the wider world; in his shouts of laughter at whatever deserved a good laugh; and most deeply, in those still fresh melodies that his magnificent musical gifts keep alive in the one simple medium that will outlive all of our astounding technologies for music-playing and listening: the heart.

Only in remembering to treasure the wealth of living that Jim wedged into his brief sojourn among us, and in living out the best of his legacy that I’m able to do, can I keep the joy that he was alive. By continuing to hear and be moved by–and move to–the music that Gerre and Jim both (and now, Anders) left eddying around us, whether from their instruments or from those lives lived with arms open wide and laughter ringing among the stars, I remember best how to keep living my own life.

P&I

Jim's memorial sculpture on the university campus where we'd all worked together was my final commission for our dear friend. This image, with commemorative text, is etched in glass and set in a steel frame, and the piece is called, simply, 'Excellence'*.

Don’t Blame Monday

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It’s true, I’m among the horde of cruel people who put the onus for all our Monday growling and grumpiness and grunge on the day itself. Many of us see Monday as the End of All Things Fun, coming as it does on the heels of any sort of weekend respite or recreation we might have enjoyed. I’ve long had that nasty habit of looking in the mirror on a Monday and seeing monstrous presence there, only thinly veiled by the black cloud of my ill-humor.P&II think perhaps it’s time to take a little responsibility for the ogrish attitudes myself and reclaim Monday as the Beginning of something fresh and new–by making it that, if need be, by force. The end of one thing is almost inevitably the beginning of another, and if the follower isn’t to my liking, then who’s to change that but me? Isn’t it just possible that in the open spaces between my crotchety complaints and snarky remarks, there could be room for the tiny wedge of reinvention to be driven in for a start? I think I should see what I can accomplish in this. No need to keep glowering at a meanie in the mirror morosely.P&IOne of the first things, I suppose, is to make sure that my Mondays hold something that I look forward to eagerly, something to start my week with a measure of pleasure. So I am taking that step in a small way already: Monday is my day for planning and for clearing the decks. As an inveterate list-maker and lister-of-lists, it’s my day to ‘walk the fences’–and since my Spread (no, dears, my Texas ranch, not my posterior measurements) consists of a house on a typical city-sized lot, it’s not too hard to accomplish that part, at least in temporal terms. But I must do so with eyes wide open for details that need attention so that I know of all the things that require mending, tending or improving. Those light switches that are going to be replaced. (The replacements have already been bought–check!–so it remains only to install them: Note!) The wood handles on the washtub need a preservative oiling. The seed starters are lined up as kits in the garage work area but need to be assembled now. And with the Must Do list is the ever-mutant list of how-abouts: would the window coverings in the reading/TV room be better insulation and easier to open and close if I redo them? Can I put a more comfortable seating angle on that chair by shimming the front legs? Do I have all of the supplies from my shopping list for finishing that little art project? Is the grocery list for Tuesday complete?

There is a surprising amount of satisfaction in not just being able to cross little things off those perpetual lists as Finished but being able, as well, to refine the remaining items so that they are more clear and purposeful and prioritized, and give shape to the rest of a busy week for me. It’s just the way I operate. It also makes me feel a little freer and lighter about what pleasurable things I can do while accomplishing my list-work, how I can distribute things in the short and long term, and when I can break up the flow of Projects with Fun–this latter being an essential thing and not, then, needing to feel like a disruption of the flow but rather a welcome island in the stream. Me, I like a wildly numerous and exotic archipelago of what others might admittedly think purposeless delights in my life’s flow.

So I am on a campaign of making Mondays a favorite day for me by turning my old attitude on its ear. I always had a fondness for forcing a change in point of view by whatever literalistic or foolish means necessary, after all: if I can’t see my artwork with enough objectivity to make intelligent editorial decisions about it, I need to shift how I look at it in order to adjust how I see it. Stand on my head. Come into a dark room and turn on the light on it suddenly. Imagine I’m a six- or ninety-six-year-old looking at it and how I’d describe it.

In the case of Mondays, I’m guessing many a 96-year-old with healthy feelings toward life would simply be delighted at being alive for another one. And six is an age when everything is still new every day, and electric with possibility. Why shouldn’t I adopt both of those attitudes?

P&IFor now, I intend to arrange at least one additional Fun Thing to be included in my Mondays on a regular basis, but perhaps a different kind of fun each time, so that I can’t get jaded and lackadaisical about it. Certainly it should have elements of silliness included, because that’s something that never does grow old with me, and perhaps is part of the reason I expect I shan’t grow old myself any too soon. Looking out my window, I see that the bare-branched trees of winter are suddenly covered with black lace, that the intermittent wind gusts have kicked up a ballet of curlicued oak leaves in the corner of the patio, and that the cardinals stopping by for a nibble of grain have somehow taken on a much deeper and brighter hue of red. Is it a change of seasons coming on? Perhaps it’s just that I’m letting the seasons change within me.

It Finally Dawned on Me

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

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

Except for emergencies and Sundays.

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

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

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

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

Lighting Candles in the Vastness of the Dark

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photoIt’s easy in this big, busy world to feel sometimes that one is alone in the magnitude of space, a tiny voice calling out and not knowing if there’s anyone who will answer. When times are grim, that is quite simply the pervasive sense. When my youngest nephew was very small and spending his first overnight at his grandparents’, my mother tiptoed down the darkened hall before turning in for sleep and heard his little voice coming out of the doorway with the plaintive little inquiry: “Is there anybody here who knows me?”

Like him, I have always eventually been answered in my timid forays into the fearful or unknown with rescuers coming to my aid, whether in a literal sense or in the sometimes equally powerful act of offering emotional and companionable solidarity. I’m here for you; I hear you. It doesn’t always have to be more than that, though I can’t imagine there are many who would find themselves able to be surfeited when it comes to genuine kindness and support; sometimes just knowing that there is somebody else somewhere in this overwhelming life who cares what happens to us is grace enough.

Entering the seemingly surreal world of the blogosphere is certainly sufficient intimidation and unfamiliarity for most of us, and a place where we well might feel we’re talking into empty nothingness. The discovery that there are not only fellow wanderers in the place, indeed, but kindred spirits–well, that is more than just a comfort. It’s a relief and a joy and the sighting of rescue breaking through the impenetrable dark with, however tiny, a candle flame. Amazing how that infinitesimal light pierces the gloom and begins to widen. How it begins to be passed from one to the other until a seeming infinity of tiny flames has suddenly coalesced into blazing daylight!

That is the kind of friendship that shifts from virtual to virtuous in a rather quick succession of conversations and shared thoughts and dreams, where we go swiftly from meeting-in-passing to knowing that it matters that each little flame be tended thoughtfully. True community, it turns out, can be cultivated in dimensions that know no boundaries of physical space. It grows in sharing commonalities and respecting and treasuring the uniqueness and differences of opinion and belief and history that give so much deeper meaning to what we do hold in common.

So I pay grateful tribute to those who have answered my voice in the darkness, who have shone light upon my blogging life and more importantly, shed light in every direction by the mere warmth and passion of their spirits through their own voices in blogging. There should be a much more beautiful and euphonious name for this dimension of community than Blog, Blogger, Blogged, Blogging–all of them sound, if not rude, then at the least terribly plebeian. But then, perhaps the true beauty of the construct is its very ability to carry our unvarnished, unembellished humanity if not on golden wings then on plainly mortal feet, all of us walking along, however trepidatiously, speaking softly to others we only trust are there, carrying our little candles ahead of us with quavering hope.

Lately I have been reminded of this sharing of light and warmth yet again by the gifts of three further Versatile Blogger Award recognitions by that Beautiful Spirit, Alpha, at Aspire.Motivate.Succeed., the warm and wonderful master of his well-tended garden, Bishop, at Bishop 9396’s Blog, and the Bardess, DM Denton, who shows magnificent visual and verbal ambidexterity. From three people who demonstrate great versatility indeed I take it as a high compliment.

And I have now been granted the Candle Lighter Award by dear ‘Nessa at Stronghold. She is a bright light indeed for such a young torch-bearer, bringing her insights and opening discussions on many a topic that could fall into the dark but for the repeated loving applications of the light of inquiry and passion that she offers in her forum. All are free to ponder there the complexities of life, love and the human psyche that cross all boundaries of age and experience. Precisely the kind of place that welcomes shared illumination just as I’ve been describing here.

Candle Lighter Award logoThe Candle Lighter Award has been variously described in terms of its requirements, so I thought I’d see if I could trace it back, and behold, this award’s creator actually maintains an open link so that we can bask in her generous and thoughtful gift. So raise your lamps high with me, won’t you, and we’ll thank her for this kind and inspiring offering. Thank you, then, both to Kate, the nurturing mother of this Award, at Believe Anyway, and to ‘Nessa, who believes strongly enough to shine her own light in the darkness.

Kate is especially generous and ingenious, I think, in opting to simply let the award she conceived stand on its own, requiring no response or action other than that one should, appropriately, shine light upon its meaning as a representation of positivity and hope and illumination in and of itself and the thoughtful sharing of it ought to recognize those whom the giver sees as showing those qualities in blog work. To further those beliefs and ideals, I will of course share the names of a small few bloggers who represent the vigor of meaningful optimism, teaching and leading and sharing the light through their munificent and loving work. And as ‘Nessa has reminded me, many of the brightest lights are those that persist to shine in the darkest places.photo

Thus I gladly pass the torch to my friends at PsycheVida, The Invisible Shadow, Aspire.Motivate.Succeed., The Human Picture, G (of G Caffe), and Year-Struck, who all know the light well, if partially by virtue of having known or passed through various dark places, and choose to shine their better selves abroad like rays of sunlight.

I have handed the Versatile Blogger Award along (as well as a few others with similar requirements) enough times that I fear I shall put your lights out, all of you, if I should share another laundry-list of factoids about my shining self, and know that you’ll find more than enough of my self-revelatory chatter just by wandering around my blog any day of the week. But I hope that you will also attend to the following fellow off-road-thinkers who certainly deserve a badge of Versatility for their wide-ranging skills and interests, again without requiring anything of them in return other than that they should rejoice in being in company that deeply appreciates the surprising and wonderful collection of wits that each of them represents.VBA logo

To Marie, tending home, garden, and a next-gen toddler in her Little Corner of Rhode Island; to Ellen, who writes and paints and draws and sets the cultural coordinates of her region at Nine Lives Studio; to Bella of winsomebella, a magical land where passionate soul-searching merges with poetry and photography, travel and storytelling; to John, cooking up history and food and familial love in the Bartolini Kitchens; and to Nia, who intertwines photography with food, the tails of cats with tales of travel, and wonderful daily expressions of local culture to charm and amaze us.

Some of you, I know, have been laureates of these specific and many other blogging awards, and deservedly so, so I neither demand of you that you accept (though it’s pretty much an impossibility to make me un-like you once I’ve decided I like you, as far as that goes!) nor that you ‘keep passing the dessert around the table’. Your blogs and excellence speak for themselves, and if you wish to share the joy further then I am delighted to have put it in your hands for the sharing. Because that is the whole beauty of this place we call the blogging community. There’s dessert and light and warmth enough here for everyone.photo

To Begin with a Seed

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photoThe whole idea that a towering sequoia can be sprung from a single, minute seed is preposterous. It’s not that I think this operation is analogous to those amusing party-trick capsules one can buy for kids, where once the pill-like mite is submerged in water, out springs a dinosaur: a sequoia is not masterfully compressed as a whole, living, full-sized tree into its seed to wow us with its razzle-dazzle emergence.

This is a much subtler, more complex, and truly far more astonishing thing, a seed containing all of the raw material and instructions for growing a full-scale, magnificent conifer. It’s more as if a very small package arrived on the front porch, seemingly from IKEA, yet containing every bolt, panel, screw and window, every necessary iota, for making the whole Empire State Building, and when the box was slit open for a peek inside, the building proceeded to assemble itself carefully and perfectly, over a few years, without any intervention from the recipient. Furthermore, if left to its own devices, it will tend to its own growth and maintenance without any aid from humans at all. Repair and beautification and renewal are included in the package with a tree-lifetime guarantee at no extra cost.P&I

This wonder is replicated uncountable times not only in the massive and miraculous evergreen forests but in every growing thing in the earth that emerges at its birth from a seed. And that’s how, despite my impressive impatience and legendary laziness–which in combination would seemingly guarantee my gardening only with the most mature plants I can finagle onto my property and into the soil, I became enamored of gardening from seed. Oh, I still love the instant gratification of transplants and bedding plants and bare-root behemoths and all of that, but to watch this scarcely-believable process of the infinitesimal exploding (in slow motion, mind you) into the impressively complex is, well, intoxicating.photo

So I have built up a stash of both collected and purchased seeds that I will attempt to nurture into something more substantial over the seasons, and will play the frivolous farmer, the mad scientist of the weed-patch and the proud parent of whatever scrawny or stupendous growing things I can coax out of those jewel cases, their seeds. I will fuss and fume and furrow both the garden and my brow as I try to conjure their beauties out of those weird and fantastical little lock-boxes of seed and I will talk sternly to the reluctant and coo at the flourishing as though I really had anything at all to do with their excellence when in fact I’m just unleashing them to do what comes naturally in the first place. With appropriate respect for their admirable powers, and love for their bloom and fruitfulness, of course. Of course.

Happy Chinese New Year, Y’All!

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That’s Texan for 新年快樂 and today is the start of the Year of the Dragon! So in addition to being a big year for my youngest sister thanks to her year of birth, this should be a year of power and prosperity for all, as the dragon is symbolic of not only royalty but is the only truly rare creature in the Chinese zodiac, being supposedly mythical and all. I happen to know where one or two hang out, but then I am kind of special, being a Rat (we Rats won the Emperor’s race between the twelve great creatures, for those of you not in the know).

And why should an old Norsk-descendant-living-in-north-Texas like me care about Dragons and Chinese calendars? Because I find all sorts of cultural treasures from all sorts of rich cultures fascinating, and why wouldn’t anyone. It’s an ecumenical sort of thing with me: most cultures have at many levels interests, beliefs and strengths that are not only worthy of examination but surprisingly held in common by many, if not most, others–simply under different names–and I think it’s tremendously impressive and endlessly intriguing to learn how our seemingly diverse nationalities, languages, customs and faiths ultimately intertwine.

Have you ever looked at a piece of Folk Art and thought that it might come from East Africa somewhere–but then thought that it might equally have come from the hands of Inuit artists or Suomi ones, dwellers in Oceania or Croatia or maybe somewhere in the heart of Syria? It’s amazingly frequent that one comes across such remarkably strong commonalities across cultures and borders that it takes a veritable forensic investigation and examination to determine a thing’s true origins. In many cases we learn along the way that in fact the point of “origin” for a single word, object, or idea as we know it was the end point of a long and winding journey through many cultures and across many borders.

That’s a mighty long-winded way of saying that it’s only natural in my view that I should be happy to learn more about and celebrate other nationalities’ and other people’s most fabulous and fascinating attributes.

The other aspect of my personal interest is simpler, perhaps: some of my Norwegian ancestors lived and worked in China in pre-Communist years and founded a school that is still flourishing under the care of Chinese teachers and administrators. For all that I deplore about the darker sort of “evangelism” practiced by many missionaries under the guise of Christian faith (and perhaps others), this kind of mutual interchange of ideas and contribution of efforts strikes me as among the best in any relationship and one I’m happy to recognize. My mother’s cousin, at the time the Norwegian Ambassador in Beijing, took my visiting aunt to the school a few years ago and they were welcomed like some sort of heroes returning from the mists of time on their arrival merely for being descended from the school’s founders, so I think it safe to say that this was seen as a more positive influence than some.

And finally, my love of things Chinese comes from wonderful friends who either are Chinese by birth or descent themselves or have spent joyful time immersed in China and Chinese culture. One such couple would be my “extra grandparents” the wonderful Talbert and Ella, who had also lived with great happiness for years of missionary work in China. Again, I know both from their deeply gentle and thoughtful natures as surrogate grandparents and from the fact that they were in the first party of Westerners actually invited to return to the Chinese interior after the flowering of détente, that this was a true love for them. The plain yet happy upshot in my middle-American life was that as a young girl I was taught by Talbert how to hold my chopsticks properly, grew up eating genuine and very humble stir-fries in my Norwegian-American home because Ella shared her know-how with Mom (long before Americans ever knew of any Asian foods more authentic than Chop Suey and Egg Foo Yong as defined by westernized restaurants), and I was regaled with tales of a magical kingdom that was surprisingly real.

When we lived outside Chicago for a couple of years during that time, a highlight was a dinner Talbert and Ella took us to at a classic hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant of the truly authentic sort, where Talbert chattered in Mandarin with the delighted owner and ordered us an unforgettably delicious feast. The owner was so taken with us that when he discovered that our party there was coincidentally on my (11th?) birthday, he came out and very ceremoniously presented me with a whole packet of chopsticks bearing a series of characters meant for good fortune, and even wrote them down. Such was the delight of the occasion that I can still show you that slip of paper. I made a little graphic out of the characters too, and will share that with you as well, as a token of my good wishes to you for this year. And most of all, because China, through its beauties of people’s shining souls, its art, its rich and almost infinitely ancient culture, its fabulous food and its dreamlike diversity has been such a gift to me all of my life, I wish all of you a very Happy Chinese New Year!

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Happiness! Prosperity! Longevity! Peace!

 

And since I know you’re still wondering, yes, I did go and look up the local dragon. It’s not so much that they’re shy, but being both rare and royal, they’re understandably a little bit protective of their privacy. This particular dragon was lounging around with a unicorn friend and just let me have a quick peep, seeing that it’s His Year, so I could report back to you with confidence that it’s going to be a grand one indeed.digital image from a P&I drawing

High Baroque in Low Places

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Craftsmanship is not one of my greater strengths. I credit myself so far as to say that I have a pretty good eye for fine craftsmanship. But when it comes to my own work, I’m impatient, short of attention, and lazy enough that I’m always that dilettante rushing through to get the job done and hoping it’s enough to hang together as long as needed. Until the homework is graded; until I can hire a professional to come and do the job properly; until I have escaped notice as the maker of said shabby construct.digital photocollageI have an honest recognition of the limitations of my skills, I think, if it is perhaps slightly magnified by my lack of gumption toward improving them in numerous areas. I could argue that I’m doing my part to support true craftsmen in their arts by not competing with them unduly, but anyone would see through that excuse, I’m afraid. Still, I am awed quite genuinely by the beauty inherent in passionate craftsmanship, whatever the cause. I love the artistry of beautifully handmade or hand-finished objects, whether they are intended as art or meant as humble functional things, everyday items that we might pass over in their daily use but for the marvels of their refinement and Fit.photoI’ve long been equally taken with the ridiculousness of both badly designed and foolishly impractical objects that were intended to be functional. Perhaps it’s the extreme contrast they have with fine craftsmanship. It’s silly enough to make something that by virtue of its careless design does not or cannot accomplish that for which it was meant, but often that very malfunction is trumpeted by the sheer ugliness or oddity of the object: one can see by simply looking at it that it won’t work or will be seriously flawed. It takes no time or effort to amass quite the collection of weirdly inept designs, from Patent applications right on up to the failed products remaindered and forlornly dusty on store shelves, and one can be endlessly entertained by the verbal autopsy of such strange husks from top to bottom–gadgets and gizmos meant to do so many unrelated tasks that they were too obviously cumbersome and ill-integrated to accomplish a single one of them. And dressed up in badly applied finishes of bizarre colors probably in hopes of distracting the customer from all other evident failings, but only drawing attention to the inherent cheapness and outlandish impossibility of their ever working as promised.

But there are so many things of the opposite sort that I think it’s too easy for us to gloss over what’s right in front of us or under our very fingertips as beautifully conceived and crafted objects worthy of our admiration for both a thing and its maker. Yes, it’s natural to admire the loveliness of the bow made for a Baroque Violin or the delicate carving on a lute, for a painting or sculpture or print made with evident and painstaking care. But it ought to be equally impressive to any of us when we pick up a dinner fork that is perfectly weighted and fits smoothly in the hand, to eat a marvelously tasty meal that has been made with such loving attention that the addition or removal of any tiny thing would be superfluous to its elegance–even if that meal is a profoundly rustic stew.

When we sit in a chair, do we notice not only how pretty, how well suited it is to the general character of the room, but also how the height of the arms supports our elbows just so and the curve of its upholstered back is designed to magically adjust to the lumbar spine of each individual sitter? Do we ask ourselves, Who made those helicopter blade fittings so exquisitely that after sixty years the contraption not only still flies the way it was made to fly but is a supremely wonderful geometric confluence of sweetly fitted parts, a sculpture of its kind, as well? Do we remember to look at the window sashes on that old house and be moved by how the intensely focused care of their making has enabled those ancient wooden single-pane mullioned windows to keep the home’s dwellers snug through 150 winters and summers?digital photocollageI hope that I, for one–as poorly equipped as I am myself to create that kind of grandeur in simple things, and too impatient to strive for better as often as I should–will always take the time at least to pay homage to the real craftsmen and women among us. To notice the attention to detail and graceful touch that they have applied to rebuilding stone porches, stitching a brocaded lining for a coat, painting a portrait of an old woman because her lined face is marked with history and pain and beauty and not because she is famous or has the money to pay for a portrait. To say Thank You to those who have made something fine and elegant and Right simply because it was what they were compelled to do.

Thoughtless Thursday

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

P&I

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