Silliness is never an entirely baaaaad thing. I can always find more room for it in my life; it doesn’t get my goat, and I am neither sheepish in the face of it nor cowed by such things. So mooooove on over here and join me in the laughs.
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…
Though many may doubt it, I’ve often got something on my mind. Much of the time it is, as you might guess, quite frivolous and fantastical. But on occasion, I have actually, factually, genuinely had a thought or two of some depth and seriousness. Thankfully, these tend to pass without causing me too much pain, though like the aftereffects of an evening of overindulgence at the cheese board, the passing thereof might engender in others a certain degree of discomfiture, for which I apologize in general here and now.
Once I’ve recovered myself I will of course return to my normal abnormality and indulge in thoughts no more intense or impressive than wisps of fairy hair and glints of glitter, and I hope that you will still accept me, bird-brained and hare-brained though I may be. And may all of your ruminations give you more pleasure than pain as well!
When my family and friends were conscripted to help install the artwork for my master’s thesis exhibition, they could not help but note that it would have been a kindness on my part to specialize in something a little more manageable, say, postage stamp illustration. Hanging murals of up to nine by thirty feet in dimensions is admittedly more unwieldy than mounting a bunch of tidy little framed life-sized insect portraits or installing a series of elfin sculptures made from shirt buttons and walnut shells. Alas, though I did segue into much more portable forms in later years, it was not soon enough for my loved ones’ sakes.
My verbosity is a similar burden on my circle of acquaintance, as I am not famous for knowing when to shut up any more than I am known for limiting my opinion to those who have actually asked for it. But just as I have learned to appreciate and work at smaller and less physically demanding visual media along with my enjoyment of massive and messy kinds of art, I have a fondness for smaller and less epic essays and poems, too, and have been known to craft these with similar avidity. While scale in no way guarantees quality or lack thereof in any medium I know, it is sometimes a relief to me as much as to my friendly audiences when I get my kicks by producing petite expressions of my inventive urges.
Mycological 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.
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.
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.
Coming 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.
Art-Colored Glasses 