Bully for Me!

Posted on by
Reply
BW line drawing of bulldog

I'm not a tough guy, but I play one on television . . .

Since it’s my natural inclination to, well, incline–that is, to be more on the laid-back, passive, reticent and/or introverted side, I give myself extra credit every time I manage to step out of that zone. Or even pretend to. While my mantra of ‘Better a live chicken than a dead turkey’ has served me well in my physical labors (I can claim zero broken bones, very few scars and fewer stitches), it’s too much of a cop-out and too easy to give up myself to playing it safe as a rule for living.

So I’m feeling somewhat bullish on the downside of my first day back in the resume-writing trenches. It’s unlikely that a personality facet as deeply carved as my talent for self-doubt will ever be smoothed out entirely, but I’m willing to force myself out of that comfort zone enough to, I hope, grow in whatever little increments I can eke, polishing a somewhat more refined version of myself over time.

And, if you’ll pardon my saying so, I will do it as doggedly as need be.

Looking for My Inner Tough Guy

Posted on by
Reply
Glass-painted self portrait

When under pressure, when filled with self-doubt, when looking for answers to questions yet unknown . . .

I’ve embarked on yet another new adventure. Not at all sure how I feel about this one, because it’ll draw on skills and strengths I’m not certain I have, at a time in life when others are unlikely to see them any clearer than I can.

That’s right, I’m a middle-aged artist about to go job-hunting again. Haven’t done that in a couple of decades. Not sure that what I’ve done in those long-ago days even counts as real job searching, since each time it was necessary for me to seek work it tended to find me before I had to struggle extensively with what I understood to be the normal process of job hunting. Do I have marketable skills? God knows. Are people with job openings going to take a chance on hiring and training me, despite the fear of a short shelf life that might be instilled by my [beautiful, and well-earned] grey hairs? Me, I plan to live a long and action-figure-like adventure well into the unforeseeable future. But I sure don’t know what form of employment that will involve.

I certainly didn’t foresee the various paths on which my previous lives have led me. I’m delighted with where they all crossed and converged to land me at this point in life. So perhaps I have unreasonably high hopes that I’ll hit the jackpot yet one more time. I’m funny like that. Never mind that I haven’t had paying work that I really loved–at least, that I thought loved me back–in most of my adult life. I’m thinking I’m due. But I’m chock-full of that malarkey too. Given how insanely generous the universe has been to me thus far without any particular regard for purpose or logic, I’m planning on yet another dose of unearned magical wonders to be showered upon me. Hear that, yoo-nee-verse??? I’m up against it, and looking forward to being bailed out by fun and miraculous happenings big enough to surf me right along into far-off retirement.

Comforts

Posted on by
Reply
apple pie photo & poem

I have enough crust to start a pie factory!

Insect Asides

Posted on by
Reply

Sitting here listening to the cicadas‘ serenade, I am reminded that one of the pleasures of having relocated to Texas is the variety of new flora, fauna and experiences I get to enjoy. I’ve long been an admirer of insects, both factual and fictional, for their wild-yet-practical construction, exquisite colors and textures, remarkable sounds and skills and most especially, for their very different-ness from us two-legs.

The series below was reverse-painted on some old windows when I was in one of my phases of such fascination.

3 painted windows

L-R: Balancing Act; Hello, Earthlings!; Let Us Prey

As we’re fortunate to have bought a house that backs on a modest greenbelt ‘ravine’ that can’t be built, I’m hopeful I’ll continue to meet new local denizens on a regular basis. So far, there have been visitations from numerous small lizards and frogs and snakes, a ‘writin’ spider’, a plethora of insects–many on a larger scale than I’ve previously known–a possum or two, raccoons that (to date) have only shown their glowing eyes as we pull into the driveway. There are birds galore, from hummingbirds to grackles, mockingbirds and killdeers and scissor-tailed flycatchers and cardinals and waxwings and-and-and . . . . The wild rabbits have made occasional appearances. Some neighbor is reputed to have been nervous about her kitty-cat and ‘turned in’ the otherwise beloved local foxes to the animal-control police, so we’ve little hope of ever enjoying them. I’ve heard tales of coyotes and wild turkeys and deer and other assorted visitors in nearby neighborhoods, but don’t know if or when they’ll visit the ravine or our yard.

The visitor I’d most like to see is one I’ve only yet heard and, once in the snow, seen footprints bearing witness to on our property: a bobcat. I’ve only seen armadillos yet in their, um, postmortem state alongside the roads, so maybe I’m a bit behindhand in converting to true Texanism, but hey, I’m working on it.

Lest Anyone Think I’d Reform

Posted on by
Reply

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

Brian James Fosnick

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

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

Initiating Self-Cooling Operation NOW

Posted on by
Reply
Rainier water

Necessary coolant

Yeah, I do know that generations have survived far worse heat for far longer periods that I’m living with, not to mention that there are far more intense climates, even in other parts of this state. So I’ll have to suck it up. Toward that end, today’s post is of some fondly remembered spots of easeful cool and calm to soothe me. Ohmmmmmmm . . .

It’s Hotter’n Holy Habañeros

Posted on by
2
Finn's grasshopper

Only the truly fabulous can look good when it's 104ºF in the shade

I generally try to keep a moderately cheery demeanor. Even on days when I’m forced to get up before, say, 10:30 a.m. or when the taxes haven’t been completely totted up and yet the single malt seems to have run out already. But when the thermometer sneers at me menacingly and I open the door to a whack of devil’s-breath heat, that’s it, I’m fried. The only saving grace is when I can retreat to the AC with unladylike speed and lounge around vegetating until my respiratory system and my hide recover and my bifocals turn back from the instant Spy-vs-Spy black they dive into as soon as the relentless rays stab at ’em. I’m grateful for the latter, mind you, as opposed to ocular cauterization, but there is a much greater lag on the return to clear-lens visibility, so why not just lie down until the emergency passes anyway? Perhaps it’s a natural consequence of sliding toward geezerhood, like so many other talents and skills I’ve been developing.

I’m trying to develop a metaphorical exoskeleton, to fend off the stuff that, like high external temperatures, is relatively escapable and inconsequential. So far I haven’t found the technique for making myself completely impervious to external woes, let alone those generated within, from personal crochets and peccadilloes–or are the latter, now that I live in Texas, armadillos?–to hot flashes. But I still fancy the idea that it should be possible to get past, through, and over the junk with which the rest of the galaxy opts to bombard me. A girl can dream . . . .

How Moby-Dick Sank the Reader Ship

Posted on by
Reply
kids outside the office door--BW graphite

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

attach a sense of duty to

a thing I used to like to do

and in a flash, a dash, a blink

I like it less than I used to think

Thank You Very Much

Posted on by
4

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buck O'Neil and Richard Feynman

Buck O'Neil and Richard Feynman

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

When Wonderfulness Jumps Up and Bites You

Posted on by
1

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

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

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

digital collage of happily mis-translated malaprops

Good cheer comes in imported packages