Tag Archives: humor

I Love You Like Crazy

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Acrylic mural: Tongue-in-Cheek, after Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun It’s probably inaccurate in more than just the politically correct sense to say that I love my husband like crazy, because it would imply that my affections are only similar to complete madness, and we all know I’m much closer than that in reality. While I flatter myself that I maintain a reasonably plausible façade of normalcy, everybody knows that I’m pretty nutty about my spouse. And those who know him don’t blame me.

He really is a lovable guy.

But aside from the stuff that is evident to the general public, that part about him being a thoughtful colleague, a committed and skilled teacher, a nuanced and inspired conductor of singers and instrumentalists, and all that other excellent and admirable kind of thing, he is smart and curious and kind as a person. I know that when we are together, I matter as much to him as he does to me; that he is a safe retreat from both the minor perturbations of the day and the greater dangers of the wide world when I am in need. And I have in him the great friend with whom I would rather while away the hours either in intensive work or fully at play than with anyone else on earth.

Most of all, I know he not only understands my particular brand of craziness but shares in it as well. Each day, each year, is a surprise package of a kind, and every one of them is somehow richer than all of the foregoing ones as more than the sum of their many parts. Love and admiration and respect and support are all well and good, but if they don’t have the kind of holy hilarity that life with my partner has, they can never be enough.

With that, I wish my beloved the happiest of birthdays, and many more of them yet to come, each in succession with new and astonishing delights.

Altered Pates

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Photo montage: Mycological MysteriesMycological Mysteries & Mishaps

A mushroom-hunter in the woods

has grasped the essence of the goods:

Ingesting whilst she picks and roams,

she damages her chromosomes;

Yet, happy, hopping, fails to know

she killed those brain cells long ago,

And thus can skip through vale and copse

quite blithely, nibbling mushroom-tops—

For nothing is so esoteric

as munching on a Fly Agaric,

But she knows not she shouldn’t eat a

bit of tasty Amanita—

Thus goes the world, and with it, sense,

when fungus fans face recompense.

Why Wait?

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Digital illustration + text: Itch

I hope, at the least, that the ibex lives in Washington state or somewhere it’s been legalized, for it’s rotten enough that Irv’s being such a nuisance makes anyone prone to overindulge in anything at all, let alone that they should get locked up for it. Lousy lizard.

I do realize that it’s a long time yet until St. Patrick’s Day returns, and no, I am not Irish. But sometimes one just needs to emit a silly Limerick or two, and who can stand the suspense of holding off until mid-March? So I’ll just go with the urge—the itch, if you will—and let my Limericks out to play a little early. Or very late, as the case may be.

Digital illustration + text: Quick & the Dead

PS—Foie gras is one of those foods I never had an urge to try, if you happened by here during my Tuesday recitation this week. But it sounded funnier in the Limerick than pâté, even though the latter *looks* cooler with its accents sprinkled on top.

 

And let this be a reminder to all of us to avoid being pests and nuisances to others. As my young nephew once shouted at the screen during an epic animated film in which a number of insects were being exceedingly awful to a number of other insects, “Be NICE, Bugs!” Or you could get in big trouble. Nicer is definitely safer.

Hiccuping All the Way

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Digital illustration + text: Hiccuping All the Way

Better Put the Best Face I Can on It

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Acrylic on paper: Silliness as Substitute BeautyComing up empty? Never! Well, okay: sometimes. That’s closer to the truth. I’ve managed to put up three years’ worth of daily blog posts thus far without missing too many beats, but do I have the occasional day of blanking on what I think would be of interest for me to write about, draw or photograph, and post. Outright brilliance would be a stretch for me on the best of days, and on many, it’s just good old showing-up-and-working that gets the job done.

Pretty much the way life works everywhere, isn’t it.

I get up and brush my teeth and take a shower and get dressed, and there’s no guarantee I’ll look less like a goofy, sleepy person than I did a half hour earlier. Some days, it’s flat-out worse, especially if I have to be up before about 9:30 in the morning. But I’m still me. I’m still going on to have a day, to do my writing and picture-making, do my household tasks, go to events, whatever the calendar demands. I’m always planning to have a really good day, if at all possible.

So whatever the agenda, I choose to give it my best, pretend (if I have to) that all is swell in the world, and see if I can’t do something myself to make it as good a day as I’m wanting. We can’t all be pretty all of the time, so I like to let my imagination offer me some fun alternatives to perfection and prettiness, and then the day has a better chance of hitting the happy mark.Acrylic on paper: Sneaking Up on Greatness

A Certain Age

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I’ve always been mystified by the people who are terribly age-conscious. When I was younger, I didn’t get the agonies my peers went through over longing to be old enough for this, that, and the other thing. Driving a car was never especially thrilling or compelling to me, alcohol had little allure as an illicit tipple when I could see how stupidly my peers (and many legal-age drinkers) behaved when drinking more than they could handle, and I’ve still not had the remotest interest in trying to smoke anything. I didn’t even care about R-rated movies any more than I do now; most of those are too violent, too rude, and or too loud for my usual taste.

When I got old enough to do all of the supposedly grownup-geared stuff, I became just as amazed and confounded by those who wish and try to be or appear younger than they are. If I want to lie about my age, I won’t pretend I’m some young thing I’m not; I’ll certainly tell everyone I’m much older than I really am so they’ll be impressed with how fit, alert, and fantastic I am compared to everyone else “my age”—but that’s too much effort for a silly joke on my part. I’m pretty content to be myself, whatever age I am, and let people love, respect, and admire me—or not—for the real me that they know. I’m happy to have accomplished what modest things I’ve learned or done, to covet the thin grey hairs and fine-lined wrinkles I’ve earned through years and experience, and to relish the freedom that comes with age.

Because as far as I’m concerned, the biggest and best goal of growing up (insofar as I’ll concede to attempting anything like that) is to be so at home in my own skin, however baggy and spotty and misshapen it might be, that I can like myself fine and expect the same respect from others without trying to be someone or something I am so obviously not. Here I am, 53-plus years of ordinary, thin-haired, not-so-fit, tacky happiness jammed into a humbly passable carcass, and I’m mighty glad of it.Ink drawing: A Certain Age

Pare a Pair of Pears, Please

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Digital illustration + text: Paranormality

Just Press this Button and Be Amazed!

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I’ve told you that I am enamored of digital photography. How could a person who loves taking pictures—but is too confused by the functions and uses of a ‘real’ camera, and far too lazy to do anything like the intensive study required to become skilled with said functions and uses, let alone learn how to process photos afterward—how could I not love digital cameras and photo processing?

One of the bonuses of the ability to revise and improve my photos digitally is the element of surprise that comes when I’ve taken very dark photos (at night or in poorly lit places), open up what looks like an entirely black image in one of my favorite editing programs, brighten it and change the contrast, and voila! there’s that thing I was looking at and had entirely forgotten by then. Sometimes the photo turns out to be something I had no idea I’d shot, too, but even those pictures can be interesting in their own ways.Photo: Gnats 1

Take this particular black rectangle from our recent time in Prague. I knew I’d taken photos on a couple of evenings when we were out and about with our compatriots, but couldn’t necessarily say exactly what the subject of them had been. A little tweaking brought the memory out of the dark.Photo: Element of Surprise 1

Gnats! There was a flurry of gnats flitting around a lamppost and making a tiny but lovely little display of sparkling fireworks, and when I took the photos I had no clue whether they would actually show anything at all, given the intensity of the surrounding darkness. But my hopes were rewarded, if not with a magnificent set of photos, at least with a welcome memory of that beautiful evening that even a clueless picture-taker like me could enjoy.Photo: Element of Surprise 2

Tick Talk

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Photo: Shoulda

Photo: Tick Talk

When You Come to a Fork in the Road…

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…as the old joke goes, ‘take it!’ Silly and facetious, yes, but that’s about as close to decision-making as most of us can get when it comes to choosing between two or more equally excellent, terrible and/or unknown paths. We often dither so long before even reaching an intersection, just worrying about when and what it might be, that by the time we’re there we’re no closer to real and reasoned decisions and end up tripping all over ourselves while we fumble onto one branch of the road or another, sometimes even going so far as to get scared enough to back up to the fork and try another route instead. Which rarely tells us any more than utterly random movement what would’ve been the genuinely best choice. Just another of life’s unfair conundrums, after all.

Mixed media: So Many Forks in the Road, So Little Time

So Many Forks in the Road, So Little Time. Detail from a mixed media sculpted window valance in a vaguely neo-Baroque style. Fun, pointless, and well worth the making.

In art-making, thankfully, the results of such choices needn’t be either so clear-cut or so exclusive. Art is one of the environments most hospitable to a constantly changing mind or, barring the ability to decide at all, a good mash-up where the chosen option is ‘All of the Above.’ So I happily pot around making mixed media works, assemblages and a veritable multitude of artworks that are nothing in the least like what I thought I was planning to make when I started them. I love being allowed to not make up my mind, or sometimes to let my art make my mine up for me. This is undoubtedly a contributing factor in my perpetual inability to make anything remotely resembling a commercial success with any of my art, this indecisive character of mine. But it sure makes for fun playtime in the studio, and that at least is a sure distraction from any unpleasant paths life threatens to lead me down, so I guess I can’t really complain.