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.