Shades of Indigo
Ocean or sky, it’s all the same; liquid or vapor, fluid, sky—
Look for the stars and wonder why you can’t remember your place, your name,
Your hopes, your fears, your heart, your dreams, or anything like a concrete fact,
But only sense, faintly, a world intact when the air and sea converge their streams.
When the blue engulfs both thought and time, what is the measure by which you live?
How many tears and breaths must give their blue to make the world so sublime?
Psychedelic Pstarfish
Seems sillier than psyllium to sing of starry seas,
Yet so the ocean’s silken shore’s sufficient proof of these
That sparkling in such shady deep, something is sure to gleam
In stunning stellar specks and sparks in that submergèd stream,
So sing we sweet and shining songs of starfish as we wish
Upon the evening star to see a firmament of fish
Speaking as a person whose sense of direction can barely get me from my own front door to the kitchen and back without assistance, I have a certain empathy for even the fictional characters who lose their ways in the world. Not so much so that I don’t laugh up my sleeves just a little at their plight all the same, since they are, after all, make-believe…
Now that I’ve had my iPad and its various drawing and art apps for about six months, you might hope, if not expect, that I would have gained a certain amount of fluency in the medium. You would, of course, be disappointed in that. I’m still as ignorant a neophyte as ever. But I’m having a good time, and that makes plodding along at my own minimal speed worth my while, all the same. I suppose it could be compared to the childhood love of scribbling and crayons and such excellent things that leads to our continuing to practice for extensive periods over our early years despite being unlikely to become little masters of art for a much longer time yet.
It would be more meaningful to me, I imagine, and to those who know me, if I could extend that youthful courtesy not only to playing with my latest techno-tools for art making but also to other areas of my life’s education, the many in which I have far less patience with learning as slowly as I do and therefore generally end up quitting or making virtually no progress for eons. Imagine if I loved studying personal finance as much as I like scribbling: I might be rolling in wealth by now instead of still struggling to count change when I buy a few groceries. If I had learned to enjoy practicing exercise—any form of exercise at all—I could have been fit and fabulous and looking at living enough more decades that I could learn a vast quantity of other fantastic and exciting things.
But alas, none of that is my nature or my passion. Plodding along and just playing with those things that amaze and amuse me, that’s my style. I may get up a short burst of energy or speed and manage to improve at one thing or another in my repertoire occasionally, but if you’re looking for snappy progress, cast your eyes in any other direction and you’ll have a better chance of seeing something new and inspiring happen. I’ll be right here in my little corner, scrawling with a stylus like a crazed second-grader mauling her coloring book and cackling with delight over the slightest mark that pleases me. Just think how well I make the rest of you look good!
Seeing the moon at its showiest as often as I have lately makes me immeasurably glad. At the level of pure appearance, its resemblance to a magnificent pearl hanging on the breast of the sky makes that nacreous gleam a beauty of which I can never tire, any more than I would grow weary of taking slow, deep breaths after a spring rain when the lilacs have newly opened. It’s as though all the finery ever worn by all the goddesses of myth has fused into that one palely magnificent, ethereal yet endlessly potent jewel in the sky, so powerful that it can be seen sharply delineated at the height of day, yet as delicate as hoarfrost or needle lace in the faint patterns of its glimmering surface. And like the poets, philosophers and writers who preceded me, as well as those at whose feet I now sit, I remain in awe of the very idea of the moon; its mysterious pull on tide, time and spirit all at once never fails to startle me when I stop to think of it. I would like to sleep every night directly under the moon, staring until my eyes can stay open no longer, if I could really sleep there: while I imagine it might be impossible to close my eyes with such magisterial magic before me. Even when the moon is at its slightest, at nadir or waning to a hairline, it keeps its mystical hold on my imagination. Sleep or no, I can only expect I would dream. The glory of the moon demands dreaming, and whether I rest or not under its wondrous beams I will always delight in seeking to replenish my store of dreams, and by such restoration, to renew my own strength by the welcome, fabulous light of the gleaming moon.
Community is a pool, a lake, an ocean. Having people around me means that every little atom of what I think, feel, say and do has the power to touch all of the lives peripheral to mine. That is immense responsibility. Unspeakable power. I may feel small and even rather insignificant in the scheme of the greater universe, but I know from the way that little things thought, felt, said and done by others move and shape me, regardless of whether their sources are famous or not, well-known to me or not.
Now that I’ve sensed the probability of my slipping toward a new round of depression and anxiety, I know full well that it’s important to me to arrest the slide and reverse my direction in order to sustain my own health and well-being. But I know, further, that it matters for the good of others whose lives intersect with mine, and that is a set of challenges and needs that should matter to me at least as deeply as my own. Yes, it matters to me if it matters to you. I’m nowhere near perfect or heroic, but I’d like to be as decent as I can manage. Even a small stone, skipped across the surface of the water, can create quite the motion in the stillest pond.
Homage to Popularity
My Distinction
If I should need some camouflage, should want to truly blend,
I’d better watch my persiflage and learn not to offend
By wearing last week’s trendy style, my hair too short or long,
Or failing, yet, to reconcile which Party’s Right (or wrong)
To run the government; which church is favored most by God,
How not to leave you in the lurch when I have been a clod,
Appalling with my social gaffes, faux pas and frightful fouls;
I may accept I’m built for laughs, but using the wrong towels
Or forks or traffic lanes, That Word in company unfit—
I hope I don’t seem too absurd as-is, but that’s just it:
My imperfections, my unique design as Me, are such
As might make me appear a freak if I am Me too much.
But, truth be told, while I may work to fit in with the rest,
I hope you won’t think me a jerk for liking myself best!
I will blend in, keep pace, behave, up to a point, to please,
But lest you think me fashion’s slave, I think it a dis-ease
To seek conformity and bow to other people’s rules
When I’m quite nifty anyhow, and others may be fools.
Fingerprint Beats Homage
I do, and learn, new stuff all the time. I wish it’d stick with me! It seems my approach to learning is very much of the two-steps-forward-one-step-back variety, or possibly, one forward, two back, if I’m to be entirely truthful. So much seems like water flowing through a sieve in this ol’ brain of mine.
That is one of the prime forces that made me such an inveterate list-aholic. I fear that if I don’t have lists for every occasion and purpose, and lists of what those lists are, I am doomed to lose whatever motes of mindfulness I have collected in the course of my journeys. Not that lists aren’t perfectly able to be misplaced, forgotten and misinterpreted themselves.
There is probably no perfect solution to this problem. I end up thinking about my lists almost more than about the contents of them or what I might do with said contents, most especially avoiding the thought that if I spent the list-composing and writing time on simply doing what I am making notes to remind me to do, I might not even need the lists. Heresy.
What can I say. I am a pessimist: I don’t think I’ll ever find enough time in a day to get all that I want done accomplished. I am an optimist, too: I think that if I hold something so dearly important as to document its urgency on a list, surely I will someday get it done. Obviously, I am just a good old-fashioned, self-deluded fool. But I have a whole list of reasons that that’s okay and will still get me to my goals. Eventually.
Here’s the thing about flamingos: they’re living contradictions. They’re some of the least altered descendants of the dinosaurs, yet in the twentieth century they became icons of modernism in art and design in large part for the very strangeness that ties them so closely to their ancestors. In the span of that surge of popularity, they also had both the high-cultural cachet of favored subjects in Art Deco’s glamorous creations and the lowbrow delights of trailer park plastic lawn decorations. The elegant long necks, graceful broad wings, and that magical coral hue of their plankton-painted plumage are counterbalanced by rather gawky squawking voices and oh, my, what an unattractive smell.
Here’s another thing: we human-types tend to have a certain ambivalence about many things in our lives and appreciate that the world is far from simple. So it’s not surprising that many of us should find flamingos fairly intriguing and compelling. They’re kind of weird. They’re sort of good metaphorical stand-ins for us.
I’m fond of and amazed by birds. I’m particularly drawn to raptors and songbirds, but truth be told, I wasn’t so taken by flamingos, and when I got to spend a tiny bit of quality time in their presence in zoos or parks, I was amused by their seeming clumsiness and more than a little taken aback by their stink and noise. Guess you won’t be surprised, then, to know that when I had a little time to reflect on it–well, it was my own reflection I saw. I’m still thankful I’m not an actual flamingo, since people mostly don’t laugh openly at my foibles when in my presence, and hardly ever tell me to my face that I’m stinky. All the same, having that little picture stored in my mind is useful. I may still be slightly ridiculous, in my stumbling, silly way and with my imperfect voice and showy but eccentric ways, but I guess if flamingos can be such wonderful and iconic beings with all of their oddities, why shouldn’t I, too? Flawed and goofy I may be, but I’m an amazing creature of my own kind.
Art-Colored Glasses 