Storytime must Never End

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

Creamy flowers & text

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

murder mystery collage

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

squirrels & text

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

Mr. Mussorgsky Makes Good Medicine

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Since I mentioned the mystical powers of restoration held by food and music and art, I suppose I should fill you in on a couple of details. I will begin with my youth, when a day home from school on account of germ infestation was made tolerable by only two things: Mom’s serious talent for coddling, and the range of treats she willingly provided in order to speed the healing of an underage invalid. While I was swooning dramatically on the living room couch, bereft of sisters (they had the nerve to flounce off to school without a thought for keeping me company in my miserable state), I was given the choice between some prized medical treatments to speed my cure.

My selections were usually as follows: macaroni and cheese, preferably neon orange and from a royal blue box–this was long before I’d discovered the delights of Amy Sedaris-inspired artery-destroying deliciousness of the sort I make nowadays–accompanied or followed by Green Jello. Apparently, there is always room for it, because after ginger ale and soda crackers, that was the first thing I craved, and it had to be green, though I don’t know exactly why, even after my body was in a state of complete food rejection.

Meanwhile, there needed to be distractions to help me survive the long hours of my desertion and recuperation. The best possible, and this will date me among all of you tender readers who have to Google “LP” to know that it doesn’t only refer to Licensed Practitioners, was to listen to favorites from among my parents’ record collection. When I was well enough, it was a real delight to lie on the floor with my sisters in a darkened living room and listen to the recording of Basil Rathbone reading Edgar Allan Poe stories, but sans strength and sisters both, it would be music I chose.

High on the list would be David Oistrakh playing ‘The Swan of Tuonela‘ or perhaps Dvorak‘s evocative ‘New World Symphony’, maybe (if I had the energy to laugh along a little) Saint-Saens‘ ‘Carnival of the Animals‘. But probably my favorite was to get my catharsis from my good friend Modest Mussorgsky in the form of ‘Pictures at an Exhibition‘ and especially the wonderfully histrionic ‘Night on Bald Mountain‘. In fact, the first LP I remember buying when I got to college and didn’t have access anymore to my parents’ collection was an album with ‘Pictures’ on it.

The hut on hen's legs, graphite drawing

Baba Yaga by moonlight, or in a darkened living room . . .

It’s obvious from the aforementioned, if it wasn’t in every way so before, that I’ve always had a fondness for the dramatic in music, whether it’s some fabulous ethnic dance-demanding stuff or my old friends the story-based symphonic pieces or Russian choral riches with the basses fine-tuned by some necessary quantity of good vodka (whether they drink it or I do doesn’t necessarily matter, I suppose). In any event, I was very pleased a couple of years ago when my good friend Alvin commissioned me to provide the “missing” illustrations for ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ when he was premiering his wonderful new arrangement of it with slides of the original set of artworks by Viktor Hartmann that had inspired the piece in the first place.

On this note, I suggest you make all haste to your nearest music collection, library, or other source of great storytelling and refresh yourself with a plunge into Mussorgsky, the tale of Baba Yaga, Edgar Allan Poe’s delectably dark yarns, a nice trip through Dvorak’s comforting cloudburst, or if you have other storytime favorites in music, art or written form, go to them and immerse yourself in their magnificence yet again.

Of Course I’m Hungry

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wineglasses and text

No matter the season, I'm always hungry . . .

Among my many obsessions, food and eating are nearly always close to the top of the list. There’s so much loveliness, so much wealth, so much potential in every bowl, leaf and cinnamon stick. And damned if there isn’t deliciousness galore.

I’m neither an expert chef nor foodie of the more serious and scientific sort, not historian or cultural anthropologist enough to delve into the deeper magic of the edible world. What I do have is tastebuds and cravings galore and a massive amount of respect for and joy in the simple and subtle pleasures of food, whether at the table or under the tree. It’s sometimes fun to experience the glorious and self-consciously over-the-top flights of culinary fancy concocted as tasting menus and elaborate kingly dishes. But truthfully, the potent magnetism of the whole event of eating or cooking itself is shaped so much by the company and the environment and the context of the moment that far less sophisticated fare is often far preferable and more soul-grabbing. Gold-leafed croquembouche or perfect Seckel pear or tuna salad on sourdough, it doesn’t matter. If the company and the ambiance are right, it’s as good as dining in the halls of the gods.

blackberries

Perfectly ripe for the moment

It’s why hospitality is a central tenet, even the central tenet, in so many cultures as well. To offer food and drink to a friend is a powerful gift. To offer them to a stranger is diplomacy and compassion, is the hopeful and gracious imperative of beings that want to bring others in the world into deeper community. To offer sustenance to an enemy is to be divinely brave and willing to risk everything for the sake of peace and kindness.

And to dine in peace, dine on sweet and delicious, savory and exquisite, marvelous and welcome meals of any kind–that’s a wonder not to be taken lightly. I’m quite happy to frolic in food without constantly wallowing in worship of it, but at bottom I still feel a certain frisson of that special quality with every crumb, every drop.

silver, salt-&-pepper, spoon

How to eat right isn't always obvious . . .

I’m also learning, as I get older, what I can and can’t eat in good health. Wheat seems to be, if not Nemesis, then at least not a good friend to my innards, and it’s obvious I should learn to love sugary stuff less enthusiastically than I have always done. So I’m working on the whole idea of how to veer away from those ruthless treats that tend to torture me without becoming too cantankerous about what I see as their loss. Mainly, I suppose, finding friendly substitutions to fill in any created blanks and to distract me from anything I might otherwise mourn as loss.

Given that there are so few things I don’t like to eat or drink, that shouldn’t be too awfully tough to do. As long as I don’t find my diet devolving for any reason to 100% blueberries and, oh boy, organ meats. I did say there’s little I dislike in gustatory terms, but I’ll just put those out there. Yes, I’m that person. But I’ve been known to eat both when the occasion required it, because the company and the occasion and what they mean will always still trump the little old tastebuds. And that’s what good taste really means to me.

Happy Place

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MDW's landscape, composited

Matins to Evensong

When the world is showing its extra cruel side, it’s time to find the peaceful center of my personal universe. I will keep mourning the lives and loves lost, the battles still raging, the injustices not yet righted, and the imperfection of a reality where children still starve, books are still burned, and toxic waste is still piling up around our midriffs.

Solace isn’t a solution, but it’s a balm that eases the troubled spirit. And what is my solace? A quiet moment calming my thoughts. The love of my nearest and dearest ones drawing me close, or building a safe perimeter around me when I need one. Music, music of almost any kind, has enormous palliative power. Writing a little something or a little nothing. Making a photograph, a drawing or a painting or a mixed media concoction of some sort: while the end product may have some measure of use in righting my inverted innermost, it’s the process that matters. The practice. The act of making–creating, bringing newness into being, starting afresh. That’s what carries the healing and renewing power. What carries me through the cold hard world when it’s not catering to my taste.

For such resources I’m endlessly grateful.

The Stickiest Substance Known

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The most depraved state of being I can imagine is that of fearing and hating Other-ness. Unfortunately, it’s also part of the natural tendency of every mortal: to imagine that all creatures outside of our own accepted parameters, whether by choice or by birth or by accident, are somehow a threat to our selves and our happiness and state of perfection.

Alligatored paint and poem

We have all known terrible beauty

There’s hardly one among us past infancy that hasn’t experienced some sort of loss and grief and disaster, and it’s the general practice to associate such events with some kind of zero-sum social economics asserting that anything lost in one’s own life is necessarily offset, if not caused, by someone else’s gain. The underlying assumption is that outsiders or anyone not to my own taste must be scheming endlessly to supplant me in my intended paradise and if they don’t share my specific (and obviously self-defined) interests, destroying me in order to usurp my throne is logically the desired mode. Ergo, the only way to avoid that is to destroy all Others preemptively, and if it can’t be accomplished with mere fear- and hate-mongering, then it will be by any means possible.

That’s the powerful source of horrifying mass murders and terrorism and war criminality. It’s where people like Norway’s monstrous 22 July attacker are formed.

Inlays and text

"He seemed okay . . . we didn't know him very well . . . just a kind of quiet guy . . . sort of kept to himself . . . "

More terribly, though, there’s a little of that doomsday design in every little thought of disapproval and self-righteous judgement we find so insidiously creeping up inside each of us in our worst moments, and it tars and feathers us all. Hate is a remarkably easy sell and counter-logic rolls right over Jane and Joe Average like Niagara Falls the minute one plays on their universal fears. It’s why we have increasingly polarized political views all around the world, but perhaps most notably here in freedom-preaching America, Land of the Free to Share My Beliefs and Home of the Brave Talk about Equality and Melting-Pot Roots. And I tend to think of this also as a time when a great many worldwide have completely blurred the line between religion and politics, another wonderfully convenient way in which one can equivocate about what is belief, what is desire, and what is fact.

Me, I don’t have a clue how to change something that I think is so deeply ingrained in simply existing as living persons. What I do know is that the only antidote within my view is personally embracing peace, tolerance, increased understanding, and compassion and believing that I may gradually become a better person for a start. No promises, only hope.

O that the sexton were here to write me down an ass!

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Silly ass (drawing)

Pardon my pride . . .

Lucky me, I am privileged to wear the insignia of the Village Natural without fear of persecution just because I am an artist. People tend to make allowances for much foolishness and many strange contortions and comical pratfalls when they know that one is cursed and/or blessed with the uniquely kinked P.O.V. of the creatively imbued. Non-sequiturs may fill the air like a flock of misfired shuttlecocks and gimcrack ideas being flung about cause ten-man pileups from mental whiplash, and yet all is forgiven–or at least shrugged off with a certain amount of paternalistic tolerance. I am happy to accept the adulation and well-meaning condescension of those who, collectively, constitute my fan base and oddball support groupies. This is, in fact, my due after the long years of toiling in secret at mystical labors whose total output, howsoever prolific, sparkling, scintillating, cashmere-comfy and glorious it may be, will cure nothing direr than ennui, save no one but from the disaster of blank pages, and solve no conundrum greater than to confirm-or-deny one’s concept of his favorite color. I accept the obeisance of the (albeit sparse) masses, because I like my work and because I believe in pointless beauty. Shouldn’t everyone?

. . . and . . .

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. . . in case anyone wondered . . .

seaside & text

How I blue all my worries away

Am I Blue?

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In a word, no.

The relentlessly blue sky of triple-digit Texas, still occasionally fooling me into thinking it would be “nice” to “go outside” and “do stuff” shortly before I snap back to sanity–and if I don’t on my own, the giant slap from the outdoor air will reboot that for me instantaneously–could conceivably lead to a little case of the blues. The prospect of job-prospecting can certainly be azure-tinted. The creeping necrosis of ancient age can induce a bout of cyan-shaded maundering in many.

blue poppy

Cerulean sweetness

But really, mes amis, isn’t there a lovely side to the melancholy, a lure inherent in the dark, even? Seems to me it’s part of the whole Artiste mythos, a contributing factor in the raging Romanticism that makes everyone think it’s okay at some level to be utterly bonkers in a gothically twisted way if one happens to be a Creative Type. Anyone that knows me the slightest degree beyond phone-book-listing knows that I think it’s a massive heap of hooey to say one can’t be truly creative without suffering deeply or that misery somehow engenders and enhances artistic brilliance. I’m more of the poster child for Better Living Through Chemistry and stand around shaking my scolding digit (choose one) at those who use such dangerous rubbish as an excuse not to take their treatment. If the treatment (whatever therapy, from talk to shock) isn’t making you more of the creative soul you were born to be, more, in fact, the very person you were born to be, that’s a failure to find the right recipe of treatment for your individual needs, not proof that treatment is not for you. And decidedly not proof that being unwell is preferable in any way to being whole and contented.

That doesn’t mean I expect or want to be leaping deliriously from one sugar-spun rose petal to another while pan-pipes tootle gaily in the copse. One-note existence of any kind is guaranteed to annoy, at least before it bores you to death. So I’ll take my bumps on the way, settle under the lapis lid of passing sadness when it can’t be avoided. But aside from any urge to grouse, I’ll also take what inspiration I can from the blue-tinged moments and dash back as quickly as I can into the cheering light of a strangely blue-sky world.

It’s Only Money, Honey

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My partner and I both had birthdays of our respective ’round numbers’ during the last year, so we have been celebrating these mid-century markers with the requisite amusement park assortment of medical inspections, tune-ups and treatments and oh, boy, is it a great way to spray the contents out of the wallet as though it were really a fire hose. Switching to a different health insurance system on our move here, after having nearly learned the byzantine ways of our longtime previous HMO, is enough of a culture shock, but when plunging into the ocean of middle age’s preventive care delights it’s more of a sea change, even a paradigm shift. Maybe simply a parallel universe.

Whatever it is, I’ve decided that the only way to keep from fainting when looking at the speed-bleed of hard-earned moolah is to follow our traditional M.O. when traveling, which is to set aside what we’re planning to live on while abroad, convert to the local foreign currency, and pretend it’s all Monopoly money until done. Somehow it seems less painful, and in this instance, since various of the medical adventures do require anesthesia of varying kinds, yet the health care providers we’ve seen thus far seem unwilling to oblige us with a nice happy twilight drug when administering their bills, might as well pretend it’s all pretend, eh?

Western-style want ad for a woman

When it hurts too much to cry anymore, might as well laugh . . .

Meanwhile, that’s my cue to keep up with scouring the employment listings and perhaps consider whether there’s anything valuable I’ve forgotten I own that I’d like to be selling off just about now. And no, HIM I’m keeping, so put your bullion away for a minute and let me contemplate.

Never Know Where You’re Going ’til You Get There

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shark/aerial digital collage

Swimming with sharks, or drifting in a dream?

Last night was less than stellar. You’d think that, having read a bit of S. J. Perelman‘s highfalutin candy-floss just before hitting the pillow, I’d immediately hie myself into some delightfully weird and comical dreamland, but no. Instead, my dreams were shaped by an earlier TV-watching moment of some crime show involving postmortem decomp, and spent much of the night involved in various episodes of corpse disposal and crime scene cleanup. How this relates to my life and waking experiences I dare not speculate. It may even be significant that, while the topic in general was fairly repulsive, I didn’t wake in terror or horror so much as mystification. This, from a notoriously squeamish customer.

All of it only serving to bring to mind once again that wonderful performance of Sylvester the cartoon “poothycat” belting out his rendition of ‘You Never Know Where You’re Going ’til You Get There’. Not simply because, if memory serves, he was doing so in order to keep the ever-tormented Elmer Fudd from sleeping soundly, but because the very theme of the song is a life-talisman for me, a perfect description in the title alone of how my life’s path meanders and takes the odd acute-angle turn.

It’s thus that what first appears to be a view into a fish tank turns into the scene framed by an airplane window, not only in my art but in my perception of the world, and what seemed ominous turns out to be utterly benign, the factual is revealed to be a ridiculous concoction invented by the lunatic fringe.

There’s something reassuring in knowing that what seems fixed in reality is actually mutable and flexible.That change is possible, even when insignificant Me happens to be the superhero on call at the moment. It’s not necessarily that I have plans that will rock the foundations of the earth, just that I like considering the possibility and seeing where that contemplation might lead. I may discover I like paddling around nekkid among lead-eyed hammerheads just for the frisson of it, or that I suddenly figure out how to levitate and enjoy Google Earth views while soaring about without benefit of mechanical support. I’ll keep you posted.