Be Not Ill at Ease
Around my sprockets and my spleen lurk what no doctor’s ever seen,
a plethora of arcane ills impossible to treat with pills
or pessaries, with tinctures, teas, or magic potions for disease–
not curable by overhaul of engine, tune-up, electrol-
ysis, electric shock–it’s thought by some I will infect them; not
true, though, for what seems to be feared is not contagious–
I’m just weird.
Possibilities
I think I have a hankering for things both rich and strange
To the degree that anything I love requires a change
From normalcy into a state you might consider odd
Or simply having no real weight upon the native sod
Of humankind–that is, not kin to mortals and their sort–
And if you find my life herein just makes you give a snort
Of disbelief (maybe disdain), I’ll not call it affront,
But pity you the sad refrain of living such a blunt
And circumscribed existence as mere ‘normalcy’ implies,
While I, adorned in fairy dust, take to the endless skies.
What with the hours of car time necessary to get us home from our holiday outing, our little corps-of-four will be loading up and heading north first thing (though admittedly, only early by my standards). We drive a nice, if fairly ordinary, car. We’re a car = transportation couple, my spouse and I. Not the sort who would be willing to spend the kind of money, let alone take the risk of caring for and protecting it, that such a vehicle would require. We are hardly 100% practical, but fancy wheels are just not in our wheelhouse.
Still, a girl can dream. Even if I have no inclination to have the expense and responsibility of owning a snazzy car, I’ve been known to develop a crush on the occasional automobile. Truth be told, it’s highly likely that my loves of this celebrity-heartthrob variety are mostly influenced by remembrances of happy times and circumstances in my own life. Silly of me, but I’m kind of a sucker for late 60s and early 70s muscle cars.
So you’ll understand that, while we’re tooling up the freeway in our luggage-laden, comfy and serviceable and even moderately cute Honda Fit, I may possibly in my mind be riding in a certain other sort of car. Fantasy can carry me a long way, you know.
Angels in the Aviary
Of winged and wondrous beings shall I tell,
Whose incandescence fills the deepest wood,
With brilliance, dazzling, pretty as it’s good,
And singing lays clear as a silver bell–
Take wing, you also, soaring wide abroad,
To sing elated tales of what is seen
From over oceans, forests rich with green
And storied mountains–palisades of God–
Let each take flight, to race the sands of time;
To see along the universe’s rim
All future iterations growing dim,
As at such speeds our eyes glaze up with rime–
Of angels such as these I tell my tale
And bid you join their swiftest ranks to fly
Above the oceans, forest, land and sky
To loveliness beside which all falls pale–
And cry, sweet birds, for happiness that we
Are joined in such angelic company.
I live in my imagination. And I’m an artist. And further, I want to invite others into my imaginings, at least some of the time. I haven’t got endless resources when it comes to the skills and tools and knowledge it might require to make images that other people can indwell in the same way I experience them. When I ‘go to my happy place’, so to speak, I’d like to be able to take others along with me. It’s always so magical there that I want to share the delirious sweetness of the experience with anyone else who might like to try it.
Much to my surprise, I discovered recently that one of the characteristic things I do, and have done for as long as I can remember, is a technique that is now embodied in a photographic format so tremendously popular that it’s taken even to the point of software being developed to help accomplish the trick for you and dramatically called HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging. I am less dramatic myself, apparently, as I’ve always simply thought of my little tweak as good old-fashioned exaggeration. What this discovery (at this late date) says the most is that I’m slow to catch a clue. But it’s also somewhat heartening to me to think that despite my lingering ignorance of HDR–among innumerable things of which I am miraculously ignorant–I have actually been practicing techniques aimed at accomplishing what is newly center stage again in the visual art world. Who knew. Me, being fashion-forward. Ha.
I’ve long since striven to bring out the contrast and depth and the separation between different components of my visual compositions by intensifying various parts of the art a bit beyond plain statement of fact. I suspect that most of us at least feel that we see (never mind experience) the things we see with greater intensity than we could hope to fully convey to those around us. A little push might be required to help others to enter into our worlds fully. More saturated color. Wider contrast between the lights and darks. Sharper definition of edges, even to the degree of incorporating bits of ‘outline’ to imitate the separation our eyes naturally make in transitions between unlike values and textures and colors in the real world. And, in photography, since I can manipulate my pictures readily now that I’m a digital shooter, exaggerating those qualities in various parts of the photos by changing the pixels.
The joke’s on me, of course, because lacking either a camera that has HDR bracketing and stitching capabilities or the know-how or software to use any sophisticated quick-click methods to accomplish this look, I still plod through it by selecting the tones and textures, the areas of emphasis and low-contrast, and saturating or desaturating different parts of my pictures all by laborious hand-tooled means. My true artistry may be my unique ability to be both forward-thinking and backward-doing at one and the same time. But I’m okay with that, if it makes it easier for other people to find their way into my images. You’re all welcome in here too, you know.
No ornithologist, I am very fond of birds but not so very knowledgeable. Maybe more of a wannabe, myself–not that I want to become a scientist or even a super birder, but a humanoid with a little hint of a fantasy about becoming a bird. You may laugh; be honest, though. Isn’t the idea of swooping aloft under your own power rather appealing? I don’t even like heights tremendously well, and I’m more like a chicken than any other sort of winged thing, to be honest, but there’s always been a part of me that found the notion of flying and singing my way through the treetops enormously attractive. If I came equipped for it. For now, I shall content myself with my dreams and with watching the ornithological world go by. I’m pretty good at keeping my imaginings aloft, at least.
Becoming Gypsies
Freedom’s a romantic notion we imbue with pretty joys,
Dreamed escape from life’s commotion and the race’s worldly noise,
Endless travel, music, dancing, and the heat of thrumming hearts,
But though sweet, the dream’s entrancing magic’s only where it starts–
Gypsy life is what we make it, rich as fantasy can be,
Only when we reach and take it: yes, it’s up to you and me
To create this liberation and its joys for which we long–
Life becomes a celebration when we fully join the song
I’ve already admitted to what I’m certain can have come as no surprise to you: that I was frequently in trouble during my school days for spending my attentions on observing things outside the window, counting the holes in the acoustic ceiling tiles, or mentally redesigning the architecture of the building rather than focusing on the requisite elements of discussion (I was too shy to speak up anyway, so what was I going to contribute there?) or question-answering (when I didn’t already have the entire assignment complete to my satisfaction I was the last one willing to offer a participatory guess anyhow), or perhaps at least getting some more study and writing done. That last was, of course, what I thought I was doing quite efficiently while I was apparently staring off into the ether, but the parallel actions I performed of contemplating Other Things were clearly not obvious ways of meeting class requirements, at least to my teachers and fellow students.
All I can say in response to this is that (a) I have managed to live a remarkably happy life and get a few useful things done along the way despite these obvious shortcomings of mine and (b) conformity is highly overrated. Oh, and (c): thanks to my wilfulness, I did get to grow up (relatively speaking, anyway) and follow a ‘career’ path that takes full advantage of–even encourages–such Frivolity as woolgathering, lollygagging and other highly refined forms of daydreaming. I’m an artist, y’all. So you will just have to sit by and suck it up when I choose to so use and/or abuse my time on a continuing basis. I take the liberty of assuming that if you’ve shown up here, and especially, if you’ve come by and still bother to return after seeing what I’m doing (or not doing), then you evidently either condone or at least tolerate such shenanigans on my part.
In that spirit, I’ll hand over, if not my actual homework for the day, a doodle of some other fanciful daydreamer, and we’ll call it good. Or good enough! And I wish you all, in turn, the freedom and ample opportunities to live in your own little fantasy worlds too, and if it suits you, to produce nothing more pertinent than whatever odd little items appear as evidence of these flighty fun activities of yours. Because I’m here to tell you, it’s a mighty fine way to have a life, even if it doesn’t make you a living.
Cheers!
Many people who know me think that I have two middle names. Legally, that’s correct–when I got married I took my spouse’s last name and just upgraded my original last name to being a second middle name. Most people get that I did not hyphenate but rather have four individual names. It’s hardly unusual, and even those notoriously fussy creatures known as federal agencies have figured out how to address me as a four-named person without batting a governmental eye.
But to be entirely transparent with you, I ought to add that I have a sort of unspoken additional middle name, that to which I’ve alluded here before, and it is: Lazy Pants. Okay, that’s two more middle names if we’re being truly precise.
Laziness is at the very center of my being. Believe me when I say that this is not bragging; I do realize that it’s not an enviable, admirable trait or one that should be emulated by others. But it’s my reality, and greatly affects what I do and don’t accomplish in this life of mine.
The happier news here is that I am surrounded by non-lazy people who not only know how to do fantastic things but get out there and DO them. This is pretty much a life-saver for your correspondent Miss Lazy-Pants. It means that someone more energetic and probably a lot more skilled is doing what needs to be done. Perhaps more importantly, it means that sometimes I receive the blessed necessity of a kick in the lazy pants to DO something myself, and better yet, the needed information and inspiration to help me do it better than I would have in the first place.
This is a gift I enjoy receiving regularly from those lovely people who, as family and proximal friends, make up my immediate daily surroundings and embrace me in their great and comforting network of support. Thanks to my life of blogging I have now got the auxiliary family of encouraging people to push me out of my comfortable lazy cocoon and make me willing to tackle actual projects, motivate me to do something new and maybe different and, just possibly, even useful.
And I thank you, each and every one of you. I’d say ‘you know who you are’–but a whole lot of you don’t even know that you inspire me, let alone how deeply you inspire me. If you’re reading this and I’ve ever, ever visited and commented on your blog, you have inspired me. Even if I’ve only lurked at your blog and never come out of my shell enough to say Hello or make a remark, I have probably learned useful things that lit a friendly little fire under my lazy pants to get back to work and do something that, if not useful in a universal way by a long stretch, will prove useful in improving me as a person and as an artist.
One of my regular inspirations and motivations comes from those bloggers who focus on making art, because it’s one of those things I love to do but often have to get pushed into starting no matter how much good I know will come from getting back to work. So today’s post is brought to you in part by the good graces of you, all of you, and I thank you.
Specific thanks for this bit also go to that marvelous pencil-wielding mistress of Drawing Saudade, who daily doses us with her creatures, characters, costumes and comforts in a marvelous flowing style that made me want to play with something similar for a change from my own typical stuff, as well as return to a longtime fascination with costume design. Thanks, friend!
Beguiling Moonlight
Every autumn evening, at the end of day,
The moon’s pale eminence sends out a silver-shining ray
A-glinting through the branches and glimmering on leaves
And shimmering on spiderwebs tucked underneath the eaves
And calling all the kitty-cats from shadowed alleys out
To torment all the night-birds still fluttering about,
And drawing from their houses the dogs behind the slats
Of shuttered sleepy windows to torment all the cats,
And pulling on the heart-strings of every sleepy child
To call each one to play out in the moonlight, in the wild,
To dance among the cat-kins and soar among the birds
And leap among the moon-mad dogs and sing the magic words
That cast a spell of loveliness on creatures so, and soon,
We’ll fall asleep, each one of us, under the autumn moon.
Art-Colored Glasses 