Spaceships, Time Machines, Bicycles

Photo: One for the RoadWhen I think about it, I’m amazed at how many modes of transport exist. Contrary to the fantasies popular in the middle of the past century, we’re not all traveling in levitating cars and being atomized and reassembled on opposite sides of the world. But it’s still fiction-worthy stuff that emerges when I realize we’re within reach of fully self-driven cars and can already travel at light speed, drive under the sea, and fly to the moon and, yes—more importantly—back again.

Fiction, however, has always outstripped real-world progress, as well it should. If we don’t imagine it first, how can we build it? If we didn’t travel thus in dreams, what chance would there be of our ever doing so in life?

I have invented an item or two in my time, but my ingenious machinations have never yet been realized in concrete form, at least those unrelated to my art. Still, I hold dear the idea that ideation is the necessary precedent of exciting discoveries and meaningful inventions. As silly as they may seem, then, I’m unlikely to quit developing my odd creations of the imaginary sort.

Who knows what journeys might someday spring from them?Digital illustration from photos: Time Machines

From the Highest Towers

Digital illustration from a watercolor: Summer Stained GlassRinging In

Every time I hear them, I remember that first morning,

That moment in a narrow street when brightly, without warning,

The bells loosened their tongues to sing and raised their clarion voices

In that wild hymnody of joy at which my heart rejoices,

And now, wherever I may be, whatever is the weather

Or the occasion driving me, those voices joined together

Stop me, and make me raise my eyes while all the bells are ringing,

And search the gladness of the skies where Carillon is singing.Digital illustration from a watercolor: Springtime Stained Glass

Eating Thistles

Photo: The Big ThistleCardoons and artichokes are every bit as admirable as their strictly-for-visual-admiration wild growing thistle cousins. But as any avid eater should know, the aforementioned relatives are terrific dining companions as well as being attractive plants. Sure, I love the silvery magnificence of a shapely cardoon leaf accenting the garden border, but if I can admire its beauty and then eat it as well isn’t that just so much the better?Digital illustration from a photo: Antique Artichoke

And artichokes, well, we all know those are as worthy of battling past their thorny armor as it was ever worth storming a castle’s battlements and portcullises to get to the treasury inside.Digital illustration from a photo: Artichoke Arrangement

The wonderful earthiness of the artichoke is an outstanding companion to the similarly strong-yet-subtle virtues of asparagus, mushrooms or root vegetables. All of these, in turn, play nicely with the denser, meatier varieties of fish—roasted monkfish or grilled salmon, for example—or a roast or stew of wild game, if one has access to, say, boar or venison. Or, if meat or fish is simply not right for the moment, some boiled, steamed or poached eggs.

How about this for a tasty Collage of Earthy Vegetables:

Blanch some cleaned asparagus, small to medium-sized artichokes, halved and trimmed, and russet potatoes, skin on and cut into modest wedges. When they’re all blanched, stem and clean some Portobello mushrooms, toss everything with a little avocado oil, kosher salt & cracked black pepper, and grill or roast until tender.

Serve with any or all of the following as a finger food, small-plate meal or as a side to the main entree (fish or meat or eggs):

Toasted hazelnuts, small wedges of Manchego or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, brown butter Hollandaise, and/or rosemary sherried green olives.

This compilation seems to me almost a vegetable representation of terroir. At the least, it’s very down to earth!

Well, Blow Me Down!

Digital illustration: Blow Me Down!The old expression in my title here—close cousin of ‘you could knock me over with a feather‘—is a colloquialism for great surprise. It’s also, was so many colloquial phrases are, comically colorful and exaggerated. Hyperbole and humor grow out of genuine life experiences and events. They are anchored in recognizably real sensations and situations as much as in silly imagination.

After all, when in shock, don’t I feel my knees suddenly go uncomfortably loose and slack, and go all light-headed as though not only my hat but the whole top of my head might just fly off at the slightest whiff of a breeze?

The appeal of the idiomatic phrase, regional quirks of language, colloquial expressions and other ‘decorative’ forms of description is that they can often communicate far more about the situation than mere facts can do. They share more of our personality and character and our own experience of the moment than the dry recitation of what can be scientifically charted could ever be able to convey. And they amuse and entertain, which gives much more impact to any statement than simple and bald recitation, and what has such verve is more likely to stick in the memory as well.

Also, it’s kind of hard to make a little illustrative sketch that conveys the astonishment with which an unforeseen hat-snatching or similar surprise nearly so well as one that says, Well, Blow Me Down! If you know what I mean.

Keeping My Eyes Open

Let’s not quibble about why I’m here; just show some respect for my dedication. I keep watch, I am the guardian, I stand undaunted at attention. I am a tireless protector. Never mind that I’m protecting what I hope might be my lunch, or at the least, my plaything for the while. I am a cat, and that is what the best of us cats do. It is nature and vocation.Digital illustration: In the Catbird Seat

The mouse living in there, well, he might have a slightly different point of view. But let’s be honest: his place in the natural scheme of things is as a cat’s toy or treat, isn’t it just. So I shall perch here and keep my patience, and never you mind criticizing my ways. That would be too—well, human of you. And you didn’t want to share your house with a mouse, now, did you! Just look away. I’m busy here.

Meeting the New Kid

Did you know that there are creatures you didn’t know you knew? Of course you knew it. After all, there’s the whole race of super-characters, multiple species like the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster, Dracula and Tinkerbell, Wonder Woman and Wolverine peopling our universe, or at least some parallel ones, so we’re pretty well surrounded by fantastic fellow creatures if we’re willing and able to recognize them.
Digital illustration: Bumblesaurus

I think that perhaps part of the reason I’ve so long loved living so deeply in my imagination is that, having the social anxiety I’ve always dealt with when it comes to human-type people, I find I’m fond of fictional company and its many quirks and quizzical qualities. Not that I would necessarily be more masterful or even less shy in the midst of make-believe characters: I’m perfectly capable of being intimidated by the magnificence of pretend persons or frightened by the nastiness of the wicked ones just as easily as by real folk.

So you’ll forgive me if, despite his appearance of being slow-moving, benign, and perhaps a touch dim-witted yet perfectly friendly, I take my time getting to know the Bumblesaurus. He just wandered into the backyard when I wasn’t looking and made himself at home under a mulberry seedling. Yes, you got that right: he’s four centimeters long. Did I mention that I’m a nervous type? I mean, you only have to be the size of a flea to spread the plague all over Europe and kill off hordes of humans, right? I really do have to remind myself to give everyone, not least of all the Bumblesaurus, the benefit of the doubt. As they probably all do me.

Slow-Moving Cars & Shiny Objects

Distractions abound. One split second of inattention can lead to disaster, whether it’s the roadside wildflowers that make me fail to notice the brake lights ahead of me or the glittery wings of a metallic beetle that keep me from realizing that everybody in my promenading party has walked on ahead without me and I don’t quite know where. Not such great and significant dramas in the grand scheme of things, these, but small indicators to remind me that things could have been so much worse if I hadn’t been so fortunate, and might be yet if I don’t learn from the nudges.Digital illustration: Tripping along the Road

The best fortune in them is, of course, that I’m cautioned before the crack of doom. How much better to be alerted by noticing the swerve I had to make to avoid plowing into the slowed traffic, or by realizing I have to catch up with my strolling companions than that I actually caused a crash or hiked right off the trail into uncharted wilderness alone. A little jolt is an occasion for large thankfulness.Digital illustration: Dyslexic Map

That’s how I travel through life, bumbling along its unmapped corridors with my faulty personal GPS and my avid, easily attracted magpie eye. I bump into life as much as I take a route through it. I’m just relieved to have lived this long without disappearing down any of an infinite number of rabbit holes and being lost forever in the warrens, tripping in them obliviously only because I was too mesmerized by nonessential Other Things along the way.

Cautionary Tale

Years ago our family lived near a wooded area where all of the kids in the neighborhood loved to explore and build forts and play, but the youngest among us wasn’t permitted to go there alone, for obvious reasons. The training was attested to by the little girl from next door who announced quite solemnly to my mom one day that her “mother always told [her] never to go into The Forest.” This little ditty is for Micki.

Don’t Go into the Forest

From long ago, our elders cautioned us

That in the wood there lurked a dreadful beast

Whose fangs were fiercely fine, and for whose feast

A hearty haunch of whole rhinoceros

Was scarce an appetizer, and the main

Entrée, a village full of soldiers, knights

And heroes snapped up, each, in single bites,

Made more delicious by their screams of pain.

Our fear of this stayed abstract, since the hurt

Inflicted, terrible enough, was made

For full-grown animals and men, which stayed

The doom from us—but then we learned dessert

Was Children, and we changed our minds, for good,

About the lure of wand’ring in the wood!Digital illustration: Child, Mother, Monster

Swimming Upstream

Some days are easier than others. Ask any salmon. It’s really amazing, what salmon have to accomplish to make the journey back to their home waters to spawn, fighting the elements, predators, and tough currents all the way over whatever massive miles they’ve wandered, just to get back to where they started, and spawn, and die.

Life is short for others besides us humans.

Some days, I do feel like I’m swimming upstream the whole time, battling my own set of challenges, and know that no matter what the celebrations back in my home waters, the end of the story is always death. The way of all things.

But far more often, I’m thinking that if life is already short, adventure-filled, quite possibly arduous at times, and certainly unpredictable, then I’d better be making the most of the journey. Whenever I can, I should be leaping and laughing, and making a pretty big splash as I go. Anything else is just drowning in slow motion. Bon voyage, everyone, I’m away!Digital Illustration: Fish are Jumpin'

Blue or Not, that Rare Moon

Digital illustration: Rare Moon 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.