Hard-Edged Impressionism

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Digital illo from a photo: Doing My Impression of a LonghornThe steadily clear, cloudless skies of a still very warm October day in north Texas lend themselves mostly to seeing the world as a series of crisp cutouts, light and shadow unmitigated by much subtlety. But after spending the last six years living here, I have found an interesting fine-textured, mellow character that offers much of the softening effect the light might seem to steal from the scenery. It comes in those rare times, like yesterday afternoon, when my spousal-person and I have the time and leisure to wander slowly and savor those things that are uniquely alluring about this still somewhat alien terrain.

Instead of the flat and unchanging brown I had somehow come to expect from Texas when I was still a foreigner to it all, sitting up in the very northwest corner of the country and imagining I was moving to dry, unmitigated plains, this part of the state is actually a softly rolling zone, a puffy quilt as opposed to a hospital-corners flat sheet. There are little ravines and arroyos tucked into it, sliding slopes of no great height but enough curvaceous amplitude to give a sense of motion and variation. There are no natural lakes around here, but a good number of created ones, and Ray Roberts Lake is a massive reservoir with thousands of acres of state park land along its shores. The farther inland oak-and-pine forested walking paths are currently closed because of flooding, an exceedingly rare thing in this region but brought on by last winter and spring’s astonishing rain performance. So even if it weren’t for the possibility that there’d be more mosquitos in the shady walk (thanks a bunch, West Nile virus), sticking to the breezier open areas of the lakeside was more promising.

As we drove out toward the lake, I was reminded of how the tall native grasses’ and wildflowers’ color and texture, height, and movement hide the sharp edges of the landscape; how the rolling terrain lulls me; how vast stretches of these, stands of trees between ranchland pastures and open plains, and the broad blue dome of the sky all become blurs of comfortable sameness. All things gain or lose specificity of detail with our relative nearness or distance, whether physical or mental.

As we’d drive nearer to a change in the topography or flora, or a lasso of vultures would tighten in the sky overhead, the edges and distinctions becoming more defined again, our eyes and minds would shift back to notice details. As we passed through these, we would relax once more into that easeful somnolence of a Sunday afternoon’s outing and see only large patches of color, texture, movement. A leafy copse at the edge of one of the area’s sweeping ranches first looks like a dark and fuzzy blend of earthy greens and browns, then gradually coalesces into trees and grasses, then proves to be shading a small group of magnificent longhorns who graze steadily, undisturbed by the larger or smaller picture.

I am reminded once more of how small a part of any picture I am, yet how free to be a moving, changing, unique point of interest within it if and as I choose. All of us are both at once: concrete and distinct, yet subsumed in the greater whole as mere specks, little dots of disappearing solidarity within the hazy afternoon of history. I am content.

Well, Aged

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I am not in the least opposed to growing older. Or even growing really, really old. I’d just like to do so with a smidgen of style and a jot of class, if I can lay hold of either of these by then. In the meantime, I’m pretty happy that most people don’t think of me as exceedingly geezer-ish—or at least don’t have the temerity to say so to my softly collapsing face. Grey hair and wrinkles, along with all of my more singular scars and bruises acquired along the way, are merely outward expressions of my having lived a life, perfect or not, as opposed to having merely existed on the planet, taking up space without filling it.Drawing + text: Time Flies

I may not be a glorious vintage of anything, but if I’m not exactly well aged, I’m at least, well, aged. And that pleases me quite enough.

Drawing + text: Finding Contentment

Key Witness

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Photo: High StrungPhoto + text: Rectitude

Kath & Mouse

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I’ve been blogging daily just long enough, now, that I find it impossible to remember every post I’ve put up thus far, never mind any larger percentage of my life’s epic episodes. It’s nice that many of those events and adventures eventually reappear, at least in teeny-tiny increments, in my shadowy, foggy memory, but I suppose it’s far from essential. We all lose traction in the paths of life at times, and get by as best we can in spite of it all.

Maybe hanging out with the next-door kitty cats so much lately has distracted me a bit more than usual and I can blame their attentions for my current inability to recall if I have posted this little set before; perhaps my brain is already pretty furry anyhow. It hardly matters. I’ll just give you another look. Or a first one. It’s all just a tad cat-and-mouse anyway, what we do here on a day-to-day basis, isn’t it.Drawing + text: Cat and Mouse

Memory is such a volatile, ephemeral, thing, and so subject to filters and interpretation. Like human history in general, if I may say. When I wrote this, I certainly wasn’t expecting (let alone happy to contemplate) that Differentness—racial, gender-related, cultural, and so forth—would still be such unfunnily real divisive poisons in the current day and age. I hope that this will one day be only the humorously cartoonish tale it was designed to be, when I posted it before (if I have), when I blog it today (as I will), and whenever I post it again (for I might very possibly do it all over again, consciously or forgetfully. Ha. Joke’s on me.

Inventor, Invented

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Photomontage: Blue WorldI was thinking about how I used to see the world through my designer goggles. You know, the way kids see what is and think of it in terms of how terrific or terrible they find it, and what they would do if they were The Boss and could make it exactly to their specifications. Yeah, you know: just as adults do. I still never visit a city or park, or sit in any room, without redecorating it or rebuilding it entirely, to have greater comforts, improved functionality, and superior beauty. All according to my standards, of course.

But as a kid, I got a running start at this by scrounging up every bit of interesting scrap and oddity I could find, and taking my current collections and organizing them into bookshelf-filling houses, costumes for characters I made out of other scraps, or perhaps imaginary landscapes into which I could mentally insert any stories I wanted to create. And, unlike some, I never grew out of it. I have always been surrounded by enablers who have not only permitted but even fed and encouraged my addiction to playing with reality. How would I remake the universe in which I live? I don’t know my plan in its entirety yet, but I am always, always working on it. Photo + text: How I Make this Place

Foodie Tuesday on a Wednesday: Spinning Time, Spanning Seasons

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Here in north Texas, the seasons are not so much defined as a slow mosey between the traditional two months of cool (also referred to locally as Winter) and the various pretend-seasons of Really Warm, Hot, and Hotter’n a Pistol. So it helps a transplanted northerner like me to occasionally do stuff that makes me feel a little more like there’s a change in the day, if not in the air. It matters less whether I do things that welcome the incoming time of year or ones that celebrate the last-hurrahs of the ending one, or, as often as not, things that bridge the gap in that same sidelong saunter as the so-called changes occur.

Since I do love autumn as much as any season, and it’s perhaps one of the less visible ones hereabouts, it’s fun to pull out recipes and treats that speak to me of the setting of summer’s sun and the rising of a harvest moon. I’m not a pumpkin fanatic like so many seem to be, and they, along with other squashes and root vegetables, are available pretty much all year long, but there is admittedly something compellingly autumnal in the scent and taste of these, roasted and seasoned just so. Anything that reinforces my sense of time, particularly when things get busy as they have been lately and I forget entirely what day it is, let alone what season. So here I am once again posting my Tuesday post on a Wednesday. I may be becoming more predictable than the seasons!

For a very easy to make little sweet that can pass for either a side dish or dessert, as need be, sweet potatoes or yams are a nice leaning-into-autumn treat that have more fiber and nutrients than the usual fluff, and are still both sweet and mild so they can be blended with quite a range of tastes successfully. In this case, I mean both our tastes and the number of flavors that meld well with sweet potatoes. As the end of summer is not yet fully fled, I can still find some juicy, ripe peaches, too, that magnificent fruit pregnant with late-season sun. Coincidentally, they share a warm, rich color palette with sweet potatoes, so they can be a lovely stealth ingredient in this dish, waiting to surprise tastebuds with their delectable and desirable intensity.

Sweet Potato-Peach Fluff

Baked or roasted sweet potato, peeled and pureed thoroughly. Equal amount of ripe peach flesh, uncooked, peeled, and also pureed. Blend them together thoroughly, adding (to your taste) browned butter, lime juice, salt, ground cardamom, and cinnamon. Serve warm, room temperature, or cold. A nice chilled glass of hard cider or freshly crushed non-alcoholic cider would not be amiss to wash this down, and it would go wonderfully with anything from a cheesy mushroom gratin to roasted duck breast, pit smoked ham to grilled cruciferous vegetables with walnuts. Or a big scoop of dulce de leche ice cream!

Yeah, it’s always good to remember that too much of a good thing is a great thing.Photo: Sweet Potato Peach Fluff

Newness Absolute

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Digital illo: CreatingCreating

Atom by atom and cell by cell,

The seconds tick and the hours tell

And up from nothingness and void,

Growing, expanding, and overjoyed,

What was mere darkness, lonely, grim,

Swells from the silence as a hymn;

Out of all absence, beauty came—

Because deep love had called its name.

What is the Metric Equivalent of Thirtyhunnert Pazillion Words?*

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Digital illo: Birds' WordsA Flock of Words

How fleeting is the flight of birds

Compared to mine, on made-up words!

Vast verbal ventures fly me high

Above their wings—above their sky—

Above the reach of angels’ thought,

So lofty are the words I’ve got.

Proliferation I can send

Beyond the universe’s end,

Where birds and angels, so it seems,

Fly only on the wings of dreams,

And I, the master of the words,

Master the dreams, the angels, birds,

The flimsy few whose flight intends

To float to those far-reaching ends

Where language takes me—but I know

Linguistic lands where they can’t go,

Because they lack these fragrant words,

Unknown to angels, dreams, and birds,

And all whose wings are not enough

To keep up with such heady stuff.

Wafting aloft, flaring with fun,

I leap the moon, the stars, the sun,

The past, the present, times not yet,

The known and unknown, and I get

No weariness from flying here

Above the mental atmosphere,

But elevated past all birds,

I’m wild with joy on wings of words!

* One of my posts.Digital illo: Word Wizardry

The Truth is…

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Photo: We All Have Stories to Tell 2I am 100% honest and 90% transparent on my blog. But I write a lot of fiction, and I’ve been known to edit or doctor my work like crazy. I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive. Maybe it’s because the intent is never to mislead and deceive, only to get you thinking (differently, perhaps) or entertain you. Maybe it’s because my own thinking is a rare, if not unique, blend of optimism, idealism, pragmatism, logic, guesswork, paranoia, fear, distrust, problem-solving, hope, and magic realism. Maybe it’s only because I’m a big enough fool to believe that I’m being honest and transparent.

Maybe, though, it’s at least a reasonable assessment because I operate with the belief that anyone who reads my posts is clever or intuitive or discerning enough to tell when I’m inventing characters and storylines, when I’m being deeply sarcastic, when I’m illustrating for comical effect, and when I’m trying to be a straightforward documentarian. Even when I’m making up ludicrous fairytales and spouting jocularities while recording my own little adventures and misadventures, I trust my readers to imagine with me the underlying bits of fact, to spot the universal truths and throw out the chaff of willy-nilly silliness. Foolish? Oh, quite possibly. But I prefer to think I’m just cutting everybody the same slack I deserve, the assumption that we’re not adversaries trying to subvert or enslave or otherwise ruin each other but rather fellow travelers and potential compatriots on life’s wandering way.

By the same token, I expect others to grant me grace when I speak my views about the good and the bad in the world, about what I think are healthy and reasonable approaches to understanding and accepting differences and where I think it important to draw a line and say, I can’t accept that idea or action as having any positive or non-harmful purpose in a world populated with imperfect and fragile humanity. Anyone who can’t allow my opinion to go un-insulted is entirely free to leave the room. Press EXIT and don’t look back! But I haven’t had anyone feel the need to do so in a rude way, and that’s the blogging world I find worth operating in; when I go to sites and blogs, to Facebook pages or zines or any other sort of forum, whether it’s one that invites the sharing of ideas and conversations or it’s strictly a pulpit for one person’s views, I am glad to be free to come and go as I please and, if the topic is one that in any way displeases or bores or offends me, to quietly depart and leave the rhetoric to those engaged in it.

On the other hand, I know that there are many (including friends and loved ones) whose thinking and whose opinions and beliefs are so dramatically different from mine that I find it difficult to refrain from civil comments yet I hesitate to leave what I think are slanderous or libelous statements, patent falsehoods, or dangerously misinformed “Facts” and “Truths” standing without challenge, feeling as though I’m slinking off ignominiously and leaving a ticking bomb in the middle of a train station by not offering a clear counter-statement to it. It is not, however, in my nature to enter into debate, no matter how civil. I find it very hard to form and articulate my ideas in a way that I find satisfactory, and am easily cowed into silence by bluster or bullying from opposing viewpoints, so I nearly always tend to “let the Wookiee win” rather than engage in what I’m almost always certain will be not only a losing proposition as a discussion but ultimately, demoralizing for me. Mostly, I’m jaded by past attempts into sensing that those whose beliefs are both loudly and firmly held have no interest in hearing my point of view, let alone considering it as having possible merit.

I was struck by this yet again recently when I encountered a long string of posts from a casual acquaintance who took boldly opinionated stances on several different issues of politics, religion, and social policy that he not only conflated into all being essentially one large conspiracy of evil, crime-backed, world-destroying intent that just happened to, as far as I could see, implicate me personally because the nefarious network he was outing as so hateful included (by name) many people and organizations that I am convinced have quite different, if any, involvement in the acts and policies of which he accused them, and in most cases, act on and endorse things that I find hopeful, helpful, healthy, and humane. But I didn’t think there was the remotest chance he would be anything but dismissive and angry if I were to express the least of my views there. And I was equally sure that he would be hurt, mystified, and convinced that I am not only cozened by the evil empire he hates but probably a brainwashed agent of their horrible intentions of world domination and destruction. So I sit and suck my paws sadly and feel sorry that such divisive attitudes can just bulldoze me like a runaway tank.

It cheers me more than you might guess to return to my friendlier neighborhood here, to be able to speak my mind and show my little pictures where if anybody disagrees, they just share what interests them to share and move on. Where if they question my veracity or accuracy, they ask questions and/or offer useful corrections kindly and without reproach or personal attack. Yes, I make up all kinds of stuff and tell stories that have sometimes have more whoppers in them than any single Burger King franchise. But I never try to hide whether I’m talking sincerely or pulling anyone’s leg for entertainment.

Yes, I edit virtually every photo I post at least a little. But the very act of taking a photo is an editorial process: the photographer chooses what her audience sees, how much of it she sees, from what point of view, and so forth, before ever fiddling with the picture for further artistic or story-driven reasons. And further, in the instances when I’m not making digitally doctored artworks out of the photos for what I believe are fairly obvious illustrations rather than factual expressions, any alterations I do make are attempts to help the photos show what I saw and experienced rather than merely what my camera is capable of capturing and showing, at least given my paltry technical skills with it.

So I stick by my claim: I’m honest and transparent here. But it is my truth, my sense of clarity and my perception of reality that I’m sharing here. I know that nothing I say or do here will change the minds of any who disagree, nor will my posts save any little part of the world. If they save someone from a bad mood for a little while, that’s pretty good. If they somehow manage to make someone who does disagree with me think about what I might think or why, that’s pretty good even though I know my chances of changing a mind are negligible if any. And of course, I could be wrong. If all my posts do is allow me a dash of release while I exercise my creativity and try to suss out my own point of view a shade more clearly, that’s not such a bad thing either. If you’re still here keeping me company when the post is over, now, that is a fine thing indeed. And that’s no lie.Photo: We All Have Stories to Tell 1

Get Ready to Get Scared

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Autumn is a strange time of year, isn’t it—the season when the evidence of the end of all living things surrounds us in greater than ever abundance is also when we’re imbued with the sense of newness as the school year and performance seasons begin. One month turns into the next over a period of ritual remembrance for the dead, a time that has managed to segue in modern times into a monstrously (pun intended) popular holiday rife with commercialism and partying that have in most cases long since obliterated any sober or spiritual content that once attached to the occasion. Confusing, perhaps, this odd mix of the haunting and the hilarious, the grotesque and the goofy.

I rather like this time of year for that very reason. The bizarre and the beautiful make such interesting partners, don’t they. It’s so perfect, the way this sort of thing reflects the natural intersections of the true and the terrible, the gruesome and the glorious—of life and death.

Me, I’m scared of practically everything. I’m not all that enamored with the more popular forms of terror-tainment, the horrific haunted houses and splatter movies, never mind the creepy cults of murder groupies and the like. But I’m human; I’m not immune, either, to a good, cathartic thrill and chill. So I get my kicks in the particular ways that allow me to feel a modicum of control, usually because I made up the scary stuff myself. As puppet-master I can enjoy the frissons until I’m, well, not enjoying them, and then put the story on hold until I’m ready to face my own death again. Mortality is such an adventure. I know you think about it, too, whether it’s Halloween month or not. Meanwhile, sleep well.Digital illo from photos: Let's Get Scared