Tag Archives: art

Super Chicken

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mixed media artworkMy superpower, if I could be said to have any, is being supremely ordinary. Yeah, I’m really, really good at that. Now, you may think it’s not impressive that I’m good at being so-so, and you could be forgiven for thinking it. And yet . . .

Besides that it requires massive numbers of us mid-range sorts to keep nature in a sort of balance with the various human outliers at the top (and bottom) of the spectrum, there’s also the comfort and safety of being able to travel under the radar of scrutiny and pressure to which both kinds of exceptional people are exposed.

What on earth does this mean I am good at doing, at being? Why, I do what’s expected. I go to sleep; I wake up. I eat and I walk and I get dressed and undressed, and the world carries right on around me. And though I don’t at the moment have employment outside of our home, my current occupation being Homemaker, I spend myself and my efforts, rather, on doing the small and yet significant things that might not be essential to keeping the world operational but grease the gears, instead. And keeping the cogs working relatively smoothly is as useful in its own way as being the driver, the engineer or a cog myself. I go to meetings and do Projects, too, to be sure, but mostly what I do nowadays is fix a meal, repair a door-jamb, ferry my spouse and a student to a rehearsal. I do laundry; I prune the plantings near the window. Glamorous? Just exactly enough.

Because the luster of the day comes not from being admired and lauded but from being appreciated, even if it’s hardly necessary to hear that announced constantly–after all, the proof of its value is in plain view if the needful things get done. Any reward lies in the belief that I make life that one tiny iota smoother and pleasanter for that one brief instant, even if only for this one other person. It’s borne on the smile of relief worn by him whose sheaf of office paperwork got filed at last when he couldn’t get to it himself, or whose old slippers have been mended by the time he gets home from the office at the end of the day. It’s in the neighbor being glad to have the excess garden supplies or box of art materials I’ve collected to send to school with her. It’s with me when I arrange the chairs alongside the singers before a rehearsal when I come by to listen to their work. It’s mostly in knowing that the stuff needed to keep quotidian action on course is being looked after, bit by little bit. And that I’m the person for the job.

I don’t do this selflessly, of course, because I would hardly keep it up for long if it weren’t so simply and inherently rewarding. And it certainly bespeaks no genius or courage on my part that I do it, for clearly it takes greater skill and ingenuity and bravery to do all of the shiny, showy things for which I provide my atoms of encouragement from the periphery. Maybe a jot of courage only to admit to being a homemaker and loving it. So many who haven’t the privilege of the life seem to disdain it and misconstrue its meaning, especially if it doesn’t have either children or wealth as part of the equation. I am far more fearful of having no sense of purpose than of being thought unimportant by anyone else; I care more about feeling my own worth than having it validated by any outside agents.

So if I seem to anyone to be afraid of taking a larger role in the Real World as they see it, I suppose I ought to admit that in one sense I am. I know that having this Job for a few years has given me new strength and the ability to go out in the wider world for a so-called Real one again when the time comes, yet I do dread leaving this role that has given me a feeling of vocation more than anything else I’ve ever done and risking the dimming of any of the self-worth I’ve garnered or the value I’ve learned to impute to the tasks of being normal and simple and everyday, which I’ve learned to see as so much deeper and richer than they’d seemed until I tried on the role of their custodian myself. I do, at the end of it, think that if I’m a dull, bland or unimportant grease-monkey to the cogs of the world, I’m a damn good one, and if I’m scared of giving up that high honor, then I at least credit myself with being a superior variety of chicken.

A Hard Day’s Work

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graphite drawingAnyone can be forgiven for thinking that today’s title is a phrase entirely foreign to me in every way. As an avowed lazy person and general slacker, I am known for working with dedication and intensity only when absolutely necessary and unavoidable, and then of course immediately reverting to a supine position as soon as humanly possible. I can, however, honestly claim a couple of points of connection with the workforce, really I can.graphite drawingFirst, of course, is that as a person who enjoys storytelling in both verbal and visual forms, I find much inspiration in the beauty of working people and the myriad tasks they perform, whether willingly or unwillingly. Their beauty, the admirable strength and the grace inherent in laboring people and their achievements, is worthy not only of recognition and illustration but also of admiration and praise. So I suppose this other understanding that I, in my limited way, have of hard work, this combined amazement and gratitude, is really what drives my urge to illustrate such people and their deeds. Call it my thank you card.digitally colored graphite drawing

Hot Flash Fiction 6

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Once Upon a Time in a Shaving Mirrordigital illustration from a photoMartin was a great gentleman. The man he saw in his dusty and slightly foxed mirror every morning was the man inside, and this was the same man he was to all others at all times. A gentleman, Martin, but his exactitude and propriety were also devoted to things quite other than mere manners. Behind his clear and guileless face was a world of fathomless seas and lacy cobwebs, untranslatable illuminated manuscripts full of spells, and the cries of birds never seen on this side of the stars.digital illustration from a photoMartin was punctilious, generous, carefully correct, guileless, and surprisingly simple, all things considered. Behind his shaving mirror, as behind the unruffled perfection of his face, lay surprising things. In the medicine cabinet, it was tinctures and potions, a collection of oddments that might please an old-time apothecary or perhaps, equally, a fine magister–a romantic necromancer, if you will. Martin, pure of heart and innocent as only a strangely experienced elder man of the world could be, had no inkling that mere proximity to this particular concatenation of goods made his inner being as wild and unpredictable as the outward man was clean and Ordinary.digital illustration from a photoThe truly remarkable thing in all of this is that anyone at all was even mildly taken aback when, one particular and strangely normal morning, the man behind emerged. No one will ever really know whether it was the workings of that alchemist’s secret-recipe hidden in the medicine cabinet upon him, or that the being in existence already right behind Martin’s mask of perfect humanity simply came into its own just as it was always going to do.digital illustration from a photoThen again, perhaps the most remarkable element of the case was really that what emerged, this inner Martin, was even better than the original. The true remaining problem was just how the rest of the world was supposed to handle the new man. Especially and particularly, how his physician Dr. Telemachrius, who had prescribed a uniquely heinous combination of the potions and tinctures expressly to turn the exceedingly unremarkable Martin into a bizarre and deadly living puppet for his own purposes, was supposed to respond. What an unfortunate turn of events for Telemachrius, after all. Health was such a precarious thing, even in those early days of rapidly improving modern medicine.

Another Serenade

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mixed media drawingEcstatic

A quenchless love, dreaming of fire,

In sparkling rain, still heart’s desire;

Still filled with stars and wind and joy

And graces formed without alloy—

A pretty hope, a shining night,

That place where blessings all alight—

Give breath and meaning to all things—

This is my love, and yes, it sings,

For in the center of it all

Into such ecstasy I fall

As cannot be divined or plumbed

When earthly spirits have benumbed

The finer senses made for this—

Stop here, and end it with a kiss!

In Case You Don’t Recognize Me

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Background Check Pending

Every particle of me

(At least those parts the world can see)

Works smoothly to create the masks

Compliant with my daily tasks

So no one guesses that down deep

My inner monster’s just asleep.graphite drawing

But I can Still Count All of My Toes (Through the Holes in My Socks)

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graphite drawingTraveling at Speed

When I was just a little tad

And full of zest and vim

I never thought the day would come

When eyesight could grow dim

And hair fall out, and memories

Impossible to keep,

Or that my middle would go soft

Or I would fall asleep

Just trying to sit through the news,

But couldn’t sleep at night,

Get creaky and arthritic

And develop underbite,

But, over and above these things,

No way would I have guessed

The day would pounce so suddenly,

So early. I’m depressed!

Sleeping Angels, All

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drawingThe assertion that ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ is cynical in its assumption not only that bad things will happen and that people will do bad things, but that this is where our greatest interest lies as well. To a certain degree, I will concede it.

And yet.

There is a part of me too that believes in the other having equal weight: the kind and good, the innocent and the pure. Our every moment of disaster, whether natural or human-made, brings out this good in force. It is the sleeping angel inside that emerges on call to offer aid to the suffering, comfort to the weary and food to the starving. I think that maybe, despite all appearances, it’s goodness that is actually the one inexhaustible resource.

I certainly hope so; in this is the promise that our history is not quite at an end.graphite drawing

How Quickly We Learn

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Even when we’re young we pick up clues pretty swiftly regarding what sort of behavior and attitude is expected of us in our interactions with others. As a child, I learned ever so quickly that I am not the boss of anyone else and practically everyone else is the boss of me, and not much has ever changed in that department. Whether happily or unfortunately, depending entirely on your point of view, I also figured out as speedily as most kids do that as long as I behaved in the expected manner when anyone was watching I could get away with a fair amount of far more self-indulgent–if not subversive–ways. Sure does simplify my life!graphite drawingShow of Proper Respect

The Mistress in her jewelry and finery and furs

Thinks everyone should bow and kiss the ground—that’s also hers—

And genuflect before her grand tiara and her mace,

So that is what we tend to do—at least do to her face.digital illustration from a graphite drawingAll frivolous jocularity on the topic aside, however, getting trained by our elders and betters, in particular our mothers, is both more complicated and more happily meaningful for those of us who are blessed with great moms. Me, I’ve got two. The mother who gave birth to me and raised me from my days as an only mildly subversive little sprout into the silly but exceedingly happy big kid you see before you today is worthy of recognition as one of the great teachers not only for giving me a framework on which to hang my sense of right and wrong and general grasp of manners but also the education and freedom and knowledge of being unconditionally loved that enabled me to choose how to build on those foundations as I grew. My second Mom, brought to me courtesy of (her son) my beloved husband, gets credit for instilling the same curiosity and drive in her children and, in turn, for reinforcing in me through her example what it means to be a lively and lovely person who is good company, an active part of the household and community at every turn, and a tireless learner and adventurer who earns her place in those settings with remarkable grace. Whether I can live up to the standards set by either of my Moms remains to be seen, but they certainly give me the tools that should make it possible if anything can.

If it can’t, I guess I’ll have to fall back on my naturally ridiculous ways and just pretend to be better than I am for as long as I can keep up the front. Those of you who are looking for reliably good, sound company, go see Mom W and Mom S. And also my sisters and my sister-in-law, great mothers to their children, and all of those other mothers, who by birth, adoption, random acquisition and teaching, raise better people, who in turn make the world a better place altogether. All of whom I thank profusely not only on Mother’s Day but every day for being such great examples even for those of us who are a little too childish to be motherly examples ourselves. Go ahead, you can say it right in front of me. I’ve learned that much, at least!

Being the Down-Home Sort of Fella that I am

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A Little Antsy Now

If I could do just as I wished and not a nickel more,

I’d not sit still just listening to any tiresome bore,

But I’m in well-bred company (I’m told), so I must stay,

Attempting to pretend it’s deep engrossment I convey—

Meanwhile, my nostril starts to itch and twitch, and I suppose

No one will take much notice if I subtly pick my nose.line drawingBumpkin’s Comfort

I am not wholly ignorant

Of what a fool I am

But if you’d keep me happy

Just give me a slice of ham

A piece of cheese a bit of bread

Some butter, if you will

And I’ll continue happy fool

Slumped up here by the still

Side Effects Make a Changed Man

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Beastly Discovery

Mild-mannered Monsieur Ste-Hilaire

Went out one night to take the air

And came home newly sharp and snarky

(Full of mischief and malarkey);

I think that maybe in the park, he

Might have met a succulent

Voracious, wild and truculent,

That bit his elbows, left and right,

Infecting him that very night

(As you’d imagine, quite a sight)

With psychedelic thoughts to itch

Him to a highly fevered pitch

Wherein he met another world

And in its vortex, seeing swirled

(The way such rarities are hurled)

Strange creatures in bizarre parade,

He loosed the window, threw the shade

Upon it open just to share

With us the beastly thoughts in there

(Effects of which you’re now aware).digital illustration