A new year

  I wanted to write something new and creative to post in these last few moments of the year, but my brain is not cooperating. I'm tired and scattered, and the sake we drank with dinner a few hours ago is probably not helping.
  Still--I wish for all of us a year of satisfying work, of strength in adversity and in monotony, of joy in unexpected places, of love given and received.
  I hear the first firecrackers going off...a little early, but sort of exciting, nonetheless. In a few minutes, we'll open the front door to welcome in the new year. Just before we completely shiver ourselves to pieces, we'll close the door, turn off the lights, and crawl into a nice warm bed.

The power of poetry—a work of wishful thinking

Shamba Ridu was a poet. So very sensitive was he, and such a master of the language, that he could write movingly on any subject under the sun—stink bugs, modern architecture, soft old shirts, the little bits of time found between the completion of one task and the beginning of another—and readers were moved to tears, even on the sixth or seventh reading. It was a gift.

It was a curse. Shamba longed to see a broken-down fence and not then immediately feel compelled to discourse on the unsustainability of boundaries. He wanted to experience the first waking moment of the day without having to look through the thesaurus of his mind for an equivalent to yellow that rhymed with rays (maize). Other people seemed to live without seeking the deeper meaning of a cup of coffee, and he longed to be one of them. They could write a letter that did not by the third line fall into iambic pentameter or disappear down a well of universal metaphor. He wanted a cigar to be a cigar and nothing more.

So one day, he put away his pens, his paper, his reference books, locked his door, and headed off down the street.

But his head wouldn’t stop. There was poetry in everything. Every object, every state of the weather, every word that people said, was so fraught.

If he could not get away from the poetry, was it because everything was significant? Did everything point to a deeper reality? Or was this all in his head? If it was reality, was it then his duty to bring it forth, to say to people: Look! Here is something fine and wonderful! Here is something deeply terrible! You must pay attention!

If it was only in his head, should he keep it to himself? Was he making himself crazy for no good reason?

Just then a woman came up to him. “Oh! Mr. Ridu! Your poem about the child in the doorway made me see my own children! I had forgotten in the business of preparing meals and mending clothes and all the exhausting duties of raising a family how much I loved them and how much himself each one is! I have been blessed all along, and you helped me to see it!”

Next to her stood four sturdy boys, happy, relaxed, and very obviously loved.

“Thank you,” he said, slightly dazed.

She shook his hand, gave him a kiss on the check, and strolled off down the street, surrounded by her children.

Rather stunned, he trailed on down to the park and sat down on a bench. A middle-aged man sat down at the other end of the bench.

“Shambu Ridu, isn’t it?” he said, turning halfway toward him. Shambu agreed that yes, he was he, and they shook hands.

“I read your bit in the Times a couple of weeks ago,” said the man. “You know, the thing about the moonrise over that little stretch of the river. I’ll have you know, it was your words that put the seal on the deal, so to speak. I’m with the Nature Conservancy, and we’ve been working for years to keep developers from cutting down all the trees and putting in a shopping mall. One of their people saw your poem and read it to his partners, and they agreed that nothing they built could possibly be worth the beauty they would destroy. The project has been called off, and the land has been donated to be used as a park and for wildlife restoration.”

And so it went for the rest of the day. Shamba heard their voices, responded to their responses to his work, but found himself listening to the music behind their stories. He finally wandered home, bemused. He pulled out a sheet of paper, pulled the cap off his favorite pen, and began to write.

Plains of forgiveness

Climb down to the plains of forgiveness

where the cool waters flow, oh,

you wait in the shade along the banks with your

wine of welcome and bread of life.

Oh, you call me, day and night, but it isn't my ears 
that hear your voice

I think you are the wish of my heart

and no more.

Jagged dry rock surrounds me: I can’t find any way down

on the wind a hint only

a far-off song

a faint green

Fairies of the fen

“Ma! They came again!” Coerl ran into the well-mudded woven house. “Ma! The fairies!”

“Did they? Did you bring in their dishes?”

“Oh!”

The child ran out into the grey dawn again and came back with a carved-wood bowl and a bucket. Not a trace was left of the food they had set out in them at sunset. Beodit had filled the bucket with fine loaves of bread and a half a wheel of cheese, while the bowl had been stacked with roots and half a dozen red apples. With winter coming on the fairies would be needing extra food, she knew.

“It is still our secret, is it not?” Beodit asked her tiny son. He suddenly ceased his cavorting around the small cottage and looked down at his feet.

“Who did you tell?” When he didn’t answer, she took a step forward, but the look on her face confused the boy and he could not answer. She did not look angry so much as afraid.

“Who did you tell?” This time fear was stronger and he began to cry.

“Mechlin! Only Mechlin!”The words began to tumble out. “He was bragging about the fine new shoes the fairies left him, and he said that his family was especially chosen because his da was a great warrior, and that the fairies would never come to us because I was a bastard, so I told him about the firewood and the new harness for the pony and the fish!”

His voice trailed off as he noticed the white face of his mother. “Did anybody hear you?” she asked.

“No. Nobody. I don’t think. I’m sorry!” he sobbed. “Are the fairies going to stop coming now?”

“I don’t know. But you must not so much as mention the fairies again outside this house. To anybody. There's no knowing who might hear. And I'll be speaking the Mechlin's ma, you can be sure.” Beodit gathered the boy into her arms until he quietened. “Now. Why don’t you wash out these dishes and put them away? By the time you finish, breakfast will be ready.”

This fragment seems to fit with the Marshes thick and waving poem...a later point in the story.

Ontario

Sometimes a story starts out as one thing, then turns out to be about something else entirely. Where this goes next...I can't even guess.

I put my finger on the map, and said I will go here. Besides, I liked the sound of the name. I liked that it was just a name to me, with no meaning, no associations. I didn’t know anybody there, I didn’t know when it had been settled, what Indian tribe had called it home, who lived there now. I didn’t know if it was in the mountains or on the plain. All roads are flat in Rand McNalley. But there were a lot more blue roads than red, and the cities were marked by smaller dots than the ones I was used to.

I gave the cat to Rita and loaded the car with all the warm clothes I had. It didn’t look like enough. I went to the Goodwill and bought another duffle bag full for a dollar a pound. Then I hit the Costco and Kmart for cases of meals in cans. My brother gave me his old sleeping bag and a couple of hundred dollars for gas.

Rita and Pepper waved goodbye from the driveway we shared. I took off on a green spring day, under an arch of new budded sycamores, looking for—somewhere far away. Something different. Seasons. Snowmen. A wolf. It’s funny the way dreams send us on our way when good advice leaves us paralyzed.

Sycamores became pines became scrub. Forty miles of roadside orchards gave way to patchy grasses and then the oil fields. I hit the 5 at eighty and scooted north with a tail wind.

Funny about those dreams. I tried not to think about them during the day, and tried even harder when the sun went down. They had started just before Thanksgiving and by Christmas had become a permanent part of my mental furniture. The funny thing was, I couldn’t figure out any explanation for their appearance. Nothing had changed in my life. No new lover, no break-up. Nobody had died, things were fine at work, my credit cards were paid off. I had plenty friends to meet at the pub, better friends to meet when I really needed to talk, and who called me for the same.

At first I didn’t think too much about it. The same kind of dream three times in one week was weird, but hardly the strangest thing that ever happened to anybody. The same kind of dream every time I closed my eyes for three months—that was scary. I tried staying up really late, thinking I would be too tired to dream. I tried a couple of beers. I tried having friends over for grown-up slumber parties. I slept with the lights on. I went to the doctor.­­

The dreams kept coming. Not exactly the same thing every night; no, more like the same story told from a different point of view every time. I didn’t think I could stand to watch the execution through the eyes of yet another witness. Quite a crowd had turned out to watch. I might have the same dream for years before I ran through the audience.

I needed a new place to sleep.

I had enough money saved up to see me through a couple of months off work. 

Hence, the map.

Spring nights were still cold, but I stayed in campgrounds to save money whenever I could, in spite of the speculative looks I got from the sloppy men who slurped and burped cheap beers at stained picnic tables carved with the initials of bored teenagers. I had cause to bless the inventor of the ATM card a couple of nights when the night winds shoved rain right through the ripstop nylon walls of my tent.

The dreams followed me. Luckily the witnesses didn’t seem to be very involved with the victim, so once the hanging was over I was able to roll over and go back to sleep. I had great hopes that by the time I got to Montana, I would be standing so far back in the crowd that I wouldn’t have to see it at all.

Hope is a liar and a cheat.

You can tell her I said so.

Farther away than it looked

a fragment

It was farther away than it looked. We had started out in the early afternoon, crossing the meadows, aiming for the lichen-mottled tor. The sun was nearly gone before we touched the base.

Distances can fool you out on the flats, whether you are on the sea or on the plains. This particular deception began to ravel hours ago, but Sharlozh had refused to turn back. “And waste all the walking we’ve already done?” he said. When I pointed out that we could not possibly reach the tor and get back home before nightfall, he jeered, “What’s wrong? Are you afraid of the dark?”

“Of course not,” I told him, “but I’m sure your parents will worry.”

“It’s your parents who will worry, since they probably know what a coward you are. My parents will know better.”

I am not sure where he got that idea. Being the companion to the Prince was no job for a coward. I knew, though, much better than he, what dangers lurked in the high grass, unseen even in daylight, and the most terrible were two-legged. I was not permitted to apprise his Highness of this fact. It was treason to suggest that there existed in his father’s realm any unruly element, force of nature, man or beast that he could not command. And yet we subjects all knew of them, were even related to some of them.

Since I could not, on pain of having my tongue torn out like the previous companion, tell the Prince exactly what it was I feared, I had to point out ever more reasons why we should turn back short of our goal, and perhaps try again tomorrow, starting earlier in the day. He was not afraid of getting lost: the plain was entirely flat, and after dark there would be the guard fires to guide us. He wasn’t afraid of missing dinner. The backpack he demanded of the kitchen weighed heavy on my back, stuffed with enough food to see us through a week of missed dinners. He wasn’t afraid of punishment: punishment would fall on me for leading my Prince into any danger we came upon.

I’ve always believed that it was dangerous to allow a person, even a well-protected prince, to grow up so ignorant of the world around him. He was never permitted to gain experiences that would teach him about the borders of safety. No curb of common sense or awareness of consequences protected him from his own willfulness. We bodyguards bore the burden of caution yet had no power to guide his actions accordingly.

We finally reached the tor. Then the prince said he was hungry. I suggested that we eat as we walked back to the city. He refused.

“A Prince reclines to eat,” he said, “and he takes his time.”

He leaned back against the smooth stone wall at the base of the tor and looked at me expectantly. I dropped the backpack from my shoulders and pulled out a tablecloth, a silver goblet with gold tracery, a flagon of wine, and basket after basket of food. He sampled this and that as though he were at a formal banquet and did not seem at all like a truly hungry man. I grew impatient, but he was my Prince and I dared not rush him.

By the time I packed up the leftover food, the silverware, the dishes, the baskets and the silverware, the sun was gone and we were surrounded by gliding shadows.

I placed myself between the Prince and the nearest shadow, but the Prince called out to it by name.

My fear turned to sudden rage but before I could temper it enough to speak, a voice came out of the dusk.

“All is ready, Sharlozh.”

The voice called him by name! In the city, this was an act so unthinkable that no one had even devised a punishment for it.

“Come along, my watchdog.”

“Please, no,” I said. “The King is expecting you. Is expecting us.”

“Even if I did not command it, you must come. If you go to the city without me, the King will believe that you have killed me, or had me kidnapped.”

And if I didn’t go to the city, pursuit would follow faster than I could run.

He eyed me, then said: “You have two choices. You can come with us. Or you can die where you stand.”

So what could I do?

They wouldn’t even tie my hands so that I could later claim that I’d been kidnapped or physically forced.

He didn’t make fatuous promises that everything would be all right, because we both knew that they wouldn’t be. I could go back three-quarters dead, and I would still be executed, no doubt after long torture.

So I walked. In silence. I followed directions and kept my mouth shut. We passed between the still grass, and did not bend the stalks any more than would a deer or some other grazing beast.

Branded

 a song

My tongue still burning from the heat in your mouth

you couldn’t make me remember you harder any other way

left me branded but it’s only a scar

left me alone but you’re only far

Borrowed what you never will repay

stole everything you could not carry away

cut the strings I’m only untuned

cut my heart out it’s only a wound

Watch where you’re walking

hungry traps are everywhere

and when you wake ask yourself

what you’re doing here

no voices call from the water

moonlight path goes nowhere

beyond the railing at the end

at the end of the pier

Whether you jump or whether you fall

I’ll remember only that you went down

eyes close it’s just a short leap

eyes closed you’re only asleep

left me branded but it’s only a scar

left me alone but you’re only far

We fought the whole damned bloody day

5/2/02

We fought the whole damned bloody day. Our clothes were soaked with it--ours, theirs. We, living and dead, all looked the same. We all wore the same clothes, fought with the same weapons. And for the same land. Both armies had fired the granaries and slaughtered the kine throughout the countryside. The wheat and rye fields around us were trampled and coated with gore. This land would produce nothing for anybody on either side to eat for a long time.

But there was plenty for the scavengers. Flies were everywhere. And ravens. And the black shadows of carrion birds circled, circled.
The sun slid into a pool of blood and turned everything that was not already red into even more blood. Our swords and axes dropped to our sides as we all woke to the end of everything.

No banner waved in victory. A flutter of cloth here and there showed only where the flag bearers had been struck down.

Who could be said to have won when the losses were so great?  
Already the corpse pickers were working the fringes of the field. A heap of mangled flesh moaned off to the left, whether in hope that someone would come help, or in farewall as another soul left its body, I could not tell, and could not take the time to investigate.

For immediately after the voice sank away came the sound of a horn in the trees across the field from from me. Nobody moved. If this was to announce the coming of another army, there was nothing any of us could do to stop it.

The riders broke through the trees only seconds later. Those of us still standing turned as fast as we could bear to. The lead riders wore plumed helmets, and their immaculate armor glowed rosy with sunset. They raised standards as soon as they were clear of the branches. One showed the green griffin rampant on a field of white. This was the emblem of our lord Ansol. A few of our men raised fists in the air with feeble cries of victory which died away when the second standard was raised. A golden serpent wound across a field of scarlet. The banner of those we fought against, the men of Gwyffenroagh. They too managed a faint cheer, but the prevailing mood was one of…outrage. If the two banners were together it meant that this whole battle had been in vain. Hundreds of good men were dead for no reason. 

Mounted knights of both houses filed out from under the boughs and formed a line around the edge of the field. A herald stepped forward and announced the imminent arrival of the two lords, Menhimmon of Gwyffenroagh and our own lord, Ansol of Carloughan.

The two of them came out of the trees together, apparently enjoying some joke. We all waited in silence until they were ready to put amusement aside and attend to the view of the battlefield. Lord Menhimmon pulled an embroidered linen kerchief from inside his red-dyed leather hauberk and held it to his dainty nose. Lord Ansol merely sat his horse and gazed at the dead bodies with distaste as though they were nothing but an obstacle to his pleasure ride.

“I knew we should have sent the horse to stop this rabble before they destroyed the fields.”

Lord Menhimmon pointed to four men, seemingly at random. “You there. Each of you take a quarter of those standing and clean up this mess.”

No one moved. Exhaustion and sheer disbelief paralyzed what remained of two armies. The lord was not pleased and raised a hand. The mounted knights lowered their lances and urged their horses forward several steps. The lord dropped his hand and the knights stopped.

The four chosen men, with tears in their eyes, gathered parties around them, and began to tug men and parts of men out of the field. The horsemen lined up to provide corridors leading to sites deemed acceptable by the lords for piles of now-useless bodies. The clean-up was performed in utter silence. It took almost as long as the battle itself. The day was long gone before the pyres were lit. The smell of burning meat sent the knights away, retching inside their helmets.

  The lords had left some time earlier to attend a feast to celebrate the peace.

New grown day

10/19/2000

We walked every day under the clouded sky. Not one drop of rain fell, not one wisp of fog arose to cool our brows. We watered the desert with our sweat. And then, one day, the last straggler looked back. From the choked sound of his voice, we figured he was breathing his last. We could hardly rouse the curiosity to turn back and see who we were losing this time.

One by one our dry throats filled with tears. 

In our footprints a garden had grown. The hazy greens and the startling pinks and reds of jungle flowers halted all forward movement. One by one we staggered back until we were all encompassed by the shady green arms of the new grown day.

A more legible version

Because I am optimistic enough to think that someone may wish to read this more easily than can be done with the version in the previous post:

The marshes, thick and waving

The marshes, thick and waving fen

the reeds tall hid the wanted men

who served a king now overthrown

who among them went unknown.

Weary of the long fight, he

left off his crown and jewels three:

the ring of ruby pressed his seal;

the sceptre held with conqueror’s zeal;

and last of all the golden chain

that made him prisoner to his reign.

These all he heavéd far from him

and turned away with face so grim

to see not where they heavy sank

whether pool or stream or muddy bank.

Turned he then to join his men

and play a simple man again.

But there was one who markéd well

each resting place where jewel fell

and who the man was let them fly

and the fell look in his eye.

In overhanging tree he lay

till day and men were fled away

The swung he down into the marsh

and waded through the reeds made harsh

by winter blast, by icy rime,

unheeding of the cold and slime.

Ring and chain and sceptre found,

into a roll of cloth were bound

and when the birds sang up the day

with crown and jewels he flew away.

This is one of my favorite things that I have ever written. Someday, I'd like to write the rest of the story, just to find out what happens.


 

The marshes, thick and waving

 

I sure wish I had PhotoShop on this computer. This is hard to read. I had to build it on a Word document. A nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there. Word, that is. Except that I do. For many, many hours every day. Sigh.

Time was only water

There's something about drawing gradiants in PhotoShop that sets my mind to, well, if not quite poetry, then something close to it. This is from January 4, 2004.

Wine glass as metaphor

I love stories and poems for the meaning they contain more than for their form, or even for the sound of the language. Here’s one way I envision a poem, or a story, or a song:

A wine glass with a glass bowl cradled by a silver tracery of vines. The tracery consists of the words and the structure of the writing. Beautiful, but not really the point. The glass gives shape to the wine, presents it for our enjoyment, but it isn’t the wine. The point is the golden glowing wine shining out between the tracery and bursting from the top like morning sunlight through the trees. The glass with no wine...just a pretty piece of emptiness.

Not a perfect metaphor; this was just a picture that popped into my mind the other day. The metaphor could go on until all meaning is completely buried in words.

Story fragment

A morning's work, long ago. I never went any further with it since I was working on a longer project which--surprise!--still isn't finished.

11/5/01

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? What do you think you are doing?”

She struggled to sit up in the tiny cave he had dragged her into. “What are you talking about? Who the hell are you?” A well-planted elbow in the groin, and his grip loosened just enough for her to wiggle out of reach. Another three feet and she could stand up and run away from this crazy person, straight to the nearest police station, if she could find it in this wilderness.

He recovered too quickly and launched himself at her knees. They rolled together out of the mouth of the cave and partway down the rocky hill in front of it. They fetched up against a boulder. He clamped a hand over her mouth, pushing her head into the ground. Tears of pain sprang to her eyes. “Listen!” he whispered fiercely, “You just about got both of us killed. You were supposed to wait until dusk. There have been scouts up and down the canyon all morning.” He looked around as though expecting an army to pop out from behind the bushes.

“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth. But you’d better be absolutely quiet until we get back to base, or I’ll shoot you myself. Understand?”

He had to be one of those crazy hermit guys you read about in the papers every so often, veterans or tax-evaders running away from old wars and hiding from the conspiring government agents who lurked in every shadow. As though law enforcement had nothing better to do than hunt down delusional ex-gas station attendants or computer software engineers or plumbers. Whoever he was, it would probably be best if she humored him for now. She nodded, and rubbed the taste of his dirty hands off her lips with her sleeve.

He took another look around. “Ok, let’s go. Keep low.”

He moved off, keeping as many boulders and bushes between him and the bottom of the canyon as possible. She followed him as well as she could. It was mid-afternoon and she had been walking since just after sunrise. She was tired and had really been looking forward to getting back to the lodge where she had a room with a hot tub. She looked forward to it even more, now. It was only two more miles back to her car, and they were headed in the wrong direction.

She let the distance between them lengthen until he was nearly out of sight, then turned to make her escape. As she turned the sound of distant automatic fire froze her in place. A squirrel chattered behind her, and a couple of ravens came flying up the valley away from the gunfire.

Something was going on. It sounded like the crazy guy was right about the danger, even if she didn’t understand just what he thought the danger was. It could just be some NRA enthusiasts down there playing with illegal weapons, shooting at anything that moved or it could be—this was even crazier—it could be someone shooting at the contact the guy believed her to be. She weighed her options. Continue with the crazy guy who hadn’t actually fired his gun yet, or head back toward the car and try to get around the gun nuts, attempting to elude both crazy guy and unseen scouts. Another burst of gunfire made the decision easier. At least this guy had a cave.

The crazy guy was waiting for her with an impatient look on his face. “Are you trying to get killed? I can’t afford to risk the movement for an agent who won’t follow orders. One more holdup and—” he waved his pistol in a meaningful manner. She simply nodded and he took off, faster this time. She followed hard on his heels.

They wound their way around trees and outcrops while the canyon narrowed to a gorge. The walls were stained with black streaks of moss that would turn green in the spring when the snowmelt filled the gorge with thunder. Now, in late summer, the stream was a mere trickle running from one scum covered pond to another, which was why she had come to the canyon in the off season. She had not been able to persuade any of her friends to come with her. They all complained that it was too dry in late summer to be beautiful and worth going to. The waterfalls would be pathetic and all the greenery faded and dusty. They had been right about the waterfalls, but the plant-life, well-adapted to the annual cycles of flood and drought, was lovely. But it wasn’t an interest in botany that brought her to the mountains. It was the bones of the earth itself, the shape of the land under tree and water, fully revealed for these few weeks when they weren’t covered by the river. This morning she had hiked all the way to the base of the falls that formed the gorge, and felt herself cradled in the center of the earth by granodiorite, with only a thin strip of blue sky far above. The cliff rose almost 1200 feet in front of her. When the stream was in full spate, the canyon was completely inaccessible. You could hike around the long way and view the falls from the top, but few people had ever stood on the smooth granite at the bottom.

The crazy man led her in zigzags up the canyon wall until they were on the hillside over looking the gorge. They crept down through the deepening forest and crossed the stream bed above the waterfall to the sunny side of the upper canyon. Reports of intermittent gunfire echoed down the canyon. She was panting hard and wishing that they would take a break so she get to the water bottle in her daypack, but she didn’t even dare ask. She was getting more and more nervous as they went. They were headed into the back country and she only had a couple of granola bars left from lunch.

The sun was nearing the tops of the rolling peaks to her left when her guide dropped out of sight ahead of her. A few more steps brought her to the edge of a shadowed fissure in an outcrop on the side of the mountain. There was a spring at one end and a lean-to at the other. Trees completely hid the sky. She stood on the edge, uncertain now about what to do.

“If you come around to your right there’s a way down between those two trees,” he said, pointing. She followed directions, and in a moment was down in the hole. He waved her to a short log. “The pack. Give me the pack.”

So all this had been an elaborate set up for a robbery. And then what? Better to cooperate until her chance came to get away. She held his eyes with what she hoped was the proper degree of confidence but without challenge. He tore into it, opening every pocket, placing her water bottle, granola bars, the wrappings from her sandwich, two apple cores and a pack of Kleenex in a neat row on the log. He pulled out the copy of The Return of the King she had brought to enjoy in the atmosphere of the canyon and rifled through the pages as though looking for something. Which he was.

He threw the book down in disgust and looked into the pack again. “Where is it?”

“If you would tell me what you are looking for—”

He dropped the pack and drew his gun. “All right. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“I’m a geology student at Cal Poly. I came to look at the rocks.”

“And I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi passing my sunset years in the desert wastes. I can see that you believe that about as much as I believe you.” The gunfire sounded like popcorn from this distance. “So. What do I do with you? Tie you to a tree and leave you there? Keep you with me? You sure as hell aren’t going to get away and tell them where you’ve been.”

Gnarled Tree

An attempt to copy a Tolkien-style tree:

 

Pretty much perfect for the Halloween season. 

I find the simple pencil lines so clean and pleasing. The character of the tree comes through a little even in my poor copy...but the pen-and-ink original has something in it so much more real. Hard to explain, but I know it when I see it.

August

10/18/12

From hottest summer and bluest sky
you came
With autumn in your eye

The flame that burns upon the hearth
you shine
Both fuel and the spark

Adventures with Visual Art...yuck. That title sounds like a textbook.

I made things hard for myself when I said I wanted to post non-autobiographical stuff. It's all very well to attempt to try to aim to endeavor to commit to producing creative work on a regular basis and to set up a venue in order to display said creative work...gosh, all I need now is time!

I've done a little writing this week, but nothing presentable. So, I dug through some old folders to see what I could find.

About two years ago, one of my kids, a talented artist, gave me a watercolor painting lesson. I learned that watercolor is really really easy if you don't mind happy and even not so happy accidents. Watercolor is really hard if you actually have a vision in mind.

Supposed to be headlands...look more like mutant sperm whales.

The actual view from, well, this side of the valley. On a very cloudy day. If all days were cloudy, my watercolor abilities would seem more impressive.

 That day I used up a 40-page 3" x 5" sketch pad just messing with color and differing amounts of water, but I didn't scan any of those. Some of them I glued to Strathmore blank cards and actually used them to write thank you notes and letters. They looked quite respectable.

My bent is much more toward words and music, but occasionally I take out the pencils and sketch something nearby, like my boot. Or I look through a book by an artist I enjoy and see what I can learn about control and technique by copying or adapting a drawing to my limited talents.

Still have not finished the moon. But I sure loved working on this.

In fact, I'm starting to feel downright inspired. Except it's time to make dinner and I'm out of time for now.

Isn't that the way? I have time to be creative, or I have time to write about being creative. But not usually both in the same day.

Wild Turkeys

I sat down on the couch to finally get down to working on a story, when I heard:

scrabble scrabble scrabble mmm mmm scrabble
hrk! scrabble mmm hrk! hrk!
th-thup    th-thup-thup
hrk!

through the window across the room.

What?

I dashed to the window and carefully pulled the curtain back to avoid scaring whatever was making the noise.

About twenty wild turkeys were milling around on the driveway between my truck and the closed gate. One by one, they flapped to the highest point on the fence, mmm'd a few times, then flailed to the ground on the other side. They regrouped at the end of the driveway and crossed the street en masse.

I've lived here for over twenty years and never seen turkeys in the neighborhood.

One thing I noticed: no gobbling. Whether wild turkeys don't gobble, or they just weren't in the mood, I don't know. Sounds like a little research is in order.

Hence the Blog

Of course, since I started this blog to encourage myself to write, I spent most of my day off cutting out fabric for an entirely not historically accurate mid-1700s man’s frock coat, cut for a woman. Think Pirates of the Caribbean, and you will get the general look.

While I love researching and making historically-accurate clothing, sometimes you just have to work with the fabric you can afford and make something just for fun. With that in mind, I’m making the coat out of a completely synthetic black satin covered with metallic gold embroidery, which I found online for a reasonable price. Because I wanted to be able to use my multi-size pattern to make several different-sized coats, I traced all the pattern pieces for the size I wanted onto non-woven interfacing material—time-consuming, but hey, I figured…saving money, right? No, not really. I probably spent more on the interfacing than it would have cost just to buy another pattern on sale somewhere. Living and learning.

I should probably state right here that I’m a generalist with way too many interests and a library to match. I’m in love with -ologies—geology, cosmology, biology, anthropology…but could never settle on one. Therefore, I do a lot of reading. I have worked as a cook, bookstore clerk, cancer research lab tech, camp counselor, carpenter’s apprentice and accountant, geophysical technologist, and one or two other jobs that are escaping my memory. I currently co-own a small company for which I write very boring reports. For fun, I read all kinds of stuff; write stories, songs and poems; sew, knit, weave, spin and dye—and a little of just about anything else you can do with fiber; and play a small number of musical instruments more or less competently. And more, but it gets embarrassing/disheartening to think about all the pursuits I've been so excited about, and worse, bought the equipment for, gotten fairly good at, then moved away from. All of which is to say that I like to learn new things and don’t ever become a master at any of them. And I certainly won’t be filling any galleries or concert halls.

Hence the blog.

I don’t intend to be very biographical in the future. The whole point for me is to have a place to share the products of my imagination and my hands. But maybe I just won’t be able to help myself. I will probably want to talk about ideas from time to time, or even post the occasional opinion. We’ll see. Anything but solitaire.

Enough talk

We sat on the couch and said: Let’s do this.

Fifty-five minutes later, the October sun had slipped almost 15º down the sky and we had both invented blog names that hadn’t already been claimed. We went general and vaguely poetic to make room for whatever might emerge from pen or paintbrush, needle or camera.