Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

Let’s Just Start with the MacGuffin:

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Surprising as it sounds and contrary to all expectations, it turns out she was the heroine in her own story.

graphite drawing

Sometimes the pivotal, crucial piece of information on which the plot hinges--the fantastical and showy part--doesn't wait for the denouement . . .

Whatever the exotic and thrilling final chapter of my life is going to be, nothing could fully prepare me, let alone anybody else, for it; I think, however, that I may have tromped through the facts of the event many times already without even recognizing where I was. Heck, I may exist in a universe parallel to the one I think I’m in as it is. It’s as though I’d backed through a door into my life and discovered I was somewhere well into the whole chain of events, been mystified by them (though everyone else is in on the joke, having started someplace more logical), and dashed back down the hall in hopes of a do-over. Pretty sure I showed up in my underwear onstage, come to think of it–everybody else seems to at some point.

Here I am, then, living a serio-comic mystery story, ending utterly unknown, and apparently it was written by a bunch of clowns more interested in spectacular pratfalls and occasional bouts of farcical action with absurd and incongruous outcomes than in logic or meaningful purpose. This is not, mind you, a complaint. Once it occurred to me that my calling in the grand scheme of existence was as comic relief, things got a lot simpler and less intimidating. There’s no grail for me to hunt, no world-saving invention for me to create, and certainly no audience expecting anything beyond my appearance in the olio portions of the program, say just after intermission and before the serious third act commences. Even in my own life I might end up playing a bit part, and that’s kind of comforting to me, as opposed to having some dreadfully high purpose to accomplish before curtain call even though nobody’s bothered to spell it out for me.

I make art that way most of the time.

Some drawings and stories start with a title that has no inherent plot or direction implied in its wording but is hoped to goose my brain in a fortuitous direction. I told you before about my [nonexistent] spy-mystery tale used (along with a few nonexistent chapters’ headings) as a springboard for illustrations. My sister donated another title for me that led to a couple of drawings that turned out to have no detectable connection with the title, “Penguins in Peril.” Much of the time, my mind takes such convoluted routes from Point A to Point B that I’ve exhausted the entire alphabet and gone into numbers before looping back to B, where I thought I was headed. If I ever really go there at all. “Penguins in Peril” is such a great title that I’ve tried, really tried, a couple of times to get it right but it just hasn’t happened yet. Ah, well, I like the drawings I got out of the attempts and I still have this fantastic title for future reference. A bonus!

There are other tales and pictorial ramblings that spring from the convoluted mental meandering itself, and these too can take their own tangents and drag me right along with them. If, as I’ve posited before, everything is research, then whatever I discard, carom off of, or don’t include in the current project is fair game for the next.

I figure that ought to apply in life as well as in art. What I didn’t succeed in becoming or discovering or doing this time around, maybe I am just saving up to do when I’m older and more, erm, mature (okay, that’s just not gonna happen). Maybe I’ll get lucky and either someone else will get it done, or karma will plunk me into a future person-place-or-thing better equipped and more highly motivated to get the job done.

And that’s what this is all really about, isn’t it. Motivation. I’m just hiding behind the actor’s persona and pestering the director to tell me “what’s my motivation?” when I know perfectly well that it’s I who am supposed to weasel that information out myself. Sigh. That’s why I prefer to keep goofing around on the edges of sanity purposefulness when making my various stabs at art, and just see where the jollity of the moment takes me. So much more fun, so much less, you know, <makes a face like a baby that just tasted a spoonful of pureed broccoli instead of the expected bananas> responsible. This way I’m also able to be just as surprised by the thrilling finish of the story as all of the innocent bystanders. Whatever it is, guys, I’ll see you there. Wear a Kevlar® jumpsuit, and perhaps also a water-squirting boutonnière, just in case.

graphite drawing

Writing good mystery stories is tough enough--solving the mysteries of one's own life, toughest of all . . .

I’m Not a Real Person, but I Play One on Television

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photos + text

Maybe, Mr. President, but in the spirit of clarity and full disclosure, I think the other thing we really have to fear is ourselves . . .

. . . or as the ever-astute Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

I’m speaking, of course, for all of us lily-livered, yellow-bellied, totally ordinary milquetoasts in the world who have ever awakened on a perfectly calm and sunny day filled with dread for no other reason than that we are over-anxious about anything–or nothing. By this, of course, I mean practically everybody. On a bad day. Those few of you magicians who have never once had this experience, I salute you with admiring astonishment. And I implore you to hustle out and patent your technique and figure out how to produce it in vegetarian-safe three-a-day capsules for the rest of the waiting world.

Meanwhile, back at the Reality Ranch, I can lay claim to having plenty of days free of the aforementioned bane, but certainly plenty of times too when it seemed it would be far simpler to raise a sunken battleship singlehandedly from the bottom of the Mariana Trench than to haul myself out of my cave and interact with the world as though I were a competent human. And I’m not talking about dealing with true clinical depression or anxiety disorder, both of which as you know by now I have entertained as unwelcome guests in my own head in times past (pre-treatment). I’m talking about that state most mortals enter occasionally, where we’re certain that our horrible inadequacy is a glaring banner of toilet tissue perpetually trailing from our waistbands, that we are so clearly impostors in our own lives that we’ll soon be successfully replaced not by another person but by a badly made mannequin and no one will notice or care.

Yesterday, I was reminded in conversation of a fine and sometimes very helpful method for dealing with this characteristic in myself. Don’t know why I’d forgotten the source for so many years, as it’s really rather handy. I was in the high school drama program–and lest you die of shock at this news, be assured that I got into it initially because (a) I liked reading and viewing plays and (b) I happened to know that there was a lot of off- and backstage stuff to be done. Somewhere along the line I drifted from stagehand duties and lighting design and being mistress of all things costume and prop and set-related to, you guessed it, acting. Clearly not because I was destined to grow up and take Broadway by storm. But there it is, weird as it sounds. I mentioned in a previous blog that I have won theatre awards, including in those years, Best Actress, but this was high school, and hardly a magnet school for the Arts, for Pete’s sake.

However, I think I did perhaps earn the award from among my peers, and obviously not because of my natural vivacity and gregariousness. What I had was a wonderfully tolerant and clever set of teachers that did their best to spot weaknesses and needs among their students and find ways for them to overcome themselves. Because of course that was precisely the problem in my case. How could an uptight introvert get up onstage and act? I could barely conceive of how to play ME in my own life at that point.

The answer was really rather simple to state, and not, it turns out, impossible even for an uptight introvert like me to execute when I put my also-natural stubborn will and desire to be better than I was behind it. “If you can’t imagine someone like you getting up on the stage and acting a part, then start with playing a good actor. Then let that actor play the part.” Convoluted? Of course it is. Silly? You bet. But somehow that one extra step of remove let me pretend it was somebody else doing what I knew I couldn’t do myself, and that was that. While I had forgotten the specific inception of that nugget of useful knowledge in my life until yesterday, I know that I have employed it to many and varied extremes over the intervening years, and can thank the idea (and Mr. C and co.) for thus having pulled me through many a dicey situation since.

So far I have played a college graduate, a construction worker, a landscape and interior designer, an artist, a teacher, a poet, an administrator, a blogger, and many other roles, not all perhaps to award-winning standards, but enough to help me survive them and sometimes even forget myself enough to truly enjoy them in the moment. And I think I’m continuing to get better at the role of Me, the one role that might actually matter the most come to think of it. I’ll keep you posted if any honors other than my self-appointed tiara should pop up.

digital photocollage

Never Fear, My Darlings, We're All in this Together . . .

Best-Laid Plans, Like Best-Laid Eggs, Gang Aft Agley

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Robert Burns evidently knew it as a long-established fact, so I think it’s safe to assume that the unexpectedness of the turnings in life’s wonderfully wiggly path long predates Bobby and me and pretty much anyone else I could look to for a quick peek in the crystal ball. The day will always just take me where it takes me, and I will consider myself to have done well even if I can only keep going with the flow of it and not just plain get knocked down and run over. Most of the time, the moment’s, day’s, or year’s destinations are far more interesting than those I thought I’d plotted out in the first place.

P&I drwgs x2

Even thoughts are often just fly-by evolutionary phases waiting to develop into something more meaningful . . .

Yesterday, for example, I thought I’d post my Wednesday-night drawing exercise, but I was startled by the arrival in my inbox of a lovely gift and task in the form of pay-it-forward blogger recognition into doing something entirely different than my first intention predicted. In the process, I discovered not only a renewed interest in visiting and catching up with various of my previous favorite bloggers‘ sites but a whole cadre of new blogs and bloggers with whom I will now be sharing this adventure. Much better than the stodgy post dedicated to yesterday’s-drawing.

On the other hand, what it brought to mind along the way was that there are few, if any, of us that understand any of ‘what happens behind the curtain’ in anyone else’s world. Non-musicians think that because almost all human beings can make sounds, most of them in some controlled form, that a singer is just someone who opens up and pretty sounds come out rather spontaneously, not that he or she would spend years learning how to breathe properly, read music, stand, sit, move and (when necessary) act in the ways demanded by the particular repertoire. That singers have, in fact, to learn a large amount of repertoire over the years, getting to know texts, languages (pronunciation and nuances of meaning), rhythms, techniques for singing faster passages or long-drawn-out notes well, and a million other aspects of musicianship that non-singers will never know.

I think it’s hilariously misguided how readily we assume that if something is done well by another person, it must come naturally or easily, and not that–as is far more often the case–it has been honed through the now-famous 10,000 hours of practice that Malcolm Gladwell posits in Outliers as requisite for gaining expertise in one’s field. Any one of us knows from experience that things being easy and “natural” from the start is rare almost to the point of nonexistence. From bronc riding to ballroom dancing, from puzzling out the intricacies of quartz crystal cutting to those of quantum physics, there’s no place that one becomes expert or even experienced at first try, or probably tenth.

So I think it’s only fair that we teach each other what we know of these behind-closed-doors mysterious labors. You see my writing in a somewhat raw form, granted, on a daily basis because I committed to posting daily and that means I can’t spend unrealistic amounts of my waking time fussing over rewrites and editorial doctoring or the house will fall into ruin around my ears and we’ll eat nothing but what comes in random order out of the fridge at every meal. Not to mention that I won’t fit in even my Wednesday evening drawing time, let alone go on photographic wanderings or any other creative tangents.

The drawing, though, you don’t see in process or very often in its developmental stages. I draw enough stuff that I don’t have to let you see my “underwear” like this, but as I say, being a fairly truthful person I think I owe it to you to show you that not everything gets finished to the same degree or as successfully. I wouldn’t claim any of my work at all as Perfect (and where would be the fun in that, anyhow?), but there are degrees of relative completion and appeal, even in my playtime stuff. So the sketches above give you some sense of process in my case. They are literally bits pulled from my carry-around sketchbooks, and show that while I’m in a particular mode I might be working out issues not only of technique and medium but also of style, mood, intended story content (if any) and so forth, until they might gel in a drawing of the sort I’m more often going to publish here or even want people to see when they peer over my shoulder at my work.

The result of recent noodling over bird stories (yes, birds are about as recurrent as the proverbial fish and pencils in my work) in my sketchbooks led to this Wednesday’s drawing session in which I imagined what would happen if a pair of birds found one of the Easter Bunny‘s plastic eggs and raised it as their own. I’m pretty sure this is the actual origin story of marshmallow Peeps.

graphite drawing

We are artistic birds and these are our peeps . . .

Given how generous, collaborative and creative the blogging world is, I expect that eventually there will be a bit of lessening of the information gap that lets us naively believe that anything we don’t understand but someone else is good at doing must just spontaneously spring into being for them. Much better to acknowledge and admire the immensity of learning and effort that devoted practitioners devote to their wide world of doings, and the great gift that having others so dedicated and skilled around us is to us all.

Just think: if some poor cave-dwellers hadn’t squatted nekkid around the cooking fire with a fat-spitting hunk roasting over it about ten thousand times too often, we would neither have the knowledge of how to have sputtery, juicy fun at the cooker, nor would we have the majestic modern beauty and wonder of aprons.

Friends Well Met in Cyberspace

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We have constant reminders of the dangers lurking around the dark corners of the webiverse, and indeed we would do well to heed all such warnings. But I have seen that the obverse of that coin is equally impressive and far more enlightening and cheering: cyberspace is full of fantastic people and inspirations, and I don’t have to go far to find them. The kindness of strangers is quickly transformed into wonderful streams of affinity and even deep friendships when we have the ability to find so much common ground despite the physical, cultural or temporal distances between us.

Case in point: ceciliag, author of the exquisitely artful and personal blog The Kitchens Garden. I saw, without surprise, that today she had received a much-deserved blogging award for her marvelous work, and was delighted, because in the short time I’ve followed her blog I have come to see her as an inspiration, a mentor and even a friend. That’s the beauty of this concentrated contact we can develop with wonderful people whose shared insights and arts move us to do more than merely hang about the fringes basking in their gifts, and actually get to work on our own, howsoever we can! What I saw with surprise, and gratitude, was that C had generously passed along the award to other bloggers, and included me. I will of course try to narrow the field of my admired cohorts enough to pay the gift forward, because others besides ceciliag have strengthened, entertained and inspired me as well. She must know that I would gladly have included her in my own list had she not been the one ‘tagging’ me!

award tag

The purpose of the award is clearly to reinforce the ties between us in this remarkably friendly and creative world of blogging, and also to introduce us to more new connexions that we haven’t yet known to enjoy. Along with the fine mandate to share with you some links to other blogs I know you’ll find delightful, I am tasked with telling you 7 things you don’t know about me. Finding 15 bloggers whose work I admire and think deserves recognition is easy (though keeping it to only 15 mightn’t be)–but since I’m so boldly non-secretive a person, I may have to fish around a little to think of any things everybody doesn’t already know about me. So first, a blogroll of other worthy persons whose blogging efforts I hope you’ll support and find as delightful, provocative, educational, witty, touching, and/or flat-out gorgeous as I do.

Ad Alta Voce

Cherry Tea Cakes

Claudia Finseth

Closet Cooking

Draw Stanley

In Search of My Moveable Feasts

Just a Smidgen

Little Brown Pen

My Little Norway

My Open Source Life

Plate Fodder

Roost: A Simple Life

Sustainable Garden

The Last Classic

Tinkerbelle

And now, as if my dear readers haven’t already heard enough blather about me, here are seven things you might not have known.

1  I consider ginger root the Universal Donor. I can think of hardly anything that can’t benefit from the addition of ginger in one of its many forms.

2   I have something a little like the earworms people get when a pop song (or, among people I know, a movement from some classical piece) gets stuck in their head for a day or week–but mine is a permanent repetitive tune. My personal theme song, I guess. At least it plays in variations sometimes, thank goodness, or I’d go batty. Or have I already?

3   Once, long ago, I got to make a commissioned artwork to be presented as a gift to the Bishop of El Salvador.

4   The shelves on my desk have a miniature found-science collection of bones, bugs, bird nests, rusted hardware and seed pods.

5   I have a horror of telephones. Yes, it has a good latin phobia name too. But what do we phobics do to get over it–call each other???

6   My ability to raise one (either) eyebrow sardonically once garnered me the nickname “GP” for reminding my teacher of Gregory Peck’s expressions. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment, ‘specially if she had any idea that my sense of irony was mostly aimed at what I thought was the absurdity of her teaching style. Mea culpa.

7  At various points in my life I thought I’d study to be a pastor (that was clearly before I started developing into such a heathen); a marine biologist (all that scientific knowledge started to get in my way); an architect (oh, yeah–a dyslexic who can barely do grade-school math). Turns out I wasn’t really cut out for any sort of well-defined path.

Which brings me right here! And I can definitely say I couldn’t be more pleased with having landed among you. It challenges more different aspects of my personality and self-image than pursuing any of the aforementioned would have done in my case. And it lets me keep up the hunt for my vocation, if I have one, with a dandy support community that often drives me down previously unknown and unexpected paths of fun-filled mystery. So thanks, and here’s to all of you, not just those on today’s list!

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Bouquets to all!

Maybe I DID Hear You the First Time

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mixed media drawing

Pardon my reverie . . . I was just mulling over my latest plans for ruling the world . . .

Oh, yes, in my youth I was very much that kid all of you teachers have found so frustrating in your classes. It wasn’t that I was at all obstreperous (a little chatty at times, but then who isn’t), and I certainly wasn’t intentionally disruptive or uncooperative. But since I mostly hated being noticed, thanks to my shyness and social anxiety, and naturally I didn’t want to get in the way of the kids that weren’t perhaps getting enough of the attention anyway, I often found myself wandering the byzantine byways of my brain with the undoubtedly frequent appearance of not caring about the highly significant stuff being generously shared from the pulpit of the teachers’ desks.

Did it really matter that while the doyenne of the desk was teaching the spelling lesson I was counting the holes in the ceiling tiles to see if one tile matched another or perhaps each was hand-punctured by specially trained elfin craftsmen with sterling silver toothpicks instead of fingers? Actually, as a sometime teacher myself, I can answer that query with a resounding Yessirree, but truthfully only because no matter how stealthy the “inattentive” student thinks she’s being, and no matter if she gets a Hundred on the spelling test every time, the other students are bound to take their cue from the least participatory and cooperative seeming student in the room. It doesn’t matter that she did in fact hear the spelling practice being held in the background of her own mental meanderings (or already knew how to spell whatever exceedingly counterintuitive new words were being practiced), what mattered was that she wasn’t supporting the standard of classroom decorum. I get that. Now. But as a kid, I found it rather trying that I had to do whatever everybody else was doing even when I was certain in my heart that I would get the required job done in my own way. I was the poster child for the triumph of Mind over What Matters.

Did I have Attention Deficit Disorder? (Do I?) Would that make any difference? Not really. Despite my demurrals and admissions of inner sloth and self-indulgence, I have always had the ability to be fairly disciplined when it mattered, I just know I have to make a very serious commitment to exercising that particular skill, because it’s simply not my automatic bent. So along the years I’ve tried to train myself up into a slightly more presentable appearance of compliance and conformity when it seems important or expedient to do so.

Yet my mind still flits hither and yon with equally purposeful purposelessness, all the same. I’m simply learning how to be better at a sort of out-of-body transcendence that allows me to look like I’m fully involved in the present action (and I almost am, really, Boss) while a hunk of my inward self can continue its peregrinations in whatever flights of fancy it requires in the moment.

digital photocollage

Sugar and spice, sure, but don't forget the snails and pails and whatnot . . .

See, there’s just too much loveliness in this universe (and potential in all of the other imaginable ones) not to be exploring it when-and-however I can. The found castoff wing of a dragonfly simply begs to be examined in person and in memory and at great length for its extravagant glassine iridescence. Every minute or magnificent object that comes into my view or my thoughts deserves some serious attention. Shells, shoes, barking madmen and barking dogs, whales and whiskers and whistling trains–if I don’t give them their due, and hopefully in the process also unveil their previously undiscovered secret histories, why then who will? That boy in row six thoughtfully picking his nose with his pencil eraser while staring out the window? Probably, because clearly he (a) has a similarly vagrant brain, the sort from which fabulous inventions and discoveries do spring, and (b) his nose ought to be clear enough by now that his brain will get more oxygen than all of the rest of Row Six put together, so his thoughts will have the added lustre of brilliance that fresh air brings.

In the meantime, I feel it incumbent upon me to keep up my part of cross-pollinating the scientific and romantic approaches toward whatever imaginative ends might finally appear. So please don’t be offended if my attention seems to have drifted just a little off to port or starboard when you’re regaling me with the wit and charm and incomparable genius that I should undoubtedly be diving into with the fullest focus possible. Because I probably only look like I’m off in la-la land when in fact it’s located in me and at one and the same time I’m perfectly awash with what you have shared, O my teachers. I promise I will absorb it, too, subliminally, cutaneously, osmotically and, if necessary, orthotically–right along with all of the goodness I’m already absorbing in my far-off inner world.

mixed media drawing

The waters of mystery and adventure are just waiting there to be swum . . .

Perhaps this will Ring a Bell

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graphite drawing

Perhaps if you've stood near the cathedral in Uppsala . . .

Yesterday I spent the whole day at church. No, I’m not nearly that dedicatedly religious–I’ll leave that to the clergy and others far more willing and capable–but since my husband conducts choirs at that church and they sang (a lot) at three services between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. yesterday and I like to hear his choirs when I can, not to mention keeping a hard-working guy company through a long day . . . well, we both spent the whole day at church. Except for a lunch break, I mean.

There were reasons besides the music that it was a worthwhile day to be at church all the day long. I’m sure some would say my everlasting soul is in dire need of such a thing, since I’m admittedly not so very pious by nature. But as I’m not conducting or singing or working like the rest of the people who attend multiple services, there is also welcome space in the forms of a mass for me to meditate and maybe refresh my strength for a bit.

The benefits of a church marathon yesterday certainly included being among people that took the solemnity and significance of 9-11’s tenth anniversary to heart and really did spend a day of remembrance and service in honor of those lost and those others who have continued to pay the price for ten years. More importantly in my book, I think many of those people with whom I ended up spending the day understand equally that the significance of the date is only validated and saluted properly by finding the most positive ways to move forward and renew all things touched by wounds of the day’s history. So amid the seriousness, there was a great deal of kindness and generosity and joy.

Certainly didn’t hurt for us to have a visit from a truly dear longtime friend who stayed after the second service and took us to lunch!

The other happy peculiarity of being in church all day was the reminder of how much I love the sound of church bells. While they were rung on this occasion for some less-than-ecstatic reasons along with the usual markings of time and ceremony, their very presence in the air, softly change-ringing through the nave and tolling across the neighborhood, was a benison I find particularly sweet. It brings not only consciousness of the best of the words and acts in hand but also of all kinds of good associative thoughts.

The bells do always bring with them reminders for me of their tolling for various loved ones who have died over the years: grandparents and close friends, other relatives, deeply connected neighbors and colleagues and cohorts of many kinds. Though I never cease to mourn the loss of those dearest to me, the bells generally bring up more welcome and cheering memories of them, perhaps because something comforting and pleasing in the sound of a well-tuned bell makes it hard for me to hear it as ominous or depressing.

The most distinct aspect of the beauty of bells’ ringing for me, though, is more strictly secular: all of the memories evoked of places I have loved to be, journeys taken, cities visited, hidden jewels of towns in obscure corners of lyrical countryside singing with the ringing of chime-like carillons and roaring urban canyons clanging with bold abandon. In part this is because of the those very connections made with memories of other loved family and friends, many in this case (happily) still living. I’m suddenly drawn back to a wintry day of walking through falling snow in the sharp cold of Basel with my sister and our cousin as the cathedral bells shout above us, echoing from corner to corner, we three stopping only to buy roasted chestnuts from a street vendor purely to heat our hands in our pockets. Then I’m in the outlandishly plush green hills of Oberstaufen in Bavaria, meandering the summer trails near town with my husband and finding one tiny chapel after another, almost like farmstands in their numbers and miniature simplicity but each exquisite in its own well-loved way, amid a sort of soft chattering of bells as one calls to another–all interwoven with the very different bells tinkling on the necks of “guest cows” equally enjoying the spa town as they roam their summer pastures.

steeple photos + text

Ring for me, sing for me . . .

I think I can fairly say that I caught the gist of the bishop’s thoughtful homily yesterday, the lilt and import of the liturgy and readings and ceremony, after attending three fairly elaborate services. I know that I bathed in the sounds of the choirs and the sonority of the organ very gladly. And soaring over it all, or undergirding it, was the recurring theme of the ringing of the bells. That was a particular grace-note on this very particular day.

Eleven is My Favorite Number

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mixed media collage

Sometimes good news comes from truly unexpected sources . . .

Even in languages we think we cannot understand, occasionally–perhaps with the help of images or context or a little theatre-of-mime interaction–we decipher the heart of the matter and make some kind of sense out of what we see and think and hear. Stranger still, sometimes from something terrible a good and beautiful thing can arise.

Modern philosophy and psychology have devoted plenty of study and energy to recognizing and making sense of how ingrained is the human urge to seek and see patterns. The mere fact that it was already bone-deep and age-old in us by the time it became a topic of study and conversation tells us how innate and intrinsic is our desire for the kind of order and continuity and sense found in rhythm, repetition and recurrence. Every kind of pattern offers its own version of meaning, and we like to cling to our own preferred sets of sought and loved markers for comfort.

We start very early with this stuff, showing preferences between different sorts of sensations even as infants–warm over cool, light over dark, sweet over sour, and so forth. We get attached to favorite foods and favorite colors. We develop our tastes and prejudices individually, corporately, culturally.

And we find ways to build elaborate systems of belief around the qualities with which we imbue our likes an dislikes. Not only is blue the boss’s favorite color, it’s THE color, it’s a matter of fact and faith, and people who prefer another color clearly need to be fixed. If the Empress is superstitious that everybody must wear raccoon fur hats on odd-numbered Thursdays, then everybody had better stock up on raccoon fur hats, pronto. (And all of the raccoons in or near the empire might be wise to consider relocating to safer territory.) That’s how dedicated people are to their preferences, my friends. In fact, if a certain sect thinks another certain sect has got hold of wrongheaded enough beliefs, they might just hijack a loaded airplane or two and knock over buildings full of Sect One people and smash them all to oblivion just to make the point of how wrong that bunch are.

Now, I have my favorites and fixations and beliefs, some deep and many shallow as pop-star fame. I like a good Lucky Number Three as much as the next guy, and while I am not the least bit triskaidekaphobic, I might admit to a little pointless fondness for the number Thirteen, if only out of pure cussedness–after all, it’s just the representation of a convenient numerical construct. But with the horrors of a certain 11th day of September so ubiquitous in the hearts, minds and media of the nation at present, I would like to say a word in defense of the wonderfulness of the number 11.

One of the ways I become intrigued by, then somehow attached to, any seemingly random thing is via that process wherein for any reason, at any moment, one becomes aware of having (peripherally or subconsciously) noted a series of recurrences of the object of interest, creating a pattern. In the instance of my seeing elevens repeatedly I can’t even think of how, where or why it caught my attention. But as these things work, once I noticed, I began seeing elevens everywhere for a while. Every time I’d look at a clock, it seemed, it was eleven minutes after some hour. Every meeting somebody required me to attend was either on the eleventh of the month or at 11:00 on some other day. Eleven birds would perch on the billboard across the way, whose white posts against a background of dark trees made a crisp white 11. Clearly once it got on that track, my brain willingly habituated to looking for elevens everywhere, and there was no need for them to have any meaning–their merely being eleven-related was their significance from thenceforward.

But in the way of such things, this made my pattern-seeking soul think that eleven ought to have some significance for me, and so I’d find myself in a reverie, a foggy abstraction in which I was spending any ‘down time’ between purposeful tasks or thoughts on mulling over possible reasons for eleven’s newfound status as a noted number in my life. There was the easy one of my pattern-hungry eye simply finding the clean and upright symmetry of the numeral notation “11” pleasant, soothing and even possibly a nice symbol or metaphor for such appealing characteristics. Of course there are happy temporal associations I could cite: my mother’s birth in the eleventh month of the calendar year; my nephew’s birth on the eleventh day of a far happier September. ‘Elevenses’–well, who can argue with the wisdom of a welcome morning break for sustenance? Not to mention the idea that eleven is even more than, and therefore obviously better than, the ‘standard number of completion’, ten–well, even a not-overly-bright worshiper of guitar amps could see the value in that.

When the dust settled and I’d conceded in my mind that I just had a new “favorite number” for no better reason than why I hold nearly any other thing preferable, I realized that just possibly I was looking harder for reasons to defend and admire eleven precisely because I was bothered by its unfair taintedness of late. That the infamy of the 9-11 attacks took place on the eleventh did not make the number eleven–an inanimate and abstract and essentially minor thing–inherently scary or evil. But if ‘thinking makes it so’, I decided I needed look no further than the damning act itself to see its purest inverse as well, indeed enough goodness to return with one hand what the other was snatching away. Unplumbed human cruelty and violence awoke its shadow twin, an equally unplumbed depth of human generosity and selflessness and healing. From the unwarranted spilling of torrents of blood and poison there also sprang a fountain of communal strength and compassion and they flowed into a sea of determination to be, if only for the moment, much better than we all had been.

For my part, I think I’ll just teach myself that I can count past ten on my fingers if I extend two digits like a skewed pair of twin towers and–far from collapsing–instead they form a V that means both Victory and (better still) Peace.

bottle photo

. . . and now let us drink a toast to the milk of human kindness . . .

Say, Haven’t I Seen You Somewhere Before?

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odd bird + penguin photos

Just what is it that makes today's creatures so familiar, so . . .

This just in from the Department of Everything Old is New Again, Déjà vu Division: the life of the general populace continues to be lived in well-worn grooves. We do what we do the way we’ve always done it, because that feels familiar and safe and because being challenged and growing are such hard work. It’s funny, though: sometimes it’s this very tendency that leads us directly–bump!–into contact with surprises and serendipitously good new things.

Take Doing the Chores, for instance. I do essentially the same set of major items nearly every day of the week, weeks on end, years at a time. But cleaning the same countertop as always in the kitchen I come across a new ant trail, and that leads me to call Mr Enemy-of-the-Bug-People, and that leads to the investigation that uncovers the Great Carpenter Ant Conspiracy before it can topple my little empire. I take a walk around the exact same route as usual and see a new kind of plant I’ve never seen before and think I may have discovered a pretty native flowering plant that might be a great addition when I get enough saved up to rehab and xeriscape our yard.

And there’s the whole thing about ‘going live’ (as far as I’ve done so by being a new-fledged blogger). While I’ve gone so far with change as to practice my dark arts of writing and drawing and photography and such in a public forum instead of closeted in an obscure garret amid a hovering handful of tubercular bohemians (a.k.a. other artistes), I am still just practicing the same arts with like tools and with similar ends. And here I am, thanks to the instant-community of the internet, seeing endless other writers and artists at work in the same new “studio complex”, learning a world of marvelous new ideas about subject, medium, technique and style, and most of all, “meeting” these impressive and engaging and artful people. Just by doing the writing and drawing that I’ve always done, only in a new work space, suddenly I have the opportunity to connect with some truly wonderful new friends.

And those friends bring me full circle in their own way, too, because as always, the roots of friendship grow best in common ground. The arts and interests and ideas that we share are the rich place where friendships are sown and nurtured. We all look for those things most familiar to us all, reflections of our own lives and loves, in choosing with whom we’d like to spend our time. No wonder I thought I recognized you!

beetle and fish photos

Interesting, isn't it, how much alike we are while being so incredibly different from each other?

Comatose, or Something Like It

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bank vault photos

Can't get awake, in gear, loosened up . . .

Brain. Stopped. Full stop.

Is the attack caused by any specific catalyst, or is it just general malaise? Does it matter? It’s a common enough ailment, to be sure. Something tells me that the cheery “Heigh-ho song” sung by Disney‘s seven dwarves, who ostensibly adore the work to which they’re trooping off for the day, did not purely coincidentally share its signature phrase with the heigh-ho also traditionally used to signify a yawn.

Aye, there’s the rub. I’m merely revealing my attitude toward anything I might label WORK. With a perpetually growing agenda of chores and deeds of doing, if not derring, always in front of me, perhaps my personal catalyst in this moment is merely the ennui of the congenitally lazy. Dear me, I probably shouldn’t even use the word congenital, since although it only denotes a condition that existed in me from–or before–birth, it should in no way be construed as deriving genetically. Not my parents’ doing, this disease of mine. I come from a sturdy line of hard working people, really I do, captains of industry in carpentry and grocery marketing and education and ministry and homemaking and dental hygiene and nursing and technology and administration and so many other productive and socially significant and uplifting fields. It’s hard to imagine that anyone deriving from that lineage could possibly be born unwilling to move and desirous of nothing more than to be indolently comfortable without any regard to my deserving.

But here we are. The very sight of a tool lying in wait of its use, a To-Do list leering suggestively at me, or the admittedly messy appearance of something that clearly needs to be Fixed can send me into a syncope of delicate avoidance. Come and revive me from my fainting couch if you must, but do so at your peril. Yes, my everlasting soul–at the very least, my reputation as a responsible adult–is at high risk of the eternal red-inked F of effing disapproval. But is it worth what might happen if, say, you rouse me from a pleasant torpor or my clearly much-needed beauty sleep before, oh, noon-ish? Dare you risk it? Even I am terrified of me when I haven’t had my requisite sleep.

But let us return to the problem of how to get anything accomplished at all when the mere thought of effort is anathema to me. The easy answer is to trick me into thinking that the task at hand is fun. The hard part of the equation, of course, is how to make more than a few very rare tasks seem fun, but I am dependent on the cleverness of others for accomplishing that part of the process as often as possible. Shaming me into doing the right thing almost never works; apparently I have a truly limited capacity for self-criticism except in places where it can be reliably unproductive, for example when it depends on elements of my self and behavior that can’t be altered anyway. Keeping my work schedule pared back to the nearly-manageable smallest number and lowest quantity possible is always a wise move on the part of any who are dim enough to have Expectations of me.

All of this is not to say that I don’t like to DO anything, though my list might be more circumscribed than some, nor that I’m a completely curmudgeonly person just to be around. It’s more that my preferred things-to-do are often those considered less useful on a grand scale, less utilitarian, than what the world might rather ask of me. Indeed, I’m quite the happy (if not grossly self-satisfied, depending on whom you ask and when) person and have a very cheery outlook for the most part, especially when I can hit that sweet spot of having, however accidentally or fortuitously, managed to think I was just having a good old time and at the end of it discovered that I got useful or important or even just practical stuff done. That constitutes something close to perfection in a day.

So go ahead. Con me into being my better self and you will have not only my congratulations on your ingenious ways but my thanks, and those of all others benefitting from it, for getting me to get something done in spite of my natural inclination toward repose. Even my sleepy, constipated brain can wrap around a nice concept like that!

acrylic painting on canvas

A good idea can go all pear-shaped, or if you're lucky, instead it bears fruit.

Foodie Tuesday: Bad News/Good News/Bad News

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Neither photogenic nor as much tastier than photogenic as it should have been . . .

The true food bloggers and kitchen mavens have it all over me when it comes to fully celebrating food in the manner it deserves. Take my lunch the other day (please!). It seemed like a good idea: cream of roasted cauliflower soup with a spoonful of buttery mushrooms on top. Nice and simple and earthy. Turns out, it was too simple, to the point of being about as bland as a children’s book written by well-intentioned Educators. I ate it, being a pietist of my own sort, but not with any particular enjoyment. I should have had the dedication to re-season the soup, but I wasn’t committed enough at the moment. The sautéed mushrooms, it turned out, only emphasized the soup’s lack of valor. A mild, but still a little irksome, moment of appetite suppression that didn’t match up to my original plan at all. The upside of it was that I was sufficiently fueled to fix up a much better dinner by the time my spouse headed home. If I cook up something disappointing, at least I’d rather it’s not when I’m sharing the food!

The week has been a little like that–mistakes and false starts punctuated and rescued by recoveries and rediscoveries.

There was the pantry light that was less and less frequently willing to be switched off until its pull-chain switch finally just broke entirely. It was good that the light was stuck “on” so that we could still find things in the pantry, but bad in that even with a low-e bulb it still heated up the little room, not very welcome in food storage at all but especially when the ambient temp here has been ridiculously high for so long. The other positive that came out of it was the motivation to replace the old ceramic shadeless utility fixture with an actual glassed light fixture, though I can’t say I enjoyed crouching atop my stepladder and angled over the pantry shelf at about 85 degrees Fahrenheit for even as long as it took to wire in a new little lamp. I’ll admit I do like the slightly more diffused light and appreciate the ability to once again turn it on and off, so I will concede that it was time to do the deed.

Then we started seeing ants, more ants, lots of ants around the kitchen. And we’d just had our quarterly household pest-control visitation in the last couple of weeks. At first I’d thought these were just refugees fleeing the spray-guy’s weaponry, but clearly the activity was beginning to build rather than subside. Great! A family of carpenter ants with resistance to our accustomed defense systems. But when I called the pest-control company this morning they sent “my” guy right on out, no waiting. Now, I like him not only because he’s a nice guy who comes when contacted and because he generally manages our bug problems quickly and thoroughly. This man, however, endeared himself to us immediately on his first visit by hooking us up with the best New York style pizza around this area (in a hole in the wall strip mall joint run by New York expats). You know you’ve found a good contractor when he can recommend first class food of any kind.

Today’s bug-fixing visit was a detailed reinspection and treatment with a new combination of baits and poisons and so forth, and certainly the ants visible during my rescuer’s efforts were not inured to this particular combo, so I am hopeful. The inspection and injection, however, required our moving most of the furniture in the affected rooms and most of the kitchen’s pantry and cupboard contents as well. And of course there were dead and dying ants all over the place. Sorry, I’m just not very zen about sharing my home, particularly my food storage areas, with indoor bugs. There was no doubt that at the end of it I would be facing a major household cleaning. The very good thing about the kitchen semi-demolition, however, was the usual one that when the contents of pantry and cupboards and counters get disturbed it’s amazing how much I discover that I’d put out of sight, out of mind or simply forgotten where it was stashed. Amazing that in less than a year since our move in I have managed to get that absent-minded and inattentive about things, but I suppose that’s not as uncommon as I think it is.

In any case, it was inspiring enough to overhaul the entire kitchen; I couldn’t even resist a foray into the freezer, though I’m reasonably certain that neither ants nor pest-control contractor visited in that particular corner of the room.

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And in this corner . . .

In any event, it was nice to rediscover a few food strays here and there that will undoubtedly whet my appetite for various forgotten dishes and treats in the near future. The freezer reminded me that I have a pair of modest lobster tails (thank you, there are some kinds of bugs I love) sealed up in there that will surely make a nice treat soon, perhaps with a little hollandaise, my all-time favorite seafood sauce; but I must tell you that I think no haute chef’s classic version or fussy variation of hollandaise matches the version I love best, the one my mother always made from the old Betty Crocker cookbook that’s purely egg yolks and lemon juice and a ton of butter. Meanwhile, I dug up and re-corralled a bunch of other favorite condiments in the pantry, from sauces to preserved lemons to pickled jalapenos and chipotles en adobo to Asian fried shallots. Sigh. Hidden treasures revealed.

Of course I couldn’t do so much tidying without simultaneously making a mess. When I was installing the light fixture, it was catching my sleeve on something that upset a bottle of vinegar from a shelf, sending the bottle headfirst onto the tile floor where it exploded in a shower of intensely fragrant miniscule glass shards and balsamic spray. Today it was turning around only to hear my favorite measuring pitcher (you know the one, you’ve got one too that’s got exactly the combination of measurements you most often use, in the size and shape of pitcher that’s most perfect to fit your favorite whisk, spatula, spoon or single-recipe-amount of any- and everything) overbalance and fall with a sharp crack on those same beautiful but deadly tiles. Goodbye, sweet kitchen tool.

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Not a tragedy in the classical sense, perhaps, but still . . .

I’m glad to say that despite my utter lack of grace and athletic skills I am not generally a complete and horrific klutz either. So I’ll be a tad more vigilant and hope that I’ve gotten my major kitchen hijinks out of my system for a little bit now and get on with fixing and eating. And I am certainly glad that there was the impetus, however unwelcome its various pesky sources may have been, to get ‘down and dirty’ in order to be cleaner and more efficient and well-organized in the kitchen again for a while. There is definitely a kind of contentment for me in just looking at a space that has been newly neatened and unveiled, and I know it will lead to more thoughtful cookery for a little while as well. Next soup will surely be much better!

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. . . and don't get me started on the joys of a stack of freshly washed kitchen linens or bar towels!